by Rachel Aaron
Tina did. Back in the game, the schtumples who ran the bank had been guarded by three-skull, level-eighty-one golems loaded with area-of-effect weapons and anti-swarm abilities. They were mostly there for color since no one was stupid enough to start shit in the bank, but on the rare occasion when a player got too exuberant spamming spells and clipped one, the golems would aggro and turn that player into paste in under three seconds flat. They were supposed to be some of the hardest-hitting NPCs in the game, not that Tina had ever been crazy enough to try one out for herself, but she'd never heard of them leaving the bank before. Apparently, that was off now. There were a full dozen standing guard in front of the bank's door, and that was a serious problem.
"Oh, it gets worse," Assets said when he saw the horror on her face. "You remember the five-skull schtumple racial leader, the Grand Schtump? Well, his roundness arrived on day zero to throw all of us players out on the street and lock the bank down tight. In addition to the golems you see there, there's a second army of level eighty-one, two-skull golems inside along with the legendary Black Golds Legion, the Grand Schtump's personal bodyguards." He shook his head. "Not even the Buffoon King himself could force his way in now, I'm afraid."
"Damn," Tina said. She was even less familiar with the schtumple part of FFO's lore than she was with the rest of it, but it all sounded bad. If SB had been here, he could have filled her in on all the details Assets was undoubtedly leaving out, but it sounded like the bank was a no go, which meant they were screwed. She'd been counting on those vaults to reload everyone's supplies and keep the raid functional. Without them, they'd be out of food by tonight, and they'd have nowhere safe to sleep.
She wasn't the only one upset by this, either. The whole raid was pissed off, yelling at Assets's players as though this were their fault.
"But that's our stuff! They can't lock up our stuff!"
"My mounts! My pets! Do you know how long I worked to collect them?"
"We're gonna have to march and fight to the death again, aren't we?"
"I want to go home!"
"Can we leave? Bastion is too hard! Let's go conquer a low-level zone!"
"Quiet down!" Tina shouted, banging her shield until everyone shut up. "We're still in a standoff here!"
"I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings," Assets said, motioning for his people to lower their weapons. "But while your plans appear to be in ruins, Roxxy of the Roughnecks, I am still most curious as to what you will do now. Depending on the answer, we may deign to join you."
He looked at her, then, and so did his guild. Everyone did. As if by some silent agreement, all three hundred players crowding into the square turned in unison to stare at Tina, hungrily, tiredly, their armor bashed and their shoulders slumped. Even CincoDeMurder and his Red Sands were looking to her, waiting for her to announce what they were going to do now.
Part of her, the Tina part, didn't understand why people did this. Didn't they know that she was just as lost as they were? That she was only ever one step ahead of complete failure? The Roughnecks were still gun-shy of her, cringing whenever she yelled, yet they too looked at no one else when it came time to pick the direction. Just her. Always her.
But while the Tina part felt overwhelmed by that, the Roxxy part of her knew what to do. Roxxy the guild leader knew that they needed supplies and shelter, and if they couldn't get it from the castle or the bank, they'd just go somewhere else. The only question was where, but the more she thought about that, the more she realized there was only one answer left.
"Okay," she announced, standing taller to make sure everyone could see when she pointed to the south. "The bank's a wash. We'll figure out how to get our stuff later, but right now, we're changing course for the Trainers' Hall!"
"You mean the Isle of Newbs?" Cinco shouted back. "Why?"
Assets, however, burst into delighted laughter. "A splendid idea!" he said, clapping his manicured hands together. "We shall join you if you'll have us."
"Happy to," Tina said, hopping down off the fallen statue of the king to start them marching down the road toward the south. "Everyone, follow me."
Everyone did. There was some muttering, especially from Cinco's group, but in the end, every single player fell in behind her, marching down the road toward the river and the city's southern wall.
