by Jeff Sproul
"We need to get farther away from her position as we proceed," Glint spoke up. "We can't risk their battle line extending in our direction. Her forces don't know we're here."
"Sounds good," said Riley. "The farther away from those spider creatures we can get, the better. Those things are new and I don't want anything to do with them."
"Those sky behemoths are getting closer," said Aaron.
It was evident to see, since the twelve massive entities filled the sky as they slowly spread out toward the oncoming assault force.
"There's a lot of those Golem soldiers around the base," said Glint. "They're heading this way. More are coming from that tunnel we need to go into."
"Well, hopefully they aren't filling the tunnel," Riley replied. "We need a small gap to move through, else we'll get noticed, right?"
"The moment one of those things comes into my sphere of invisibility, we're caught," Glint sighed. "So we're going to have to time our movements just right as we get closer."
"Why didn't we do this earlier?" Aaron asked. "Why didn't we try the invisibility bomb team previously?"
"Well, first of all, there was no easy way into the compound without a large force," said Riley. "Second, we probably couldn't have afforded those bombs without Brenda or Sage covering the cost for them. Third, we could've won that fight with minimal losses if half our attack force hadn't up and vanished. And—"
"Ok, I get it, I get it. It didn't make sense to even do at the time," said Aaron, shaking his head as he looked over to Riley with a grin.
"Also, this could go really badly," Glint spoke up. "Just pointing that out there. It's not as if all of Riley's plans are infallible here. He doesn't exactly have a one-hundred percent success rate for 'good plans working the way they should.'"
They continued to close the distance on the outermost edge of the sludge. The Rooks had pushed forward enough to reach the sludge before them, essentially tripping the wire that signaled 'enemies are nearby.' It meant that the bomb team was relatively safe in proceeding onward without garnering Golem's attention.
As Riley's team got ever closer to the tunnel, it was easy to see that it was able to support thirty soldiers standing side to side. Because that was exactly what was streaming out of the passageway. Thirty, thirty, thirty, thirty. With only about three feet behind and in front of them, rows of thirty Golem foot soldiers marched out of the tunnel. But the moment they left the passageway itself, they started to run across the sludge, heading straight for Rook's forces.
But the Rooks weren't reliant on paragon powers alone.
Five dumpster-sized cannons with short, stubby barrels had been set up to the rear of Warcry's forces. The cannons belched balls of blue flame upon Golem's ground troops in the distance, while the front line of Rooks were still skirmishing with an onslaught of larger spider-creatures that were far less numerous than the wave of Golem foot soldiers heading toward them, but also far more troublesome.
Riley couldn't see them, but there must've been numerous smaller mortars set up which were firing high-arc rounds up into the sky. Some were managing to arc enough and impact the sky behemoths, albeit for what had to be lower damage. Any targets that Warcry and her forces hit weren't coming up with hitpoint numbers that Riley could see since his party only included Aaron and Glint.
Numerous beams of light, of all different colors, sizes and intensities were shooting from the Rooks’ forces. Discs of cutting energy. Orbs of explosive light. Pellets, bullets, bursts of plasma. Strange fields and waves forced some of the closest Golem troops back, or smacked them into others. Barriers of dirt had been erected in makeshift bunkers and walls that could be fired from behind. Sometimes, it looked as if nothing was there at all until one of Golem's troops moved against something, or on something. When that happened, sometimes a field would go up like a shield screen. Other times, a puff of freezing frost or burst of acid assailed Golem's troops.
There were surely other powers going on that Riley couldn't see, such as Warcry's buff that boosted everyone around her. He also knew that Warcry had more healers than the average hellion guild, due to being a primarily paragon alliance. Paragons had more healing abilities and could use more healing tools, while hellions tended to boast odd support abilities.
"Feels like this is taking longer," said Aaron.
"This sludge slows down our walk speed," said Riley.
"Maybe I was moving faster through it when I was in my Arbiter form. Just feels especially slow. Well, it's not like we can run to try and make up the difference, right?" asked Aaron.
