by Rachel Aaron
"And then what?"
The whole room turned to glare at him, and Anders cringed, but his bulging fish eyes never left Tina's. "Say we do roll the knights and free the players--what do we do with them?"
"We take them with us, duh," Neko said. "They're baby lowbies. If we set them loose in the city, they'll just get caught again."
"Okay, but how do we that?" Anders pressed, keeping his eyes on Tina. "You said yourself that our food won't last forever, and that was before we added the survivors from the Founder's Square to our ranks. There are a dozen more wagons full of low-level players down there. That's a lot of extra mouths to feed who can't contribute to the raid. We'll be greatly increasing our liabilities by saving them."
"Well we can't not save them," Tina said fiercely. "What are you saying? That we should just leave them to die?"
"No, no!" The ichthyian Cleric put up his webbed hands. "This is an atrocity, and it absolutely has to stop! But we're not saving anyone if we rush in blindly, use up all our mana and ammo, and then collapse while wandering through the city, trying to get away. Even if we kill every knight in that camp--and that's a stretch--the FFO wiki defines the Royal Knights as the king's private army, which means there have to be a lot more of them around than the hundred or so we can see down there. There are also the normal city guards and Bastion's soldier NPCs, all of whom will be after us once we do this. Again, I'm one hundred percent for wrecking that camp. I just also want us to have a plan for what comes next."
Tina didn't have a good answer for that. She leaned back to the window, glaring through the curtains at the extermination camp to see if there was something she'd overlooked, some big weakness they could exploit to their advantage like the corridor they'd used to trap and kill Grel. She was still searching when Killbox snorted.
"Why are you getting all complicated about it?" he asked. "It's not like we haven't done this before."
Tina glanced back at him in confusion. "What do you mean?"
The Berserker shrugged his huge shoulders. "I'm just saying that this shit fest is no different from every other shitty zone in FFO. Here, see if this sounds familiar." He straightened up and schooled his face into a stern frown. "'Hero, there's an enemy camp in the square below! You need to kill the guards, free the prisoners, arm them with the enemy's weapons, and feed them with the enemy's food. And while you're doing that, burn fifteen tents and kill the named officers X, Y, and Z. Oh, and if they have any cool magical thingies lying around, rig those into a bomb as you leave.'" His stern scowl slid into a smirk. "See? This is just another quest zone. Boo-fucking-yah."
Tina's jaw was hanging open by the time he finished. She didn't know whether to laugh at his stingingly accurate summary of things quest givers wanted them to do in what felt like every zone of the game, or to be astonished that Killbox had actually suggested a viable plan.
"I can't believe I'm saying this," she got out at last, "but I think Killbox has a really good idea."
Killbox stuck his thumbs in his belt, grinning at her praise. Meanwhile, everyone else was staring at her in shock.
"I'm serious," Tina said. "If we smash the place up and give all the freed players the knights' weapons and supplies, that lets them join us as fighters instead of liabilities. Also, breaking their stuff and killing their officers means the knights can't easily follow us or counterattack. And if they do have a magical thingy, we can totally rig it to explode. It may not blow up big, but having to worry about defusing a bomb is just one more thing they'll have to do instead of chasing us. It's a legit good plan!"
"But what happens after that?" Anders asked, pressing his webbed hands together nervously. "I don't mean to keep being Captain Bringdown, but you do realize that attacking the king's knights means we'll be starting a rebellion, right? We're in the heart of Bastion's territory. All the surrounding zones are sworn to support the king. Even if we make it out the gates, if King Gregory names us enemies, we'll have nowhere safe to run."
"We're not going to run," Tina said firmly. "If we can't go to the castle, we'll go to the bank."
"I don't think withdrawing your savings is gonna help," Frank said nervously.
"We're not going there for money," Tina clarified. "The bank is a magical vault that stores all of the stuff players want to keep but can't fit in our backpacks. It's literally packed with loot! Plus, since it was always meant to look secure, the building itself is a fortress." A smile broke over her face. "Think about it: we're about to free and arm a hundred players who hate the knights as much as we do. Once we've loaded up on the enemy's weapons, we'll take our army and march to the bank. Once we take control of the building, we'll have a bitchin' base with all the food, magical supplies, and weapons we could ever need. Do you know how much sweet armor I've stuffed into my vault over the years? I could probably gear an entire raid by myself."
