by Hugo Huesca
From the corner of her eye, she saw the archers take aim at Lavy and Alder, who had stepped in front of the drones to protect the Jamming dish.
Kes figured it was as good a time as any to take a shot in the dark and hope for a miracle. “Now, Alder!” she ordered as she struggled to keep the Inquisitor at bay.
Alder took a step forward and activated his last incantation. “Dazzling display!” The supernatural music that followed drowned the sounds of battle. The notes were smooth like honey, and they came with their own light show, something that Kes had never seen, as if explosions of sound and music were going off around the Bard all at once.
The archers and the Militant soldiers stopped in their tracks, staring dumbfounded at the bardic incantation while the Inquisitors, who had higher resistance against Mind-altering effects, tried to push past Kes and the Monster Hunters to end the effect.
“I can0t hold it much longer!” Alder warned her. Kes knew that, when the Bard ended the effect, the archers would turn him into a pincushion.
“Jarlen!” she screamed, hoping against hope that she hadn’t imagined the purple mist she had seen before entering the tower. “Archers!”
Kes’ opponent was good. A talented duelist, judging by his stance. The Militant Church had probably trained him since birth, long before he passed the aptitude tests to become an Inquisitor. His sword danced and flourished around Kes’ lunges and feints, which looked sluggish by comparison. He was good, stronger than her, and younger. He caught the side of Kes’ blade and riposted so fast that only her shield already being in the right place to block saved her. His blade sprang forward and drew a slash that burned Kes’ side. She could smell burning flesh where the smite enchantment had charred the skin. She bashed him with her shield and forced him to take a step back.
In a duel, Kes would’ve been in trouble. But this wasn’t a duel. “Cleave!” she roared. Her sword soared through the air, and the man calmly prepared a parry—but instead of striking at him, she slashed at the Militant soldier a step away, a man who wasn’t paying attention thanks to Alder’s magic.
Kes’ sword pierced his neck, and then the blade sprang, impossibly fast, right back toward the Inquisitor who was looking at the soldier and wasn’t expecting it. He nevertheless managed a weak parry—a testament to his skill. Kes’ blade bounced away.
“Power strike!” Her blade glowed red as she used the momentum to fuel a side-slash aimed at the Inquisitor’s temple. The beauty of power strike was that you only needed to hit fast and didn’t need to worry about putting much weight behind the attack.
The Inquisitor caught the blunt of the hit with his sword’s guard—saving his life—but the impact punched through it and mangled bone and tendon. He stumbled back, teeth clenched against the pain, and tried to switch his sword to his left hand.
Before he could, Kes darted forward and bashed him on the side of the head with her shield. His helmet’s enchantments flared blue as he fell down, once again saving his life. She moved in for the kill-shot, but a second Inquisitor took his place, driving her back.
Then Alder’s light-show ended, and the Bard fell to his knees.
“Archers!” the Inquisitor on the ground bellowed. “Take them out, now!”
Kes’ heart skipped a bit when she realized the archers were still aiming, and Jarlen was nowhere to be seen. “Shit—” The arrows cut loose as she jumped in Alder and Lavy’s general direction, raising her shield, but knowing she wouldn’t make it in time.
Several muted thuds rang across the tower as the projectiles found their targets.
Kes blinked, and then cursed, as the two Inquisitors still standing collapsed with their backs filled with arrows. Without skipping a beat, her Monster Hunters pushed forward, making short work of the remaining Militant soldiers.
“What?” bellowed their wounded leader, trying to stand. “What have you done?” he yelled at the archers.
A shadow floated above him, half-mist and half-vampire, and coalesced into the shape of a little girl of about ten, dressed in a blood-stained dress. “Don’t be angry at them,” she said in a sing-song, her eyes glinting maliciously. “They only did what I asked them to do.” Jarlen turned to Alder, who was panting on his knees and just as surprised as everyone else. “My thanks for pointing out those with weak Spirit, Bard. You made my job easier.”
“No problem,” Alder managed.
