That Wasn't the Plan

by Jason Cheek

  “I wouldn’t worry about it too much, Nykii,” Tammy said, as she caught the paranoid look that flashed across her friend’s face. “Those losers are locked away, alone, and outnumbered. The question that needs to be answered is, where the hell is our relief shift?” That comment immediately started a loud mutter amongst her people.

  “Those dumbasses are always running late,” Nykii said with a disgruntled snort as she took another pull on her beer. Across the courtyard, the rest of her teammates pulling guard duty had already broken out their own libations as they complained about the late night shift. It was bad enough to be stuck on this punishment detail as it was, but Dalton Sevens, aka the whiner, didn’t make it any easier. Maybe it was time to light his ass up once again to remind him that he was supposed to follow her orders, not the other way around.

  While that might be fun, she didn’t really see that helping the situation any. As it was, the whiner would just complain to Dante that she was picking on him and then she’d have to listen to that bullshit again. What she really needed to do was get out and get some levels, but with their current alliance with the northern tribes, that wasn’t really an option either. Letting out a heavy sigh, she leaned back against the doorjamb and checked the time on her HUD.

  “The jackasses are already five minutes late.” Nykii silently bitched as the rest of her teammates started to relax now that they weren’t in trouble for their indiscretions. She was turning around to head back inside to wait and have a word with Jackass Sevens whenever he finally decided to show up, when a motion near the south gate caught her eye. Turning back around, she forced her eyes to switch to Darkvision mode to see what was up.

  “What had caught Lucky Tess’ eye?” Nykii silently wondered, as she squinched her eyes up while scanning the fields outside the wall. Nothing popped into view, but whatever it was, it had Lucky Tess all wound up. There was the scraping sounds of booted feet behind her as the rest of her teammates joined her curiously looking out into the twilight. After about thirty seconds of nothing, she was about to turn away, when Sar suddenly spoke up.

  “What the fuck kind of noise is that?” The Arcane Mage demanded, cocking his head to the side.

  “The fuck are you going on about?“ The question died on Nykii’s lips as she got an inkling of what he’d meant, when she became aware of the same soft, irregular sounds being carried on the wind. At first, she couldn’t place the noise. It seemed to be emanating from the south. Not from one location, but from … everywhere. It was the irregular clanking that first tipped her off to what was going on, but before she could call out a warning, Lucky Tess and his teammates started to glow orange.

  The men and women of Lucky’s group never even got a chance to scream as a golden circle filled with runes lit up the ground around them in a five yard radius. Whatever it was, those that were within its’ radius of effect just collapsed as their bodies started to writhe in silent agony. At the same time, two different sets of bright white flares slammed into the thrashing bodies of her teammates. Sliding the long bow off, she began casting the spells needed for the stone reinforcement to her armor while, mentally flipping to the raid chat as she nocked an arrow.

  “Wake the fuck up!” Nykii urgently swore in raid chat. “We’re under attack!” That was as much as she got out before a wave of dark-purplish blasts took out Lucky Tess and the rest of his team in the blink of an eye. While their stone armor boost atop their regular armor had given them major protection against magical attacks, the enemy hit them with so many blasts at once that the extra resistance didn’t even matter. That, more than anything, made her realize just how fucked they were as she cast Searing Touch on her arrows.

  While it might not sound like much, at level 32 the spell offered an additional one-hundred and fifty damage per hit. Although, it might not be as flashy as some of the other Nightmare profession trees that the other Chaos Storm Alliances had received, it was anything but mediocre. A few of the louder mouthed assholes had quickly found that out for themselves. For a DPS Warrior or Ranger, that was a massive amount of damage to be pushing out with each hit, but when added to the Sneak Attack from a Rogue, that basically was equal to a head-shot in an FPS game. In layman’s terms, that was a one-attack kill, which was unheard of in a MMORPG style of game.

