by Jason Cheek
Chapter One.Thirty-Five
(Thursday, May 8th / Day 18 of The World.)
In the courtyard below, I saw the remains of the PKers strewn about like discarded rags. Those that hadn’t escaped had been completely wiped out by mine and Domenic’s forces. As I took in the scene below, I saw that Helgath, Neristhana, Kenzie, Zhou, and Darkhorse were busy looting the corpses of those they’d killed, while Domenic’s defenders stood back in a semi-circle around them nervously watching their activities as if unsure of how to proceed.
Apparently our team’s alliance tags had completely caught the defenders off-guard. I was about to rappel down one of the few remaining ropes, when a well armored Dwarf halfling shoved his way through the stationary elementals and stopped to speak to one of his officers. Hearing a familiar voice I turned to see a heavily armored Half-Dwarf wearing full scalemail armor reinforced with pieces of platemail on the shoulders, hands and shins. He had two large glowing flanged maces in each hand and a large heater shield on his back that looked well used.
“What’s everyone looking at?” The Half-Dwarf asked his lieutenants, one being a Gnoll to my surprise, as he looked around to take in the situation. Casting a quick Identify spell, I smiled as I saw that it was my friend, Domenic, Vengeance Burnslinger, a level 32 Arcane Paladin.
“Are these the reinforcements that you mentioned were coming to help us earlier, Commander?” The stout halfling lieutenant asked in obvious confusion, as a familiar looking human couple came running up with Large Rock Bears at their sides.
“Didn’t you say something about a Flying Squirrel giving you a message earlier that Star was coming with an army?” The petite human patiently asked, as Domenic noticeably perked up while nodding in agreement. I smiled, instantly recognizing the woman as my guildmate and friend. A quick Identify confirmed that I was correct as Fluffy Tomohiahya, a level 34 Human Ranger, appeared over the woman’s head. Though her in real life name was Danny, we just called her Fluffy most of the time.
“Yeah, I did,” Domenic agreed, before calling out to his people. “Stand down everyone, these are friends.” As my teammates stopped their looting to look over at my friend with interest, Domenic turned back to Fluffy. “Though, I’d like to know why I’m just hearing about the little guy now. You’d think that having a Flying Squirrel that could deliver telepathic messages would be something to tell your guild about in emails or, I don’t know, our Sunday morning breakfasts?”
“That’s your morning breakfasts,” the human man next to Fluffy said unhappily, as Domenic gave him a sardonic smile.
A quick Identify turned up the name, Tony Tomohiahya, a level 34 Human Ranger and longtime friend that was married to Fluffy. They’d agreed at the beginning of the second week to give Dom a hand. Tony’s unhappiness came from not being able to join us for our Sunday morning breakfast routine since they were currently living out of state. I couldn’t help the smile that came to my lips as I shouted down at my friends.
“Maybe that’s because I didn’t get the little guy until earlier today!” I growled back in the same fake biting tone we used in real life when ragging on each other. Picking up the nearest rope leftover from the PKers’ attack, I slid down to the courtyard below, while Mike and his companion Shadow Stepped down from the wall.
“Show off,” I complained, only to have Mike give me a winning smile. While he introduced his companion, my friends fell in behind me as I walked up to Dom grumbling unhappily. “I remember you trying to pick her up back in High School too, if I’m not mistaken.”
“I think you remember it incorrectly Star. She was the aggressor back then, not me.” Domenic said with a knowing smile. “Thankfully, I saw right through her and was never interested in plowing that field. Besides everyone knows, you never stick you dick in crazy, well apparently everyone except you, Jay.”
“Everyone except Jay and John you mean, right Dom?” Mike piped in as they both laughed it up at my expense.
“You both mean everyone except Jay, John, and AJ, right?” Fluffy joined in on the fun.
There was a moment of silence as the rest of my friends looked over at me, unsure about how I was going to react to this new bit of information. I understood their concern. While I usually took everyone’s razzing well about Julie’s extracurricular activities, John and I had never made up after I found out he’d screwed around with Julie behind my back while we were still dating. Letting out a sigh, I asked the only question about it that was important to me.
