by Oliver Mayes
“How much did you tell him? The last thing I need in the middle of all this is to get killed by him before we even start the plan.”
Lillian didn’t immediately reply. She just stared at him, the noise of the clock becoming more prominent with each tick.
“Andrew is very interested in helping us. But he doesn’t trust you any more than you trust him and he’s not a huge fan of Hammertime’s, either. It was difficult to convince him this wasn’t a trick, given our history, but I showed him some footage to bring him around. My footage of our failed attempt. As well as some of yours, actually.”
She wasn’t apologizing for it. She wasn’t rushing to explain herself. She was just sat there, letting him absorb the information. Was she trying to upset him? Why was she baiting him like this? The clock ticked onward and Damien sat there, holding himself back. Until he could no longer.
“I thought we were friends. Why are you trying to make me angry on purpose?”
“Okay, so we’re friends. What’s my second name?”
Tick, tick, tick, tick…
“What’s my ambition? What do I want to achieve in life?”
Tick, tick, tick, tick…
“Tell me everything you know about my past; how many siblings I have. When I decided to be a medical student, and why. How long I was with Andrew, before everything went wrong. What I enjoy besides playing Saga Online. Tell me anything you know about me at all.”
Damien leaned forward, struggling to keep his voice level.
“I don’t know anything about you besides what you’ve told me.”
“That’s exactly right. And I’ve told you nothing. But you seem to have built an image of me in your head. One where I give, and you take. That was fine when you needed help, but the crisis with your mom is over. She is safe, and you have a stable future.”
Her voice had been very calm throughout, but now it was starting to build. And unlike his own choices, her every move and word was well thought out, crystal clear and full of weight. All the weightier in this room without distractions.
“You’re still completely focused on what you need. And your needs will never end. They just come one after the other, all in a neat little row, lined up to infinity, that which you’ve just fulfilled immediately replaced by whatever it is you need next. I saw Andrew do this when the competition consumed him. Now the same is happening to you directly, at my expense. Your needs are more important than my needs, even when I’m helping you fulfill yours. Do you know what that makes us?”
Tick, tick, tick, tick…
“Allies. As long as we want the same thing, no problem. But if it doesn’t benefit you directly, or it has even a slightly negative impact on you, you immediately become hostile. You’re still doing it, right now: you didn’t even bother asking which part of the footage I showed Andrew. You rushed to confront me, and I’d rather not respond in kind. It clouds my judgment and makes me less than what I am. So we’re going to slow this, all the way down, and proceed as allies. Not friends.”
Damien had never been broken up with before. He’d never had a girlfriend before to afford the possibility. He imagined this is what it felt like. It was not pleasant. Lillian took him in, watching his face carefully for a few seconds, before proceeding in the same vein as though nothing had been said.
“I showed Andrew the part where Magnitude was talking to you about making a deal. Once he got through the first bit, you know, the part where you lumped him in with Magnitude and insulted both of them, he was surprised. He thought you’d take the deal. He’s a pretty easy read for me, I may have even detected some respect.”
“I don’t much care about the respect of someone I don’t respect myself. I’m assuming there’s a point to this, besides telling me we’re not friends anymore, and I’d like you to get to it quickly.”
“He wants something in return for his assistance. The bag he insists you stole from him.”
Oh. So that’s what this was. Lillian’s grand scheme to bring Aetherius into the lineup would cost him the best item he had. Which he got fair and square, by the way.
“And had you already decided we were allies, rather than friends, before you agreed to that deal?”
“The deal started with him saying he wanted to kill you in a widely publicized duel and for you to post some unflattering messages afterwards on your own wall, as well as returning the bag, but I haggled him down to something I thought you might agree to. On my terms, he only gets the bag if the operation is a success and we get past the wall and out of immediate danger. I haven’t told him when and where we’re meeting yet, so his ability to interfere with our operation in the event of him not joining us is limited. If you don’t want to give him the bag, I will relay that to him and continue negotiations.”
