Bastions

by Jeff Sproul

  "Yes, while it's easier to travel long distances at specific locations, some of the older transportation methods are now rare or unavailable."

  Riley shook his head. Maybe until Golem was dealt with, he should look into a method of rapid escape. His eyes then slowly went to Taurus. "Wouldn't suppose that you'd let me…shake one of your tendrils?" he asked with a sly smirk.

  "If you so much as try and touch me, you won't have to worry about Golem absorbing you."

  Riley sighed. "Alright, alright. But, quick question, how do I get rid of this bone armor?" he asked, gesturing to his body.

  "Like this," said Taurus, as he lifted one of his tendrils in Riley's direction. The spike pulled out of his back, and then whipped around like some sort of weird magnet and re-attached to Taurus's tendril.

  The bone armor chipped and broke away, dematerializing quickly. Riley looked himself over. "Great. Let's see…" He thought for a moment. "System, can you reach Crimson Alliance HQ on comms?"

  "Negative. There is still a level of interference preventing communications from being established."

  "But you are able to teleport me there when I'm ready, right?" Riley asked.

  "That is correct."

  "Alright, so I'll go notify Chrono about what's going on, and tell him that you're watching over the base. I'm not sure when he plans to log off, though," said Riley.

  "He stays on pretty long, he only gets about five hours of sleep," said Taurus. "Which isn't very healthy, I should say. But he'll be on a bit longer, I'm sure. But he hasn't been as active today as you have. You should definitely take a breather."

  "Yeah, it's been a long day. Alright, I'll head off if you think you have everything under control."

  "I'll be fine," said Taurus with a nod.

  "Great, here, take this," said Riley as he tossed the band on his arm over to Taurus, who slipped one of his tendrils into it. The band then tightened around the bone spine as if it was a person's wrist. "I'll head off then. Good luck."

  "Try not to get eaten, again," said Taurus.

  "No promises," Riley chuckled as he headed back to the command center, after wading through the rubble of the storage building.

  Before teleporting away, he quickly checked in on T-One. He walked into the command room and spotted the trooper sitting in the command chair. There were three base-bound troopers with rifles trained on the door. They were positioned defensively around the room, apparently prepared for any breach of the door and any possible threats that might come through the ceiling or floor.

  "T-One, wouldn't suppose you ranked up again, did you?" he asked.

  "In fact I did, sir," said T-One as he pulled himself out of the command chair and stood.

  "Awesome, let's see what we can do with you then," said Riley as he walked over and tapped T-One's shoulder. Upon doing so, a similar menu as before came up.

  -

  Trooper One

  Intelligent Command:

  Boosts the innate intelligence level of the NPC to come up with better strategies.

  Defense Command:

  Increase the Toughness of all NPCs under the command of the NPC, through a command module, by 1.

  -

  Riley considered the two options. "Yeah, let's go with the intelligence boost. Since we're working with a limited quantity of defenses, it might be best to know how to position and use them to better efficiency," he said as he then selected the 'Intelligent Command' upgrade.

  "Fine choice, sir," said T-One.

  Riley smiled. "I know, I know," he said as he turned. "Keep up the good work. System one, let T-One retain battle command, but obviously his authority is overruled by officers and myself."

  "Yes, commander," said the system.

  Riley made his way out of the command room and up to the second floor. He headed straight for the teleporter. "System, transport me to Crimson Alliance HQ."

  "Teleportation commencing in ten…nine…"

  Riley got a big grin on his face when he heard the countdown commence. He was looking forward to calling it a night. It had been a loooong day.

  "Three…two…error, interference detected. Transportation halted."

  "Wait, what?" Riley asked with wide eyes.

  "Just kidding, commander. Proceeding with transport in three…two…"

  "I don't know how I feel about AI humor." Riley's smiling face had turned into a scowl.

  There was a sudden flash of light as the teleporter shot him across the game world.

