Acrion- Cascade

by Scott Seier

the link with Vigil was momentarily clouded with confusion. That is precisely what I was doing. You are far too weak to be left without me for too long. Providing these improvements to the hammer will be extremely helpful if we get separated!

  Pleased with the results nonetheless, and confirming that Vigil was equally satisfied and actually not trying to be incredibly condescending, I dove back into the new interface for my 'micro shaping' skill and was still there when the ground gave one last rumble and then all hell broke loose. Time to go to work!

  A huge wave of force radiated from the base of the white mountain, much larger than anything before. The shockwave flattened anyone under level 10, even way back at our little outpost near the town. It felt like getting kicked in the chest by a mule, looking around I could see more than one nearby player with almost a quarter of their health knocked off. For me, I only suffered a single point of damage, which was quickly regenerated. Curious. I had never put anything into Constitution, which to my knowledge was the only way to get some subtle damage reductions outside of abilities. Even hael took more damage than I did, and at the moment he was at level 19.

  The rogue in question popped the top on a small healing potion and chugged it, making sure he was topped off before he called attention to himself and started barking orders. "It's begun! Maintain organization!" He yelled, his voice echoing across the open fields that surrounded Four Flags. As if in response I received a notification

  Event Alert!

  New Event Beginning

  The Turtle, The Demoness, and The Pinch

  "Turtle?" That was all I had time to say. The entire white mountain... rose. From where I was, I could only see two of the four massive legs, the size of...well, there was no real world object that I could think to relate them to. They were huge, thick, scaled monoliths of muscle and sinew. Through the plumes of dust I could just make out the massive, dragon-like head of the thing, thankfully pointing away from us.

  Well, there's the turtle... the whole mass of the mountain served as the shell. I tried to do a few mental calculations as to how heavy the thing had to be, but gave up within about ten seconds and refined the thought to, "don't let it step on you".

  The Eleventh Division's ship, The Pinch, as it was apparently named, dove towards the head of the creature, a massive surge of magic erupting from it's decks to smite the beast. An entire raids worth of mages and other casters emptied their mana reserves in an instant, raining destruction on a scale that I thought only a well funded military could hope to match. The bombardment was as bright as the sun and kept applying a brief 'blinded' debuff to me every time I tried to focus on it.

  After the first big burst, the ship began to ascend, cutting off the onslaught. It became obvious why a moment later. The creature raised it's massive head, seemingly unfazed by the incredible opening attack, and opened its maw.

  The turtle didn't really have teeth, but razor sharp stone shards the size of buildings took their place. The monster stayed like that for a long time, it's mouth just hanging open. Some players nearby speculated that the heat from the Eleventh Division's assault had fried its brain or something

  "I'm not so sure of that.." I muttered. A hand fell on my shoulder and I turned to see who it was. Billy. She nodded at me. "It's...inhaling. Look at the dust." She said quietly, her hair brushing against my ear as she moved closer in an attempt to stop the others from overhearing. I guess she didn't trust them not to panic, but regardless, she was correct. The never ending plumes of dust that the beast's movements stirred up were definitely moving in an unnatural direction. As in. The entire mountain seemed to be absorbing the airborne material, like a vacuum.

  A few more large, but lonely, spells dropped from The Pinch as it circled far above. The spells must have been massive in scale, but from where we were, their impacts seemed less than devastating. The mountain turtle didn't even twitch.

  Then it was apparently time for it to return fire. The vacuum effect around its base stopped and the turtle snapped its mouth shut with enough force to cause a shockwave to wash over the nearby landscape. It's head began moving, tracking the movement of the flying ship as if it was fly and the monster was a frog, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. In this case, it wasn't a tongue that shot towards the ship...

  The turtle rose up, the entire weight of the mountain being hefted easily by it's enormously powerful legs, and released whatever it had been brewing up within itself. The attack was...catastrophic didn't quiet seem to be the right word. It was simply overwhelming in its scale. The entire southern sky was suddenly bathed in a poisonous purple color while the clouds themselves were torn apart by the huge burst of caustic energy. The Pinch was completely engulfed by it, being struck nearly head-on by the attack. The crowd of hundreds around me cried out in unison as we lost sight of the ship.

