by Rachel Aaron
Tina jumped forward. "Wait, wait!" she said, throwing down her sword and shield and then waving her hands to show that they were empty. The action caused the Knight trainer to pause, giving Tina hope that the woman wasn't actually crazy enough to blow up herself and all her students just to spite a few players. But while her display worked on Dame Steelwall, it didn't work on everyone. At the back of the wagon, a vengeful young man with hate burning in his eyes kicked a white-banded barrel off the top of the stack. It bounced down the grassy hill toward the raid, and Tina froze in horror.
Wind-Fire powder was the most volatile magical substance in FFO. It didn't even technically need fire to go off. A good blast of air would do it, which meant if that barrel ruptured, they were all going to be consumed in a fire tornado that would burn open the other barrels behind it. One blast would hurt enough, but there was enough Wind-Fire powder in that wagon to torch the whole city to slag.
Every bounce the barrel made down the hill, Tina swore it was going to spill. Wind-fire powder was heavy, and the barrel seemed to be packed to bursting with the deadly stuff. Thankfully, the soft, grassy hill alone wasn't enough to break it, but the old sword-sharpening rock between her and the bouncing barrel would. One hit--that was all it would take, and everything she'd fought so hard for would go up in flames.
That was more unfairness than Tina could take. Leaving her weapons in the grass, she charged forward, hoping that no one followed her. As the bouncing barrel launched out of a dip in the hill and flew toward the waist-high sharpening stone, Tina dashed forward to put herself between the barrel and the stone. She made it just in time to catch the flying oak container before it crashed, but Tina's body wasn't any softer than the stone she was trying to protect it against. Frantic to avoid causing the disaster she'd been trying to avoid, she twisted and let the barrel's momentum take her to the ground, plunging her body into the soft dirt. She was starting to think she'd done it when her body hit a buried rock she hadn't noticed in the tall grass, and a cracking noise sounded in her ears.
The sound had barely finished before her entire right side erupted in flames. Tina roared in pain, but she didn't let go of the barrel. If she released it, the bindings would snap completely, releasing the burning powder into the wind to spread out of control. If that happened, they were all toast, so Tina gritted her teeth against the pain and shoved her hand into the gap, stopping the powder that was pouring out with her own fingers.
It mostly worked. The leak stopped, but her metal gauntlet started heating up. With great effort, Tina stood the barrel on its end, taking great care to keep her hand wedged into the hole. A few of her raiders ran forward to help, but Tina shoved her free hand at them. "No one move!" she bellowed, sending her reinforcements screeching to a halt, and then she turned on the trainers who were still standing frozen in the hall's doorway.
"You didn't let me finish," she said through clenched teeth. "I said we wanted your base, not you! You got some crazy high opinions of yourselves, thinking we'd want you for anything. Our demands are simple: get out. Just take your little bullshit army and walk away, and we won't touch a hair on your heads."
Her hand was a mass of pain now. The Wind-Fire powder that had gotten out earlier had coated her side, filling every crack in her armor with smoldering fire. The urge to stop, drop, and roll while screaming for heals was nearly overwhelming, but Tina forced herself to stay put, glaring at the NPCs until, at last, Dame Stonewall lowered her head.
"Very well," the Knight said. "We will make for the castle, then."
Protests erupted from the masters behind her, but the Knight trainer waved them down. "We must keep ourselves alive so we can serve the king!" she cried. "These buildings are not special. Let the demons have them. The sacred Bastion already shines in the sky! Surely the king's justice will fall upon them before long."
With that, the trainers started down the hill. The moment the adults started walking, the apprentice army bolted for the opposite bridge, leaving the cart full of Wind-Fire powder where it stood in the doorway. Tina watched them as long as she could, trying to make sure they were all actually going before she gave out. Unfortunately, that turned out to be more than her body could handle. The NPCs had barely made it to the far bridge before she sank back to the grass in agony.
As the building flames started to engulf her she saw people breaking ranks and running her way.