  Chapter 20: Good Night

  Riley quickly filled Chrono in on the details about what transpired at Outpost Rose. Chrono then thought it best to spend a little poryte in making a transport of some materials to get Taurus up and running again. But without a storage facility, Chrono had to transfer the exact amount that Taurus would need in order to create a new storage facility, before then sending him another batch of materials about twenty minutes later, once he assumed that Taurus would have built the storage facility.

  By this time, Riley was long gone. He'd taken his scorpion back to Bunker 7 and went back to his own room for that night. He signed off and returned to the real world.

  Once out of the game, he found himself in bed with his headset on. He pulled it off and set it on the desk nearby. He took a minute to just stare at the ceiling for a bit.

  "What a day," he murmured. "I haven't felt this mentally tired since the first day of the expansion and that wasn't even that long ago," he sighed.

  He pulled himself out of bed and went over to his computer first. He pulled up some of the forum sites he liked to keep tabs on, then went and used the bathroom for his nightly routine. Once back in his bedroom, he went to his desk and did some light forum perusing. His post about Golem had gotten a few more downvotes, which kept it from being noticed by the majority of the populace of the forum. He shook his head. Well, maybe Taurus would post about it too.

  He considered pulling some of his in-game footage from that day. He could sell that to a news organization, maybe. But then, he got to thinking about it. Their outpost was in shambles and he was from Crimson Alliance. There were likely to be people that were aware that he was in Crimson Alliance. If the media got a hold of his live footage, two possible very bad situations might occur. The first being that nobody believed him and that the footage would be debunked as being from Mage World Online. The other more terrible situation was that people would believe Crimson Alliance was in a weak position and was prime for attacking. If that happened, then he'd directly be the cause of any turmoil that The Crimson Alliance would get. He really didn't want to create more problems. Sure, he needed to get the word out about Golem, but not at the cost of the safety of their entire alliance.

  He ruffled his short hair and wondered what to do. Maybe doing nothing was the best method. Outside of game, that is. There was plenty of work to do in-game.

  He decided to close the forums and open up his finance sheet for the month.

  He recorded everything he did, whether it was a gain or a loss. He had decided to place more attention on his finances so that he could more efficiently use what he had. He'd fine-tuned his monthly expenses, curbing some of his expenditures at the cafe and otherwise. He also made sure to convert a sizable portion of his in-game earnings into real money. Sigil Credits, or 'SC', were worth less than they were back in Paragons, at least in regard to GDs (Global Dollars).

  It was common for a game's currency to lose value when its population fell off a bit. It was no different with Sigil Online. But while the currency had lost value in direct conversion to GD, he was actually in a more stable situation than he'd ever been on his current character, Relinquisher.

  Sage made sure that each player gained a sort of dividend, which was a lot like an allowance, based on guild earnings. Obviously, the majority of the resources the alliance pulled in as a whole went to benefiting the alliance, but the alliance had multiple avenues of manufacturing that they could work with in order to turn materials into profit beyond
their actual worth.

  Riley was pretty certain that Chrono was making those scorpions, or some form of them, and selling them to other hellion clans around the game. Probably ones that were across the map, so that they wouldn't be used against Crimson Alliance. But in a game like Sigil, you never knew how things like that might turn out when you were dealing in what were effectively weapons.

  He knew that Aaron was working in the same capacity. It was very likely that Aaron was selling things to people who would use them against Crimson Alliance. Maybe not against The Bunker Brawlers directly, but potentially one of the other guilds, since the hellions were more numerous than the paragons in Crimson Alliance.

  Riley rubbed at the corners of his eyes. He was feeling pretty tired. He needed to just settle and relax. He shouldn't let stress from Sigil carry over to the real world. He knew it would, like it would with anyone who worked a stressful job. Just because he wasn't making minimum wage in a venue somewhere, where an angry customer would yell at him, didn't mean that almost having his character killed today wasn't any less stressful. Especially when losing that character would've been a huge hindrance to what he could earn.

