by Cheek, Jason
“Stop instigating them,” Shapo said a little louder than necessary, as the assault force went back to taking out the enemy sentry.
Surprisingly enough, there hadn’t been any players to fight during the entire assault. Shapo had thought they’d be mostly fighting against a group of holdouts battling to the very end like normal. You know, losers who couldn’t accept that they were being taken out by a larger guild, but instead, there’d just been an unbelievable amount of these mindless pets everywhere. Whoever had set them up was annoying as hell. The dickhead had two hundred of both the Water and Earth Elementals patrolling the fortress’ courtyard in groups of forty. They hadn’t managed to pull a single group of forty yet without aggro’ing another two groups at the same time, turning every simple fight into a marathon battle of attrition.
While the loss in levels wasn’t permanent, it was frustrating as hell in their current situation. And if that wasn’t enough of a pain in the ass, the freaking Elementals were now immune to their Lightning Strikes. In truth, the mindless creations had been hard enough to deal with as it was using magic, but now the raid was being forced to take the monstrosities down by melee damage alone, it was a complete pain in the ass. Shapo didn’t know what kind of Nightmare quest this dickhead had, but with ten players or less left, there should’ve only been a handful of sentries to deal with. Not this insane amount. Her attention was pulled back to the fight by a ragged cheer from the Fatal Midnight raid members as the Earth Elemental crumbled into a pile of minerals.
“Good job, Fatal Midnight,” Ortiz V shouted in raid chat. “That cleared the foyer, now let’s take the keep!”
It was about fucking time, Shapo thought as Ortiz V led the melee portion of the raid into the central keep. There’d only been twenty Earth Elementals guarding the room, but fucking A, that had been no joke. In her heart she knew this whole assault would have gone differently if these Fatal Midnight losers actually had a decent non-direct damage Nightmare tree like the Global Brutality guild’s and not buffing, which just irritated her that much more as she and her team joined the last half of the raid passing through the doorway. She was just approaching the archway to the central great room of the keep, when Chip N’dip, a Rogue/Assassin on her team, called out in annoyance.
“Really, more Water Elementals?”
“Why is it glowing?” Some faceless Fatal Midnight player commented in raid chat, as Roberto excitedly pushed his way into the room ahead of her shouting.
“It’s mine … it’s mine!”
“Don’t you dare blast that thing, Romperu,” Shapo warned her teammate, as Mister-Griefer glanced back to give her a dirty look.
On one level, she didn’t blame the Fatal Midnight guild leader for being annoyed. The new Water Elementals immunity to her people’s Lightning Strikes had an unpleasant side effect of making the bolt of lightning split into a number of tiny tendrils that shot off in multiple directions. While it didn’t cause much damage to the melee players being hit or do anything more than make your hands slightly numb, that was the effect only if there were enough melee attackers surrounding the targeted Water Elemental to split the streams with.
Otherwise, it was a different story altogether, Shapo thought with a silent chuckle, thinking back to what had happened the first time they’d blasted a Water Elemental next to a small group of Fatal Midnight players. The effect was actually quite beautiful and made her think of touching a Plasma Globe at the local Science Museum when she was a child. You know, besides laying out the whole team with a five minute stun.
“Look, there’s two more!” Cap’n Hoser, their team’s acting tank, called out excitedly. “Let’s hit them all at once!”
“I wish your people would stop doing that shit,” Mister-Griefer snarled, as she squeezed passed the upset man.
“Oh come on, there has got to be at least five hundred of your people in the room by now,” Shapo said, rolling her eyes in exasperation. “You know as well as I do that this is going to look cool as hell.”
“I just wish you’d stop using my people as guinea pigs,” Mister-Griefer ground out through his gritted teeth, while trying his best to not lose his temper.
“Oh come on,” Shapo said, letting out a throaty chuckle. “It’s not like there’s anything else for us to do if our Lightning magic can’t hurt these things.”
