by Rachel Aaron
It was a desperate hope and a foolish one. As Earthen Fortitude faded and her flexibility returned, Tina still couldn't see any light through the sea of mouths and hands surrounding her, but the pain rocketed up as the pressure of all those bodies started to dent her armor. With no more Steady Ground to anchor her, the endless grasping hands pulled her off her feet, moving her farther into the monster's endless maw. As the pain mounted and the blackness grew darker, Tina realized with a start that this actually might be it. She couldn't even move her sword to try to cut her way free as the thousands of hands locked her down, locking her in place as the monster started to pull her body apart.
Then just when she was about to go to pieces, an arc of golden light flashed in the bloody dark above her face, carving off the top of the pile of zombies trying to eat her. A massive armored hand appeared next, reaching through the freshly cut chasm of clean-severed body parts to grab her by her breastplate collar, then an unstoppable strength ripped her up and out, pulling her free from Corpse Legion's maw to set her down at King Gregory's feet.
"Are you all right, General Roxxy?" the king asked, his sword flashing as bright as the morning sun as he slashed away the tendrils of arms and legs Corpse Legion was still sending after its prey.
"I'm--" Tina stopped, clenching her fists to hide her shaking. "Thanks for the save," she said when she could speak again. "I didn't think we'd see you until we got to the castle."
"I cannot lead from the rear anymore," the king replied, holding the pile of corpses--which was now only a quarter of its original size--back with the Dawnblade while the rest of the Roughnecks hacked it to bits. "And I didn't send you out here to die."
That was a welcome surprise. "Glad to hear it," Tina said, sighing in relief as a heal landed on top of her. "Where's James?"
The king turned and pointed back toward Camp Comeback. "Your brother said he was still 'too short for raid bosses,' so he stayed behind to make sure all the players got out, and to gather some kind of weapon. I'm not entirely sure what, but he asked me to go to the front and help you."
Tina snorted. "That sounds like James."
"He is most brave," the king agreed. "I am glad he stayed to see to the rear, because we have our hands full on all fronts." He pointed north, and Tina turned to see what was left of Bastion's army joining the Trade Company shield wall for a push. Between the two of them, they'd made it a good distance toward the castle, but the forward momentum seemed to be stalled.
"If we can just get to the castle, we can secure this road and use it as a pipeline to move everyone inside," the king went on. "The Diplomatic Quarter is right next to the castle, so it should already be evacuating. Once the players from your island are safely within the walls, all the noncombatants left in the city should be accounted for. After that, we can collapse this front and activate the Bastion. If it only has to cover the castle, then I think it will work."
"Sounds like a plan," Tina said, glancing at her raid, which had just finished hacking what was left of Corpse Legion to pieces and was now turning to Dreadpool, which Frank was still keeping cornered in the courtyard of what had once been a very fancy inn. "We'll keep doing our thing here. You go push that front."
"Are you certain?" Gregory asked. "You still have one more monster to defeat."
Tina shook her head stubbornly. "You paid for raiders. You're going to get raiders. Leave the bosses to us. You just focus on pushing to the castle. The sooner we get everyone inside, the sooner we can end this and write off our debt."
"Then I will go," the king said, smiling at her. "Good luck, Roxxy, and may the Sun be with you."
"May the Force be with you too," Tina said, flicking the blood off her armor.
The king turned and jogged back to his draft horse, which his veteran knights were holding for him a good distance away. "To the gates!" he ordered, sweeping his golden Dawnblade toward the castle. "For the Sun! For Bastion!"
The ground trembled as a thousand armored knights on a thousand armored horses yelled in reply and charged up the hill. The Trade Company's shield line scattered out of their way as the mass of riders trampled the squishy zombies and shattered fragile skeletons on their way to the castle gates. The level-eighty-knights' lances went through low-level undead like they were tissue, and King Gregory's Dawnblade turned a dozen zombies to ash with every stroke.
