That Wasn't the Plan

by Jason Cheek

  Sub-Leader Butcher was momentarily surprised that the ambush hadn’t taken out more of the enemy, until she saw a familiar face calling out orders in the middle of the group. She’d never forget the cocky man’s white-blond, spikey hair and cold-blue eyes as a cold shiver ran down her spine. It was Apoxsee, the Dread Pack’s guild leader. The individual responsible for so many deaths in their city.

  Apoxsee was doing his best to rally his guildmates in the face of the overwhelming numbers of defenders they were up against. He was having them use the black gravestones of their dead to form a defensive circle around the gate to give his people some sort of physical barrier against the incoming barrage. Watching him work, in her heart of hearts, Sub-Leader Butcher knew that if they could kill him then the newfar attack would fall apart. Coming to a decision, she helped to take out the handful of Rogues that were still being taken down, before calling out orders.

  “Form up to advance on the gate!” Sub-Leader Butcher's voice barked, as her troopers sucked down healing vials and hurriedly fell into formation. This time, she took the lead position at the head of her troopers as her voice cracked like a whip. “Our goal is to break down the barrier of gravestones and take out the Dread Pack’s guild leader, Apoxsee!”

  “Look, if our brothers’ and sisters’ in arms can’t slaughter the enemy from range, the Dread Pack will just burn them down,” Butcher said, her voice taking on an earnest tone at the fearful looks that flashed across her troopers’ faces. Normally, she would’ve just given the order to attack, but all of the troopers here were volunteers. Besides, she couldn’t fault them for being afraid of the inhumane guild leader that had caused so much death and suffering. “It’s the only chance we have to break the enemy’s assault.”

  Seeing the fearful looks in her troopers’ eyes slowly being replaced with one of determination, made Butcher breathe a sigh of relief. Maybe she was a fool for throwing her life away resisting these immortal bastards, but she couldn’t stand around and do nothing when faced with such an overwhelming evil. If she was going die here and now, she thought as her face turned hard, then let it be for a cause that was worthwhile. Besides, another two or three hours would save thousands of civilian lives as they were even now being evacuated from the city onto the waiting ships in the harbor. With that thought held in her heart, Butcher raised her sword and pointed it at the hateful enemy.

  “For Darom,” Sub-Leader Butcher bellowed, “charge!”

  The battle shout ripped from the throats of the troopers behind her as Butcher started forward at a slow jog. Step-in-step, the line of troopers followed behind her doing their best to keep in formation as the jangling sound of equipment filled the air around them even over the sounds of battle. Glancing over her shoulders to either side, she received a head nod from her Team-Leaders as she began increasing their pace. At forty-yards, the line was moving at a fast jog and the Dread Pack hadn’t realized the danger they were in due to the withering fire hammering into their ranks. A few steps before the stacked gravestones, Butcher’s voice cracked like a whip.

  “First row will assault the enemy! Second row will destroy the barricade and then engage!” Sub-Leader Butcher vaguely heard her Team-Leaders’ acknowledgements of the order as she leaped the gravestone barrier.

  They’d caught the Dread Pack fighters by complete surprise, Sub-Leader Butcher thought, as she Shield Bashed the man in front of her off his feet, while her blade sank to the hilt in another man’s chest. A half-second later, the first row of troopers slammed into the enemies to either side of her with devastating results. Their attacks were brutal and effective as blades hacked into unarmored flesh as the newfar reeled under the assault.

  One of the newfar brought their sword up to hack into Butcher’s exposed neck just as she lunged, when the swordsman next to her took that man’s arm off at the wrist before he could strike. As the man windmilled back screaming about the loss of his arm, the swordswoman next to him silenced the man with a thrust of her sword into his open mouth. Even then, the newfar wasn’t dead. As the man collapsed to the ground, the swordswoman ripped her sword free and stepped over the momentarily stunned enemy. As she laid into the next newfar her comrade was fighting, the second row of troopers commenced to hack the downed man to death. That scene was repeated again and again as Butcher’s troopers steadily advanced into the center of the Dread Pack’s lines. In less than a minute, they’d opened up a clear path to Apoxsee and his officers.

