by Adam Elliott
Quite the fitting name.
"Should the Wardens breach into the Throne Room of Bastion, they can awaken The Warrior with little more than a touch," Valserys explained.
"And if they do?" Cayden asked though he'd played enough videogames to know the answer.
Elazio answered anyways. “Then the Warrior will kill every man, woman and child on this floor.”
Chapter Five
“Anyone else feel like we're going to end up fighting Dracula before the night is over?”
Most of Cayden's party were usually pretty on the ball with his references, so it came as a bit of surprise that Michael was the only one who appeared to get it. The new addition to their party hummed Bloody Tears to himself as they advanced on the castle gate. A point in the man's favor, Cayden supposed.
Cayden still wasn't sure what to think of Michael, the ruggedly handsome solo player who had turned down command of Bastion in favor of letting it fall to Cayden's party instead. He knew what the gals in his party thought of him though, if only because it was all but impossible to ignore the way Sarah and Celia had fawned over him in the lead up to the teleportation that had left them less than a mile from Bastion. Only Silver appeared to have been immune, the ever-serious mage too busy in her plotting to give Michael much more than a cursory smile.
In the twenty minutes Cayden had spent talking with Duke Elazio, the solo player had managed to ingratiate himself to both Celia and, to Cayden's surprise, Shifty as well. By the time Cayden returned, the three of them were laughing like good friends, and no amount of reasoning or excuses could convince either of them that Michael would be anything but an asset to their party.
Admittedly, Cayden lacked any good angles of attack. Michael was of a comparable level, with a DPS focus that fit well into the open space of their party. Worse yet, his build, once it was explained to Cayden, was pretty well thought out. At first glance, a dozen levels in a tanking class like Juggernaut should have disqualified him, but once Michael explained its interaction with the abilities of his other class levels, well, even Cayden had to admit he was impressed.
Grudgingly.
So why didn't he like the guy? Was it just something as simple as petty jealousy? Everyone fell for that from time to time. Right?
No. Not me. Never. Cayden thought to himself with a roll of his eyes. He could figure out things with Michael later. Right now they had a very, very large fish to fry.
“Not on any maps I've got, not even the internal guild ones.” Silver said from the back of the line.
"So it is safe to say that it probably didn't exist until this morning," Michael replied before Cayden could.
“Which was pretty much what we figured.” Cayden continued his thought anyways. “Guess we're going to have to clear it the hard way.”
“I'd feel a lot safer doing it if Sarah was with us.” Celia chimed in.
“Wouldn't we all.” He replied. Despite pleading from Celia, and slightly more dignified requests from the others, the waitress remained resolute in her earlier position. She was retired as an adventurer. Besides, she'd said, who would watch the Dizzy Sheep if she was off gallivanting around?
“No help for it.” Cayden continued, glancing over his shoulder. “Anything we should be concerned about?”
Roberta and Valserys took a moment to glance at one another as if exchanging information and deciding which would be the one to speak all in a single look. It was Roberta who drew the short straw.
Elazio's lead engineer was nothing like what'd Cayden had expected, though admittedly it was hard to narrow down exactly what he had expected in the first place. A petite and slender woman of perhaps fifty, Roberta stood head and shoulders below Cayden at just under five feet in height, though one could never tell it from the presence she exuded.
Roberta was as strong-willed as she was tiny. While her voice wasn't deep, she made up for it with an air of authority, a curt tone that spoke of nobility. "Uncertain as of yet, Field Marshall."
“Uncertain?” Shifty asked.
"Legend has it that the upper floors of the keep are replete with powerful guardians," Roberta explained. "But most of them are tethered to their locations, and should present no threat to you unless you seek them out."
“That said, the lower floors have been abandoned for centuries. It is likely that some, or all of the grounds are overrun.” Valserys added.
“Wunderbar," Cayden said dryly. "You three wait out here while we go inside and-"
“I'm sorry, who is the third person in that statement?”Silver interjected sharply.
He'd been dreading this. “Who do you think Silver?”
“Oh please Cayden, drop the chivalrous crap for once in your life.”
“This has nothing to do with...” Cayden shot back, his temper getting the better of him for just a second. “You're level one hundred, right?”
