by Jason Cheek
Krishna and Angie were right about the new strategy they’d worked out amongst their guildmates. It was something to be proud of, I silently thought, as eight hundred points of mana was sucked out of my reserves. While the Umbra Hunter form was impressive for traveling and conducting Sneak Attacks, it was not a powerhouse for melee combat. The way they’d managed to work around the problem was impressive as hell and gave them the ability to smash the enemy hard. As the golden glow of my healing spell spread out to cover the Humans and horses, I crossed my fingers that the surprise of the attack would last long enough for us to break free of the horde’s lines before they managed to come up with an effective counter to our assault. Without pause, I began casting my next Extended magic spell for Holy Shield, when Lance Leader Warf’s hands urgently began shaking my shoulders.
“All of you must fallback now Overlord,” Lance Leader Warf cried out, nearly disrupting my three-second cast as another series of golden glows washed across both groups.
“Gah,” I wordlessly grunted, shoving the man off of me as I got a headrush from using too much mana all at once, “get a hold of yourself Lance Leader Warf and focus on getting your men saddled up!”
“You don’t understand,” Warf angrily raged back, “our mounts are unable to be ridden-” his voice suddenly died out as he saw the horses climbing back to their hooves and shaking off the last of their injuries. What can I say, they’d mostly recovered from the group heals that had been cast while we were still running up. Instead of arguing further, the Cavalry Officer gave me a single nod, before whirling around to bellow at his troopers. “Everyone mount up before we’re slaughtered by our own people!”
‘Before we’re slaughtered by our own people?’ I mentally repeated in consternation, as the royal cavalry troopers immediately began disengaging from the enemy they’d been fighting against with the Werebears and ran for their mounts. The urgency in their movements set off warning bells in my head as Neysa roughly knocked me with her shoulder to get my attention.
‘Get on!’ she demanded, offering her flank. As my hand reached up to grip her thick coat of fur, I felt the familiar tingle of mana being worked by Shamans a second before the ground underneath my feet erupted.
Everyone in both raids were suddenly blasted into the air like rag dolls as sharpened stone spikes the size of my forearm shot up from the ground with the force of exploding grenades. Gold and green sparkles instantly filled the air around us like fairy puke as everyone’s Holy Shield and Enhanced Mage Armor were shattered across the breadth of the raid. A fact that I was barely aware of as Neysa’s cries of agony ripped through my mind from the multiple shafts of stone piercing her body.
Luckily, I managed to keep my hand knotted in Neysa’s thick coat as we crashed through the field of stone spikes. Though I used my body to protect her bloody flank, I could still feel all of the impacts through our shared link that pierced her shoulders, neck, and flank even as my Bone Shield gave up the ghost from the multiple impacts. As we slid across the ground breaking off stone spikes at their base, I caught glimpses of the rest of the raid as they struggled to survive.
In one such flash, Krishna, Phoenix, and the other Wardens were crashing to the ground after having their nature spirits take the brunt of the blast. Though still hurt, none of their injuries were debilitating enough to take them out of the fight. For their mounts, that was a somewhat different story. While all of them had a number of the thorny bands that made up their bodies broken or shattered, none of nature spirits were so damaged that they’d become discorporate.
In another flash, I saw that the Heavy Cavalry troopers and their mounts, along with many of our pets, had been brutally savaged by the stone spikes as well. While none had been outright slaughtered, many were already struggling to free themselves from the shafts piercing their bodies. As Neysa and I slid to a stop, my eyes came to rest on the backs of the Druids in Werebear form and the Manifest Cave Bears standing tall. Covered in gore and bleeding from numerous wounds, they proceeded to shred the surviving Orc Warriors that had been caught in the Shaman’s Earth Blast. Ripping the head off the last Orc, Angie faced the horde and rose to her full height as Kitano waded up to her side. As she held up the gruesome trophy for all to see, the massive Cave Bear rose up next to her on its hind legs and bellowed.
“RRROOOAAARRR!” The bestial challenge was immediately echoed by the six remaining Cave Bears and eight Werebears that were still standing in a defensive half-circle ahead of us. Facing the enemy, the female Druids triumphantly held up their gory prizes as one for all the enemy to see. Their combined roars were so loud that they seemed to momentarily drown out the entire battle that was going on around us. As they dared the Orcs to attack, I silently thought, what they just pulled off was badass.
