by Jeff Sproul
The Bunker Brawlers, which was the guild Riley belonged to, tended to stick to defensive actions or support functions. They weren't conquerors. They knew they needed to survive as a guild and alliance, but they didn't like the idea of fighting with players that they had once fought beside, against their current allies. It was…a very strange dynamic, to say the least. Many of Riley's guild mates were still apprehensive of his choice to decide the fate of their guild, even if the only alternative he'd had was to be killed by Sage along with Amber Impaler, Parviz, Chase, and Carla.
There had been no way out of that situation, other than to align themselves with Sage.
The Bunker Brawler's base was known as Bunker 7 and was located in the center of the city and at the center of The Crimson Alliance. Even if they wanted to turn against Sage and the other hellions now, they'd still be surrounded. They'd have to flee—with all of their assets on them—to another area entirely and hope someone would take them in and not kill them for all their loot.
He'd discussed it with Laura, the leader of The Bunker Brawlers. Laura had certainly been upset at the time. But she'd been in Sage's lair. She'd seen his power and, in a quick act, was saved by Parviz just as Riley had gained consciousness after going through a portal.
Laura's frustration at learning of their part in the alliance quickly alleviated as she knew what Sage and his allies were capable of.
But that was mostly in the past now, even if it was often brought up in some way or another.
Gem gave him a strange look as Riley shook the man's hand. "Thanks a bunch," he told him, before Gem's eyes widened, realizing there were three large scorpions surrounding him in the small abandoned bakery shop he'd been using as a place to rest.
Riley got back on the scorpion and left the shop. He went around back with his three-scorpion group and quickly had them remove one of the manholes on the ground so that they could discreetly descend into the underground. The last scorpion down would pull the cover back into place, concealing their actions. Once underground, Riley took the lead with the other two scorps behind him. He headed directly for the sewer areas beneath the enemy troops. Hopefully, they weren't covering underground routes. To Riley's knowledge, he'd never heard of The Vigilant using underground tactics, so he figured he had a good shot.
Hellions often used underground areas, due to the fact that hero-centric players were often on the surface and had been on the surface since the beginning. Hellions had to utilize the vast underground areas of the game in order to have any territory at all when the Hellions expansion had been released.
For now, Riley was using the sewers as a weakness for the paragon-centric enemy troops.
The sewers were mostly pipes and tunnels. There wasn't any raw sewage actually flowing. For the most part, it was all empty pipes that were there for aesthetic purposes. Despite being called sewers, they were mostly just underground tunnels made of concrete. Small white lights were interspersed around the ceiling and floor, illuminating the area around him. But even with the lights, he kept his goggles on, because he didn't want to be left in the dark in case something happened. He also wanted to keep his stealth detection on, in the off-chance that something might be hiding. The last thing he needed while down in the tunnels was to get jumped and discovered by some stealthed robot from the Iron Hounds.
It didn't take long to get directly beneath The Iron Hounds' army. He lifted his arm and activated the band for rendering a map of the nearby area. Despite being on the enemy's side, there wasn't any issue with the map and he was able to see it just fine. Either the enemies didn't have good jamming equipment, or The Vigilant simply had better scanning equipment.
Scorp One slowed its pace as Riley reached the right side of the enemy's forces. He was keeping a close eye on them. It was likely that he wouldn't be able to account for any enemy forces that were cloaked, but if there were any, he'd hopefully catch some of them in his plan.
He was keeping a close eye on the jamming field that The Vigilant were producing. It didn't reach too far beyond the tracks, but it did encompass the entire area he'd need to be in, even underground. But once again, he was on a timetable. He needed to move quickly if he was to cover all the ground he needed to, in case the enemy finished its preparations and attacked.
There was still a chance that the enemy was simply gathering their forces in an assumption that The Vigilant were the ones who might attack them, but it didn't make a whole lot of sense, unless they were just super paranoid without reason. As far as he knew, The Vigilant hadn't gone on the offensive against them beyond that one raid on their caravan.
Well, he was about to give the fists and the hounds something to be truly concerned about.
Once he'd reached his destination, he produced small red gems. He could've used his boots, or even the aid of the scorpion he was on, to place them around as needed, but since he'd kept Amber Impaler's powers, he used the morphable amber goo to aid him in this task. He’d produce a gem, and while the several-second cooldown went away, he'd use the orange tendril coming from his right arm as a 'planter.' He'd grab the gem with the tendril and then pierce the ceiling and floor, only to push the gem through the tendril and set it several inches into the floor, or about a foot into the ceiling. He was thankful that Amber's powers were so…lethal. But for now, he was practically using them for gardening.
If you considered planting explosive gems 'gardening.'
He moved as quickly as the cooldown on the gems would allow. Even as he worked in an area, he was gradually fine-tuning how often he'd need to place a gem, and where would be the best spot. He kept referencing the 3D map coming from his arm. He wanted to make sure the enemies weren't on the move, and he was checking their positioning so that he could cause the maximum amount of damage possible. Part of him wished he had Todd back. Todd could've moved the ground and helped him increase the lethality of the gems. But Todd was never coming back.