  He had been stressed for over a month back when he lost Radiance, his original Sigil Online character. He had trouble sleeping and would sometimes wake up sweating. Then, that feeling had returned when he found out about the deaths in Sigil Online and the tumor in his head.

  Luckily, even that alleviated over time. But now, he felt like he was back in the thick of it all over again. Was this how playing virtual reality games was always going to be, when he made a living from it? Surely people with more traditional jobs had their own similar issues. Whether it was getting yelled at by an irate customer, or getting injured at work, or finding out that you'd lost your medical benefits, or job entirely.

  He sighed again. His thoughts were getting the best of him. He got out of his chair and crawled into bed. He flipped off his table-side lamp and closed his eyes, shifting around until he got comfortable. He laid on his back. Then his side. Then his back again. Then his other side. Minutes ticked by. Then an hour. Then another.

  Yeah, it was going to be one of those nights.

  Chapter 21: New Day

  Riley was a little later getting online the next day. He didn't encounter any trouble as he made his way into the game. He was able to get to Crimson HQ without issue, where he found Chrono, Laura, Carla and Chase.

  "You know we've been waiting," Carla spoke up, right as Riley came through the red doorway.

  Riley rolled his eyes as he made his way over to the group of four.

  "I didn't sleep very well last night," Riley said when he got closer. "I tend to ignore my alarm a bit when that happens."

  "Yeah, I heard yesterday was a rough one for you," said Chase. "Wish we could've helped, but we weren't around when you were tasked to the outpost."

  "Or when you decided to hunt those Golem things yourself," Laura accused, her brow slightly furrowed. "It's like you have some sort of death wish."

  "I couldn't help myself," Riley sighed as he scratched at his head. "I had to try it out. I thought I'd be safe in the base. But…I was obviously wrong. I assume Chrono told you everything?"

  "I told them everything," Chrono spoke up from a few feet away. He was once again in front of a terminal, checking the surrounding areas, along with resource output reports.

  "Well, it's what…nine, ten now?" Riley asked, trying to remember what he saw on the clock before he logged in.

  Chrono checked the time on his terminal. "It's nine-thirty," he said.

  "Alright, so still pretty early," said Riley. "Did you guys have plans to go out and farm?" he asked, assuming Laura and the others would want to get some monster-hunting in. "I assume there isn't anything we need to act on, else you three would already be on your way there."

  "I've been deploying aerial drones and surveying the wild areas," said Chrono. "But it's taking a while. I've occasionally seen pings, but the drones aren't able to see through the stealth and the pings move away. So I can't really tell what's out there, but I haven't come across any large groupings yet. I've spotted some small outposts interspersed around that we didn't know about before. But nothing that we should be acting on. We can't go seizing every little resource spot out in the world, unless we know we can defend them. Else we're just inviting a group of players to seize it from us and use it for their own gain."

  "Right, right," Riley murmured. "So…farm day?" Riley asked, glancing to Laura and the others.

  "That's the plan," said Carla. "You have anyone's powers to work with?"

  "Yeah, I've still got Gem's and Amber's. So I'll stick with those." He then looked over to Chrono. "Did you make any of those sky guards yet?"

  "Not yet," Chrono replied. "I'm setting aside some resources to do so. I think we need them in about a group of three or five, which is a bit command-point intensive. I don't want to go losing any of them with how expensive they are."

  "Yeah, makes sense," Riley mused. He returned his attention to the other three. "So, let's head out?"

  It didn't take long for Riley, Laura, Chase and Carla to arrive at their destination, Death's Chasm. It was a decent area to farm materials, since it was hard to get to. Since Laura and other members of The Crimson Alliance would be farming Death's Chasm pretty often, they'd decided to set up a small hidden outpost with a teleporter. They had to bring poryte to it, since the location wasn't near any resources.