  The turtle continued to expel the huge attack for almost half a minute. By the time it came to an end there wasn't a single person in the entire valley that had any hope of surviving the event. No one, except Hael. "Look alive! The town is assumed to be the turtles main target! If that thing is allowed to turn around, it could wipe us out, and everything in between, with a single attack. I need unit A to stay to the west with the fortifications. Units B, C, D,E, and F, shift to the east!" a lot of confused faces turned towards us, and no one really hustled to follow the order. Hael sighed, cleared his throat and took a deep breath. "ONE GOLD FOR EVERYONE WHO FOLLOWS MY ORDERS, LET IT BE BOUND!" A large silver thread snaked out form the center of Hael's chest and floated out over the mass of players. It coiled and seemed to grow as more people focused on it.

  A single bright red thread, tiny in comparison, floated up from the crowd and tied itself neatly to the now enormous silver one. After that, dozens, then hundreds of threads followed the first. By the time everyone had bound themselves to Hael's proclamation his original silver was completely obscured by the many streaming tie-ons. "I'm sure I'll regret this later..." Hael muttered and then snapped his fingers. The cacophony of threads and color exploded in a beautiful display of diverse hues. It was like Milenta and my own agreement, back at the cafe, except huge.

  "Okay!" Hael yelled, but not nearly as loud as before. For some reason everyone was keenly listening to him and a silence had fallen over the field. "I repeat, unit A, west to the trenches! Units, B through F, east, with me!" He stalked off without waiting to see if anyone was going to listen. Everyone listened.

  As he walked Hael turned and walked backwards to address us, his trusty team. "This is going to get sketchy quick, I'm sure of it. The outlaws won't risk themselves to the turtles attack just like we won't. They also wouldn't be able to overwhelm the high level defenses to the west, so east is the only option for their attack. There is a huge river further to the north that winds down and around this whole area. It won't let them slip behind us easily. I'll need you guys close to me at all times. I need to stay alive as long as possible so I can call in reinforcements if we need to, not to mention, if I die, my orders die too. The whole raid will probably fall apart." No one argued that point, and everyone accepted their new body guard duties easily enough and tightened up around our fearless leader. Hael looked relieved that he at least had us to back him up.

  The shift in troop position didn't take too long, but another ten minutes were wasted trying to find certain specialized players who were spread throughout the assorted army. By the time Hael was satisfied with his raid's information and command team we had added another four players to our inner circle, and I had another four people Hael wanted me to keep alive. He assured us that it was a necessary evil, and that when combat started we would be more than grateful for these people's help.

  One of them was a kind looking guy who wore glasses. As far as I knew no one needed glasses in Acrion, so I had to assume they were a style choice for the man. Next, was a woman who sounded like she was born and raised in Texas. She was a minute away from saying y'all regardless of the subject of the conversation. Third was what looke
d like a really young kid. He must have been at least eighteen years old, but his character didn't look a day over sixteen. His eyes held an emptiness that spoke of serious hardship, but he was always polite, and tried his best to smile at everyone, even though I could tell it was a task for him. Lastly was the depressed kid's opposite. He looked ancient. Well, at least by Acrion standards. Even if you played this game as an ninety year old you could make yourself look twenty, so why this guy chose to look like he was in his late sixties was beyond me. Instead of a deep sadness, like with the kid, the old timer exuded a bright and contagious positive energy that was mirrored in every action he did.

  Hael talked quietly with the four new recruits while the rest of the raid milled in front of us. We were up against the walls while the remaining force was spread out into the field before us. On this side of the town there was about one hundred and fifty yards from the base of the wall to the tree line. Our raid took half of that space up. This wasn't an issue, until Billy noticed that some of the players that were closer to the trees were just wandering into the woods on their own, apparently sick of waiting.

