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by R J Triveri

The rustling sprang up all around them as the grass bent and parted for the creatures. Sally looked from side to side as the circle grew from a few tracings to a constant growing shape that became wider with each passing moment. “This isn’t right. They shouldn’t be spawning like this.”

  “Why not?” Athos asked loading a vial of his Pyrothium. If anything, he could break a hole for them to run.

  “Grass Fishers normally aren’t this aggressive. They aren’t pack hunters,” she pointed out as her drones dove into the edge of the circle. The buzzing grew, then slowed, then the silence of the grass ring reigned again. “Shit, too much damage.”

  Walter nodded and brought his screen into existence. Opening his map, he began to check the status of the area and began to read to the two, “For those hunting in the Sea of Grass tonight, you’ll be happy to know that as of midnight, we’ve increased the spawn rate and cut the taxes to zero until six am. However, safe havens have been disabled to compensate for the changes. Enjoy your night of happy hunting, and remember to beware the hordes. Thanks can be forwarded to your neighborhood Suit guild master, Paul.”

  It was his fault.

  The thought rang through as Athos shot his incendiary cocktail into the grass and scorched a hole, only to have the creatures look back at him. Swimming in not the grass, but the air that was left in the wake of the fire. “Shit.”

  Looking between the two, Walter set the tone as his voice raged. “The Suits reset the rules! We need to get out of here! Now!”

  The Battle of Queen Farm

  Damage Received - 92% integrity remaining

  (Party) Athos Aramis: Damned fish! Athos accidentally spit across the private chat as another bit at his heels. There were just too many of them to shoot, and their newly ranked integrity exceeded his Pyrothium’s damage as another orb of fire and fury died behind him. Though it wasn’t by much judging from the impact of Walter’s fist and the flash of white pixels that followed, but it was more than enough to create a problem. A message from Sally flashed across the screen as the gates of the homestead approached.

  (Party) Sally Queen: Just run, Athos. We don’t have much longer until we get to the house.

  Not a step later, another flashed.

  (Party) Walter Queen: Don’t relax and don’t stop, you two! It’s not going to get any easier when we do.

  It was starting to scare Athos that Walter was the voice of reason. To him, when the words of a man who decided that going down a hill without breaks was a good idea became the voice you trusted, things were going from worse to Hell in a hand-basket.

  His integrity dropped again as a fisher caught his hand on the back swing.

  Damage Received - 89% integrity remaining

  He may have quickly knocked it away, but the others weren’t doing much better. Walter’s integrity was a bit lower than his own, and Sally’s had just taken a drop. None of them were near the halfway point, but that could quickly change. Their only hope was to pass into the safe zone of the Queen’s farm. Walter’s words nagged at him though, why wouldn’t it get any easier? The idea quickly jumped from a thought to words.

  (Party) Athos Aramis: Why?

  To him, it was a valid question, but as they crossed the threshold into the homestead, the answer was quick to show itself. The school of fishers crossed the entrance just as easily at the three had. Pouring like water out of the grasslands and onto the trimmed grasses and roads of the farm, the school quickly began to spread out. Athos didn’t need an answer to it anymore as Walter led the three through the front door and slammed it shut. The sounds of fisher bodies pounding against the door and walls followed for a moment before becoming silent once more.

  Sitting on the stairs rather than moving to the couches, Walter sighed. “Damn Suits.”

  Sally looked at Athos, then her father before a few worried words passed her lips. “I’m going to check on Mom.”

  Walter seemed as though he was going to say something, but stopped himself and nodded. With that, Sally squeezed passed her father and bounded up the stairs leaving the pair alone for a bit. “Damn them.”

  “Walter?”

  “The Suits, the fishers, damn them both.” He looked at Athos with emotions running through his face as the pounding began again. “They know we’re in here.”

  The alchemical arm had already figured as much when the pounding continued. “It’ll be alright,” he managed after a moment. Every fiber of his coded being told him it wasn’t going to end well, but the best he could do was put on a brave front. All the while, his hand was still clutching his Magus. Almost like a stress toy, the soft, pink grip was comforting to squeeze.

