Forever Fantasy Online

by Rachel Aaron

  “You mean like a democracy?” Tina scowled. “We don’t exactly have the time to set up something complicated. Also, mercenaries are a military operation. That means one leader with the ability to make quick decisions in the field. We can’t be taking a vote on every little maneuver.”

  “Don’t care,” the Ranger said, crossing her arms. “Either we get a say in decision-making, or we go.”

  “Grel’Darm is about to walk into us!” Tina said, pointing at the walls, where soldiers were beating the alarm gongs nonstop. “Can we just agree to figure something out after the battle?”

  “No,” Zen said angrily. “The expediency argument isn’t going to work anymore. There’s always something going down in this shit-fest of a world! That’s why we need your word now.”

  Tina gritted her teeth. “This is extortion.”

  “Shoe’s on the other foot, isn’t it?” Zen said, lifting her chin.

  Tina ground her boots into the stone, scrambling to think of a way to share power that wouldn’t result in chaos or lose her all control over her guild. She could already feel Grel’s footsteps rumbling through the ground. If they were going to do this, they needed to move now.

  “What about if we used the guild officers?” she asked. “I’d still be in charge as guild leader, but Assassins, Rangers, Sorcerers, Knights, Berserkers, and Naturalists would each get one vote on a council that can overrule my decisions. Would that work?”

  The Ranger frowned. “I was hoping for something more flexible.”

  “Zen, we are legit out of time,” Tina said desperately, pointing at the rumbling ground. “You’re getting the power to fix things to your liking in the future, but if you don’t work with me now, there won’t be a future.”

  The elf looked back at the other Rangers, most of whom gave her the thumbs-up. “Okay,” Zen said. “We’ll take it. But now we’ve gotta vote.”

  Tina rolled her eyes. They didn’t have time for this, but the class-leader thing had been her idea, so she stomped her impatience down and turned to address the rest of the raid. “You heard the agreement,” she said. “If that’s cool with you, then sign the paper and group up by class. Once you select your officers, we’ll hold a vote and get this show on the road. Just make it snappy. Grel’s almost here.”

  Zen smiled and picked up the quill, signing her name below Roxxy’s on the Order’s contract that had formed their new guild. Once she’d signed, the other Rangers ran up to sign as well. More players followed, and soon, with the exception of KuroKawaii, everyone had signed on. That was much better participation than Tina had hoped for, and she would have grinned with relief if she hadn’t just been forced to give control of her guild away to a bunch of ingrates.

  Once they’d signed, all the players broke up into their class groups. Tina was tapping her boot, waiting impatiently for the others to finish, when she felt the imposing presence of Commander Garrond behind her.

  “Taking a vote?” he asked suspiciously when she turned around. “I thought you were the ‘highest authority’ of this mob.”

  “I am,” Tina snapped. “We’re just handing out some long-overdue promotions while we wait for the battle. And speaking of battle, are you ready?”

  “The Order is always prepared to come to the defense of the innocent,” Garrond said pompously, nodding over his shoulder at the perfectly square squadrons of gold-and-white soldiers arrayed in the yard behind him. “Have you decided where you will fight Grel’Darm?”

  Tina nodded and pointed at the keep’s inner door. “We’re going to trap him between the inner and outer gates,” she said. “The same place you cornered us when we came in. That should keep him boxed up good and tight, and the narrow door will keep us from getting too overrun by the rest of the undead. Once we engage, make sure you keep all your men back at least a hundred feet. His Chain Fire can go forever so long as it has new targets, but it can’t leap more than that. If you stay out of range, it should keep the Chain Fire out of your fort.”

  Garrond looked at her as if she were mad. “A hundred feet?” he cried. “You’re talking about my front door! I can’t just leave the front of my fortress unguarded during a siege!”

  “Do you want Grel dead or not?” Tina snapped back. “Don’t worry about the front. We’re going to be jammed in between the gates. Nothing’s getting past us.”

  “It had better not,” Garrond said impatiently. “I just hope you’re actually as good as you boast, Roxxy of the Roughnecks. There are a lot of lives counting on you.”