  "As long as their stupidity isn't contagious it shouldn't matter much." Hael said when she pointed this out. The rogue pointed towards the sad kid. "Laz, you're up. Those players are in the raid information somewhere. Find out where and monitor them. They are our new early warning system. Agatha!" This was directed at the Texan. "Order the stealthies to move out and to the north. I want them waiting in the wings so we have a little surprise when they try and set up a caster battery. We don't need them as scouts anymore" Agatha snapped off a very proper looking salute and started repeating Hael's words to the air, apparently projecting them to the necessary individuals. Laz, the sad one, just sat down in the grass and closed his eyes. I was starting to see why Hael brought these guys in. They were the equivalent to real life military infrastructure. Communications and tactical awareness, rolled up into two people. I wondered what kind of cool skills and abilities combined to produce such interesting results.

  It didn't take long for Laz, Lazeron, the sad kid, to call out the first fatality. "One dead, it happened fast." He spoke in a light monotone voice that sounded oddly like a computer. Hael pointed at the old man and the guy in the glasses. "Find it, and tell me how it happened." The old man, the name over his head read 'Joeprinter' but I had heard Hael just call him 'Joe', sat down on the ground next to Laz and closed his eyes. At the same time, glasses, Demetistics, adjusted said spectacles, and stared intently in the direction of the forest where the players had moved into. Joe was the first to speak. "Found the marker." He paused for a moment and grumbled to himself. "Looks like, maybe... one mile out." Hael nodded and focused on Demetistics. "Talk to me." He said. The man in the glasses raised a hand, holding off Hael for a moment. "It's harder if I wasn't aware of it happening in the first place. A moment please." While waiting on Demetistics, Lazeron called out another death. "Another down, slower this time. A small drop in health, then another about twenty seconds later.

  Demetistics nodded. "I caught that one. An archer took him out. Four damage for the first shot, a glancing blow, and twenty five the next. An ability was used for that one. Nature affinity. The first man though, he died from a single, huge attack. Eighty nine points of damage. Blunt force." Everyone in ear shot muttered at that. That was more damage than even a tank at our level could take. Joe chimed in. "The second death was about...hmm. Maybe four hundred yards or so, to the left, of the first. North, I think." Hael nodded solemnly and thanked them. "Agatha, please push the stealth unit even further north. All the way to the river, I want all of them in stealth as much as possible. Tell them to send assassins out as sentries. If someone finds them. They kill that player. No matter what. Got me?" Agatha straightened her posture and started whispering immediately.

  It went on like this for a long time. Laz would call out a death, Joe and Demetistics would investigate it from afar, and Hael would direct Agatha to send out orders as a response. Hael had originally thought it would take about forty minutes for the bulk of the outlaw forces to make it to us, but it was going on two hours when Lazeron began calling out more deaths than either of the other two information gatherers could keep up with. "It's starting." Hael said darkly. Those words drew me out of my experimentation. I had made a ton of progress in such a short time, but had yet to crack the specialty threshold. Now I just had to hope I had enough to make it through the coming conflict.

  "All of the people further than a half mile from the edge of the forest are gone." Joe said this with an uncharacteristically deep and crackly voice, like he was trying to hold back tears or something. "I can confirm that." Demetistics added after a few seconds, his voice deep and strong to contrast the elder. Hael glanced at Laz, forgetting for a second that he was sitting with his eyes closed. "Laz, how many?" The boy cracked open a single eye and squinted at the raid leader. "Looks like forty two total deaths in the forest, we have five hundred and sixteen in our ranks currently. The rest must be spread out in the woods still, or with our stealth unit." Hael's face didn't really give away much, but I could tell he was pissed that so many had just walked to their own deaths. We needed the bodies...

  Speaking of bodies... a screaming one was ejected from the forest in spectacular fashion. Soaring twenty feet in the air in a nice arc, until he, predictably, came back to earth. The impact killed him and a grave marker came tumbling to a stop near the feet of our first line of melee fighters.

