by Rachel Aaron
She couldn't see the artifact itself from down in the street. Accessing the actual Bastion required a multistage questline in which one ran around discovering the history of Bastion the city and how it was related to Bastion the magical doohickey. Tina couldn't remember what the big sun crystal surrounded by alchemical machinery did, exactly--the Bastion Castle quests were for level thirties, which was a long time ago for her--but she vaguely remembered it was one of those super-weapon-against-evil things that were somehow never actually available when you needed them. It was pretty, though. Even from way down here, the Bastion's golden light poured through the white tower's stained-glass windows bright enough to rival the actual sun riding high in the blue sky above it.
But while the inner keep still looked like a fantasy king's enchanted sanctum, the outside of the castle told another story entirely. Now that they were closer, Tina could see that the castle's outer wall wasn't nearly as white as it had looked from far away. The smoke had gotten here, too, staining the giant stones a grimy, brackish gray. Even the golden gates looked dimmer, especially given what was growing in front of them.
Directly ahead, the extermination camp they'd spied on from the bakery was swarming like a kicked-over anthill. Now that she was on the road instead of looking in from above, Tina could no longer see over the ten-foot-high barricades of rubble, but the gap in the walls the wagons went through was directly in front of her, and that was where Tina was aiming.
"Right!" she said, lifting her sword. "Let's see how these cowards stand up to people who can fight back!"
The Roughnecks poured out of the side street and onto the Royal Mile behind her with a roar, shuffling and bumping each other as they moved into formation on the open road. As ordered, the Knights, Assassins, and Berserkers all moved to the front. The Sorcerers and Rangers fell in behind them, while the healers and lowbies shuffled around to the very back. Several feet to Tina's right, Frank jogged up to take the second spearhead position, closing his visor nervously since they were both now a good twelve feet out in front of anyone else.
Horns blared from the camp, sounding the alarm. Tina wasn't surprised and didn't care. Stealth was not her raid's forte. She'd kept them hidden in the backstreets for as long as she could, but there was no way to hide four-dozen raiders with giant glowing weapons once it came time to actually roll out. The shit-geared Royal Knights couldn't do squat against a raid like hers, anyway, so she just kept striding forward, trusting her people to stay in formation as she picked up the pace.
When they were less than five hundred feet from the front barricade, two heavy wagons were pushed together to close the entrance to the camp, and the plate-armored knights in red-and-gold tabards swarmed the rubble line, packing its ridge with their swords and interlocking shields. They'd moved the two ballistae she'd noticed earlier up as well, nestling the giant siege weapons into the stacked stones to hold them in place while crews cranked back the telephone pole-sized spear shafts, their two-foot-long arrow-headed tips pointed at the raid.
When the siege weapons were ready to fire, the tall elf captain with the graying black hair Tina had seen operating the gallows emerged to stand on top of the largest wagon being used for the blockade. Sneering at the approaching players, he raised a metal cone to his mouth.
"I am Captain Malakai of the Royal Knights!" he shouted, the simple megaphone boosting his already-booming voice to painful levels. "In the name of King Gregory, I command you to halt!"
Tina shrugged and raised her shield.
"The king has issued a decree!" Malakai went on, holding up a scroll of parchment bound with all kinds of official-looking ribbons and seals. "All players are to disarm and surrender themselves to be judged for crimes committed during and after the Nightmare."
Tina edged her shield higher. She was only two hundred feet away from the entrance to the camp now.
When it was clear she wasn't stopping, Malakai shoved the scroll into his assistant's arms, nearly knocking the much smaller man over. But rather than looking angry, as Tina expected, the captain's face was almost gleeful when he turned to yell at them again.
"This is your last warning!" he cried, his dark eyes bright with something that sent shivers up Tina's stone spine. "Lay down your weapons and surrender! Anything less, and we will slaughter you where you stand. Not even the vultures will want you after our vengeance is completed!"
