Bastions

by Jeff Sproul

  "You fight any Golem creatures yet?" Riley asked.

  "Not yet! But it sure sounds like a fun time to me. Sounds like you and a few of the others are getting all of Golem's attention!"

  "Sure feels like it!" Riley laughed. "So you're loving Bastions then?"

  "Absolutely!" Red said with a wide grin. "Plenty of killing for me and my girl. Good times!"

  Red's energy was infectious. He got a big smile as well and looked ahead."One minute till arrival," came Chrono's voice over the bands. His voice would've carried specifically to the guild leaders and their second-in-commands. A second voice then sounded over Riley's band, but also Red's. "Sixty seconds to the site," said Laura. "Start popping consumables and buffs if you have them."

  This form of communication was referred to as 'raid comms.' There was a distinct leadership at play via their communication lines. Chrono was the lead, and would speak to the guild leaders and seconds, and then they would in turn speak to Chrono and their own subordinates. This made it so that Chrono was only able to hear communications from the guild leaders and not individual alliance members. It significantly alleviated congestion so that they could all react quickly and precisely.

  Riley tightened his grip on the scorpion. He was loosely counting down the seconds as they traveled. He reached up and flipped the switch on the side of his goggles, activating his stealth detection. He doubted he'd be able to see anything with it, but he'd rather have it on and not need it, than have it off when it could potentially save his life.

  A dull light came from up ahead. With the goggles on, he saw things a bit differently since they had to both light up dark areas as well as indicate where actual light was. It made the actual light more intense, but not so much that it prevented him from seeing in the daylight. The goggles would actually shift to accommodate the lights he was seeing. Else, the intense light in the game might somehow blind his character.

  The Sappers and their scorpions would be the first ones out of the tunnel, but all Riley could see was a distant bit of movement.

  Riley had been under the impression that they were supposed to tunnel into Alpha Site and go beneath the wall in order to avoid many of the bastion's defenses and guards.

  Chrono's voice suddenly came from their bands. "There's a barrier protecting the underground portion of the base. Scorpions can't melt or tunnel through it. The Sappers are claiming that they'd have to use a lot of damage to break past it, if at all, which might compromise the rest of the convoy if we're all underground. Everyone, get above ground. This isn't the best option, but we can't risk getting trapped underground at this point. We'll fight them on the surface and break into the base up there."

  "Alright everyone," came Laura's voice over the band. "We can't go in through the underground. There's some kind of barrier. We're assaulting it from the surface. We're heading up."

  The convoy rapidly moved on through the tunnel. All of the scorpions knew where they were going, as each player had the coordinates in their contact list. But now that their destination was changing slightly, each player would have to divert their scorpion mount and the scorpions in their care. Riley's two other scorpions were already set to 'escort' so that they'd follow him in. Due to the amount of scorpions they had with them, their attack group had been supplied with 'Command Scorpions' as well, which were closer to the back of the group. These allowed for increased command potential, so that they could utilize a larger force of scorpions despite any player's shortcomings.

  The mass of players and scorpions flowed out of the tunnel like a tide of skittering crimson.

  Riley and the rest of The Bunker Brawlers ascended to the surface, where the light of the rising sun would greet them.

  Alpha Site was ahead of them, tucked away in the crescent shape of the mountain. It was draped in shadow, protecting itself from the morning sun. They were a couple thousand feet away from the bastion's outermost walls. But where Outpost Rose had paragon architecture for its walls, this was of hellion design. The structure looked more like a cross between a bee hive and an ant hill. He'd never seen anything like it. Its above-ground structure was shaped in a wide, layered cone, almost like a stack of increasingly small pancakes from bottom to top. It was hard to gauge its size from his current distance, but he'd put it somewhere between six and eight stories tall. This wasn't some miniscule outpost. It was a full-fledged bastion, whether it was lightly defended, or not.

  If there was a barrier that was keeping them from progressing underground, then it had to be some sort of cylinder or half-sphere that expanded much farther than the walls of the single structure. It was odd that they had a barrier that only worked underground. Maybe it kept them hidden somehow? Riley had no idea. There was only one thing he should be focused on now and that was making it through this battle alive.