“Did he do this before or after we broke up?” I asked, unconsciously holding my breath.
“It was way after,” Mike said with a shrug. “The rest of us figured you wouldn’t want to hear about it one way or another.”
“Not really,” I agreed, not bothered by the information at all or that my friends had kept it quiet. It would have only been a problem if AJ had screwed around with her while we were still dating. “AJ is welcomed to ride that crazy train as much as he wants. I just hope he doesn’t mind all the company.”
“I think it was more like she was trying to work him over like Hefe,” Domenic said, as Mike grimaced at being reminded about Hefe’s screw up.
“Well, that’s a relief,” Fluffy said somewhat embarrassed. “I thought I’d just caused a major faux pas or something.”
“Naw, it’s cool,” I said, with a self-deprecating shrug.
“So for the record, that means Mike and I are the founding members of the DFJ club” Dom said, grinning uncontrollably as he and Mike gave each other a fist bump.
“DFJ club?” Tony asked, somewhat confused.
“Didn’t Fuck Julie club,” I said, rolling my eyes as Tony perked up.
“Hey, that means I’m in the club too?” Tony chimed in with a laugh, before lowering his voice. “I’m not only a member, I’m the president.”
“Nor have I,” Fluffy chimed in holding her husband’s gaze, as we all laughed at his imitation of the old Rogaine for men commercial. “But I would have given it a shot if I had half the chance.”
“What?” Fluffy innocently asked, as the rest of us froze looking at her in disbelief. She continued without breaking eye contact with her husband as his head unconsciously cocked to the side at her next words. “Julie is hot, I would’ve given that a go in a second.”
For a long moment, Tony just looked at his wife while contemplating her words as a big smile slowly formed on his lips. “Um, can we have a word in private, dear?” Tony said more than asked, as he suddenly took her by the arm and hurriedly walked away from the group.
“Are you upset, honey?” Fluffy asked somewhat nervously, before they were completely out of range of the rest of us.
“Nope,” Tony replied in an excited voice, “it’s actually quite the opposite.”
We stood there, for a moment, looking at each other unsure of how to react to what had just gone down between our two friends. I’d known Tony and fluffy for a number of years from gaming together online. They’d even come to visit me in Florida a time or two over the years. While Fluffy was always nice and easy to hang out with whenever we played, she’d always come across as somewhat reserved on one level. With a shake of my head, I caught Domenic’s and Mike’s eyes.
“Wow, I didn’t see that one coming,” I commented, as both of my friends vigorously nodded their heads in agreement. We waited around for half a minute, before Mike haltingly asked.
“So, do we wait around for them to finish their talk or what …?”
“We wait,” Domenic and I said in unison. As another half a minute went by, my face suddenly took on an unhappy look as my mind went back to our last discussion.
“Speaking of John, where is he and his crew?” I asked, as my lips unconsciously curled into a sneer.
“Jay, are you ever going to let it go?” Domenic asked, letting out a bark of laughter. “That’s ancient history now.”
“Dude, he fucked Julie while we were still officially dating,” I snarled in spite of myself, as everyone looked at me sideways. T
aking a deep breath, I gave everyone an apologetic wave as I continued in a more normal voice. “Who’s still logged in?”
“OKaaay,” Domenic said, in a tone that hinted I was overreacting. “I’ll take that as a definitive, no.”
“Whatever,” I said, turning to Domenic as I subtly rubbed my eye with a middle finger.
Though John was still in the guild, I had little to do with him ever since I found out that he’d slept with Julie behind my back while we were still dating. It wasn’t that he’d had sex with her, but a break in the trust of our friendship. We’d never been quite the same after that, and was probably the reason why I flirted so much with his daughter. Yeah, I know, I could be a real asshole at times.
In one way, it was just how John was. You could trust him with your life or loaning him a thousand dollars, but he’d screw your wife or girlfriend behind your back just to get another notch in his belt. Okay, maybe that was more of my anger speaking than the truth. He probably wasn’t as bad as all that. If you listened to AJ and Hefe, they’d say that he did that just too finally beat me at something for once in his life. Whatever the case, it was always a touchy subject between us.
