REAMDE

And for preventing the beneficiary from being Yanked. Yanking was a spell, normally used with hostile intent, that abducted the target character and sucked him across space at unthinkable velocity and deposited him at the feet of the spell caster.

 

Marlon began bringing down the curtains of protective spells. In doing so, he was exposing himself and the members of his army to attack; but his army was dissolving anyway, fleeing on a menagerie of winged, four-footed, and six-footed mounts, magic carpets, numinous motorcycles, and magical currents of air, trying to put as much space as possible between themselves and him upon whom the comet was unmistakably crosshaired.

 

Just as the screen was going completely white and the subwoofer trying to turn itself inside out, a translucent image of Thorakks appeared square in the middle, reaching toward him with one gloved and mailed fist. The screen became considerably darker, and they were treated to an animation that made it seem as though they were being vomited up an esophagus of eerily colored smoke and twining tendrils.

 

And then they were on a rocky ledge on the side of a mountain somewhere, looking at Thorakks, who was lit up a blinding white on one side and completely black on the other.

 

Marlon spun the point of view around so that they were looking in the same direction as Thorakks, that is, into the valley below them. A fireball the size of Staten Island was just that second slamming into the ground. Marlon had to turn the subwoofer totally off.

 

They stood there for a minute or so just to enjoy the spectacle: a shock wave spreading out from the middle like a ripple in a pond, eventually freezing to create the rim of a crater. Columns of steam rising up from the vaporized river. Rocks and trees raining down (both Thorakks and Reamde cast warding spells to keep from getting crushed by falling debris). The vast bubble of light and smoke gradually focusing into a column, the column resolving into a bipedal figure: a man with a long white beard, gazing about the crater somewhat in the manner of someone who has just turned on the light in his pantry and is looking for cockroaches. For—as Csongor now understood—this being had literally rode in on the comet, like a child descending a hill on a trash can lid.

 

“Egdod,” Marlon said in an interesting combination of reverence, disbelief, and pants-pissing fear.

 

“Never thought I’d see him in-game,” said James indistinctly from across the room. A moment later the words were repeated, in a harsh metallic voice, and with a different accent, by Thorakks.

 

Marlon was busy invoking new spells, trying to rebuild the defenses he had shut down in order to allow himself to be Yanked and trying, Csongor suspected, to make himself invisible. Noting this, Thorakks said, with mild amusement: “Seriously? You’re going to put up a fight?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“You’re going to go on the lam from Egdod.”

 

“I have no choice.”

 

“Do you know who his player is?”

 

“Of course I know.”

 

“Do you know he’s the uncle of your friend Zula?”

 

Marlon froze for a moment, and Csongor imagined that, in Marlon’s mind’s eye, he was seeing the image he had described to them during the voyage: a moment, just after Ivanov had been shot and Csongor knocked out, when Zula’s face had met Marlon’s through a dirty windowpane, and their eyes had connected for a few moments.

 

Then his eyes refocused on the screen.

 

“I will talk to the uncle of Zula when I have the money,” Marlon said, “and have given it to my friends. Their home has been exploded and they are running from the police and from everyone else, and they are depending on me to finish this.”

 

“Then let’s haul ass,” James suggested.

 

Marlon poised his fingers on the keyboard, then glanced up at Csongor. “Are you ready?”

 

“I will be,” Csongor said, “by the time you get there.”

 

“HEY, BIGFOOT,” CORVALLIS said. “You are rearranging the planet faster than our servers can update the caches.”

 

“It’s good for you,” Richard muttered. “Call it a stress test and get on with it.”

 

“It doesn’t help that you’re doing it at one in the morning when most of our senior staff are asleep.”

 

“It’s Saturday. They’re partying. What do you think phones are for?”

 

“I’ll try to reach them but—”

 

“Before you do that, tell me where the little fucker is.”

 

“So he’s back to being a little fucker now?”

 

“There are a lot of crushed and incinerated remains underfoot … but he should have survived … I cast a protective ward on him immediately before impact.”

 

After a lot of typing, C-plus answered: “He’s not there. He got Yanked just in time by one Thorakks. I can give you general coordinates, but they are moving fast and the database is going to lag.”

 

“Just give me a place to start tracking them,” said Richard, sounding more and more like Egdod himself with every moment. “No, scratch that.”

 

“Come again?”

 

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