by Rachel Aaron
Fittingly, the Endurance- and Strength-based characters were handling the march the best. When it became clear the casters couldn’t keep even this slow pace, Tina and SB—who’d insisted on walking under his own power again—organized a piggyback rotation. Tina volunteered to take NekoBaby since the Naturalist had wiped herself out bringing SB back to life. The jubatus was curled up on top of her backpack like a giant pet cat, which would have been cute if it hadn’t meant Tina had to carry her shield on her arm instead of her back, making her entire right side ache as the miles wore on and on.
At least no one was complaining anymore. Ever since the Assassins had left, no one had issued a peep of disobedience. They’d had a few more fights with random monsters, but the packs of shambling zombies and undead hounds were easier than the ones they’d fought yesterday. Tina took that as a sign they’d finally crossed into the western half of the Deadlands. Everything got easier as they got farther away from the Once King’s mountain.
But even though the fights weren’t as deadly, the fear that they’d come around a bend and find KuroKawaii’s or ZeroDarkness’s corpses—or worse, their reanimated corpses—didn’t go away. She’d even sent Zen ahead once to scout for them, but the elf had returned empty-handed.
“Are we there yet?” Killbox asked wearily, dragging his giant boots.
“Five more miles, I think,” NekoBaby said from atop Tina’s backpack.
“How do you know that?” Tina asked. She’d spent forty hours a week grinding quests in the Deadlands when the place first opened, and she still couldn’t wrap her head around the new distances.
The Naturalist shrugged. “Intelligence gear.”
“Nice,” Tina said. “Does that mean all the casters are super smart now?”
“I wish,” NekoBaby said with a snort. “It mostly seems to augment memory and analytical skills. Ask me to name the first one thousand prime numbers sometime.”
“That’s still pretty cool,” Tina said.
“And hella useful,” Neko said. “That’s how I know how far away from the Order of the Golden Sun’s fortress we are. I can remember the old game map’s grid system perfectly now, so I’ve been using familiar landmarks to build an updated version in my head.”
Several impressed “oohs” went up from the surrounding players, and Neko preened.
“So how much bigger is the world now?” Tina asked.
“Hard to say,” Neko replied. “Most stuff seems to be a thousand times bigger than it was in the old FFO, but not everything fits that measurement. For example, the destroyed caravan we passed should have had two thousand feet between burned-out carts, but it had the usual two-foot gaps. Trees are likewise not a thousand times taller, and so on.”
“So everything’s bigger but not consistently so,” Tina said with a sigh. “Great. But how did you know the Order Fort was five miles away if we’re not there yet?”
“Because I can smell the forges on the wind,” Neko said, tapping her nose. “I’m regular old smart, too, you know.”
Tina was too excited about the possible end of walking to even shake her head at that. “We’re almost there, folks!” she called back to the others. “Just keep putting one foot in front of the other!”
A smattering of weak cheers was her only answer, though she did see SilentBlayde wave at her from the back, where he was bringing up the rear. Despite him insisting he was fine to walk now, Tina couldn’t miss how exhausted he still looked. Seeing it made her feel like a failure all over again, but just as she was about to start beating herself up again for the fiasco on the hill, she spotted a figure walking out of the darkness on the road ahead.
Her first thought was KuroKawaii or ZeroDarkness, but the person was wearing a robe, not leather armor, and leaning on a staff. A player then, but not one of hers, which was exciting. Up until now, the only other players they’d seen had been dead bodies.
“Hey!” the new player called, waving his arms as he hobbled faster.
“Hey to you, too!” Tina called back. “I’m Roxxy, and this is the Roughneck Raiders guild. Who are you?”
“I’m KatanaFatale, Sorcerer amaze!” replied the new player proudly, making guns at her with his fingers.
Tina fought the urge to roll her eyes.
“So,” KatanaFatale continued, dropping his hand back to his staff, which seemed to be the only thing keeping him up. “You guys coming back from a raid at the Dead Mountain?”
