by Natalie Grey
“Heal up,” Thad said, “and let’s get going.” He gave a contemptuous glance at the smoking wreck of the crater. “Not so difficult this time, was he?”
He gazed across the chasm toward the final boss, and his face broke into a smile.
Everything was finally going right.
“This fight was a little weird,” Gracie reminded them as they jogged across the void. Talking kept her from thinking about how there was nothing at all beneath her feet. If she actually had to move her feet to run forward, she didn’t think she could do it.
She hated heights.
“It’s going to start slow,” she warned them. “Gary, I need you and Fys to keep your pets with you at the start; we’ll bring them through once we’ve navigated all those ice walls. Do as much ranged damage as you can with Ushanas. Lakhesis, Anders, Chowder, you’re with me, there’s no need to split the tanking groups. Freon, throw anything you can—and, I guess, keep an eye out for anything weird.”
“Right,” Freon said. “Sit in the back and look pretty. Got it.”
“Just let me carry it all,” Ushanas said, flexing under his flowing robes. “I’ve got this, guys. Frost mages? We don’t need no stinkin’ frost mages.”
“You say that now, but just you wait. That fire boss comes running over with his axe, and all of a sudden it’s going to be, ‘Oh, Freon, save me! Snare him!’” Freon’s falsetto came through the voice filters, and everyone burst out laughing.
“You two want to duel?” Gracie said. “Because that’s what I’m hearing. When this is over, we’ll meet at the old temple and fight it out. For now, Ushanas, take it away!”
“Yes, ma’am. FIREBOOOOOOLT!” Ushanas sank into a casting crouch and unleashed hell on the figure at the top of the hill. “Rain of FIIIIIIIRE!”
“Flaming arrows to the FACE!” Alex yelled.
“Tiny—useless—arcane spells!” Kevin tacked on. “Pew pew pew! Seriously, I feel like I’m shooting at a tank with a BB gun.”
“Ha.” Gracie advanced, keeping her eyes locked on the boss to see when he was going to cast the walls of ice. “Slow and steady, guys, slow and steady. Wasn’t there supposed to be a wall of…oh, there we go. Ushanas?”
“One more rain of fire, coming right up.”
“I have to say,” Jay admitted, “it’s a bit disconcerting to have fire raining down around me. I never really noticed that in other games.”
“There definitely is a hellfire vibe,” Gracie agreed. “Okay, we’re clear. Advance!”
Kevin might be disparaging his own efforts, but the ranged damage dealers were making progress. The boss’s health was only creeping down, but he wasn’t able to spend as much time casting ice spells, which meant that Alan didn't have to do damage control on the melee group.
They arrived at the top of the hill in a rush, and Lakhesis whipped out a flaming sword. “First you, then your boss, asshole!”
“You know,” Gracie commented, “I’ve never had a boss I cared about enough to do something like this for them. Almost makes me think better of the guy. I mean, Icy Dude’s been hanging out here for centuries, and he’s still devoted to the cause.” She hacked her sword down. “That said, you don’t get to destroy the world, bitch.”
“Gracie’s layin’ down the law.” Jay launched into the fray with a series of kicks and punches. “All right, now we’re getting somewhere! Look at that health bar go. Whoo!”
“Everybody just keep doing what you’re doing,” Gracie called. “We’ll— What is he doing?”
The boss had shuddered and now began to glow.
“GET OUT!” Freon yelled.
They ran. No one stopped to look back; they just ran. Gracie knew her lips were moving as she went: come on, come on, come on, shit, shit, shit, shiiiiit! They could see the glowing line on the floor now, and she was sure she wasn’t going to make it.
“Run faster,” she pleaded with her character. Her hands ached where she had them clenched. “Oh God, oh God, oh God… Oh shit, we made it. Did we make it? Did…” She turned around. “Wait, isn’t anything going to— SHIT!”
The entire hill went up in smoke, the boss vanishing and ice raining down where they had all been standing.
