The Clan

by D. Rus

  The General gave us a curt nod, then bowed to the Princess, thanking her for her troops. The officer on duty hurried to put us in the picture.

  "Four rogue groups of five men apiece have advanced toward the enemy two hours ago. They've already taken up their positions around the castle. They've also discovered three enemy outposts and a chain of guard spells. They're doing nothing about it—no point in alarming the enemy yet."

  A waitress who'd been doing her rounds with a trayful of steaming coffee had finally made it to us. Rubbing his reddened eyes, the officer nodded to her, taking a cup. We all followed suit, sampling the delicious drink. Gingerly Ruata took one sip and froze, concentrating on her feelings. She'd had coffee before, surely?

  The officer piped up, "Unfortunately, the best bridgeheads for concentrating the attacking forces are all under surveillance. So it looks as if we'll have to move straight on. Two Wizard groups under invisibility spells and power cover are already taking up their positions about three hundred feet from the castle walls. On our signal, they'll create stationary portals opening directly onto the castle square. The first line should be fully deployed within ninety seconds. Max, what's your ability range?"

  For a moment, I just stared at him absently before realizing what he'd had in mind. I leafed through the virtual spell book and found it. "One hundred and twenty feet."

  The officer made a face, pouting his lips. He scratched his head and turned to Frag. "Problem, Comrade General. The Death Knight's range is a hundred and twenty. That's an extra minute's walk from the portal. Besides, that'll put him within range of their crossbows and glaive throwers, as well as magic. They'll break the spell."

  Frag frowned, thinking. "Max, you move to your position in half an hour under your own steam. I'll give you eight Enchanters and two Necros as your batteries. Each can transfuse you about a thousand mana. That's not much but the transfer quotient is too steep. Still, it's good enough for a Bastion-class shield. I'm also giving you five of Lt. Singe's Wizards to cast a Minor Power Dome around you. I would have given a few rogues to cover you, but we have none to spare. Sorry about that. And... I suggest you take five of your cutthroats. Just make sure the invisibility is maintained."

  An ash-haired humanoid with the rank of Lieutenant added nonchalantly, "Mana transfusion has a ten minute cooldown. We'll be out of circulation so don't count on us any further."

  "I know," the General nodded. "How much damage can the dome sustain?"

  "Thirty kee. Followed by a big bang with everybody lying flat on the ground watching snot fly."

  "Not enough. We'll give you Brown's group. They'll cast a new spell if the dome drops below twenty percent. But that's about all I can do. I'm not going to lose my best-trained men. I'll need all of them when the battle enters its crucial stage."

  Lt. Singe shrugged. "We can start by casting some mist," he offered. "Lots of it. It'll last three minutes or so. That'll force the Cats to spread the field of fire thinly, minimizing the damage."

  "Excellent," Frag said. "That's it. Go to it!"

  "Yes, Comrade General," the officer barked, noting his orders on his clipboard. "Max," he went on, "we seem to be clear on your objectives. Now for the big picture. Once the dome is down, we take out the main gate, it's about a hundred thousand hits, should take us a minute or so. The first special-ops vanguard will mop up the square, get to the teleport pad and take control over it in order to meet the enemy's potential reinforcements and any of the enemy's eventual malingerers. The second reinforced company will take the donjon and the control room. To bring the castle under our control, a group of forty men has to hold the central artifact for twelve minutes—quite doable. The cutthroats—two thirds of them, rather—will mop up the walls and the corner towers, mainly against NPC guards. They're perfect for the Drow and will give them some XP into the bargain. The remaining one-third will move to reinforce the HQ group. The General's priority is to take the basement dungeon before the enemy has had the chance to destroy evidence or move the prisoners. So that's where the HQ group and the Drow will be heading, followed by the HQ staff and a dozen reserve guards. We need to exercise extreme caution. We must capture as many targets as we can alive and hand them over to the second wave. Keep your eyes and ears peeled, listen in to all communication channels, stay put if you're killed as the clerics are under orders to reincarnate all corpses within two minutes of death. That's more or less it. Now," he looked me and the others over, "hurry downstairs and join the raid, then form a group with several support teams. Lt. Brown is in charge during the first stage. Once he's gone into battle, you're responsible for yourselves and the cutthroats."