"That's right," came Glint's quick reply. "I won't have the energy to get us there if we run."
Out of the corner of his eye, Riley caught a glimmer. He glanced over and saw a sharp-angled object in the sky. The pinkish crystal ship, Needle, had arrived. Its transport beams fired down to the far left of Warcry's troops, in the opposite direction of where Riley was moving in from.
Not that he could fully see from the distance, but he knew the majority of their forces were being deployed to create a diversion, while some of their heavy hitters would remain on the ship itself to act as gun batteries. Most notably, Silver Shooter, Chromatic Lotus, a few of The Royals, and at least a hundred troopers of the same make that he'd produced back at Outpost Rose. Another two-hundred troopers were deployed with the ground forces. The troopers weren't much, but they were certainly better than nothing.
As the Needle made its presence known and reinforced the battle line, new flashes appeared just behind Warcry's forces.
"Did Warcry just get more troops?" asked Aaron, looking over.
Riley nodded. "Oh yeah. Looks like…I can't really count them from here, but I think they're the Battle Rooks her alliance uses."
"Battle Rooks?" Glint asked.
"They're about eight feet tall, thick arms, one with a wide shield and another with a big blaster arm. They have around four-thousand hitpoints each, but can negate almost all damage that hits the shield."
"Wouldn't mind having some of those," Glint mused.
"As far as I know, she doesn't sell them, or their tech. So I think you're out of luck," said Riley.
"Hey, check out the tunnel," said Aaron. "Are the Golem soldiers as tightly packed as they were before?"
Riley had to squint and tilt his head around to try and get a good look. Just as Aaron said, there weren't rows of thirty anymore. There were maybe fifteen to twenty, running out but not marching in a line.
"They're coming out faster, though," said Riley.
"Yeah, but if that's the case and they're not filling every foot of the tunnel, we might have a better chance of sneaking in along the wall," Glint countered.
"If our luck holds out," Aaron added.
At this point, the bomb team was passing much closer to the occasional nest that Golem had constructed. It had been hard to tell if they were doing anything in the distance due to the fact that the whole area was covered in Golem troops moving about and heading in the direction of Warcry. But now that Riley got a closer look, he could make out the shifting of the folds of the nest as a new foot soldier was produced every ten seconds or so.
Not only was Golem deploying its reserve units of stronger spider-things, but it was creating foot soldiers from the nests, and probably through far more numerous nests on the other side of the portal in Mage World.
"Things are getting heated out here," Glint commented as she looked around. "I've never seen this many players in one place before. And I've seen some big battles. Not to mention this veritable horde of Golem soldiers."
"I'm worried about those behemoths," said Aaron. "They're still spitting out those spiders and they're almost at Warcry's forces. If they get overhead, they'll have a better angle to ambush her back line, which is where all her crowd-control damage is right now."
Two orange beams cut through the sky, larger than any individual player could produce. They also looked terribly familiar to Riley.
"Was that Warcry?" Glint aske
d, suddenly bringing their group to an abrupt halt due to the sheer range of the two beams.
Riley turned and looked behind them. On the opposite side of them from Warcry was something he honestly hadn't expected to see again since that day on the outskirts of Crimson City.
"It's the bastion hound," Riley muttered, eyes wide.
The beams subsided.
Riley glanced around and saw one…two then three behemoths break off from the main force and head toward the bastion hound.
"Is it on our side?" Glint asked.
"It looked like its beams hit one of the behemoths and now they're heading for it, so it has to be, right?" said Aaron.
"I don't have any idea," Riley murmured. "But it sure seems like it's on our side for now. Or at least, against Golem."
"Does it have any other weapons?" Glint asked.
"I don't know," Riley replied. "I only saw it use the beams back in Crimson City. It fired on The Vigilant and we think it belongs to a couple guilds that they were fighting."
