by Natalie Grey
Everyone watching went still, and a couple of people sucked in their breath hastily. No one was willing to look at Dan and Dhruv.
Sam was smiling now. They’d done exactly what Jay had accused them of doing—throwing all of the rankings integrity out to pander to their funders, and it was coming back to bite them in the ass. Anyone watching the stream had heard what the player said, and within an hour, it was going to be all over the forums.
“Come on,” Sam said under his breath. His eyes fixed on Jay’s character, then slid to the Aosi woman who was running the show. Callista, her nametag read. She had a sword that was almost as tall as she was. “Come on. Bring it home.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The void twisted and swirled around Gracie, and then, with a jolt of haptics to her feet and a crunch of frost, resolved itself into a shattered moonscape. Stars glittered overhead, thousands upon thousands of them lighting the night sky in a ripple that was somehow totally alien compared to the Milky Way.
“Whoa,” she breathed, and the game made a puff of crystallized breath so realistic that she shivered and gave a little laugh. She took a few steps forward, looking around in wonder. Her footsteps crackled in the frozen dust. “Every time.” Her voice was a murmur.
“Hmm?” a voice behind her asked, and she spun, clapping a hand to her chest. She had totally forgotten anyone else was there, and Jay had surprised her. He grinned and held up his hands. “Sorry, sorry. What does ‘every time’ mean?”
Gracie shook her head, momentarily unable to find the words. “Every time I load into a new zone,” she told him finally. “Every time I even log in? It’s just so damned beautiful that it takes my breath away. I used to read about places like this and imagine them when I was playing D&D. Now I feel like I’m really here, you know?”
“Yeah,” he said after a moment, and she could hear the depth of emotion in his voice, even through the game’s filters. “Yeah, I really do.” He reached out to take her hand.
She reached out as well, and there was a moment of confusion as their hands passed through each other. Gracie felt her brow furrow, and then she laughed. “Ah, crap. See? This is the sort of thing that happens. It looks so real that I forgot we aren’t actually here.”
There was a cleared throat from behind them, and Gracie turned quickly, her cheeks heating. She was very glad for a moment that no one could see her blush in-game. She had a sense that it was Alex who’d done the throat-clearing, though, and she just knew there was going to be some teasing later.
Oh, God. She fought the urge to drop her head into her hands.
Luckily, she had plenty of other things to focus on—like getting through this run quickly. They were already behind, and there was no time to be sitting around and bemoaning that fact.
She looked around and did a quick check that everyone had loaded in without issues.
“All right, here’s the deal,” she told them. “I need you to be on-point. That means you let the tanks build threat, and you watch yours. It means you’re very careful not to pull anything when you spread out. It means all DPS takes responsibility for helping the healers. If you see something weird or there’s a patrol coming in, say something. We can go gambol around and wipe this thing as many times as we want in the future—just not this time.”
There was a burst of laughter, and people nodded.
“You heard the woman,” Alex told them. “Same time tomorrow night, we do the run with no gear.”
A few suggestive whistles pierced the air and he posed, fake-flexing as if for a swimsuit competition. Gracie was more than a little tempted to take her headset off and take pictures, and she mentally cursed him for having done this at a moment when she had no time to do so.
She was pleased to see that as she took her first few steps into the dungeon, people noticed and followed at once. Alex’s panther, Teef, padded along beside her. The various non-melee team members were staying in the middle of the group, with Lakhesis bringing up the rear.
No one was taking any chances.
The first elementals appeared in the distance quickly. They were patrolling in a small pack, small shimmers like tiny nebulas kicking up dust devils on this weird and alien moonscape.
The story of this dungeon was an unusual one. Not star-crossed lovers or an evil genius, but instead, a shamed general who had died with his army, and whose soul could not find rest. He had fled to this prison of his own making in the afterlife and had been driven mad by the thought of truce between the races, for it had been their wars that had destroyed so many lives.
