The Once King

by Rachel Aaron

  “No way, I’ve got a super-sweet and way better idea,” NekoBaby said, bouncing with excitement. “I’m going to need a caster convention up here. Also, everyone else is gonna want to stand waaaaaay back. Like, a hundred feet.”

  Nodding, Tina called for all the Roughnecks’ casters to come forward. Everyone else she ordered to the minimum safe distance. Then she had them move back an extra fifty feet, because Neko. While the rest of the players were shuffling, Neko and Richard divided the Roughneck casters into five teams. Four pairs of Naturalists and Sorcerers—one for the top and bottom hinge of each door—and a fifth team of Clerics that Neko designated as “emergency blast shield.” When everyone was in position, Richard walked back to his group and look expectantly at Tina.

  “Ready,” he called.

  “Great!” she yelled back, reaching up to cover her ears with her hands. “Knock ‘em down!”

  The roasty smell of fire magic filled the corridor as Richard and the other Sorcerers began collecting smoldering red magic in their hands. As they worked, the Naturalists waved their staffs around in circles, creating huge whirlpools of glowing water that they fed in streams through the tiny cracks where the doors met the walls. When the gaps for the hinges were absolutely full of water, Neko gave Richard a thumbs up. He nodded back and raised his staff, signaling the Sorcerers to unleash the magic they’d been building.

  All at once, four huge gouts of white-hot flame hit the four corners of the doors. The intense magical fire superheated the stone instantly, turning the black rock red, then orange. It was getting even brighter when Tina felt a rumble under her feet.

  “Oh, crap!” Neko said, launching herself toward the Clerics. “Blast shield up! Dive! Dive!”

  Golden light filled the tunnel as the Clerics erected their magical shields over the casters. As for Tina and the others, they were forced to hit the decks as the giant stone doors exploded, blown outward in a shower of stone shrapnel and superheated water.

  Tina kept her head down, using her armor to protect SilentBlayde as thousands of needle-sharp rock shards peppered the hallway. When she raised her head again, the giant stone doors were gaping away from the wall at perilous angles, their faces so spiderwebbed with cracks they looked ready to crumble.

  “Wow, guys,” Tina said, awestruck by the destruction. “That was big even for us.”

  Richard’s flat expression showed a glimmer of pride. “Flash-heating water in an enclosed space results in a cavitation collapse due to the rapid expansion of gasses.”

  “He means we caused a steam explosion,” Neko translated. “Rock couldn’t handle that shit!”

  “Good job,” Tina said, impressed.

  “It was Neko’s idea,” Richard said quickly, clearly far more concerned with accuracy than any sense of humility.

  Shocked, everyone turned to stare at the cat girl.

  “What?” Neko cried defensively. “I know things! I’ve gotten past way harder puzzles than this in D&D. My regular DM is a fucking sadist. The Once King needs to up his game to at least an adamantium door collar and dwarven time-skipping locks before I’m gonna have trouble.”

  “Word,” was all Tina could say. She offered Neko a fist bump. “So now we just push them down and walk in?”

  They all stared at the crumbling hundred-ton doors.

  “Not it,” Killbox said.

  “Ladies, please,” Neko said, swinging her staff like a golf club. “Gust!”

  Magical wind exploded from NekoBaby’s weapon as she sent the Naturalist’s PvP knockback spell sailing down the hallway. The winds crashed into the unbalanced, unsupported, thoroughly cracked slabs of rock at hurricane force, sending them tipping over into Sanguilar’s room. As they toppled like redwoods, Tina realized far too late that she had no idea what was beneath Sanguilar’s room or if the floor could take the impact.

  For once, though, the impenetrable nature of the Once King’s fortress worked in their favor. The crash shook the whole damn mountain, but the floor didn’t break as the doors collapsed into two huge piles of rubble. Waving the rock dust away from her face, Tina let out a huge sigh of relief. She was lifting her hand to order everyone forward again when she spotted something in the dark ahead of them. A lot of something.

  “Hold!” she yelled, squinting through the billowing dust.