“Okay, on the count of three,” Roberto called out in raid chat.
“One,” Cap’n Hoser shouted.
“Two,” Chip N’dip said, a second later.
“Three,” Roberto said, a second before three Lightning Strikes flew out from her teammates hands just as Shapo was passing through the doorway. Instantly, there was a thunderous boom and a flash of bright light as she was suddenly blasted off her feet.
Gasping for breath, Shapo looked around in a confused daze from where she had been discarded like a piece of garbage against the far wall. Not that she could actually move her head due to the Stun that was flashing in her HUD. Ignoring the ringing in her ears and her flashing red health bar, Shapo’s blurry eyes took in the horrific scene around her. Everywhere she looked, there were blackened parts of limbs and chunks of semi-seared flesh now littering the foyer, her, and the fifty or so survivors that had been in the room with her. Even more disturbing, was the fine mist of blood and small chunks of meat and viscera that covered everything.
Shapo numbly watched the remaining members of the Fatal Midnight raid come rushing into the foyer with their weapons drawn. The first two hundred simply ran straight through into the great room, while the handful of the surviving Priests stopped to heal up Mister-Griefer, Ortiz V, and the other Fatal Midnight survivors. The Ranger could only silently watch as the guild leader rose to his feet, after having his debuff removed, and sneered at her in contempt.
“We’re going to spawn camp the rest of your worthless, fucking team until we’ve taken the fortress on our own,” Mister-Griefer spat at her crumpled form. Nodding for the Priests and the handful of injured still being healed up to follow his directions, the pissed off guild leader strode after the rest of the raid calling out orders. “Cut down any enemy you find, we’re heading to the fortress’ control room!”
Fucking idiot, Shapo thought, as she watched the last thirty seconds of her Stun begin to count down. She’d slaughter the lot of them herself if they dared to threaten her teammates as they spawned in. Not that she was particularly worried that would be much of a problem as several voices called out a warning for approaching Water Elementals. Closing her eyes, she mentally crossed her fingers and hoped that she was out of the AOE range of those exploding Water Elementals just as the sounds of battle came to her ears. It was but a few seconds later that another deafening explosion shook the entire room.
Opening her eyes, Shapo was just in time to see a debris cloud of dust, stone, and bloody body parts come shooting into the room as everyone that was standing near the archway were blown off their feet. The still injured raid members were instantly killed by the explosion and following impact, while the healers furthest from the archway ended up in a bloody heap around her. The dust cloud had barely even started to settle, when the Stun finally wore off and she was able to once again move.
“Get your bleeding, worthless body off of me,” Shapo hatefully said, kicking the female Priest that had landed on the lower half of her body away as she climbed to her feet. Looking around the room at the stunned survivors, she sneered at them angrily as she pulled out a Healing potion from her belt and gulped it down. “If the lot of you had half a brain, you’d have healed the one person that saw what had happened to the raid instead of leaving them stunned on the ground and falling for the same dumbass trap two times in a row!”
Seeing Mister-Griefer’s head lying on its side on the cold stone floor, Shapo shuffled up to the dead guild leader’s head and booted it through the archway. The makeshift ball made a squishy thud against the far wall of the great hall as Shapo snarled in frustration. Not daring to go any further into the r
oom, Shapo took up a sniper position in the archway as she carefully studied the destroyed room trying to understand what was going on.
The great room itself looked like a bombed out French Chateau directly out of an old World War Two movie. The stone walls of the room had been scarred black and were a crumbling mess near where the weird Water Elementals had exploded. The heavy, iron chandeliers hanging throughout the room were bent and twisted, the tables and chairs that had been evenly spaced around the chamber were now nothing but splintered wood, while the floor was covered in a mixture of crumbling debris and oozing chunks of the dead. There was literally no way to recover any of the raid’s dead with a resurrection spell even if the Priests dared to go far enough into the room to cast the spell.
