Looking for Group

by Alexis Hall

  [Yell][Arachnia the Spider Queen]: FEAST, MY CHILDREN AND BRING ME THEIR WITHERED CORPSES.

  Tiny spiders began raining from the ceiling, but Drew had Circle of Corruption ready to go.

  “I’ve never understood that.” Dave sounded oddly meditative. “Cos if they feast on us, there won’t be any corpses for them to bring to her.”

  A long sigh gusted over Mumble. Drew was pretty sure it was Bjorn. “Spiders, Dave, feed by injecting their prey with digestive fluids, which reduce their victim’s innards to the consistency of soup. Then they suck out the soup, leaving only a desiccated husk.”

  They AoE-ed the spiderlings in a maelstrom of fire, shadow, holy light, flashing blades, and raining arrows.

  “The first time we did this,” said Ialdir, “Jargogle was scouting and the event triggered right on her head. I’ve never seen a kobold die so fast.”

  [Raid][Jargogle]: Thank you for bringing that up

  [Raid][Jargogle]: Perhaps we should talk instead about the time you pushed the big red button in the Mechanarium

  [Raid][Jargogle]: The big red button that says Do Not Push

  “I wanted to know what it did.”

  [Raid][Jargogle]: What it did was cause you to die horribly in a gigantic explosion

  [Raid][Jargogle]: Good times

  When the last wave of spiders was vanquished, Arachnia herself began to descend slowly from the ceiling. She was a bloated red-and-black spider-demon thing, all dripping mandibles and pulsing eyes. Drew had spent a good amount of time this expansion with his face in her underbelly and it wasn’t pleasant down there.

  “Everybody back,” called out Morag. “No pulling the boss until we’re ready.”

  The valiant adventurers sprinted back and formed up again in the archway.

  “You know the drill,” Morag went on. “DPS the adds, don’t stand on webs, if you get Royal Venom run away from the raid. When she goes up to the ceiling, we have to get the Sentinels down before she comes back or it’ll be an almighty clusterfuck. Drew, I’ll mark them up, and we’ll take one each. You get star, I’ll have the weird purple one that looks like a dildo.”

  Drew nodded, even though nobody could see him. “Got it.”

  “Prio star, then dildo. Ranged, you can attack the boss while she’s in the air, but if I see a single potshot before the Sentinels go down, I’m sending you into the naughty corner.”

  [Raid][Ignatius]: Anything but the naughty corner!

  This was where Drew would find out if he’d signed up with a bunch of noobs or not. They’d done okay up to now, but Arachnia could be tricky if the raid didn’t pull together. When everyone was ready, Ella ran forward, maces whirling, and Arachnia plopped down on top of her.

  [Yell][Arachnia the Spider Queen]: Come in to my parlour, little flies.

  [Yell][Morag]: That is a rubbish taunt!!!

  Drew settled into the rhythm of the fight. There was much less cross talk than the last two bosses, because with flying webs and adds coming in and poison chaining through the raid, there was a lot going on and lot to keep track of. Drew focused on the job in front of him, letting instinct and muscle memory take over. He sort of liked this bit of the game. It was that sense you got when you were doing something you were good at and doing it well and not even having to think about it. And sharing that feeling with a group of people who were in the same zone. Mumble was busy with voices, but Drew had stopped worrying about who was who. Right now, it was all about information processing. His eyes and ears were full of data, and long experience had taught him how to filter it.

  It was touch and go a couple of times, and Prospero got swarmed by spiderlings when the boss was at about five percent health, leading to a mad DPS race against Ella’s dwindling health and Solace’s dwindling mana pool. Drew’s heart was racing as he blew as many cooldowns as he could and pounded his rotation like he was actually hammering a giant spider goddess. When she dropped, there was stunned silence and then an eardrum-exploding roar across Mumble. He thought he heard Bjorn actually singing.

  “Fucking well done team.” Morag.

  “We are awe-some.” Bjorn, still in singsong mode.

  Ialdir seemed to be breathing for the first time in ten minutes. “Oh man, when Prosp went down, I was like new pants for table five.”

  “Um,” said Prospero, “I’m still kind of dead over here.”

  Morag hustled over the many spider corpses and shattered egg bits to Prospero’s body and began to channel the divine energies that would bring him back from the dead. On the other side of the room, Ignatius was doing the same for Caius.

