by Jeff Sproul
"By yourself?" Laura spoke up.
Warcry smirked and nodded. "Yeah. Don't worry. I'm sure everything will be fine. But I don't expect you all to sit out. You'll know when to jump in."
"We intended to strike as the bomb team moves in," said Chrono. "You're telling us to wait for you to…do something? This is a pretty important mission that requires everything to go perfectly. As you said, one damage will detonate those bombs, and the bomb team has to get them from where we are now, on the outskirts of Golem's scan range, all the way into Golem's compound. There's that black goo stuff, there are hundreds…thousands of enemies in there already. Luckily, most are melee, but they do have ranged units as well. And as far as I'm aware, you have no abilities other than group support."
Warcry shrugged. "Well, you're not wrong. I'm entirely a support paragon. I can't do much on my own. But don't worry about it. Hell, if my part of the plan fails, you'll know pretty quick, ‘cause like…I'll be dead. Then you'll know to move in. Alright?"
Chrono and Laura exchanged looks, while Gella was noticeably agitated.
"We'll do as you say," said Chrono. "I suppose it doesn't matter much anyway, as long as Glint's invisibility abilities are as powerful as she says."
"Oh, they are," said Glint. "Suuuper powerful. It won't see me coming, and Gella said that even if I step on the sludge, it won’t know my precise location. So…as long as we have some kind of distraction, we should be able to make it. It's just a matter of what you all end up achieving, if we succeed. ‘Cause…we'll probably succeed…probably."
"Aaron and I will carry the bombs," said Riley. "Glint keeps us invisible. We get to the gate. We plant one bomb, we go through the active gate, we plant the other bomb on the other side. Glint won't have enough energy to get us back out, so she'll teleport away using her last individual teleport stone."
"Yeah, sadly I only have the one and this is as good a chance as any to use it," said Glint.
Riley then continued to speak. "Aaron and I will be stuck on the Mage World side when the bombs destroy both gates."
"I still think we might be able to use the other gate to teleport us away," said Aaron. "There's a possibility that we can use it just before we trigger the second bomb."
Riley quirked his lips to the side. "Well, that creates two avenues then. But regardless of what happens, we aren't coming back."
Aaron sighed. "Just because we have to leave Sigil for…a time doesn't mean we're going to die. We might be able to use the second gate to jump back to somewhere in Sigil. It's probably still aligned to send things here, since Golem is still actively attacking Sigil. So…should be easy."
Riley thought on it a moment and nodded. "Well, we'll do what we can. But ensuring the destruction of both gates is more important than us surviving. The portal gate first and then the gate in Mage World. Thanks to Warcry, we can take them out."
"Speaking of which, who am I billing for these?" Warcry asked as she looked around. "Don't get me wrong, I want to save the game as much as anyone, buuuut…these cost eight-hundred Sigil Credits a piece. So…that's something we need to talk about when this is all said and done."
"If this all works out, we'll discuss it," said Chrono. "Personally, I'd love to try and figure out how you managed to create such a device."
"Same here," Aaron mused, as he had been relatively quiet up until now.
"Well, it sure as hell wasn't me. It was our top crafter," said Warcry. "And tons of resources worth of development. We didn't really have much of a use for them until now. So I'm glad we have them. Hopefully they work."
"And they only explode in a one-foot radius?" Riley asked, looking at the two shiny silver barrels.
"That's right," said Warcry. "All the damage is concentrated. So the moment they trigger via timer, or by taking any damage at all, they'll detonate in a one foot radius around the barrel and anything in that radius takes eighty-five thousand damage. So, even if you only set it at the end of one of those gates, as long as those gates don't have more hitpoints than that, you should be good."
"It should be enough," said Gella as she continued to eye the two barrels warily.
"I got a partial look at it in the distance, but do you have a better view of what we're going into?" Warcry asked as she looked around the room.
"Certainly," said Gella as she went over to one of the consoles and pressed a number of crystalline buttons. A second later, an image appeared as a viewscreen in the center of the room.