***
"Assets gets it, but I don't," CincoDeMurder said, running to catch up with her at the front of the raid after they'd been walking for a good five minutes. "Why the Trainers' Hall, Roxxy? It's supposed to be for new players to learn professions, but it's still a giant compound full of high-level NPCs and class trainers. It's gonna be a stiff fight if they're still there. Not that I'm afraid of them or anything," he added with a flex of his bulky shoulders. "But why there?"
Tina glanced at him. "What's your crafting profession, Cinco?"
"Blacksmith."
"Same here," she said. "Did you grind it up to max level at the city's main forge?"
Cinco scoffed. "Fuck, no. I leveled it at the Trainers' Hall because it has everything you need to make stuff in one--" Cinco's blue eyes suddenly lit up. "Oh!"
"Now you get it," Tina said with a grin. "The Trainers' Hall is the only place in the city that has facilities for every crafting profession. They've got forges, ovens, alchemy tables, supply vendors: everything we need to outfit an army. It's also the only free-standing structure left in the city that's big enough to house us all, and it's isolated on its own island in the middle of the Herald's River. The walls might not be as thick as the bank's, but it's still everything we need in a base."
Cinco gave her an impressed look. "I like it," he said. "But now we've three guilds together, what do you think about just bailing from Bastion?"
Tina glanced over her shoulder at the royal castle, which was now little more than a glint of gold high on the hills behind them through the smoke. "Afraid of what's coming after us?"
"Hell no," the Red Sands leader said stubbornly. "But this place is wrecked. I'm not afraid of the knights or the king. I just don't see the point of fighting to the death over somewhere that's still on fire. Bastion was our only option when we were all alone, but we've got a legit army now. We could go somewhere else. Someone mentioned conquering a zone, which isn't actually a bad idea. All the places around Bastion are pretty low-level. If we wanted to, we could go out to one of the smaller cities, take it over, and make all those NPCs work for us."
He finished with a grin, but Tina shook her head, copper dreadlocks swaying. "Nah, I don't like it. I don't want to rule some medieval village, and what we need is here in Bastion." She banged a gauntlet on her chest piece, which was still dented from where she'd crushed Malakai, and from Grel's beating the day before that. "I need sun metal and earth-imbued steel to fix my gear. My armor's the best in the world, but even it can't take unlimited punishment. Another boss fight, and it'll probably fall right off me. The rest of the Roughnecks have similar needs for their weapons and armor. We've been riding high because we're better geared than everyone else, but if we lose our stuff, our ability to kick ass will go down enormously."
"Yeah, good point," the Berserker said, rubbing his own armor, which was looking pretty banged up between the skulls. "If we don't keep our gear advantage, the knights will win on numbers alone."
"Exactly," Tina said. "But even more importantly, I don't want to stay here. Even if we did take over somewhere where we could live like lords, we'd still be trapped in this stupid world. But the king of Bastion has a dimensional adviser who's an expert in all things portals. He might know why we all got stuck here in the first place, and even better, he might know how to send us back."
"That would be nice," Cinco said, mopping the sweat from his brow. "I like my new body a lot, but fuck do I miss air conditioning." He sighed. "Guess we gotta stay and fight, don't we?"
Tina nodded. "This is our best chance. If we run, the king will restore order to the city, beef up his army, and probably come after us cause we're a giant threat. If we stay,
though, we keep the city under siege and the king under pressure. If we can regroup, resupply, and gather more people, we might even be able to beat him and take the castle. Then he'd have to help us."
"He'll probably want us to go home even more than we do at that point," Cinco agreed. "But we'd definitely need a boot on his neck, 'cause I ain't begging. Not after the shit he and his knights have done."
"Damn straight," Tina agreed, cracking her knuckles. "Payback is definitely overdue, and we still don't know how many players he's got captured in the castle. We're the strongest around. That makes us their only hope."
Cinco whistled. "Damn, girl, you think big. And here I was just trying to survive." He gave her an appreciative look. "I can see why you're still the leader of the Roughnecks. You're tough and smart."
Tina stumbled at the unexpected praise. "Thanks?"
"So do you still want to go by Roxxy?" he asked, walking a little closer. "It's a pretty name, but I'm guessing it's not your real one. What are you actually called?"