The whole room started buzzing excitedly at the prospect of getting their loot back, but Zen still looked unconvinced. "That might work against normal NPCs," she said. "But what if the king decides to come out and kill us himself? He's a five-skull raid boss, remember?"
"If he comes out, we'll deal with it," Tina said confidently. "We're a raid. Bosses are our thing. And I've already tanked him hundreds of times. I've spent the last five Oktoberfests chain killing him, trying to farm his stupid endless beer stein, which he still hasn't dropped. Gregory has got a lot of HP, but he's nothing on Grel. We've totally got--"
She cut off when SilentBlayde suddenly stepped into the center of the room. "They've hung twenty more people while we've stood here arguing," he said darkly.
"Enough talking, then," Tina agreed, looking around at her officers. "Let's vote on it."
Zen's eyes went wide. "You're asking for a vote?"
Tina gave her a firm nod. "This is a course of action we're all bound by. Everyone has to be in, not just following my orders. That's vote-worthy in my book."
For the first time ever, Zen beamed at her. "I vote yes," she said, raising her hand. "I don't care if we have to fight the knights and the king at the same time. I couldn't live with myself if we abandoned all those people."
"Same here," Killbox said, thrusting his armored arm up so fast, he punched a hole in the low ceiling.
"Me too," KatanaFatale said.
"You know my vote already," SB said, putting his hand up.
"Thanks for letting me ask the devil's questions," Anders said. "No matter what, I want to stop the knights. Let's do it." His webbed hand went up.
"I'm still not entirely sure what's going on with the boss monster king and what not, but if we're saving people, I'm all in," Frank said cheerfully.
"It's a hell yeah for me," NekoBaby said, throwing her hand into the air. "I'm so down with killing those assholes."
"That's everyone, then," Tina said with a bloodthirsty grin. "The vote passes. Now." She cracked her stone knuckles. "Let's go teach this city not to mess with players."
The others cheered and rushed down the stairs to tell the raid. Not wanting to crash three stories to the ground, Tina followed more slowly, easing her weight down the not-rated-for-stonekin steps. For once, though, even being forced to lag behind couldn't dent her mood.
She'd hated this voting thing when it had first been forced onto her, but now Tina was starting to see its usefulness. Having to make her case for big stuff was annoying, but letting the officers have their say at the beginning seemed to eliminate dissent afterward. And since she could always count on SB to take her side, it was impossible for her to actually lose a vote since it took all of the officers voting together to override her say as Guildmaster. She still hated that she'd had to give up power, but this wasn't actually a bad system now that was getting used to it.
Figuring that out made Tina feel like she'd already won. By the time she got to the ground floor of the destroyed bakery, she was stepping lighter than she had since this disaster started. True, her plan to get them home had fizzled, but she finally felt like she had her guild ba
ck in hand, and they were about to go pound some fuckers who truly deserved it.
"You look surprisingly happy," SB, who'd been waiting for her at the door, said.
"Of course I'm happy," Tina replied. "We finally get to be the goddamn heroes for once." She flashed him a grin. "You ready to do this?"
"Oh yeah," he said, patting his blades. "Just give the word."
"Let me get my raid ready and it's given," she said, breaking into a jog as she hurried back to her players to whip them up for the kill.
Chapter 4
James and Tina
"They're doing what?" James hissed. "We're doing what?"
NekoBaby gave him a wicked fanged grin. "Stomping the yard, fool! These NPC knights are player-killing creeps, so we're gonna trash their shit and save our peeps. The plan is easy: we're gonna stay in formation and kill everything sleazy. Healers and ranged are gonna take the barricades so we can support the melee throwing down like grenades."
She finished with her hands out, miming a mic-drop motion with her staff. "There," she said, standing up normally again. "That's our strat. I even rapped it for you, so don't fuck up."
