by Rachel Aaron
“Are they dangerous?” Frank asked, pulling out his sword shakily.
“I suppose,” SilentBlayde said with a shrug, drawing his swords as well. “They’re level eighty-twos while we’re just level eighty, but we’re all so well geared that we should be able to take these one-skulls no problem. I actually soloed this quest for an achievement a few months ago.”
Frank still wasn’t moving, so SB waved at the monsters. “Yoo-hoo! Ghosts! Over here! You guys dance like squares!”
At the sound of his voice, all five deathly elves turned at once, their mouths distorting down to their necks as they unleashed their unearthly screeches of rage. SB waved at them one last time before ducking behind Frank.
“Protect us, tank!” he cried, giving the old man a shove before wrapping himself in a nearby patch of shadows.
From the safety of the lightless realm, SilentBlayde watched as the ghosts lost sight of him. Frank was out of the trees now, though, so they charged him instead.
“Dammit, SB!” NekoBaby yelled, backing away from their newbie Knight. “Stomp, Frank! Stomp!”
It was then that SB realized that they hadn’t explained to Frank how to activate his abilities. Fortunately, Frank seemed to have been gaining in the same innate knowledge related to his class as the rest of them. No one had taught Neko how to use her magic after the transition. She’d just done it, the same as all the other healers. Likewise, SB couldn’t tell anyone how he knew how to walk through shadows. Back when this was a game, he’d had a macro set up for every stealthing occasion, but when he’d seen Roxxy going down under the skeletons, he hadn’t even thought about his buttons, or lack thereof. He’d just known what to do, flitting through the lightless realm to her side before he realized what was going on.
Thankfully for all of them, Frank was no different. After a moment of panic, he activated the knight’s area taunt instinctively, stomping his foot and sending bright cracks of energy spreading through the dusty forest floor. The golden light laced its way up the ghosts, making their eyes flash red, then they all charged at poor Frank as though he was their ticket back to the land of the living.
For a horrible second, it looked as if their spectral fingers would pass straight through the Knight’s shield. Then sparks flew as Frank lifted his shield to meet them, grunting with impact as all five specters slammed into him with real physical force. The ghosts screamed in frustration, then spread out to surround him and claw from all sides. Frank cried out in pain, turning with his shield to try to block them all at once. He was starting to panic, swinging his sword wildly without hitting anything, when the cold gray darkness of the forest was split by a vibrant cascade of green color.
Behind him, NekoBaby’s staff and hands were glowing like the summer sun through trees. She waved them in a dramatic motion, and Frank was bathed in a wash of verdant energies, his whole body glowing as the healing spell surged through him.
“Whoa!” he cried, face breaking into a wondrous smile. “That feels amazing! Lemme get some more of that, please!”
Still watching from the shadows, SilentBlayde lifted an eyebrow. Pain had never been an issue in game since all unpleasant feelings had been muted in favor of fun, but now that things were real, it seemed that healing carried a measure of pain suppression as well. The ghosts were still hitting Frank as hard as ever, but he didn’t seem to mind nearly as much now. He actually looked like he was having fun, whacking the transparent figures with the flat of his sword as though he was playing Whack-a-Mole.
Frank seemed to have the ghosts’ full attention now, so it was time for SB to do his part. Making a mental note to tell Roxxy about the pain suppression, he emerged from the shadows right behind one of the ghosts. Silver blades flashing, he landed a half dozen lightning-fast slashes in its back in the space of a heartbeat.
Spectral miasma split beneath his glowing silver blades, and the ghost vanished in a flash of light, screaming all the while. Neko cheered when it went down, raising her hands to hit Frank with another healing spell.
“That’s more like it!” she said cheerfully. “Now kill the others, and let’s get my new dress! Faster, Assassin! Stab, stab!”
Grinning, SilentBlayde stepped back into the shadows, leaving Frank gleefully whacking the ghosts as he learned to manage his shield. Since this was supposed to be a training fight, SB ignored Neko’s calls to hurry up and took his time, letting Frank get several more shield strikes in before popping out of the shadows to dispatch his next target.
