Forever Fantasy Online (FFO Book 1)

by Rachel Aaron

  She couldn’t do it.

  It felt like cowardice, but after the unnamed Sorcerer and David, Tina didn’t have it in her to lead this raid as they perished one by one on a hundreds-of-miles-long slog through a deadly swamp. Not when salvation was just on the other side of a damn stone wall.

  That decided it for her. The Order Fortress was huge, hostile, and deadly, but they were still people. People she could bluff, bully, or bargain with. If they chose the swamp, it would only be a matter of time before someone died, but if she could just get them through those gates and into the portal to Bastion, everyone would survive and this horrible ordeal would finally be over. That was a prize Tina was willing to risk everything for, and she didn’t care how much of a monster she had to be to get it.

  With that, Tina pulled herself to her full towering height, glaring down on the smaller Ranger like the magical stone demi-god she was as she said, “No swamp.”

  Zen scowled. “But—”

  “No swamp,” Tina repeated, her voice as firm as bedrock. “That’s final, Zen.”

  The Ranger’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “So we’re just going to beat ourselves bloody on the fort?”

  “No one’s going to beat themselves on anything,” Tina snapped. “What part of bluff do you not understand?”

  “The part where you’re the one doing it!” the dark-skinned elf yelled, frustrated. “Do you expect us to believe you won’t make us attack? You can’t even keep from attacking your own players! The first arrow they fire, you’re going to send us all to our deaths because you’re too stubborn to consider anyone’s ideas but your own!”

  “That’s not true,” SilentBlayde said, appearing seemingly out of nowhere to stand beside Tina. “Roxxy listens to her raiders all the time.”

  “But we’re not her raiders, are we?” Zen said, turning her glare on him. “You, Neko, and a few of the others are, but the rest of us pick-ups might as well be toy soldiers for all that she listens to us.” Her eyes snapped back to Tina. “I’ve done the Dead Mountain with the Roughnecks several times now. I’ve seen how ‘Queen Tina’ runs her raids. The ruthless dictator act was great for getting us through the dungeon fast, but our real lives are on the line here, and I don’t trust her not to throw mine away.”

  “I’m not going to throw anyone’s life away!” Tina roared. “I’ve been busting my ass trying to do the opposite, in case you haven’t noticed!” She turned back to the raid. “No one is going to die, okay? All we’re doing is marching up there and putting on a good enough show to get inside. That’s it. No fighting. I swear it. The moment things start to look actually dangerous, we’ll leave.”

  “And go where?” Neko asked.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Tina snapped to hide the fact that she didn’t have an acceptable plan B. “Because it’s going to work.”

  Zen rolled her eyes, and Tina tensed. To her relief, though, the Ranger didn’t keep arguing, and she didn’t walk out as the Assassins had, but she clearly wasn’t happy. A lot of people weren’t. The whole raid looked nervous and resentful, but there was nothing Tina could do about that. The decision had been made, so she bellowed at everyone to get into fighting formation.

  It was a sad, shuffling show as the raid lined up. Tina and Frank took the front, flanked by a spread of formidable-looking Knights and Berserkers. Behind them were the Rangers, Sorcerers, and the healers. As the only Assassin left, SB should have been between the two groups, but he had yet to leave her side, and Tina didn’t have the heart to make him.

  Once they were in formation, Tina had everyone with damaged armor moved to the center to hide their injuries. The Rangers, she sent into the copse of dead trees beside the road to find long sticks to fill their quivers with so they wouldn’t look so obviously empty. She was banging on her armor with her fist to try to make it look slightly less dented when Anders shuffled up to her.

  “Here,” he said, taking off his guild tabard and handing it to her. “Use this.”

  “What for?” Tina asked, holding up the red cloth stitched with the white bull of the Roughneck Raiders guild.

  “A standard,” Anders said with a fishy smile. “Every proper army needs a banner to wave.”

  Tina smiled back. “Thanks, dude. That’s good thinking.”

  Together, the two of them found a suitable tree limb to use as a flagpole. When she’d tied it tight, Tina hoisted her “banner” high and turned to look over her troops. They still looked sad with their dirty armor and bloody patches, but it was as good as things were likely to get, so she gave the signal to march out of the woods toward the Order’s fortress.