  They refused to take Taali along. Instead, they entrusted her with the equally important but safe task of monitoring real-world newsfeeds as well as the Cats' and Olders' guest forums. We needed to know how fast they'd react and who would be the first to start making waves.

  Everybody had something to do. I received two invitations, to join the group and the raid respectively. I accepted both. I spent the following ten minutes on my feet in a solid shoulder-to-shoulder formation as the wizards cast buffs on the entire raid. Their spells had doubled my power: hits, strength and magic resists of all levels. Perfect time to do some solo leveling! I got a word that the total cost of the buff ingredients was about thirty thousand gold.

  As I waited, I played around with my chat boxes creating and saving unique raid settings. The sheer number of channels made my eyes water: raid chat, group chat, HQ staff, battle and private chats and the location chat for whoever happened to be around. Mind boggling.

  Then their quartermaster issued me, as a hybrid class, ten elixirs of life and mana each. He reminded me to return the surplus after the op and submit screenshots of respective log entries to justify my expenses. Yeah, right. Finders keepers, losers weepers. Those were top elixirs restoring nine hundred points each. Hardly any surplus going to remain, I thought as I spirited the vials away into quick access slots. My inner greedy pig grabbed a clean cloth and began wiping the vials lovingly checking the result against the light like some otherworldly bartender.

  Finally, our group of twenty-six sentients detached from the rest and teleported to the Cats' territories. We landed at a spot chosen by our recce, less than a mile from the castle. A quick invisibility spell, and we sat down on the ground waiting for the signal to move up. I think I even had a quick nap.

  A nudge to my shoulder brought me back to reality. The whole group was ready, waiting for me.

  Lt. Brown posted an order in the group chat:

  Attack in fifteen minutes. Renew invisibility, then continue to the staging area.

  I glanced at the raid chat box half-expecting an Armageddon. As if! The Vets never failed to surprise me with their discipline. The chat was perfectly organized, staff reports interspersed by the occasional flicker of senior officers snapping orders. Just like in some space mission control center.

  We jumped about a bit, checking for any rattling gear, then trotted off to the position chosen by the rogues.

  A hundred and twenty feet. It felt horribly close. The castle walls seemed to loom overhead, the shadows of the guards flickering in the crenels. The sharp sting of the glaive thrower glistened in the torch light. Already the castle was surrounded by a good fifty warriors. In a moment, that number would grow manifold.

  Lt. Brown moved his lips watching the timer mete out the seconds. On his sign, we drank our mana elixirs. We were going to need them.

  A taste of cinnamon lingered in my mouth, the popping of stationary portals so loud in the night. Spells hissing. Fog thickening around us. Let the party begin!

  Immediately after casting a mist screen, Lt. Singe's wizards made a circle, unfolding the Minor Power Dome around us. As they did so, I selected the castle as target and activated the Astral Mana Dispersal. The ground shifted underfoot as the black vortex began its slow whirling dance. One of the special-ops guys cussed with feeling. A swift hook to his liver stopped him hal
f-word. Now we could see the castle's protective field clearly as the anthracite lightning branched over it, squeezing out and devouring the spell's magic ingredient.

  Behind the castle walls, the alarm bell tolled. Several powerful fireballs shot skywards, illuminating the field and the dark mass of warriors exiting portals and taking up their positions. A glaive thrower snapped, followed by another one. I didn't see the first glaive. The second one hit the dome, ricocheting into the sky. The mages winced, absorbing the cooldown. Thirty seconds...

  We were our enemy's closest and most enigmatic opponent—therefore, his primary target. Try to imagine a foggy circle about fifty feet in diameter with a black tornado dancing at its center. All the enemy had to do was realize the connection between our presence and the dome awash with black lightning. I could only hope that the banshee wails of their wizards reporting their accumulating crystals being drained dry would frustrate the enemy enough to force them into making hasty errors.

  At the moment, I had all the mana I needed. Clan enchanters worked in pairs transfusing their stocks to me.

