by G. Akella
"Viper! Keep Viper up!" some girl yelled frantically from the top of some boulder.
"Rada! Where the hell are you going?!"
Teetotaler said something else, but Max didn't hear him anymore—a Darkaanese warrior had appeared out of nowhere, striking him in the side with a short spear, and head-butting him in the chest. Max's breath caught in his throat from the pain, and he toppled over to the graveled road, teeth rattling. Grabbing the spear with both hands, the Darkaanese raised it over the grounded warrior, but then a huge ball of fire smashed into his back, sending him flying. Engulfed in flames, the reptile wheezed something, dropped the spear and crumpled to the ground, limp.
"Drinks are on you," Luffy grunted in the party channel. "And on Bonbon..."
"Drinks?!" the bald man exclaimed indignantly in between heavy breaths. "A mere glance at a beer label gets you shitfaced!"
"Sure, compared to you alkies," the mage drew a dramatic sigh.
A heal from Alyona washed over Max, and he struggled up to his feet. The fog had already dissipated, but visibility hadn't increased on account of the smoke rising over the camp. The air was heavy with a stench of burned flesh mixed with freshly spilled blood—a nauseating combination if ever there was one. Barely managing to keep from retching by breathing through his nose, the warrior surveyed the battlefield.
Their paranoia had borne fruit, as the Blades were finishing off the Darkaanese soldiers who had gotten past the barbs. Ten yards to his right, pink-hailed Aja spun like a top, deftly avoiding the heavy blows of the enemy commander's two-hander. Sporting less than twenty percent HP, Tijuaourr roared helplessly as he kept trying to get her. Yes, the NPCs had gotten smarter, and practically impossible to provoke into attacking, but when you're struggling to stomp into the ground a frail pixie of a girl less than half your size, that has got to sting.
"Behind you!" Bonbon shouted to Max, having just finished off his last opponent.
The warrior spun around to see a Darkaanese soldier about to lunge at him with his spear. Just then, Donut and Tasha materialized behind the lizard—it took them all of four hits to put it down. Tijuaourr hit the ground mere seconds later. Seeing that her immediate vicinity was clear of foes, Aja gave an ostentatious shrug of the shoulders, and sheathed her blade.
"They're running for it!" one of the Blades shouted.
And indeed, the dozen or so reptiles that were still alive out of those that hadn't yet reached the camp's territory had turned their toothy mounts around and were making a hasty retreat.
"Bastards have smartened up..." Bonbon pulled off his helm as the Darkaanese fled for their lives, then fished for a bottle, took a few hungry pulls and passed it to Max. "Let's hope they don't come back with some friends..."
There was no sense in abstinence in such circumstances, so Max accepted the vessel without argument. The liquid filled his belly with a pleasant warmth. Returning the bottle back to Bonbon, Max looked around for Teetotaler, found him, and walked his way.
"Sorry about that," Alyona's voice had a dash of guilt. "I was focused on Bonbon since he had two on him. I didn't notice right away that you needed heals..."
"It's all right," Max smiled at her. "Let me talk to Teetotaler real quick, and I'll be right with you."
"Sure," Alyona shifted into a cat, gave a great stretch, and lowered herself onto the ground.
Standing near the central boulder were about ten Blades, and when Max walked over to them, he realized why a grave silence had taken hold of the camp. Lying in a pool of blood by the foot of the boulder was a curled up corpse of a priestess. Seeing Max approach, the Blades' commander turned toward him.
"Three down," he stated grimly. "Monkie, Samurai and Rada. The first two in battle, but this one..." he gestured at the girl slain by the Darkaanese. "What possessed her to jump off this rock..."
"She was pulling me out," Viper said, and looked at Teetotaler defiantly.
"And why the hell were you running off past the barbs, brainiac?!" the mage barked in frustration, slipping a rollie between his lips. "I'll have you both on potato peeling duty till the cows come home!"
"As you say," the officer shrugged, squatting over the fallen priestess.
"Goddamn embarrassment," Teetotaler took a deep drag, gestured at the reptilian corpses dotting the landscape, and turned to Max. "I don't know how many of these amphibians are out scouting, but I reckon this isn't their last century. Which means the sooner we get out of here, the—"
"Darkaanese! Two more squads, each about a hundred strong!" Standing atop of a boulder, Myrrha was pointing westward.