“Yes and no,” Tina said. “We were going into the dungeon, but then this shit happened. Now we’re kiting the first boss toward the Order’s fort so we can get out of here.”
“Right, right,” Katana said, nodding way too much. “Just raiders doing raidery things. Gotcha. But um, can I tell you something kinda crazy?”
Considering how insane everything was, that made Tina smile. “Go for it, dude. Gimme your best crazy.”
The Sorcerer lowered his voice to a whisper. “I think I’m trapped in the game.”
Tina blinked. “Uh…”
“I know!” KatanaFatale said, his face panicked. “It’s nuts. But I can’t log out, and there’s no UI, and everything hurts for real now. If you’re still logged in, I need you to put in a ticket for me or something, because I can’t—”
He didn’t make it any farther than that before the entire front of the raid started laughing. NekoBaby almost rolled off Tina’s back, she was cackling so hard. Tina was just as bad, clutching her side as her aching muscles protested. She knew it was terrible, but she couldn’t seem to stop. The stress was definitely getting to her, she decided, and judging by the other players’ reactions, she wasn’t alone.
KatanaFatale’s face turned bright red. “I didn’t expect you to believe me,” he said over their laughter. “But it’s really happening! I’m stuck as my character!” He pulled up his robe to show them the ugly, bloody gash on his leg. “I’m in real trouble here!”
The wound shut Tina up instantly. “Sorry, man,” she said. “You didn’t deserve that. We do believe you. That’s why we were laughing. We’re all trapped in here.”
The Sorcerer’s jaw dropped. “You mean it’s not just me?”
Tina shook her head. “On the up side, you’re not trapped here alone. On the down, none of us have any idea how to get back, and we’re stuck out here with no mounts and no teleports. That’s why we’re running for the Order fort. We’re going to use their portal to Bastion to GTFO. You’re welcome to join us if you want. We can always use more damage dealers.”
“Thank you so much,” Katana said in a rush, grabbing Tina’s shield arm. “You have no idea what I’ve been through! This place is really dangerous alone. But if you’re headed for the Order, you might want to go another way. I’ve already been to the fortress, and it’s not pretty.”
“What do you mean ‘not pretty’?” Tina asked sharply. “Is it already overrun with undead or something?”
“No, the fortress is fine,” Katana said, tugging on his long black hair. “That’s actually the problem. Let’s just say they’re not in a welcoming mood.”
He pointed at his wounded leg, and Tina did a double take. “The Order did that to you?”
The Sorcerer nodded. “I was questing at the hub in front of the fort when the game…um…you know…” He waved his hands around his head in a spinning motion, and Tina nodded impatiently for him to get on with it. “Anyway, when I came to, I was alone. All the NPCs had retreated inside the fortress, and there were monsters everywhere. When I ran to the doors to get them to let me in as well, they opened fire.”
He turned his leg to show her the back of his calf, where the tip of an arrowhead could just be seen poking through his pale skin. “I’m lucky this is the only one they landed. They were shooting to kill, but their aim is awful. I ran away after that, but I didn’t want to go through the Never Swamp, and I figured there’d be players raiding Dead Mountain, so I started walking east, hoping I’d meet someone. You’re the first players I’ve seen.”
&
nbsp; “Shit,” Tina muttered, looking back at the rest of her raid, who were still too busy laughing at the Sorcerer to have heard the rest of his story. Their rudeness was her salvation, though. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do yet, but if the others found out the safety they’d been marching hell-for-leather toward wasn’t actually safe, things could get ugly again. She needed time to think, so she put a hand on Katana’s shoulder and dropped her voice to a rumble only he could hear. “I’ll handle things from here. There’s an elf Assassin in the back named SilentBlayde. He’s my second. He’ll fill you in on what we know and the rules of the raid and get someone to heal your leg. Just do what he says, and you’ll do fine.” She smiled. “Welcome to the Roughnecks, KatanaFatale.”
By the time she finished, the Sorcerer looked like he was going to cry. “Just Katana is fine,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “Thank you, Roxxy. I can’t say how nice it is not to be alone out here anymore.”