Not wasting a second, I rolled to my feet and cast Regeneration on Neysa as I tenderly patted her bloody side. That didn’t mean the fighting had stopped everywhere else, I quietly noted, as I felt the Silver Dire Wolf’s pain immediately lessen through our link. Eying my dwindling mana pool, I gripped Helgath’s leather-clad thigh to link with her mana as a group of twenty tattooed Orcs with bone piercings in their flabby skin and carrying skull-tipped staffs pushed their way to the front of the Orcs ranks. A quick Identify on the scary looking bastard standing at their head told me everything I needed to know, when I saw Bugrol the Wicked, level 48 Orc Elemental Shaman appear over his head.
“Ah, fuck my life!” I swore out loud, as an evil glint came to the Orc’s tusked face. I had just enough time to trigger my Extended magic skill and pulse out Regeneration to everyone in both raids as my friends began to react.
Unfortunately, it was already too late for us to do anything as the group of Elemental Shamans slammed the base of their staffs into the frozen ground at their clawed feet. Realizing something bad was about to go down, Angie and Kitano both began shattering the stone spikes in-between them and their prey while the remaining Druids and Cave Bears joined them after a moment’s hesitation but it was already too late. Before any of them had taken more than a few steps towards the evil looking Orcs, the shrieking skulls atop the Shaman’s staves belched out wide cones of flame.
Closing my eyes and mouth, I held my breath and ducked behind Neysa as the billowing fire washed over everything in its path. It instantly felt like my entire body had been shoved into a blast furnace. It was even worse for my face. Even pressed into both forearms, I could feel the intense pain of my skin being flash roasted as it turned crunchy and began sloughing from my face. It was somehow even worse with my Regeneration spell ticking every second since the same skin was being recooked and melted off my face over and over again, it was agonizing.
By the third time of being burned alive in-game, you’d have thought I would’ve been somewhat immune to it by now. That, or my fifty percent resistance to Elemental magic would’ve mattered more than just reducing the hit points that were being lost. Trust me when I say, that you never got used to being burned alive. If anything, knowing what was coming made the soul rending experience that much worse. As my eyes began boiling in their sockets, I was sure I was going to completely lose my mind, when the ground rose up to smash me in the face.
It took a few ticks of Regeneration for me to realize I wasn’t still being burned alive. Though, it was probably my eyes fully growing back in my skull more than anything that helped me realize that simple fact. That was probably because the agony of my wounds hadn’t really lessened since my skin was still in the process of being grown back.
Even then, it took me a few seconds of looking up at the snow heavy clouds, before my mind fully reset. Partly that was due to the mana depletion I was dealing with. Even though a dull glance at my mana bar showed that I was nearly back to two hundred points, the momentary stupor it could cause took a moment to recover from. That, and the intense pain I’d suffered through at the same time probably didn’t help any either.
A part of me was starting to think that the Human mind could only tak
e so much pain before blacking out the specifics. That, or it was an aspect of how the FIVR interface worked in conjunction with your mind so that the players didn’t suffer any PTSD upon logging out. I was just mentally chuckling at my random thoughts, when my eardrums started healing back enough for the sounds of battle to make it to my ears.
In a flash, the urgency of our situation suddenly came flooding back to me. It seemed to happen all at once. My senses were flooded with the searing agony coursing through Neysa’s body, the pain-filled moans of my friends, the screams of shrieking horses, the enraged bellows of Orcs … it hit me all at once as I rolled over and puked. The taste of bile seemed to clear my mind as I reached out to pull myself up on the blackened lump in front of me, only to be hauled to my feet by an arm.
“We must fallback now!” Fylreh’s concerned voice shouted in my ear, as she let me go and began firing arrows in a blur. Surprisingly enough, she didn’t seem to be hurt at all, I thought, as my voice cracked out like a whip.