  “Don’t worry,” Tina assured him. “This kind of encounter is our bread and butter.”

  Garrond didn’t look convinced, but he must have finally realized just how screwed he was, because he nodded anyway. “Just make sure you get into position soon. Grel’Darm and his army are only half a mile away.”

  The commander strode back to his troops after that, and Tina sighed with relief, turning back to the class groups to see whom she was going to be running her guild with.

  Fortunately, the selection process didn’t take long. One by one, the new officers left their groups and came forward. Even though there were only two of them since Kuro had declined to join the guild, Tina was beyond relieved when SilentBlayde came forward as the leader of the Assassins. The Rangers, of course, chose Zen, though Tina was shocked when NekoBaby won the Naturalist vote, and even more surprised when the Clerics chose Anders.

  “Instant disaster, just add mob rule,” she muttered as Neko bounced forward, shooting Anders a murderous glare when he stepped up beside her. Thankfully, any potential incidents were nipped in the bud when Killbox, now the officer of the Berserkers, elbowed his way between them.

  KatanaFatale came up next, practically shoved to the front by the other Sorcerers. When Tina asked how he’d gotten elected given that he’d only been with the raid for a few hours, the poor man had muttered something about new guys getting the shit job. Finally, and most surprising of all, Frank came over.

  Tina thought she was seeing things when the newbie tank walked out of the Knights’ circle, and she wasn’t the only one. All the officers were staring slack-jawed as Frank took his place in the circle, pushing up his visor to smile sheepishly at them.

  Tina broke the awkward silence first. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, Frank, but how did you get elected to lead the Knights?”

  “You still don’t know what cooldowns are!” Neko blurted out. “What gives?”

  “That’s what I said,” Frank replied, shrugging his huge shoulders. “But once they found out I used to be chief engineer at an ammonium plant, they told me I had to take the gig. Seems I’m the only one with actual managerial experience.”

  “Can’t argue with that logic,” Tina said, relieved that she had someone she liked for the Knights. “Okay, folks, you know the plan. As always, SB’s in command if something happens to me, but otherwise, you guys are the bosses. You’re in charge of making sure all your people are okay and doing what they’re supposed to be doing. Got it?”

  Everyone nodded as horns began to sound from the walls of the fortress. In the courtyard, Commander Garrond thrust his sword into the air. “The undead are upon us!” he cried at the top of his lungs. “Everyone to their positions! For the living!”

  The Order roared back as one, “For the living!”

  “That’s our cue,” Tina said, thrusting her fist into the air. “Roughnecks! Let’s go show this world just how destructive we can be!”

  A deafening cheer went up from all the players as they jumped up and started running toward the gates.

  ****

  As Tina had discovered the hard way in her attempt to storm the place, the front of the Order’s fortress made a good trap. The walled-in corridor between the inner gate and the outer gatehouse that stuck off the fort’s main body like a gooseneck was a perfect kill box—narrow, tall, and walled in by stone on all sides. The front gatehouse especially was a massive defense of heavy walls and stone archer towers, all o
f which were emptying of soldiers at Garrond’s command as Tina and her Roughnecks took up position between the gates.

  “One hundred feet!” Tina yelled at the Order soldiers running along the walls above them. “You stay one hundred feet away from us, or your whole fort turns into a Chain Fire bonfire!”

  Satisfied she’d done her due diligence, Tina turned to examine her battlefield. She’d chosen to fight here for a lot of reasons, but the relative narrowness and the thinner-than-average stone walls that formed the gooseneck’s sides were the two biggest. Once the raid was inside, the Order locked the inner gate behind them, the giant doors closing with an ominous boom as teams of soldiers lowered the heavy crossbeams into place.

  “Positions, everyone!” Tina yelled. “Ranged damage and healers line up in the back! Melee fighters to the left and right! Frank, you’re up front with me!”

  Everyone scrambled into place as she yelled out positions, and Tina grinned. Finally, they were starting to look like a real raid. She was ordering the back line to group up closer when a giant tremor shook the ground, and the whole fortress groaned.