“Holy…” Jay muttered. “Okay, so when you take his health down fast, he suicides. That’s fun.”
“Super fun.” Gracie’s heart was pounding as if she really had run all that way. “Holy shit, guys, that was close. All right, stay on your toes, and let’s get moving. If we want to have any shot of catching up with Demon Syndicate, we have to keep going.”
In his office, Dan paused, his hand reaching for one of the cables.
Callista’s team had gone into the first boss fight about ten minutes behind Demon Syndicate, but they’d lost a few minutes in the fight. If that trend continued, Demon Syndicate would win handily and Dan wouldn’t need to intervene.
After a moment’s thought, he settled down, his elbows on his knees. He’d wait a little longer.
He was only going to take the servers down if he absolutely needed to.
Chapter Thirty-One
Thad couldn’t remember anything from the trash mob run leading to the second boss. He moved with icy precision, aware of the patrols, pulling groups mechanically so that they advanced almost without stopping.
But he wasn’t all there. His mind was focused on the boss fight, still seeing the jets of fire that had come shooting out of the ground to wipe the party last time.
It wasn’t going to happen again, he swore to himself.
When they were finally done with the trash pull, he was feeling good. He’d resisted the urge to take short cuts, and as a result, they hadn’t put themselves in danger. Games like this punished you when you—
A tap on his shoulder called him back to the real world and he pulled off his helmet, annoyed, to see Evan’s face. He covered his mouthpiece. “What?”
“The other team cut across the field on a different path,” Evan said. He looked pale in the dim light. “They’re almost ready to go in. Dragon Soul is asking if they should take the servers down.”
“What the— No.” Cold certainty settled in Thad’s chest. “Like hell, we’re running from this.”
“Frank thinks—” Evan began.
“No. Fuck that.” Thad took a deep breath and steadied himself. “No,” he repeated. “This is ridiculous. We’ve been training for months. We have a better team setup, and we’re still ahead of them. We’re going in, and we’re going to wipe the floor with the other group.”
Evan looked doubtful, but he wasn’t brave enough to assert his opinion right now, and Thad was just fine with that. He gave a brief nod and withdrew, and Thad put his headset back on. After a moment, he decided the rest of them didn’t need to know about the development. They were fighting well, and they didn’t need the distraction of worrying.
“All right.” He bounced lightly on the balls of his feet. “We’re going in right now. No way to know who is on our tail, so we’re not going to waste any time.”
“Everything okay?” Jamie asked over a private channel.
“Yeah, cable came loose,” Thad said without hesitation. “Evan noticed. Got it reattached just fine, though.”
“Ah, good catch.” He could hear Jamie relax.
Thad smiled grimly. “Now, remember where the jets came out. It was in the center of the floor, so spread out and take your sectors for handling the adds. Porto and Harkness, you keep an eye on anyone going for Envi, and call in whichever ice mage is free if you need it. Speak up before you need intervention. Everyone good?”
There was a chorus of agreement.
“Good,” Thad said shortly, and he spurred his character to a run, dashing across the line of fire into the final boss battle.
Gracie gritted her teeth as she swung—once, twice, a slash, a downward hack, and then she holstered her blade and lashed back out in one smooth motion to kill the elemental with a punch. She was panting by now. This dungeon was more int
ense than their usual play, and they were close to two full runs by now.
Alan launched into heals at once, HOTs shimmering in the air around Gracie, Teef, and Fys’ current demon. She set off as the heals took effect, swiveling her head back and forth to check for patrols.
“Callista.” Jay’s voice was quiet, but it got everyone’s attention. “Do you want me to check where we are in the timings?”
They had taken another shortcut, and again it had paid off. Gracie hadn’t been sure that it would, half-expecting it to be a trap, but they had managed to fight their way through patrols quickly and efficiently, dividing the melee team and alternating so Alan didn’t need to spread his heals out as often.
“Nope.” Gracie didn’t even think about it. “We were behind coming in, and we’re probably still behind. There’s no way we’re so far ahead that we can afford to take time checking where other people are.”
