by Rachel Aaron
Tina turned back to the fish-man, who was still trying to claw her face. “He does look pretty gone. But I thought people with Leylia’s were banned from VR for life. How’s he been coming to raid nights?”
“He said the game was too important to him to lose,” SilentBlayde replied, nervously adjusting his mask. “I can sympathize with that, so I agreed to keep his secret.”
“Do you think that was a good idea?”
SB shrugged. “I don’t know. But Anders always said it was safer for him to be in the game than in real life. At least there he knew he wasn’t dreaming. It’ll make his condition worse in the long run, but it’s not like there’s a cure for Leylia’s, so what does he have to lose?”
“Not a lot, I suppose,” Tina said, then her jaw tightened. “But having Leylia’s does not excuse being a rapey creep!” She glanced back at the other players, her eyes catching on the dead one. As always, the corpse stuck in her mind like a barb. She had to fix this, had to make it right, and disgusting and crazy as he was, Anders was the only healer they had.
Ignoring the bile rising in her throat, Tina dragged the struggling Cleric by his collar over to where her failure lay headless in the road. “Anders,” she said using her raid-leader voice, “rez him.”
For a moment, the everyday nature of the command worked. The fish-man stopped flopping in her grasp, and Tina’s hopes soared until he crossed his arms. “No,” he said stubbornly. “I’m still mad at you.”
“I’ll kick you from the raid if you don’t,” she lied, hoping that pretending they were still in the game would have some sway on the delusional idiot.
“Nice try, dream,” Anders said, shaking his head so vigorously his spines swayed. “But you can’t trick me. I do whatever I want here.”
“You motherfucker,” she growled, leaning down into Anders’s fish face. “This guy is dead, and you’re the only one who can save him. Cast Raise Ally on him now, or I swear to god, I’ll—”
A mournful sound cut her off. Somewhere behind them, a discordant horn was resonating through the dry, cold air. More horns joined it moments later, followed by the heavy clanking of massive chains.
Forgetting Anders for a moment, Tina and SB both turned toward the Dead Mountain. “Whoa,” the Assassin said, stepping back. “Is it just me, or did the Once King’s fortress get a lot bigger?”
Tina said nothing. She was too busy squinting through the gates where the instance portal had been before it had vanished. The enormous stone hall that started the dungeon was just as dark as it had been when she’d spotted the skeleton patrol inside thirty minutes ago. Now, though, there was a lot more movement. Instead of just one pair of skeletons, Tina spotted dozens, maybe hundreds, their ghostfire eyes burning like blue fireflies in the dark. As terrifying as that was, though, it was the still-blaring horns that frightened her the most. They were louder than they’d been in the game, but she’d know that haunting cry in her sleep. It was the sound effect that signaled the start of the Grel’Darm encounter, the Dead Mountain’s first raid boss.
“Shit.”
“Those are Grel’Darm’s horns!” SB said at the same time, staring at the open gates in new horror. “He can’t come out here, right?”
“The skeleton pair did,” Tina said. “They’re clearly not dumb mobs stuck on patrol paths anymore.”
“And they know we’re here,” SilentBlayde said, cringing at the dozens of ghostfire eyes that were now staring at them from the dark. “What do we do? We can’t take that many. We barely handled two.”
“Hell no, we’re not fighting that,” Tina agreed. “We’re gonna run.”
With that, they both looked at the rest of the raid, still down on the ground.
“I don’t suppose you miraculously found more pan-elixirs?” Tina asked hopefully.
“I only had the two,” he said sadly, and then his blue eyes brightened. “Cleansing magic might work! That’s all the pan-elixirs do. Too bad Anders isn’t in his right mind.”
“Too bad for him, you mean,” Tina said. “Because he’s what we’ve got.”
She turned back to the fish-man dangling from her hands. It was clear by now that Anders was not going to rez the player she’d gotten killed. At least not voluntarily. If they could get the rest of the raid up, though, she wouldn’t need him. She could get a non-crazy healer to cast Raise Ally, and then they could all GTFO together.