  The inside of Sanguilar’s boss chamber was uncharacteristically dark. The huge room—one of the biggest in the entire fortress—was normally lit by red fonts of enchanted blood and the ever-present ghostfire torches. Now, though, the giant doorway they’d just cleared looked like a hole into deep space, complete with hundreds of glittering stars. Stars in pairs, all standing at roughly head level.

  “Tina,” SB whispered, grabbing her arm.

  He didn’t have to tell her. Tina was already drawing her sword, moving her shield in front of her as she stared at the hundreds of blue-white spots flickering in the dark ahead of them. Flickers of ghostfire, burning in what had once been eyes.

  “Roxxy,” Garrond demanded, coming to stand beside her. “What monsters lie before us?”

  Tina squinted, letting her eyes adjust to the dark. Back in the game, the Sanguilar fight had included legions of zombies that poured out of holes in the walls. Every time a zombie died, Sanguilar got health back. To beat him, the Roughnecks had had an off-tank team sit in the back of the room and keep all the zombies contained while Tina lured Sanguilar to the opposite corner, where the rest of the raid could kill him safely away from his reinforcements.

  With that in mind—and Sanguilar on another continent—the obvious answer was that the ghostfire eyes belonged to the zombies the Blood General had left behind. But they hadn’t seen any undead the whole way up here, and these figures were bigger than the little trash zombies had been. They were also armed and armored, their shapes bulky in the dark. Now that her eyes were adjusting, Tina could make out the faint glow of enchanted gear. Really, really nice enchanted gear, which wasn’t normally something you saw on zombies.

  It was, however, a feature of players.

  “Oh shit,” she said, taking a step back. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  “Those are raiders,” SilentBlayde whispered, his voice shaking in horror. “Undead raiders.”

  Tina cursed herself for an idiot. How had she not seen this coming? She’d seen other raids going into the dungeon the whole time she’d been trying to get her own group together. She’d heard the screams coming down the mountain the day of the transition. Hell, Richard had been here and escaped. He’d flat-out told her that all the other players raiding the Dead Mountain had died, but death was just the beginning in this place. The Once King hadn’t left his castle unguarded when he’d sent his army to Bastion. He’d saved the best for himself.

  “Shit!” she swore again, lifting her shield against the sea of ghostfire eyes staring back at her.

  “You’re saying those are players?” Garrond asked, his voice afraid for the first time she’d ever heard.

  Tina didn’t have the heart to tell him it was so much worse than that. Those weren’t just any players. They were the guilds who’d been raiding the DMF at the time the transition hit. Every single one of those players was level eighty and wearing gear that was at least as good as her current Roughnecks possessed, probably better. These were the groups Tina had been competing with for world firsts. They’d been at the top of the game, and they were all soaked in ghostfire.

  “Order of the Golden Sun, to the doors!” Garrond cried, raising his gleaming sword. “Keep them bottled! If we let them get into the hall, they’ll surround us!”

  “Wait!” Tina yelled, but her voice was drowned out by the roar of the soldiers as they thundered after their commander. The Roughnecks had to hug the wall to keep from getting trampled as the Order filled the broken doorway. On the other side, ghostfire eyes flared in the dark, and then the air was choked with the smell of blood and the screams of dying men.

  “Fuck!” Tina stomped her armored foot. “T
his is a disaster! Those poor Order bastards don’t stand a chance against geared raiders. He’s feeding them into a meat grinder!”

  “How many are in there?” Frank asked, his face pale.

  Tina had no idea. Fortunately, SilentBlayde was more observant.

  “I saw at least twelve shield-bearing Knights at the front,” he said quickly. “It was a bit chaotic, but they looked like they were in groups of two.”

  Tina nodded as she saw where he was going. “Main-tank and off-tank pairings. Good thinking.” Then she gritted her teeth. “Shit, that’s six raids at least.”

  By this point, the entire Order army was pressed into the door to Sanguilar’s room, blocking the way with their bodies. Literally, in some places. The golden troops were tough NPCs, but their gear was only as good as the Deadlands entry quest items. They were better than Bastion’s knights, but they were nothing compared to players in DMF gear.

  “Ugh,” NekoBaby said, ears back. “I’ve never seen the concept of a ‘meat shield’ used quite that literally.”