The Needle was visually zooming in on the facility in the distance. There was a single tunnel entrance that had been carved out of the dirt that led down below ground. It was outside the walls of the facility itself, but apparently Golem didn't care. The upper facility was covered in sludge. Outside the facility was an ever-growing sea of black sludge, with little dark hive-like mounds built up a few stories high. There were also more narrow and taller towers going up seven or eight stories.
"What are these nest structures?" Warcry asked as she gestured to the screen. "And that tunnel goes straight down to the portal gate?"
Gella spoke up, "That's right. I would guess that Golem realizes it has the foothold it needs, so it's less concerned about walls and dirt being in the way. Golem can't create its own gate, but it did absorb a number of entities in our game that had building capabilities. So it mimics those nests from one of the monsters in our game, so that it can manufacture troops from them if it has a resource line set up. Which is what that sludge acts as. Those towers are improved sensors. It'll let Golem know if we get close to it. It's likely that if Melissa and her ship are nearby, they’re also out of range of those towers, like we are. Our ship and theirs have a similar stealth potential."
"But Glint over here has a higher stealth than that?" Warcry asked, as she pointed her thumb at the silver-haired woman.
"Yup," Glint said with a wide smirk. "Probably the highest stealth capability in Sigil. But I can't keep it going forever. And it's more taxing the more people I have to cloak with me. It's going to take just about all my energy to get out to the destination. So we won't be able to run, it'll have to be a walk. But from what Gella says about Golem's stealth detection, it's twenty points lower than my stealth."
"Yeah, Golem has a very powerful stealth detection with those towers, enough to catch our ship and any of our own stealthy players, but Glint has…boosted her ability beyond what we've been able to do on our side."
"Yep, wasn't easy," Glint said with that same smirk, but she clearly wasn't willing to divulge more than that.
"Great. So are we ready then?" Warcry asked. "I got the bombs here. I'm here. You're here. Let's do this, yeah?"
Chapter 34: Let’s Do This
Riley had one of the bomb barrels strapped to his back. It was cumbersome, to say the least. A bit more than the crate he'd carried previously in a similar fashion. He looked over at Aaron, who was in his human form, doing the same. The plan was that Aaron would only pop his last tier three sphere when they were right about to engage in a fight. Glint was leading the way, acting as their guide, even though it was evident exactly where they were going. The dark, sludge-walled bastion kept getting larger and larger in their vision. It was a slow trek over the mostly-dirt terrain. But there were patches of sand that would've made it hard to roll the bombs over. Not to mention that having one of them fall over on rough terrain might've caused it to go off.
Riley kept looking over to his left. He had a good line of sight on Warcry, despite the distance between them. She was maybe five-hundred feet away, while the base was several thousand. They were getting closer to the sludge at this point. Gella had warned them that if they stepped on the sludge, Golem would be alerted to 'something' being out there, but not where. It was like having a lake-sized tripwire. Once the wire was tripped, you knew something was in the lake, but not where in the lake. That was where Warcry came in, along with their forces on the Needle.
Riley was able to see Glint and Aaron easily enough because he was within
an 'invisibility dome aura,' that emanated in a short radius around Glint. They wouldn't be able to get too far from her, or they'd risk breaking out of her stealth field. Apparently it cost more energy the more people that were actively in it. The only problem was that if an enemy went into the field, it would see them.
There was a dull silvery shimmer around them. There was roughly four feet between each of them, with only about four more feet around them for maneuverability. For added safety, Riley and Aaron had short cords tied to their chest harnesses that went to a harness Glint was wearing around her jacket.
"So you said it's safe to talk when we're in your stealth field, right?" Riley asked as he reached down to his arm and tapped at the band to pull up a small holographic screen.
"That's right," said Glint. "My field nullifies sound going through it. So we can't hear anyone outside the field and they can't hear us. But at least we can still see outside of it."
