Bastions

by Jeff Sproul

  Its head faced the gathered players on the ridge of the crater, almost as if it was scanning them from left to right. Then, it spoke.

  "Why have I been brought here?" came its strong, feminine voice. It was not a roar, nor a hiss. Its maw was open, but didn't move all that much, as it formed human speech. It was as if it was talking some other way, despite how its voice emanated from its head. "Why have you gathered against me? I am not easy prey!"

  Then, with a strange but simple gesture from one of its claws, its name appeared.

  'The Chromatic Nine-Tailed Queen, Nexis.'

  Riley's brows were raised. "It can talk?"

  "She can talk," Red corrected. "Did you see what she did? She just moved her hand…or claw, and made her name appear. NPCs don't do that! Only players do!"

  "But she's also a dragon!" Riley said, glancing over to Red for but a moment. "The devs said they didn't want dragons in a superpower game. Not even the hellions can look like a dragon. Lizards maybe, but not dragons!"

  "I wanna be her friend sooo bad! She's so cool!" came the distant voice of Carla.

  The dragon, Nexis, continued to stalk slowly from side to side, aware of the players around the rim of the crater.

  "She's not attacking us," said Riley.

  "Maybe we should strike first?" Amber asked.

  "Does anyone know what this thing is?" came Chrono's voice over their bands. "I'm not sure what's going on. Is it a player, or an NPC?"

  "Are you a player?" Carla yelled out.

  The dragon continued to stalk, offering up no response.

  "We didn't get a response?" Chrono asked over the band. "Alpha Site is lost. I'm not getting a reading on resources either. The whole site is gone. Maybe this dragon could offer up some special loot if we bring it down, but it might not be easy, even if it's not all that big."

  Laura's voice quickly came over Riley's band. "We don't know what it is, and it's not attacking us! We can't just kill it yet. What if it's a player, somehow? We don't know what the hellions of this base were up to, or what this dragon even is!"

  "Sage would want us to kill it," Chrono quickly remarked.

  "Oh yeah? Then call him, Chrono, and find out for sure."

  "The comms are still down from interference. Probably from this creature!"

  "Then you have no idea what Sage would want," Laura quipped.

  "Who cares if it’s a player or a monster. We have way more firepower than this dragon does," said Amber from nearby. "We came here to fight, not walk away from possible loot!"

  "But it just ate The Sappers!" came Chase's voice from a few feet behind Riley.

  Riley could hear other voices speaking up from all around, mostly the hellion clans, but also a few of The Vigilant players.

  There was no immediate word from Chrono, or Laura; only the voices of nearby players that all had an opinion or comment on the matter at hand. All the while, the dragon simply stalked back and forth.

  The Bunker Brawlers were spread out in such a way that they still had some distance from The Pale Ones, but The Vigilant had pushed a little further ahead. As far as Riley could see, they hadn't lost anyone to the vortex.

  Chrono was far to the right, but with how the battle had gone, their entire force was curved around the edge of the crater now. The crater wasn't too steep. A person could walk down it without much issue, if they were careful.

  Nobody in the assault force attacked. Not without permission, at least. Nobody wanted to incur Sage's wrath, even if Chrono thought that Sage would want them to attack. Laura had brought up a good point even many of the hellion players were leaning toward. Nobody wanted to be 'the player who led to the death of more of their force.' The Sappers were gone, so they were already down one-eighth of their player-base. Even Chrono had speculated that they may only lose two or three players in the attack, five at most. But losing the entirety of The Sappers constituted a steep cost for the alliance.

  Even with his night-vision goggles on, Riley realized that the area around him was slowly shading over and becoming less intense than it had been. He looked down and noticed a faint shadowy area flowing over their battle lines. He glanced from side to side, then turned around and looked up into the sky.

  A behemoth creature, the size of the now-gone hellion nest, loomed in the sky. It was the shape of a loose triangle, with long tendrils hanging from beneath. The edges of the triangle were lined with what appeared to be large eyes. All Riley could do was stare up at this monstrosity.

  A distortion of space appeared to the left of it as another identical massive creature appeared. A second later, there was another distortion to the right, as a third uncloaked.

  "Up in the sky, behind us," was all Riley could manage to say, as numerous dark objects shot from beneath the mass of tendrils of the three behemoths. The dagger-like objects plummeted toward them. Dozens upon dozens, falling toward their battle lines.

  He didn't need to get a better view of the behemoth's flesh, or a closer view of the falling objects. He knew full well what he was seeing. "Golem's here!"

  Chapter 25: Breaking The Tide

  Chrono's voice came over Riley's band. "Golem is here! Defend your positions, fortify those around you! We've lost the entirety of The Sappers, we have to repel this attack! If it's anything like what Riley and Taurus dealt with, they'll exhaust their troops and leave. Ignore the dragon for now, unless it attacks!"

  "But why is it here now?" Riley asked aloud, not entirely expecting a response.

  "Riley!" Laura called from a short distance. She swiftly closed the distance on him. "Any ideas?"