Tina smiled and let him go, watching the Sorcerer hobble to the rear of the group, where SB immediately scooped him up to start explaining all the important new facts of life. When he was safely under ’Blayde’s wing, Tina raised her hand and got the raid moving again.
“Oh em gee,” Neko said, hopping back up to her perch on Tina’s back. “That poor guy! I thought I was going to bust a gut.”
Tina nodded impatiently, her emerald eyes locked on the road ahead where it vanished around a curve, possibly the last curve before the Order’s fortress came into view. “Neko, you ran into some non-player characters for your quest, right? What were they like?”
“Huh?” Neko said, confused. “Uh, like normal, I guess? They said their canned bit after we freed them just like most of FFO’s ‘put the dead to rest’ quests. They were legit ghosts, though. Just lost spirits with no brains.”
“Damn,” Tina said. “So utterly not helpful, I take it?”
“Nope. Sorry, boss,” Neko said, yawning. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna sleep on your back some more. You’re like a warm rock. It’s really nice.”
Tina snorted. “Enjoy it while you can, because I’m not doing this again.”
But NekoBaby was already asleep, her carefree smile fading as the very real exhaustion set in. When she was quiet, Tina let the smile slip off her face as well, glaring down the road as she struggled to figure out how she was going to handle the promised safe haven that might now be a fortress against them.
****
The main road of the Deadlands ran east and west between the knifelike peaks of the mountains. The eastern side dead-ended at the Once King’s fortress, but the western end of the zone followed the land down through the foothills and into the gloriously wet, soft, green Verdancy, the previous highest-level questing area before the Deadlands were introduced, and one of the prettiest zones in FFO. It was still pretty now with its giant glowing trees shining like green-and-gold beacons through the predawn dark. The vibrant color was a shock after the relentless gray of the Deadlands, but Tina could only see it in glimpses thanks to the enormous stone building blocking the way.
The Order of the Golden Sun’s fortress had been built in the very last narrowing of the mountains before they shrank into the rolling foothills of the Verdancy. Perched high on an artificial hill, the square fort stretched across the entire pass, creating an impassible wall between the Deadlands and the brilliant forest of the Verdancy beyond. The only way around was an old goat-trail through the mountains to the south that led down into the Never Swamp, a level-seventy-five zone full of mud, giant spiders, giant crocodiles, and giant lizard-men.
Standing on her tiptoes, Tina could just spot the Never Swamp’s gloomy trees between the mountains. Though more colorful than the Deadlands, their green was sickly and cold compared to the shining Verdancy, and that wasn’t even counting the noxious brown haze they gave off. Grimacing, Tina turned away from the swamp to focus on the fortress’s sixty-foot-tall white stone walls.
As the world’s wall against the armies of the Once King, the Order’s fortress had always been well defended, but she’d never seen anything like the force that filled it now. There had to be half a thousand armored soldiers wearing the white-and-gold tabard of the Order of the Rising Sun crowding the battlements. Worse, the weapons in their hands weren’t the worthless mundane swords they’d had in the game, but the glowing golden hammers that Tina recognized as the reward item from the faction’s reputation vendor. Many of the soldiers carried bows as well, some already nocked with arrows ready to fire.
“Great,” Tina muttered, glancing at her newest raid member. “And you say they shot you on sight?”
“Pretty much,” KatanaFatale replied, leaning on his staff to take pressure off his bandaged leg. They hadn’t had the mana to spare for healing a non-life-threatening wound, but a few cloth bandages plus Zen’s real-life experience as an ER nurse had been enough to make do. “I knocked on the gates and yelled hello, and they yelled back with a lot of arrows, so I hit my cooldown and ran. They hosed my illusionary double with pretty extreme prejudice, by the way.”
“What’s your factional status with them?” Tina asked. “Any reason for them to hate you?” The Order was normally friendly to players by default, but she was hoping that maybe Katana had done something stupid in game that would explain this.
“Ally ranked, last I checked.”
