by Scott Seier
"We need to move!" the words came from myself and Hael at the same time. "We are in deep shit now. Crap. Just CRAP!" Hael yelled while looking around and then picking a direction to move in. We followed in a hurry, not wanting to be left behind. Gleer and Will getting filled in by our fearless leader as he jogged. "I really thought I would be able to hit at least level 20 before she got here." I heard Hael mutter to himself angrily. "Didn't account for respawn timers though. Five damn hours, and then another five to wait on our gear. might as well be an entire day wasted." We rushed through the forest, doing our best to tread the line between expedience and not falling on our faces.
"Hey Hael." I called after our disgruntled leader. He ignored me and made another turn that confirmed my suspicions. "Hael!" I reached out and grabbed his shoulder. He let me pull him to a stop and threw up his arms in the universal "WHAT" gesture.
"You're leading us back towards Four Flags aren't you?" Will and Gleer panted, but swung their heads around, looking for land marks or for enemies I couldn't tell. Hael breathed evenly and just nodded. "I'm thinking that your plan is that we die closer to town so that it's easier to make our way back to our grave markers and get our stuff back. Right?" Hael looked at me with a raised eyebrow. "Yeah, the grave run will be harder the further away it is from our respawn point. If we can manage to at least make it to the edge of the forest before they take us out then we'll only lose out on half the day instead of the whole thing." Hael paused for a second and shrugged. "The guild leader is going to visit Four Flags in a couple days. I really can't afford to lose out on an entire day of leveling, half is bad enough already, it was a bad idea to bring us into this forest without proper information about the numbers we were facing... So lets get a move on, come on!" Hael was about to turn and keep running when a chilling sound radiated through the whole forest. A hunting horn. They'd found the sight of the fight. As the haunting sound faded I caught Hael's eye before he could make another break for it. "I say that we don't die at all, or if we do we make them work for it. I don't die on other people's terms."
Hael almost laughed in my face. "Look Lyst. That last guy? He called in reinforcements. You may not understand this, but this whole quest had to be a set up. The town guard had to have known roughly how many marked players there were. They hand out the marks after all, but they only let five players take the quest? That's only five groups, max. The guard who gave the quest showed up at 5 a.m. then disappeared before the townspeople woke up... The limit of players coming into the forest is twenty five, when the number of players hiding out here is likely similar. Or way more... I didn't take into account the drastically inflated populations due to the Cascade... The damn players bribed the guard somehow to send us out here so they could farm us for money. You drop all the coins you have on you when you die. All of them are marked so they can't do quests for money like a normal player. Even if we came out here and killed a few of them, then went and got our silver for it, there's no way we wouldn't come back out here to kill more. The more we succeed the more money in our pockets, there are no banks in Four Flags, it's too small of a town for it. It's a feedback loop. Not only that, but the ones we killed had zero cash on them. Not a single copper. Which means all their money is most likely being held by a single hidden player. so dying has no real risk for them at this point. I have no idea where they got Ferry Orbs at this level, but it means that they are more organized and well funded than anyone could have expected at this level. It's not all just coincidence. It's a planned mass ambush."
I stared with my mouth open for a second longer than I felt was polite. "Well I...didn't know most of that!" I admitted. Hael threw up his arms and turned back towards the town. "But, my point still stands." He turned back to me with a hint of annoyance, but also a speck of hope in his eye. I could tell he didn't like the idea of being hunted down like dogs any more than I did. Even if it was less efficient.
"I would rather not die Hael. Or if we have a choice I would rather go down swinging than running." Will said, Gleer nodding enthusiastically in the background while scribbling madly in her notebook. Had she been writing this whole time?? Even when we were running? I glanced at the page she was working on. Not writing. Drawing... she was drawing the Ferry Orb, in detail, while we ran for our lives and planned our potential deaths. Interesting girl. Turning back to Hael I outlined my general idea.
The mine was closer than the town anyway. And the looping path we'd already taken slowed down our pursuers as much as it had slowed us down. If not more. We could make it. Hael put his stamp of approval on the idea, but before we could move out, the rogue grinned and pulled something out of his bag. He tinkered with whatever it was out of sight and then a ferry orb flew out from behind him. We all looked at him curiously. "Just calling in a little back-up earlier than expected." He said with a shrug, already in motion.
It took several minutes for us to get back on track and plot our course to the mine. As we ran, hunting horns called out to each other through the forest, some closer than others. Will nearly jumped out of his skin every time one of the horns sounded. And when I say jump out of his skin I mean it. The veins were bulging in his arms and he was breathing much heavier than his level of stamina should call for. When a call would go up nearby his whole outline would ripple slightly. I kept a very keen eye on the progression of his condition, but I noticed Hael and Gleer both acknowledge his state and shrug it off. Apparently they all knew things about each other that I didn't. I looked above their heads where their names floated, and just underneath, the Eleventh Division guild tag. I couldn't see my own name, but it very obviously lacked the same affiliation. Perhaps they were keeping things from me. Of course they are, you have only known the lot of them for less than a full day. It would be absurd for each of them to share their deepest thoughts with you after such a short time. I almost ran into a tree.
