by Alyson Belle
Silence fell between us. I hated being in the dark about Vierdimin’s larger plans, but there was no way I’d be able to find him and force him to explain anything without leveling up and recovering the help of my friends.
Then Erlix broke the lull: “On the plus side, you’ve got the server’s best rogue on your side.” He grinned. “I’m with you no matter what, lady. We’ll figure it out together.”
It was an unusually touching statement from the little guy, and it drew a smile out of me despite the grim mood. “The best rogue, huh?”
“Not the fastest, strongest, or highest leveled, of course, but definitely the best. Considering the whole of my qualities.”
“Like your giant halfling cock.”
“It’s huge .”
I started laughing, grateful that the halfling was still feeling cocky enough to crack jokes even with the odds stacked against us and our bodies in actual physical peril outside of the game.
Then Erlix got a serious look on his face. “So what do you want to do about walking into this obvious trap?”
Now it was my turn to pause and think for moment. “As I see it, we can’t do anything about a trap we don’t understand and can’t identify. If we can’t see the angle, then we only have two options: hold back, or plunge in despite the danger. We don’t have time to hold back, so I think we need to walk in, trip the trap, and hope we can make whatever save we need to make to get out of it.”
Erlix jerked a tight nod. “Works for me.”
“Mistress? Tiny half-man?” Fiero pointed through the hole he’d hacked in the foliage. “The Tower of the Fey Court awaits.”
Through the ragged slashes, we could now see a shimmering white and golden tower, with arcane purple crystals glimmering in the sunlight as they floated around the parapets. I sucked in a quick breath, amazed at how beautiful it was. I’d only heard stories about it, because it wasn’t even a dungeon… not usually, anyway. The Tower of the Fey Court was a level 50 quest hub for Wild Fey Dominion faction members. Since not many players played that faction, and fewer still got to level 50, there was hardly any information about it. As members of the Humans of Lorengarde, we could fight our way inside, but there wouldn’t be any loot or many wandering mobs for us to fight through like there would be in a proper questing dungeon.
“There’s going to be guards that try to stop us from getting inside that quest hub,” I warned them. Kromgorn had attempted to raid more than one enemy quest hub during our guild’s PvP battles with The Secret Order, because taking out quest NPCs kept them down for a full 24 hours—a significant disadvantage for anyone trying to level in that zone, and a great way to deny resources to enemy faction members. But I remembered that before you got close, a handful of faction guards of the appropriate level would spawn and try to stop you.
“So what?” Erlix asked. “Sic your dragon boy on a couple of ‘em and do your sexy booby dance for the others.”
I blushed, still not used to being objectified like that—despite the fact that it’s exactly what I had been planning to do—and started forward, with Fiero at my side and Erlix dropping into stealth a few paces behind me. The towers loomed as we drew closer, looking more and more impressive. When we got to about 50 yards away, the little blinking combat indicator on the bottom of my HUD kicked in, and I drew my bow.
“Get ready!” I shouted. “They’ll spawn any moment. Keep moving toward the towers!”
Erlix circled out and Fiero raised his sword. I spotted a dark figure at the base of the tower, staring at us with his arms akimbo. Before I could get a closer look the first of the Fey guardians began to spawn, fading into being around us— Fey Guardsman, Lv. 45 floated above their heads. There were two of them, pale purple ghostlike wraiths with long, grasping claws, about 20 feet away. They floated quickly toward us. Fiero snarled and leapt into battle at my mental Attack command, lunging toward the nearest spirit with a savage slash, while Erlix unstealthed behind it and drove both his daggers in. At the same time I loosed several arrows at the second wraith. We might be able to do enough damage to finish these before having to deal with a second wave, if we hurry.
But then I watched in horror as my arrows passed through the guardsman with no apparent impact! Fiero’s swing and Erlix’s stabs both failed to make contact with anything solid, throwing them off balance, and they crashed into one another and rolled to the ground. The wraith the boys had attacked pounced on Erlix and sank its translucent claws deep into him, beginning to drain his hit points, and the little halfling began to scream. Fiero jumped back to his feet and tried slash after slash at the creature, but it ignored him and continued to drain Erlix’s life as the blade passed through it like nothing was there.
