by Rachel Aaron
Frustrated, Tina blew out a breath. On the one hand, she thought James was grasping at straws. Between the scrap of cloth with the king's colors and the eyewitness testimony, it was pretty obvious who the guilty party was. On the other, though, the King of Bastion was the one who had everything they needed. Their plan to get home depended on gaining access to his portal keeper and his library. If her gut was right, then they were screwed, but if her brother was actually on to something and this was a horrible but isolated incident committed by a handful of knights gone nuts, they might still be able to salvage the situation.
"I hope you're right, James," she said tiredly, glaring down at her brother. "But there's no way to know for sure from here. We'll just have to keep going and see how things shake out. The Royal Knights' barracks are in the royal castle. If they've all turned against us, we'll know soon enough."
James closed his eyes in relief. "Thank you, T."
"I'm not doing this for you," she snapped. "I'm just not willing to give up yet on the only good plan we have. If we can't work with the king, we're back to wandering in the wilderness."
"I'm fine with that," Zen said, folding her arms stubbornly. "I refuse to work with anyone who does this."
"So do I," Tina agreed. "But so long as there's a shadow of a doubt, we should honor it. Innocent until proven guilty, right?"
Zen's scowl said she'd already made up her mind, but she didn't say anything else. When Tina was sure she wasn't going to have rebellion in the tanks, she turned to the rest of the raid, who'd crept close to the broken inn to listen.
"Let the survivors finish eating and then get back into formation," she ordered. "The plan is still on. We keep going to the castle."
No one looked happy about that, but no one seemed willing to fight her over it, either. It wasn't the reaction Tina had wanted, but she'd take it, walking out into the square to search for a clear spot where she could get her traumatized army back together.
***
The raid that marched out of Founder's Square was very different from the one that had walked into it. The players were no longer a huddled mass looking at the ruined city in fear. They were an army, marching in formation with weapons drawn. If the reason behind it hadn't been so gruesome, Tina would have been delighted, but she'd been changed as well, stalking down the increasingly chaotic ruined streets with her fists clenched and her eyes dead ahead.
The death hadn't stopped when they'd left the square. They were in the oldest, nicest part of Bastion now. Back in the game, the tangle of ancient streets and elegant houses surrounding the castle had been charming and expensive, the home of the city's most exclusive and ridiculous vanity item questlines, like the Duke's Turban. Now, they were a warren of smoke and blood.
Bodies had been shoved into every narrow alley. Just like in the square, the corpses were all players, but these people hadn't died of a quick slash across the throat. Their killers had been much more creative. The bodies had been mutilated, some with obvious signs of torture, others simply hacked to pieces in a frenzy.
The scale was totally different, but in its own way, the walk through the narrow streets was even worse than Founder's Square. At least there, people had just been dead. This violence was sadistic on a level Tina could not comprehend. Even the Once King hadn't treated his victims this badly. With every torn-up corpse she passed, her hatred for whomever had done this grew and grew. She was trying to get a hold on her rage before it caused her to do something stupid when she felt SB enter her shadow.
"The Royal Mile's just ahead," he whispered, his voice like a ghost in her ear.
The Royal Mile was the name of the big parade boulevard that ran north and south through the middle of the city straight to the castle gates. Despite the name, it was a lot longer than one mile, but it was the most direct path to the castle. That should have made it a good find in these mazelike streets, but SB's tone told a different story.
"How's it look?"
The Assassin took a shaky breath. "Not good. There's a ton of NPCs. They've got a big camp set up in the middle. There weren't enough good shadows to get in without being seen, so ZeroDarkness and I didn't get as good a look as we wanted, but it's definitely not a place we should just walk into."
"Well, shit," Tina said, looking up at the looming buildings caging them into the narrow street. "Good call on not risking yourselves. Is there any way around?"
"Not if you want to get to the castle," SilentBlayde said, stepping out of her shadow to point down the street. "There is a big building two blocks north that's still structurally sound. We could probably see what we're up against from there. Zero's already got it staked out."
"Good work," Tina said, holding up her hand.
The raid behind her stopped at once, feet and claws scraping nervously on the sooty street. Considering the last time she'd stopped them had been for a field of bodies, Tina didn't blame them one bit for being anxious, but she didn't have anything to say to soothe their fears. So instead, she ordered them to stay on alert and called her officers forward. She was about to lead them to the building SB had pointed at when she saw James walking toward her behind Neko, even though the cat-girl was hissing at him.
"Whoa," Tina said, putting her hand on her brother's chest. "What do you think you're doing?"
"Going with you," James said, looking obnoxiously determined despite his flattened ears. "I want to help."
"Then stay where you're told," she said sharply. "This is for officers only, and as you just told me an hour ago, you're not even part of my guild."
James winced at the reminder, but he didn't back down. "I have business with the king as well," he said stubbornly, pointing at SB's backpack. "Those are my letters in there. Ar'Bati and I risked a great deal to get them so that we could warn Bastion of the Once King's invasion. I can't do that if you take one look at the situation and decide to bail."
