Crystalfire Keep

by J. A. Cipriano

  “I know you’ll both do fine,” Wazif chortled, his hands on his broad belt. “It’s me I’m worried about. I still don’t know if it’s best for me to adapt for damage dealing or take advantage of being a Mystic and help with support.”

  “We have a lot of questions to answer all around, Wazif,” I said, trying to get everyone’s attention on me without resorting to the Raid Alert function, a loud, intrusive mental trumpet I had access to as the raid leader. “I think the best way to answer them, especially for those of you new to our group, is by doing. Who hasn’t done the full Crystalfire Keep keystone quest yet?”

  I was a little surprised when almost all of the FFC folks raised their hands, even Wazif, which was probably a safe bet to do. Sure, he had helped start the final countdown, but he hadn’t received the keystone to the Keep proper. You would have thought that the FFC itself had enough people to give it a try on their own but either they hadn’t or worse they hadn’t succeeded. Nahma was the only one who kept his hands down.

  “Well, we’re going to fix that,” I said with every bit of confidence. “We can’t rest on our laurels either. With the enforced one day wait after the first segment of quests, we’ll be cutting it close as it is.”

  Dunya put her fists on her hips and puffed out her chest. “Like I said, we’ll cut everything down to size in no time. Don’t worry about the time, I’m sure we can handle it!”

  “The one thing for certain is that you’ll have to help them on this, Max.” Kayla laid a hand on my shoulder and as always, that helped calm and focus me. “We can’t afford to split up everyone and expect to get it done in time, plus you’re, well, the only tank.”

  Merina scowled faintly as she leaned forward in her butterfly seated position, planting her palms on her knees. “Look, it’s sounding like this one tank thing might sink you guys. If you absolutely think we need it, I can try – ”

  “Would you?” Nahma piped in. “That would be incredible.”

  Dunya scoffed. “As long as you aren’t asking me, I don’t care.”

  Before anyone else (and I could see several other people about to add their own unsolicited opinions) could pile on, I raised my hands and did the thing I didn’t want to do so early. I mentally activated the Raid Alert. A loud cacophony of mixed horns, calculated to no doubt pierce even the thickest of skulls and the dullest of senses, blasted through my brain along with everyone else’s.

  That shut everyone up.

  Taking advantage of the momentary silence, I clambered atop a stack of crates, supplies for the border guards up here, and raised my hands. “I’m sorry about that, people, but I want all this talk of people changing roles or inverting their play styles or what not to stop right now. If I understand what a lot of you have said, you want to do this for the very reason that most of the players in Elementalis and especially the elitist guilds think that how you play is invalid. It doesn’t do anything to make this statement while you cave into ‘conventional wisdom.’”

  All eyes were on me as I pushed on. “Look, those people aren’t even wrong, not about what works. The important thing, though, is that those normal builds, that normal way to play, works for them. That doesn’t give them the right to tell you that how you play doesn’t work for you. Sure, there are always going to be things that flat out don’t work, but the very fact that you’ve gotten this far proves that what you’re doing works, right?”

  Dunya and Burndall broke out in cries of agreement while most of the others were quieter but no less certain in their support. Even Merina, in her strange mix of defiance and acquiescence, perked some at what I was saying. My eyes flashed over to Kayla and her supportive smile and slight nod spurred me onward.

  “We’ll have to adapt, I’m sure, and change things up to face the challenges ahead,” I nodded. “We Firsters have had to do so far but we haven’t had to go against what we are. That isn’t going to change now. What I’m getting at is that at the end of the day, we’re going to win, we’re going to beat out El Rec and the Sisters and anyone else, and we’re going to do it without compromising who we are, each and every one of us.”

  Maybe it was cheesy to keep going but it felt right for me to do so, especially as I summoned my banner out of my inventory, raising it high above my head. “Are you all with me?!”

  The echo of the cheers, applause, and whoops of joy weren’t quite as deafening as the big victory parties in Granholm at been but in a way was more satisfying.

