Inferno (Play to Live: Book # 4) by D. Rus Page B

peace.
    So that's basically what it was, this legendary Tavor TAR-21 and everything it stood for. Still, it didn't look as if Laith appreciated its Middle East background. He was too busy studying the document, his eyes scanning the lines telling him about a funny and unfortunate accident with a certain cryogenic company worker who'd become her own shop's reluctant client.
    All color had drawn from Laith's face. He looked up at the ogre. "Just tell me where I can find this piece of shit," he croaked.
    "Have you finished reading?" the ogre asked calmly.
    "Yes! Yes! Where is he?"
    "Message part two, delivered verbally."
    The ogre attempted to stretch his mouth into a smirk, then activated the simplest illusion artifact. The air thickened into the figure of the deranged Tavor. Laith recoiled. Wrestling a heavy two-handed sword from a guard, he began slashing at the immaterial image.
    Ignoring his outrage, Tavor kept pontificating in a sickly sweet voice,
    "I hope you liked my gifts to you. Both bitches are pushing up the daisies. Shame Mommy wasn't as lucky. Never mind. She didn't get too far — in fact, she's wonderfully within reach now. I'll get her! I'll get you too, you slimeball! Hey, Rocky! Trigger code one three five! Kill Laith!"
    "Code confirmed," the giant rumbled as his enormous club swept the speechless Laith aside, stripping him of half life and all passive shields.
    The second blow would have been deadly, had Snowie not stepped in the ogre's way. The guards joined in from the flanks like a pack of hunting dogs baiting a bear. The ogre circled on the spot, fending them off. Security protocol demanded the clan leader escape via an emergency portal. Instead, the furious Laith went for the stone giant.
    What happened next was the stuff legends are made of. Or would be, in a thousand years. Taking a swing with his heavy sword, Laith activated the deadliest thing he had: the Wings of an Angel, the level-300 combo he'd gleaned from the Chinese assassin being sacrificed to Lloth.
    Only now he didn't have the slim stiletto of a thief in his hands but a fifty-pound sword. AlterWorld wailed its indignation, ripping off seals and engaging compensatory mechanisms that allowed a priest direct access to his or her god's power. This was the easiest and most logical way to do the impossible.
    The Fallen One's black energy enveloped the blurred outline of the falling sword as it sliced through the crunching stone ribs, turning them inside out.
    The ogre groaned, convulsing, and froze, turning into a blood-curdling winged statue, the way it would be discovered later, three thousand years after the Battle of the Temple, grossing out the impressionable future visitors of the Fallen One National Arts Museum.
     
    * * *
     
    Yet another rush construction project that had started immediately after the arrival of Aulë was impressive in its scope. Unwilling to leave their Father's temple unsupervised — and also worried about all the work and resources invested in it — the dwarves expressed their desire to settle down in the Valley of Fear. Putting it plainly, in the territories controlled by my clan and myself. The guards, the priests, an impressive lineup of masters — they were about five hundred in total. I didn't object. The colonization of the abandoned territories was perfectly in keeping with my own interests. Soon, the squat Dwarven raiders began crawling all over the valley, scaling the ancient mountain range that surrounded it.
    The very next day the Dwarven camp swarmed with an activity that lasted all evening and part of the night. In the early hours of the next morning, my guards on the walls jumped from the deafening clap of a cargo portal. Its shimmering arch began disgorging a long column of prospectors: dozens and dozens of grim treasure-hunting dwarves, followed by drill rigs gleaming with copper like some steampunk nightmare, and magical beasts trained to detect ore veins in claustrophobic underground