by Luke Isaacs
“Let the battles begin!” Odin boomed when Thor had finished his pep talk and Valkyrie swooped from behind the mountains, flying low over the field offering blessings and temporary boosts in exchange for GG or DC.
The championship, not unlike the preliminaries, fell into three zones. The first had players against player until they would reach one of the dragons, Fafnir or Nidhogg. Killing one of them opened the portal to the next zone for anybody with a kill rate of 10 or more. Of course, killing any dragon would provide the quota of 10 in an instant.
Mark paid a passing Valkyrie for Mana, Health boosts and a blessing in accuracy for the entire team. A gift none of his team members refused.
Rick called up his Thunder Sword and Oak Staff, which augmented any spell cast in the group. Rania drew her Fire Bow, then vanished from sight. Mario began incanting his line of blessing and boosts as Dana wove 20 spells and ensnared them in her utility belt for faster casting.
Mark, the only one of them from the demonic races, called his Dark Bliss since the blessings of Mario would have zero effect any of the demonic race competitors.
“Charge!” called Rick, and Valhalla Greatest launched themselves into the fray.
They moved in a formation of two lines. Rick and Mark led the way, followed by Rania, Mario, and Dana.
They advanced cautiously, experience from the last two years had shown them that you could be the best player in the arena and still be killed in the chaos of the first few minutes, where low tier and inexperienced players and teams would unleash their most powerful weapons and spells. Many would die and a fair share of them would be game veterans.
A strange disc-shaped projectile was thrown at Mark, and Mario cast shield just as a grenade from the Urban Fantasy setting of the game exploded. It saved Mark from certain in-game death, but he had to quickly take a potion to retrieve the lost Health points.
After two minutes of advancement, they faced their first real battle of the competition with a relatively unknown team cutting down enemies with long flashing wands.
“They’re like Lightsabers?!” Rick shouted as he deflected a swipe at his head with his staff.
“Wicked!” called Rania, and unexpectedly materialized when the opposing team activated an Area of Effect spell. The AOE spell had the bonus of decloaking anyone under a spell of invisibility.
The team facing them lacked experience, but they certainly didn’t lack enthusiasm as they hammered Valhalla Greatest viciously. Rick cornered one of the players of the other team at a fallen tree and matched him blow for blow with his Thunder Sword. Sparks flew as they thrust and parried, but Rick slowly wore the other player down.
Dana was locked in a battle of her own with the Psychic of the other team. Blue energy arced and frizzled over the heads of the two teams. Rania, now visible, shot and ran, repeating this tactic as a player of the other team targeted her with a Laser Sniper Rifle.
Behind them, Mario cast continuous healing spells and gulped one Mana potion after another as the other team’s medic aided his team with a healing wand and lots of auto bandages.
Mark was faring better than his teammates; his demonic form alone had phased the other team’s players, and it allowed him critical time and space to complete a tactical by going directly for their leader, attacking and beheading him in two strikes.
Still, even leaderless, the other team held their own.
Dana broke the impasse by casting a decaying spell at her counterpart. As the woman was preoccupied trying to heal her rotting visage, Dana was able to attack her mind and, in a few seconds, opened a window through which she was able to control her and use her to attack her teammates.
Rick sliced off the arm of his opponent and plunged his sword deep in his chest just as Dana’s mind control victim killed her own medic. He looked around to find the battle done except for Rania and the very persistent sniper. He smiled as she successfully eluded the sniper until he was forced to reload. Rania deftly nocked an explosive arrow and released it as the other guy was raising his gun to take a kill shot.
The arrow exploded in front of his face, taking off his head.
“Well done,” called Rick. “Move on!”
The team advanced through the valley without engaging unless they had too. That was becoming a little easier. The traffic on the battleground was thinning as players met their fates. In the distance, they spotted the fire and might of the dragon Fafnir, who they beat last year through a regimented strategy. Rick saw another less-organized team was about to be annihilated by the huge dragon and decided they should make a play.
“Slay Fafnir!” he yelled and charged.
Valhalla Greatest followed him as one and circled the great dragon at a safe distance. Rania ditched her bow in favor of her Thor-blessed Thunder Daggers. Dana immediately released four spells of armor decay, two of ‘slow and weaken’, and at least three types of diseases on the dragon that she knew he was not immune to, courtesy of last year’s experience.
Mark repeated the strategy he had used against the dragon that assailed them at their pre-game meeting and darted in, hacking at the claws of the dragon as Rick threw AOE spells one after the other in the beast’s direction, rendering every move of the great beast an agonizing hell.
Mario cast his spells, alternating between blessing spells on his teammates and curse spells on the dragon.
The battle was still tough, and their efforts consumed around 20 percent of their Mana and Health stash before Fafnir, becoming more and more damaged, obliterated the remnants of the other team with a single swipe of its mighty tail and took flight.
That desperate but powerful move meant he had only around 10 percent of his Health points remaining, but also had the effect of knocking down the entire team and depleting half of their Health points.
The first to climb back to her feet, Rania shifted back to her bow and began to unleash arrows as Dana weaved an intricate spell of Spirit Shattering.