The moment he mentioned the Once King, Tina rolled her eyes. "Enough with the stupid plot crap already," she snapped. "For the last time, we already took care of the Once King's army in the Deadlands."
"And I keep trying to tell you that wasn't his only one!" James said frantically. "The Once King is the primary source of conflict for every zone in the game. All of those questlines are still going, and now that they're not being reset with the server or foiled by players, there's nothing to stop them from moving into their final stage." He looked around at the alleys full of bodies. "I know things here look really bad, but even if this was all the Royal Knights' doing, we still have a duty to warn the king about what's coming. I'm not part of your guild, but I am walking through this city with you. If you're going to make a decision that involves my future, I want to be there."
"Well, you don't get to be," Tina said coldly, crossing her huge arms over her chest as she glared down at him. "This isn't home, James. You don't get to dictate what happens here. This is my raid, so you're going to listen to what I want for once and stay put."
James sank lower. "But--"
Tina didn't stay to hear the rest. She just turned on her heel and stomped off down the street. It felt uncomfortably like running away, but if she'd stayed, she would have just ended up yelling at him, and that wouldn't help the new responsible-leader image she was trying to cultivate. Also, Tina hated yelling at her brother. It always ended up making her feel even worse, which was saying something, because no one got to her the way James did. Even when he wasn't trying, he always managed to wheedle into the worst parts of her, which was why it was better for everyone if she kept him at arm's length and preferably out of earshot. He'd be safe with the raid around him. Meanwhile, she had work to do.
The building SB had picked out for them was a tall, skinny tower at the corner of what had once been a charming intersection. The wooden door was charred and hanging off its hinges, making it easy to kick out of the way. Tina stepped over a fallen sign skillfully painted with a loaf of bread and crunched across the glass-strewn floor. The others followed right behind h
er, but while they all went up to the second floor with no problem, Tina paused at the human-scale stairs.
Stonekins had always been too big for the rest of the world. Back in the game, it had only been a minor inconvenience since she couldn't actually feel her shoulders scraping and her weight never broke anything because game physics weren't real physics. Now, though, all of that had changed. In her new perspective, the tiny wooden steps looked perilously fragile, like strips of balsa wood.
There was no other way up, though, so Tina turned her giant metal-booted foot sideways and placed it gingerly on the first step, easing her weight onto the board. The stair groaned and creaked as her weight came down, but the wood held, as did the next one. She had to hunch her shoulders and slide sideways to fit her body up the staircase itself, but eventually she reached the third floor, where everyone else was already waiting.
The six of them were crammed into what had been a small sitting room. ZeroDarkness was there as well, crouching beside the large cracked picture window that looked over the Royal Mile, the reason they'd come up here. Someone had pulled the curtains, which was good, because with all their glowing magical equipment, they would have stood out like disco balls to anyone who looked up. The multicolored light did a nice job of illuminating the room, though, enough to see that there were no bodies or blood. That was a welcome relief after the last hour, and Tina let out a long breath.
"Okay, Zero," she said, easing forward to stand at the window beside their other Assassin. "What've we got?"
The jubatus gave her a haunted look. "It's easier just to show you," he said quietly, pulling the curtain open a crack to reveal the Royal Mile below.
"Fuck," Killbox said.
"Fuck," Tina agreed, dragging a hand down her haggard face.
The Royal Mile was a four-lane flagstone road that ran from the southern city gates on her left all the way north to the castle's outer-wall gates on her right, which were shockingly close. It had been impossible to tell from deep in the narrow streets, but they were only a few blocks away from the royal castle, so close that she could no longer see the green mountains behind the towering eighty-foot white outer walls. Directly in front of them was the Grand Square, the largest expanse of open flagstone in the city. It was the place where all the big in-game events kicked off, which meant it was always decorated for a party. Now, though, it looked like a concentration camp.
It was jam-packed full of tall men in shining armor and wearing the king's red and gold: Royal Knights. As SB had mentioned, they'd set up a full military camp in front of the castle, complete with hundreds of tents and two large ballistae pointed south down the Royal Mile. All the roads leading into the square had been blocked off with ten-foot-high barricades made from piled rubble scavenged from nearby buildings. Only one section had been left open, and that was guarded by a full squad of Royal Knights armed with long spears in addition to their normal swords and tower shields.
Moments later, Tina saw why. As she watched, a wooden wagon carrying a large cage full of scared, sweaty players rolled up the Royal Mile to the defended camp. When it stopped at the checkpoint, the Royal Knights driving it, one elven and one human, went around back to open the cage. As the human knight approached, the low-level players pressed themselves against the farthest side of the metal enclosure, but gate guards were already there, using their sharp spears to drive the players forward to where the other guards could reach. The human driver laughed at their shouts of pain then plunged his armored arm into the crowd and yanked an elven Sorcerer still in her starter robes out by her hair. He dragged her kicking and screaming out of the wagon and handed her to his elven friend, who was waiting with a blood-stained rope to tie her hands behind her back.
Zen clenched her fists. "What are they doing to her?"
"I think we'll find out soon enough," Tina said, looking farther into the camp, where a dozen more wagons were parked in a circle, their metal cages full of player prisoners watching the newcomers in horror.