  11

  As the cheers died down, I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. Where had that come from? Was that kind of leadership in me all along and I’d never had the confidence or the opportunity to use it? Had I held myself back before, when I was looking for work outside the game, and cost my sister and I a more normal life?

  Shrugging it off, I opened my eyes. Those questions didn’t matter, not really. Whatever it was deep inside me that was coming out was something I was happy with and hindsight would only bring pain and recriminations that wouldn’t affect the future. Cracking a smile, I raised my voice one more time before our merry band descended into general chatter.

  “Okay, one last thing, friends.” I waved a hand at the new recruits and Wazif. “New people, we’re going to meet in Granholm in a half-hour. That should give us an hour to do the Kallisandre escort, plenty enough time. Get ready!” Looking to the old guard, I nodded. “If there’s anything you guys want to do, you’re free. Research, shopping, farming, heck, it may not even be a bad idea to make an early night of it and rest up.”

  Raising a finger, I added one last thing. “Oh, I’m going to try to fit in a midday session starting tomorrow. I know it’s unlikely everyone can do this, probably barely anyone else can manage it save maybe Burnie. If you can, though, we’ll do extra farming, questing, and practice, okay?”

  As I hopped down heavily from the crates, another cheer rippled through the tiny crowd. Burnie and Nahma took the nominal lead, moving in to chat with and organize the new crew, while Crysta and Kayla both came up to me.

  “Good speech, Shale,” the Ranger smiled wanly. “It sort of reminded me of some of the big rallies Amethyst would hold … you know … back in the day.”

  As if we’d done it a hundred times before, Kayla and I each put a hand on Crysta’s shoulders. “It does,” Kayla said softly, “but if you ask me, I think Shale really means it and Amethyst … never quite did.”

  I shook my head slightly as I squeezed Crysta’s shoulder. “I do mean it, but I won’t say that about Amethyst. I think, if anything, she takes things too seriously if that makes any sense. Either way, we’re here for you now and that’s what’s important.”

  Kayla nodded. “Now that I’ll happily agree to.”

  “Thanks, guys.” Crysta glanced around as we pulled back a step. “You know, I miss the chatter, guild chatter, I mean. I forgot how silent this game can be if you’re not connected. I don’t know if either of you has thought about it but, like, I think we should make one.”

  “A guild?” Kayla tapped her lip. “Why don’t we just join the FFC? I don’t know about you two, but I have enough things I have to manage in my life that I don’t want to oversee a guild on top of that.”

  Turning towards the cluster of FFC folks, Crysta shook her head sadly. “I totally don’t mean any disrespect because the people who came out today, they seem pretty cool. It’s … look, Nahma said the FFC has, like, eighty-something members and only four of them came to help. I don’t want to go from one disloyal guild to, well, another one.”

  “I can understand that,” I said, “and, as much as I hate to say this, I think you’re right. It’s not anyone’s fault and I don’t even think worse of most of them. I mean, it was just a fan club. Other than liking what we did that one time, what attachment did they have to us?”

  I tried to ignore the guilty side of me that chimed in, saying that if I had done what Burnie asked, if I had schmoozed and spent time with the FFC instead of going to the Vale, things might have been
different. I couldn’t listen to it. All that would do would lock me into mental paralysis, worrying more about every past and future decision instead of making them.

  “Anyway, what I’m getting at is that I think Crysta’s right. We need a banner to rally around and not just mine.”

  “Do we, though?” Kayla put a hand on my shoulder as she continued, “Guilds offer perks, sure, but nothing that will affect our runs on the Keep and that has to be our priority right now. Even if forming a guild was the priority, my point about who would run it stands. I know I can’t, I doubt Crysta can with whatever is wrong with Vanni, and Max, what about your own family, your sister?”

  “I don’t know,” I began. “Maybe I …” That was when it hit me. The Filter hadn’t stopped her and more importantly, I hadn’t told her about Chrissy. I couldn’t have … unless that was what she saw in the Vale. Turning to look Kayla in those deep blue eyes, I didn’t even have to ask to know that was the case.