“Why would you need to meet with him after this if I say no? In fact, what if I don’t want him on the team at all? We can manage this just fine by ourselves and as far as I’m concerned he’s a dangerous, unwanted presence. Why should I be the one who sacrifices the most valuable thing I have for something I don’t even regard as a benefit?”
Lillian shifted in her seat and glanced away from him, the first time she’d moved since they started talking. She scrunched her eyes shut and refocused on the floor, then stared at him even more piercingly.
“Frankly, Damien, his abilities make him more valuable to our objective than you. I’d rather have both of you on side, but if that becomes impossible I will strive to make sure he is on board so we have the highest possible chance of success, even at your expense. If it’s a straight choice between you and him, I’ll choose him. If you’re not prepared to part with the bag, I will try to find some other way of coercing him to join us. If that includes you not being invited, which I imagine it will, that’s what will happen.”
“You’re not serious? After everything he’s done to us, you’re prioritizing him over me?”
“I’m not debating this with you. You have a straight choice between agreeing to hand over the bag, in return for which you are guaranteed a spot on the team, or refusing and dealing with whatever the consequences of that decision may be. I didn’t have to tell you what those would probably look like, but I did. Mainly because I’m hoping against hope you have some common sense you’ve been keeping hidden. Decide.”
There was no way out of it. He needed to get through the gate, and he couldn’t do it by himself. The bag was extremely useful to him, but not nearly as important as getting on with his quest. The main problem he had with this exercise was making a concession to Aetherius. He consoled himself with the knowledge that if they didn’t manage to break through he wouldn’t have to.
“Yes. If we get to the Outer Ring, I’ll give the bag to Aetherius.”
“No. You’ll give him the bag if we get past the wall and out of immediate danger. Look at me and say it clearly.”
“I will give Aetherius the bag if we get past the wall and out of immediate danger.”
“Thank you for your time, and your cooperation. Go away.”
It was past 3am. Damien was on his way to the rendezvous point, bleary-eyed and not in the best of moods. The preparations were all complete. He was meeting with Lillian and her group at the entrance to the zone so they could travel together. They’d link up with Hammertime and his group near the border to Magnitude’s wall. Aetherius would be the last to arrive, since Lillian had diverted him to a separate location as a bare minimum countermeasure. It probably wasn’t necessary, due to what had been promised. Which, in addition to the lack of sleep, was why Damien wasn’t feeling particularly chirpy.
Things were not looking too hot. It had taken six hours to get his minion count and Soul Reserve back up by himself. What made it worse was knowing it could’ve been avoided. Potentially. Only Damien would likely never know. When he’d first logged back in, he’d been given an option he hadn’t considered: he could respawn in his base, in Camelot (certain death) or where he’d died. He could go straight back to the locati
on he’d made it to, beyond the wall.
Except, he knew it was a false option. If Archimonde was camping that location, he’d be dead on arrival. Besides which, by that point he’d already pledged his support to Lillian and Hammertime’s offensive. Even if Archimonde and Magnitude had overlooked this, which he sincerely doubted, he’d be leaving Lillian and her party to fend for themselves. She’d take that pretty poorly, given the talk they’d had prior to his login.
The biggest insult by some margin was that his body had not been looted. There probably hadn’t been enough of it left to loot by the time Archimonde was finished with it. Regardless of why, his enemies had forsaken the chance to break his Adept Robes gear set. That’s how nice they were being. They may as well have patted him on the head.
It was with a heavy heart that Damien arrived at the rendezvous point with two hell hounds, a succubus and seven imps in tow. His base was completely defenseless, his minions either integrated into his own Soul Summon Limit or dismissed for soul energy. He’d filled his Soul Reserve to 10/10 and left his Soul Summon Limit 10 points clear in anticipation of summoning an incubus, although he’d resorted to dismissing the incubus in his base to acquire the last few souls. He wouldn’t be the one to get them spotted early and ruin the whole plan by trying to walk that hulking thing across the zone unnoticed. Although he didn’t have much hope for the plan to begin with.