"Water magic! Purge and smother!" NekoBaby yelled as the cat-girl and other Naturalists surrounded Tina.
Tina was starting to lose feeling in her right arm, which was even more alarming than the burning had been. Then, out of nowhere, water poured into her gasping mouth.
When she looked up, she and the barrel were both trapped inside a gigantic sphere of pure-blue water. She couldn't breathe, but that felt like a small price to pay as the flames on her right side began to smother and die. Her armor--super heated by the fire she'd been holding back--turned the water white as it boiled it away, but Neko and the others must have been adding more, because the sphere surrounding Tina only got bigger.
When the burning in her right side was gone and her armor was no longer instantly boiling everything around it, Tina decided it was time to leave. Since her right arm didn't work anymore, she turned her shoulder to pull her fingers out of the barrel, abandoning it in the water as she slogged away to look for an exit. The magical bubble of water should have been easy to leave, but its swirling eddies and churning bubbles messed with her sense of direction. Being a rock, she didn't float, so at least she knew which way was down, but the orb's shimmering outer surface distorted the sunlight, filling the water with dancing glimmers that made it impossible to tell which direction was out.
After about a minute of confusion, Tina realized that she was being stupid. It was a sphere. Any direction would do.
Still holding her breath, Tina plowed forward. Pushing through the water was hard, but she wasn't actually in a hurry. She'd been under for a good two minutes now, but her lungs weren't even pained, making her realize just how long stonekin could hold their breath. Filing that tidbit away for later, Tina put her head down and focused on plowing through the water, forcing her giant body against the magical currents until she finally broke the surface, walking out of what had to be a twenty-foot-wide sphere of floating, undulating blue water.
NekoBaby rushed her at once and started throwing glowing green magic all over her. Flowers bloomed at Tina's feet as the euphoric feeling of the healing washed away her pain and trauma. When the life-magic high faded, she flexed her right arm to make sure it still worked, sighing in relief when her fingers wiggled as usual.
"Good job, Neko. Thanks for the save."
"No problemo, boss," the healer said with a salute, then she turned back to the giant drop of water they'd made on the riverbank. "So, um... what do we do with the barrel?"
***
"Home sweet home," Tina said thirty minutes later.
As promised, all the trainers and their apprentices had evacuated the compound. The giant drop of water was gone, and the leaking barrel of Wind-Fire powder was now sitting in the grass, surrounded by a water-magic seal to keep it contained. The rest of the barrels had been less magically--but no less securely--taken care of with rope and canvas, tied down to the wagon, and wheeled back inside the Trainers' Hall, which was now theirs.
Tina and her raids now completely controlled the stone hall and the island it sat on. After being on the run all day, it didn't feel real that they could finally stop. But with guards at all the bridges and surrounded by a river too wide to easily shoot over, they were as close to safe as it was possible to be in Bastion. The squat hall and surrounding stone sheds weren't fancy or elegant, but they were sturdy, easy to protect, and packed full of forges and looms and stocked to the ceiling with piles of vendor trade-goods, which made them better than any castle, in Tina's estimation. She wasn't even sure what they were going to do with it all yet.
With that, Tina's eyes moved to the mob sp
illing all over the green hill. The sight of over three hundred players milling around in a rainbow of glowing weapons and armor was more intimidating than she'd expected, because now that she'd gotten them here, she had no idea what came next. Other than the Roughnecks, no one had food other than what was in their pockets. She didn't know everyone's levels or professions, and the Red Sands were the only other well-armed group. How the hell was she going to equip and protect them? More importantly, how was she ever going to retake the city? She'd called them an army all day, but the crowd in front of her looked more like a mob. What was she going to do with this?
She was being crushed under the weight of that question when she suddenly remembered Killbox's plan for taking out Malakai's camp. His suggestion to kill the guards, free the prisoners, arm them with the enemy's weapons, feed them with the enemy's food, burn fifteen tents, and so forth hadn't actually worked in practice, but it had been strangely on the money-- because it was a format all of them had instantly understood. She had no more experience running an army than any of the people out there had being in one, but they all knew how to play FFO.
