Read The War (Play to Live: Book #6) for Free Online

smellogram: steel, skin, poison, warm flesh in dozens of tasty varieties. A unique spectrum that could be smelled from over five miles away. But it was not what I needed.
    An emotions model: stress, fear, evil exhilaration, hatred. Bright strokes of feelings filled the surrounding area. Beautiful, but useless!
    A magic imprint of the territory: the pattern of the astral world, ornaments of its threads of power and scattered plants and minerals issuing background noises. This won’t do! I just can’t make sense of this. Gimme a plain old picture, with a horizon and some dimensions!
    New shapes flickered in my mind’s eye: a mountain ridge surrounding the Valley. Very close, a mile away at most. An acacia grove, barely discernible in the early morning light. A hill with random ruins, an ancient spiral road. Finally, a clear reference point!
    I flipped through the pages of the Valley’s cartographic atlas in my head. I should recognize a conspicuous place like this one when I see it, come on! A mile from the edge , upland, ruins, serpentine road…Not it…not it…keep looking…Found it!
    It was a place far from the castle, just over a mile away, straight ahead. Those bastards sure knew how to hide!
    My warriors were on the walls. Reserves were mostly NPCs.
    "Red alert! Breach in sector N27! Twenty thousand players, increasing by 300 per minute. Demons, dwarves and any remaining heavy golems: prepare to attack!"
    But this wasn’t enough. And the closest basilisk egg we had buried was over two miles away, out of reach. One basilisk wouldn’t suffice anyway as we had spotted the enemy too late. We would have to use our backup.
    "Get the King and both Wild ones from Arsenal 4! Teleport them right after me, to the point that’s closest to the breach zone. Let’s go, move!"
    The wizards froze in a trance, their eyes twitching underneath their closed eyelids. Finally, one of them woke up and said: "Sir, we have a logistics issue. Only one of our portal casters has the beacon marker. We’ll send five of our wizards with him right away. They will make copies of coordinates. Two minutes at most."
    I ground my teeth. “Next time, make scrolls! I want every guardroom to have its own sealed volume with a dozen parchments containing the coordinates of each and every point!”
    Orcus put a hand on my shoulder, trying to calm me down. "We can’t, Sir, it’s a matter of security. We won’t be able to keep track of them all."
    "It’s an open secret now! If one person knows, everybody knows! And after we win, this place will be accessible to anyone. We won’t be able to retain the monopoly of temples. Plus, it’s not profitable, no economical or political gains, dammit all to hell!"
    But my rant was pretty much a waste of breath. We still needed a few minutes to wake up our army and to get artifacts out of storage. No matter how loud a command, it still needs time to be executed.
    The portal took us to a ravine with a stream passing through it. In theory, such a place would provide good cover from prying eyes and also deafen the clap of a portal.
    The guards were nervous. They hurriedly formed the outline of the defense perimeter. The ogre carriers shifted from foot to foot as they stood holding the giant basilisk eggs, reminding me of ants guarding their larvae.
    I felt a strong itch between my shoulder blades and looked to the side where I sensed the foreign evil coming from.
    I guessed right…Or maybe I smelled it coming. It could be that I had picked up some hell hound skills after having mental contact with one of them.
    Wind blew from the mountain ridge. It brought the jingling of steel, the sounds of spells being cast, and muffled cursing in different languages. The fog glistening with neon was like a messenger letting us know with gloating delight that the enemy portals were numerous in that area by now.
    I shivered again and turned to Orcus. "They’re watching us…"
    He only shrugged indifferently. "Obviously. We’re