That was the best idea Tina had had all day. Tightening her fists on the Cleric’s robes, she gave the still-struggling fish-man a hard shake. “Anders!” she barked in his face. “We’re all down with a status effect. I need you to cleanse the raid stat!”
Anders tilted his head lopsided and laughed at her. “No way! I’m not doing work in a dream. Now let me go so I can fly!”
He started flapping his arms and making chirping noises. Tina was shaking him back into submission when a thundering clatter like thousands of pieces of metal tumbling down a hill rose from the fortress behind her.
“The skeletons are starting to move,” SB reported, his face pale above his mask.
Tina gritted her stone teeth. “Dammit, Anders!” she shouted. “Do you hear that? We’re all going to die if you don’t start casting!”
“Chill out, Roxxy-boxxy,” the Cleric said with a grin. “We can’t die. We’re in my dream! It’s all fine.” His eyes brightened. “Maybe they’re delivering pizza!”
“Dude, please,” she begged. “Just start casting! One other healer, and we’re good. How about David over there? Once he’s cured, he can do all that healing work you don’t want to do. Okay?” She turned Anders toward the other blue-scaled ichthyian Cleric, who was lying on his back, covered in rainbow barf.
“Nope!” Anders said, crossing his arms. “Nopey nope nope noppity! I’m not doing a thing you say. You’re mean dream Roxxy, not hot dream Roxxy.”
If she hadn’t needed the Cleric so badly, Tina would have thrown him into the gathering undead army for that one. She was seriously considering doing it anyway when the ground shook beneath her feet. Stones began sliding from the barren hills behind them, but the crashing rocks were drowned out by the giant groan that came from inside the fortress. A sound so huge and deep, it was more vibration than noise.
“Um, Roxxy?” SB said nervously. “I think Grel’Darm the Colossal might be coming this way.”
His words were followed by another crashing footstep, and bile rose in Tina’s throat as she realized what she was going to have to do. Grel’Darm was a raid boss. If he caught them on the road like this, it wouldn’t be just one dead player. It would be all of them. They were all going to die if she couldn’t make Anders do his damn job.
With that, Tina swallowed her bile and dug down to her rage. It wasn’t hard to find. Anders may have been a guildie, but he was also a man who, when he thought he could get away with it, had chosen to try to rape an unconscious friend. Whatever she did to this bastard was fine. The creep deserved it.
“We’re out of time for your crazy,” she said in a low, cold voice. “You are going to start cleansing people right now, or I am going to turn this into a real nightmare for you.”
Anders stuck out his green tongue at her. “Whatever. This is my dream. You can’t do anything.”
“Oh yeah?” Tina said, then she punched him. Hard.
After her and SB’s battle with the skeletons, Tina was fairly confident that FFO’s hit points system was still around in some form. That meant a raid-geared healer like Anders should have the health to take plenty of abuse, so Tina didn’t hold back. She punched him hard, driving her metal-gloved fist into Anders’s face with a wet crunch that sent green blood splattering across the ground.
“Ow!” he screamed, his confident voice finally cracking as actual pain got through.
“Does that feel real to you?” Tina shouted. “Ready to cast some healing now?”
Instead of doing as she asked, the Cleric began to panic, his slippery blue fish-skin sliding through her fist as he
fought to get free. Cursing loudly, Tina redoubled her grip and hit him again, slamming her fist into his face until his wide fish jaw was broken and his double eyelids were fluttering.
“Cleanse the raid now!” she roared.
“Screw you!” he roared back, spitting green blood in her face. “News flash, bitch! There’s no interface. Therefore, this. Is. A. Dream! But feel free to keep hitting me. Maybe it’ll wake me up, which would be great, because this is the worst hallucination I’ve ever had!”
“I can do worse than hitting,” Tina promised. “I don’t care about your delusions, and I don’t care if I break your skull. There’s three dozen not-crazy people here who are all going to die if you don’t cast that spell!” The ground rumbled again as she finished, and Tina yanked Anders forward until they were nose to broken nose. “Last chance, asshole,” she said through clenched teeth. “Heal the raid, or I’m gonna get real ugly on you.”