For a soaring moment, it looked as if the king's charge was going to make it the whole way in one go, but then the army of former knights crashed to a halt as they ran into the glut of undead besieging the castle's gates. Horses reared, and men shouted, hacking and slashing at the undead. Some were pulled screaming from their mounts by the ravenous hordes. Others were taken down by the enemy's archers. King Gregory himself took out an undead catapult, picking up the whole siege engine, wagon and all, and tossing it into the main body of the undead's army, sending zombies flying.
"Nice!" Killbox said, his face splitting into a grin. "Now that's what a raid boss of your own is for!"
"Hey, guys?" Frank shouted, his panic evident in his voice. "The big pool guy is still up!"
"Right," Tina said, dragging her eyes off the desperate fight at the gates and back to their own battle. "Back to work, everyone!"
Frank had been tanking Dreadpool the whole time she'd been dealing with Corpse Legion, and while he'd done a pretty good job for a guy who'd never tanked until last week, he was looking pretty rough. Freshly healed up from her near swallowing, Tina lifted her shield and charged the lumbering giant made of stitched bodies, taking its attention from Frank with one good shield bash to the seams that held its leg together. The giant roared and dissolved again almost instantly, forcing them all to scramble back to avoid its deadly well of blood.
Dreadpool lived up to its name three more times before they managed to take it down. The Roughnecks erupted into a cheer of victory when the stitched corpse giant finally fell over into a perfectly normal pool of blood. Tina let the celebration go on for a minute before yelling at everyone to shut up and get their mana back. While the casters ate and drank, she looked down the road to see how the king's battle was doing.
"Mixed" seemed to be the answer. The king and his men had cleared the force at the gates, but they were now pinned in by countless smaller bosses. There were death-infused elementals, corrupted walking trees, and even a giant rotting panther, and that was just what Tina could see from where she was standing. There were more waiting down the castle walls, filling the air with magics and special attacks as they pounded the king's army against his own castle walls.
"Holy crap!" Killbox said, coming up beside her. "How many are there?"
"The game has eight expansions, plus vanilla," replied Richard between bites of the choux bun he was eating as fast as possible. "Each expansion had an average of twelve dungeons, nearly all of which involved the undead in some form or fashion since the Once King was FFO's major plot enemy even before he was introduced as a killable raid boss. Dungeons generally contain between five and eight bosses, so do the math, and that's over three hundred potential enemies with a three-skull rating or higher. And that's not even counting all the special-world and quest-event bosses. Of course, the majority of those should be under level eighty, but I don't think that's going to help much given the sheer numbers we're facing."
"It's FUBAR is what it is," NekoBaby said around the apple fritter she'd shoved into her mouth. "This is worse than those dungeon speed-run challenges, and they don't even drop any loot!" She kicked the hacked corpse of Dreadpool. "Stingy bastard!"
"No complaining," Tina warned. "You all voted for this, so if you're mana'ed up enough to yack, let's fucking fight."
Neko cringed at her tone, but Tina didn't care. She was already charging down the Royal Mile toward the rear of the army surrounding the king's forces. Carving her way through lesser zombies, she picked the first actual boss she laid eyes on--a giant snake wreathed in ghostfire that she vaguely remembered from one of the desert temples. She couldn't remem
ber exactly what it did, but she knew it was only a level forty, so she didn't stop to find out. She just swung her sword and chopped off its tail then leaped back into the air as the boss's blood became lines of spinning flame as they hit the ground.
The Roughnecks had to jump rope as they hacked the creature apart. More blood meant more spinning blades, turning jump rope into double Dutch. But as complicated as the mechanics turned out to be, forty levels was still too much of a difference, and the boss went down a minute later.
The flame spinners were still sputtering out when a lightning-infused undead boar turned and charged them. Tina and Frank caught one tusk each, then together, they hurled the entire animal into a boss made of swamp water and rotten plants. Steam and squealing erupted as the two collided, their magics misfiring as the Roughnecks ripped them apart.
After that, things quickly dissolved into chaos. A griffin boss covered in poison tried to attack from above, only to go down with ten of Zen's arrows in its wings. The giant slime that tried to suck them into its toxic sludge was turned into a cloud of noxious fumes by the Sorcerers' fireballs. The giant shadow panther split into seven smaller panthers that all went for healers, but the two Assassins took them all down first, killing each cat in one hit before the casters even realized they were under attack.
