by Cheek, Jason
‘Where do you want us?’ Neysa mentally asked, sending feelings of confidence through our link as my mind struggled to update the tactical map running in my head. Unfortunately, the gaping holes from the fog of war wasn’t helping any.
It was obvious that Evil Sandra had somehow figured out that we were in the area and had deployed her forces accordingly. While all of this could’ve all been happenstance, I wasn’t a believer in coincidences. Even if you didn’t understand everything that had led up to your current situation, things typically happened for a reason. Could Evil Sandra have had all of this in place just because she was a thorough commander? It’s possible, but then why wait to wrest control back over the graveyards until now? No, in my heart, I knew that I’d somehow fucked up. The question now was how much?
Reaching the mouth of the gauntlet, I signaled Assault Leader Dell to deploy the pre-planned group of House Kayden troopers to guard our backs. While it was necessary, I wasn’t exactly thrilled about heading into a questionable combat situation with two hundred and fifty less troopers than I’d originally planned on. Not that there’d been much of a choice if I wanted to keep the two hundred and fifty Rogue players that had been preparing to attack the troopers guarding the eastern graveyard out of the fight.
If not for my new perception ability, those players would have caught my troopers completely off guard and easily taken control over our fallback position. While they could still corpse-hop to the southern graveyard and regroup there, doing so would take time and mean that they’d be lacking a lot of their primary gear in the process. It was possible that a smart commander would send a runner to let the main force know of our second attack group. Hopefully, by then we’d be on our way with Domenic and his people out of the area. I let out a heavy sigh. Those were another two more juggling balls of shit that could come crashing down on us at any second.
Even so, Mike’s reply via Tengsly did ease my tension somewhat by confirming that his group had managed to pull away the majority of the forces sieging Domenic. Still, there was no way for us to know for sure how successful the ruse had been until we stuck our proverbial head in the noose. That was, until I heard the rhythmic beat of approaching hooves coming from deeper inside the gauntlet. Fylreh knew better than to give away our position by using a full gallop, I thought in consternation, as the hard-faced Centauride came flying through the ruined gateway not sixty yards away. As Fylreh oriented on me in her headlong flight, I felt my heart anxiously clench in my chest as her hooves began beating the ground even faster.
“Star!” Fylreh urgently called out still twenty yards away. “The siege engines crews are all that is left at the third wall!” Seeing the confused look on my face, she came to a thunderous stop before me as she did her best to disperse her forward velocity by a series of rearing hops. As a wave of dust washed over the front line of our forces, Fylreh hurriedly continued out of breath. “The main attack force had just reached the walls when I came upon the enemy. From my count, there wasn’t more than a thousand newfar in the attack!”
“Yes!” I shouted in excitement at the good news. Stepping up to the Centauride, I clasped her upper arm in thanks as I met her golden eyes. “Good work, Fylreh, that’s exactly what I needed to hear!” Seeing the slight blush that suddenly came to her cheeks, I stepped back somewhat embarrassed at my enthusiasm, before continuing more somberly. “Would you mind keeping an eye on the plains to the west for the enemy’s advance?”
“As you wish, Star,” Fylreh replied in a more serious tone, even though the excited glow never left her eyes. Before either one of us could say more, the Centauride reared up on her hind legs and leaped away. Watching her chestnut hair streaming behind her for a second longer, I shook my head to clear my thoughts and contacted my soulmates as I turned to the raid.
‘We’re heading in. Please keep a watch over the southern approach so we’re not caught by surprise,’ I instantly sent to both Helgath and Neysa as I updated them on the plan, while ignoring the mental fingers clawing through my thoughts for more information as I continued nonplussed. ‘Fylreh is keeping an eye on the western side of the valley.’ Getting a wordless acknowledgement filled with love and concern from both of them, I began calling out orders. Within seconds, we were moving deeper into the gauntlet as planned.
Everywhere I looked there were areas of glassy and burnt ground. From the damaged terrain, the first group had obviously fought a steady retreat back from the first wall. The effect was sobering, to say the least, and was most noticeable with my friends who were silent as their eyes swept over the devastation leftover from the battle. As we approached the shattered gates, a sinking feeling began to build in the pit of my stomach as I noticed the clustering of white gravestones that peppered the area for the first time. I hadn’t noticed them earlier due to the distance and number of new boulders that were scattered around the area.