The last remaining Inquisitor fumbled to his knees, trying to enter a dueling stance again, but the shaking in his left hand didn’t allow it. “Blood-sucker!” he exclaimed. “I knew Gallio should have destroyed you when we had the chance. It’s a mistake I won’t make. Smite!”
He attempted to strike down the vampire, but she dispersed into mist, which floated behind him before returning her to her normal shape. Kes saw with horror how Jarlen smiled as she hugged the Inquisitor from behind and drove her long, black nails into the man’s eyes.
His screams only ended after she tore his neck open, putting him out of his misery.
“Some people don’t know when to give up,” Jarlen said as she fed.
Kes’ stomach churned. She took a deep breath and looked around, because it gave her an excuse not to stare at the source of those slurping sounds. Kaga and Yumiya were alive, but wounded, although neither seemed to notice the blood staining their fur. Yumiya was busy sedating the Cleric and tying him up. Of the Monster Hunter’s original ten, only six remained, and they were restraining the archers and the two surviving Militant soldiers. A little more than half the drones were still alive. Alder and Lavy…
Alder and Lavy were tired and battered, but they were alive.
The Marshal let out the breath she didn’t know she had been holding. She allowed a second for relief to flood through her. They were alive.
That one was close, she thought. If it hadn’t been for Jarlen… or for Lavy’s specters… or for Alder’s dazzling display… Things could’ve gone terribly wrong.
Enough commiserating, boot, Ria told her. There’s a war to be won, you cannot waste time having a small crisis every time you survive a skirmish.
“What were they doing here?” Lavy asked weakly as she helped Alder up. “How did they know we’d come?”
Kes sighed and allowed her martial discipline to take over again, drowning all emotion. “This tower is a strategic position. When the Heroes and Inquisitors headed off to retake Mullecias, they left a few griffin riders to cover important zones. This man over here—” she pointed at one unconscious soldier “—is not a rider. My guess is that a few Militant soldiers stayed behind to secure the tower, and then you and Alder brought an army of blue-balled hell chickens to the plaza. The riders were probably in the middle of extracting their allies before we ran inside.” Had the Inquisitors had a few more minutes to plan out their attack, it was doubtful that Kes or anyone else would’ve survived. If that Cleric had had a higher combat casting… she withheld a shudder.
“If you’ve finished chatting,” Jarlen said, cleaning blood off her face. “I’ve missed half the fun already, so I’d like to kill as many people as I can before daylight comes. Pirene’s spiders are climbing the tower as we speak, from the outside, trying to keep those pesky griffins away from us, but there’s someone at the top who just keeps killing them with arrows. Anyone up for another round?”
“We are!” one Monster Hunter exclaimed.
Kes turned to Alder and Lavy. “You stay behind. No offense, but you’re tired and out of spells. I don’t want to have to babysit you while we clean up the tower. Stay safe and help the drones.”
“That doesn’t offend me at all,” Alder said. “Be safe, Kes.”
Kes grasped the Bard’s forearm, and then went after Jarlen, trying her best to pretend she wasn’t so tired she could barely swing her sword.
Lavy watched as Kes and Jarlen disappeared up the trapdoor. The Witch tried to listen to any sounds that might tell her what was going on up there, but the rain and the battle outside drowned it all. She
hurried toward her dish and the surviving drones—about two dozen of them instead of the original thirty, but they were enough. They were digging a tunnel frantically under the tower, looking for the ley line, while others danced near every corner, “claiming” the building for the Haunt.
Alder hurried next to her. The Bard looked barely conscious, but apparently he was as stubborn as her. “I looked outside,” he said. “Gloriosa’s brood and the Haga’Anashi are kicking the ass of the couple Heroes remaining.”
The news felt like a breath of fresh air in Lavy’s battered lungs. “That means Ed’s back,” she said. With him and the rest of the Haunt buying them time while the drones set up the dish, they had a chance. “Alder, I think we’re going to win!”
The Bard nodded. “Only if we hurry. Let’s not leave Ed outside too long, or he’ll get cocky and try to solo the rest of the Heroes, alright?”
Seconds after, the drones finished their little dance. Everything was coming together in such a way that Lavy almost found it hard to believe.