****
Back on the main road, Tina was having a far less enjoyable fight.
“Fire!” she shouted.
A volley of colorful glowing arrows sailed over her head. From the hill on Tina’s right, fireballs launched, and lightning arced. Along with the onslaught of magical attacks came a cacophony of embarrassed, half-hearted shouts.
“Poison shot!”
“Chain Lightning!”
“Fireball!”
Seconds later, the awkwardness was drowned out by a deafening series of thunder-cracks and explosions in the dirt beyond the road. Shielding her eyes from the pyrotechnics, Tina cursed the loss of her helmet as their target—an undead boar the size of a shuttle bus—vanished into the glare. It emerged a few seconds later, its singed fur leaving a burning trail behind it as it began to charge.
“And…stop fire!” Tina said, holding up her sword.
Two extra fireballs launched before she’d even finished. These were followed by a lightning bolt, an Assassin’s bolo shot, and several arrows before Tina could whirl around. “I said stop!”
The gigantic boar was now only thirty feet away. It charged across the dead gray landscape, dust and dirt flying from its powerful hooves. Hateful blue-white fire flickered in its hollow, leaking eye sockets, making the black ichor that flew from its metal tusks glisten as it homed in on Tina.
“Wait,” she said, stepping out in front of the raid with a nervous glance over her shoulder to make sure she wasn’t about to get shot in the back. “Waaaaait.”
When the boar was only twenty feet away, she swung her sword down. “Now! Charge!”
A dozen Knights and Berserkers lunged forward to attack the boar along with her. As they ran, more embarrassed cries rang out.
“Frenzied Strikes!”
“Storm of Blades!”
“Kamehameha!”
“Shield Charge!”
That last one was Tina, who winced even though calling out their abilities had been her idea. The shame would have been deeper, but she had to stay focused on the monster she was rushing.
Her shield slammed into the oncoming boar like one truck colliding with another. The screech of metal on metal echoed up the mountains that surrounded the Deadlands’ gray valley. But as big as Tina was, the giant boar was easily three times larger, and as it pushed against her shield, her feet began to slide in the loose dirt.
“Steady Ground!” she yelled, drawing from the deep earth. The bedrock magic answered, causing the dust and gravel to solidify into ultra-hard rock around her feet. As it anchored her in place, the boar finally ground to a halt on her shield.
By this point, the other melee players had spread out to form a rough circle around the beast. There was much jostling and cursing and stepping on toes, but eventually, they were all in position to begin hacking away at its sides. Finally, a pair of Assassins appeared out of thin air and dropped onto the monster’s back, stabbing their swords and daggers into the rotting flesh on either side of its spinal column. The rotting boar roared at the onslaught, and Tina slapped the flat of her sword against its snout to keep its attention.
“Mocking Strike!”
She wasn’t sure how one mocked a rampaging undead boar, but the ability must have worked, because the monster’s head swung back around to try to gore her. Spear-like tusks grated off her shield in a shower of blue sparks. A few landed on Tina’s cheek, singeing the smooth stone of her face. She shook them off and smacked the boar again, hacking its rot
ting nose with her sword to make sure it stayed locked on her.
Despite being a three-skull monster, the boar didn’t last long under attack from over a dozen players. Tina was just getting into the rhythm of step, block, strike when the monster tumbled to the ground, its hind legs hacked clean through. After that, the living corpse-pig could do nothing but thrash helplessly on the road as the remaining players turned it into fetid mincemeat.
The moment it stopped twitching, the accusations began.
“Watch out, asshole!”
“Dude, bad aim!”
“You dick! Don’t use Storm of Blades while we’re standing right next to you!”
Tina watched the bickering with a bleak expression as she contemplated whose butt to kick first. Since the melee team was already digging into each other, she decided to start with the ranged.