Tina gritted her stone teeth. So much for that. If they were shooting allies on sight, she didn’t think her Legendary rank was going to count for much. But hostile or not, that fortress was the only way on this continent to get to Bastion. If they wanted to get to safety, they had to get inside. Fortunately, Tina had a plan. It wasn’t going to be a popular plan, but it was the best of bad choices. So, with a bitter sigh, she left the overturned cart she and Katana had been hiding behind and walked back into the dead copse of trees she’d told the others to wait inside, out of sight.
They looked up hopefully when she approached, and Tina sighed. “I’ve got good news and bad news,” she said grimly. “The good news is that we’ve made it to the Order’s fort well ahead of Grel’Darm. Good job on marching your asses off, everyone!”
There was a smattering of applause before the raid fell silent.
“And the bad news?” someone yelled from the back.
“The bad news is they might be hostile, or at least not as welcoming as we’d hoped,” Tina said matter-of-factly. “I don’t know what to expect, to be honest, but here’s what I want from us. We’re an army. A max-level, awesomely geared raid.” She held up her god-forged shield for emphasis. “We are the most dangerous, deadly group of anything in this world, even if we don’t look or feel like it right now.”
“No shit!” someone shouted.
“I know you’re all exhausted,” Tina went on. “We’re hungry, thirsty, and out of everything from mana to food to ammo. But when we walk up to those gates, I need you all to pretend we’re not. Looking too dangerous to ignore or attack is our best protection and our only negotiating leverage here. We have to look like we can kick that fortress’s ass if they piss us off, so gimme your last energy here, people!”
“But we’re not actually going to attack, right?” asked one of the Clerics.
Tina shook her head. “No. I know we can’t take that fort. We just have to look like we can so they’ll be too scared to shoot.”
“Or we could go around,” Zen said, pushing her way to the front of the group and pointing her bow at the side path that led to the Never Swamp. “If we go that way, we won’t even have to get the fort’s attention.”
“The swamp is full of diseases, poisons, and xenophobic lizard-men who ride goddamned dinosaurs,” Tina snapped. “We’d have to cross the whole zone to get to the one town by the ocean, and Grel’Darm would be behind us the whole way.”
“We don’t know that,” Zen said stubbornly. “He could still break aggro at the zone border.”
“He hasn’t broken aggro for anything yet. Why the hell would he care about zone
borders now?”
“Even if he does stay on us, it’s still better than bashing ourselves against a fortress,” Zen said stubbornly. “Everything in the Never Swamp is level seventy to seventy-five, and the pirate city on the other side is only lightly guarded. We could blast our way through no problem, steal a ship, and sail to Bastion.”
“Do you know how to sail a ship?” Tina asked. “’Cause I don’t.” She pointed at the bend that hid them from the Order fort. “There’s a perfectly fine portal to Bastion not half a mile away! All we have to do is get to it, and this shit will finally be over.”
“Or we’ll be over,” Zen said, crossing her slender arms over her chest. “If your bluff fails and that army opens fire, we’ll be dead. The Never Swamp might be a longer trip, but it has water, living trees, and animals. There’s eight of us Rangers in the raid. Wilderness survival is literally our thing. We can keep everyone fed and alive no problem. Also, I used to grind faction points for The Great Mercantile in the swamp. I know all the safe paths through the disease clouds and the ambushes. I can get us through safely. There’s no reason to throw ourselves at this fortress.”
She said that like it was going to be a walk in the park, but Tina knew better. Even with the Rangers’ skills, crossing the entire Never Swamp could take days, maybe even weeks with the new distances. There was no way the raid could make that. So far, the Strength-based players had been willingly carrying the casters when the weaker classes couldn’t go farther, but the Knights and Berserkers were all tired now too. How much longer would that good-will between strangers last? When would it eventually become “carry yourself”?
If Grel kept chasing them, Tina’s money was on not long at all. A day if they were lucky, hours if they weren’t, and then it would fall on her. She was the raid leader. If push came to shove, she’d be the one forced to decide who got left behind, and she just…