Tina was getting less comfortable with this conversation by the second. But as awkward as Cinco's blatant flirting was, it was still nice to have a fellow guild leader to chat with, and it wasn't like her real name was a secret. "It's Tina," she told him with a shrug. "I don't really care which people use, to be honest." She glanced at him. "What about you? Do you want me to keep calling you CincoDeMurder?"
Cinco threw his head back with a laugh. "Of course! My name is awesome. And who ever heard of the great and terrible leader of the Red Sands, Thomas the Berserker?" He shuddered. "I have my reputation to think of."
Tina couldn't help but laugh at that. "Well, I'm counting on you to live up to that rep when fighting time comes, 'cause I've got a feeling we're in for it."
Her shoulder was suddenly heavy as Cinco clapped a hand on it. "Babe, you ain't seen nothing yet."
Before she could decide on how to react, he let her go and walked off whistling. Tina was staring at his back in confusion when a brilliant light flashed behind her.
It looked like a lightning bolt, but the evening sky was cloudless above the haze of smoke. Also, the light was the wrong color. Lightning, at least the sort she knew, was usually bluish white, but this flash had been pure gold, like the sun glinting off a mirror.
Bracing for horrors, Tina whirled around, but the city looked mostly the same. The only difference was that the golden light that always shone from the Bastion's tower top of the castle was now way brighter. Even at this distance, the glare was almost too much to look at. And it was growing, the golden shimmer expanding over their heads as she watched to cover the entire city in a glowing golden dome.
"What. The. Fuck," Tina said, craning back her neck to follow the golden light as it passed over their heads. Then she turned to her Roughnecks. "Anders! Lore me!"
The fish-man Cleric pushed his way forward. "It's the Resplendent Aegis of the Bastion!" he cried, gills wiggling excitedly. "The king's activated the ancient artifact!"
That didn't sound good. "What does it do?"
"All kinds of neat stuff," Anders said, lifting his webbed fingers to tick off the benefits. "It stops the undead, blocks necromancy, and it seals off the--"
Without warning, ZeroDarkness stumbled into view right in front of them, falling out of the shadow beneath a covered porch as though he'd been kicked out.
"--Lightless Realm," Anders finished, looking around as all the other Assassins in the raid popped into view. "Which means no stealth."
Tina's stomach shrank into a ball. She looked at Zero, who was gasping as if he'd just been dunked in ice water, and then back at the city. The burning, dangerous city, where SB was still out alone.
Her mouth opened to call for a rescue team before she knew what she was doing, but she closed it just as fast. Even if she could put together a crack force, she had no idea where SilentBlayde was. She'd sent him off to look for James back at the Royal Mile, which meant he could be anywhere. If she sent a team after him, they'd have to go back into the area where the knights were patrolling, which meant she might just be sending more people to their deaths. She couldn't justify that, especially not when they were so close to safety. She could already smell the river, which meant the Trainers' Hall should be just around the corner.
"Roxxy?" Anders said, clutching his staff nervously. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," she lied, turning her back on the city. "Keep moving."
She'd send people out later, she promised herself, after they were secure. SB was the quickest person on his feet she knew. He was clever, deadly, and brilliant under pressure, and he knew this world better than any of them. He was also an elf, which meant he didn't stand out like she did. If anyone had a chance of surviving in Bastion alone, it was him. Hell, he was probably looking for her at the bank right now. He'd only need one glimpse to understand the situation and one more to spot their trail. It wasn't hard to follow an army, after all. He'd probably be here any minute with James in tow, which meant it was up to Tina to make sure they had somewhere safe to come back to.
With that, she picked up the pace, marching the raid down to the river bank and across the fishing docks toward the wide stone bridge that led to the Trainers' Hall.
It had been a while since Tina had been down here to grind her professions. Laying eyes on the building again, Tina liked it even more than she remembered. Bastion's verdant mountains ran diagonally from southwest to northeast. Here, in the southwesternmost corner of the city, the steep foothills opened up to form a valley where the Heraldsford River emerged from the mountains, pouring into the city and down a series of canals before spreading out into a wide, branching waterway that completely surrounded a hill at its center, forming a large island where the Trainers' Hall rose like a citadel.