Immediately, my mind began trying to reconstruct the battle from the evidence at hand, but it wasn’t until we reached the opposite side of the wall that things started to make sense. I’d been keeping an eye on the gravestone names. By a rough count, there’d been something like fifty-plus different players that had been struggling to recover their corpses. From the field of white gravestones and new boulders littering the field between the first and second wall, it was obvious that a number of the Aussie players had pushed deeper into the gauntlet than they were supposed to and had gotten their asses handed to them.
What was most disconcerting to my strategic mind was that shouldn’t have made much of a difference. With the expected surprise of our assault, there shouldn’t have been any deaths to speak of, except for the zombies. This just confirmed my belief that the enemy knew we were coming and had been prepared in advance.
Letting out a deep breath, I nervously led the raid into the war-torn field between the first and second wall. All that I could do at this point was trust in Fylreh’s scouting ability and in the safeguards I had in place around the mouth of the gauntlet. Around thirty-feet in is when my booted feet sunk into something unpleasant, forcing me to slow down to a walk. At least, if I didn’t want to be wearing the disgusting shit.
I hadn’t noticed the four inch deep bog-like goo of unidentified smegma until I was right on top of it. Mostly because, I was too busy keeping my eye on the defensive wall in front of us. Obviously, this would have been an excellent place for an ambush. Hurriedly looking around, I realized what I was looking at a half-second later as the smell hit me full in the face, making me gag. As if on cue, Hefe’s annoyed voice broke the heavy silence.
“Fucking A, Jay,” Hefe croaked, as he stopped to hold up a goo-covered boot. “What the hell is this crap?
“No clue,” AJ said, breathing through his mouth. “But, it’s seriously some nasty-ass shit.”
“One of the Chaos Storm Alliance guilds must have had a shitty nightmare tree,” Hefe scoffed out loud, as AJ joked back.
“Naw man, that’s what you call a shitty start,” AJ said, giving Hefe a fist bump. As both of my friends laughed, Jill smacked the Dwarf on the head.
“Gawd, you’re such dumbasses,” Jill said, rolling her eyes at the weak joke.
“Seriously though,” Krystal said, obviously distressed at the horrific smell. “What the hell is this?” Before I could speak up, Thomas joined the discussion.
“It’s zombies,” the Devil Dog guild leader said in a flat voice, as my friends looked over at him in confusion.
“Yeah, watch out for the bones,” Sarka groused, kicking away part of a ribcage that had become wrapped around her boot. “You definitely don’t want to fall down here.”
“I wonder if it’ll be on your boots or your bare feet when you change back,” I heard Krishna muse out loud, as the rest of us looked back to see the horrified look on Lyeneru and Angie’s were-faces as they visibly gagged at the thought. Turning away like I hadn’t heard anything, I began to hurriedly make my way through the bloody bog of stank.
“Is this seriously what’s left
of all your zombies?” Rani asked in confusion from where she followed behind me.
“What did you expect would happen if a group of mindless undead attack fixed defenses?” I pointedly asked, as we made our way through the goop with our boots crunching the smaller bones underfoot, while my friends joked back and forth about the situation. Hefe and AJ even started a grotesque game that consisted of slinging the larger bones at Matt Cobra and Thompson who promptly zinged them back as the boys on both sides laughed at the spray of disgusting smegma being flung about. It was a more dangerous game than any of them knew, I silently thought, knowing that all it would take was for one of the women in the group getting hit with the smelly gunk in their hair or mouth and the fun and games would be over. Forcing myself to ignore the train wreck waiting to happen, I nodded to the numerous boulders strewn about the field, explaining to the V-MMORG Admin. “The raid leader probably had her people make a temporary wall at the ruined gate ahead of time and then simply bombarded the bunched up undead.”
“But-“, Rani stuttered, trying to wrap her head around the evidence before her. “In Telrain you crushed the opposition with your hordes of undead.”