Tina smiled in reply and swept her sword through the air until it rang. Behind her, a symphony of steel rose in reply as all the players readied their weapons, the air filling with power as spell casters gathered the beginnings of their magics, sending a hum like electricity through the raid.
"So be it," Malakai said, his thin lips curling in disgust as he turned to his knights. "Open fire!"
"Open fire!" Tina shouted at the same time, throwing up her shield. Frank did the same, dropping into his stance just in time as the ballistae on the barricades twanged, and two telephone pole-sized arrows launched toward the raid.
The massive bolt slammed into her bulwark with deafening force. Sparks flew from her metal boots as the impact pushed her down the cobbled street, but her enchanted shield had taken far worse than this. An arrow, even a giant one fired by a siege weapon, was nothing compared to the beating Grel had given her, and after pushing her several feet back, the bolt's massive barbed head broke into pieces, followed by the shaft. As metal shards and splinters exploded over her head, Tina glanced to the right to see that Frank had likewise stopped his bolt. She was taking a breath to tell him good job when the raid launched its attack.
A slim dozen glowing arrows flew over her head from the Roughneck ranks. Their tiny fusillade looked pathetic as it sprinkled down on the knight-covered barricade. The armored soldiers raised their shields in a tight formation to block the attack, but it didn't work at all. The magical arrows shot from enchanted weapons of legend punched straight through their mundane shields and armor and exploded, covering the barricade in a wave of fire and acid so bright, Tina was forced to look away.
Look away and grin. After all the hard two- and three-skull fights in the Deadlands, it felt so good to see what her raid could do against normal, at-level opponents. Men screamed as whole squads were immolated. Dozens more fell to the ground, thrashing as they were dissolved by the Rangers' Acid Shots. One arrow clipped Malakai himself, showering green acid all over the left half of the captain's body. Tina grinned in delight when he toppled off the wagon, screaming and clawing at his face as he went down.
"Melee to the sides of the road!" she shouted, breaking into a run now that they were now only fifty feet from the wagon-clogged entrance to the camp. "Sorcerers and Naturalists, fire at the entrance! Bust us in!"
The players in the front of the raid, her included, broke to the left and right of the wide road. This exposed the back line of spell casters but also gave them an open line of attack. Tina had barely gotten out of the way before fireballs the size of cars streaked past her while lightning flashed, striking the heavy wagons the knights had used to block the entrance to their camp.
The resulting explosion was so loud, it shattered the few windows that remained in the buildings surrounding the square. Metal and stone rocketed skyward. So did the knights who'd tried to use their shields or broken wall sections as cover. When the dust cleared, all that remained was an open, slightly molten hole through the center of the barricade, opening a clear path to the yard full of player-filled cage-wagons. What she did not see, however, was the expected army of armored men with shields on the other side.
"Roxxy!" Killbox yelled at her. "Are we charging in or what?"
She waved at him to be quiet and looked down at the tiny shadow under her feet. "SB! I need your eyes on the other side!"
"Got it," came the deadly whisper from her shadow. Then, a second later, his presence returned. "The enemy is grouped up in the tents on the side. They're going to try to flank us."
"Melee back to the middle!" she shouted. "Get through the gap, the
n break left for the tents!"
The melee fighters roared in reply and charged to the front. They were just in time too. As the raid began to pour through the burning hole the spell casters had opened, a rallying cry rose from the camp.
"For the king!"
With that, hundreds of plate-wearing knights leapt out at them from the tents that lined the camp's western edge. More jumped out from the shadow of the forward barricade, lunging at the raiders with their swords. "Death to the players!" they screamed. "Remember the Nightmare!"
"All forward!" Tina yelled, sending two knights flying with a sweep of her shield. "Stomp them down!"