James still couldn't believe what he was hearing, and not because of Neko's awful rhymes. "But that's a rebellion!" he cried, slamming his own staff down on the cobblestones. "It's the worst course of action possible! Even if we win, we're going to split the city into armed factions right before the Once King's invasion!"
"Meh," the cat-girl said with a shrug. "You're the only one who thinks the invasion is still going to happen. I'm with Roxxy. The O. K.'s corpse brigade already got beat, which means all the scripts are off. We're writing our own plot twists now."
"But why are we going straight to attacking?" James demanded. "We should at least talk to the king first!"
"Um, dude, they're the Royal Knights," Neko reminded him. "Unless the king is seriously AFK on his duties, it's kind of obvious he's in on this."
James shook his head violently. "I can't believe that. King Gregory is a famously kind man. Hell, half of his quests are for solving problems caused by him being too nice. There is no way he'd be party to his knights committing war crimes."
Neko rolled her orange eyes. "Yeah, well, they kind of built an industrial-strength hangman's scaffold on his front door, so 'scuse me if I don't believe you."
"There just has to be some mistake," James pressed. "This isn't normal behavior for them! We should at least try to find out what's going on before we--"
"Why the hell are you defending them?" Neko demanded, jabbing him with her claw. "They're mass-murdering fucks!"
"I'm not defending their actions!" James cried. "I'm just saying we shouldn't engage in vigilante justice when we haven't tried anything else first!"
Neko crossed her arms over her chest belligerently. As she did, James realized for the first time that the healer wasn't actually wearing a white dress, but a giant undershirt with a belt over it. Her actual robes, worn over her shoulders like a long open duster, were ripped open down the front. He was wondering what had happened to her when Neko turned up her nose.
"You can bitch back here all you want, but I take my orders from Roxxy, and she says we're gonna murder the shit out of them for what they've done."
Frustrated, James dragged a hand through his fur. "Then I'm going to talk to Tina."
"So much nope on that one," Neko said, snagging his shoulder. "Roxxy told me to keep you out of trouble. I've got the lightning sub-talent, so don't make me Taser you."
She waved her other hand at him, which was now wreathed in lighting, and James froze. Despite her tattered robes, the cat-girl still had ten times better gear than he did. Even specced for healing, one blast of her lightning would be enough to put him on the ground. He was still backing away when Ar'Bati suddenly jumped up from the step where he'd been sitting beside the silent and grim Flameboyant.
"What do you mean 'keep us out of trouble?" he demanded. "We were supposed to be escorting you!"
"Yeah, that's what we in the business call 'being handled,'" Neko said sweetly, batting her eyelashes at the furious warrior. "I'm actually the cat with the power, and just so you know, I'm a blast first, heal second kind of girl. But we can still be cool. Just don't try anything stupid, and I'll keep you nice and safe."
By the time she finished, Fangs was growling deep in his throat. If James had given him even the slightest hint of a go-ahead, he probably would have thrown down right then and there, which was why James kept his arms firmly at his sides. It wasn't just fighting Neko that would be futile. They were in the middle of a whole raid of Roughnecks, any one of whom could tie both of them into pretzels. Any efforts to force their way anywhere would be doomed from the start, so James lowered his bound staff.
"Okay, okay. You win," he said, fangs clenched in frustration. "We'll stay put."
That earned him a pat on the head and a "good boy" from Neko. It also earned him a punch in the arm from Ar'Bati. The hit was enough to make him stumble, but James didn't even say ow. He just waited patiently until Neko was distracted by some other drama--which took precisely ten seconds--before turning his attention back to his adopted brother.
"Listen--"
"No!" Fangs in Grass snarled. "You listen! I refuse to fight against the king, and you must too. Anything less is treason!"
"I know," James said. "But--"
"Since you aren't panicking, it's obvious you do not know," Ar'Bati said. "King Gregory's rule doesn't stop at Bastion's walls! The Savanna is also part of this kingdom. Our father is addressed as 'Lord Rends of Claw Born' outside of Windy Lake for a reason, and our mother was the Four Clans' ambassador in Bastion for years. You were adopted into a noble and powerful family! We are not commoners who can flirt with questionable acts. Especially treasonous ones! You heard the idiot Naturalist's rhyme. We risk dishonoring our entire clan for generations just by standing here!"