  As soon as they reached the hill leading up to the fort, Tina knew they were in trouble. The guards on the walls had gone into a frenzy the moment the raid had come out of the trees, banging alarm gongs and shouting warnings to their fellows inside the fortress.

  “The players are here! To the walls!”

  Tina’s ears pricked at the word “players,” but there was no time to hesitate. If this was going to work, they had to show that fortress they weren’t worried about anything, so Tina ignored the smell of hot oil drifting toward her on the wind and held the banner of the Roughnecks high, walking straight up the road toward the sealed door with huge strides of her stone legs.

  It seemed to be working. Now that she was closer, Tina could see the individual soldiers’ faces in the bright torchlight on top of the walls. Some were focused and disciplined, but most looked confused and scared, struggling to hold on to their new glowing weapons. One man even had an empty bow drawn, his arrow-less string pointed at Tina’s head. That should have made her feel better, but for every scared soldier, there was another who watched the approaching raid with naked hatred burning in his eyes.

  “I don’t like this,” Tina muttered as the scared soldiers scrambled to follow the angry ones’ orders. “Fear and hate are not a good mix.”

  “They sure don’t look real happy to see us,” Frank whispered back. “I thought we were on the same side as these guys.”

  “We were in the game,” Tina said. “But a lot’s changed.” She nodded at the arrow-riddled road. “I’m worried that other players started some shit.”

  “You thinking there’s bad blood here?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” Tina said. “Look at all the problems we had with people back at the Dead Mountain thinking this is a dream. This fortress is the entrance to the Deadlands and the place where everyone hung out. There were probably tons of players inside when whatever it was went down and trapped us here.” She scowled. “I bet someone did something stupid.”

  And now her raid was paying for it. The fortress’s brightly lit battlements were getting more crowded by the second, and Tina’s confidence in their ability to bluff their way inside was dropping with every new soldier that came up. But there was no turning back now. Whatever Zen said, Tina had no illusions about their ability to make it through the Never Swamp. Getting to that portal was their only hope of getting out of here with everyone alive, so she stuck to the plan, walking calmly forward with her chin up.

  She’d just stepped onto the wide circle of light thrown off by the bonfires that burned on either side of the fortress’s front gate when a single guard yelled, “Death to the monsters!” and loosed his arrow.

  The raid froze. The fortress went stock still as well as the arrow whistled through the air. Tina forced herself to appear relaxed as she watched it fall, but her shield-hand was fisted so hard it hurt as the arrow sank into the road in front of her, ten feet shy of its target.

  Her.

  “I said hold, you morons!” an officer shouted, cuffing the soldier over the head. “Don’t fire without orders!”

  Cowed, all the soldiers nodded, and Tina saw her chance. Putting up a hand to make her raid stay put, she walked forward alone until she was standing only a few dozen feet away from the fortress’s enormous barbican. When she was in position, she planted the guild’s banner in the dusty gray ground with
a thunk and took a deep breath, filling her giant lungs with air to shout up at the guards on the battlements above.

  “Why do you fire upon us?” she cried, careful to keep her language to the “ye olde” style all the NPCs had used in game. “I am Roxxy, leader of the Roughneck Raiders guild. We have fought many undead in your name and brought you countless trophies of their defeat. Explain this treachery!”

  Tina had thought long and hard about what to say on the walk up here, and she was pretty pleased with what she’d come up with. It was important to remind these people that, whatever might have happened before her raid got here, they were all ultimately on the same side. If she could make them feel like they were the ones in the wrong, maybe fear would turn into apology. But while she was happy with her opening attack, the soldiers didn’t seem to know what to make of it. They talked back and forth across the walls in low voices, some shaking their heads, others making angry gestures. When she tried to move a little closer, one of the officers pointed his bow at her chest.

  “Stop!” he cried, voice shaking. “Don’t move! We will treat any advance as hostile!”