“What part of ‘Only attack once’ do you not understand?” she yelled, turning to glare at the spell casters she’d positioned on the hill behind them. “I saw those extra shots! How many times do I have to say this? There. Is. No. More. Friendly. Fire. It’s all unfriendly fire! If you keep attacking after melee is engaged, you risk hitting us as much as the enemy. There’s no damage meters to top anymore, so just cool your junk and wait until I tell you to fire again.”
When all the ranged classes looked suitably downcast, Tina turned to the mass of Berserkers, Knights, and Assassins standing around the dead pig. “All right, melee,” she said, shifting to a more positive tone. “That was our best charge yet, but you still have to get it through your heads that you can only use single-target attacks. Also, you all have to remember your positions! I saw way too much tripping over each other, and we don’t have time to waste on that shit. Once we’re engaged, the ranged can’t fire anymore, so we need to get in and get the job done.”
A lot of victorious smiles vanished at her words, and Tina belatedly realized that some positive reinforcement might also be useful.
“Good job on the ability call-outs, though!” she said cheerfully. “I know it feels stupid to shout out activations, but we don’t have the interface to tell us who’s doing what anymore. We have to have some way of keeping off each other’s toes and coordinating. It’ll get old soon enough, so stop snickering.”
She eyeballed one of her Knights. “And please call out real ability names from now on. I heard you over there, Mr. Kamehameha!”
The Knight shrugged unapologetically, and Tina rolled her eyes, motioning for everyone to get back into formation on the road. Grudgingly, the raid obeyed. No one said anything she could hear, but there were a lot of grumbling and dirty looks. They were finally obeying orders, though, so Tina let it slide, letting out a frustrated breath as she signaled for everyone to march on.
She probably should have ordered a rest. The Strength-geared classes all seemed fine, but several of the casters were starting to lean on their staffs. It was a pathetic sight, but Tina was determined to keep going. Not only did marching keep the raid busy and out of trouble, but constant movement was their only hope of making it to the safety of the Order Fortress at the other end of the Deadlands before nightfall. She couldn’t feel Grel’s footsteps rumbling through the ground anymore, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t still coming, and unlike them, skeletons didn’t need rest. If they stopped, the gap she’d worked so hard to put between them and the Once King’s army would close, so until they got to safety, pushing forward was their only option.
“Roxxy!”
The cheerful voice of SilentBlayde cut through the grim silence of the raid. As always, the sound made her heart leap, and Tina spun around to see the trio of questers jogging up the road behind them. SB was running as gracefully and tirelessly as the mythical creature he was supposed to be. Frank looked a bit more red-faced, huffing from the multiple-mile run in full armor with NekoBaby sitting on top of his backpack like a feline Yoda. Hitching a ride was classic NekoBaby behavior, though, so Tina didn’t think much of it until the group got close enough for her to see the deep circles under the healer’s eyes.
“What’s wrong with you?” she asked as Frank helped the cat-girl down.
“She went MOO,” Frank explained. “I’m given to understand that’s bad.”
“For the last time, it’s OOM,” Neko said, wavering on her feet. “As in ‘Out Of Mana.’”
Tina gaped at her. “How did you run out of mana? Naturalists are regen machines. Was Frank that hard to heal?”
“No, he was okay,” Neko said, giving up and sitting down on the ground. “But something’s weird about healing now, Roxxy. It takes a lot more juice than it used to. I was fine to start, but by the time LazyBlayde there finally decided to dispatch all the ghosts, I was empty.”
“I wouldn’t have taken so long if you’d said something,” SB said irritably. “And you said you’d regenerate your mana if Frank carried you.”
“I thought I would,” she said, mouth opening in a yawn. “But I still feel like butt.” She fluttered her eyelashes at Frank. “Can you carry me a bit longer?”
“No,” Roxxy said as the Knight’s face turned scarlet. “His job is to tank, not taxi.” She looked down at the knee-length plain white robe Neko was wearing. “But at least you got a new dress.”
“But I didn’t!” the Naturalist cried, yanking up the plain muslin to show Tina the ripped robes she was still wearing underneath. “This is Frank’s undershirt!”