He continued his task, constantly moving on scorpion-back, with two others flanking him. They didn't say anything, but then again, he wasn't really making conversation with them. He was too preoccupied with his current task.
He hadn't been keeping track of time. Five or ten minutes might've passed before he got to where the Fists of Atlas were. Once he arrived, he quickly started back at his task, planting more gems around the floor and ceiling of the tunnels. He just hoped there'd be enough damage. It sounded as though these guys had tougher units than what he had fought out by his base earlier.
He was keeping a much sharper eye on the map, now that a significant number of minutes were passing—at least in terms of a possible engagement. The enemies still hadn't begun to move. They hadn't so much as shifted from their positions as far as Riley could tell. Maybe there weren't any players in the vicinity? Or maybe they were just waiting. For what, Riley had no idea.
Today was just full of little mysteries.
He kinda wanted to go fight in a dungeon somewhere. He missed going around and fighting monsters in various places where you knew they'd spawn and it was only sometimes a challenge to kill them. But all of this was just player-vs-player and a bit stressful.
Of course, a lot of that stress came from the fact that he was now in a PVP-oriented alliance. There were plenty of areas that weren't fighting over cityscape. Even some of the wilds areas weren't very rich with resources, so players would build there, hoping that nobody would attack them for the underground resources. Even if they were sometimes attacked for whatever they'd acquired in a more player-vs-environment capacity.
Riley placed the last of the gems that he could. Each placement cost about 30 energy. He'd drank two of the energy-replenishing cans, as he hadn't been sure how many he'd need. He would've taken the next two hours to keep planting gems if he knew he had the time to do it, but he didn't.
So with roughly two-hundred and fifty gems planted, he headed back as fast as the scorpion could take him. The lights rushed by. The dusty odor of the tunnels wasn't as prevalent when mo
ving this quickly. Not that he minded it all that much. There were some places in Sigil Online that smelled much worse.
In no time at all, he reached the entrance that he and the scorpions had come down through. He didn't want to create any rough exits or entrances with the scorpions’ tunneling abilities, in case anything was still potentially watching. Even as he was returning to The Vigilant's side of the train tracks, he was keeping a keen eye on those red dots. He had planted all the explosives he could, and he was able to set them off at any moment.
It was very interesting, actually. As he looked out to the other side of the tracks, even through a number of short buildings, he could see little tiny indicator specks for each of the gems he'd planted. This would allow him to think on which ones he wanted to explode remotely with his mind.
Now that he was on the surface again, he got off of the scorpion and walked ahead of it. He left the alley and headed back around the building to where he'd been speaking to Aegis and Ava.
Ava was nowhere in sight, but Aegis was still there, consulting her rendered map. It was only now that Riley was looking around, consulting his own. The Vigilant didn't have any troops directly in his line of sight. They were over closer to the tracks, but still hidden behind barricades or buildings. But they were mostly one or two streets over, while Aegis was back a little further, surely for safety.
"I'm back," he called over to Aegis. He then spotted the indicator signals for himself and the three blocks for his scorpions. "Hey, you weren't watching where I was going, while I was out there, were you?"
Aegis turned her head to him and smirked. "I'm not that dumb. I kept going into different buildings every time I wanted to check your progress. So unless something literally followed me into a closet every time, you're fine. I just came out when I saw you coming back."
"Ah, alright, good idea," said Riley.
"So I take it you did whatever you were going to do?"
Riley nodded. "Yep, it's all done. I assume you have some idea of what I was doing?"
Aegis smirked. "Well, Ava figured it out before I did. I just sent her back to check on Domi. So, are we going to go through with it? I haven't seen any movement from them."
Riley kept watching the other side of the tracks. Most of the enemy forces were positioned much like they were in terms of where on the street they were located and how spread out they were. But it was likely that The Vigilant had more traps, even if they were fewer in number.
"I'm ready if you all are," said Riley. "I can go when you're ready for the fallout."
Aegis pulled her cellphone from her inventory. "Group call local guild mates." She was then silent for a few seconds. "Ava, you good?…Great. Domi? All set up?" A few moments passed. "Well you've had as much time as we can spare. It'll have to do. Silver, are you in a good position?" Aegis was silent for a couple more seconds. "Well, it's about to get a lot more interesting, I promise. Gem, are you awake? Good. Alright everyone, we've got Relinquisher from Crimson here with us. He's about to make a move. You'll know it when you see it. Be prepared for anything."
Aegis kept the cellphone up to her ear and then looked over to Riley. She nodded. "Do it."
Riley nodded back and turned to face the direction of the tracks. He looked at the gems to the far right, focusing on the upper level first, the ones that would be on the ceiling of the tunnels, and right beneath the enemy troops' feet.
His lips curled.
One by one in rapid succession, explosive flashes with subsequent booms came from the other side of the tracks.
The explosions ripped across the battle-lines that their enemies had prepared.
Aegis laughed. "I guess you got the best view from up there, then," she said on her cell, surely talking to Silver Shooter.
Riley remained focused. There was only a fraction of a second between each explosion. He had to take a few seconds to detonate all of them, going from right to left. Once he reached the left side, he looked back to the right side of the battlefield. "Phase two," he said, still holding that same grin.