One of his hounds snarled and Damien followed the direction it was looking in as Legolias, one of Lillian’s party, stepped out of the trees and beckoned him to follow. Damien stepped in and found all four stood at a fire: Legolias, the scout-spec ranger. Judgementday, the paladin healer. MrHealyFunTimeYeah, the support priest. And Lillian, who required no introduction. She decided Damien didn’t need any introduction either, inviting him to join the group through an in-game message and setting off without a word. Legolias neatly leapt between the trees, placing himself in the highest branches and matching his leader’s pace from fifty feet above the ground. The other two ran a bit to catch up while Damien consigned himself to the rear guard. He assumed that if Lillian ‘expected’ anything of him, she’d make it known.
They had to stop a few times and wait for Legolias to find a path around when he reported ambushes in the trees ahead. It went some way toward highlighting just how desperate players were to join the Carlisle-Elite, that they would wait for passersby at nearly 4am. Fortunately, Legolias seemed very good at fulfilling his role. He had to be. With five players in their group, bulldozing through and expecting people to move was not an option. Especially since there was a hefty reward for killing all of them now. Occasionally, they even ran into some mobs that had found the time and space to respawn in the early hours of the morning. They were circumvented as well. Lillian only had one thing on her mind, and it wasn’t petty grinding.
It took a while, but the faster speed from having a smaller group made up for the rerouting issues until Lillian brought them to a halt with a single closed fist. She typed a few messages and soon they were joined by Hammertime’s team. Aetherius was already with them. It was hard to tell who in the group looked more upset by this development. Damien was pretty unhappy himself, but personally he’d have put his credits on Lillian, even though he couldn’t see her face. He could certainly hear her hissing at Hammertime.
“Why is he here? He was supposed to be the last to join us.”
“He found us of his own volition. It didn’t seem practical to send him away to have him return later, although I assure you that was my inclination. Especially since he’s already fallen out with my gunslinger.”
Damien drew level with the rest of Rising Tide, leaving his demons behind, and took the second party in: Hammertime, the berserking behemoth. Trinytea, a dual-pistol gunslinger. Sabrina, the support mage. OhHolyLight, the Godhammer paladin healer. And, of course, Aetherius. The trickster. He was looking a lot less smug and a lot more uncomfortable than Damien had thought he would. That was good. He caught sight of Lillian’s face, wondering if she’d keep her cool now she was face to face with Aetherius in game. Her ire, much to Damien’s surprise, was directed not at Aetherius but the gunslinger.
Lillian paced toward her, her fists balled up and her shoulders hunched. Trinytea backed away and Hammertime came to stand between them. Lillian turned on him instead. Everyone’s hands shifted to their weapons.
“What—,” she enunciated with utter contempt, “—is she doing here?”
“She’s one of my best, and has remained faithful and hardworking ever since she left Rising Tide. If we’re entertaining both Daemien and Aetherius, I’m sure you can manage her.”
“She didn’t leave Rising Tide. I threw her out. She knows she isn’t welcome in my company, or Legolias’s, or even Aetherius’s for that matter. You don’t strike me as incompetent, Hammertime. This wasn’t a simple mistake.”
“No, it wasn’t. We’re shorthanded and the choices below her were untrustworthy, unfitting or both. Your reaction justifies my choice to withhold her identity, but only if you don’t push this any further. Times have changed. Your vendetta against Trinytea counts for nothing against the challenge that lies ahead.”
Lillian stared at him, her chest rising and falling as the rest of them held their breath. Lillian returned Hammertime’s chiseled, disdainful gaze.
“It wasn’t a vendetta. It was a promise, which you’ve maneuvered me into breaking. You say you brought her because she’s trustworthy, but you’ve proven yourself untrustworthy in so doing. Not a good start to this alliance.”