“Not really,” I argued, as we reached the shattered gateway. Here, the undead had been hacked to death and were mostly intact corpses instead of crushed goo. Pointing to a makeshift barricade that had been constructed across the shattered gateway, I continued my impromptu lesson. “See, they just let the zombies stack up and then hacked the mindless creatures to death one after another.” The doorway in the barricade was wide enough for four of us to pass through at once as we continued towards the last defensive wall of the gauntlet. “Telrain wouldn’t have gone any differently. The only reason we hurt the Chaos Storm Alliance so bad there was because we caught them by surprise. All that they had to do was respawn at one graveyard and they would have easily fought off the waves of undead with minimum deaths. Hell, they probably could have done that without even setting up any barricades. Though, if they had, it would’ve gone just like this.”
That bit of information seemed to make Rani rethink the general usefulness of my undead pets as we moved towards the last defensive wall of the gauntlet. All around us were the various sleeping gear and campfires of the Chaos Storm Alliance. Obviously, they had moved their gear from when we went through earlier that morning. Something that would have set off alarm bells that this was an ambush for any of us that had been part of the stealth group to talk with Dom, I mentally sighed, just another mistake on my part for not having at least one of my teammates from earlier escorting the first group to warn them of what to expect. As I silently studied the last defensive wall of the gauntlet, my self-castigation was cut short when I caught sight of the five siege engines and their Dwarven crews sitting atop the wall watching the assault.
“Alright people, it’s time to make the donuts,” I announced in raid chat, as Thomas, Kenzie, and the other Devil Dogs glanced over at me in surprise, while Rani gave me a smirk.
“What?” I asked, frowning in annoyance as I came to a stop. Seeing my older friends roll their eyes at me, I ignored the peanut gallery and focused on the Devil Dogs. “Don’t even act like your old asses don’t know the commercials.”
“Who are you calling old,” Kenzie grumbled, flipping me off as Thomas quipped back
“I’m just trying to figure out if you’ve even seen the commercial.”
“Our sensei used to use the saying all the time,” I said in the way of an explanation. “Surprisingly enough, YouTube still has most of the older commercials like that online.” Jill, Krystal, AJ, and Hefe were already well acquainted with some of our odd sayings like that and just acted like Domenic, Mike, and I were super geeks. What-the-fuck-ever, I thought with a mental snort. While I didn’t watch TV, I sometimes watched the older commercials that peopled marked as being funny. Or more accurately, I usually only watched the commercials that were banned in the states because they were more interesting.
“You know,” Kenzie said with a smirk on her face, “it kind of takes away from the joke if you have to explain it.” Rolling my eyes, I ignored her dig and moved out, acting like nothing had happened.
“Okay people, it’s time we got this party started,” I tried again, as Kenzie busted out laughing.
“You’re quoting Pink now?”
“I fucking hate you,” I muttered under my breath, as everyone started laughing even harder. Letting out an exasperated sigh, I tried again. “Look, do you mind fucking keeping it down? The enemy is up ahead.” That seemed to get everyone back on track as they began eyeing the fortifications thirty yards in front of us, while I gave Tengsly a message for Domenic and sent the Flying Squirrel off with an unhappy squawk. This time when I moved out, the raid fell in behind me as I continued in a more serious tone. “Fylreh reported that the siege engine crews were left behind while everyone else joined the assault. If there’s no more surprises, we have a thousand newfar in the attack force and twenty-five Dwarves with the siege engines left to deal with.”
“Damn, it’s too bad we can’t somehow take the siege equipment with us,” Thomas muttered unhappily beside me, as we made our way across the gap between us and the enemy.
While I agreed with the sentiment, I knew doing so would slow us down too much to escape the horde of enemy players that would be hunting us down. As soon as the enemy commander realized they’d been suckered, the shit was going to hit the fan. Giving Thomas an apologetic nod of understanding, I continued laying out the order of battle. “Assault Leader Dell will secure the defensive wall and destroy the siege engines, while the rest of us get into range to offer Domenic and his people support against the invaders.”