“Good call,” Alan said at once. Gracie could hear Lakhesis and Chowder agreeing as well.
“In fact…” Gracie watched as the next patrol made their approach, and her mind snapped to a split-second decision. “Run now. Everyone go. We’ll be able to get past this patrol if we move quickly. We all healed? Mirra, we good to go on heals?”
“Yes. Holy shit, are we just doing this?” To her amusement, Alan sounded not at all panicked, and entirely on board. “All right. Move, people. Pick it up. Your tank and healer are entirely insane!”
“I say we stage a mutiny,” Lakhesis said in a stage whisper to Dathok, but no one took any more time to joke. They were running in an arc to avoid the oncoming patrol, and they stumbled across the line of flames with whoops and cheers.
“Take it away, Callista!” Alex called as the group spread out.
Gracie gave them a grin, and as the rest of the team fanned out, she kept running, lifting her sword and staring down the end boss.
“Surprise, douchebag!” she called. “We’re baaaaack.”
Thad skidded under the boss’s feet and rolled into position as the huge battle axe came down on the other side, the shudder running through all of Thad’s haptics.
Too slow, bitch, he thought with satisfaction. The boss was swinging around now, but Thad had aced his first interaction. That was just the sort of boost he needed right now.
He spun through his opening rotation with the ease of long practice. How many of these dungeons had he run with his team? Enough that he could do this rotation in his sleep. He’d begun to get a feel for the way Dragon Soul put things together, and the way their rules worked.
Of course, sometimes they threw curveballs like mixing fire and ice, but Brightstar would fix that.
Next time, they’d demand a video run-through before the content dropped.
Thad didn’t feel bad, not in the slightest. This was a game. No one was obligated to play it. Anyway, anyone in his position would take the boost if it were offered to them. He just happened to be the one in the way of the good luck.
The first jets of fire shot up from the ground, but he wasn’t in the way of them this time, and as the elementals spawned, he heard the mages calling to one another to coordinate their efforts. Thad smiled in satisfaction. This was how it was supposed to work; everyone doing their job, responding to the controlled chaos with planned contingencies.
And Dragon Soul had wanted to pull the servers down? He shook his head as he began his rotation again. With the elementals on the board, Envi’s healing had spread and she was pulling more threat now, but nothing they couldn’t handle easily enough.
That was when the second set of fire jets went off. The set where Thad was standing.
The set he hadn’t known about.
Dan’s eyes narrowed. From the sound of the yells, the tank had been unprepared for this development. He looked at the phone, where he was on a conference call with the head of Brightstar’s PR team.
“Now?” he asked delicately.
Frank’s silence indicated he was wavering, and it stretched for so long that Dan nearly yanked the cord out. But just as his fingers closed around the clasp, Frank said, “No. Our guy said they can pull it off. I don’t know about this stuff, so I’ll go with his judgment.”
Dan sighed. When he’d proposed this deal, a one-time boost to help Demon Syndicate prove the nay-sayers wrong and help Dragon Soul kick Callista out of the top ten, Dan had thought it would be a simple one-and-done. They’d punt the Callista problem down the road enough that they could find a way to fix it before the next content patch dropped.
He hadn’t counted on his own team going behind his back, not to mention dealing with the competing egos of Brightstar’s executive team and Demon Syndicate’s guild leader. Dan had been in the boardroom for ten years and had played MMOs for most of his life. He should have anticipated this, he thought.
The question was, what did he do now?
“Listen up,” Gracie said as she sprinted toward the boss. “First thing, Freon will focus entirely on snares. Just snare as often as you can, kiddo.”
“Right-o, boss.”
“Also…” She watched the boss swing his battle axe up over his head.
One thing she’d say for augmented reality: it was a lot easier to give orders on a dedicated voice chat than it would be in an actual battle.
“What’s up, boss?” Jay asked, prompting her.