  [Raid][Prospero]: Quality healing, Sol

  [Raid][Solace]: *blushes* Thanks. Ella’s easy to heal

  [Raid][Jargogle]: Well he is the best geared tank on the server

  [Raid][Orcarella]: :P

  “Can’t believe we didn’t wipe.” Someone? Caius or Prospero?

  “Yeah,” agreed Morag. “It’s gone smoother, but the important thing is we kept it together.”

  “And we had some really terrible luck.” Drew was pretty sure that was Ialdir—as the only American in the raid, he was easy to recognise. “That egg sac on the first Sentinel phase really sucked.”

  “And somebody chained poison through the melee,” said Bjorn in his stern voice. “I’ve checked the logs and you know who you are, but there’s no point naming names, and it wouldn’t have happened if you’d all been properly positioned.”

  Jargogle’s stern voice was way sterner than Bjorn’s. “Now listen here, young man. It’s all very well for you and your fire-flinging friends, but when four of you attack a tiny egg sac you stand close together.”

  “Okay, guys,” interrupted Morag. “It was a difficult situation but there’s things we can learn from this. Melee, you do need to pay more attention to the venom, and Bjorn, you have to stop talking like a primary school teacher.”

  “All right, message received. Now anybody who wants loot put their hand up.”

  There was nothing Ella needed from Arachnia, so Drew opened a window and got himself another glass of Dr Pepper. Anni had basically got that fight down a few months ago and anyone who chained poison through anything would have been reamed out by the raid leader. On the other hand, as Morag had said, they’d pulled through pretty impressively, and it had actually been fun in a slightly knuckle-whitening way.

  One of the problems with raiding was that, after a while, it began to be a chore rather than a challenge. These fights had become so routine to him, they’d stopped being interesting. But learning to work with a whole new team made them come alive again.

  Morag jumped up and down for attention. “Okay guys, it’s half nine. We can call it here if you like, but we’ve got plenty of time to take a couple of cracks at Vilicus. We probably won’t get him down this evening, but we might as well get some practice in.”

  “I’m game,” said Ialdir, “but I need to help Stefan put the kids to bed.”

  Bjorn sneered down Mumble. “This is so typical of you, Jacob. Having a family and a life and priorities outside raiding. Such a liability.”

  [Raid][Ialdir]: brb

  [Raid][Morag]: Okay everyone, back in 20 minutes. Or else.

  [Raid][Caius]: Grabbing a cuppa

  [Raid][Prospero]: Two sugars for me

  [Raid][Dave]: bio break

  [Morag] whispers: Doing okay?

  To [Morag]: yeah, having fun

  [Morag] whispers: It’s really good to have you along

  To [Morag]: thx

  Drew took a sip of his Dr Pepper. He wasn’t used to being checked in on. It was, well, it was nice. Normally he’d have spent this time browsing the forums and reading tanking blogs to keep up on the latest strats, but he didn’t want to miss any chat, so he found himself glancing round the raid group to see what everyone else was doing.

  Solace had run up one of the sheets of webbing and was balanced precariously at the top, her wings shimmering in the deep blue-green light. Ella ran up
to join her.

  To [Solace]: hi

  [Solace] whispers: we have to stop meeting like this

  To [Solace]: you mean at the top of arachnia’s web in the middle of CoT?

  [Solace] whispers: hee

  To [Solace]: enjoying the view?

  [Solace] whispers: I suddenly realised I’d never been up here

  Drew zoomed in and out and spun his camera around. He’d never been up here either. Now he came to look at it, someone had put a lot of love into this place. Arachnia’s chamber was a tall dome like the inside of a pepperpot, the walls crisscrossed with webbing as intricate as old lace. Cocooned bodies were strung in spirals from floor to ceiling.

  To [Solace]: omg, there’s a dead kobold up there.

  To [Solace]: look at its little feet poking out

  Drew put his head in his hands. That had been about as suave as one of the suave options in Alpha Protocol. Here he was, with a cute girl at the top of an enormous spiderweb, talking about dead kobolds.

  [Solace] whispers: Ohmigod, kobold feets!

  [Solace] whispers: Is it wrong I find that cute?