Now he was seeking an army and was determined to take revenge on the entire world of the living.
And they were here, so convincingly that Gracie could almost feel the cold wind on her skin. They were here to stand against an evil that would destroy the world. She knew what her mother would say; what Kyle would say. That it wasn’t real.
But it was. No virtue is wasted, the strange boss had told her when they fought, and Gracie believed it. Her team was here, and even if the evil they fought didn’t exist in the “real” world, choosing to stand for what was right wasn’t wasted.
She believed that wholeheartedly.
As the elementals drew closer, she turned to make a last, silent ready-check of the team. Everyone nodded to her, and Gracie took a deep breath, drew her weapon, and charged. At the last moment, she went into a spin and down into a crouch, lashing out so the sword bit through the group of elementals like a scythe, its magical blade cutting into them and draining them of their power.
“What up?” Gracie greeted them. “Hear you’re trying to destroy the world. Can’t let you do that.”
“Gracie’s monologues to trash mobs are one of my favorite things about this game,” Freon commented as he loosed an ice bolt that took one elemental in the chest. “She really wants them to get why she’s killing them.”
“Well, sure.” Gracie threw her sword up in the air, slammed her fist down in a shock blast, and caught the sword as it came back down. “Otherwise, it’s just rude, you know?” The elementals shrieked and converged on her, surrounding her with a dizzying array of colors as they tore at her. “Like, for instance, right now I’m going to assume they’re trying to explain the same thing to me. Otherwise, they’re definitely being dicks about this.”
“I don’t know,” Alex said contemplatively. A brace of flaming arrows whistled by. “We did come into their house and start killing them. That seems kind of like a dick move on our part, right?”
“Alex, focus. They’re trying to destroy the world.” Gracie drove her sword forward and grinned as one of the elementals disappeared into nothingness with a last shriek of anger. “Anyone with plans of killing everyone doesn’t get to complain about people trying to stop them.”
“Sure, sure.”
At Gracie’s side, Jay slammed his fist into the last elemental, who disappeared in a puff of energy. She could hear him breathing heavily. He nodded at her, all business now, and she looked around.
“Mirra, tell me what’s what.”
“Nothing unusual for trash mobs so far in terms of DPS,” Alan reported, “but most of their damage is actually from DOTs, so if anyone with dispels could cycle through those, it would take a bit off our plates on the healing side.”
People nodded.
“Ushanas?” Gracie asked.
“Demon Syndicate had some good intel,” Ushanas said. He didn’t sound too happy. “I’m not sure how useful I’m gonna be.”
“Hang in there,” Gracie said. “Don’t write yourself off yet. All right, team, let’s keep going, and let me know if you think we’re going to get random pulls. Any heads-up is useful.”
They proceeded across the moonscape quickly, only once winding up with a surprise patrol. Gracie’s health dipped dangerously low at one point, prompting a brief flurry of shouted accusations among the others, but a stern talking to kept them on-point, and quick thinking from Jay and Alan kept her alive.
It was an exercise in trust, Gracie thought, to be the tank. You had to go out there and face down the monsters, believing that your team would have your back. Then again, she supposed it took just as much trust to be the healer and know you couldn’t take down the mobs on your own, or be the DPS and know that you could neither heal nor soak up the brunt of the damage.
Teamwork wasn’t optional here.
Between the moonscape and the floating ruins of the castle, there was a tiny, isolated island from which a beacon of blue-white light seemed to stab into the sky.
And there seemed to be no way to get to it. Gracie stared at the gap between the edge of the moonscape and the floating hunk of rock. Now that she was at the edge, she was very aware that they were on a tiny hunk of rock tumbling in the middle of a nebula.
It made her realize that she didn’t know which way was up.
Or if there was an up. She gulped.
She edged toward the end of the ground. She could see this going one of two ways: either they could walk just fine on the nothingness, or they were going to lose their tank.