Since they were almost all under-leveled and made for three- to five-man groups, no one boss was particularly hard. The trouble came from the fact that it was never just one boss. They came in waves of fives and tens with no break in between. Each one had its own special considerations and mechanics. Some had attacks that could instantly kill even a level-eighty player if they didn't do things just right. Others were invulnerable to damage until certain conditions had been met.
It was the same old jump-through-the-hoops ridiculousness that had made dungeon fights so fun back when FFO had been a game. It was a lot less fun now that it was actually deadly and all happening at once, but this was the stuff that had gotten Tina hooked on FFO and raiding to begin with. She'd tanked all of this before, and she knew--or at least very quickly remembered--every single enemy they faced, and she kept that knowledge flowing to her raid.
"It's HarveyDangerGnoll! Grab blue orbs and avoid red ones! Here comes the Halloween boss! Catch his head when he throws it! It's the Ghostfire Ghost! It has to eat a priest before we can kill it! Anders, get in its belly!"
They danced through purple laser beams, slid on sheets of ice, and held their breaths through clouds of poison. Tina was burned by acid, doused in magical napalm, and at one point, eaten by a giant undead clam. Twice, she had to crack Frank out of a crystal iron maiden, and she nearly bit it herself when she slipped in the remains of a death-water slime and fell straight into the path of a massive zombie crocodile. It was only SilentBlayde's miraculous appearance that saved her arm from being bitten off. He stabbed out both of the boss's eyes in a single attack, killing the boss before its jaw could finish closing. As Tina pried herself free, he cast her a quick, sad glance before vanishing back into the Lightless Realm.
On and on it went. While the Roughnecks battled bosses, Cinco and the other Red Sands members shielded them from being flanked by the still-rising hordes of lesser undead, while Assets and his newly armored and mounted Trade Company kept the masses off the refugees and lowbies, who were still waiting to get into the castle. On the other side of the boss army, the king and his men were fighting a brutal battle to hold the castle's front gate.
Stuck in the middle of it, Tina wasn't even aware of the passing of time. Her whole world had shrunk to enemies and mechanics: hitting this not that, don't stand in fire, do stand in the blue stuff, smash the crystals, pick up the orbs, on and on forever. Then with almost jarring suddenness, she found herself facing a wall of former knights. Behind them, King Gregory was panting on his horse, looking almost as confused as she was. They were so caught up in the battle lust, it took both of them several seconds to realize what the fact that they were seeing each other--and not an endless wall of bosses--meant.
"Did..." She stopped to swallow against her dry throat. "Is it done? Did we kill them?"
"I think we did," the king replied, looking around.
They all looked around in awe, but sure enough, while the waves of zombies Cinco and Assets's groups were holding back were still going strong, the boss-filled square in front of the castle was now empty.
"Holy crap," NekoBaby said, her eyes huge. "We just killed, like, every boss in the game! There has to be an achievement for that!"
"The achievement is we get to stop," ZeroDarkness said, dropping his daggers as he flopped on the ground in exhaustion.
The rest of the raiders followed suit, falling to the ground or leaning on their weapons. The casters didn't even eat. They were simply too tired, flopping on their backs on the bloody stone. Tina wanted desperately to follow suit. Her whole body felt as heavy as stone, and not in the usual good way. But she didn't dare let her guard down yet. They'd killed off the bosses, but the actual point of all this fighting wasn't finished yet.
"Mana up," she ordered her raid. "And move out of the way. We've got people coming through."
The raid grumbled, but they did as she said, moving out of the way of the main gates Gregory was already yelling at his men on the walls to open. A minute later, the colossal doors to the royal castle opened with a groan, and the mass of refugees they'd been protecting all this time surged inside.