  While Sub-Leader Butcher’s advance might have looked relatively easy to an outside observer, in truth, her troopers had only taken out the severely wounded newfar that had lost their Flame Shields and hadn’t been able to fallback quickly enough to the rear. As Butcher came to a stop so that her troopers could reform their battle line, Butcher saw the Dread Pack guild leader turn to face her. There was no fear in those deadly-blue eyes, as the familiar mocking grin came to the Assault Warrior’s pale face.

  “So this is the little bitch causing us so much trouble,” Apoxsee said to the two, Nightmare spec’d guild officers standing next to him with a sneer on his lips. Like the rest of the players in his guild, he didn’t look at the people of The World as anything more than digital code. If pressed on the subject, he might have added that the NPCs were relatively unique due to their distinctive designs, but otherwise, he wouldn’t have even once considered that the digital personalities of the people of The World could actually be true people. It was just too absurd of a concept for him to entertain. Besides, after running through so many virtual worlds with his guildmates like a bunch of murderhobos, the thought that any of the digital individuals could actually be conscious or truly alive would’ve been too contradictory from what he knew to be true.

  Not that the general attitude of the majority of the players in the guild had toward people in the real world was all that great either. The Dread Pack, like most of the Chaos Storm Alliance were made up of typically egocentric, if not completely narcissistic, personalities. Apoxsee Neoauspex led a guild that made money off of publicly destroying other guilds in the games he played by the use of insider information and then publicizing their defeats as excellent playing to MMO Twitch fans on his channel. His good friend and guild officer, Amron Bungholio, used his own podcast to back up the narrative of their exploits, while making sure to ridicule their victims in such a way to make them look like they were simply losers that deserved to be ganked. Shuuk D’Poke, the other guild officer and general tool standing with them, was the Facebook administrator for his GameTwitch group that was the guild’s public face.

  Officially, his group was supposed to promote Twitch gamer channels to draw interest in players’ streams. In actuality, Apoxsee used this group with the other Chaos Storm Alliance guild leaders as a way to target new victims for their streams. The group did such a good job at ganking the people they publically said they were trying to support and promote that most of their victims didn’t even realize the scam that was being run against them, Apoxsee had always gotten the biggest laugh out of that.

  Everything had been running like clockwork, until just recently. It had started when they’d taken on their latest target, Startum Ironwolf. Instead of being taken down like everyone else. This player had done what no other targeted victim had managed to accomplish since they started running their hustle. He’d somehow managed to stand against their combined strength. Not only that, but how he publicized his own exploits against them had made him nearly impossible to take out on social media. They’d tried their normal types of attacks to turn the community against him, but when it came down to it, at the end of the day, Startum didn’t seem to care what anyone else thought about him. Even worse, every tactic they tried to run against him just seemed to backfire. Combine that with his in-game rankings and people were starting to watch his streams on their own to find out how he was doing what he was doing.

  The number of viewers for their channels were already down nearly ten percent. If they didn’t find a way to take him out soo
n, the loss of revenue was only going to get worse. That was partly why they were focusing so much on retaking Darom. The other part was because Julie, the Chaos Storm guild leader, had explained to everyone the night before that Darom was the linchpin to this Startum player’s entire operation. If they could take Darom back before he could escape to his own area, they would be able to cut him off and destroy his forces at their leisure. In all of their minds, the only way they could get back their position of dominance in The World was by taking down this upstart hard. Besides that, if their victims started fighting back where would they be left then? These were the thoughts going through Apoxsee’s mind and the reason he was pushing so hard to take the city of Darom back as he turned back to the line of NPCs preparing to attack and called out to his officers. “Once we take these NPCs out, we’ll clean out the rest of the city so they can’t catch us by surprise again.”