“No,” Anders said, petulantly turning his head away.
As he turned up his squashed fish nose at her, something inside Tina snapped for real. Whatever friendship she’d felt for Anders when they were guildmates was forgotten. She just couldn’t take that this crazy idiot—this molester—was going to get them all killed out of delusional belligerence. The rage was boiling so fiercely inside her, she didn’t even realize she’d drawn her sword until she was holding it to his throat.
“Heavenly Salvation,” she said, slow and deadly. “Your raid-wide cleanse. Cast it now.”
When he didn’t start making the casting motions, Tina stabbed him in the shoulder.
Anders screamed as the blade slid into his flesh. He grabbed the sword to try to pull it out, but Tina was much too strong for him.
“Cast the goddamn spell, Anders!” she yelled, holding her blade steady in his shoulder as his white robes turned green with fish-man blood. “Do it now, or you’ll be learning to cast with one arm!”
“Roxxy, stop!” SilentBlayde yelled. “He’s got a mental disorder! It’s not his fault he’s acting like this!”
“No, it’s yours for wasting that potion on this basket case!” she shot back. “Seriously, ’Blayde. Did it ever occur to you that maybe, just maybe, the guy with Leylia’s wasn’t going to be useful? There were five other healers to choose from!”
“I’m sorry!” SB cried, his voice panicked. “I confused him for David! I don’t know everyone perfectly by sight without nameplates! Everything would have been okay if David hadn’t choked!”
“Whatever,” Tina said, keeping her eyes on Anders, who was now a sickly shade of gray. “If you don’t like this, you can run, but the enemy is on its way, and this idiot is the only chance we’ve got at saving the raid. I don’t care what I have to do so long as he blows that ability and gets our people up.”
“But this is wrong,” SilentBlayde pleaded, his face horrified as he stared at the panting fish-man. “There has to be another way. Maybe we can hide everyone while they get it together?”
“The two of us can’t move thirty-seven people before that army gets here, and you know it,” Tina snapped. “If we’re going to make it, we all need to run together, and Anders here is gonna make that happen. One way or another.”
She removed her sword, dropping the Cleric into a gasping, bloody heap on the ground. “You ready to cast that spell yet?” she demanded, kneeling beside him. “Because I will cut you into itty-bitty pieces before the undead get here if that’s what it takes.”
Anders lifted his head, green blood trickling from his mouth. “Screw… you…” He panted. “This is a dream, you crazy bitch.”
“You know, I’m not even going to argue with you anymore,” Tina said, raising her sword. “Dream or not, it still hurts. Now cast, or get ready to lose some scales.”
Anders looked at her like she was a monster then, and underneath the rage, Tina felt like one. Creeper or not, a small part of her knew her desperation was getting the better of her. Anders had always been a little weird, but current attempted molestation aside, he was normally a peaceful, together sort of guy. Unfortunately for him, he also had the one thing Tina needed to save everyone, so friend or not, monster or not, she would do whatever it took to make him use it.
When he still didn’t raise his webbed hands to cast the spell, Tina swung her sword and sliced off the webbed ridges from his upper arm. She was turning to do the same to his other arm when SilentBlayde was suddenly there.
He appeared between blinks, standing between her and Anders. Tina barely managed to stop her swing before she cut into his back, but the Assassin wasn’t even looking at her. He was kneeling in front of Anders, grabbing the fish-man’s limp arms and moving them in the circular motion all Clerics made when they cast.
“You see, Anders?” SB said nervously. “When you start casting, she stops stabbing. Easy!”
SilentBlayde was speaking to Anders, but he was looking over his shoulder at Tina, his ice-blue eyes begging her. Unable to keep going with him looking at her like that, Tina stepped back, watching suspiciously as the white-robed Cleric began experimentally going through the motions SB was leading.
“Look! It’s working!” the elf said excitedly. “Maybe if you cast the spell, Angry Roxxy will vanish!”
This suggestion seemed to please Anders very much. The blue-scaled ichthyian rose to his feet, waving his arms in circles with more certainty. As he moved, Tina felt power rushing past her to gather in the Cleric’s hands.