“Just the three of us,” Tony called out, as he returned from his little chat arm-in-arm with Fluffy.
“Kitty and Glenn were holding the main wall and finally logged out to take a break.”
“He’s pissed that they’ve been stuck neck deep in this shit for a week,” Fluffy added, as I frowned knowingly. No one wanted to be trapped in a never-ending siege instead of exploring the world and playing their own game. Kitty wouldn’t mind so much, but Glen was always bitching about how I attracted problems, and the rest of them had to deal with the fallout. Not that I could blame him this time around, since Julie essentially was my problem. Seeing the look on my face, Fluffy couldn’t help but laugh out loud as Tony jumped in on the fun.
“Yeah, Glen totally blames you this time around,” Tony said, as I pressed my fingers into my closed eyelids feeling the onset of a migraine.
“Don’t worry, Kitty was sticking up for you the whole time,” Fluffy said, still laughing. “Even if she agrees this was totally your fault for sleeping with that skank in the first place.”
“Skank?” Kenzie asked in surprise, “who even uses slang like that anymore. “What, is this Kitty woman my grandma’s age or something?”
“Depends,” Tony said, barely holding in his laughter. “Do you consider late sixties early seventies old?”
“Of course she doesn’t look that way in The World,” Fluffy said, nearly howling in laughter at the distressed look on Kenzie’s face. “She got herself a top dollar makeover to say the least.”
“I never knew a female Dwarf could look so sexy in tight leathers,” Tony said under his breath, as Fluffy gave him a hard smack to his back. Obviously, that reaction was all in play, as Fluffy agreed a second later.
“Grandma was looking good.”
“Great!” I said, dragging out the “a” sound. “It’s nice that we can all agree to appreciate a beautiful woman.”
Everyone chuckled at my offhanded comment. Seriously though, that was one of the best parts about playing an MMORPG. It’s doubtful that you could make an ugly looking character in any of these games if you tried, I silently thought, as a smile came to my lips. Even the monster races looked amazingly good in fantasy games. Besides, Kitty always had a certain classy style about her. I was interested as hell to see what she was rocking.
“Oh yeah, Jimmy logged out about an hour ago,” Tony added as an afterthought.
“Damn, I really wanted to catch up with him,” I thought glumly. Not that I blamed him. It was freaking late as hell.
“Well, that's unfortunate,” Domenic said with a frown, as he turned to his lieutenant. “I guess that mean’s I’ll have to get started resurrecting them on my own.“
“I can help resurrect too,” I offered, as my friend gave me a nod of thanks.
“That would be a huge help, thanks Jay,” Domenic said a bit relieved. Seeing my nod, he quickly ordered his lieutenants to lead a squad to gather up the wounded and bring them all to the keep as he turned to the silent, scarred Gnoll following behind him. “Gutirrg, please take over command here. Keep the walls clear at all costs, while I attend to our fallen.
“On it, Venge,” the Gnoll said in barely understandable common, before hurrying away with a group of fifty troopers at his back. There was definitely some questions I had for Domenic after watching that odd interaction. I mean, weren’t all Gnoll tribes evil?
With that taken care of, Domenic asked us to follow him. As he led us away, the Dwarves started gathering up corpses that had been partly buried at the base of the wall while another group took the dead troopers place. None of us had even noticed the bodies under the frozen snow during the attack. I offered to resurrect them here, but Domenic waved the offer away, saying it would be better at the keep where they didn’t have to go very far to rest. Before we’d taken five steps, Kenzie shoved me hard from behind as if to remind me that her and her friends hadn’t been introduced yet.
Uncomfortably clearing my throat, I quickly introduced everyone on my team, while my friends laughed good-naturedly at Kenzie’s antics. There were a few curious looks at Helgath and her place at my side, but no one said anything out loud about it as Domenic guided us on a semi-parallel course towards the central keep and the outer wall. Though, Domenic did start telling us about the day’s siege and the stealth attacks that had been keeping his people so busy tonight.