  “Minds on what you’re doing, people!” Tina shouted when everyone’s heads whipped toward the still closed-and-bolted outer gate. “Weapons out! Remember your jobs!”

  The ground shook again as she bellowed the orders, and Frank gulped beside her.

  “Roxxy?”

  “It’ll be okay,” she said, turning to face the shaking doors in front of them. “Just do your job.”

  “About that,” he said, voice quivering. “Can you please tell me how we are tanking this guy again?”

  She’d already explained the fight to him several times on their way up here, but it was his first big boss encounter. Tina wasn’t about to begrudge him anything right now.

  “Sure, man,” she said, giving him a reassuring smile. “Grel’Darm is what we call a ‘Massive Blows’ boss. That means he doesn’t attack fast, but when he does hit, he hits for a lot. You need to be prepared to use your defensive cooldowns every time you get hit. But the main thing we have to watch out for is Howling Strike. It does ridiculous damage, so you never want to get hit by more than one in a row.”

  “And that’s why we’re trading off tanking him?”

  “Yup,” she said, nodding. “It’s all about using Steady Ground. That’s our anti-knock-back ability. When you take a really big attack like Howling Strike, the force can send you flying. If you’re not prepared, you’ll splat against the back wall like a bug on a windshield. That’s where Steady Ground comes in. When you hit it, it’ll lock you in place so Grel can’t punt you away. The ability will give you ten good seconds of guaranteed feet on the ground, but once that’s over, there’s a twenty-second reset time before you can Steady Ground again.”

  “And that’s why we’re taking turns.”

  “Exactly,” Tina said. “I’ll hit Steady Ground for the first Howling Strike, then we’ll switch places, and you’ll use it, then me again, then you again, and so on.”

  “I see,” Frank said slowly. “But Roxxy—and I mean no disrespect cause I’m sure you know what you’re doing—ten seconds of Steady Ground plus twenty seconds of waiting for it to reset is only thirty seconds. If I understand all this ‘cooldown’ stuff right, that means we only get four uses of Steady Ground per minute between the two of us. What if he Howling Strikes more than that?”

  “That’s where my plan comes in,” Tina said, nodding at the melee teams who’d taken up position against the box courtyard’s walls to their left and right. “If everything goes like it should, you and I will only have to tank Grel long enough to get him into position. Once he’s there, all we have to do is keep him in place for a minute while the melee does their job. After that, there should be no more tanking needed.”

  Frank didn’t seem reassured, so Tina changed the subject. “Show me your Hunched Stance.”

  “That’s the one where I angle my shield for the Big Boot, right?” Frank said, crouching down with the top of his shield braced against his shoulder and the base on the ground.

  Tina nudged the bottom of his shield out farther with her boot. “Remember, the angle has to be forty-five degrees or lower. This is a deflection move, not a block. You want the force to slide over you, not into you.” She adjusted his shield again then stepped back to check his form. “Looks good now. Just do it that way every time, and you’ll be fine. Oh, and remember to keep your head down. Even us tanks can get KO’d by a bad blow.”

  Frank nodded nervously, dancing from foot to foot as he straightened up.

  “Hey,” she said, putting a hand on his shoulder to steady him. “It’ll be okay. I’m right here beside you, and there’s an entire raid of people behind us. None of us are doing this alone.”

  “But if I mess up, we’re all going to die, right? The other Knights were saying this guy is really unforgiving.”

  Tina smiled as warmly as a stonekin could. “He is, but don’t worry. I’ve done a lot of tanking in my time, and I have plenty of tricks up my sleeve. The same goes for all the players behind you. Don’t underestimate how much FFO we’ve played. If you slip up, we’ll be there to catch you.”

  “But what about The Contagion of the Great Pyre?” he asked in a panicked voice.

  Tina frowned. “The Contagion of—Oh! You mean Chain Fire!” She laughed. “You’ve been talking to SB, haven’t you? Contagion of the Great Pyre is what Grel’s big ability is called in the lore, which is cool to know if you’re an FFO history junkie like SilentBlayde, but no one actually calls it that. If we had to yell ‘Contagion of the Great Pyre!’ every time it went off, we’d be burned to a crisp before we finished talking.”