  Opening his inventory, Walter’s fingers drove through his windows before it closed again. A slurry of anger, betrayal, and a bubbling of sadness washed over his face as he buried it in his hands. A moment later, the reason pried itself from his mouth. “At six am, the field rules will reset, Athos. That means we’ve got a little under five hours to weather the storm.”

  Five hours? It might as well have been five days at that rate, Athos thought as he tried to stay positive. “Five hours is a long time,” he agreed, but his mind raced from one option to another as Walter interrupted his thought process.

  “And that door won’t last for one. It wasn’t built to survive a siege. Honestly, the walls might not either. I can’t remember the last time Sally checked the integrity. It’s been three months at least…”

  That wasn’t what he was hoping to hear. “Can’t you check it from in here?”

  He shook his head. “It’s not my profession. If you want to ask me about something, ask about a cake or flower and I can, but this…” his hands motioned all around him, “wasn’t built with flour or grown from a seed.”

  His attitude, his personality… was this really the Walter he had befriended? The gunslinger of an alchemist wasn’t going to be deterred that easily. “Then we’ll get Sally.”

  He looked at Athos. “And she’ll do what? Her tools are outside in the barn.”

  His mind raced past his logic as he spoke. “I can get them.”

  Walter waved it off as another barrage of thuds crashed against the door. “You? You don’t even have any armor. You’ll be mauled to death in less than a minute,” he helpfully reminded Athos. “Besides, you don’t even own it. None of the interfaces will even bother to open for you without her around.”

  “Well, can’t Sally come with me?”

  He firmly looked at Athos before he shook his head. “I’d rather die than risk losing her. At least upstairs, she’s safe with her mother.”

  Without her skills or equipment, Athos’s plans were starting to dry up. So, he sat against the door, feeling each beat of the fishers behind it. His mind raced, trying to figure out something like he was sure Walter was until a message flashed across the group window in his vision.

  (Party) Sally Queen: You’re both way too loud. We can hear you through the walls. Dad, he has a point, but you’re right. Athos, get up here. Alone. Dad, brace the door to supplement the integrity with whatever you can until Athos tells you to open it!

  Walter seemed as confused as Athos as the two looked at each other across the small entry way. A little fear entered Athos’s eyes as he tried to think of something, anything to say, and failed. He simply settled for leaving a silence between the two of them. Walter nodded as if knowing any words he could say would fail him. Whatever was about to happen, Athos got the distinct feeling neither of them were going to like it. Walter hoisted himself up and moved into the living room to move anything that wasn’t nailed down, and Athos dashed upstairs to the beat of the fishers pounding against the wooden door.

  As his feet fell on the landing of the top floor, he saw Sally waving him into another room at the end of the hall. His feet picked up the pace and brought him into a room where the young woman and her mother were waiting. Though Sandra had the support of her daughter, she was no less frightening at that moment. The older woman was on her feet holding w
hat seemed to be a large, curved blade. Even from his distance, Athos could see the bejeweled hilt and the fine, glowing blue etching scrawled across the blade’s faces reflecting its own ghostly light. It was almost as elegant looking as it was deadly. It was such an odd sight that Athos barely noticed the door closing behind him.

  “I will not let my daughter go out there with an alchemist,” Sandra began as Sally let her handle her own weight, the blade seeming to offset her only so much. “Even with a dual class, you aren’t strong enough to protect her.”

  A moment later, a new message flashed across his screen:

  Party Leader - Sandra Queen has removed Walter Queen from the party.

  He felt a pang of confusion rise then die at the message and her voice. “I can try.”

  Walter Queen => Athos Aramis: What the hell is going on up there?

  Athos wanted to answer, but he had no idea.