  “Maybe Garrond can handle it,” SilentBlayde said hopefully. “He’s a raid boss himself and has two thousand guys with him. Six full raids is still only about three hundred people. If he pushes into the room, he can surround the players and crush them with superior numbers.”

  From the orders he was shouting over the din, it seemed like that was exactly what Commander Garrond was trying to do, and despite the bloodshed, the Order was making headway. They’d already made it over the crushed doors and into the dark room, which was now lit up by the paladin’s gleaming holy sword. Watching from the back line felt wrong, but Tina had promised Garrond she’d hold the Roughnecks in reserve for the Once King. She was determined to make good on that, but then flashes lit up the dark as the undead players’ abilities started going off. Soon, the doorway was full of Sorcerers’ Fire Tornadoes and volleys of Acid Arrows from the Rangers. The attacks ravaged the Order’s lines, filling the air with the stench of charred flesh.

  “That’s it,” Tina said, hefting her shield. “He’s being slaughtered. We need to get in there.”

  “What makes you think you can take it any better?” asked a smug voice behind her.

  Tina closed her eyes with a curse. “You don’t want to start this shit with me right now, Cinco,” she said, turning around to see that Red Sands had finally made it up here from their spot at the rear. But while he could never look not-arrogant, CincoDeMurder at least didn’t look deliberately antagonistic as he walked up to join her.

  “I’m not starting anything,” he said, rising on his toes to get a better look at the slaughter in front of them. “I’m just stating facts. You guys are all DMF geared, but so are they. That means anything you do in there is gonna be an even fight at best. Even if you do win, you’ll be too shredded by the time it’s over to go on to the Once King.”

  Tina bit her lip. “Yeah, but—”

  A blast of golden light interrupted her, and her head whipped back around in time to see Sanguilar’s room lit up by hundreds of pillars of sunlight.

  “There goes Garrond’s mass rez,” SB said.

  “You mean ‘there goes our ace in the hole,’” Tina growled furiously. “Now we’re screwed!”

  “Not yet, but we will be if we keep wasting time,” Cinco said. “If the NPCs want to soak up the damage, let ‘em. We need to get through to the Once King before Garrond’s army breaks and we get overwhelmed.” He pointed at the door with his spear. “There. Go in the side and hug the wall, and we’ll see if we can’t get around.”

  After yesterday, Tina wasn’t inclined to do a damn thing Cinco said. But while he was definitely an asshole, he was still one of the best PvPers in the game, and strategically speaking, that wasn’t a half-bad idea. It was certainly better than standing here talking while all their backup died.

  “Let’s go!” Tina said, trusting the others to follow as she ran forward, clutching her shield tight. When she reached the rubble in the doorway, Tina leaped up the pile in one jump, landing on top of a six-foot-tall chunk of broken stone to see what they were in for.

  As she’d noted before, Sanguilar’s room was big. In this immense underground stone box, waves of golden troops repeatedly crashed and broke on not six but eight knots of undead players. Garrond’s mass resurrection spell had just gone off, but the ground was already littered again with the Order’s burned and broken bodies. She was trying to get a feel for just how many of their side were dead versus the enemy when Cinco grabbed her shoulder.

  “Change of plans!” he yelled over the carnage. “This fight’s already fucked!”

  “How do you know that?” she demanded. “We just got here!”

  “It’s fucking obvious!” he shouted, pointing at the growing piles of bodies. “The momentum’s lost! Garrond already tried to save it and failed. The whole plan’s FUBAR. We have to fall back!”

  “There’s no falling back from a Hail Mary play!” Tina roared, but it was hard to argue with what was happening right in front of her face.

  No matter how many of Garrond’s soldiers crashed into them, the undead players’ lines were rocks. Any damage the Order soldiers did was immediately erased by floods of healing ghostfire from the undead Naturalists and Clerics. Garrond’s troops had had a lower ratio of healers to begin with, and those they had already looked to be out of mana. Meanwhile, the undead raiders’ DPS was pouring abuse onto the Order’s back lines, taking out their reinforcements before they could even get to the front.