  We had tried to tell each other exactly what we had seen during our individual trials in the Vale of the Three Wolves right after it had all gone down, but the Filter stopped us. Now, though, it looked like we could now and I could only attribute that to the shift in Trust levels. It hadn’t even occurred to either of us to test that specific thing out earlier.

  If it had been any of my other friends who saw this, they would be confused but Crysta only had to take one glance between us to realize that something special was going on. “Uh, do you guys need a moment? I can, like, head off, check on things up there …”

  I shook my head. “Maybe but hold on a second. I need to get this thought out of my head before I completely lose it.” Smiling at Kayla before glancing over to the rest of the group, I pointed at Burndall. “I figure that while people will want me to be the guildmaster on paper of any new guild, Burnie is the one of us we can trust that can actually run the thing. I was dumb before when I didn’t give him the time or the chance to manage things, but this time I won’t be a fool.”

  Crysta quirked a smile. “Well, I guess I better start thinking of names to suggest, right?” She folded her hands behind her head, giving us a knowing wink as she started to stroll over to the others. “I’ll let you guys do whatever it is you need to do.”

  She wasn’t even three steps away when Kayla grabbed my hand in a vise-like grip and urgently pulled me towards Whitepeak’s little inn, the only real structure in that lonely outpost of tents and firepits. I didn’t need the urging to follow in her wake and a moment later, we were inside the log-and-stone cabin, Kayla closing the door behind us.

  The warmth of the blazing hearth washed over us as the sole occupant of the place, a barrel-bodied Craggar NPC, barely looked up at our entrance. The only way we would have more privacy would be in an instance or, citing one of the few perks of having a guild, in a guild hall, where the guildmaster decides who can enter, leave, or even partition off sections with different privacy settings. This would do, though.

  I was about to say something, but Kayla beat me to it. “You heard me, didn’t you? I mean, it came through the Filter because you obviously heard me say something.”

  She didn’t let go of my hand and I didn’t let go of hers as I nodded. “It came through loud and clear. You’re talking about what happened during the trials, what you saw, didn’t you?”

  “I was. I mean, I had no idea it would go through that time, but I was wrapped up in the moment. With what I saw, well, I wouldn’t want you shirking what you need to do up above over some contest, no matter how much money it means.” Kayla quirked a smile as she looked up at me. “It’s not like I mine in the Venusian salt fields for flower petals. If we keep progressing like this, I’ll be able to help soon.”

  I laughed a little. “I guess we haven’t progressed far enough for the Filter’s purposes.” Closing my eyes, Dr. Fontaine’s wager echoed through my head. “And you’re right but not exactly about what you think you are.”

  “Huh?” Kayla wasn’t the type that was usually caught off-guard like that, not by people.

  I opened my eyes again and meet her confused gaze. “Well, I guess on all of it but … look, the Crystalfire Keep thing, it’s not about money anymore. Okay, it’s not just about money. Something’s happened, something up there, and there is a lot more on the line now than ever before.”

  Kayla’s eyes focused and her expression sharpened as she searched my face. There was a moment of silence broken by two things in rapid succession.

  First, a UI update flashed across my vision: You have gained Trust with your Promised! Your Trust is now at 26 points!

  Second, Kayla frowned slightly. “What happened? I believe you but … at least try to tell me, Filter or not.”

  She had a point. It couldn’t hurt to try.

  “Here we go then.” I took a deep breath and tried to get it out in one go. “My guru Suzuki jumps into low orbit and now the rabbi is wrapping up the fireworks factory if we don’t finish the Keep in the top one-hundred of the server.” Growling, I let Kayla’s hands go to cover my face in frustration. “Stupid, stupid Filter!”

  Cool, thin fingers touched the backs of my hands before worming into my palms as she slowly pulled them away from my face. “Hey, it’s okay. So, we’re not quite at that point yet but enough came through, I think I get the gist of it.” The soft smile on her lips and her glittering blue eyes melted away my frustration. “Something bad will happen if we don’t get in the top one hundred on the server and it has nothing to do with the actual prize. For now, I don’t need to know the rest. You think it’s critically important that we don’t fail, so we won’t.”

  “Easier said than done.” I let out a ragged sigh. “But you’re not wrong. We won’t fail, we can’t fail.”