It was a reckless thing to shout. Holding the line would have been a much better tactical decision, but shield wall-style fighting wasn't something the Roughnecks, or players in general, were good at. They were used to moving, chaotic raids and PVP brawls in which all they had to do was play their role. They weren't used to having to pay attention to the larger battle or keep up with multiple enemies who didn't follow the usual monster AI script. Even if they had been better prepared, the Roughnecks simply didn't have enough melee fighters to hold a line against an army this big. A full offensive push was the only thing they were really good at, so wrecking-ball assault was the plan, and Tina intended to hold up her end.
With a roar of fury, Tina ran into the oncoming wall of knights. Just before she crashed into them, she felt a twinge of doubt that maybe she couldn't take twenty guys by herself no matter the gear difference. But there was no backing out now. Her allies had already vanished beneath the wave of red-and-gold tabards and gleaming armor, so Tina gritted her marble teeth and plowed ahead, swinging her god-forged shield ahead of her.
Each swipe broke limbs like kindling. Swords burst into pieces when they landed on her, and men were sent flying. While her shield laid waste to her right, she used her sword to parry the men on her left, killing one by accident when her blade passed through his weapon like it wasn't there. He went down, grabbing her legs and cursing her name. Tina was still shaking him off when two elven knights circled past her shield to stab her in the back. But cries of victory turned into dismay as their swords slid off her glowing armor harmlessly. Grinning, Tina wheeled and slammed her shield into them, sending both men sailing over the barricade to crunch against the building a dozen feet behind it.
For all the knights she sent flying, though, the crowd around her didn't get any thinner. Enemies surrounded her on all sides, forcing her to wade through them as thought she were pushing through an armored marsh. It would have been really dangerous if killing them hadn't been so laughably easy. One swing of her blade was all it took to cut down a human knight straight through his shield, and she booted another so hard, his chest plate crumpled like a soda can. Someone smart threw a chain over her head to try to drag her down, but Tina caught the links in her teeth and bit right through then turned to bash the gaping soldier in the face with the edge of her shield.
Nearby, she could see Killbox towering over the normal-sized humans and elves. He was an island in a sea of red, ringed by shields, but for all their numbers, they couldn't touch him. His giant ax felled them in swaths like grass. A few mundane arrows sailed down from the castle's walls as long shots, but the broad-headed points couldn't even pierce Killbox's skin as he laughed and swung faster, carving a path of destruction toward the center of the camp.
Tina tried to follow, but despite how easy it was to defeat the knights, she was a tank, not a damage dealer. She simply couldn't take out as many people in one strike as Killbox did, and that slowed her down. Scowling, Tina swung her shield around to cover her side and stabbed the man in front of her through the chest, hurling his body into the oncoming crowd. The impact knocked three other knights flat, buying her a moment of space to jump onto a nearby cart to see how things were going.
The barricade was her biggest worry. The plan was for the Rangers, Naturalists, Clerics, and Sorcerers to take it over once the melee had pushed forward. She wanted them to be high up and out of the fight since they were impossible to protect in the bloody mosh pit of a battlefield, but again, players were horrible about falling victim to tunnel vision. Sure enough, the first caster she laid eyes on was a Cleric who hadn't stayed with the group because he was too busy winding up a big healing spell. A pair of towering Royal Knights leaped out from between the nearby tents and tackled him as she watched, shattering his building spell as they all went down in a pile.
Tina swore and leaped off her cart, but she was miles too slow. One of the knights had already pinned the Cleric and ripped his staff away, holding him prone on the ground while the other knight drew back his blade for the kill.
But then, seconds before the sword landed in the Cleric's chest, an arrow came screaming in at high velocity. It punched through the first knight's shoulder, came out the other side of him, and struck the second knight in the head. The force of the attack blew both bodies clear off the Roughneck Cleric, and then a jubatus Ranger leaped down from the barricade's rubble. He yanked the still-shocked Cleric to his feet, shoved the guy's staff back into his hands, and dragged him up to the group of Roughnecks standing on the high ground where Zen and KatanaFatale were shouting orders while firing off their own endless stream of attacks.