  Death's Chasm was a chaotic place. There were fissures of molten lava, occasional tremors, even volcanic eruptions that sometimes spewed meteor-like objects down around their vicinity. It was a dangerous place to be, but the monsters and their loot made it entirely worth it. At least, if you could easily access the location and keep out of sight of hostile players.

  Chase was able to deploy mechanized units due to his powers. Over time, he'd leveled up enough to make even stronger robots. One was a spider bot that had high stealth detection. None of his mechs could fly, unless he spent more of his energy on changing their configuration to allow them to.

  With Laura and her nineteen duplicates and Carla and her high-damage lotuses, combined with Riley's various stolen abilities and Chase's damage, healing, and utility, they were able to remain safe and deal with various enemy types in the area.

  Their outpost was located behind an illusory wall against one of the mountain sides. It was a less traveled area and they always had Chase scan ahead for any enemies, player or otherwise, that might be lurking.Outpost Blood consisted of a hellion-designed command module, which looked like a glowing red pod with a screen attached to it, along with a spire that went up to the ceiling of the ten-foot tall room. The entirety of the outpost was extremely compact compared to Outpost Rose. The side of the cave room housed the teleporter. It was essentially a ten-foot tall, ten-foot wide, ten-foot long section that was surrounded in an open, glowing red membrane that they could all walk into, as if it was some sort of liquid or gel that kept its shape. There was a compartment nearby that looked like some sort of organic chest made of a light brown wood and glowing red veins. It would hold the poryte they'd need for teleports back home. The teleporter and organic chest were both wired into the command module via crimson veins which pulsed from time to time. With the illusory wall, the location was concealed, but the command module needed a supply of epper rods to keep the illusion running. As long as The Crimson Alliance was coming to Death's Chasm, they were able to farm more than enough materials to make up for the loss of keeping it running.

  After Chase had made sure that the area was clear, the four of them exited the outpost and trekked out into the vast area that was Death's Chasm. There were tall pillars, mountains, caves, fissures, flowing lava all around. The place was much warmer than even the vast desert areas around the original cities of Sigil Online.

  Riley kept an eye on their surroundings, even though he knew that Chase—with his higher stealth detection, would notify them of anything unu
sual.

  "So how's your wife liking being manager of the department?" Carla asked, looking to Chase.

  "She likes it," he said. "She's a lot busier than she used to be, but she enjoys the job. It's what she was working toward, so she's happy. I just need to watch how much time I spend in Sigil, since she's not around as often as she had been."

  "Still haven't convinced her to make a character?" Laura asked.

  Chase sighed. "She did, but she said she didn't really see the point of it all. I think Sigil Online just doesn't interest her."

  "What kind of game do you think she'd like?" Riley asked. "There's plenty of others out there."

  "I'm not entirely sure," Chase replied. "I've tried bringing others up. I told her if she found one she liked, I'd play it with her, which would limit my time in Sigil, but I wouldn't mind."

  "Yeah, I wouldn't blame you for wanting to spend more time with your wife," said Laura.

  "I'd give you crap about it though," said Carla with a smirk.

  "Well, games aren't for everyone, I suppose," Laura commented with a shrug.

  "She's pretty content to just hang out, watch the news, find out what's going on in the world and then read a romance novel before bed."

  "But doesn't she work for a news company?" asked Carla.

  "Yeah, but she's in the IT department, or well, the manager of it now. She doesn't specifically work with any of the actual content."

  "Oh, I see," said Carla.

  The group continued to move along, chit-chatting in casual tones, so as to not alert anyone too far away. Chase had two scout bots out, one ahead of them and another behind. They weren't currently as prepared as could be for combat if something were to jump them. Laura's powers shined if she was able to produce all her duplicates before a fight. Chase's powers allowed him to create robots with various individual functions, but he only had the scouts out for now. Together, they could deal with a plethora of situations, but only if they had a minute to prepare first.