"Mother..." Teetotaler screwed his eyes shut, took a few deep breaths, then grinned and slapped the warrior on the shoulder. "Vagabond did say we wouldn't be bored with you, Max. So, let's not be bored!" He looked at the Blades gathered around the boulder, and bellowed. "The barbs are gone, so we loot the corpses quickly and scram! Don't leave the dead's belongings behind! We move out in two minutes! Tick-tock!"
After some forty minutes of maneuvering past the myriad boulders and rock formations dotting the terrain, where a reckless step might mean a broken foot for their elk, the party finally made it to the gap in the mountain ridge.
"Goddamn it!" Teetotaler swore angrily the moment they rounded the rock protrusion and saw fortifications blocking the passageway. "What a shitty day this is turning out to be!"
"This is it, my darlings," Bonbon mused in their party channel, lashing his tail at his side, then turning toward Max. "Shall we reprise the glorious roles of the three hundred Spartans?" he flashed a big grin. "I call King Leonidas!"
"Put a sock in it, eh?" Max shot down the bald man while taking a look around.
The gorge itself, when viewed from above, had the shape of a funnel. From the spot where they had stopped and for another two hundred yards forward, the width was roughly three hundred yards, then the sides tapered sharply and the narrow space that remained was blocked off by walls of large gray stone, measuring five yards in height and fifty yards across. Down the center gaped a gate aperture, with a couple of square jagged battlements on either side. It became clear now why the stronghold was empty—a landslide had demolished half the fortress, transforming the gorge into a precipitous wall rising to some two hundred yards. Climbing it in cat form was still theoretically possible, but it would take way too long, and who knew what they might find on the other side? He might have chanced it still if it weren't for the enemy in hot pursuit, but he had no intention of abandoning Vagabond's men—even beyond basic decency, there was no way his party of ten would make it in Darkaan without them. Running wasn't an option as they surely wouldn't slip past enemy scouts, nor could they use a portal here. The only remaining option was to fight, and you couldn't ask for a better spot to make a stand than behind these walls. They say a cornered rat fights to the end...
"Lizards! Just under a mile away!"
Myrrha's sonorous cry wrested him from his brooding, and he shifted his eyes to Teetotaler.
"I'm very sorry, Max. I didn't know..."
"Forget it!" the warrior dismissed him, gesturing at the gray walls. "Let's get up there and try fighting them off. It's just too bad someone took off with the gate."
"We'll make another gate," Teetotaler rose in his stirrups, turned and waved a hand toward the fortress. "We're headed inside! Release the elk! There's no room to spare, and they're not high enough to be of any real help, anyway. Viper and Aja to the right wall, Nixon and Ghost to the left. Proxx, Engineer and Tameya, close up the gap as soon as everyone is inside—you've got a ton of material to work with. Everybody clear? Then let's go!" The mage lowered back into the saddle, then slapped the side of his elk, and led the way to the fortress. The rest of the squad quickly followed, filing through the arched fortress gate, and began to dismount.
Inside the stronghold, the devastation wrought by the rockslide was on full display. Only two stone structures had been spared, one of which was a stable, whereas the other's function was beyond Max's co
mprehension. He jumped on top of one of the walls, shifted into elf form, and took a look around. The fortress was roughly fifty by fifty yards in size, with the entire courtyard littered with rock fragments, debris of structures that used to stand here, and some other gray-colored material with a smooth, tile-like surface. Rising from the debris, covered in thick brown moss, were stumpy saplings with bright orange leafage. It was unlikely that these had been planted by the fortress' former inhabitants, which meant it had been abandoned no less than several years ago.
Lying along the wall directly underneath the warrior was a ten-foot-long reptilian skeleton, out of which protruded a spear shaft, as thick as a human forearm. Another skeleton lay nearby, this one clearly belonging to some avian species, its cervical vertebrae shattered to pieces. Max pondered for a second what might have happened here, but quickly dismissed the thought—this wasn't the time for idle curiosity.
"Everyone on the walls, quickly!" shouted Tameya—a short, raven-haired woman with Eastern features. "Unless you wanna get smacked, that is—in that case, stay right where you are!"