  Tina scowled but stayed put, tapping a finger impatiently against her shield, fighting the urge to glance nervously over her shoulder at her raid. She hadn’t heard movement, so she was reasonably sure they were all still in position, but her people weren’t going to be able to keep looking like capable hard-asses for much longer. The predawn dark was doing a lot to hide their true shabbiness, but if the soldiers had too much time to study their empty quivers and slumping shoulders, the whole charade would fall apart. Then just as Tina was opening her mouth to ask what the hold-up was, an extremely tall, dark-mustached man wearing glittering gold-and-white plate armor appeared on the wall.

  Tina recognized him at once. It was Commander Garrond, Paladin of the Order and the main quest giver for the fortress. More importantly right now, he was also a level-eighty-one four-skull. That made him the biggest badass in the Deadlands who didn’t work for the Once King, and from the way he was looking down his nose at Tina, he knew it.

  “I am Paladin-Commander Garrond of the Order of the Golden Sun,” he said, his voice booming across the empty battlefield. “You players are no longer welcome in our fortress. Leave now, or face our wrath.”

  “What the hell, fucker?” Tina shouted back, abandoning her attempt at quest-text-style dialog. “We’ve fought the undead for you assholes for a year, and now you’re sending us away? What happed to the honor of the Order?”

  Given all the quests she’d had to do involving the Order’s honor, Tina thought that angle would be a shoo-in. To her surprise, though, the commander and his soldiers looked angrier than ever.

  “What do you know of honor?” Garrond roared, his pale face turning scarlet. “You players imprisoned us to serve as slaves for your glory for years! You plundered our wealth and magic as ‘rewards’ for fighting our enemies, and yet you achieved nothing! The Once King’s armies are larger and stronger than they’ve ever been! Worse, now that we are free, we’ve seen your true colors emerge. You are all evil! Demons and madmen in cursed bodies! Once the Order of the Golden Sun has destroyed the undead menace, we will purge your kind from this world as well!”

  A huge cheer went up from the guards as he finished, but Tina could only stare in shock.

  “Wait,” she said at last. “You mean you guys were real this entire time?”

  “Of course we are real,” Garrond said, insulted.

  “But you were NPCs!” Tina cried. “Programmed characters! This was all just a game until two days ago!”

  If the soldiers of the Order had been mad before, then her words brought a veritable storm to the battlements now.

  “Our years of unending torment were not a game!” Garrond thundered, almost too angry to get the words out. “We existed long before your Forever Fantasy Online ruined our world! But we may not last much longer thanks to what you’ve done.”

  In the back of her mind, Tina knew she should be amazed at the implications of alternate worlds going on here, but she didn’t have the time. She could already feel the raid wilting behind her, and with it, the rapidly closing final window they had for survival.

  “That shit’s not our fault!” she boomed back in her own parade-ground voice. “We don’t know anything about slavery or ruining worlds, but we sure as hell fought a mountain of undead for you ungrateful assholes, which means you owe us. We don’t want your crap loot anymore, anyway! All we need is your portal to Bastion. Let us use that, and you never have to see us again. Now open up before me and my friends decide to give you a real problem to worry about.”

  “Never!” Garrond shouted, pounding an armored fist on the battlement wall so hard, a chip flew off the stone. “Do you have any idea what it was like to be stuck in place, watching you play soldier? We were trapped! Compelled to sing praises for all your petty, meaningless achievements like you were actual heroes of legend! For years, we have cried as we’ve been forced to hand over our highest honors and artifacts for your childish endeavors, but no more! Nothing you say will convince me to let such immoral, dangerous, selfish creatures into my fortress ever again. You should be grateful I haven’t ordered my men to kill you where you stand!”

  Several people in the raid behind her groaned in dismay, and Tina’s grip on her shield tightened. She’d really hoped she could just talk her way in and to not create a situation, but it seemed that push had now come to shove, which meant it was time to play her card.

  “We’re not going away,” she snarled up at him. “I didn’t come here for trouble, but you’re facing an army capable of taking on the Once King himself, so if you don’t want something unfortunate to happen to your pretty white fortress, you’d be wise to open those gates and let us through.”