Being careful to keep an eye on the three doorways entering into the room, Shapo pulled open her system window trying to get her head around what had happened. The only thing she could think to do if another one of those nasty Water Elementals showed up was to blast it from range and hope she could duck back around the archway quick enough to dodge the resulting explosion. Slowly her ears began to stop ringing as she searched through the lines of red text, until she found what she was looking for.
Moonshine Elemental blows you up for 2,356 points of damage.
“What the fuck is a Moonshine Elemental?” Shapo angrily swore out loud to the destroyed room, when she realized there was singing coming from the far side of the great room. Bluish-white electricity began dancing around her finger tips as she raised her hand to blast anything that dared to show its face. Slowly, the Ranger somewhat calmed down as her ears healed enough for her to make out a man’s voice singing an off-key ditty.
“… bottles of … shine … wall … of moon …”
For a long moment, Shapo incredulously stood there listening to the repeating refrains as her eyes searched the dark room for the source of the singing. Due to her being Human, she could barely make out anything in the low light of the dusty room. The Ranger couldn’t have said if it was the words she couldn’t quite make out or the bizarreness of the surreal situation, but unconsciously she found herself creeping further into the room as all the while the words became clearer.
“… bottles of moonshine … wall … thirty-nine … moonshine. Take one … it around …”
As Shapo’s eyes adjust to the low light, she was finally able to make out an open trapdoor towards the back middle of the great room. From the angle she was looking down into the room, she was able to make out a pair of armored boots propped up on the edge of the hole. It was just about the time the words to the man’s song became clear enough for her to make out.
“31 bottles of moonshine on the wall, 31 bottles of moonshine. Take one down and pass it around, 30 bottles of moonshine on the wall.”
Was this the dickhead that had been causing them so much trouble, Shapo wondered, as her feet carried her closer towards the trap door? Could she sneak up on this idiot and take him out before he knew she was there? A plan began forming in her head as she slowly slid her long sword and dagger out of their sheaths and slipped into Stealth. As she neared the trap door, she saw what could only be described as an armored Half-Dwarf sitting back in the fortress’ control room taking a sip from a lead-glass jug. Before she could lunge at the player, Shapo saw a flying squirrel dive past her head to flap in front of the man’s face just as she heard several voices suddenly curse out in the foyer behind her.
“What in the bloody hell happened?” Chip N’dip swore as he appeared next to his corpse.
“Did someone catch the license plate of that semi-truck that hit us?” Cap’n Hoser croaked out, from where he squatted on the floor over his gravestone.
“I swear by all that is unholy, I’m slaughtering the Fatal Midnight losers that killed me!” Roberto appeared bitching up a storm.
“What the hell is a Moonshine Elemental,” Gene Anthony complained loudly, holding up his heavy leather robes that were completely ruined in disgust.
Along with Shapo’s teammates, there was a slew of angry voices that suddenly filled the keep as the first batch of Fatal Midnight players that were blown up by the Moonshine Elementals started appearing next to their corpses. The noise was near overwhelming after the almost complete silence. It was in that moment of distraction that the flying squirrel flew past her head and out of the open door to the keep, when she heard words that sent a cold shiver down her spine.
“Holy shit, that really does work to get the Perception skill,” the Half-Dwarf said in an amused tone, looking directly at her as if she weren’t in Stealth. “I was wondering if you guys were ever going to make it inside the keep at the rate you were going.” Shapo hurriedly looked at her HUD to make sure she was still in Stealth mode as the man let out a deep sigh and continued talking as if she weren’t a threat.
“While I appreciate the extra skill and being able to test the effectiveness of these Moonshine Elementals,” a shit-eating grin came to the Half-Dwarf’s face, “it’s going to break my Dwarven Brew Masters’ hearts when I tell them they can’t drink this tasty brew because it’s a part of our strategic reserves until we can make some more.” Seeing the confused look on Shapo’s face, the cocky man gave her a wink and flipped a switch on the panel in front of him. “Don’t you worry your pretty little head over all of that, because you will be as they say, squished … like … grape.” The last part of that was said as the Half-Dwarf made a chopstick snapping together gesture with his fingers.