She and two others in light brown mantles designated them as Earth mages stood opposite the gate, forming a triangle with each side about three feet long. When no more Blades or panthers remained on the outside, the mages joined hands and began raising them upward slowly. As they did so, the rocks littering the courtyard floor stirred and shifted, then crawled in the direction of the gate aperture, inside of which had formed a thin colorless membrane. About half a minute later the three mages jerked their hands downward, and all the rocks hurled toward the aperture at tremendous speed. There was a deafening crash, followed by shouts of enthusiastic approval all around them.
"Quite a show," Alyona smiled next to Max, studying a gigantic boulder so unceremoniously shoehorned into the gate aperture.
"No kidding," Teetotaler echoed, gazing contemplatively at the skeletons lining the fortress walls. "Outside of very specific circumstances, the spell is mostly useless. It could have been a decent AoE if not for the long casting speed, but as it is... Good thing it's a connecting talent, 'cause things would be looking rather gloomy for us otherwise."
"Gloomy? I find that to be a gross misrepresentation of how shitty our situation is," said Myrrha, whose hawk-like eyesight allowed her to see farther than most other players. She gestured at the Darkaanese figures entering the gorge. "A level 300 mini boss and a century of elite Darkaanese scouts."
"Just one century?" the mage clarified.
"Yes, exactly the same as those who have attacked the camp."
Teetotaler drew a sign, then smirked and glanced back at the pileup of rocks blocking off the gorge.
"Buff up! Be ready for them!" he bellowed, then turned to Max and added in a calm voice. "If we make it out of this alive, I just might believe that you're being led by the gods..."
The foulest in terms of taste was the elixir of possibilities, which added one hundred to each stat for four hours, contrasting starkly with the pleasant mint flavor of the elixir of health or the sweet orange flavor of the elixir of strength. If only this stinker didn't last four hours instead of two... Max gave the lilac-colored vial in his hand a dubious look, picked the cork off with his nail, then took a deep exhale and gulped down the bottle's contents in one go. As a kid, it had been recommended to him by his dentist to rinse his mouth with a concoction of oak bark, and his mother would force her son to repeat this agonizing procedure every damn day. And now he couldn't help associating the taste of this elixir with the one from his childhood. Max spat from the wall, then quickly slipped a pipe between his teeth to try and cover up the bitter aftertaste. As he lit up, he noticed a young guy standing on a small natural plateau to his right, about a hundred fifty yards off the ground. Shoulder-length black hair, trimmed beard, plain leather armor—how this fellow could have made it up to the plateau at such a steep incline, Max could only guess. Neither his face nor his level were visible from here. Catching the warrior looking, the man threw up his hand in a greeting.
Greetings, Gray One! A voice rustled in his head. Wait for it...
And that was it... Upon speaking those words, the stranger wrapped his cloak around him and simply vanished... Max took a deep drag, exhaled the smoke through his teeth, and shook his head contemplatively. Who was that? And what was he supposed to wait for? Surely the man had noticed their perilous situation. Was this a promise of help? That would be nice—some kind of hope, at least. Sure, I'll wait, Max grunted to himself, then shifted his attention to the enemy host as it came to a halt about two hundred yards before the fortress.
The reptiles were fully aware that the players had nowhere to run, so they took their time dismounting, then splitting up into four groups of melee and ranged fighters. The commander of the elite century—a warrior in a brown-green suit of plate armor with one hundred million HP and another tongue-twister of a name, Oualeeshch—rode out in front and calmly examined the fifteen-foot-high walls of the fortress. A level 300 mini boss. As long as the tank stayed up, the entire raid should be able to put him down in about ten minutes. If only he was here alone, that is.
What was the reptiles' plan of attack? Assuming they couldn't produce scaling ladders out of their asses?
Max exhaled the smoke, allowing himself a chuckle at the mental picture. Meanwhile, Oualeeshch turned back to his army and yelled something, or, to be precise, hissed loudly. Obeying his order, five figures attired in dark vinous mage mantles—having arrived with the century of elite scouts, they had been waiting just behind and to the side of the melee soldiers' right quadrant, along with the mounts—silently turned and started toward their Dobermans. After digging around in the saddle, the figures produced small animals that appeared to closely resemble Earth's chimpanzees—the creatures must have been bound by some paralytic spell, as Max had initially mistaken them for gray travel pouches. The mages then returned and laid the animals down roughly ten yards in front of the troops, forming a right rectangle with each side roughly five-six feet in length. Within a few seconds, a perfectly black reaping-hook materialized in the hands of each sorcerer.