Chapter One.Thirty-Six
(Thursday, May 8th / Day 18 of The World.)
Mike apologized, saying that was partly his fault for pulling his teams out from harassing the graveyards, which had given the enemy the extra troops they had needed for the stealth attacks. He explained how he had his people on standby in case we were discovered during our stealth run, but that he’d get them back into position once we had returned. Domenic agreed that having Mike’s people spawn camping the graveyards had been a life saver. Without it, they would have probably been overrun that morning when the additional Chaos Storm alliance’s reinforcements had arrived. We were halfway between the middle of the outer wall that was still being bombarded with intense Lightning and Flame Strikes, when Domenic came to a stop.
“Those idiots keep blasting us with their AOEs thinking that they’re hurting us,” Domenic said with a sharp bark of laughter, speaking loud enough to be heard over the bombardment. Pointing out several iron poles sticking up out of the battlements, he continued proudly. “While we were falling back from the first and second walls, I had my people working hard on installing those lightning rods and the sturdy stone roofs atop the battlements. It’s a take on traditional hoarding that I modified for our current situation. So far, we haven’t had a death from their trebuchets since.” His finger pointed next to the thick wall of stone that was piled up before the gates.
“They keep pounding the gates like they did on the other defensive walls, thinking this one will give out like the others,” Domenic said with iron in his voice, as his hard eyes grimly studied the stone blocks. “Good luck with that. They still haven’t realized that the only way they’ll pry us out of this mountain is by coming in over the walls and taking it from us by fighting hand-to-hand,” he flashed us a savage grin. “I swear we’ll slaughter every last one of them if they decide to do that.”
Ignoring Mike’s worried glance, I focused on my surroundings while following Domenic as he led us in the direction of the keep. As we walked, troopers ran past with the dead bodies of their fellows in carts as they hurried to get their companions laid out to be resurrected and healed. It was a gruesome sight to say the least, and a sign of what was to come if my friend didn’t listen to reason. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I didn’t see him holding out against that many players for that much longer. Especially, not after the newest Emergency Hot Fixes that had come out. One resurrect in twelve hours wasn’t going to help a
ll that much in a siege like this. Not when the Chaos Storm Alliance had the numbers to easily overwhelm his people with one solid push if they went all out. Now that there wasn’t any permanent level loss, there wasn’t anything holding them back from doing just that.
I’d seen this before in other games. NPCs simply couldn’t hold out against an overwhelming number of undying players. It wasn’t that Domenic was blind to this simple fact. In his heart, I was sure he saw the writing on the wall. The problem was that, like me, he was stubborn as hell when it came to people trying to bully him out of what he’d worked so hard to achieve. I was sure that after completing his Nightmare start and then being forced to hold out against these asshats for a week and a half straight, that the Chaos Storm Alliance had completely flipped his switch.
While the plan that I’d come up with wasn’t any different than a strategy that we’d often used to effect in numerous StarCraft matches in the past, I could tell by the tone of his voice that there was no way he was going to be willing to back down, even after our conversation this morning about evacuating him and his people. Mike, Domenic, and I had played enough years together to know each other’s idiosyncrasies, which meant we recognized the signs before us. I just hoped that I’d be able to get through to him or this was going to turn ugly real fast.
With that disturbing thought in mind, we neared the iron-bound doors of a building next to the central keep that looked to be a workshop of sorts, when an over-sized Lynx suddenly appeared out of thin air at Domenic’s side. Most of the team jumped in surprise at the creature’s unique arrival. As we studied the Blink Lynx with interest, it matched paces with my friend. The cat was nearly two thirds as big as Neysa and, like my Silver Dire Wolf, was having an intense, telepathic conversation with my friend. How did I know that? Like most Italians, even though he wasn’t speaking out loud, Domenic still talked with his hands as they went back and forth excitedly about something important.
“Is he having a seizure?” Neristhana asked under her breath, as she critically eyed my friend’s flailing arms. From her perspective, he must have looked like a total spaz. Somehow, I kept a straight face as I whispered back.