Riley tapped at the little holo image in front of him until he'd selected a video source to pull from. A second later, an image of Warcry appeared, along with an audio feed.
Warcry had deployed a small puck-sized drone to fly around her and record her feed. Apparently, she was streaming it for anyone to see. As a leader of one of the largest paragon alliances in the game, it was something that she normally would've never done, especially since she was effectively out in the middle of nowhere, all alone. Even if there was a large Golem-infested base ahead of her.
"Man, this is a longer walk than I imagined," Warcry sighed. "There's nothing out here! Except for that big ol’ Golem bastion. But well, I've got a mission to do, you know? You see, nobody wants to go fight Golem. So I gotta do it myself."
At this point, Warcry monologued as she walked alone toward the Golem facility. She was a safe distance from the bomb team, so any attention she got from Golem wouldn't disrupt the two bombs. So far, Golem hadn't sent anything out to intercept her, despite the fact that they were well within Golem's scan range at this point.
"You see," Warcry spoke up again, with the audio easily discernible over Riley's band. "Golem is this terrible entity that came from Mage World. And as you can see, it has taken up residence here in Sigil Online. And I can't very well let that happen. I had hoped that my powerful alliance would do the smart thing and come out here and help me wipe Golem from our game, because you see, Golem has an active portal gate to Mage World Online that allows it to pull in all the troops it needs to conquer Sigil, just like it did Mage World. So, I'm gonna march my way over there and start punching things until Golem kills me, and probably absorbs my powers…which, let's be honest, would suck for the rest of you, because you all really love my buffs, right? And if Golem absorbs me, it'll be able to give those same buffs to all of its soldiers. Wouldn't that be a pain?"
"What is Warcry trying to do?" Glint asked, as she and Aaron could easily overhear the video feed.
"I'm not sure," Riley said as he kept walking. "Apparently, this is all part of her plan. The Needle should be able to zoom in and come to her aid with our forces if Golem deploys troops toward her. But…it does seem a bit crazy. Maybe she's trying to convince people to come out and do something about Golem?"
"Did she say what that device on her back is?" Aaron asked.
Riley leaned in closer to the video feed and studied the bread-box sized device harnessed to her back. A pole, several inches thick and about four feet high, came out of it.
"At least it's a nice day," said Warcry over the feed. "A good day for punching monsters in the face, yeah?" She chuckled to herself. "I just hope someone hurries out here to help me. Else this isn't going to go well for a lot of people, because I've fiddled with the alliance permissions for the alliance I run. Maybe some of you have heard of it, The Rook Alliance? I think we're kind of a big deal, if you ask me. But as some of my guild officers have hopefully realized by now, I kind of broke the nature of some of the agreements we had with how the alliance is run. You see, I wanted to give my alliance ample time to get their heads in the right place. I didn't want to go rushing over into that Golem compound too fast, else my alliance might not be prepared. And you see, my alliance really needs to be prepared. Because folks, I'm now going to let you in on the big secret. I changed the permissions on my alliance so that if I die, my entire alliance dissolves. That's right, folks. Nobody gets to be in charge of alliance assets. If I die, the shield goes down and The Rook Alliance breaks up into…what is it, thirty-two guilds? Now, only about fifteen of those are of any decent size to try and seize everything that becomes disowned when I die. So, when I die, the fifteen most powerful guilds in The Rook Alliance will tear each other apart to seize what they can. Because if they don't, surely someone else will. Not to mention, I already know which of them dislike each other. So…hopefully for some of those folks, I don't end up dying, right? I guess it's a good thing I brought this long-range transmitter with me so that my alliance can join me out here. You know, if they feel like it. I think it'll be pretty interesting to see what happens if they let me die and all of Colossal City goes to—"
An intense flash lit up the video feed. Riley squinted, then realized that the light was also coming from the left of where they were. He looked over and saw rapid bright flashes, all in Warcry's vicinity.