"What kind of bastard wrote the behavioral algorithm for these two-legged beasts?" Alyona exhaled, then turned away as the figures in vinous mantles dissected their victims from the chest down to the groin, put away the hooks, and sunk their hands into the innards of the dying simians.
Max felt his stomach turn at the nauseating sight, as cries of exasperation and strings of seniorities went up from both walls.
"Silence!" Teetotaler barked in the raid channel. "They don't understand you anyway. Save your anger for when they launch their attack."
"Blood magic," Bonbon explained calmly, standing to Alyona's side. "The devs were planning on implementing it, but then decided not to after the press went apeshit. But these guys," the bald man nodded at the reptiles sanding perfectly still over their victims, "seem to have figured it out on their own."
What happened next defied reason. Their ghastly ritual complete, the Darkaanese mages walked out in front, fell into a row across from the fortress, and raised their bloodied hands toward the gate in perfect synchrony. The next moment, their palms spewed forth fiery tendrils that coalesced into an enormous ball, then smashed full force into the boulder serving as the gate. With a crash, the earth mages' creation, along with the gate columns, was turned to dust that crumbled into the dark brown moss.
"Tameya!" Teetotaler bellowed at once.
"Forty minutes till the cooldown," the young woman replied calmly.
"Damn it! Tanks, block off the entrance! All melee, back them up! Healers, mages and archers—stay up on the walls!"
"Looks like your luck has run out," Myrrha drew a bitter sigh, getting her bow ready as the quadrants of Darkaanese scouts started their advance on the fortress.
"Don't jump to hasty conclusions," Max smiled at the young woman, stashing away his pipe. "And don't bury us just yet."
Chapter 2
The rays of the
gentle Spring sun inundated the trees lining the roadside. Their leaves, having started their blossoming only days ago, looked resplendent, like puffy clouds of emeralds. The hillsides on either side of the road was carpeted with light-green grass, and dotted with yellow patches of dandelion-like flowers. The sunlight bounced off the mountain lake's bright blue surface some fifty yards below, bringing back freshness and the scent of fish being dry-cured on strange contraptions. We had been rounding this lake for the better part of the morning, and my spirits couldn't be higher thanks to the majestic scenery. I was sitting on a rock, smoking my first afternoon pipe, and gazing contemplatively at the dragon and razorback frolicking by the roadside. As a kid, when my parents would take me and Alyona to the zoo, I could spend hours studying the caged animals, mesmerized. Well, "hours" may be a stretch—our parents' patience wasn't bottomless, and our walk-through of the entire zoo rarely exceeded several hours. And the visit always concluded with a lollipop and cotton candy for both of us, though it was Alyona who would end up consuming mine. And why would you expect a big boy, almost a man, to bother with that saccharine junk, or to walk around the zoo with puffy candy fixed to a wooden stick? Could that be the reason my little sister so loved those trips to the zoo? I should remember to ask her when we meet. At any rate, the spectacle I was presently seeing was unlike any experienced by any school kid, whether in Moscow, Tokyo or Uganda. Having grown considerably larger in size, yet still resembling an enormous baby chick, George was spreading his still-undersized wings and aiming to jump onto Gloom's back. The boar would hop aside with swiftness belying his bulk, then turn abruptly and punish the dragon for missing his mark by ramming his snout into him. George would fall to the grass, and Gloom would give a series of loud, satisfied snorts. And whenever George did manage to grab the boar by the withers, the two of them would proceed to roll on the ground, roaring and mowing down trees and making such a ruckus that all the surrounding birds fell deathly silent, and Irrot, the Snow Leopard who was our escort, stared with his mouth agape and eyes shining with awe. In short, the sight wasn't for the faint of heart. Not that anyone was concerned for either the boar or the dragon—though Gloom was one hundred levels below Vaessa's pet, he had a definite weight advantage, and the dragon clearly wasn't biting too hard. In fact, I didn't doubt for a second that whenever George would gain the upper hand, it was simply because the razorback let him—both to encourage his new pal, and in the spirit of good clean fun.