  That was supposed to be a joke, but Frank was too anxious to notice, so Tina just moved on.

  “Okay, Chain Fire, real quick. Two times during the fight, once at half health and once as a quarter, Grel will unleash a massive-damage ghostfire attack that jumps from player to player. The attack splits with every jump, so it’ll hit the two of us first then split into four, then eight, and so on forever until there are no more targets in range. Each hit does a shit-ton of damage and can’t be blocked, so you just have to suck it up. That’s why I’ve got everyone else grouped up in the back for—”

  She stopped as the ground shook again, nearly knocking her off her feet. “You know what? Don’t even worry about it. It’s the healers’ job to deal with Chain Fire.”

  “But you said it was going to take all their mana to heal the Contagion…I mean Chain Fire,” Frank reminded her. “That’s why we’re not getting heals during tanking phase. They need to save their mana to put out the fire, right?”

  “We’re going to try to go without heals,” Tina said. “I can still call for help if we need it, but we’re geared tanks! We’ve got over six hundred thousand health each. We should be able to take a few whacks without needing a patch-up.”

  She kept her voice cocky so as not to scare him, but the reality was that their healers didn’t have the mana to keep two tanks topped off and keep the entire raid alive through two Chain Fires. If everything went to plan, that wouldn’t be a problem, but Tina still intended to save all non-Chain Fire healing for absolute emergencies. Otherwise, healers would go OOM, and people would die.

  “We’ll be fine,” she said, slapping Frank on the shoulder. “All we have to worry about is keeping each other alive and the boss in position. The raid will handle the rest.”

  Frank nodded with a gulp, lowering his visor again as the rumbling in the ground increased. Feeling the paving stones rattle under her boots reminded Tina that it wasn’t just Grel’Darm coming to get them. It was an entire army of the undead. That was the other reason she’d chosen to fight between the gates. In this narrow place, they could eliminate the Once King’s numbers advantage, forcing the army to fight them in small, manageable clusters rather than all at once.

  Or at least, that was the idea. Tina was going through everything again in her head one last time when
she heard dozens of people gasp behind her.

  She whirled around, sword up, but all she found were a bunch of casters staring at the sky. Confused, she looked up as well, but all she saw was the early-morning version of the endlessly cloudy Deadlands sky.

  “Anders!” she hollered. “What’s going on?”

  Anders blinked his huge fish eyes at the sky. “Death magic…” he said, voice shaking. “Floating above us on the wind. There’s so much of it.”

  As creepy as that was, magic in the air wasn’t an attack, so far as Tina knew. It was distracting her back line, though, so she banged obnoxiously on her shield until all the robed spell casters were looking her way again.

  “Keep it together, folks!” she yelled. “Nothing new here, just another day and another boss fight. We can do this! We even get to cheat this time, so cheer up!”

  As she said that, drums began to pound outside the walls. Huge, booming, discordant war drums that beat in a frenetic rhythm. These were followed by the high-pitched wailing of thousands of hollow, ghostly voices. Listening to them was like hearing an entire country being slowly murdered. The sound plus the now-constant rumbling in the ground was enough to make even Tina quake in her boots, keeping her eyes fixed on the fortress’s closed front gate.

  “Archers ready!” the booming voice of Commander Garrond rang out behind them. He was standing on top of the fortress’s northern tower—a hundred feet from the raid, as promised. Even from so far away, though, Tina could see the strain in his face, which she took as a sign that the undead were even closer than she’d realized. Then without warning, the rumbling under her feet stopped.

  Tina froze. The drums and wailing continued, but the ground was still, and she cursed the closed outer gates that kept her from seeing what was going on. Locked between the walls and the two doors, the raid was essentially packed inside a box. A very useful and strategically critical box, but it was still annoying. Behind her, she heard the Rangers whispering about going up top to take a look, but though she was dying to know what was going on outside, Tina shook her head.