“It’s mental damage! They’re illusions!” Erlix shouted, even as he feebly stabbed up toward the monster he couldn’t seem to hit. “ Illusions! ”
I cursed in a very unladylike way and stumbled backward, trying to get some distance from the quickly approaching second wraith that my arrows had failed to hurt, racking my brain to try to think of what I could do. I didn’t think Seduce would work on these things, and I didn’t want those claws anywhere near my body even if it did. It was crazy that between the three of us we didn’t have something that would work on these things—incorporeal enemies were rare, and the game didn’t usually throw guards at you that didn’t have some obvious weakness. A wizard could have burned them to a crisp with ease, but all we had was my stupid illusion magic…
Your stupid magic… of course!
I’d managed to get my Illusion Magic skill to level 15 through repeated casting of the Dazzle spell that was so delightfully annoying to Erlix, and now I held my hands out in front of me and braced myself. As the wraith drew close enough that his claws could almost reach my tender skin, I shouted, “ Dazzle !” and blasted him with the full force of my sparkling, popping fireworks.
The rainbow shower blasted through the Guardsman, and I watched with amazed satisfaction as his purple, translucent body was torn to pieces. Then I skipped a few steps over and shot another blast at the creature feeding on Erlix, being careful to avoid hitting Fiero with my stunning cone of colorful explosions.
The halfling sprang up at half health, panting, and waved us toward the tower. “Nice work! Come on.”
The three of us sprinted toward the tower, closing the distance through three more waves of illusionary guardsmen. Each time I paused for a quick double-blast of my Dazzle spell, ripping the level 45 guardsmen apart with ease. As we neared the ornate double doors marking the entrance of the Fey Court, the shadowy figure I’d seen earlier backed away and ducked inside, but not before I’d noticed his name and guild tag.
“That was Nambla!” I cried. “Vierdimin’s rogue crony. We must be on the right track.”
We stepped across the threshold into the tower proper, and my combat indicator fell away. Once you fought your way through the guards, the quest hub was just a quest hub. For the moment, we’d be safe.
“How did you know to use Dazzle on those, Goldie?” Erlix asked. “Gotta admit that I’m impressed. I never would have tried a lowbie spell like that while something was trying to leech my life out.”
“It just seemed like the right thing to do. You said it was mental damage, but that didn’t fit the profile for actual ghosts, which do cold damage. But they were definitely incorporeal. That meant they really had to be illusions… I figured another blast of illusion might disrupt them enough to totally destabilize whatever was holding them together.”
“Damn smart. How was the XP? I think those are the first mobs you’ve killed…”
They were, or at least the first ones that weren’t so low as to not be worth anything to me. I flicked open my character screen and saw that all the guard-slaying had gotten me a tenth of the way into level 51. I frowned at my XP bar, annoyed to see such slow progress, but then I laughed at myself.
“What is it?” Erlix asked.
“It’s just that the Fey guardsmen
are insanely good XP. I killed half a dozen of them and gained a 10th of a level toward 50. If guards didn’t get stronger and nastier as you stayed in their spawn zone, it would probably be worth it to stay here and fight them until they were grey to me… but the XP seems awful compared to what I get for fucking my enemies.”
On Kromgorn I would have been delighted at the XP gains I was seeing here, but as Lacey I just found myself wishing I could find some more targets to seduce instead. I shook my head, chuckling again as Erlix grinned at me.
“Life of a courtesan, huh Goldie? Even when you’re playing around at being a real adventurer, you still just wanna be a ho…”
It was true. But now we needed to get moving. I started walking deeper into the tower before I noticed that Fiero was hanging back, hovering right at the entrance, obviously dealing with an internal struggle of some sort. “Fiero! Get in here!”