  Glittering green streaks shot out from between the layers of the 'pancake' hive.

  The different guilds were already spreading out, to avoid remaining in one large clump of scorpions. They spaced themselves out so that they were moving in clusters, with five to ten feet between each scorpion. They still had a distance to travel in order to make it to the hive.

  A dozen green streaks smacked into the dirt all around them. Upon impact, a gaseous green and yellow cloud formed and expanded about ten feet in all directions. Riley did his best to avoid them, since none were landing directly in his path.

  More streaks shot from the nest and peppered their assault force.

  "Steer clear of those clouds!" Chrono's voice shouted from the wristband. "They're a mixture of both poison and acid. Those scorpions won't be able to withstand much of that damage.”

  "Keep you and your scorpions out of the clouds," came Laura's compact version of what Chrono had said.

  As a second-in-command, Riley would get both Chrono and Laura's play-by-plays during the battle, whereas the other Bunker Brawlers would just hear Laura's voice.

  Riley kept his sights ahead, making sure to avoid the repeated bombardment of green streaks. At first, there had been only twelve launch points but more were firing up from other locations across the stacks of the nest.

  There was movement beneath the lowest stack, where the nest met the ground. Riley tried to determine what he was seeing. There were creatures exiting the confines of the nest. Many, many creatures. Were they Golem units? Or something else?

  "Anyone have eyes on those units?" Chrono's voice sounded from the band. A few seconds passed before he spoke again. "Long-range players, take out those emplacements on the nest. Tanks, move to the front of your guilds to defend. Remember to keep your scorpions out of direct melee if you can. Crowd control players, position behind your tanks. There's an army of armored mantis minions headed toward us. It's unlikely that they have ranged abilities, but I remember that the mantis format has powerful melee capabilities and can fly short distances. Stay out of melee if you're a ranged fighter."

  Laura relayed Chrono's instructions to The Bunker Brawlers.

  In seconds, the various guilds all shifted their individual player positions.

  With the constant shifting around, The Sappers were now mid-front, with The Bunker Brawlers following behind back left, with The Vigilant beside them, back right. To the right of The Vigilant were The Crimsons and Royals, while to the left of The Bunker Brawlers were The Pale Ones and Thrashers.

  The Great Weavers had spread out across everyone and not stayed in a single cohesive group. This actually played to the spider-hellions’ strengths, as they would help fill in gaps in the assault.

  Chase had 'mechanized' his scorpion, giving it a spider bot with a mortar that was riding the scorpion as it skittered along. With puffs of sound, the mortar fired on the nest, causing intermittent explosions against the crevices of the layers.

  Streaks of red fired out from The Crimson's formation, while The Great Weavers created nets that they deployed almost like kites, which would intercept some of the oncoming green streaks. At first, the webs were floating too far beh
ind the assault, but as the front of their army collided with what had to be a hundred or more mantises, the webbing floated better into place and worked a lot like the vapor cloud that the Golem frog had used in the cave.

  Within moments of their army meeting the forces of Alpha Site, everything became all the more chaotic. Just as Chrono had said, the mantises leapt into the air and broke their tank lines.

  Players were dismounting their scorpions and Riley quickly followed suit. They'd have to engage the current enemies if they wanted to progress any further.

  "Riley! You still got my powers? Stick with me!" Amber Impaler shouted over the din of explosions and shrieks of minions.

  Riley had been within twenty feet of Amber from the moment they'd left Crimson City. He would've probably been elsewhere in the group if he had taken other people's powers, but currently, he was wielding both Amber Impaler's orange slime along with Red Shotgun's energized blasts.

  He decided he wanted to be in the thick of the fight today. And when was he ever going to get a better opportunity than when surrounded by his allies?

  Amber rushed ahead toward the mantises, only to have several fly right into their ranks.