“Get your asses up and get moving people!” Standing tall, I felt the adrenaline begin pumping through my veins as my Raid Leader persona settled over my shoulders like a familiar cloak. Even as my cold calculating mind kicked into overdrive, I couldn’t stop my clenched fists from glowing with purplish-black energy or the seething rage that flared to life in my chest as I took everything in at once: Neysa’s burnt and blackened body rising to her paws in a fury with Helgath still somehow strapped to her back; the zombie pets that were now only the smoldering husks of skeletons struggling to free themselves from the stone spikes piercing their bodies; the Manifest Large Wolves and Cave Bears that were half-dead blackened husks struggling to rise, the nature spirits’ thorn bodies that were barely holding together, the fried Werebears that looked more like mutant Freddy Krueger wannabes, the nearly Humans and their mounts that were barely alive, Phoenix and the Wardens’ half-melted faces that were healing with each tick of Regeneration as they struggled to their feet, the fifteen-yard-wide swath of destruction that now ran along the entire front of the horde from where the fiery shots from the city’s catapults had struck, the mass of injured Orcs scattered across the ground, and the stream of Enhanced Multi-Shot arrows that Fylreh was sending nonstop into the Elemental Shamans even as the rest of the horde vanguard surged forward. After spending the majority of my life leading raids against literally hundreds of bosses in numerous MMOs, my mind had no problem categorizing it all as my mind worked out the best strategy it could for us to survive this shitstorm on the fly.
“Wardens and Druids cast your Healing Breeze! Set all pets to attack!” I began bellowing out orders like a metronome. “Mount up people, we need to get moving now!”
Following my own orders, I mentally reached out to all my summoned pets and ordered them to attack the Elemental Shamans. Like with any pet in an MMO, my focused thoughts gave the zombies the direction they needed to easily yank their bodies free of the stone spikes. With silent shrieks, the smoldering undead charged after the Shamans at their inhuman speeds.
At the same time, my mental orders to Kitano and Shadow Fang were slightly different. Instead of having them randomly charge in, I had them target Bugrol the Wicked and ordered them to attack after the zombie charge started. As a sparkling swirl of green energy from the various Healing Breeze spells being cast suddenly filled the air, I saw Kitano rise up on his hind legs and bellow.
Even with missing most of his thick fur, the demon bear was a sight to see. Corded muscles flexed as his massive bulk began charging toward the horrified Orc Shamans as they did their best to fight off the smoldering skeletons clawing at their bodies. Hidden behind the massive bear, Shadow Fang’s almost dissipated form danced in the shadows waiting to get close enough for a solid strike. Before either of them had reached their target, another chorus of bellows and howls rang out as the rest of the raid’s Manifest Pets charged in to attack.
With a grim smile, I targeted Bugrol the Wicked and hit him with a Magnify Damage, before selecting a handful of the zombies that were tearing at his body and triggered Corpse Explosion. I didn’t wait to see the results of my little present to the evil bastard. Turning away, I hurried over to a once again injured Lance Leader Warf and began helping him onto his mount’s saddle, before turning to the next trooper as Stone and Flame blasts began randomly pelting the area around us from the pets’ fight against the Orc Shamans. Luckily, none of it was focused on our group or I doubt we’d have survived another massed area of affect attack. Getting the man onto his mount, I went to grab the next trooper surprised to see Phoenix already helping the rider into their saddle. Turning around, I saw Rohan and Suman already helping the last two troopers. Giving the men a quick nod of thanks, I turned around calling out in raid chat while I scanned out our situation.
“Alright people, let’s blow this popsicle stand!” My voice unconsciously went up a few octaves at what I saw. The enemy’s reinforcements had arrived in mass. While a number went after the handful of pets that were still fighting to the death against the Elemental Shamans, the rest were nearly on top of us. Seeing the worried looks on Angie and Lyeneru’s furred faces as the slathering horde charged the line of Werebears, I slapped the horse’s rump in front of me as I yelled “Go! Go! Go!” as I took off running in the opposite direction.
“Lancers ride!” Lance Leader Warf bellowed, as the Heavy Cavalry kicked their heels into their mounts.
“Oh shit!” Krishna screamed, as his eyes bugged out at seeing the solid mass of Orcs that were nearly on top of us.
“Move it Krish!” Phoenix screamed, as she frog-hopped onto the back of the Stag like an old-style cowgirl.