They were going to win. The words kept dancing around in her head, almost a foreign concept. She’d spent her life in one dungeon or another, always fearing when the day would come that the first team of Heroes arrived.
But this time would be different. All those people she’d lost over the years. Her parents, Warlock Chasan, Lord Kael. Not anymore. After tonight, it’d be the Inquisition that should be afraid.
And she’d helped make that happen. The thought made her weak in the knees. She wanted to weep from joy.
Instead, she took a deep breath and helped the drones carry the dish she’d built up the stairs. She was so happy she barely felt the weight. Her heart raced as fast as a hummingbird’s.
They were halfway up when she heard a sharp crack and a puff of smoke, and the dish shifted precariously backward. Dunghill! She and the drones hurried to catch it, and managed it at the last moment before it fell down the stairs.
“What happened?” she asked, almost of the mind to blame the drones.
“I don’t know,” Alder said. He was at the back of the procession. “One of them just up and vanished.”
“What?” Lavy asked. “That makes no sense.” Was this one of the drones’ tricks? But that couldn’t be. They never acted up when the stakes were high. She gazed at the drones and froze. There was something in their eyes she’d never seen before.
Absolute horror.
Her blood turned to ice in her veins. “What’s going on?” she whispered.
One by one, the drones began to vanish in puffs of smoke.
It was no Boss fight, but Lisa was starting to enjoy it. The creatures just kept coming, and unlike half the monsters she’d faced, they just didn’t know when to quit. According to her screen, they were called hell chickens. They were some sort of black-feathered dinosaur, with powerful beaks and claws sharp enough to tear through her Cleric’s armor.
Above, the griffins dove into the battle, claws at the ready, and came back up while carrying a hell chicken or one of the horned spiders skittering along the Assassins’ tower. It was very cinematic watching the flying lions tear the creatures apart and shower the top-down camera with black feathers or blue ichor. Once in a while, a spider got lucky and managed to snare a griffin with their web, and then the critter and the rest of its nearby spiders would fall on the poor griffin and rend its flesh with their mandibles.
Yes, Lisa had to admit she was starting to have fun. Around her party, other Heroes fought fiercely—since they weren’t going to make it to Mullecias anyway, there was no point in holding back.
The hell chickens were dying in droves. Their bodies littered the plaza in bloody heaps, Ivalis Online’s graphic engine doing an incredible job at showcasing the causes of their deaths—they were charred, or torn, or vaporized, or frozen, or melted by acid, each with their own dying animations. The survivors were just as likely to go for the Heroes killing their brothers as they were for the fallen chickens themselves to feast on their flesh as the battle raged on.
Near a corner of the screen, a Heroic Knight was rushed by a dozen hell chickens just as his Priest used restoration on him. Restoration was a high-level spell meant to heal huge amounts of damage… And it was also completely useless in the Knight’s situation. Lisa saw how the Knight went down in seconds. That was because restoration was an emergency spell, meant to take a character’s HP out of the red. It was useless if the hell chickens kept the Knight pinned and just whittled away his HP over and over. Lisa, who had a bit more experience as a healer, always saved her single restoration for when it could actually make a difference.
Mark laughed merrily in the chat. His Fighter and Lisa’s Cleric found themselves back to back, with the dwarf bashing his shield in wide arcs, pushing three or four creatures away with each arc, while she kept the buffs up and the circles of respite ongoing, as to force the hell chickens to fight them at a disadvantage. Even Ryan was quiet, too focused in the battle to be his annoying self as his Rogue darting in and out of stealth and sneak attacked everything in sight. Meanwhile, Omar emptied the Wizard’s list of area-of-effect spells, launching fireballs, blizzards, ice shards, and everything else in his arsenal, without holding back anything for later.
Lisa wanted to advise him to save some juice up in case a mini-boss showed up. After all, Pantheon didn’t usually care to create extra content for anyone not in the main area of the World Event, so it was clear the developers had something in mind. Perhaps she was right: Albino horned spiders arrived at the plaza, skittering atop the rooftops and the walls of the buildings surrounding them. Since they were a different color than the usual brown or black, Lisa was willing to bet shit was about to get real. Perhaps we get to fight an elite Queen as a mini-boss, she thought.