“Wow, and I thought I was unpopular. Everyone here hates each other so much we better divvy up who fights who before we get started. Dibs on Damien.”
Everyone turned and stared at Aetherius. Who threw his hands up and shrugged.
“Don’t look at me, I’m not the one who assembled this ‘team’.”
Legolias dropped down from the trees right next to him, short-swords drawn, and scissored them over his throat. Nobody rushed to defend the mage.
“If this doesn’t work out, we’ll all be in line to kill you first.”
“Cool, very confidence-inspiring. I’d like to get through the wall before the next streaming competition, though, so I promise to shut up if you lot promise to pull up your pants and stop acting like children. Everybody wins.”
He looked at Lillian imploringly, motioning to the blades against his neck. She rolled her eyes, but motioned for Legolias to leave him be.
“Those are favorable terms. Everyone gather round and we’ll go over the plan.”
After everyone had figured out where to sit without being next to a mortal enemy, the briefing began. It took about ten minutes, much of it repetition as players took it in turns to stifle their yawns, but by the time they were done the plan looked good. Better than good, actually. While it wasn’t an ideal group of ten, the players were all highly specialized and there were a wide variety of abilities and utilities to bring to bear. Some of which Damien hadn’t even heard of.
As the rest of them trudged toward the gate, still eyeing each other warily and choosing their walking partners with care, Damien pointed at the floor and summoned his incubus. Then he dug into his bag and grasped the weapon he’d commissioned Noigel to equip the incubus with and tipped the bag upside down, allowing the weapon to fall to the snow with a thud. It was a double-handed quauhololli. While the name was exotic, the weapon itself was crude and brutal, like the incubus itself: a huge orb of dense iron, strapped to the end of a long wooden shaft.
The armor choice was not armor at all. It was a simple leather harness, providing almost no protection. A niche item for transporting resources, the leather straps supported a large basket on the back where materials such as lumber, rocks, ore and loot could be collected and transported en masse. It had never been very useful to Damien, since he’d always relied on the Bag of Holding. He’d found a combat application for it instead.
If Damien was possessing the incubus, and the incubus was wielding a
massive two-handed weapon, that meant Damien needed to sort out travel arrangements. This was the best he could come up with at short notice. The incubus had equipped the harness, but try as it might, with its stamina rapidly depleting, it could not comfortably hold the weapon Noigel had crafted for it. It was simply too heavy.
Damien possessed the incubus and his ‘Nine-Tenths of the Lore’ trait doubled all its stats. He grabbed his vacant body with his new gargantuan hands and dropped it into the open top of his gathering bag first, then strained to pick up the weapon before resting it over his shoulder with one hand. The beast’s stamina stabilized, then rose back to 100%. Sorted.
Damien trudged his way to the rest of the group, Noigel corralling his minions to gather around him on either side. The players looked at Damien in alarm and made way as he took his place at the front of the line, next to Hammertime. The guild leader gave him a quick once over, looking up at a player taller than him for the first time in a good long while, and nodded in satisfaction before bringing his attention back to the gate.
There were three major components to the plan, all with strict time frames. The first phase was actually reaching the gate through the no-man’s land, which spanned an area slightly longer than two football fields. The wall was manned by archers in the walls and ‘spear-chuckers’, as Lillian affectionately dubbed them, on the ramparts.
The second phase was getting through the gate. Breaking it down was fairly implausible, since it occupied the approximate dimensions of a four-story house and according to Lillian’s footage was made of wooden beams arrayed four meters thick, reinforced with steel. Once they started hitting the gate, their presence would be noticed without a doubt and the timer would begin. If things went well.
The final phase would be destroying the Portal Stone to prevent reinforcements from arriving, which would only work if the second phase were to be completed within about thirty seconds. That would allow any Carlisle-Elites who were already online and ready to go time to join, but at 4am on a Monday morning they were counting on those players being in short supply. After a minute, they could count on offline, serious players arriving, having been informed by the guild alert system.