Mario healed the entire team to give them time to complete their task. Beside him, Mark ditched his sword for a strange staff with a crystal shard tied to the end. As the dragon passed by, he aimed and hit the bottom of the staff to the ground. The top of the staff detonated, launching the crystal shard at Fafnir’s right eye.
The dragon cried in rage and pain for its lost eye and unleashed a breath of thunder at the team before flying straight up to get out of range. The team was thrown to the ground by the mighty concussion, their team Health glowing red as it plummeted to two percent.
While the dragon’s move to get out of damage range and prepare for a final attack was understandable, it helped the team. If he’d pressed his attack, he would have finished them. As it was, they had time to consume two bottles of Health potion each and make ready to meet the last strike of the dragon,
While they had been preoccupied, four other teams had approached. They didn’t have the time or energy to fight all of them, so they concentrated their efforts on the dragon.
As Fafnir dived for another assault, Rick threw it a spell of bleeding and Rania showered it with exploding arrows. It was enough. The great beast began to spin out of control and crashed in front of Valhalla Greatest and the approaching teams who rushed in to finish it. When the dragon took its last breath, the ground in front of it caved in to reveal a ragged cave entrance.
Rick and the team rushed into it and the game stopped for them, allowing a well-deserved rest until the remaining competitors moved through to the second round and the final scores from the first round were calculated. Rick watched the scoreboard and didn’t fail to notice that the Thugs were one of the last teams to qualify.
7
“What the hell was that?” Yee switched his wrist phone to a secure channel and poured his anger to Mehemet. “The Thugs barely made it, where were your mercenaries?”
“Relax Mr. Yee,” Mehemet answered in a chemically relaxed voice. “This isn’t the preliminaries anymore. If my men are too involved in the early stages, it will be noticed
and your team will be disqualified.”
“But your men didn’t do anything to help!” Yee screamed in his holo bubble, totally invisible to the other spectators of the event. “Nothing at all! They were supposed to nudge things along!”
“You may not have noticed it, Mr. Yee,” the voice of Mehemet had an edge to it now. “But we’ve already sacrificed men. My Legionnaires are now ten strong instead of the 14 we started with. That’s four men killed while subtly paving the way for your incompetent Thugs to pass the first gate.”
“When was that?” Yee’s panic started to subside. He had a lot at stake. He had gambled all his liquid money on a bet, plus he signed away the right to his shares to Mehemet. He could not afford to lose. “But they passed the portal with only one percent Health points remaining!”
“True, but the important point is that they passed. I will hold up my end of the deal Mr. Yee – I am a man of my word. But the rest depends on you and your team. Pull your act together and don’t ever speak to me like you just did again.”
And he cut the connection.
Yee’s gut sank into his shoes. This was a bad deal. If he wanted to, Mehemet could just screw him over and still come out on top of this whole mess. He had to pray that he would indeed stick to his end of the deal.
Unfortunately, Yee wasn’t the trusting type. He tapped out a new number on the secure commlink of his holo bubble and took some deep breaths to calm himself. He hadn’t spoken to the person he dialed in four years but knew she would recognize him.
A woman’s face appeared on the projected screen in front of him. It was a different face to the one he’d last seen her wearing. Prettier and more youthful. If he didn’t know better, he would have thought she was a different person.
“Hello, Bobby Yee.”
If she was surprised, she didn’t show it.
“Hello, Lara. I need a favor.”
“I am listening,” she answered in a husky voice that triggered some memories for him. “Who do you want me to kill?”
8
“Well, that was far easier than last year,” Rick said, as the technicians inspected his gear. “Have we improved that much?”
“We’ve become more efficient as a team.” Dana watched as the ushers removed the game losers from the physical arena. It looked like only 10 percent had made it through. “Three years of continuously working together does that to people.”
She smiled at him. Even though she was old enough to be his mother, Rick found her smile charming and thought it was no wonder she’d succeeded as a popstar.
“We are a real team now,” Rania said, grabbing a bottle of enhanced filtered water from the table next to her holo globe. “We know and anticipate each other’s moves.”
“The scoreboards are up,” Mario called, pointing to the huge floating holo globe above the field. “Wow! Odin’s Hand didn’t make it!”
“What the!?” Mark looked as if he’d just woken from a dream. “Are you sure?”
“Definitely not there on the boards,” Mario ran his eyes down the list of the 200 players going into the next round. “But the Thugs are there.”
“This raises our chances greatly!” Rania was glowing. “Oh, I’m gonna be so rich!”
“We haven’t won yet,” Rick said. “Remember the support this Thug team had in the preliminaries. We’ll have to be on our guard against those individual players.”
“I don’t think they got help this time,” said Mario.
“They did,” said Rick. “It was subtle, but it was there. Be wary.”
The horn blew, announcing the time for non-contestants to vacate the playing field. Technicians and support staff scrambled off the field, leaving the too-slow players to finish their own re-suiting or globe mounting.
Another horn sounded and the team materialized into the game. Valkyrie swooped low over the field and the gigantic Thor in the sky addressed the players.