“Yeah.”
“And you take a 90% penalty to basically everything. Right?”
“Yeah, but-”
“What is 10% of one hundr-”
"If you'd let me finish instead of being an ass!" Silver snapped. "You'd know that with all the stat boosts from my items, I'm closer to a level fourteen or fifteen."
He hadn't thought of that, though the smirk on her face as realization crossed his made it almost impossible to see the logic in her argument through the haze of irritation. She had a point, but damn if he wanted to admit it now.
“You know we can't risk you.”
“What risk?” She scoffed. “Cayden, I've been playing this game longer than everyone in this party combined. You think I'm going to pull aggro or run into a trap like some idiot noob?”
"She's right," Shifty said from the sidelines, saving Cayden the shame of having to admit it. "Even underleveled, we're better off having her than having the empty slot.”
"Thank you!" Silver said with an exasperated sigh. "I'll sit at the back and sling some damage, and we'll get this all done faster."
Cayden looked to Celia, then even to Michael for help. The former stared back at him expectantly, while the latter only shrugged in a way that felt like a near-perfect summary of Cayden's options.
"Fine." He said, at last, snapping his fingers and searching out his social menu to add Silver to their active party. "On the condition that you stay within thirty yards at all time so that I can cover you if need be."
“You won't need to.” Silver replied with such sweetness that he felt his teeth ache. Before he could interject, she held up a finger. “Yes, fine, I will. Shall we?”
Instead of responding to her, Cayden turned his attention to the two Elan with their party. “Will you be alright out here alone?”
Valserys nodded. "The beasts in the area are easily dispatched if we come across any at all. We will enter the castle once you send word that it is clear."
“Alright.”Cayden nodded. "Everyone ready?”
The group gave their assent, but all eyes turned to Michael, the party fixing him with a unified stare until their meaning finally clicked in his head. “Oh. Right. Yeah. Command: Full Equip.”
The air around Michael shimmered as piece after piece of his thick armor materialized into existence upon his body. As a juggernaut, he wore nothing but the mightiest plate, the ornate Albieth steel engraved with defensive inscriptions and painted a blood red that made the stunning man stand out amidst their party, even if he was now wearing a full helm.
“Well then, shall we?” Cayden asked with a smirk.
“Really?” Silver asked, eyeing him with a blank expression.
“Really.” He replied, offering her his most charming smile before turning in the direction of the lowered drawbridge.
Bastion was the sort of castle you'd only ever see in a film or a video game. The type that could only exist when budgets and time constraints weren't a real concern, and you were willing to ignore a few laws of physics to make the scene picturesque. Even calling it a castle wasn't strictly accurate. Cayden wasn't exactly
up to date on his ancient architecture, but he thought that 'walled city' might be a better term for the majority of what lay ahead of them.
The curtain wall of the city was, by his best guess, about fifty feet tall and at least half that in width. Towers studded the length of it at various intervals, at least thirty by his casual count. The whole of the town was surrounded by a twenty-foot wide moat, though it was curiously absent of water.
Perhaps not so curious, considering it is supposedly abandoned. Cayden realized as they walked across the creaking wood of the immense drawbridge.
The outer walls were merely the first ring in a series of defenses that they had been able to see as they approached the fortress. A second, crescent-shaped wall separated the lower city from the upper township, with a single road the only official thoroughfare between the two. And after that, most impressive of all was Bastion's Keep itself.
Even as little more than a silhouette against the night sky, the keep was a majestic building. It sat on the edge of the sheer cliff-face, with the lake below surrounded by a final wall for conventional defense. It almost reminded Cayden of some sort of twisted tree, with branches growing out of the main bulk of the keep to rise up in half a dozen individual spires, connected to one another by walkways. Here and there even those branches grew their own offspring, small offshoots that hung off the edges of the established towers with such flimsy connections that Cayden knew some sort of magic had to be involved in their creation.
Travel through the city was safe, but unnerving. Silver and Celia provided light with their magic, but there was never enough to cover every darkened nook and cranny or to reach the end of every dim alleyway. By the time they reached the second wall, the whole party was dripping with dread and tension. By the time they arrived the keep itself and saw the first motion within its walls, it was a relief to see that they'd only have to be fighting the walking dead.