Instead of galloping away, Krishna formed up with the rest of the Wardens as they turned to look at their guildmates, refusing to leave until the Druids did. With a shared nod to one another, the Werebears turned around and shimmered into their Umbra Hunter forms as they began racing after the rest of us. Only then did Krishna and the other Wardens wheel around and follow after them. I would’ve laughed at the apoplectic look on Phoenix’s face if the situation wasn’t so serious.
“Come on Fylreh!” I shouted, urging the filly to head out as I swung up onto Neysa’s back. Not exactly an easy thing to do at a run, especially with having a still unconscious Helgath strapped to her back.
It wasn’t that I was particularly trying to be the last in line. It just happened to work out that way. Obviously, the Centauride didn’t like that since she refused to leave my side as she kept up a constant barrage of arrows against the charging Orcs. In truth, it was probably best since there were still a number of arrows and single spells being slung our way from both sides. One unlucky hit and I could end up Bantha fodder.
The thunderous sound of approaching hooves caught my attention as thousands of Heavy Cavalry charged back into the horde’s chaotic lines. It was an impressive looking force as the horses aggressively snorted and whickered and I was sure glad not to be on the receiving side. Between the artillery barrage and the push to catch our ragtag group, the Orc lines were perfectly positioned for another counterattack, which I figured was Lance Sub-Leader Brewster’s plan. With their iron-tipped lances glinting in the morning’s light, I coldly watched as the Royal Heavy Cavalry triumphantly took their revenge as they slaughtered another swath of Orcs.
‘I need to talk with Lance Leader Warf,’ I mentally sent to Neysa, as I turned back around to focus on the path ahead. Getting a wordless acknowledgment, I felt the Silver Dire Wolf pick up speed as my adrenaline began to ratchet back down.
As Neysa began galloping to catch up to the group, I took a quick moment to check over Helgath. She was in bad shape after being nearly burned to death. Tenderly wrapping an arm around her chest, I pressed my forehead against her burnt neck as I verified the Half-Orc’s current hit points and active status effects that were listed under her name in my HUD. Helgath’s health was down by two-thirds from the severe burns that covered most of her body. It was pure luck that she was still passed
out, I thought, my heart-wrenching at seeing her so hurt.
Worried that Helgath would wake up from the agony of her injuries, I decided to try casting while mounted. Though I knew it officially shouldn’t be possible to do, I was getting a good feel for The World and the wiggle room that seemed to be built into its rules. If you had a high-enough base set of skills and attributes, you could usually learn to do something on your own. It might cost you increased mana and time, but that wasn’t a horrible deal if I could figure out how to make this work.
While in theory that sounded easy enough to accomplish, actually pulling that off was another story altogether. It took nearly everything I had to focus enough to cast Regeneration and not fall off of Neysa’s back. If not for our shared telepathic link, I would’ve fallen off of the Silver Dire Wolf’s back multiple times. When I finally managed the first cast of the Regeneration spell, it sent a thrill of exhilaration through my chest. It wasn’t just the fact that I’d managed to heal my soulmate. I’d managed to consciously bend the rules of the game!
The knot of tension that had been gripping my chest eased as I saw Helgath’s severe burns begin to heal before my eyes with every tick of the Regeneration spell. Knowing that Neysa was in just as much pain, if not more, I focused on repeating the feat that I’d just pulled off. Failure after failure flashed past my eyes, but this time, it only did it a handful of times before the golden glow passed through my hands gripping the Silver Dire Wolf’s coat to flood into her body. Though Neysa didn’t say anything, I felt the lessening of her pain as the Light magic did its work.
My body was soaked in sweat as I glanced at my system window to see that both my skills in both Concentration and Riding were going up quickly from my efforts. Knowing that our situation was dire, I expelled a deep breath as I continued my efforts to get our Enhanced Mage Armor and Holy Shield spells restored. I quickly discovered that while the Enhanced Mage Armor’s insta-cast was doable, the Holy Shield spell was another story altogether. Trying to hold onto my mental Concentration for a three-second cast while on Wolf-Back nearly did me in. Neysa began shifting again and again as she ran to stop me from falling off her back.