We would've made it to the mine without incident if we hadn't decided to alter our trajectory slightly when a horn went off directly to our east. In response we moved slightly to the west and by doing so ran head first into a camp of enemy players. The resulting fight was the first time I took heavy damage while in Acrion and would forever serve as a reminder to me that I should really nail down what my own teammates are capable of before going into a fight with them.
We burst through the trees and nearly flattened Hael as he stopped dead in his tracks. The four of us stood. The many of them stood. And then all hell broke loose. There were a lot more magic users in this squad, and it wasn't until a nearby tree was split clean through resulting in a shower of falling branches and chunks of bark as it fell and wedged between it's neighbors, that I took the time to scan through them and look at what we were up against. Hiding behind a tree and peaking around the trunk at odd intervals as to avoid getting hit by the many missiles in the air, mundane and otherwise, I began piecing together our enemy's composition. Three mages. Two warlocks. Three hunters. Five warriors. Despite the massive class diversity that Acrion offered it was momentarily funny to me why so many people chose almost exclusively from the original big class names from rpg history. There are three rogues that are currently not observable as well. Well that just settled it. People were un-original. Sixteen players. Sixteen...wow.
The trees were taking a beating. More of them giving way and crashing down, only to be thwarted by the obscene density of the forest. It took the maze effect and added another dimension to it. Now as I jumped from cover to cover I had to also worry about diagonal obstacles. I nearly knocked myself out several times. Vigil was invaluable in this situation. He was able to move faster than any non-agility player could, flanking the enemy and blasting them with caustic bursts of purple wind. His attack usually enough to knock them
from their hidden positions and give me a clear shot to Astral Tag them.
The two dot effects, one from Vigil and one from my Tag, would spell doom to anyone under level 3 within a few seconds. The steadily decreasing numbers among the outlaw player's didn't seem to bother them in the least. The mages were throwing fireballs left and right, trying to hit a stealthed Hael I presume, but also causing small fires to crop up. Their manic obsession with burning through all of their mana as fast as possible made them perfectly visible to myself and Gleer, even through the dense vegetation. neither of us taking too much time to start raining hell on them.
With the mages sent cowering behind stumps of their own it allowed Hael and Will to move freely to fight the eight melee fighters they had. Their rogues dancing in and out of shadows with Hael blurring in their wake, slowly hunting them down. Will fighting and dodging through fires and falling trees, trying to keep his distance from the swarm of warriors. I thought it was all over and that we were about to go out with one hell of a last stand until the enemy's reinforcements arrived.
More players with red names began boiling out of the forest. Their arrival heralded by a deafening horn blast and their triumphant cheers. Unfortunately for them Will's weird...aversion... To the hunting horns reached its limit with that last one. Now Will, since I'd first seen him get pulled out a tree by the forest lady, had always been wearing the same green bracers. Sort of bulky bracelets to protect the forearms. I pegged them as some random piece of gear that he picked up or was gifted, like Hael's weirdly expensive looking leather armor, or Gleer's super glowy Spellbook that she hastily tried to shove back into her inventory every time she thought I was looking. But apparently his bracers were a little more special. Well...honestly I didn't know what any of their special stuff did. Heck I didn't even know what my own special stuff did, my enchanted weapon resting in my hand, but stubbornly not explaining its secrets to me. But back to the bracers.
Wills gear was woven from living leaves and vines! Like the stuff that had grown through the hair of the druid lady from the eleventh division. Except it had been so tightly woven and layered that I had taken it for leather, or some similar substance. Now though, the leaves that made up the two bracers were agitated. Lifting themselves and turning to their opposite sides. On one side each leaf was a bright, healthy, green color. Like spring. On the other side it was a shockingly metallic silver color, and after that last horn the silver was showing very prominently.
The same shiver wracked Will's body that I'd noticed a few times before, but this time the blurry effect it caused seemed to linger longer than it should have. Will's body suddenly bulged with muscle and I heard several bones snap. The writhing mass of tendons and sinew settled themselves, leaving a far more muscular version of Will in its wake. "I..." the voice that came from Will's mouth was bone chilling. It was deeper than any natural voice had any business being, and it vibrated the air like a constant rumbling growl was playing in the background. "I will not be hunted." The absolute beast of a man that had swapped with our moderately cool friend took a step forward and bounded the remaining distance to the nearest Warrior. He grabbed the player around the neck, ignoring the strength stacking warrior's attempts to break his grip and smashed the poor soul into the dirt like a doll. Only a grave marker giving away there had ever been a player there at all. The Lycan will most likely kill you if you get in its way, I recommend focusing on the two warlocks that are sneaking up on us. Aw he said 'us'. Spinning in place, tearing my eyes away from the Lycan rampaging through a half dozen lower level players like they were children, I targeted the warlocks Vigil had pointed out. Battle on I suppose...