  Butcher was completely stunned by Apoxsee’s brutal words and attitude. It was the same complete lack of regard for hers and the people of Darom’s lives that was reflected in the two men’s eyes standing next to him. She’d only seen such complete inhumanity in the eyes of the monster tribes of the north. It was like these newfar didn’t consider them as anything more than bugs to be crushed under the heel of their boots. While their attitude was sobering to say the least, it was also freeing in another. If she were going to die, then she was going to do it on her own terms. As sparks glinted from the crossbow bolts being blocked by their Flame Shields, the swordswoman pointed her iron blade directly at Apoxsee.

  “Drinks on me, tonight, for the trooper that takes Apoxsee’s head!” Sub-Leader Butcher shouted to her troopers, as she started forward with her shield raised. While none of them expected to live, they appreciated the jibe as her troopers let out a savage shout and bravely followed her into the eye of the storm.

  With contemptuous looks on their faces, Apoxsee and his officers blasted them with their Flame Thrower spells at point blank range. None of them were surprised about the Dread Pack players’ choice of attacks as they did the only thing they could do. Slamming the point of their shields into the cobblestones, the troopers hunched behind their iron-reinforced shields for protection as the air burned around them.

  Sub-Leader Butcher could only hope against hope that the rest of her troopers managed to take down the evil bastards Flame Shields with their ranged attacks. It was the only chance they’d get to take them out, she thought, as her leather armor and metal breast plate smoked from the intense heat, while her hit points began to fall at a precarious rate. It was in that moment that the flames suddenly died out around them. Forcing her half-cooked body into motion, Butcher rose to her feet to see the trio swearing at the crossbow bolts that had suddenly pierced their bodies, but before she could launch her battered body at the hated newfar with her surviving troopers, a large, bronze-armored figure leaped off the archway above the gate dropping directly towards Apoxsee.

  In that surreal moment, Sub-Leader Butcher took in every detail of the enormous warrior as he dropped the ten-yards to the ground. The full-faced, horned helm, the bronze, full-plate armor, the shredded red cloak fluttering above his head, and the massive two-handed Warhammer swinging down at the Dread Pack guild leader’s unarmored head. The impact of the oversized weapon would have been humorous if the situation wasn’t so dire. One second, Apoxsee was sneering at them in superiority and the next his head came out his ass.

  The surviving members of the Dread Pack that were on this side of the flaming wreckage of the gate just stared at the massive warrior that had suddenly materialized in front of their formation and taken out their most powerful player with one hit in stunned amazement. Before either guild officer could think to retaliate, Amron was blasted off his feet with the upswing of the Warhammer as he literally summersaulted in place as his head exploded into meaty chunks from the force of the blow. Obviously, the level difference between them all was extreme, was Shuuk’s sole thought, as the huge warrior’s backswing killed him instantly.

  At that point, the rest of the Dread Pack newfar began blasting the new enemy with their flame attacks. Shrugging off the fire as if it were nothing, the towering warrior’s hammer rose above his head and turned to face the shattered gates as Sub-Leader Butcher was forced to duck behind her shield again, when the ground suddenly lurched under her feet as the fire died away. Peeking over her shield, she caught a glimpse of the armored warrior’s broad back as he strode through the fiery remains of the gate after the surviving Dread Pack newfar.

  Sub-Leader Butcher was still trying to figure out exactly what had happened, when Zinnaemita’s arms wrapped around her shoulders and gently helped her to a sitting position, as the cooling relief of the Gnomeling’s Song of Rallying Spirit began healing her burns along with those of her troopers, Butcher took in the sight of the odd group of humanoids and demihumans in wonder. Never in her life would she have expected to be healed by a team that consisted of a Plain’s Centaur, a Half-Orc, a Half-Elf, and a Gnomeling without being filled with disgust. Truly, it was just one of the many wonders that seemed to surround Lord Ironwolf. Focusing on the Gnomeling’s pale-blue eyes, Butcher asked.