  On top of that, Dante’s Nightmare profession tree also upgraded armor too. It gave everyone in Global Brutality almost a plate-armor level of armor protection by level 25 on everything but the shoulders and head. Those pieces didn’t come until level 40. On top of the physical protection that was combined with the armor you were already wearing, each piece came with a five percent bonus against elemental magic. That was huge in and of itself, without even mentioning how invincible you felt when you were totally armored up like a walking tank.

  “Light your signal fires, enhance your armor and weapons, and then fall back to the keep!” Nykii urgently shouted out as the teammates around her looked at her like she’d suddenly grown a second head. “Dalton Jenkins, wake the fuck up and get your ass moving! I need your team down here now!”

  “Why the fuck are we falling back?” Sarunas demanded, as Nykii began shoving everyone she could towards the door.

  The Arcane Mage wasn’t the only one refusing to follow orders. Everyone in the raid was up in arms about missing out on some possible action. They were bored to tears and wanting to beat on something to release their pent-up frustration. Instead of falling back, all of her people began buffing up for battle and either were forming up before the door of the keep, or, like the outer wall guards, forming up at the base of the motte to take on whatever was headed their way.

  At least, the dumb bastards had lit the bonfires, a freaked out part of Nykii’s mind thought as everyone began doing their own thing. She could be reading this situation all wrong and ordering everyone to fall back for nothing, but her gut was telling her that something seriously bad was about to go down. The number of individual magic attacks that had wiped Lucky and his team out in the blink of an eye were no joke. Unfortunately, the problem was that this was the first action that any of them had seen in almost a week.

  “What’s your damn problem, Nykii?” Tomeo bellowed at her, completely falling out of his sleazy character persona. At times, she honestly didn’t know which was worse … choosing to role play a sleazy character or being a bossy dick. Either way, it pissed her the fuck off as she continued to ignore him.

  “We’re supposed to be fighting, not falling back!” Nathan snapped irritably. He was the other main Ranger in the raid and her second-in-command. Usually, he accepted her lead without complaint, but, this time, he was being belligerent as hell. He could fuck off too if he wasn’t going to follow her directions.

  The ruckus just grew worse as everyone complained and clamored to be heard while preparing to fight. Even Dalton was cursing up a storm in raid chat as he got his people moving to join in on the fun. While Nykii understood where they were all coming from, this was absolutely the worst time for the raid to be losing their discipline and acting like a bunch of newbs. Using her bow like a makeshift club, she began whacking the teammates around her.

  “Shut your freaking pie holes and get inside the damn keep!” Nykii screamed at the top of her lungs as her guild mates looked at her like she’d lost it. Nothing was helping to get her people’s heads out of their asses. She was just about to start shooting people herself, when Tammy’s horrified exclamation cut through the chaos.

  “We’re so fucked!” The dead certainty in the Priest’s strained voice cut through the mini-riot like a hot knife through butter. As everyone looked over at her in surprise, she numbly pointed a finger towards the southern fields.

  It took a moment for the Global Brutality members to make sense of what they were seeing. Even though by now all of their eyes had naturally switched over to Darkvision, the wall of armored trooper racing towards the outer wall was almost too much to take in. There were literally hundreds upon hundreds of attackers running acr
oss the open fields. Weapons were forgotten in dumbfounded amazement as multiple wooden ramps slammed atop the low wall. As the first troopers came running up the ramp, a wave of purplish-black blasts came from the troopers further behind them.

  “Incoming!” Nykii screamed as she came to her senses in time to eat dirt. It was a term that she’d frequently heard her father and his friends use after returning from their time in the sandpit, aka their tour of duty in the Middle East. She’d never fully understood what he’d meant until now as a wall of offensive magic washed over their head. A handful of her teammates hadn’t heeded her warning to drop and were blasted off their feet.

  The blasts weren’t anything like fire, frost, or arcane. Whatever the magic shit was, it ate away at a person’s skin and bones like the worst flesh eating virus you’d ever seen. Individual shots didn’t seem to be terribly effective, but getting hit with twenty of them at once ate away a person’s flesh and muscle to the bone within seconds. As her teammates screamed in pain and tore at the dark, spreading wounds, another gold seal lit up the ground near the entrance to the keep making those inside its area of effect collapse to the ground to thrash in silent agony.