Curses and painful dots were the domain of the warlock apparently because within a few seconds I was covered in the things. I fell back behind a tree, happy that at the very least I'd given as good as I'd gotten. Two Astral Tags and two of Vigil's breath attacks had the two of them scrambling for cover as well. My speedy imp was able to find and flush them out time and time again, but he wasn't able to land a heavy hit after the first couple, the warlocks either dodging, or using a strange skill to negate Vigil's attack.
The locks were hiding somewhere in the endless trees, conjuring all manor of nasty spells from afar, lobbing them blindly in my general direction, effectively pinning me down and forcing me to consider another tree as mine was already on its way out. The warlock's spells building up in the living wood and rotting it from the inside out. My body felt for the poor tree as the same spells were eating away at me in a similar fashion. My enhanced spirit was fighting valiantly to regenerate my health at a steady rate, but it couldn't keep up with the dots on me. My health ticked downward, each time the spells did their slow damage, pain would radiate through me, like a body-wide tooth ache "how long do these damn things last!?" I yelled at no one in particular. I Heard a muffled "Forever dumb-ass" and a "you'll be dead before you find out" from the Warlocks as they happily sent a few more casts sizzling into my failing cover. Vigil appeared next to me and gazed at me for a moment. They should only last a few more seconds. I suggest that we try to hit them with an enhanced Veil Burst. It took me a moment to understand that a Veil Burst must be the name of whatever spell the imp shot out of his mouth, but that didn't help me know what he meant by enhanced.
You will simply be required to supply the additional power. Rest your hand on the center of my back and channel mana into me. I did as instructed, funneling the few points of the stuff that I had left into Vigil and watching in astonishment as he suddenly inhaled, ballooned to nearly twice his normal size, and then opened his mouth letting out a massive purple ball of swirling energy. The spell was far more densely packed than his normal attacks and it flew much faster as well. The Veil Burst burned its way straight through the trees, leaving a five foot wide swath of smoking ruin in its path.
The two warlocks had no way of knowing what was coming. They were hiding too closely to one another, making them an easy target for the large singular spell, and had been focusing too exclusively on the quantity of their own attacks, not paying any attention to what I had been doing.
The burst hit them, killed them, and moved on before they could even yell for help. Vigil and I stood, both slack-jawed at the hole we had punched through the forest. That was unexpected...
Gleer had killed all three of the enemy mages. Damn. Hael had killed two out of the three stealthies. Damn. And Will/the Lycan had completely slaughtered the hunters, warriors, and what reinforcements had shown up, and was now sniffing the air and sweeping his head back and forth. As I watched Will's body twisted unnaturally and lashed out at the air. A second later a rogue fell out of stealth clutching the stump of an arm that Will now held. "Sneaky little pests." The boulder-twistingly deep voice spat out. Wills foot snapped forward, smashing into the struggling enemy rogue's chest and sending him spinning into a tree. Or he would have hit a tree, but a grave marker plopped to the ground half
-way between where the player had been and where he would have ended up, the force of the kick too much to sustain. Silence flooded the area. Fires crackling and trees grinding against one another were the only sounds in the night.
When no more enemies made themselves known I relaxed, letting out a long sigh. So much for my plan to run to the mine and hope we could fight them in close quarters to negate their numerical advantage. We'd just fought and killed the majority of their forces right here in the open. As my eyes refocused on the now, I was startled to see the Lycan standing right next to me. His silver and yellow eyes boring holes into mine. I suddenly felt the need to run. Or at least drop to the ground and play dead. The Lycan tilted his head as Gleer slowly walked up next to me. Her health blinking yellow, proof that she'd had quite a fight while I had been chatting with the warlocks. The Lycan was about to take a step forward when a hand appeared out of nowhere and tapped the silver leafed bracers on his right arm. Instantly a ripple and blur engulfed Will and within a couple seconds our druid friend was back with us looking sheepish.
"I'm sorry about that." He said rubbing his neck and bowing his head in shame. "It's really hard to keep everything under control when that transformation hits. It's like downing a couple dozen energy drinks at once, I kind of lose it..." Hael appeared fully and shook his head. "It's not a problem, you saved the day anyway, no way we could have taken them without the extra muscle." Hael walked around and searched the ground around every grave stone. "Yup, not a single coin." He muttered to himself. He looked up into the canopy. It wasn't even noon yet, but we had just fought a war. And I could see that our leader was having trouble figuring out how to ask us to keep going.
"Normally, after a player vs player, or pvp, conflict our guild leadership recommends we take a break, but..."