The “Oorah!” that sounded from the raid loudly echoed off the walls of the gauntlet and made the Dwarves sitting on the walls jump to their feet in terror as they noticed our raid for the first time. A few of the braver souls jumped down to try to get their siege engines turned around, but most of them just hopped off the far side of the wall to run away or possibly warn the rest of the force. Not that they had any chance as we swept through the artillery park killing everyone in our path. The Dwarves on the far side of the wall tried to seal the shattered gateway with their earth magic, but it was too little too late as we charged through the wide opening blasting the handful of Dwarves to death.
Thankfully, our luck seemed to be holding out, meaning there weren’t any troops waiting for us in ambush as we made our way across the pockmarked battlefield towards Domenic’s fortress. While that might sound like I was being paranoid to some, it’s something I would’ve done if the shoe was on the other foot, which was why Assault Leader Dell’s orders had him prepared to repel an assault from either direction. While I thought it was a decent plan, Sarka disabused me of that belief a second later.
“Why are we leaving nearly half of our force behind to take on an enemy nearly three times our size?” Sarka sidled up to me and asked in a hush tone.
“If everything works out the way we hope, there won’t be a battle,” I ambiguously answered back with a smile, as I glanced at Rani meaningfully.
“And if it doesn’t work out?” Sarka pushed, annoyed that I didn’t actually answer her question as she completely dismissed the V-MMORG Admin.
“Then we’re going to get some experience running back from the graveyard again,” I said with an unconcerned shrug
“Can’t you just for once answer a freaking question directly,” Sarka griped, as we made our way across the war-torn field towards Domenic’s fortress. “I swear, you’re worse than Yun-” I half-tuned her out as she began bitching up a storm. A quick glance at Yun and Tinyr laughing at my situation let me know they must have seen this coming. Suppressing the smile that tried to form, I turned back around to study the shallow craters filled with water that were scattered around the field in-between wide areas of melted sand and piles of rubble that were more than likely the leftover mineral-remains that had made up Domenic’s Earth elementals. It was a so
bering amount of destruction and brought home the extent of how large battles in The World could literally reshape the landscape. My attention was suddenly pulled back to Sarka, when she popped me in the shoulder hard. “Are you even listening to me?”
Before I could answer the pissed off Warrior, a horrendous grinding sound filled the air. Immediately, the massive stone wall not forty yards away suddenly began to slide together and compress. As the entire wall folded flat across the courtyard and began to retract into the keep, I slowed to a stop at the impressive sight as Sarka’s voice died away.
“Well, shit on me.”
“I guess we’ll find out together if this worked or not,” I said, before calling in raid chat. “Everyone, prepare for battle!”
Chapter Eleven
(Shapo Xela - Chaos Storm guild officer, assaulting Domenic’s fortress (thirty minutes earlier))
“Are you a complete fucking idiot, Romperu?” Shapo shouted in annoyance, as the entire group of melee players fighting against the Earth Elemental was blasted off their feet from his Lightning Strike. “I’ve already told you, the fuckers are immune to lightning attacks.”
“Would you stop freaking calling me that?” Roberto asked in a huff, as he turned on their group’s team leader. “Rimaru deserves more respect than that. He was the damn Butcher of Bucharest,” he irritably explained as Shapo mimed stroking herself off. “What the fuck does it even matter to you anyway? It’s not like I’m hurting anyone important.”
“That’s not the point,” Shapo said, glancing over at the Fatal Midnight guild leader who was visibly seething at the Chaos Storm players’ constant mistakes. “Mister-Griefer is about to bust a nut if we keep killing his guildmates.”
“Better watch out,” Roberto sarcastically said as they busted out laughing, “or they might try debuffing us.”
“Alright … alright,” Roberto said, gasping for breath as the melee group gave them dirty looks. Before any of them managed to climb back to their feet, the Earth Elemental began pounding its sledgehammer-like fists into the stunned players. Although the stun only lasted for five second, two of the Fatal Midnight players were sent to the graveyard as their heads burst open like overripe melons, before the raid was able to climb back to their feet. Catching his breath, the Ranger continued with a satisfied smirk. “Besides, the Water Elements are more fun anyway.”