  The commander laughed in her face. “You bluff, player! I can see the condition of your ‘army.’ Do you think I can be fooled by sticks for arrows and half-dead healers held up by their fellows?” He shook his head. “I am being merciful far beyond what your kind deserves. Now leave before my patience runs out and I decide to deliver the justice of this world upon you.”

  Tina’s scowl stayed firmly in place, but inside, she was cursing up a storm. This was falling apart in the worst way, but what could she do? They couldn’t go forward, they couldn’t go around, and they couldn’t turn back. The idea of dying in front of the Order’s gates—literally a hundred feet from safety—was intolerable. Marching through the swamp and watching everyone die one at a time was also intolerable. That left only one option. Tina just hoped she lived to regret it.

  “All right, asshole!” she shouted. “You think you know so much? I’m gonna tell you how it really is.” She drew her sword and stabbed it at the road behind her. “The Dead Mountain is on the move! There’s a goddamn army of them coming, and Grel’Darm the Colossal is leading the way. They aren’t that far behind us, and that train is running straight at this place.”

  Gasps of alarm rose up from the Order’s soldiers. Even Commander Garrond’s thick black eyebrows rose in surprise, and Tina smirked. She’d found her lever at last, and she was going to use it to pry this place open.

  “You want us gone?” she went on. “Well, too bad! We couldn’t leave if we wanted to. We’re stuck between Grel and you assholes, but that’s your bad luck, because dying in battle here is a lot better than being filled with the ghostfire!” She swung her sword back around to point at the fortress’s double doors. “We’ve got enough shit-kicking left in us to bust this gate and stomp you all. Especially you, you weak-ass four-skull. You might kill us thanks to sheer numbers in the end, but we’ll sure as shit wreck the hell out of this place before we go. So you tell me, Mr. Paladin Commander, how’s your oath to defend the world against the undead going to hold up when Grel’Darm turns that corner and all you’ve got left is a smoking ruin?”

  Dead silence waited when she finished, and Tina knew she’d hit a nerve. She just hoped it was enough. Her raid wasn
’t as big a threat to the fortress as she claimed, but Grel was. If she could convince Garrond that she was more trouble to fight than to overlook, they might make it to that portal yet. But while Tina had painted the most horrible picture she could think of, the commander still wasn’t ordering his soldiers to stand down.

  Clearly, a stronger point needed to be made.

  “Naturalists forward!” Tina commanded, holding her ground. “Focus lightning on the front gates. Let’s bring ’em down!”

  The order echoed off the silent walls, but nothing happened. Growling, Tina looked over her shoulder to see Neko staring back with her ears down.

  “You said we were only bluffing!” the Naturalist hissed. “Lightning isn’t bluffing!”

  “Yeah, well, you heard the man,” Tina said, her voice cold. “Bluffing has failed, so now we’re punching.”

  Neko’s ears pressed even flatter against her head. “But you said—”

  “I know what I said!” Tina roared. Now was not the time for arguments. With every second that lightning wasn’t frying soldiers, her ability to force Garrond to let them through shrank. Another few moments, and it would vanish altogether, but Neko wasn’t moving. She just stood there, clutching her staff with her tail between her legs, until Tina looked away in disgust.

  “Sorcerers forward!” she cried instead, turning back to the wall. There was some shuffling, then KatanaFatale limped up beside her. “Finally,” Tina snapped, pointing at the gates. “Start casting Rising Inferno. I want those things in splinters. The moment they’re down, we run for the portal.”

  As pale as the dust at his feet, KatanaFatale nodded and began the long casting ritual for the high-damage Rising Inferno spell. Satisfied that much was going to plan at least, Tina used the mirrored inside of her shield to check the rest of the raid behind her.

  It wasn’t pretty. Everyone looked terrified and betrayed, which was no surprise since Tina had just done exactly what she’d sworn she wouldn’t. If Garrond hadn’t been right there listening, she would’ve explained that they only needed this one attack. Once the doors were down, all they had to do was run for the portal and they’d be safe. There was no way to tell them that without giving her game away, though, so Tina resolved to say she was sorry later. As soon as she made sure there was a later.