"Well, if it can shoot that far and that hard," said Glint, "then we need to keep moving. Who knows who might show up to this fight if Warcry was broadcasting for everyone to see. They have no idea we're here to bomb the gate and the gate on the other side. If the gate on this side dies before we get through it, then this whole plan is a wash, as far as I understand it."
"That's right, we gotta keep moving, but we need to make sure nothing comes stomping around that might squash us."
"I wonder how many hitpoints that thing has," Aaron murmured as their group continued to walk. He kept his head turned to watch the bastion hound. "Think we could take it out with one of these bombs?"
"I don't want to risk finding out," said Riley.
Another pair of orange beams shot out from the bastion hound and tore into the behemoths above. It cut through the air at a slow turning angle, hitting two of the behemoths for several seconds before dissipating.
The three behemoths launched several dozen spider-entities at the hound. But as they got close, little compartments flipped open around the armored center of the hound. Small rockets fired out and homed in on the compacted spiders and detonated, sending the spiders falling and flailing to the ground. Several new compartments opened along the lower side of the hound. Riley didn't have any good line of sight to see into them, but in moments, a torrent of bullets poured out of each one, blanketing the area that the spiders were falling around. One after another, the spiders burst into particles under the heavy assault of the bastion hound's weaponry. It was far more formidable than Riley imagined. He was incredibly thankful that he and the couple of Vigilant players he was with at the time didn't have to fight it. They might not have fared as well as he’d initially thought. The bomb team had less than a thousand feet to go to reach the tunnel. They were slipping past numerous nests and groups of rushing soldiers all heading toward the front line. There were so many soldiers. Riley just wished there was something more he could do. But he had his own mission to complete, a terribly important one.
"Looks like there's eight to ten soldiers coming out at a time now. I think the troops from Mage World are thinning out," said Glint.
"Yeah, but they're still coming, and do you see the tide of soldiers heading for Warcry and the others?" said Riley.
Glint turned her head. She glanced around for a few seconds. "Man, it's hard to even see them all, since everything is just a black, oily, scaly mess. It's so hard to count, but they easily outnumber our forces. And that's just these ground troops. They keep spitting those spiders from the sky. Doesn't look like they're using those sky jellies they had before."
"Yeah," said Riley. "Golem probably just wants to eliminate the threat right now. It has overwhelming numbers, it probably thinks it can pick through whoever's left after it whittles us down."
"I just hope the underground area with the gate isn't full of monsters," said Glint.
"We'll know soon enough," Riley replied grimly as he watched the tunnel leading down.
The battle raged on all around them but luckily not too close. None of the hound's beams hit the ground. Each time they fired, they were focused on the sky. Warcry's cannons were pummeling the massed foot soldiers, along with spread out and rapid mortar fire. The key problem for their forces now was the fact that the sky behemoths were now looming menacingly over their forces. Compact spiders were being shot down toward Warcry's battle group and no shield was protecting them from straight above. So instead, various ranged paragon powers were being used to blast them out of the sky as they descended.
"One is going for the hound!" Aaron blurted out.
The closest sky behemoth reached the bastion hound. Its long tendrils reached down and curled around the thick midsection of the blocky compartment on the legs.
Glint kept walking ahead but diverted her attention between where she was going and what was happening to the bastion hound. Its missile compartments were throwing volley after volley into the behemoth that seized it. Slowly, the large metal hound was lifted off the ground. Foot by foot, it ascended into the sky.
"It's picking it up?" Aaron said in disbelief as the three of them watched.
The behemoth drew the hound off the ground and into the sky. A hundred, two-hundred, three-hundred feet. It was slow, but the distance added up quickly. The sky behemoth released its hold on the hound and sent it plummeting several hundred feet to the ground.
When it hit, Riley couldn't hear it through Glint's field, but he felt it when the ground shook.
The metal hound fell over on its side. Its legs shifted and moved, but it looked as if it would have trouble righting itself quickly. The same behemoth descended upon it and reached out with its tentacles to grab the hound once again.