  Riley thrust his right arm, punching the air. A subsequent bang came from his knuckles as a burst of eight red energy pellets streaked at the nearest mantis as it came fluttering down. Several of the pellets hit the mantis, but it was lanky and a little hard to hit.

  Its health appeared a moment later, showing it as 'Armored Mantis Skirmisher,' '290/290 HP.'Its health put it on par with the Golem soldiers he'd fought the other day. But some loose math told him that despite their health only being 290, they must have damage resistance due to the armor they had. Not to mention, Riley had already spotted three of the mantises assailing one of their scorpions. They'd made quick work of it, even though the scorpion had shot acid over one of them.

  The health bars that appeared around him blurred together. All he could see were the bars; there was no time to actually determine individual health amounts and whether one was lower than another.

  Riley formed an amber shield on his left arm. He rushed into position alongside Amber Impaler and watched his back as Amber used his own powers to create sharp tendrils to impale the nearby mantises, rapidly tearing into their health despite what damage mitigation they might have.

  One of the mantises directed its attention on Riley, but he was able to deflect the serrated edges of its arms with the amber shield. Each impact took 22 energy from his pool. It seemed that instead of having a shield value, the impacts were lessening the damage and then applying it to taking away his energy. He wasn't all that used to paying attention to what happened when he used the orange goo as a shield yet. Now he knew.

  A series of bangs came from his side. Then a loud hiss.

  A flurry of red pellets smashed into the mantis he was fighting, while another mantis nearby was doused in green acid. But this acid was pouring in a stream from Green Melter's hands, and not falling from the sky as an exploding cloud.

  "Any casualties?" came Chrono's digitized voice over the sounds of the battle.

  Riley continued to fight. He could see Laura's copies moving around the battlefield, blasting mantises with their gloves while blocking attacks with their energized shields. Even with ranged glove weapons, Laura's copies made for excellent skirmishers, especially in large numbers.

  "None!" came Laura's voice over the band, in response to Chrono.

  "No player casualties have been reported," Chrono spoke up after several seconds. "Keep it up! We're whittling their numbers down."

  "So I guess this isn't Golem then?" Red called out as she and Melter worked with Riley and Amber to thin out the mantises that were nearby.

  "Definitely not Golem!" Riley yelled back, trying to be heard with the constant sounds of battle all around them.

  The fighting raged on as mantises became less numerous. Riley had only seen one of Laura's copies go down and maybe two scorpions within his sight. He kept his three scorpions back in reserve, positioning them beneath one of the wide web-umbrellas that the weavers had positioned above their troops. He wasn't expending too much energy with Amber and Red's powers. He also had a well-fed buff to help with his energy overall, which gave him a ten percent increase to his energy pool. The entire alliance had eaten a meal together before leaving the HQ. It was something that Chrono and Sage had whipped up to help boost everyone's energy for the fight. It had to have been expensive to produce, but Alpha Site would pay for it a thousand times over, in due time.

  Even as the mantises thinned out under the onslaught of the Crimson Tide, the streaks of green were relentless as they pelted the area, weakening and breaking through some of the webbing that the weavers had erected in defense. But just as quickly as they went down, the weavers worked to construct new ones.

  The Sappers pushed ahead. They all had something called a 'cloak of shadows,' which was an item they had crafted that hellions could utilize. It was apparently different than the cloak of concealment that hero-players could make. But The Sappers weren't currently using theirs for stealth. Riley honestly wasn't sure if they could stealth, but it did make The Sappers easy to notice in comparison to the rest of the guilds. Of all the gathered clans and guilds, it was actually harder to tell the difference between The Vigilant and The Bunker Brawlers, since most paragons tended to blend in together. The hellions had the most unique aesthetic to allow them to stick out in groups. The Pale Ones were still predominantly white. The Royals were mostly Blue. The Thrashers were robotic or metallic, and The Crimsons looked…well, they were red. Then there were The Weavers, who all looked like spiders. So at most, they were a little hard to differentiate between all the scorpions around.

  A deep rumble came from the nest ahead. A moment later, the ground shook beneath their feet.