  Sixty seconds. The pressure on the dome kept growing. The glaive thrower fired every ten seconds, the constant ricochets of crossbow bolts rattling against the dome. Finally, the enemy deployed the big guns. The sky burst into a crystal hail. A downpour of meteors showered overhead like tracer bullets. Flame spewed from the gun slits, devouring the mist-shielded circle. Fire rose above our heads, roaring like a blast furnace. The dome-controlling wizards were turning paler with every second. Blood gushed from one's nose and another one's bitten lip. The third one groaned, clutching his head.

  "The dome!" Brown barked to his mages.

  After a brief moment, a supplementary power dome rose over our group. Not a moment too soon. The first dome exploded into a million crystal shards, its five casters collapsing on the ground. An already-drained enchanter was fussing over them, forcing the turquoise elixir into the mages' white lips.

  Eighty seconds. The distant Vets' formation got moving, rapidly covering the remaining ground. According to HQ's calculations, the castle's defenses should collapse after three or four more ticks. Now that the enemy had a more interesting goal in their sights, they relaxed their pressure on us. Two Necros, our last reserve, began pumping us up with their mana. The Lieutenant peered at me, then at the castle, as if asking, so where's the result you promised? The whole op was at stake. We were almost out of mana. The second dome was about to give up the ghost. And their defense was still holding. By the looks of it, we sure had underestimated the Cats.

  The Necros raised their hands, drained. My mana was at forty percent. That would last me about fifteen seconds' autonomy on the High Spell. Two or three ticks. After that, hasta la vista, baby.

  Time raced. "That's it," Brown wheezed.

  With a crash, the second dome collapsed. A crossbow bolt struck me in the hip. I had three thousand damage points' worth of passive shields. As long as I had them, I could hold the spell. The flames roared, reaching up over our heads. Clouds of toxic green smoke clogged our lungs, thorns pushing through the earth to pierce our feet. The enemy's mages made sure they kept us occupied. What an eerie feeling, to stand amid the fire like a broken doll feeling nothing as the shield absorbed not only the damage but also the very sensation of pain. There was no pain, thanks to our developers and the Fallen One.

  With a quiet tick, the spell entered its last moments. But the enemy's defense still held. Pointless, all pointless. The power of the cooldown was pressing me to the ground, forcing me down ankle-deep into the soil.

  I closed my eyelids. I'd let everybody down.

  "I'll help you," a familiar voice whispered into my ear as my mana bar refilled to the brim. For a brief moment, a dark shape obscured the stars.

  New buff alert! You've received an unknown buff: *#@$$@#@!

  Effect: Restores 100% mana and gives 30-second protection from any type of damage.

  "Thanks, O Fallen One. I owe you," I croaked.

  The Fallen One was raising my credit limit. That was all fine—until payoff day.

  Strength was gushing from me, the cooldown releasing its heavy grip. My lungs didn't feel the acrid smoke any more. The bone thorns crushed underfoot, unable to break through the invisible divine protection. My comrades in arms were dying, all dying. Having never recovered, the wizard group had turned into a mass grave. The enchanters were trying to use the portals but how could you expect them to cast a personal gate under the pressure from five or six debilitating spells? Lt. Brown stared at me, perplexed, not understanding how it was possible I was still alive and casting the spell. He wasn't looking forward to a cheap death but he wasn't going to prevent me from having my way, either. So he made the only possible decision. He deleted me from the group and transported everybody else via an evacuator portal to a random destination.

  So there I stood alone amid a dozen graves, in a semicircle of cutthroats shielding me with their bodies. I met their leader's stare and nodded: get lost. He lowered his eyelids briefly, then shook his head. He had his orders. After a brief moment, the Drow collapsed all at once. Now I was well and truly alone.

  Bang! The earth shattered as the dome over the castle exploded in a billion fragments. We'd done it! The Vets' battle cry shattered the air as they charged the main gate. A couple dozen warriors and archers got busy blunting their weapons against iron oak, a hundred mages getting through kilotons of mana per second as they transformed it into all possible types of magic damage.