“Let me show you where you can shove that cocky self-righteous attitude-” Shapo began to say, as she prepared to blast the smug smile off the dickhead’s face with her Lightning Strike spell. There was no sense in holding back since the loser could obviously see right through her Stealth. Unfortunately, before she managed to cast the Lightning Strike spell, the stone floor beneath her feet suddenly lurched hard enough to throw her to the ground.
For a long second, Shapo was stunned from the interruption of her spell as the entire keep began to shake around her. Confused screams from her teammates and the rest of the Fatal Midnight raid echoed around the foyer and the great room as a horrendous grinding noise filled the air. All around her, the walls began to shrink and compress as her raid mates began to die by the scores. Shapo didn’t understand what was going on, but even as she regained control over her body, the shaking was so severe that it was practically impossible to even climb to her hands and knees.
Something deep inside Shapo’s primitive brain warned her that she was going to die as she lurched towards the trapdoor in a flailing dive only to find it impossible to move in any one direction from the intense quaking. This was all obviously part of the Half-Dwarf’s plan, Shapo thought, as she tried to inch across the shaking floor towards the foyer and the exit. That’s when she realized to her horror that the doorway was no longer there. Not even the foyer was there. Instead, it was a solid stone block.
A quick glance at her HUD told Shapo that everyone in the raid had been killed as the walls all around her began folding up onto themselves like some short of collapsible jigsaw puzzle. As the great room of the keep got smaller and smaller, the Half-Dwarf’s words suddenly made horrible sense … squished … like … grape. As the words echoed in her thoughts, Shapo let out a bloodcurdling scream just as the stone ceiling folded down to crush her to death. As her vision turned black, a disturbing red text window popped open before her eyes as she howled in frustration.
You have been killed by Vengeance Burnslinger! Due to your corpse being completely destroyed from a fortress being put into travel-mode during a siege, your spirit will be released to the nearest graveyard in twenty-four hours.
Chapter Twelve
(Second Assault Group: Star and friends in the gauntlet)
‘I was beginning to think you weren’t going to show up.’ Domenic’s voice sounded in my mind. ‘I’ll be out in a jiffy. Oh, and thanks for explaining how to get that Perception skill. It worked like a charm!’ Finished with delivering his message,
Tengsly lighted on my shoulder and snuggled up to my cheek, before crawling into his normal spot inside the hood of my cloak as I went back to watching the show.
The beginning was the best. There was nothing like watching the massive walls folding up into the courtyard with the thick chunks of earth jutting out from the edges. It was truly an incredible sight to behold, I silently thought, as the massive fortress continued folding up into travel mode. Although, by now only a shrunken version of the central keep was left as it quickly shrank to the size of a yard long, by foot wide block of stone lying on the barren ground inside the cave-like opening in the side of the mountain.
The complete and utter silence after the terrified screams from hundreds of players dying and the bone-vibrating sounds of stone grating against stone as the fortress folded up hit those of us watching almost like a fist in the gut. As the cold wind whipped around us as it passed through the gauntlet, the sharp clamoring sounds of metal armor was carried across the field to our ears as a scale mail clad, black-haired Half-Dwarf climbed out of the hole that had held the fortress’ control room. I immediately recognized Domenic as he rose to his feet. The look of stunned disbelief was clear on his face even from this far away as he slowly looked around at the empty hole where his fortress used to be.
I fully understood what he was feeling. It was a truly awe-inspiring sight. One that I’d have to share with him if I ever got the chance. There was no doubt in my mind that the true affect was mostly lost for those fans watching the video online from my Twitch channel. Domenic only took a few seconds to look around, before squatting down and fitting the massive stone into his rucksack. Closing up his bag, the Half-Dwarf slung the now massive rucksack onto his back, before turning to face the two lines of armored Dwarves marching up to him.