  Looking around, Nykii instantly recognized the problem. This fortress had a defective design. The hill the keep was on made it slightly higher than the outer wall, which made the entrance easy for ranged attackers to easily target. This thought came to her as a number of her teammates’ icons suddenly turned gray in her HUD. Her brain momentarily froze as the gray kept growing. That’s when she realized it wasn’t just a few of the teammates around her that were being slaughtered. It was the majority of all of her available forces as the teams guarding the graveyards registered as being cut down.

  This wasn’t some random attack, this was a planned invasion. The only chance they had to hold out was to seal up the keep and combine their forces with their relief shift. Maybe then they could at least get some payback. Nykii didn’t bother calling back the fifteen remaining Global Brutality players that had formed up at the base of the motte earlier. As far as she was concerned, it was their loss for not falling back to the keep when the order had been given. The idiots had completely missed what was happening behind them and were now charging to their deaths.

  Ignoring the stone chips raining down on top of them, Nykii popped up into a crouch screaming out orders for the survivors to fall back inside the keep. This was the only chance they were going to get, she thought, as she began hauling the teammates around her to their feet and shoving them towards the safety of the keep. Looking back over her shoulder, she saw the force of unknown attackers begin pouring over the wall from ten different breach points. At the same time, two massive Cave Bears flanked by three large wolves came charging through the open gate that Lucky and his people had been guarding. Hot on their heels were even more of the unknown assailants.

  She immediately recognized the bears and wolves. Were these people part of another group of blind players that they hadn’t been told about? She wondered, trying to understand just who they were up against. The first few attackers over the wall took heavy damage from her people’s initial barrage of defensive fire. Instead of panicking or falling over dead, the armored invaders wordlessly dropped to the ground inside the courtyard. Stepping forward a few steps to make room for the attackers behind them, they wordlessly crouched behind their shields and began blasting at her people with more of those purplish-black bolts from before.

  Who the hell sent Mages in as storm troopers? Her mind screamed as the initial magic blasts were easily shrugged off by her people’s stone armor. There was a moment when she held out hope that her people would weather the onslaught, but within just a few seconds that slim hope withered as the volume of fire increased fivefold. Before her people could reach the enemy’s line, the animal companions barreled into them wreaking chaos.

  Terrified screams ripped from her people’s throats as they were smashed to the ground or ripped off their feet by their heads. With powerful flicks of their heads, the bears threw their victims through the air like ragdolls, while the glowing blades of her people flailed at the wild beasts. Not that those attacks had particularly hurt them. The screams were more from the shock then actual damage.

  Even with the obvious level difference between the two groups, her people might have had a chance to take some of the creatures down with them if the invaders had just stayed where they were. But, instead of holding their defensive position, the magic wielding assault force simply stood up as one and drew their blades. With a wordless shout, they waded into the uneven melee as reinforcements continued to pour over the wall.

  That was more than enough for Nykii to know they didn’t stand a chance out in the open. As soon as the golden seal disappeared from the ground in front of the keep, she shoved her panicked people through the archway just as another wave of purplish-black blasts hammered the entrance. Tomeo was in the lead with Nathan at his side, when Dalton and his crew began screaming in raid chat.

  At first Nykii couldn’t understand what she was hearing, when the DPS Warrior urgently began calling out orders as the clank of battle came to her ears from deep inside the keep. The blood in her veins turned to ice as she suddenly understood what she was hearing. Before any of her people could react, blood spurted across her face as Tomeo and Nathan suddenly came under attack by a pair of black-armored shadows.

  Complex blade combos lashed out slashing up underneath both men’s stone-enhanced leather armor to pierce their kidneys, before hammering into the base of their necks as another black-armored figure popped out of stealth further back inside the guard room. Instantly, blue magic flared from the attacker’s hand, releasing a flurry of foot-long ice shards directly into Nathan’s unprotected face. At the same time, another black shadow appeared in front of Tomeo. With the flash of a blade, the shocked Rogue watched the blade enter his crotch as it was forced up under his armor into his sternum.