Tina slumped against her shield as the torrent of dirty, frightened people flooded past. She hadn't realized how much the responsibility of protecting them had weighed on her until it was suddenly gone. Now that they were inside the castle, they were under the king's protection, and while that didn't let her off the hook, she was no longer the one in charge of all the lives in Camp Comeback.
The relief of that was like a dam breaking inside her. Tina had to fight to stay upright, clinging to her shield as all the refugees and lowbies scurried into the protective shell of the castle, where they joined an already enormous crowd. As she stared at the wall of people packed into the castle's giant paved courtyard, it took Tina's poor, exhausted brain several moments to realize these must be the NPC refugees from the Diplomatic Quarter--the actual citizens of Bastion.
She stared at them in wonder. This was the first time since getting trapped that she'd seen regular people--not players, not soldiers, not knights or monsters or corpses or kings but average everyday people. Other than being terrified, they looked surprisingly ordinary. Some were fat, some thin, some young, some old. Some had possessions in their arms. Others had nothing. There were parents carrying their children, an older woman protecting a very pregnant younger one with a kitchen knife. There was a girl with her puppy and a balding man clutching his terrified obese cat. They all just looked like people you'd see anywhere, but there were so many of them, and they were so scared.
For the first time since she'd arrived at the Order's Fortress, a stab of pity punctured Tina's anger. Of course these people were afraid. Their world was ending before their damn eyes. Even if they hadn't been trapped in the Nightmare, they'd come back to find their homes on fire and the dead marching on their city, and they couldn't do anything to save themselves. Tina couldn't imagine what it would be like to be low level and gearless, forced to hide inside walls from monsters who could swat you like a fly. How terrified they would feel and how helpless. No wonder they hated the players, Tina realized with a jolt. If she'd been stuck inside those walls, she'd hate the people who'd done this to her world too.
She was still reeling from that unexpected moment of empathy when a ghostly horn sounded in the air. The noise sent a wave of fear down Tina's spine, making her shoot bolt upright. All the other veteran Roughnecks jumped as well. Even SilentBlayde came out of the shadows, appearing right beside her as a deep voice shouted though the now-still city.
"You will all feed the great pyre!"
"Crap!" Tina swore, yanking her shield off the ground. "That's Sanguilar!"
"Sangu-who?" Frank asked numbly, sitting up from where he'd been lying on the ground.
"The Once King's Blood General!" Tina yelled back, reaching down to yank the other tank back to his feet. "He's the next-to-last boss in the Dead Mountain Fortress, the one directly before the Once King himself!"
"And that's bad?" Frank asked.
"Hella bad," Tina confirmed, holding up her red-runed sword. "He's the guy who dropped this. Sanguilar was the Roughnecks' world-first kill. We were one of the only guilds in the world who could take him, but that was with the original Roughneck Raiders guild back in the game."
"You think we can't take him?" Killbox said, insulted.
"No," Tina said curtly, looking the Berserker dead in the eyes. "Don't get me wrong. We've come a hell of a long way since the Deadlands, but this fight is stupid hard even for veteran raiders, and we don't get to try again if we wipe. We'll just be dead. Even if I had the best raiders in the world, though, I don't think it's possible to beat Sanguilar in these conditions."
"Why not?" Killbox asked.
It took everything Tina had not to roll her eyes. "Dude, did you do any research on the DMF fights before you got into my raid?"
"Nope," Killbox said proudly. "Now why can't we kill this fool? We killed Grel!"
Tina reached up to rub her suddenly throbbing temples. "Because Grel was relatively simple. Tough and hit like a truck, but he wasn't actually that complicated to fight. Sanguilar is completely different. One of his abilities is that he heals whenever anything dies within a hundred feet of him. Back in the game, we got around that by just not dying and by off-tanking all of his stupid endless skeletal soldiers way off to the side, where their deaths wouldn't pump him back up. On a battlefield like this, we don't have that kind of control."
She pointed back at Cinco and Assets's lines, which had already been pushed back almost to the gates by the ever-increasing army of undead, which was now picking up new recruits as the ghostfire from the zombies spread to the dead soldiers and knights at their feet, raising new undead to serve the Once King's will.