  Tina’s shoulders slumped as the reality of their situation finally hit her. It didn’t seem possible that everything had gone to hell so quickly. But even with Cinco tugging pointedly on her arm, she knew to her core that retreat wasn’t an option. Even if they could find somewhere safe to fall back, what was the point? As everyone had been saying for days now, they were this world’s last hope. King Gregory and his forces were desperately defending the Savanna right now, waiting for Tina and her raiders to keep their word. If the Roughnecks couldn’t kill the Once King right here, right now, everything was over.

  “Fuck it!” Tina yelled, pointing her sword at the door on the other side of the room, multiple raids away. “We’re going through!”

  “Are you crazy?” Cinco screamed.

  Tina left that for him to decide as she leaped off her vantage point and charged into the room. She didn’t look back to see if Cinco had followed, but from the shouting of her officers, she knew her Roughnecks had, and that was what mattered.

  Gritting her teeth, Tina pushed through the back lines of the Order’s troops. She had to hot-foot it over the bodies like an obstacle course just to get to the central section of the room. Behind her, her guildmates cursed and stumbled as the less agile classes tried to keep up. Tina knew she was going too fast, but she could already see the battle lines softening as the raiders’ superior damage started to win out over the Order’s numbers. If she didn’t make it before the Order folded, those raids would turn on her, and then it really would be Game Over.

  Scanning the battlefield for the safest route, Tina caught sight of Garrond. The four-skull commander towered over everyone else. He had two Assassins stabbing him in the back and a spear sticking through his right leg, but there were two dead player Knights on the ground in front of him, and he killed a Berserker as Tina watched, tearing the ax out of the player’s hands and slicing him in half with it. He spotted her as he finished, his face desperate and despairing before he hid his weakness behind a stony scowl. Sprinting through the chaos, it was all Tina could do to give him a running salute as she shot by.

  I’m sorry, Garrond.

  There was no chance to say it aloud, but from the look on his face as her raid thundered past, she knew he understood. The paladin had said over and over that he would gladly lay down his life to beat the Once King. Now he was getting a chance to prove it, not that knowing that made Tina feel any better about leaving him behind.

  Tearing her watering eyes away from t
he desperate commander, Tina forced herself to focus on her own fight. She was halfway across the room now, close enough to see the staircase at the back that led up to the Once King’s throne room. Or rather, the giant royal complex that ended at his throne room. For once, though, Tina was happy the fortress was so massive. All those fancy empty halls and giant doors would be good distance to put between her and the undead player army when they finished off the Order, especially if the Roughnecks could find something to collapse and block the way. First, though, they had to actually get out of here. But in a rare stroke of good fortune, the undead players seemed about as observant as normal undead, which was not very much. The dead raiders were so intent on wiping out Garrond and his troops that they didn’t even look at Tina’s army as they ran around the room behind them, pouring through the door at the back and up the ghostfire-lit stairs to the next tier.

  Refusing to celebrate such a bitter victory, Tina grimly led her strike force up and away from the battle as fast as she could. Thankfully, this was the part of the Dead Mountain she’d spent the most time in recently. She’d come up to these damn halls five nights a week while her raid had been working on killing the Once King, and despite all the new passages, she knew the way by heart.

  Careening down a black-carpeted hallway, Tina blasted past tapestries and ghostfire torches until she spotted her goal at last: the beautifully decorated wooden doors of the throne room. That was where the Once King fight started, and since he’d said they would fight “in the manner of the game,” she’d assumed it was where he’d be waiting for them now. The giant wooden doors with the wings carved into them were already opening on their own, but as she lifted her sword to signal her people to get ready, she saw what was inside.

  Tina slid to a halt, her sharp metal boots tearing up the rich black carpet. The throne room doors were open, but the throne itself—a twisted spire of Eclipsed Steel as big as a minivan—was empty. Instead, the room was full with yet another group of undead players. This was the worst one yet, because while every player in here was a DMF raider by definition, these ghostfire eyes shone out of a glittering array of top-tier gear. There was stuff in there that even she’d never gotten, but the real tell was the Knight standing in the front: a towering male stonekin wearing an exact copy of Tina’s gear right down to her almost-unique-in-the-world sword.