Another series of explosions rumbled from the distance as Riley set off all the floor-based gems he'd placed. With any luck, the first explosions would've opened up the ground beneath the enemy's feet, causing damage with the initial explosion and maybe even a little with the short fall, if the equipment was heavy and less agile. This second phase was to detonate the floor-based gems, to get another round of explosions on all the enemies if they fell into the holes that the first phase created.
"They're losing lights," said Aegis as she watched the little red indicators go dark, one after another.
After a few more seconds, the explosions ended and Riley let out a slow sigh. "And that's all of them."
"Silver, keep an eye on the tracks, if anything even starts to cross over, you take them out," said Aegis. "Gem and Domi, make sure you're in safe positions. It looks like…wait, I'm not seeing any indicators."
Riley's brow furrowed. He brought his arm up and tapped the 3D map on. He checked it over and only saw the indicator lights for their own troops. "Wait, that's not right," said Riley. "There's no way I killed them all. You said some of them were tough, right?" he asked, looking over to Aegis. "There's no way I managed to kill absolutely everything. Even if they weren't prepared for it."
Aegis consulted the 3D map as well. She put her cellphone on speaker mode and set it in her left hand while she used her other to navigate the map and the local area.
"I'm just seeing a bunch of smoke from up here," came a female voice that Riley imagined had to belong to Silver. "No movement. No hostiles."
Riley kept a worried look as he looked over to Aegis. "Did you actually see any enemies with your eyes?" he asked.
"I saw troops over there," came Ava's voice from the speaker on Aegis's phone. "At least some mechs. Not a lot, but I just thought they were their lighter forces."
"I spotted a couple humanoids," came Gem's voice. "But I didn't look for long."
"I spotted whatever was out in the open," said Silver. "There weren't many, but the bulk of their forces were hiding behind things."
Riley shook his head. "Something's wrong. This doesn't feel right. My attack should've culled a number of their forces, but not everything. They must’ve cloaked or something. You said you can't see them on scanners when they're cloaked, right?"
"That's right, but only The Iron Hounds have cloaking abilities," said Aegis.
"Uh, guys. I've got something," came Silver's voice from over the speaker.
"What is it?" Aegis asked.
"Hell, you can see for yourselves," said Silver. "Look at the smoke. I don't know what it is."
Riley and Aegis looked up above the closest building and over to the smoke that was rising from the explosions. The dark smoke billowed and wisped up against the nearby roofs and up into the sky. There was no structure taller than about one or two stories on the outskirts of the city. But the way the smoke moved, it was moving around and against something.
"What is that?" Riley asked, pointing to where the smoke was curling around some sort of structure or construct that was most certainly there but unable to actually be seen.
"It's stealthed," Aegis said, with wide eyes. "Was it there this whole time? Silver, can you make out any details from where you are?"
A moment later, the strange space that the smoke was moving around shimmered and warped. Four iron legs rose up, easily four stories high. They were segmented in such a way to look like how a canine's might, but they were much more rigid, and, of course, mechanical.
The upper portion of the construct appeared. It was like a large rectangular block. As if someone had slapped an enormous brick on top of four metal legs. The brick section rose several more stories above the legs, making the entirety of it truly immense. At least, compared to the fact that they had nothing of such a size on their side of the tracks.
"Yup, I can make out lots of details," came Silver's almost shuddering voice.
"How the
hell…what do we even do against that?" asked Gem. "You realize I can't actually throw gems that far, right?"
"Well, we don't know what it's capable of yet," said Aegis. "We might have a chance. But I agree, this doesn't look good."
Riley just stood there, staring at it. Despite the fact that he felt it could probably decimate their entire group, he had to admit, it was pretty damn cool.
A bastion on legs.
Chapter 11: Bastion Hound
"That thing must've cost a fortune," said Riley.
"They must've funneled a ton of resources into it," said Aegis. "We had no idea they could make something like this."
"Alright, so…let's see. I've got two thoughts here," said Riley. "Either almost all of the indicators on the ground were decoys that we couldn't see, which meant that they were cheap and super expendable, or they were all very light troops that were meant to support that mobile bastion. Which means it has weaknesses that we can exploit."
"Want me to go out and kick it?" came Ava's voice.
"Uh, how about not yet?" said Aegis.
"You sure? I bet I could knock it over. One kick, kapow. Done," said Ava.
Aegis shook her head. "You can't even get up to it, even if you wanted to kick it!"
"I can kick its legs, and I can jump pretty good."
"All by yourself? Just…calm down and let me think here."
Riley slowly scanned the entirety of the monstrous metal hound. It had no actual head. It was mostly a box with legs. But there had to be a lot of room inside. Was anyone inside of it? For all intents and purposes, there could be a whole army inside, or a bunch of players.
They were only six people.
"I'm waiting for orders here," said Gem. "I've got traps all over our side. I imagine Domi does too, but if that thing walks between our two locations, I'm sure we’re screwed out of damage. If that thing marches on us, we can't stop it from heading into the city and toward our base."