Tina blinked. “Why are you wearing Frank’s undershirt? What happened to the quest? Was it not there?”
“No, we did it,” SB said. “But—”
“There was no loot!” Neko yelled. “They cheated us! We killed all the stupid ghosts and put their damn remains back in their graves, and we got nothing!”
“The fog parted to reveal a chest when we were done, just like it was supposed to,” SilentBlayde explained. “But there was nothing inside it. Not even gold.”
Tina’s face fell. “Really? Damn, dude. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to send you on a wild goose chase.”
“It’s okay,” SB said immediately. “Honestly, it makes sense. Back when this was a game, quest rewards spawned as needed. Now, though, where would the loot even come from? It’s not like ghosts would actually have a bunch of brand-new caster robes just lying around. They don’t even wear clothes.”
That did make a certain amount of sense, but it didn’t help with their problem. “We’ll make you a new set of robes as soon as we get time and materials to craft,” Tina promised Neko. “Do your old robes still work even with the rip?”
“I think so,” Neko said, looking down the front of her shirt-slash-dress. “I can’t see my stats anymore, obvs, but taking them off makes me feel weaker, so they must be doing something. Anyway, Frank’s shirt is better than SB’s cape. That little thing couldn’t even cover my womanly assets, if you get my drift.”
She winked obnoxiously at Tina, who rolled her eyes and turned to Frank. “Will you be okay? Shirts don’t have stats, but you might need it for other reasons now that our armor is real.” Chest hair, she imagined, would be a real pain in plate armor without something to protect it, but Frank shook his head.
“I’ll be all right,” he said with a lopsided grin. “We’re Knights, right? Helping damsels in distress is in the job description.”
“I’d never call Neko a ‘damsel,’ but she is quite distressing,” Tina said, grinning back. “I’m just happy you’re all okay. Now hurry and get back in line. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover and not a lot of light left to do it in.”
Neko stalked back to join the other healers, grumbling under her breath about cheap broken quests that didn’t even give you cash. Roxxy sent Frank to watch the front of the raid, then she pulled SB aside to get the real story.
“So how did Neko actually run out of mana?” she whispered. “Was Frank’s tank training that bad?”
“He actually did okay,” SilentBlayde said. “Not great. I wouldn’t let him solo tank anything complicated, but I don’
t think he’ll die so long as he’s got a competent healer.”
“That’s better than I’d hoped,” Tina said, but even with his mask, she could tell SB was frowning. “What else?”
The elf looked worried. “Neko wasn’t just faking to get a free ride. Healing is a lot harder now, Roxxy. A lot a lot. Mana recovery, too. Even with her robe ripped, Neko should have been able to heal a geared tank against five one-skulls for days, but she ran out of mana after only a few minutes. By the time I’d killed the last ghost, she could barely stand up.”
That was new. Normally, being out of mana just meant not being able to cast spells, not falling over. “Since when does being OOM make you physically tired?”
“Since this happened, I guess,” SB said, waving his hand at their new bodies. “My guess is that healing real wounds takes a lot more magic than just refilling numbers on a health bar. Whatever the reason, we can’t count on our healers to be able to heal like they used to.”
“Crap,” Tina said. “Low heals. That’s just what we need.”
“It gets worse,” he said quietly, turning to show her the empty satchel that normally held his poisons on his belt. “Remember how I threw night powder to blind that one skeleton? Normally, that ability has a two-minute reset, but my packet never came back. It looks like ability timers don’t refresh if the action takes a physical material that we don’t have.”
“You mean you were only carrying one packet, so one packet was all you got?”
SilentBlayde nodded, and Tina turned with a curse to examine the raid marching away from them. The Clerics, Naturalists, and Sorcerers were all noticeably more tired than everyone else, but what really worried her were the Rangers’ quivers. In the game, they’d always been full. Now, every one she saw was half-empty.
“Shit, shit, shit,” Tina said, furious with herself. “I’ve been running combat drills on every monster we’ve come across. I didn’t realize mana and ammo were no longer infinite.” She’d used up half their resources on goddamn boars.