  “Was that the same warrior that came to your rescue inside Darom?” Seeing Zinnaemita’s wordless nod as she continued singing, Butcher shook her head trying to understand what the odd warrior’s help could possibly mean. Before she could contemplate the issue further, she was surprised to see troopers atop the walls begin waving excitedly at someone on the far side. Butcher’s hit points weren’t even half full, when a messenger came running up to her from the nearest gate house. Coming to attention before her, the ex-guardsman quickly gave her a salute.

  “Sub-Leader Butcher,” the wide-eyed messenger said, as Butcher returned the young man’s fist salute. “There’s a Sub-Leader Tericius outside the burning gates.” His words lowered as if he didn’t believe his own words.

  “A group of swordsmen and swordswomen suddenly appeared out of nowhere and slaughtered the rest of the newfar that we were fighting outside the wall. Once the Dread Pack was taken care of, a line of civilians, mostly women and children, came streaming out of the forest's edge,” the young trooper paused his story as Zinnaemita and Butcher glanced at each other questioningly, before the young man blurted out. “Their leader, Sub-Leader Tericius, says they’re survivors from Telrain sent to us by Lord Ironwolf himself!”

  *** The adventure continues in “Book Seven”

  coming soon ***

  Character Sheet

  Name: Startum Ironwolf –

  Level: 36

  Difficulty: Nightmare Start

  Half-Elf: House of Kayden

  Class: Empty

  Profession Title: Necromancer (Dark Magic)

  Titles:

  First Settler

  First Village

  Hero of Delonshire Mine

  Leader of House Kayden

  Lord of BrokenFang Hold

  Worm Slayer

  Tribal Leader

  Mine Boss

  Noble Guardian

  Ship’s Captain

  Protector of Auris Shaeras

  Orc Slayer

  Sekolahian Bane

  Beastkin Brother

  Noble Defender

  Scourge of the Dishonorable

  Statistics:

  Hit Points: 2,552

  Mana: 3,700

  Endurance: 2,340

  Attributes:

  Strength: 100 (+86)

  Intelligence: 181 (+171)

  Spirit: 106 (+71)

  Agility: 120 (+30)

  Stamina: 150 (+82)

  Charisma: 78

  23 Unassigned Attribute Points.

  Racial Ability:

  Adaptable Survivability (Passive) – All defenses increased by 5% and total hit points are increased 10%.

  Darkvision (Passive) - Grants ability to see in dim-lighting conditions up to 100 yards and the ability to see in complete darkness up to 60 yards.

&
nbsp; Ambitious (Passive) - Receive 5% experience bonus when gaining experience.

  Racial Modifiers - +2 points to any stat of choice per level.

  Abilities:

  Frost Magic – Level 33

  Light Magic – Level 35

  Fire Magic – Level 18

  Dark Magic – Level 28

  Water Shaman – Level 13

  Nature Magic – Level 30

  Shadow Magic – Level 3

  Unarmed Combat – Level 24

  One-hand edge – Level 33

  Two-hand edge – Level 17

  Shield Block - Level 33

  Shield Bash – Level 33

  Riposte – Level 32

  Lunge – Level 32

  Parry – Level 33

  Dodge – Level 33

  Archery – Level 13

  Spells:

  Frost:

  Frost Blast (30 Mana) – 2 sec cast – Launches Blast of frost at enemy. Damage is 200% of Spell Power. Slows target by 50% for 15 seconds. Range 60 yards.

  Frost Nova (50 Mana) – Instant cast - Blasts enemies within 10 yards of the caster for 100% Spell power and freezes them in place for up to 8 sec. This spell does not affect friendlies within range of the AOE. Damage caused may interrupt the effect. 30 second cool down. Requires frost magic skill level 5.

  Ice Lance (40 Mana) – Instant cast - Deals 400% Spell power to an enemy target. Ice Lance damage is doubled against frozen targets. Slows target by 50% for 15 seconds. Requires frost magic skill level 10. Range 40 yards.