  To [Solace]: probably

  [Solace] whispers: hee

  At dead-on twenty minutes, Morag called the raid together and they climbed out of Arachnia’s domain and into the Halls of the Torturer.

  [Yell][Tortured Victim]: AHHHH! NO! MAKE IT STOP!

  [Yell][Vilicus]: Be grateful. To live is to suffer. To suffer is to live.

  They passed beneath another archway of thorns and roses into a fairly generic tower of crumbling stone, and fought their way through Vilicus’s twisted, tortured guards.

  “You know what I don’t get?” mused Dave.

  Magda: “I keep thinking I do, but there always turns out to be something else.”

  “What I don’t get,” Dave continued, unperturbed, “is what this big stone tower is doing in the middle of a hedge maze.”

  Ialdir: “No, no, this is really cool.”

  [Raid][Prospero]: Oh God, you’ve started him

  [Raid][Ignatius]: Run awaaaaaaaay!

  “About two-thirds of the way into Legend II,” Ialdir—or Jacob, Drew still wasn’t sure which he preferred to be called—began, “Raziel goes to speak to this man named Vilicus, who studied the secrets of immortality with the dark elves. And this is basically the tower he hangs out in.”

  “Yes,” added Bjorn, “if you played the original games, which you wouldn’t because you were a foetus, there’s lots of things you’d recognise.”

  “Yeah, but why is it in a maze.” Dave still didn’t sound convinced.

  Ialdir sighed. “Because Vilicus betrayed Raziel, which meant the Ritual of Torment Raziel was using to try and save his homeland went wrong, and they all got sucked down into the underworld.”

  “Oh right. But why is it in a maze?”

  “Because,” growled Bjorn, “it will allow us to get phat loots. Now shut up and hit things.”

  They shut up and hit things, and finally arrived at Vilicus’s torture chamber. It was a vast, circular room with grooves cut into the bloodstained floor, chains hanging from the walls and ceiling, and gruesome, improbable-looking torture devices scattered around like socks on laundry day.

  Vilicus himself was a tall, dark-haired man in a blood-red robe. Drew knew that up close his face was a horrible patchwork of scars.

  [Yell][Vilicus]: Immortality is found through pain. Come, friends, and I will make you immortal.

  Morag sighed. “Okay, so Vilicus is a three-phase fight. I don’t know how you did it in Anni, Drew, but we normally three-heal this one. We only need one tank, so I’m going to go Endurance. Everyone give me a tick while I switch specs and change into my healing pants.”

  Anni’d had Vilicus on farm for the last couple of months. They’d taken to using this really cheesy strat where they’d had one healer, one tank, and everyone else on DPS to grab the damage buff and burn him down as fast as possible. Unfortunately, you could only get away with that if you were already ridiculously overgeared. Drew had sort of forgotten how to do the fight properly and, in a way, was looking forward to trying, because while it was a total pig, it was also one of the most interesting fights in the dungeon.

  Morag had swapped her platemail for slightly different-looking platemail and a slightly gentler-looking sword. “Right. So, in phase one, Drew, can you tank him in a circle so Tainted Blood doesn’t spread too far? Melee DPS, seriously don’t stand in the shit. If you get Curse of Blood, run the fuck away. If you get Curse of Flesh stand the fuck still and let everyone stack on you. If someone gets Curse of Bone, all deeps on them, and get them out again. Phase two, same, but don’t stand in blades. Phase three, all that stuff, but we need to get him down before we get too many Tormented Spirits. Bjorn and Jargogle, you’re our top DPS, so run to the torture equipment and grab Glory Through Pain ASAP.”

  “I’ll hop on the rack,” said Bjorn. “You get in the iron maiden.”

  “If either of them go down, then prio is: Ignatius, Caius, Dave, Ialdir.”

  [Raid][Ialdir]: :(

  Bjorn snorted. “Dude, that’s what you get for playing a pet class.”

  [Raid][Solace]: Morag’s on Ella, but if you could help out with Glory Through Pain, that’d be great.

  [Raid][Solace]: I’ll prio Bjorn and Magda, and prop up the raid.

  [Raid][Prospero]: And I’ll heal every-fucking-body.

  [Raid][Solace]: I’ll play it by ear, but if the damage from Glory gets too high I’ll be purging at about 40%

  Once everyone had readychecked, Ella ran into the room, punched Vilicus in the knee, and then started moving him in a tight circle. As the Torturer took damage, his blood began pooling on the floor, and Drew edged him out to make room for the melee. Mumble was loud again, and slightly frantic.