  “Did he message you too?” Sandra tried to smile but only succeeded in lightening her face a slight bit as she looked at her daughter standing nearby. “He’d get too worked up if he knew what we had planned.” She tried again, and a smile managed just to crack across her cheeks. “But did you know Sally said the same thing? Despite how different you two are, she does have some respect for you, but this isn’t about you or her. If she dies on the way, there’s no way to save the rest of us. If you die, she can still work with the materials at hand to cut off the stairs.”

  Sally seemed a little preoccupied as she spoke. “The walls will hold well past six, but the doors and windows won’t. I just can’t see another way to do this.”

  It made sense to Athos. “Okay. Then we can just move everyone upstairs.”

  The younger of the two shook her head. “The fishers will eventually make their way up on the rails the stairs rested on. It’ll just delay them.”

  There seemed to be more to her words. “So…?”

  His attention was kidnapped as the blade flashed again when Sandra held it up to eye level. “This is Flusica. She may have been discovered by me, but she was specifically enchanted to make my gladiator fights more realistic.”

  The way she held herself and her blade, Athos didn’t like where this was going. “Okay…”

  “You see, when wounds can heal instantly, the meaning of violence is lost on some people. Humans begin to think that everything is just some game. That the world here isn’t real and that life doesn’t really matter for those around them.”

  The pounding down below only got worse as Athos grew uneasy. “And that helps us how?”

  She flourished the blade as if it had no weight. “The interfaces won’t work for you, but they will for her.” Her eyes darted to her daughter, who held her head to the side, looking away from Athos and her mother. “Sally and I talked about it. I don’t condone it; however, she is right.”

  The unease grew in his heart as she continues to speak. “About?”

  “About you needing her to follow through with this absurd plan,” Sandra finished as she flourished the blade in her hand again. “Once I do this, you’ve got around ten minutes to get to her equipment and get back.”

  Athos only felt more confused as he looked at the blade. “Do what? What the hell are you talking about?”

  As if she were about to point out something exceedingly obvious, Sally sighed. “My mother is going to cut off my arm, and you’re going to use it to trigger the interfaces to return to my inventory.”

  “What!” Athos felt his voice rise before he spoke again. “That’s insane!”

  Sandra nodded. “Maybe a little, but Flusica can dismember an avatar with its enchantment. Since it is still hers, the limb is still identified as her. As long as you get it back to her within ten minutes, I can reattach it to her like nothing happened.”

  “It won’t be that bad,” Sally assured, and before Athos could say anything, she looked at him and tried to smile. “It’ll just be arming you for the situation.”

  It was like a needle popping a balloon. Her simple words, that one joke, took all the fight out of him as he looked at her. “You’re seriously going to make a joke like that?”

  She only nodded. “I’d make more, too, but we don’t have time, Athos. When you get there, just use my hand to touch the interface on the tool bench and the woodpile. That should be all I need for this.”

  The alchemical arm looked from her to Sandra before he took it all in. “Ten minutes?”

  “Ten minutes, and that’s all you have,” Sandra answered. “It won’t hurt her but bring her arm back in one piece.” Her eyes seemed to wander for a moment before she spoke again. “And don’t tell Walter. This was her idea, she’ll tell him. You’ve got other things to worry about.”

  “You’re sure?” he asked looking at Sally.

  Sally’s face was uneasy, but she seemed to be confident as she nodded. No tears gathered in her eyes, nothing shook her, so he tried to do the same. He nodded and Sally held out her arm to her mother.

  Muttering a skill command under her breath, Sandra’s mother brought the blade down quickly as a trail of blush light followed in its wake. With a single swing, a scream echoed throughout the room. Sally’s arm fell to the floor with a sound all too familiar to Athos as her body followed. A moment later, a time appeared in the corner of his vision under Sally’s integrity bar, which had taken quite the hit down to well below the eighty percent mark.

  “You said it wouldn’t hurt her!” Athos cried at Sandra before Flusica vanished back into her inventory. The woman seemed ready to speak again before her daughter interrupted.

  “Take it and go!” Sally screamed back as she struggled back to her feet before nearly collapsed back onto the ground as white light streamed from the wound in infinitesimally small squares and triangles.