His glamoured face contorted into a mask of agony. “Oh, great mistress. I want to obey your command, more than anything! But the Fey have been enemies of the dragonkin for generations. Their magics prevent my entrance.”
Erlix rolled his eyes. “More like the code prevents us from bringing a hostile NPC into a quest hub like this… even a charmed one. So much for that idea. He wasn’t even any help!”
I frowned, trying to think of some way to get around the restriction. But there wasn’t an obvious solution. Finally I ordered him to sit outside and wait for us to return, while defending himself from any threats. We’d need him handy to turn in the dragonkin orb if I could figure out a way to recover it, and on a private note, I wasn’t quite ready to say goodbye to that lovely tail of his yet… and possibly not any time soon. None of the other NPCs I’d bedded had been able to do anything quite like that . Even the memory of it sent a little aftershock of pleasure thrilling through me.
But there would be time for play later, and I was confident that Fiero would be safe enough at the threshold. I forced myself to stay on track. Task number one: figure out where Nambla went and come up with a way to defeat Vierdimin’s other lieutenants, assuming they were even here. There were low level food and drink vendors all around us, cowering in fear since we were of a different faction, and I called out to them: “A Dark Legion rogue just passed through here. Where did he go?”
For a moment I thought I was going to have to have Erlix rough ‘em up a little, but then a fruit vendor swallowed nervously and raised a trembling finger to a white marble staircase that led up to the second floor of the tower. “That way, miss courtesan ma’am. You won’t be fucking us silly, will you? Please don’t!” He held his hands up to me and shied away as though that would be the worst thing in the world. “All three of them are up there. The Secret Order folks. They’ve wreaked havoc on the court. Please just get them out, all of you, and I know our king will be grateful.”
I cocked my head at him. Was this some kind of emergent quest from fighting in enemy territory? I’d have to keep an eye out for the Fey royalty in case there’d be another reward for saving them. In the meantime, I gestured to Erlix and we mounted the steps, ascending toward the second floor.
Chapter 9
The stairway to the second floor of the tower opened into a wide, clear area that had probably been a marketplace for NPC vendors to set up their wares at some point, surrounded by a ringed balcony where people could walk around and look down at the merchants. Now that The Secret Order had moved in, though, it was empty. There were three exits beside the one we had walked out of: two that led up to the balcony and one that must lead up to the next floor of the tower, and everything had the smooth, beautiful texture of cool, white marble. Nambla was nowhere to be seen.
Erlix remained in stealth, staying a few yards away from me, while I edged in carefully, trying to keep my eyes on everything at once. Nambla had to be planning something—I had no expectation that we’d be able to climb the tower unchallenged.
My suspicions were confirmed when metal bars slammed down over all four exits and Nambla unstealthed on the balcony above us, laughing maniacally. It was now clear that the marketplace could easily double as an arena… an arena we were temporarily trapped in.
“What’s your plan, Nambla?” I demanded. “You know you can’t hurt me, so what good does it do to keep us trapped in here? I’ll get out eventually.”
“I might not be able to hurt you, you cock-sucking slag, but that doesn’t mean nothing can hurt you.” He reached into a pouch tied to his belt and retrieved a tiny blue orb which I couldn’t identify from so far away, and then hurled it down into the arena with us. I suddenly regretted my decision to leave Fiero outside, since the big lug was the best source of raw muscle we had, and I was feeling pretty vulnerable with him gone, Charm unavailable (since I had a PC and an NPC charmed now), and Vejazzle on cooldown.
The blue orb bounced twice before coming to rest about 15 feet away from me, in the middle of the arena, and then started glowing. I was torn between inspecting it more closely and backing away from it, but it was probably one of Vierdimin’s little surprises, and the last thing I needed was to get bounced back to Lorengarde because I was careless enough to stick my face in a bomb. Erlix hugged the wall, still in stealth, and circled around behind it so that we could flank it. I erred on the side of caution, drew my bow, and activated my Sexy Shadow skill for the first time, creating an illusionary double of myself I could control with my mind. We’d walked right into a trap, like we’d expected, but I still wasn’t sure this was the trap Erlix and I had been worried about—it seemed too simple.