There was a shimmer in the sky near the behemoth. A myriad of particles shattered like a broken mirror in the sky. Then, something flew out and smashed into the side of the behemoth, sending it toppling over and down to the ground. It immediately tried to right itself, but before it could, the bastion hound fired its twin beams and cut deep into the enormous creature. Just as the beams ended, so did the behemoth's hitpoints. It burst into particles, defeated.
With the behemoth out of the way, it was easier to see what had sent the massive creature to the ground.
It was a dragon of numerous chromatic colors. It was The Chromatic Nine-Tailed Queen, Nexis.
Glint spoke up, "Is that the dragon from—"
"Yeah, it is," Riley cut in. "She came?"
"She's so amazing," Glint sighed. "Now I want to stay and watch her decimate Golem!"
"We have to keep moving!" Riley objected.
"I know, I know. I was only mostly kidding," Glint grumbled, still moving ahead.
There were so many elements on the battlefield at this point and it was hard to keep track of them all. Nexis was using her own beam to assault the behemoths. With the dragon's help, the bastion hound was able to right itself and get back to attacking as well.
Golem's forces were splitting. A detachment of ground troops, maybe a hundred, were sent toward the bastion hound. Two behemoths were trying to assail Nexis, while the bulk of Golem's ground troops were crashing against the Rooks and Riley's friends. There was no way for him to tell if they had taken any losses. He'd only be able to find out after the fact. For now, they were on their own against Golem's horde.
Riley, Aaron and Glint neared the passage that they'd spent so much time travelling to. Golem's troops were still rushing out of it, but there were gaps of space on both sides of the tunnel. Glint had Riley go behind her, while Aaron went in front with his tier-three sphere ready to activate at a moment's notice. Glint narrowed her sphere of invisibility to more of an oval than a circle. It afforded them a little more leeway on the sides, but now they had to travel in a column and couldn't really fit side-by-side.
They snuck along the right side of the tunnel. It, like all their surroundings, was covered in sludge. It was fortunate for them that Golem couldn't detect t
heir location based on sludge alone. The attack seemed to be fulfilling its objective.
Golem foot soldiers ran by the trio as they descended into the ground, heading straight for the carved-out cavern that had been inaccessible to them in the previous encounter at this location. The battle was still fresh in Riley's thoughts.
Some of Golem's soldiers came close to the shimmering field of Glint's invisibility aura, but none touched it. Now that they were delving deeper into the compound, one wrong move might spell doom for the entire endeavor. The three of them were the only hope for Sigil Online at this point. Even though the battle was going well outside, the battle lines were simply being held, not pushed. Warcry and the others had made an initial push into the outskirts of the sludge, but had bunkered down to eliminate as many of Golem's forces as they could in a defensive posture, essentially turning what should have been an assault into a defense.
The number of Golem soldiers coming through the tunnel wasn't falling any farther.
Deeper and deeper they descended, until a faint blue glow came from the depths below. As Riley walked, he was on edge. At any moment the plan could be turned on its head. He saw the blue glow coming from farther down. He said nothing. Nobody said anything. They could certainly speak, but despite the safety of doing so, nobody was willing, or perhaps nobody had anything to say. Riley surely didn't.
They hugged the wall as close as they could, transporting the two explosive devices. It was impossible to know what was going on with the fight. No sound penetrated the field of invisibility. It was eerie, to say the least. Watching Golem's forces rush by, they descended into the depths of its most defended compound. How many other groups in Mage World Online had done what they were doing now? How many had succeeded in stalling Golem’s advance? How many had failed without making any notable difference?
The tunnel evened out and soon they were walking on more level ground.
The cavern they came to was a sight to behold. Four of the portal-wielding spiders were hunched down on the ground, streaming in forces from elsewhere in Sigil Online. But at the center of it all was the gray stone structure of the gate that was connected to Mage World Online. A blue square portal loomed in the stone frame of the gate. It was almost like a stone window that breached the gap between game worlds. It wasn't much to look at, but what it represented was almost inconceivable a year ago.