“Einherjar, in this battle you have to fight off Jotun and vanquish Jörmungandr. The Jotun you will face are giants of ice, fire, thunder and stone. Each giant killed is the equivalent of five kills, but you have to cut a hole in Jörmungandr’s heavily armored body if you want to reach Loki and Fenrir in the next round.
“As before, you need to have ten affirmed kills to pass before being allowed to cut through Jörmungandr’s body. Receive my blessing and venture forth to win the day, Hail Einherjar!”
A roar from the contestants went up. The battlefield was the same size as the last one, but much less crowded. Fights erupted immediately between newbies and freshman teams while the more experienced players like Valhalla Greatest ran away from the spawning point towards the mountain-like structure that made a solid border on the horizon. This was the living body of Jörmungandr.
The experienced players knew that instead of the dragons in the earlier round, in this one they would face dozens of very difficult to kill Jotun or giants. Saving their Mana and spells for those fights was crucial to their advancement.
And as suspected, the Jotun materialized into existence randomly and unexpectedly. Before they’d covered even an eighth of the distance to Jörmungandr, an enraged ice giant appeared in front of the Valhalla Greatest team.
The team had fought giants before, and they knew that you had to defend with the same element of the giant and attack with the counter-element. Mario spread warmth spells over the team as Dana started on her Spirit Warmth spell as she slipped a spell replicator from her stash. The Spirit Warmth spell was vital to fight off the chill the giant would cast over her team, but also cause damage to the giant. The spell replicator would repeat the spell as long as she had the Mana to keep it going.
Rania loaded several fire arrows to her multi-slotted bow as Rick called his Sword of Fire to existence and started hurling fireballs at the giant.
Mark, as always, called first for Dark Bliss. He then cut his hand with his greatsword and rubbed its length with his blood before igniting it so that it was wreathed in flames.
The giant swiped at Rick, who ducked at the last moment and turned, severing the huge hand of the giant with his sword. The giant screamed in pain and was unprepared when Rania’s flaming arrows struck him, igniting his whole body in flame.
The giant roared and blew chilled air at the team, dropping the Health of Mark and Rick to almost three percent. Mario immediately cast a healing spell supplemented by a cold shield over them while dodging the club of the giant. Dana threw her Spirit Warmth spells, and steam started to hiss from the puzzled giant’s ears and mouth.
The giant charged at Dana, only to be met by Mark’s sword. He sliced through its leg just above the ankle, severing its foot completely. The giant fell, screaming in anger and pain, lashing out as it hit the ground; it knocked Rick 30 yards away. Mario rushed to revive his fallen friend as Rania shot two arrows into the giant’s eye.
Blinded and in pain, the giant managed to get back into a kneeling position. It flailed ineffectually at the team before, picking his moment, Mark climbed onto its back and started hacking at its neck with his flaming sword. The giant collapsed forward like a felled tree and Mark continued hacking until its head rolled away, blue blood spurting from the stump of its neck.
The revived Rick ran to join the team with Mario.
“Good work everyone, that was one tough son of Helheim!”
“He was,” Rania said, breathed deeply. “We need to amass five more kills before approaching Jörmungandr, what do you suggest guys?”
“There’s a lower ranked team barely holding off a fire giant over there.” Dana pointed to a battle going on around a hundred feet from them. “We could lend a hand?”
“They are lower ranks,” Mario said. “They might attack us with the giant on our backs.”
“It is a risk,” Mark countered, “but it is the fastest way to finish this battle area and move forward.”
“Yeah, whether we kill the giant or that group,” Rick added. “Both will push our kill numbers up the charts.”
“Okay, but be ready for any eventuality,” Mario warned them. “The Thugs and their cronies are only a hundred feet from that battle fighting a stone giant.”
The team nodded and started to prepare their spell arsenal and change equipment for the coming encounter.
Mario readied Cold Poultice spells and placed them in his tool belt as they walked. Rick changed to his Chilling Sword and prepared several Area of Effect cold-inducing spells.
Rania de-materialized and they only knew she was there by the sound of her nocking iced arrows in her bow. Dana gulped two bottles of Mana and set about preparing dazzle spells in case the other team attacked them, theorizing that if they were dazzled, the giant would kill them where they stood. She added several calm spells that would help fight the giant’s fire element and help extinguish any fire damage her teammates suffered.
Mark was already bathed in his Dark Bliss. He extinguished the flames on his sword to return it to base damage. Being a demonic being, he had high immunity against fire, so he alone amongst the team could fight in close quarters of the giant, without incurring a lot of heat damage.
As they closed in, they realized the other team was from the Old West setting of the game. They were shooting guns and rifles that inflicted little or no damage on the giant, who could really be harmed only through magic.
And as Mario suspected, the moment the other team spotted them, some of them started firing at Valhalla Greatest. Dana shook her head.
“You asked for it, idiots.”
She cast her dazzle spells. The cowboys dropped their weapons and began walking around aimlessly. One walked directly into the club of the giant and his shattered body flew over Dana’s head. The giant finished their whole team with a few heavy swings of his club and roared in triumph. He started towards the Valhalla Greatest.