It was the most beautiful thing Tina had ever seen. She was just so awestruck by the sight of her officers actually following the plan that a group of knights almost managed to pull her down off the cart. She kicked them away absentmindedly, scanning the barricades to make sure everyone was in position, but for once, things actually seemed to be going right. As planned, the Roughneck casters now held the high ground for the entire southern sweep of the camp. They used the height to their advantage beautifully, raining arrows and spells over the melee's heads into the rear of the camp where the gallows were. Whenever a new group of knights gathered up to push forward and reinforce the men dying to the Roughneck's melee, a fireball or lightning bolt would descend on them, blowing them apart. On the far side of the camp, twelve men did manage to get together and charge a lone Berserker who'd waded in too deep, but just when they were about to swarm him, a bus-sized tornado of flame landed on their heads, melting their armor off them in a glowing river as they went down without even a cry.
Satisfied the battle was well in hand, Tina kicked away the next batch of knights trying to pull her down and starting scanning for the Assassins. They had the most important part of the plan, but as usual, they were almost impossible to spot. She was about to give up when she saw ZeroDarkness appear in front of a cage-wagon full of players.
The jubatus Assassin stepped out of the shadows and sliced open the lock in the same motion. The players inside screamed in fright, but their shouts turned to joy when they realized the black-clad knife-wielding terror was on their side. The Assassin gave the cart a jaunty thumbs-up and pointed at Zen's Rangers on the barricade, then he vanished back into the shadows, leaving the door to the cage wide open as all the players inside rushed to freedom under the cover of Zen's arrows.
Just when Tina was starting to think they were going to pull this off without a hitch, she saw two of her Knights go flying through a tent. They rolled to their feet in unison, but they still looked shaken. Scowling, Tina looked around for what could have thrown such sturdy fighters and spotted a tight formation of Royal Knights emerging from the center of the battle. The group was formed up around the salt-and-pepper-haired Captain Malakai, his acid-burned face twisted in rage as he shouted commands to the rearguard of knights still trying to get past the arrows and fireballs to reinforce the front line.
All that changed when he caught sight of Tina.
"There!" he bellowed, pointing his sword at Tina. "I've got their leader! The rest of you, focus on the healers!"
With that, Malakai raised his shield to charge.
Knowing she'd need better footing than a cart, Tina leapt to the ground with an earth-shaking crunch. She didn't want to fight him near her people, though, so she charged forward
and intercepted him in the open area in front of the cage wagons.
They connected with a crash that made her ears ring. Since they were both knights, they'd both charged in with their shields, but Malakai's guard was just standard metal. Tina's gleaming sun-metal bulwark sundered the captain's shield, leaving him with nothing to break his momentum as he slammed into her.
That should have given her the edge, but Tina had barely managed to get her footing before Malakai's sword swept out in a lightning-fast strike for her neck. But that weapon broke as well when Tina parried, her crimson-glowing blade cutting through the normal steel as if it were made of paper. Malakai's dark eyes burned with rage as he reeled back from the flying metal shrapnel, and Tina started to laugh.
"Kill the leader, huh?" she taunted, flashing a cocky smile at the enraged elf. "Not a bad idea. I'm thinking so goes the head, so goes the snake."
She finished with a hard swing at the empty-handed captain's head. It wasn't a subtle attack, but with his sword and shield broken, there was nothing he could do to stop it. His only choices were lose his head or retreat, which was why Tina was shocked when her swing stopped cold.
She blinked, glancing up in surprise to see her glowing blade clutched in the elf's long-fingered hand. She'd sliced clean through his metal gauntlet, but the pale skin beneath was only nicked. She didn't even manage to see how nicked before Malakai pulled her forward with tremendous strength.
Tina was eight feet tall and half a ton of armored stone. She wasn't used to being knocked around by anything smaller than her, but Malakai's attack took her off her feet. She stumbled forward, catching herself on his chest only to end up staring at his bared teeth.