  Riley's eyes were still wide, but he quickly pulled his thoughts together. "We can't form a defensive line, we're going to get bombarded by these things! They were hands last time. Don't let them grab you, they weren't very strong, but there were a lot of them!"

  Laura nodded and then brought her band up to speak closer into it, even though it would pick up her voice regardless. "Everyone, fire into the sky! Hit as many as you can before they land!"

  Immediately after the order, a series of white streaks came from her many copies as they shot into the sky. Red lotuses rose more slowly from Carla's position.

  "If they hit the ground, try to freeze them before damaging them, we might be able to manage their numbers better that way!" Riley called, letting his band pick up his voice to relay it to the others in The Bunker Brawlers.

  At some point, Chase must've changed the configuration of his mortar bot, because searing bullets tore into the sky, smacking into several of the descending creatures.

  At least one of the bullets must've made contact with the large sky creature first, as its name appeared moments before the names of the descending objects.

  'Golem Sky Behemoth.' Its health bar showed a total of 45,000 hitpoints.

  "What the hell? It has that many hitpoints?" Riley asked with wide eyes. "How are we going to kill one of them, let alone three? We didn't even bring any sky guards with us!"

  The ever-so-familiar Angler Jellies appeared all around the three behemoths. There were too many to count. They floated around, but weren't moving directly to the gathered players.

  Riley punched into the air, firing bursts of red pellets up at the central behemoth. At this range, he was hoping to cause a little damage to the falling Golems, but if he could land a couple hits on the behemoth as well, then he'd be fine with that too. Unfortunately, most ranged attacks had a damage falloff value, so even if his shotgun bursts managed to hit things in the sky, they weren't going to do optimal damage compared to something nearby on the ground.

  He managed to take a moment to read the name of one of the descending objects. As he did, he realized that they were…bigger than he remembered them.

  'Golem Carrier Strike Hand.' Unlike the regular strike hands that he'd dealt with the other day, these were larger and had 2225 hitpoints.

  It only took one to land about twenty-five feet away for him to realize how they were different. The shape o
f the hand was mostly the same, but it had far more mass. The hand opened up, just as it had when he'd first encountered them. But this time, five Golem soldiers came running out from between the hand's fingers as a splash of sludge was left at each impact site. The soldiers darted in multiple directions. Riley was quick to launch several more volleys of shotgun blasts in their direction. The red pellets smacked into two of the soldiers, revealing their names as 'Golem Composite Soldier,' with their hitpoints at 325. These were the same as when he fought them the other day in Death's Chasm. Well, at least they hadn't gotten stronger.

  The Crimson Alliance battle line became chaotic all over again. The hands smashed down amongst them, deploying five soldiers each, only to then leap away. The hands quickly assailed some of the idle scorpions. With the scorpions’ lower health pool, they were crushed quickly once the hand started to grip them.

  Amber and Riley fought together, covering each other, while Red and Green fought to their left, watching each other's back as well.When Riley had fought the soldiers before, they'd poured into a room one at a time. Now, they were pelting the area in groups of five, while also receiving strike-hand support.

  Sludge became ever more prominent on the ground around them. It coated the area as the hands landed. As their health got low, some of the soldiers were diving around to create more of the sludge. Riley had noticed that a full health Golem was able to create more sludge than a lower health one, so it wasn't as if they were cheating by sludging their low-health troops at the last moment.

  Riley and Amber cleared the grouping of soldiers that had landed in their area, along with the hand, even as more landed nearby. Riley glanced up into the sky every now and then. He didn't like the prospect of one of those behemoths getting any closer to their battle lines, due to how massive they were. He felt as if the creatures could crush them if they came down upon them, but that also meant that they could damage them more severely, due to an optimal range.

  He noticed a number of carrier hands arcing in such a way that would push them beyond where The Crimson Alliance was fighting.

  Riley's eyes followed one of those long-arcing strike hands and realized where it was heading. Within seconds, several of the hands smashed down into the middle of the crater to then deploy their troops and begin an assault on the dragon, Nexis.

  "You bring your sky creatures against me?" came the unmistakable voice of the dragon. "Let's see if you and your vile abominations can kill me!"

  Riley could only barely see into the crater at this point. He watched as the dragon darted with incredible speed and tore into Golem's soldiers with her claws. The hands leapt to grab the chromatic dragon, but the dragon slipped and dodged with fluid movements. Even when it appeared as though one of the hands had grappled her, the dragon slid smoothly from its grasp, as if the hands couldn't possibly get a hold of her.

  Three more hands descended toward the crater, but the dragon reared her head back and with an open maw let loose a torrent of prismatic energy. Red, green, blue, indigo, violet and the myriad of hues between came rushing into the sky as a concentrated beam. The beam was laser-focused on one of the falling hands, and even though Riley couldn't see its hitpoint count, he watched as the hand was killed in a matter of seconds, only for each of its soldiers to then be destroyed one by one by the continued blast. As soon as one hand was killed, another was attacked, until the dragon found herself in melee range of the monsters again.

  "We need to stay away from that dragon!" Riley yelled.

  "Then tell her to keep her distance!" Amber replied as he repeatedly jabbed his tendrils into a hand that had leapt to grab him.