  “That’s the spirit! And to keep that spirit alive, we need to get you ready to run the new folks through their paces.” She let my hands free once she was certain they wouldn’t slap back over my face and cradled my chin in her palms. “It’s not like the rest of us can help carry them through, not with them being standard group quests.”

  “Which is why I’m still a little worried about the lack of a second tank in our little crew.” Despite that concern, I was smiling. How could I not with Kayla so close? I put my arms around her as I continued, “If it keeps going as we think, with these quests all being an introduction and how-to guide for the Keep itself, there has to be a reason the quests weren’t raid quests outside of widening the field of participants.”

  She got on her tiptoes and gave me a quick kiss. “We’ll figure it out so don’t let it weigh you down. You have enough to worry about. If we can’t find a second tank, we’ll find someone or one of us can try to regem for it. At the worst, we will find a way.” She winked. “We’re pretty good at that by now.”

  “Again, you’re right.” It sounded easy when she put it that way and despite my better judgment, I believed her. I returned her kiss and smiled. “So, about getting ready for the rest of the session, I guess you’re talking about Gem Fusion?”

  Kayla’s hands moved to my shoulders as she stepped back. “Exactly. Unlike some of the other Ring’s abilities, there’s nothing in Gem Fusion that says we must be in the same group for it to work. Giving you a discount cost Twincast Gem to use while guiding the others through the keystone quest will give you an extra edge you might need.”

  “Good point. I also want to play around with the Darkness Mod Gem. I’ve still got an empty linked slot in my banner that’s waiting to be used and it could come in handy both against the Solar Guardian and the Dark Rider.”

  Kayla nodded as we hesitantly slipped away from each other. “Then we’d better get to theorycrafting! We’ve only got, what, twenty minutes or so before you need to get your butt to Granholm.”

  “Right.” I swiped my hand through the air out of habit more than necessity, bringing up my full inventory while opening UI sharing privileges with Kayla. “What do you want to tackle first?”

  “Let’s do the G
em Fusion first.” I shrugged as I sorted all my free Gems into one window of my inventory. “That’s going to be the real toughie. If we run out of time looking at the Darkness Gem, I can throw it into the banner and test it on the fly.”

  She nodded as she twirled her fingers, her own inventory flaring to life before my eyes as she reciprocated the UI share. “It will be a toughie. We have a lot of possible options, all with their own strengths and weaknesses. The tooltip says this works like a normal Twincast except when noted otherwise” – she looked away from her inventory at me – “which means, well, have you ever used a Twincast yourself?”

  “I’ve never been so lucky to have one myself,” I admitted. “I know they usually have a larger increase in the Elemental Power cost of the linked Gems, but I don’t know what other wrinkles there are to deal with.”

  “Well, the only really important one is that it synchronizes the cooldowns of the two Gems to match the one with the longest cooldown, so you can’t cheat by, say, connecting a Gem with no cooldown with one with a long cooldown,” she explained as she sorted through her own extra Gems. “Ideally, we want to pick Gems with similar cooldowns so that rule doesn’t cross us up.”

  I nodded as I pulled up a stool around one of the few oak tables. “Understood. So, should we look at adding some big cooldown ability or something more generally useful, like a heal or attack to be used a lot?”

  Kayla took the stool opposite me. “Like with everything else, there are pros and cons to both. Still, I think you’re about set for emergency cooldown abilities.” She started to sort her inventory even finer, partitioning it into various categories of Skill Gems. “Your strength in tanking is about as strong as it can be, even more so if we’re in the same group to leverage the powers of our Promise, so we should work on your offensive or support abilities.”

  Frowning a bit as I squinted at my inventory, I nodded slowly. “Point taken. The problem is that we’re working against all my affinities. Warlords and Craggars both suck at everything offensive and that’s what I need work on.” I passed my hands through the shimmering display in front of me. “It doesn’t help that I don’t have many offensive Gems. I mean, I really only kept a couple of the starter Warlord Gems, you know the stuff that lets you get out of the newbie yard I couldn’t actually sell.”