  Without hesitation, Nykii whipped up her bow to return fire as an unbelievable amount of arrows blurred past her face to burry themselves into Tammy’s stunned face, while a Frost Nova blasted throughout their ranks freezing them all into place. Mentally howling in frustration, she helplessly watched as her friend’s hit points dropped to zero, while Nathan and Tomeo’s bodies collapsed in pools of their own blood.

  In the blink of an eye, these assholes had crippled her forces by taking out the two highest Rogues and the only Priest that Nykii had in her raid by Sneak Attacks. She gritted her teeth mentally raging. That was Global Brutality’s modus of operandi. She was so going to kill someone as soon as she was unfrozen, Nykii promised. For now, all that she could do was search for her next target, while counting down the seconds to the crowd control spell’s release as they targeted Islas next.

  Further back by the stairwell, Nykii could see a female Arcane Mage wreaking havoc on Dalton and the rest of his people. The Falling Stars spell the woman was channeling was inflicting terrible damage to her teammates as they battled against a large Half-Orc Warrior blocking the stairs halfway up. Several of her Rangers were targeting the Arcane Mage with everything they had, which was a major amount of damage. While the woman’s hit point bar looked like a yo-yo, the Priestess was able to keep her alive by continuously spamming shield and healing spells.

  For the Global Brutality members that chose the quick way down, aka jumping, they were immediately set upon by a flaming red-haired warrior in matching armor. The armored woman was a freaking force of nature. Using the strength of her whole body, she wildly swung her oversized, two-handed battle axe like a Viking Valkyrie come to life. One of Nykii’s DPS Warriors, Lazo Jenkins, that had chosen the quick way down was blasted off his feet, before he could catch his balance. Even though the big man survived the debilitating blow, his health was down by a third as his shield was transformed into a deformed wreck that was now wrapped around his ruined arm.

  The two Rogues that had followed the large man down fared no better. As they leaped to at
tack the fierce warrior, a black-armored shadow Sneaked Attacked from Stealth taking the nearest man out with flashing blades, while the red menace shrieked at the top of her lungs. Twisting around with her battle axe still in motion, she somehow managed to dodge the Backstab aimed at her spine to slam the oversized iron blade deep into the second Rogue’s back.

  Nykii couldn’t see who it was, but the blade sliced through the stone-reinforced armor like a hot knife through butter. The angle of the strike and the force of the blow redirected the man’s flight as he faceplanted hard enough into the stone floor to shatter teeth. Completing the twist, the enraged woman leaped atop the man as she stomped his face into the ground with her armored boot. Yanking the massive blade free in a fountain of blood, she began hacking the Rogue to death in a frenzy of violence that had to be seen to be believed.

  Who dared attack a known PVP guild in their own base outnumbered five to one? Hell, how did these unknown assailants know to infiltrate their keep so quickly? The professional side of Nykii’s brain churned demanding answers as she took everything in. It was like they’d known everything about them ahead of time.

  With a snarl, it came to her in a flash. Islas had befriended that poor, blind girl in the dungeon, and that two-faced, little bitch had played him like a newb. Was the freaking girl really even blind? She momentarily wondered, before dismissing the thought. In truth, it was a surprisingly well-executed plan for a guild that they’d rolled up like an old newspaper a week before. One she had to give props too, even if she was pissed about being in the situation they were now.

  Nykii wasn’t particularly upset about the extreme violence. Her guild did worse on a regular basis and excelled at it. Not that it was any particular surprise, they were called Global Brutality for a reason. No, what pissed her off most about the situation was being played and then taken out like a bunch of punks. This round might be lost, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t fuck up these people’s plans. Catching Sar’s eyes, they shared a meaningful look just as the timer on the Frost Nova clicked down to zero.