  The castle put up a good fight. Boiling tar kept flowing, crossbows and glaive throwers released over the sea of flying arrows. With a thump, a trebuchet discharged from a donjon tower, propelling a two-ton rock onto the second line of our warriors. Yes, but... that was little more than an agony. Even I, too dangerously close to them on my hot spot of vitrified earth, could see that the Cats had failed to hold the perimeter.

  After another half a minute, the gates groaned and collapsed, letting in a human flood that consumed the thin line of defenders and everything around them. So far, the op had been a success. Now for the second part of the show: taking over the castle.

  Chapter Four

  From the chat logs of an unknown bystander.

  Current time.

  Place: a lay-up about five hundred feet away from the Castle's main gates.

  "They're going in, Sir. O-three hundred hours, just as we've been told.

  "I detect the instance of a High Circle Spell...

  "No, Sir, I'm afraid I can't establish the caster's name. The group is protected by a mist screen.

  "Roger that, Sir. I'm adding all the established names to List 12.

  "I'm observing the intervention of a third force. Presumably, a class A structure. An unknown spell detected. It's a buff, uncategorized.

  "List 12 updated. The caster's name established. Code name assigned: Puppet.

  "Roger that, Sir. Priority target list updated. Puppet added at #2.

  "Roger, Sir. Commencing countdown now. 30 minutes to time D. The group is ready, Sir. We won't let you down."

  * * *

  I downed the mana and life elixirs and sat on the still-hot ground amid the makeshift graveyard. The interface blinked, receiving Lt. Brown's message.

  Stay put and take it easy. The reserve clerics are moving up toward you. They'll resuscitate everyone.

  I shrugged and typed OK. Why wouldn't I take it easy? There I was watching the slaughter on the castle walls from the front row as an occasional guard's body dropped into the moat. In a way, it was spectacular, very much like a New Year's firework display: deafening flashes and bolts of lightning mixed with the rattle of steel and some heavy-duty cussing. That was a favorite male pastime: to batter the bad guy black and blue and get away with it. Actually, I'd already noticed that about one-third of the Vets were girls. Not in the combat groups, of course, but they had their fair share of fierce valkyries.

  I made a mental note about the perma players' gender ratio. This
was a potential time bomb. Of course there were always lots of female NPCs—the Drow Princess alone was worth her weight in gold. Still, it was hardly a substitute. The NPCs were just that, NPCs. They hadn't had childhood Disneyland trips, they hadn't read the same books and were clueless about music. Learning to become kindred souls with a human being could prove a daunting task for them.

  A couple of healers arrived. Three mid-level warriors came slithering over the vitrified stones behind them, meant to provide cover in case of any eventualities. The senior cleric stopped, estimating the potential work load, then began sending messages over his hospital chat, apparently calling for reinforcements. Fourteen resurrections and all the rebuffs—definitely too much work for the two of them. And now speed was our main advantage. I turned back to the castle. The skirmishing on the walls was dying down, dominated by the cutthroats' dull black armor. The north tower glaive thrower was lazily burning. Opposite, smoke bellowed from the south tower gunslots, apparently induced by some Godawful feat of magic. The front line troops had already passed through the gates, followed by a short HQ column. Judging by the serried rank of Drow warriors amid them, the Princess had to be there, too.

  A solemn fanfare resounded behind my back as the Pearly Gates opened. The resurrection spell was a sight and a half. The idyll was ruined by Lt. Brown who swore wholeheartedly as he studied the surrounding desolation and the newly-sprouted graveyard. It was impressive, I had to admit: pockmarked with gravestones, the surrounding field was dug up as if by an artillery barrage.

  The arriving cleric reinforcements worked double time. In less than three minutes, all the dead had been resuscitated. The enchanters headed back home while both Wizard groups stayed put, waiting impatiently for a rebuff, having a quick smoke and talking in quiet voices. They discussed the High Spell and cursed the ever-watchful NPCs on the walls with their paranoid Forest Cat masters. Apart from the regular guards on the walls, the Cats had also posted strengthened ballista sections which, together with some extra wizards, must have cost them a fortune.