She’d seen the Heavenly Salvation spell many times in-game, but she’d never paid much attention to the graphics. Now, as Anders stepped through the casting motion, the gray clouds of the Deadlands parted, and a shaft of brilliant golden light shot down to bathe them all in dazzling warmth and radiance. A heartbeat later, the spell went off in an explosion of angelic wings and white illusionary feathers.
As the spell exploded around them, Tina swore she felt an unsettling presence looking down at her from the suddenly clear sky. Fortunately, the feeling—both the sense of being watched and the warm radiance—faded almost as soon as it began. As the feathers vanished, the Deadlands returned to its normal cold gray, leaving her half-blind and shivering with loss. When her vision cleared, though, the first thing Tina saw was all the unconscious players sitting up. She was watching them blink their eyes open with heart-pounding relief when she realized that SB was standing beside her.
“Thank you,” she said quietly.
“Don’t mention it,” he whispered back, sounding just as relieved as she was. “But we’re not in the clear yet.” He nodded at the dark gate, where the clamor of the undead army was getting louder by the second. “They haven’t come out yet. I’m not sure why, but my best guess is that they’re waiting for Grel’Darm. If that’s the case, then we’ve got maybe five minutes to convince everyone else that this isn’t a dream before he finishes walking from his boss room to the front gate and we get crushed under skeletons.”
The idea of facing a raid boss in their current condition was enough to make Tina’s new stone heart stutter. “Then we’d better get to it,” she said, breaking into a run as the two of them rushed into the crowd.
****
“We’re saved!”
“What the hell?”
“I’m a girl?”
“I’m a guy! And I have a…oh god.”
“Why is the dungeon so big now?”
“Did anyone else get that wham-spin-wham feeling?”
“Did we get hacked?”
“Guys? Where’d the interface go?”
“I can’t log out! Someone call a GM!”
“People!” Tina bellowed, slamming her shield down to get their attention, but no one was listening. Everyone in the raid was freaking out in their own special way. Some stared blankly at the gray Deadlands. Others waved their hands and staffs, their eyes growing wide as magic lit up around them. One of the giant muscular Berserkers just cackled and started doing one-armed push-ups, yelling for the others to come and look at him. Mostly, thoug
h, people seemed to be obsessed with checking out their new bodies. Particularly the nonhuman races.
“SB,” Tina said quietly, tilting her head toward the cat-girl Anders had attacked, who was just now sitting up. “I need you to secure NekoBaby before she freaks and starts a shit storm. We can’t afford another crisis right now.”
“Secure how?” the Assassin nervously asked.
“Sweet talk? Move to the side? Crowd-control?” Tina shrugged. “I’m not asking you to black-bag her. Just no screams, and make it fast. And get her to try Raise Ally on the Sorcerer.”
When he nodded and ran off, Tina drew her sword and started to bang the flat against her shield, getting louder and louder until she’d finally annoyed the road full of players into looking at her.
“Listen up!” she shouted, her new deep voice bouncing off the rocks. “I know you’ve got questions, but we’re in serious danger.” She pointed her sword at the looming shadow of the Once King’s fortress. “The raid mobs are intelligent now, and they know we’re here. They’re already massing to come out, and if we don’t get away pronto, we’re all going to die.”
That was the type of dire announcement one would expect to be met with instant obedience or at least major hustle. Instead, Tina got dazed looks, a jumble of questions, and a whole lot of not running for their lives. And other than the obvious immediate problem of impending death, that seriously pissed her off. Her Roughneck Raiders would have fallen in line instantly.
“What is wrong with you?” she cried, stabbing her sword toward the mountain. “Death, that way.” She swung her sword around to point up the road. “Not dying, this way. Now march!”
Again, no one moved. “I know what’s going on,” said someone in the back. “I must be having another one of those lucid dream—”
“No!” Tina shouted. “Don’t even start with that shit! You’re not dreaming, and you don’t all have Leylia’s. It’s a rare condition, people!”
“If we’re not dreaming, then how do you explain this?” one of the Rangers yelled.