  Riley returned to the fight at hand, realizing he was slacking just a little, but he felt that knowing what the dragon could do was worth the time spent.

  Chase's Gatling-bot had wandered too far from the protection of the nearby Bunker Brawlers, with only some of the scorpions around it. It didn't take long before a hand gripped the Gatling-bot and completely crushed it, while numerous soldiers fought the nearby scorpions.

  One by one, the scorpions were being killed off. The Great Weavers, who had spread themselves out amongst all the guilds, weren't fully concentrated and were getting picked off. Riley spotted one of The Vigilant players turning into particles as well.

  "We're taking losses, move your scorpions into more defended groups!" Chrono spoke up over the band, but Laura wasn't forthcoming with a response of her own for The Bunker Brawlers. Her clones were fully engaged with the many hands and soldiers that had fallen into the area. There was no way to protect anything when the enemy was falling all around them.

  Riley did his best to take a good look around the battlefield. There might've been a better set of powers for him to take, now that they were dealing with Golem, but the powers he was currently using were the most efficient as far as damage was concerned and that was what they needed most in a fight like this.

  For all of Golem's hands that landed amongst their ranks, others were landing outside of the mass of players. The outer arrivals were grouping together and pushing into their ranks as larger groups, and were harder to deal with. Players were dying. Scorpion losses were becoming ever greater. There was no longer a wall of scorpions to protect them. Bit by bit, it was coming down to just the players.

  Riley had kept his three scorpions at his back. They were still safe and launching jets of acid at available targets without hitting friendlies. If they were going to survive this fight, then they needed to conserve energy and health. With a force this large, healers were few and far between. Generally, if a guild had ten to twenty players, they might have two to three healers. But when players grouped together to hunt monsters, those healers were generally accompanied by only three or four other players, at most. So with the entire mass of each guild on the battlefield, the healers were spread too thin from a sheer numbers standpoint.

  Even within The Bunker Brawlers, Carla could heal, but was better at blowing everything up. Brenda could heal too, but was better at sniping weak spots on enemies with her crossbow bolts. Riley was no longer a healer, unless he took a healer's powers. Laura could equip her clones with healing items, but even that wasn't very practical, due to how they worked. At the moment, Chase was their only good choice for a healer. His Gatling robot had been destroyed, and he was already creating a small robot while two scorpions defended him. Once the robot was made, he directed it to fire a beam of green and white light that slowly regenerated the hitpoints of anyone it touched.

  As soon as Chase had made the first bot, he worked on another. It wasn't the best healing and they'd already started to take some hits, but it'd have to be enough for now.

  "You quarrel amongst yourselves?" came the dragon's deep voice.

  A chill ran up Riley's spine.

  The dragon's voice was much closer than it had been when he'd heard it last.

  Almost in terror, he turned his head.

  The dragon's scales gleamed and glittered in the light of the sun, which was much more prominent as the dragon loomed on the edge of the crater a mere twenty feet away from Riley. With the dragon's size, the creature was practically right upon him, and now in the midst of The Crimson Alliance's dwindling army.

  "Such inferior things!" the dragon spoke, as she struck with one of her clawed hands, smashing one of Riley's scorpions into the ground before spraying it with her prismatic ray.

  Riley could see the scorpion's health drop in increments of 125 to 150 every second. He could only imagine that the ray itself was made up of a multitude of different elements, making a person or minion's resistances count for very little, if they were for a specific damage type. At 100 damage a second, he wondered if the high-hitpoint carrier hands had very low or even negative resistances, due to how quickly they had died compared to the relatively weak scorpions. Maybe the dragon's beam was just really well-suited to destroying Golem for some reason?

  His other two scorpions attacked immediately in defense of the one the dragon had as
saulted. Their jets of acid sprayed against the dragon's torso, only to slide off. There wasn't so much as a sizzle until the acid slipped off and touched the ground beneath the dragon itself.

  Was the dragon immune or resistant to elemental damage, while also able to cause all elemental damage with her ray attack? Were her claws able to use elemental damage when they hit? He had no true way of knowing. All he could do was watch as his middle scorpion was killed. It was the one he'd been riding over the past week. It was a little depressing to see it die so easily. He was about to attack, while holding his shield up to his body to protect himself, but something in the back of his mind told him not to. He didn't know why. The dragon was acting weirdly. Entirely unlike a player, or a minion. She had displayed her own name upon them encountering her and even though his scorpions had hit her with acid, her health bar should've then appeared since they did damage to her. The only time a health bar didn't appear was when a player attacked another player. But if a player attacked another player's minions, they'd still see the names and health bars of the minions. So on this fact alone he was even more confounded.

  He didn't know if it would work, but he had to try. "We don't want to fight you!" Riley called out to the dragon. Upon saying that, his scorpions even tried to pull away, only to have the dragon quickly grab and tear into them, one after another.

  "Then you should not fight me!" the dragon replied.She’d responded to him!

  Riley had no idea what to do with this information. He tried to think quickly. He glanced around, still seeing Golem in their midst and surrounding them on all sides. There were far more enemies here than there had been when Outpost Rose had been assaulted.