“Right, sorry. I want you all to keep moving,” Gracie said, “and we’re going to rely on Ushanas to give us directions if we need to. Call the shattered-column side ‘stage left,’ and the less shattered one ‘stage right.’ Then there’ll be boss-side and— Sec.” She dialed in as she swerved around the descending battle axe. “And ‘healer side,’” she finished a bit breathlessly.
It all looked so real that her body refused to remember sometimes that this was just a game.
“So you want me to be on the lookout for...” Ushanas said.
“Anything,” Gracie said. “What happened in the first boss fight with the suicide explosion? They could throw another curveball here too.”
“Good call,” Jay said.
Gracie started into her rotation, but she knew this was really just her buying time for the rest to get into position. Freon, Alex, and Fys’ demon would pull threat away from her almost immediately.
The dungeon designers had really figured out how to get under a tank’s skin with this one.
“Everyone is in position,” Ushanas relayed a few moments later.
“Good. Freon, go when ready. Gary and Fys, line up all your damage.”
“Ready,” chorused three voices.
The first snare hit, and the boss swung away from Gracie with a shriek.
“Melee DPS, get in a few good hits and then withdraw back here!” she called. “Don’t want you in the way of those jets.”
“Aye aye,” Jay called back. “Take that, you son of a bitch! I don’t know about you guys, but I personally would not enjoy getting punched in the shins like this.”
“He’s an undead ghost-thing,” Chowder weighed in. “He’s been holding a grudge for thousands of years. I don’t think he cares about his shins.”
“You’re a real buzzkill sometimes, you know that?”
“Less smack talk, more getting out of the way of the fire jets,” Gracie said with a snicker, and she was pleased to see them scatter. “Actually, you know what? Split into two groups, and head for stage left and stage right. We’ll have you pick up the adds as they spawn.”
“Cool beans,” Lakhesis called. “Teef and Chowder, with me.”
“I got the rest,” Jay chimed in.
Gracie grinned and gave a satisfied nod as the first jets went off. Within moments, the team was swinging back into action, pulling the adds away from the casters.
“All right, now Freon. I want you to come join me— Shit!” Fire jets went off close to her, and Gracie’s health bar took a fifty percent hit. “What the fuck?”
“So there’s another set of fire jets,” Ushanas observed.
“Full heal here in a second. Feel free to pull the adds,” Alan told her.
“I think that set of jets is done for now,” Freon said, “so I’m still on my way.” He started running and the boss, who had been making a beeline for him, howled in protest and tried to follow, dragging its icy chains in a slow arc.
“We need to get these adds cleaned up before he gets back!” Gracie called.
“On it,” chorused Kevin and Alex. Teef dashed into the fray as several ice-enchanted arrows came zooming past, and Gracie’s shock blast pulled the elementals back to her.
They burned down the group as quickly as they could, and Freon fired off another snare as he looped behind Gracie. “I think it’s working!” he called.
“Keep moving,” Gracie told him. “Kite him in the center if you can, but stay far to the outside to avoid the jets. Bet you’re glad you’re not really running this much, aren’t you?”
“Christ, I hadn’t even thought of that.” He was laughing.
“BATTLE AXE!” Ushanas’ voice cut through the chatter. “Stage left, stat!”
“Shiiiit!” Gracie and the rest went skidding out of the way, and Alex gave a yell a moment later.
“Fuck! Teef!”
“Oh, no.” Gracie knew it wasn’t real, but the sight of Alex’s pet lying prone on the ground, its body bloodied, made her heart twist. “Alex, I’m sorry.”
“Stay focused,” was all Alex said. “No battle rezzes means we have no margin for error now.”
“Yeah,” Gracie murmured quietly. “Yeah.”
But worry twisted in her gut. They were taking a long time to get the boss down, and now it would take even longer. What if it was too long? What if—
She’d made the best choices she could, she reminded herself. She couldn’t waste any brain space doubting her earlier decisions. They’d gone with the team they had, which was the best decision, and they were using a strategy that was working.