Seen from that angle, Bastion wasn't any different from any other gone-to-hell zone they'd quested through a hundred times back when this was a game. Tina already knew the recipe for taming places like this. Everyone here did, which was why the moment the idea entered her head, Tina jumped on it.
"Listen up, everyone!" she bellowed, silencing the whispering crowd as all the eyes snapped to her. "This place belongs to us now, so we're not calling it the Trainers' Hall anymore. I hereby officially rename this island as Camp Comeback, and it's going to be our official quest hub for Bastion city!"
A confused murmur went up at that, but Tina wasn't finished.
"Since this base was taken by our combined efforts, everything in these buildings--all the crafting goods and food and bandages and everything else--belongs to the Roughnecks, Red Sands, and East Bastion Trade Company guilds!"
That caused a lot of angry shouting among the lowbies, but she was having none of it. "You don't like it?" she bellowed at the crowd. "Too bad! You want our protection, that's the price, but that doesn't mean you can't get yours. There will be quests! And work! There's plenty here for everyone of all levels to do, and I guarantee that you'll be paid and fed for your efforts."
"What kind of quests?" someone yelled from the crowd.
"You'll see," Tina said coyly, mostly because she hadn't thought them through yet. "But what's most important is that, starting here, we're going to carve out a chunk of this world for us. There are still a lot of players trapped in the city. We going to save them! There're still a lot of asshole Royal Knights out there killing people. We're going to stop them! There's a lot of food and supplies hiding out there in the city. We're going to find it! It's a big list, but if I've learned anything from years of FFO, it's that there's nothing more persistent, more destructive, and more effective than a bunch of players all grinding quests together!"
This earned her many proud laughs from the crowd, and Tina raised her fists high. "We're going to be a scourge on this goddamn city, but the good kind. We're gonna shut down the fighting and the abuse. We're going to find food and water for everyone. We're going to put this whole damn city on our terms. Are you with me?"
The crowd responded in an ecstatic roar as hundreds of players shouted back their approval. Tina swayed with the heady rush of rallying such a large crowd. She still wasn't used to being in front of so many people, let alone being able to move them. As the applause rained down on her, she thought she'd float right out of her armor. When it finally died out, Tina took a shaky breath and waved CincoDeMurder and Assets over.
"We need to get organized fast," she said, keeping her voice down so the energized crowd wouldn't know she hadn't actually put anything together yet.
Assets polished his ruby sunglasses. "What do you have in mind?"
"I was thinking we'd play to our strengths," Tina replied, turning to Cinco. "Our first and most dangerous issue comes from ourselves. Internal threats are all player versus player, so that makes Cinco and the Red Sands perfect cops. Set up guards and patrols inside these buildings and halls. No one but you is allowed to PVP. That means no killing but also no abuse, stealing, griefing, et cetera. If someone starts shit or tries to take what isn't theirs, shut them down."
Cinco gave her a red-armored thumbs-up. "Can do."
"Second, Assets."
The elf looked up with a sharp-eyed smile. "Yes?"
"This place is loaded with loot," Tina said, pointing at the former crafting hall full of crates, barrels, and stacks of metal that had all been just art assets in the game. Now, though, all of that stuff was real, and it was theirs for the taking. "You're used to managing lots of goods. Go seize all those supplies and make us an inventory. From here out, you're in charge of logistics. We'll divide up the valuables later when we actually know what we have, but we need to get everything on lockdown ASAP. Got me?"
The gold-haired elf's eyes twinkled with delight. "I'll have a manifest ready for you before nightfall."
"What about the Roughnecks?" CincoDeMurder asked.
Tina pointed back toward the city. Thanks to the river and all the open space it provided, they had a clear view north straight up the city to the royal castle, where the Bastion still gleamed like a spotlight through the haze of the smoke.
