The Duty (Play to Live: Book # 3) Read Online Free Page B

better to sink an adamant blade under his seventh rib.
    The Fallen One stared at me skeptically. "Feeling better?"
    "A grudge always feels good," I refused to play along. "Why, what do you see that I don't?"
    "Everything. White Winnie's is the mark of ownership. Of submission. Yours is the precious gift of a High God, and I risked a lot making it. That's nothing to turn your nose up at!"
    "What did you risk, then?" I asked, calming down a bit and nodding my thanks to Macaria who'd just switched her attention from the puppies for long enough to fix my plummeting health.
    The Fallen One thawed out a bit. He seemed to be genuinely proud of the work he'd just done and, like any craftsman, he couldn't wait to blow his own trumpet.
    "You see, every our action is a tiny pebble that tips the scales of the universal balance. But as we two are in different classes, mine can be a boulder while yours is but a grain of sand. Mind you, it's quite capable of starting a landslide provided the place and the time are right. But that's irrelevant. So basically, by interfering so blatantly with the course of events, I disrupt this shaky balance which in turn not only offers the Gods of Light a perfect excuse to strike back but also exposes me to the universe's potential compensatory readjustment. And you can never tell how the cosmos is going to react. It's quite possible that a great leader of Light has just been born somewhere—or a mob slain by a Paladin of Light has just dropped an incredibly powerful scroll. You just can't tell."
    He paused, his gaze focused on the horizon, his unmoving stare seeing things only known to himself. Well, well.
    Finally he came to. "Actually, considering the Gods of Light's current advantage on all fronts, I'm not particularly worried about disrupting the world's balance. As it stands at the moment, it's a one-team one-way game, which at least allows us to restore some of the disadvantage. That's one explanation of our recent successes and our opponents' lack of response. No need to grin! Your particular persona doesn't interest the world's scales in the slightest. Don't get too big-headed: they'll brush you off the world's chess board without even noticing. There'll be no free ride. What's worse is that our actions bring this world to life, adding to its uniqueness, thus bringing the two realities—Earth and AlterWorld—even further apart. The umbilical cord that still connects them keeps stretching but it's getting thinner and tauter. It rings with the strain. Here, listen."
    I pricked up my ears, struck by that unexpected bit of insider information. I could hear the wind blowing, the bees buzzing, the trees rustling. But was it the bees? Or the wind? I raised a quizzical eyebrow, looking him right in the eye. The god lowered his eyelids with a sad smile. A chill ran down my spine.
    I shook my head as if trying to empty it, cartoon-like, of all the sounds and musical notes. The Fallen One had to be pulling my leg.
    He promptly grinned and guffawed. You son of a bitch!
    Once he calmed down, he turned serious. "In actual fact, you—all of you permas I mean—are yet to develop astral sensitivity. You can't notice the strain sustained by celestial spheres but it's huge, you'll have to trust me on that. Very soon the umbilical cord will break, rending the two worlds apart, probably never to see each other again. We can only guess what will happen to us afterward."
    I wrinkled my forehead. "If, as you say, AlterWorld will drift away, it means that all the regular players will go offline, unable to re-enter the game, right? There're fifty million players and only two percent of them are permas. How's that for Judgment Day? Empty streets and castles, deserted chat rooms..."
    "Not quite so," the Fallen One pointed out. "Your biggest mistake is believing it's still a game. It's not. This is a living breathing kicking world even if initially artificial. Your own faith created it which in turn was amplified by the