As the name suggested, the main building was a large hall made of rough stone blocks sitting at the very top of the hill. It was quite large because it had to hold stalls for all the beginning-armor vendors as well as trainers for all of FFO's six classes, but it still wasn't big enough. Around the stone building, smaller structures had been constructed for all of FFO's crafting professions, forming a hub of trainers and supplies. Bridges connected the island back to the city on three sides, but otherwise it was completely cut off by the river, which ran down from the mountains. Since the water entered the city on the western side, it hadn't yet been polluted by the ash from the fires, leaving it clear, swift, and deep, acting as both a water source and a protective moat. It was truly a perfect little fortress, and Tina was determined to make it theirs.
"Roughnecks on me," she called, stepping onto the stone bridge that led across the water.
Her raid obeyed at once, hurrying into what was now their standard formation--tanks up front, melee on the edges, healers and casters in the middle. A few moments later, Cinco and his people stepped up to join the formation as well. Swelling with pride at how fast everyone had come together, Tina drew her sword and marched them forward. She'd only made it half-way across the bridge when the heavy wooden doors of the main Trainers' Hall flew open, and a motley army poured out.
Even by her new low standards, it was a sad showing. Despite their scavenged helmets and crossbows, it was immediately obvious that most of the "soldiers" were kids. They ranged from lanky eight-year-olds to burlier teenagers, which matched what Tina remembered of the apprentices that were always running around the crafting areas. In the whole group, there were only six adults, and only one of them was actually armed. It was the Knight trainer, a statuesque human woman wearing the thickest plate armor Tina had ever seen who stepped forward to meet the raid as they left the bridge and started up the grassy hill.
"I am Dame Fiona Steelwall!" she yelled, striking a defensive stance in the doorway as Tina marched forward. "Master of the Knightly Arts! Who are you to so brazenly approach the Island of Dawn's Hope?"
Tina and CincoDeMurder stepped forward. A few seconds later, Assets ran up from the rear of the raid to join them, striking a pose t
hat would have been impressive if he hadn't looked so threadbare. There was a pause while the three of them exchanged glances, and then, since no one else was doing it, Tina stepped forward.
"We do," she announced loudly, keeping her sword out but down. "We are the leaders of this army, and we have chosen the Trainers' Hall as our new base."
"We will not suffer your abuse willingly," Fiona said, keeping her own weapon up. "Know that I was level eighty-one and three-skull during the Nightmare. I have every knightly skill in your game and many more you have never seen. The other five masters arrayed behind me are no less powerful. You face obliteration if you proceed!"
That was too much for Tina to take with a straight face. "Ha!" she barked, pointing her sword at the shaking wall of children. "Is that why you gave all your apprentices crossbows? You must be really confident in your ability to wreck us."
The Knight trainer waved a dismissive hand. "We work together, live together, and fight together. That is the bond of master and apprentice."
"Lady," Tina said, "it's gonna be 'die together' if you don't stand down. I've three full raids of players here. That's two more than I need to take this place. You don't have a chance."
"Is that so, player?" the Knight spat, raising her hand. "You leave us no choice. Present barrels!"
At her cry, the line of apprentices shifted, and a squad of teens wearing blacksmiths' aprons rolled out a wagon full of barrels banded in white-painted iron. Tina recognized the color coding at once. So did the other players, causing the whole raid to jump backward.
"Wind-fire powder?" Tina cried, glaring at the Knight NPC. "What the hell are you? Suicidal? You light even one of those and we're all gonna die in a firestorm! I thought you wanted to live!"
"We will not surrender to be enslaved and defiled by you monsters," replied Dame Steelwall, sheathing her sword to accept a burning brand from the girl behind her. "We are prepared to die as heroes here if it means taking you filth down with us!" She reached the smoking, tar-covered brand back toward the barrels as she finished.