My sexy double shimmered into existence beside me, looking ready to—well, if not to fight, then definitely ready to fuck. She wore my same ranger leathers and held her bow at the ready just like mine. I mentally ordered her to fan out so that there were apparent enemies on three sides of the sphere now, and we both pointed our arrows at it and waited for something to happen. Nambla leaned forward, balancing his arms on his knee, and watched with amused curiosity. I wanted to send an arrow his way just to wipe that smug look off his face, but there’d be plenty of time for Erlix and I to deal with him once we handled whatever this new threat was.
The blue orb began to expand explosively, doubling again and again, and started taking the shape of a blue humanoid. A bulbous, grotesque face twisted out of the head, his limbs began to thicken, and the creature stood from it’s embryonic crouch, yellow eyes menacing. Just as I realized I was looking at miniature ogre, Giant Ogre Soulburner, Lv. 60 appeared over his head.
I swallowed as a shiver of fear ran through me. The Giant Ogre Soulburner was a boss mob that appeared in the The Shadow Alchemist’s Tower , which was a level 60 dungeon zone. I knew him by reputation, since I’d heard my guild mates discuss tactics against him when they raided that dungeon. He was physically powerful, but he also had a damage-over-time debuff he could cast, Soulburn , that would tick your health down while leaving your physical attacks severely weaker. Somehow Vierdimin had captured him from that dungeon and given him to Nambla in the shape of that blue orb to use against us!
“Nice move, Nambla,” I growled, raising my bow to take aim at the still-growing ogre. “You can’t hurt me yourselves, so why not transport something that can, huh?”
I released an arrow at the same time as my illusionary double. It flew through the air and plinked into the hide of the ogre, which had now reached its full height. My arrow did 0 damage to it, since it had impressive damage resistance. It raised its massive arms and roared in challenge.
Uh-oh. This isn’t good at all. If my arrows can’t do anything to this boss, what am I supposed to do?
Usually it took a whole group to defeat a boss monster, and this one was ten levels higher than me! Erlix might be able to hurt it with his rogue abilities bypassing its armor, but not if it creamed us both in a few hits. He was still stealthed and circling, looking for his opening and trying to figure out what to do, just like I was, while Nambla watched us from above and cackled with laughter.
T
hink, Lacey think—you’re supposed to be an expert at this game. What can you do?
I took stock of our situation: a level 50 Courtesan and a 30ish Rogue against a level 60 elite boss mob. Four exits barred, with no way out, in a large, open arena. My best skills were on cooldown—I could release my Charm on Fiero if I had to, but I knew that trying to charm a dungeon boss would likely be fruitless. Most of the large-sized ones, like this guy, would be stun and charm immune. I had no offensive spells and no way to hurt him since his damage resistance was so high.
While I was thinking, the ogre roared and rushed toward the illusionary duplicate. I ordered her to dance backward, out of his way, but he swung a meaty hamfist and clobbered her before she could get out of the way. The illusion evaporated in a poof of mist, and I cursed and skidded backward as he turned his gaze on me.
Damn, he’s fast! So much for my illusion… now what?
Erlix could see as well as I could that if he didn’t strike soon, we’d both be ogre food. As the beast prepared to charge me, he slid up behind it and leapt out of stealth for a nasty Assassinate, landing on the ogre’s back with an impressive somersault. His daggers sank deep into the critter’s hide, double-critting it for 5% of its health, and it roared in pain and began to flail, trying to get Erlix off of its back. He stabbed it a few more times, taking off another few percentage points of health, but then one of its flailing limbs caught the side of his face and knocked him clear across the arena. He landed upside down in a crumpled heap with 80% of his health gone.
I winced on his behalf—he was half that thing’s level, so our odds were not looking good. Now that Erlix was unstealthed, it had forgotten all about me, thanks to my Unintimidating trait, and it began to clomp across the arena to finish the halfling off.