  A banging came quickly on the door, words were angry, incoherently upset with fatherly rage as the lock held fast before another message flashed:

  Walter Queen => Athos Aramis: Athos! What is going on in there! Why isn’t anyone answering me!

  “Go, Athos!” Sandra commanded. Athos grabbed the arm and began to turn back towards the door before Sandra stopped him and pointed to the far end of the room. “Use the window. You’ll take some damage, but it’s the easiest way out. Go!”

  The pounding on the door continued. Questions rose in him, but there wasn’t time as a party message flashed in the window:

  Sally Queen - 72% integrity - 9:45 until limb fragmentation

  They didn’t want Walter to stop him or slow him down, and Athos was expendable. With a grim nod, he turned towards the window, opened it, and jumped down into the active hunting zone.

  Being Handy

  The rush of air was exhilarating as he tried to brace himself, but the ground was much less so.

  Damage Received - 80% integrity remaining.

  Despite how much quickly the ground had rushed at him, Sandra was right. The damage wasn’t nearly as bad as he had thought. Then again, it was only two floors up. He only had a moment to get his bearings as he heard the window close above him. He wasn’t immediately mobbed, so the fishers must have congregated near the front. The sound of rushing wind without the cool breeze was enough to tell him that a few still managed to spot him and the tasty snack he carried.

  Doing his best to ignore them, he pointed himself at the barn and ran as fast as his body would let him. The wind pushed against his skin, his coat rustled in the breeze, and his bag flopped against him as he did his best to avoid any of the fishers, but their telltale sign only grew louder as he ran further away from the house. Opening his inventory, he deposited the arm for safe keeping. To his great dismay as his face began to quickly approach the ground, a rouge fisher had been making a b-line for his leg and taken a large bite into his flesh.

  Damage Received - 78% integrity remaining.

  “Damn it!” loudly escaped from his lips before he collided with the ground. All the while, the fisher continued to gnaw on his leg sending waves of pain through his a
vatar as his integrity continued to drop.

  Damage Received - 76... 74… 72% integrity Remaining.

  His reflexes were still charged from the buff, and his gun could draw and aim faster than ever. Switching his ammo in a fast moment, he pressed the barrel against the head of the lone fisher and fired and echoing shot that ripped through the body and then left him with a burst of glowing white light. A moment of silence was soon broken by the growing sound of the wind on a still night.

  Sally Queen - 70% integrity - 8:50 until limb fragmentation

  Realizing his error, he picked up the pace and made a mad dash back towards the barn. He had never been so excited to see a barn before in his life, and he doubted he ever would be again as its welcoming blue siding invited him into the open door. As soon as he got close enough, a message flashed in the group screen from Sandra.

  (Party) Sandra Queen: Athos, I can see you from here. Once you get inside, the woodpile should be to the right, the tools to the left. Once you use her hand to touch it, she’ll do the rest here, but don’t remove it until you get the message, okay?

  (Party) Athos Aramis: So, just hold her severed arm against it?

  (Party) Sandra Queen: Her hand, not her arm, but yes. Pretty much that’s it.

  A moment later, his hand aimed and shot at another fisher, wiping it from the world in another glorious explosion of pixels and white with a loud boom. With a pair of Pyrothium left, it didn’t make him happy to have to keep making so much noise, but the more he drew away, the better it would be for the degrading walls and door. A thought occurred to him as a morbid grin crossed his face. As he ran into the barn, his hands cupped around his mouth.

  “Hey!” his voice boomed through the quiet night as his gun raised to the sky and shot in quick secession. “Over here!”

  Slowly, but surely, the fishers were drawn to him like a moth to a flame as he switched gears and shot a triple shot of Sol Arum into the school as it approached. As soon as the vials splashed into the school, he holstered the weapon and pulled the barn doors shut. It might not have been much, but the doors of the barn hadn’t been attacked yet, and with the school after him, he could buy them a little time.