  "What's going on?" Red yelled as she looked around, sticking close to Green.

  Riley kept his shield up, preparing for anything. "Burrowed enemies?" he called out. "We're within their barrier. Just because we can't go through it, doesn't mean they can't!"

  A deep hum reverberated out from the nest, shaking them to their core as they stood there, watching the nest while others in the attack dealt with the remaining mantises. The acid-poison artillery shots coming from the nest had subsided altogether.

  "This doesn't feel right," Amber called out over the deep sounds emanating from the nest, which was roughly five-hundred feet away. But The Sappers had gotten within only a couple hundred feet of it now.

  The layers of the nest crumpled and slowly tore away, bit by bit, as if they were flaking and being drawn inward. It happened faster and faster as the nest was sucked in, down toward the ground. But the nest wasn't the only thing being drawn in. Stones and bits of the mountain that the nest was built against were crumbling and flying toward the center of where the nest had stood. The ground tore away, revealing a green and black swirling orb. Nearby material rushed toward it, as if it was some sort of black hole, sucking everything in.

  Riley looked to The Sappers, realizing that they were all hunched over, clinging to the ground, but slowly being dragged toward the swirling orb.

  Seconds later, Riley felt his clothes tug outward. He looked down to see the dust at his feet being drawn in the strong vortex of materials. A few seconds later, his body was slowly being drawn closer. He crouched down and jabbed the amber shield into the ground, then morphed its form to spike and extended it into the ground, as if it were the roots of a tree.

  Amber Impaler had been a few feet ahead, and without even looking back at Riley, he jabbed his tendrils into the ground to keep himself in place.

  The entire attack group of the Crimson Army had bunkered down to resist the pulling force. Whatever had prevented them from tunneling had now subsided, as they had no issue digging into the dirt. Players were directing their scorpions to dig into the ground, even as some of the closer scorpions were getting swept up into the vortex.

  "The
hell is this thing?" Amber yelled.

  "Is it going to stop?" Red shouted.

  "It has to stop eventually, else it'll consume the whole game!" Riley called out.

  The orb was drawing everything in, in a sphere around it. Dirt, mountain, scorpions, plants, even The Sappers were losing ground to it. Several of The Sappers’ players had lost their grip and hurtled toward the sphere, only to get sucked into its shimmering, multi-colored surface. They didn't burst into particles, they simply vanished into it.

  "Maybe it's a gateway, like a portal, or a wormhole!" Riley yelled, trying to keep an eye on it.

  "You want to let go and find out?" Amber Impaler shouted back. "Be my guest!"

  More scorpions were drawn into the vortex. The orb was eating a larger radius of its surroundings and close to half of The Sappers had been drawn into it. Moss, the leader of The Sappers, had been in the middle of his contingent and as the ground broke away from beneath his body, he was drawn into the orb as well.

  The orb continued to expand for exactly sixty seconds before everything currently being drawn in was suddenly dropped to the ground.

  A bright flash lit up the area and a wave of energy and air buffeted the assault group.

  Everyone flinched and shielded themselves from the light and gust of wind.

  A moment later, the bright flash diminished. The vortex and orb were gone. All of The Sappers had been drawn into the orb and were nowhere in sight, along with a large radius around the orb itself.

  But in the orb's absence, something else had appeared.

  Riley stared at the newly arrived entity in confusion. "But…Sigil Online isn't supposed to have dragons!"

  It was roughly twenty feet tall. Its wings came from its arms all the way back to the sides of its sleek body. Its form was strong and agile. It slowly stalked out into the sunlight, as part of the mountain that had been blocking the rising sun was now torn away. As the light hit it, its scales gleamed in a myriad of chromatic colors, much like how oil might when left to settle on water in a city street. It possessed no eyes, but had three short protruding horns from its forehead. Its mouth opened, revealing two sets of teeth on the bottom of its mouth, and two more on the top. Even its teeth possessed the unique chromatic effect. Its tail initially appeared as a single mass, but as it crawled around in the crater that the orb had left, its tail broke apart into nine different cords.