It was difficult to look at directly. His eyes kept wanting to close from the intensity of the light. But as the initial intensity of the light finally subsided, he was able to make out figures in the distance.
He tried to determine who they were with direct line of sight, but they were too far away. He diverted his attention to the video feed from the drone.
"Oh, hey…you made it! Well…a few of you, anyway. Where are—"
Another intense flash lit up the video feed.
After another few seconds, it faded. Riley kept glancing between the video feed and over to where Warcry was. There were easily twice as many players around her now, roughly one-hundred.
"What are you doing out here?" came a frustrated male voice from the video feed. "You could have at least told us what you were planning! What if we had gotten here too late?"
"And what if you had just listened to me in the first place?" came Warcry's sharp reply. "We could've ensured the safety of more of our alliance with the proper tools and equipment if we had prepared earlier than this, which is what I warned all of you about."
"Well, how do you expect us to—"
Another bright flash lit the area. The video feed went fuzzy.
Riley saw another group of twenty to thirty paragons appear. This new group was carrying equipment of some kind.
Riley checked the video feed again, but it was still fuzzy with static. He couldn't make out any visual or audio from it.
"Either Warcry's new arrivals brought jammers with them, or Golem has turned something on," said Aaron. "I doubt we're going to get her video back."
With a sigh, Riley flipped the screen off and turned his head to try and keep track of what was going on. They were roughly five-hundred feet from the sludge. Even now, it almost looked as if it was creeping ever closer to them. But perhaps it was just a trick of the light due to its strange, slimy features.
"I guess this was Warcry's plan," said Glint. "Force her entire alliance to come and keep her safe and fight with her."
"Sounds like Warcry," Riley said with a big smirk.
In the next several minutes, two more groups of roughly fifty players arrived, bringing the total to around two-hundred and thirty or so members from The Rook Alliance. Riley couldn't remember how many total players were in Warcry's alliance, and it was likely that some had to stay back and hold down their own bastion, along with whoever was currently offline. But it looked as if the bulk of The Rook Alliance had come to Warcry's aid.
"I wonder what they're talking about," Riley murmured to himself, wishing he could still listen in on Warcry. She was probably berating her own alliance as they were about to go to war.
"Something's happening," said Glint as
she pointed up ahead of them. "There, just above the compound."
It was easy to see, a shimmer in the sky. But the shimmer slowly expanded and grew. At first, a single behemoth appeared above the Golem-controlled gate compound. Then, two more on either side of the first. Then two more beyond that and several above and behind.
"Oh, this isn't good," Glint sighed. She kept moving forward despite what she was seeing.
From what Riley could tell, there were twelve of Golem's sky behemoths out in the open now and they were getting closer.
Numerous black shapes were ejected from between the lower flaps above the tendrils on the behemoths. Instead of dropping down, these projectiles were coming in at an angle, like cannon fire. They got ever closer as the seconds passed. Riley's head turned to watch Warcry's forces, since the projectiles were headed right for her. At this point, her forces had spread out more and were rushing ahead. None of the player-characters he could see were any larger than another. None of them were hellions. All of them were paragons, surely made prior to the Hellions expansion. The Rooks of War, Warcry's initial guild, had been comprised of lower-level players, but under her guidance, Riley was sure that they'd all managed to level up by now. Probably even close to one-hundred.
The black shapes were angular, like elongated pyramids or diamonds. It was hard to make out in the distance. But in no time at all, they reached The Rooks' position.
A bright blue screen manifested into existence. It was easily the size of ten seven-story buildings all put together. The black projectiles smashed into it, causing it to crackle and ripple with energy. The barrier protected Warcry's forces from the objects landing amongst her troops. But upon hitting the ground, the dark shapes shifted and contorted. Spindly limbs jutted out from the shapes after they hit the ground. It looked as if they were spiders…or perhaps something more horrendous. The objects were twice the height of most players and about ten feet wide. They lashed about with several forward-facing legs or cords or appendages of some kind. It was difficult to see what was actually happening.