The horned critters rushed into the fray, doing their best to ignore the hell chickens. Lisa noted with pleasure that the hell chickens, whose numbers were thinning by now, attacked the albino spiders as well as the remaining groups of Heroes.
The event wasn’t over, though. As Lisa’s mace crushed a spider princess, a pair of elite kaftar rushed at her, brandishing long spears. Mark dealt with one, blocking the charge with his shield and his taunt. She handled the other one, casting a stormwind to push the hyena-man straight in the path of Rylan Silverblade, who chopped its head off with a well-timed critical hit.
“Hah!” Ryan laughed. “Take that!”
Around Lisa, more kaftar joined in, jumping at the remaining Heroes, most of whom were caught by surprise. Since few players had had the foresight to save their dailies up to this point, the elite kaftar began dropping Heroes like flies, either by spearing them themselves or by setting up a flank for the hell chickens and the horned spiders to abuse.
It was great. Lisa knew her group could mop up what was left of the monsters. All the glory would be theirs…
Then she saw the great white horned spider rising above the farthest rooftop. The albino Queen. Was that the mini-boss? She descended in a hurry and rushed toward the tower.
Someone in heavy plate armor was riding her. Lisa’s eyes widened as she realized it was the final Boss. The Dungeon Lord. Mullecias was a fake-out, she thought. The real battle would be here. The other players would have to come all the way back from Mullecias if they wanted to take their shot.
Unless… unless she managed to take the Boss down first.
Her hands hovered over her keyboard. She’d finally read the tag above the Boss’ head.
It said, “Dungeon Lord Edward Wright.”
For a second, she froze, her brain not even recognizing the name. “Mark, are you seeing this?” she asked. She could even swear that the pixelated Dungeon Lord even looked slightly like her old friend. The hair was longer, and his face’s features sharper and, perhaps, crueler, but the likeness was unmistakable. He and his Spider Queen rushed through the carnage, his sword and his eyes shining green as he led his minions into battle and his aura buffed them into a renewed ferocity.
Around him, the weakened Heroic parties fell left and right, teleporting out in flashes of light.
“Yes,” Mark said quietly. “What the fuck?”
“Guys?” Omar asked. “What’s going on?”
Lisa barely heard the kid. Is Ed working at Pantheon now or something?
She was so stunned that she only caught sight of Rylan Silverblade when he was almost upon the Dungeon Lord, creeping up on the Boss from behind with his sneak up. The Dungeon Lord and the spider were too busy fighting their way forward to realize the Rogue’s presence. “Ryan, wait!” she called. Something was off about all this. Something was terribly, terribly wrong. She rushed at them.
But the Rogue and the Dungeon Lord were far enough from her that she could do nothing but stare in horror at what happened next.
“So you think you can make fun of me, Eddy, you little shit,” Ryan muttered over his mic. His voice was trembling with anger. “Well. Let’s see how you like this.”
And he shadow stepped above the Queen, double scimitars shining a bright purple as he unleashed the rest of his dailies in a flurry of deadly, magically enhanced steel. The Dungeon Lord reacted with incredible speed, managing to parry one scimitar with his flaming sword, holding it with both hands and screaming in anger.
Rylan Silverblade’s second scimitar crackled as its enchantments punched through the Dungeon Lord’s magical defenses and then buried itself within the Dungeon Lord’s breastplate, tearing through it as if it were paper.
The Dungeon Lord and the Rogue seemed to stare at each other for a long time. The battle raging across the plaza seemed to come to a stop. Lisa could swear she heard a woman screaming.
And then Silverblade drew his blade out of the Dungeon Lord’s chest, a spray of arterial blood marring the albino Queen’s chitin. He kicked the Dungeon Lord off of his mount. Ed’s flaming sword snuffed out as he struck the floor. Lisa screamed. The Dungeon Lord tried weakly to crawl away, leaving a trail of blood behind him. He didn’t get far before his strength left him. The green light in his eyes faded by the second.