  “No, no, run away!”

  “Not that way!”

  “This way!”

  “I said towards, dipshits!”

  Drew’s health dipped alarmingly, so he threw up Unholy Resolve. Hopefully it’d be off cooldown again by the time the next phase started. He flicked a glance at the raid’s healthbars. They weren’t looking good, most of them hovering at about the forty-percent mark.

  Suddenly there was a massive, fleshy explosion, and Prospero and Heurodis both went grey.

  [Yell][Vilicus]: DELICIOUS AGONY!

  [Raid][Prospero]: ded

  “Where the fuck were the melee?” roared Bjorn. “What the fuck? When someone gets Curse of Flesh, you stack on them, you don’t just stand there mashing your rotation like little noobs.”

  Morag: “Keep it together, we’re not wiping this yet.”

  [Raid][Heurodis]: you look at your boss mods you see who has the debuffs you go where you are meant to go its not difficult.

  “You can rant after the fight, Bjorn.”

  “I’m just going to sit here and weep.”

  Things didn’t go too badly in the second phase. People stayed out of the blades and handled the curses more or less okay. There was still a lot of raid damage and Caius went down just on the transition to phase three.

  [Raid][Caius]: Bugger

  [Raid][Heurodis]: weeping

  Phase three was a DPS race. These indestructible ghosts kept spawning, and the trick was to kill the boss before there were too many to handle. Glory Through Pain gave a really big damage buff but at the cost of a really nasty DoT, and with a healer and two DPS down, there was no way the balance was going to work.

  “Okay,” said Morag. “Hail Mary strat. All DPS get Glory. We’ll see if we can keep you alive.”

  They couldn’t keep them alive.

  Ialdir—pet-based noob that he was—was first to go, followed by Ignatius, then Solace, then Jargogle. Which left Morag and Ella and Dave desperately flailing at Vilicus while a rising tide of anguished spectres came forth to devour them.

  “Aaaand that’s a wipe,” said Morag as the spirits overwhelmed her.

  Next thing Drew knew, Ella was
a pile of crumpled limbs and armour of the floor. He released and respawned outside the entrance to Crown of Thorns, next to Dave and Morag, whose ghosts were flying back to the instance. He swooped after them and gave four hundred gold to the nice man with the anvil who was waiting just inside to beat his armour back into shape.

  Then he hit num lock and steered Ella through the winding empty halls of CoT, past Kelebos’s gate and Thornheart’s grove, up Arachnia’s web and down Vilicus’s tower. The guild was eating fish outside the torture chamber.

  Mumble was kind of quiet, and Drew wondered how this would go. Wiping was part of raiding, but people tended to take it badly, especially the first wipe of the night.

  Morag: “Well, not the worst effort.”

  A spluttering noise down Mumble.

  “I know you’ve got stuff to say, Bjorn, and you can say it, as long as you use your inside voice.”

  “Sorry, I’m just in an angry space because we should not be making these mistakes. I’m not blaming anybody, but people should not be dying from Flesh Curse. Especially not if they’re me. Prospero got cursed, only the ranged stacked.”

  [Raid][Solace]: Sorry, I was slow. There was a lot of damage coming in so I couldn’t stop healing.

  “If people were where they were meant to be, they wouldn’t need healing.”

  [Raid][Jargogle]: Once again, Bjorn, this is harder when you are in melee. You have to run around the tainted blood.

  [Raid][Jargogle]: And that means you get everywhere more slowly.

  [Raid][Jargogle]: And before you say anything, my sprint was on cooldown.

  “Okay.” Morag. “Let’s have the ranged in a bit closer to make it easier for melee to cover the distance.”

  Drew wasn’t sure if he should say anything. The part of him that had spent three years with Anni was frustrated, just out of habit really. The deal had always been that when something like this happened, there was a rousing chorus of “we shouldn’t be wiping on this” before everybody’s performance got put under a microscope. The system worked well enough to get server firsts, and while he was pretty sure it wasn’t right here, he wasn’t sure the softly-softly approach was going to work either. The truth was, the melee should have been sharper and that was that. But everyone was acting like it was the whole raid’s responsibility.