Ushanas must have had the same thought because the fire mage motioned for Gracie to stay back. “I’m clearly the most expendable at this point,” he told her. He peered into the void, gave a little shudder that his suit captured quite well, and stepped out onto nothing.
His foot sank a few inches, then seemed to find a surface, and Gracie let out her breath in a whoosh. A few people started laughing, and one or two had their hands pressed over their chests.
“Fuuuuuck,” Alex breathed. “Oh, fuck, that was scary.”
Gracie gave a chortle and edged out to follow Ushanas. Even knowing that the ground was there, it was still insanely hard to force herself to keep going. Every instinct of her very human brain was screaming at her to go back to someplace nice and normal and not do crazy things like walk around in space.
Thankfully, by the time they got to the island, most of the adrenaline had faded and the group was back to joking and laughing. Gracie wondered if they remembered that people might be watching the live stream, but she decided not to remind them.
The last thing they needed was for anyone to get all up in their own head.
They had barely taken a few steps onto the floating island, however, when the beam of light roared.
“YOU SEEK TO STOP THE GENERAL?” Light blazed and a figure resolved itself, arms spread, head thrown back in the column of power. “YOU WILL BE THE FIRST TO DIE!”
Ice began to rain down, the ground turning slick with it and shards crashing into the rocky surface.
“Ushanas!” Gracie yelled. “I think you’re up!”
“Oh, shit!” Ushanas was laughing, but it was barely a moment before a fireball went whizzing over to catch the figure in the chest. There was a scream and the beam of light disappeared, leaving only a white-robed Aosi, his hands raised as he readied another spell. Ushanas settled into a crouch. “Ice versus fire, bitch!”
“Melee!” Gracie yelled. “Get to the squishy! Ranged DPS, any time now!”
The team yelled their agreement, and arrows and bolts of magic began to whizz overhead as Gracie and the others charged. They were halfway there when walls of ice sprang up, making the team flinch instinctively. The surface of the ground, designed to be slick, kept them moving until they skidded into the walls, and they took far more damage than Gracie was comfortable with.
“Fuck!” Alan used his major group heal. “All right, try not to do that again!”
“Aye aye!” Gracie called back. “Sorry, man!”
“No way to know that was coming; totally get it.”
Gracie turned back to begin hacking at the ice. It shuddered when magic and weapons hit it and collapsed a few moments later. The group cheered, and Lakhesis signaled to Gracie that she would go ahead, triggering the next walls of ice with only one set of damage.
Gracie and Lakhesis advanced by turns, and it wasn’t long before they had reached their target, who had been calling down curses on the whole group. He sneered at them, spreading his hands.
“You want to repeat the mistakes of the past.” His face was twisted with fury. “Better the world die in fire quickly than sink once more into warfare. You would bring them suffering, but I will not let you do that. DIE!”
He punctuated the shout with a bolt of ice that shot over Gracie’s head, Gracie having ducked instinctively as his hands opened to release the spell. Before he could do the same again, she had charged him and was swinging her sword.
“I have to ask,” she called as he stumbled back, “does anyone ever obey that suggestion?”
“Can’t blame the dude for trying, I guess,” Jay chimed in, executing a jumping kick that kept their adversary from regaining his footing. “But maybe they’ve just gotten a little out of touch up here.”
Gracie laughed and slammed her sword down like an axe, cheering when the Aosi stumbled, fell, and went still.
“WHOO! Okay.” She was panting. “One boss down, probably one to go. And…” She paused. “Didn’t Demon Syndicate go in with, like, eight ice mages? Bet they didn’t fare too well with this one.”
“WHAT THE FUCK?” Thad demanded. He stared around at the island and felt cold disbelief settling into his chest. Three of their mages lay dead, and the gear of the rest of them had taken significant damage.
And apparently, there were no resurrections in this dungeon.
“What the fuck?” he said again for emphasis. He looked at Envi. “What the fuck was that?”