Back at the first wagon, the guard squad was using their spears to force the remaining low-level players out of the cage. There were a lot more of them packed in there than Tina had realized at first. By the time the cage was empty, the knights with the ropes had tied up over two dozen players. The last one out, an ichthyian Sorcerer, fell to his knees, clearly begging for his life, but the knights just kicked him into line, beating his face until it was bloody before binding his webbed hands behind his back and attaching him to the long rope with all the others. When all the players from the wagon were bound together, the guards marched them into the camp past the wagons full of other players and up toward the gate to the royal castle, where a gallows had been hastily assembled.
The long board platform had twenty nooses in total. Without a word from their executioners, the weeping players were hauled up the stairs one by one and fitted with thick ropes around their necks. The gruesome spectacle was being overseen by an astonishingly tall Elven knight. Even from this far away, Tina could see that he was at least a foot bigger than his fellows. When all the players were noosed, he stepped forward, brushing his graying black hair away from his face as he proceeded to read something off a scroll. Tina couldn't hear what, but as he read, all the players who hadn't been weeping already started to bawl.
"That's Captain Malakai!" SB hissed.
Unable to tear her eyes off the spectacle, Tina tilted her head. "Which one?"
"The really tall elf reading the scroll," SilentBlayde said. "You remember the four-skull mini-boss we had to kill on our way to fight King Gregory for the 'Drunken King' event every Oktoberfest? That's him. He's the officer in charge of all the Royal Knights."
"Oh yeah," Tina said, eyes narrowing. "Looks like we didn't kill him enough."
Back on the gallows, Captain Malakai had finished reading his decree. He rolled his scroll back up and walked to the edge of the gallows. Then, with a final sneering look at the condemned, he turned and kicked the metal lever, dropping all the players through trap doors. They kicked and swung at the end of their ropes for several moments. The higher-level players lasted longer than the lower ones, but eventually they all went still. When the kicking stopped, the Royal Knights standing guard nearby set down their shields to applaud. They were taking down the dead to make room for the next round when Tina reached out and snatched the curtain closed.
"Well," Zen said darkly. "I think that settled the question of whether or not the knights are guilty."
Tina nodded, clenching her fists.
"What are we going to do, Roxxy?" Anders asked in a stricken voice behind her.
"What do you mean, 'What are we going to do?'" Killbox asked. "We're going to go in there and start breaking things!"
"Yeah, fuck those guys!" Neko cried in agreement. "I say we roll 'em!"
The room was soon full of calls for violence, and Tina put her hand up for quiet. "I want to kill them too," she said. "But let's think this through. That camp is packed. There have to be hundreds of enemies down there, and not stupid zombies this time. Those are level-eighty NPCs in heavy armor with swords and shields, and they have prisoners. It's not the sort of situation we can just plow into."
She glanced back through the gap in the curtain to take a better look at the enemy. It pissed her off how much the Royal Knights' armor looked like Roxxy's. Since she was a Knight-classed character, it made sense that they'd look similar, but the more she studied them, the more certain she became that the men down there were nothing like her. Unlike player Knights, who came in every race, the Royal Knights were all human or elven, and their weapons and armor didn't glow like hers did, a sure sign that they were made from mundane steel. They had to be stronger than normal people, given how easily they were able to drag the gearless low-level players around, but Tina was sure that she was a hell of a lot stronger. When a jubatus player got free and scrambled under a wagon to hide, no one lifted the wagon off him as she could have. Instead, the knights used their spears to stab the guy to death i
n his hiding spot. When they were done, they fished out his limp corpse and tossed it onto a wagon full of player bodies that was trundling out of the encampment, destination unknown.
"We have to get down there."
Tina jumped. She hadn't realized SilentBlayde was so close, but when she looked down, he was peering through the curtain right beside her, his handsome face twisted with fury like she'd never seen. And he wasn't the only one. All of her officers looked ready to murder. Killbox was grinding his fists together, and even Anders was flexing his spines menacingly. Tina didn't know KatanaFatale well yet, but apparently the fire Sorcerer could literally steam when angry. It was quite the unified front, and for once, Tina was right there with them.
"The king can go to hell," she announced as she turned to face them. "I don't care if he's our ticket home or not. We're not working for anyone who would order this shit." She pounded her fist into her open palm. "We're going to clean them out."
"I'm all for it," SB said immediately. "But how? You were right when you said that we couldn't rush in. There's an army down there, and our track record versus armies isn't so good."
"I don't know about that," Tina said. "There's a lot of them, sure, but these guys are nothing compared to Garrond's Order of the Sun. They've got mundane gear, no archers, no high ground, no magic users, and I know for a fact that the royal castle's main gate takes forever to open, so reinforcements won't be quick. We, on the other hand, are freshly loaded, as pissed as hell, and we've got the element of surprise." Her face split into a wicked grin. "I bet we could just roll 'em."
That earned her a whoop whoop! from Neko and a high five from Killbox. Everyone else seemed less gung-ho, but the only person who actually spoke up was Anders.