"Our external threats are all NPCs," she said. "So the Roughnecks are going to be outer security. I'll establish patrols and scouts so that nothing from the city surprises us. We'll be the first to intercept any outside attack. Also, since I've got the majority of the geared healers and my Ranger Officer is a legit nurse, my guild will handle medical as well."
"And the quests?" Assets asked.
Tina shrugged. "I'm still working out the specifics, but for now we'll just make 'em up as people ask. Just make sure to keep the exchange rate quest-like. You know, pay someone one loaf of bread to go find fifteen loaves of bread, that kind of thing. We're all so used to it that hopefully no one will notice they're being ripped off until we've gathered enough supplies to pay them better."
"And they called me mercenary," Assets said with an evil chuckle. "That is devilishly one-sided. I couldn't love it more."
Tina grinned back. "Desperate times, desperate measures. We've gotta turn this little something of ours into a big something before we're starved out or overrun. Clock's ticking, so let's get moving."
The other leaders nodded and broke apart before walking back to their guilds to explain the new way of things to their seconds. For Tina, though, she was left alone. Despite it being nearly sundown, SB still hadn't shown up. She didn't know if that was because he was being cautious or because he was in trouble, but there was nothing she could do. Already, Roughnecks were coming up to her for patrol orders, peppering her with so many questions, she didn't even have time to look at the burning city as the sun sank below the western walls.
Chapter 9
Haurto
SilentBlayde woke up in a barrel.
It was a new experience, that was for certain. With his numb legs crammed up against his chest, it was also a very unpleasant one. Moving as best he could, he started rocking in hopes of tipping the container over so he could get out, grateful that James had at least stashed him out of sight after...
He stopped rocking, head flopping down to rest his forehead against his knees. The smell of dried blood filled his oaken hiding hole with a metallic reminder of what he'd done. What he'd been.
SB squeezed his eyes tight as a hot wave of shame overwhelmed him. He'd nursed his failures and anger all through the city in pursuit of James. Then, when he'd caught up at last, he'd gone nuts. He'd acted like an animal, stabbing James not just once but dozens of times. He particularly remembered driving the small dagger into his friend's kneecap, a pain he was sure James wouldn't forget any time soon.
Covering his face with his hands, SilentBlayde replayed the entire fight in his head, hopin
g that maybe he hadn't actually been as detestable as he remembered. No luck. All he could see was James trying to save lives while he stepped out of the shadows to take them. He'd hunted them like a beast, lashing out at anyone who dared to anger him.
This apple didn't fall far from the tree, did it?
At least he'd been winning until that damn NPC of James's had tackled him. As he'd learned during the fight on the frozen hill in the Deadlands, he only had so much speed before his body gave out, and he'd foolishly used up most of it killing the knights. He'd been so caught up in ending things quickly so that he could get James back to Tina, he'd played his cards too early, leaving him unable to exploit the split-second pause before Ar'Bati had clinched him. He'd still gotten a good stab in, but Angry Cat had been more resilient than he'd given him credit for, and the distraction had allowed James to get a hold.
It was humiliating to remember. SB was faster, stronger, and better geared than James had ever been, but Tina's brother had shown him how little that mattered now that this was no longer a game. Every time he'd twisted out of one lock, James was already putting him into the next, always forcing him into positions in which SB's superior strength and gear were useless. And when he'd finally run out of cooldowns, speed, and breath, James's legs had been around his neck.
That was when things had gotten really bad. SilentBlayde hadn't felt that helpless since that horrible night at the Sakura Festival when he was eight. The connection to the memory had driven him into a wild panic, sending his hands to the knives he hadn't even realized came out of his set until he'd pulled one. He'd completely lost control, stabbing James over and over like a maniac, but the worst was the look on his friend's face right before James had torn out his artery.
With our fangs in the enemy.
"We are enemies now, aren't we, James?" SB asked his bloodstained knees. He had to apologize for this, but what could he say that James would believe? He couldn't count how many times he'd had to make amends to Tina's brother for something he'd done, but this was the worst by far. Just thinking about how he'd acted made him want to stay in the barrel forever, because James was right. He never did learn, did he?