Envi said nothing but he could feel the silent reproach.
Thad dropped his head into his hands for a moment. They had to keep going. He had to get hold of himself and keep going. He was beginning to wonder if Envi hadn’t been correct, and Demon Syndicate was being set up.
Because what else explained this?
“What the hell was that?” Dhruv demanded. He looked around at the group, his eyes settling on Sam. “Well?”
Sam felt a jolt of adrenaline. He was in it now.
To his surprise, he didn’t feel like running and hiding. He understood at last how Jay had felt when he’d faced down Dan and Dhruv the other day. At the time, Sam had wondered in despair why Jay wouldn’t just do the smart thing and do what his bosses wanted.
Now he understood.
And he could see where the limits of their power actually were.
“What?” he asked as innocently as he could. He had to be careful not to overplay this. Open mockery wasn’t going to get him anywhere.
“We asked you for specifications,” Dhruv said dangerously.
Dan cut him off with a gesture. “We understood that this monthly run featured fire, not ice.”
“We submitted the full specs,” Sam said. “I prepared all of the documents and looked them over myself.”
“You said the boss used fire,” Dhruv said through gritted teeth.
“He does,” Sam said, still radiating innocence. You didn’t ask about the first boss. Just the last one, he thought. He didn’t say that, though. That would be pushing it.
There was a long pause while the two founders stared at him, then Dhruv swore and slammed out of the room. Dan gave Sam a long look.
“Are there any more surprises?” he asked evenly.
“Everything is to the specifications I sent,” Sam said, taking refuge in that one unassailable fact: he had given them a chance to see exactly what he was doing. He hadn’t hidden anything from them.
Dan paused, then nodded quietly and followed Dhruv.
When he was gone, the team let out their breath.
“Let me guess,” Evan said. He’d sat next to Jay, and had taken it hard when Jay had quit. There was a smile beginning around his mouth. “They don’t know about the other part, either, do they?”
Sam gave him an innocent look. “Everything is to the specifications I sent,” he repeated with an elaborate shrug.
And, he thought with savage satisfaction, he wasn’t cheating. He was doing the op
posite of cheating. The things he’d built in would level the playing field, not put his team ahead. No one would be able to say that he’d given anyone an advantage.
He’d have to hope that was enough to save his job.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The group waited only as long as they needed to for their health to come up and their cooldowns to finish, then set off again toward the ruins of the castle. This time it was Freon, to general laughter, who decided to go first.
“I can’t believe we let Ushanas do this last time,” the Ocru rumbled before stepping out onto the nothingness. He paused, his foot still up. “I’m just going to put it out there that I’ll be pissed if what worked last time doesn’t work this time.”
“Coward,” Ushanas said, chuckling.
Freon stepped out, pretended to fall, and then chortled as everyone gasped and reached out to grab him. Their hands shot through the space where he was standing, and he clasped his hands around his sides as he laughed.
“You’re an ass,” Gracie told him affectionately. “Don’t give us a heart attack like that again!”
“Oh, it was worth it.” Freon stood up, clearly wiping his eyes in real life. “So worth it, I tell ya. Okay, let’s go get this sumbitch.”
“Now you’re talking.” Gracie walked with him across the second expanse of the void, trying to keep her eyes fixed on the palace and not on the nothing beneath her feet.
She wasn’t outstandingly successful, but it helped to focus on the building. She kept her eyes resolutely raised, and as she got closer, picked out the shattered wrecks of towers. Some were floating, their columns destroyed but the vantage points still hovering above, while others had been knocked to the ground to sprawl in scattered heaps of rubble.
Where the castle still stood, magic glittered among the stones, something flickering in the mortar and shining faintly in the gaps of missing stones. Where the castle was broken, the magic sputtered and sparked like a shorted electrical system. Frost sparkled faintly on the ground. The scene was at once telling and utterly surreal.