"I don't want to do this, either," James assured him. "But Tina is my sister. I can't abandon her."
Ar'Bati made a cutting motion with his claw. "Your sister is a power-drunk mercenary with no loyalties who chases whatever benefits her at the time! Stopping her would be far kinder than abetting this crime!"
"Roxxy would kick your ass if she heard that," NekoBaby informed them.
James and Ar'Bati both whirled around, and the jubatus healer, who was still a good ten feet away, batted her large, pointed ears. "I have cat ears, remember?" she said, rolling her eyes. "You want to talk shit behind Roxxy's back, do it more quietly."
"I will tell her my opinion to her face when the chance arrives!" Fangs yelled back, puffing out his chest. "I do not fear her like the rest of you, cowering in her shadow!"
Neko sneered at him. "Go ahead and try it, fur ball. She'll turn you into Angry Cat tacos."
Ar'Bati hissed at her for that, and James grabbed his arm. "Leave it," he whispered angrily. "It doesn't matter what we want, anyway. We're prisoners."
"Then we should be making escape plans!" Ar'Bati whispered back.
"I can still heaaar you, Angry Cat!" Neko called in a singsong voice
"My name is Fangs in the Grass!" Ar'Bati bellowed back.
Whatever new insult Neko was about to yell back got cut off when Tina climbed up on an overturned wagon and banged on her shield for attention.
"All right, people, listen up!" she yelled, her stonekin voice bouncing off the looming buildings loud enough to be heard in the back but not so loud that it carried to the troops encamped in the square a few blocks away. "The king's knights' base is just around the corner. You all saw what they did in the Founder's Square. Well, they're still doing that, and we're not going to stand for it!"
A wave of angry agreement swept through the crowd, and James's ears went flat. None of the fury was directed at him, but ever since the village, being in an angry crowd made him feel as if someone were going to bash him with a rock at any moment.
"They picked the wrong players to mess with!" Tina went on. "We're goin
g to hit them like a hurricane. Smash their shit, free their prisoners, and head for the bank to regroup and fort up for whatever comes next. Now there're a lot of them out there, so I want everyone in the same formation we used for Grel'Darm. If you have questions, ask your class officer. They know all the specifics. Lowbies, you guys aren't fighting until we get you some better gear, so stay in the back with the casters, where you'll be safe. That's all there is to it. Now get to your groups!"
James winced while all the players around him cheered. The Roughneck officers immediately pulled their people together and started explaining the class-specific parts of the plan. Each group raised their weapons when they finished. When all arms were in the air, Tina drew her sword and waved the group toward the main road.
"James," Ar'Bati said frantically as the raid began to march. "We must not be part of this!"
"I don't intend to be," James said, turning to NekoBaby, who'd bopped back to their side. "We refuse to fight," he informed her. "Taser me all you want, but we're not helping."
"Umm, dude, no one wants you to help us," Neko said, looking James up and down. "You've got shit gear, and your pet NPC doesn't even rate. My orders are to keep you safe and out of Roxxy's hair. If you're not fighting, that just makes my job waaaay easier, so please feel free to do nothing at all."
"Oh," James said, shoulders sinking.
Neko patted him on the head one last time and sauntered back to her Naturalists, leaving him unsure if he felt better or worse.
***
After hours of walking through narrow, smoke-clogged streets, emerging onto the Royal Mile felt like stepping onto a stage. The blasting light of the noonday sun radiated down on the scarred flagstone highway, banishing the shadows. Now that there were no buildings blocking it, the wind from the knifelike green mountains beyond the city was free to blow the smoke away, leaving the corridor that bisected the city clear and bright.
Up the hill to the north, dead ahead, Tina saw the king's castle in all its glory. In stark contrast to the ruined city, the royal castle's gold-roofed towers gleamed as bright as torches behind the soaring outer walls. And in the middle, placed atop the tallest spire like a jewel in a scepter, was the Holy Bastion, the ancient magical artifact the city was named after.