  "Dramatic, but effective I suppose..." Billy said to herself quietly, shrugging slightly when she saw Joe send a deep frown in her direction.

  Out of the trees came a broad shouldered man with a condescending, but also friendly, smile on his face. He took ten steps out of the shadows cast by the forest and came to a stop. He eyed the assembled force with obvious annoyance, and more than a little dismissal, and after a couple seconds made a small gesture with his left hand. Following him out of the shadows came a very odd assortment of players.

  The first one out was a hulking Sasquatch, with glinting steel armor strapped to him. He stood a full chest above the first man, who himself wouldn't have ever been called short. The giant was twice the height and three times the width of an average man. The next one was even more unsettling. A beast crawled from the trees. On all fours and everything. Huge claws dug into the soft earth easily and a long lizard-like tongue dangled from its maw. And what a maw it was. Teeth like a shark, multiple rows, its jaw looking twice as wide as it should be, a body like a tigers, and a tail like a scorpions.

  "What the fu..". "A Manticore." Gleer cut off my expletive with awe in her voice. "A Manticore shifter. That's incredible." Will sniffed haughtily at her words. "Wolves are cool too.." He muttered. I thought I saw a tiny twinkle of silver in our druids eyes.

  The manticore prowled around the first man and then lazily laid down behind his legs, eying the first line of fighters hungrily. For a second I wondered if a player in the body of a beast like that would actually try to eat another human... I glanced warily at Will and reminded myself to stay out of his way when he cut loose.

  Two more figures made themselves known behind the original man, but both stayed in the shadows, and both were the normal shapes one would expect a person to be in. "Ladies, and Gentlemen!" his voice boomed out over the field like it was magnified magically. "I have business in the town that you are guarding so valiantly. Unfortunately, that puts you and I on opposite sides of fate in this conflict, and for that, I apologize. That said, I will offer you a chance to eliminate yourself from the coming battle. Simply walk away, and I'll offer you safe travel through the woods." At this he turned sideways and swept one of his arms out gracefully, gesturing at the cool shadows behind him. To the credit of everyone present, no one budged. I think this guy made a slight miscalculation when he asked people to walk past bigfoot and a frickin manticore. Or maybe it was the contract that Hael had gotten everyone to agree to. I chose to believe it was the good in everyones hearts that mad
e them make the right choice.

  The man held his position for a while. Waiting the whole time for one of ours to give up and hoof it, but eventually came to the conclusion that this part of the process had come to a close. "Honorable. The offer of safe passage has now expired. I will meet you all on the battlefield, but first, to match your honor, I will offer this. My attack will commence in one hour. My opening tactic will be to lure as many of you as possible into the forest where my better organized teams can dispatch you at their leisure. I will punch straight through your defenses, topple that wall behind you and finish what I came here to do. There is nothing that you can do to stop me. Prepare yourselves." The man bowed deeply to us, then turned and walked back into the forest.

  The bigfoot and the two shadowy figures followed immediately, but the manticore stayed were it was. Lying in the grass and eyeing our numbers like an all you can eat buffet. There was a malevolence in its eyes that caused a shiver to run down my spine. Next to me Will stiffened. "The bastard is challenging us. The Lycan wants to tear him limb from limb..." I looked alarmingly at my friend and glanced at Hael for help. The rogue just stood there, watching the manticore as keenly as Will was. It was Billy who stepped up and laid a hand on Will's shoulder, whispering something in his ear that caused him to visibly relax his taught muscles. Will shook himself to clear his head and smiled sheepishly at Billy. What the hell did she just say to him!?

  A squad of ten melee players broke off from the main force with their weapons drawn. Thankfully this was enough to get the manticore to finally stand up and retreat into the forest after his friends. Somehow, in his movements, the manticore seemed to make it very clear that he was only leaving because he wanted to, and for no other reason. Somehow I agreed with it. I didn't think those ten guys would pose much of a threat.