"Skill Use: Observe," Cayden said under his breath as they watched the shambling corpses and misshapen skeletons pacing aimlessly back and forth inside the courtyard.
Shambling Terror
Level 16
HP: 1050/1050
MP: 10/10
TP: 200/200
Skills: Unknown
Resistances: None
Weaknesses: Holy 100%
Blood Skeleton
Level 15
HP: 750/750
MP: 0/0
TP: 500/500
Skills: Unknown
Resistances: Darkness 50%
Weaknesses: Holy 100%
“Not exactly much of a threat.” Michael said, looking to the others.
“Individually, no.” Cayden nodded. “But I count nine that we can see from here. There are probably going to be at least that many that we can't. Likely far more than that. Might be better to take them piecemeal.”
“You've got a plan?” Silver asked.
“Nothing clever. They're bunched up too tightly for us to pull them in small groups. But if we pick a fight at range, the skeletons are going to reach us a lot faster than something called Shambling Terrors.”
Silver nodded. “Considering how slow they are moving, we might be able to just keep backing up and kite the terrors with ranged attacks.”
“My thoughts exactly.” Cayden nodded. “So who is pulling?”
The group looked between one another. In their regular party, it wasn't even a question. Shifty had the longest range by far, so it just made sense for him to pull the targets. Here, however?
“How about we let Mrs. Boomspell do her thing?” Shifty suggested.
“I prefer Ms. Boomspell, thank you very much.” Silver chided. “I don't think I have anything that'll hit them all, but I'll get their attention for sure.”
"All we can ask of you," Michael said. They couldn't see his playboy smile beneath that horned helmet, but it came through all the same in his tone.
“Celia, go with her to the front and be ready to cast something to slow them down if they end up coming at us faster than we expect, alright?” Cayden instructed. There was a twitch of annoyance at the corner of Silver's eye at being babied, but whenever he was uncertain, Cayden erred on the side of having a backup plan. Irking Silver was just a happy little bonus. “Ms. Boomspell, you may fire when ready.”
“Aye aye, Field Marshall.” Silver shot back with a smirk. She might not get along with Cayden at all times, but she did enjoy his sense of humor more than she cared to admit.
What followed was half a minute of spellcasting.
Even though most of Silver's most potent magics were locked behind level or stat caps as a result of her death penalty, Cayden admired how she worked with what she had. Spell after spell fell from her lips, Directed Targeting, Minor Power of the Magi, Inner Fire, Scourge of the Undead and others. Each incantation was a short-term damage boost, stackable with the others to produce a more powerful effect for a correspondingly increased cost.
Silver knew what she was doing, and that alone made Cayden smile, albeit one he quietly hid behind a gloved hand for fear he might get caught. The last thing he needed was for Silver to catch him grinning like an idiot.
A lesser player like, say, the Banes, would have opened up immediately on the monsters. Even most good players might only throw on their usual rotation of pre-battle buffs. Silver wasn't doing either. Instead, each spell was tailored to her opponent, and her goal focused on inflicting the maximum possible damage in that first attack when the enemy would be most vulnerable, when she could strike the greatest number.
It was a little thing, not something that would swing the fight wildly in their direction, but the sort that could add up to dozens of other small tweaks, leading to victory. It was that eye on perfection that separated Silver from the thousands upon thousands of players who had tried and failed to climb the tower as she had.
“... until all is fire. Fire Burst!” Silver finished the incantation and raised her left hand, a ball of magical fire already coalescing into existence before her open palm. It hovered there for a moment as she closed one eye, squinting at the distant targets, then let fly with only a thought, the ball of fire streaking towards them.
As one, the group of players braced for the shockwave of the spell, and they were not disappointed. Closer than the others, the force of its detonation would have toppled the waifish Celia from her feet if she hadn't been expecting it, and even further away Cayden wisely took a knee to bear the brunt of it.
Then it happened again. And again. In all, the little ball of flame detonated a total of six times before its light finally flickered and extinguished. Each blast was accompanied by a mostly unreadable flood of damage notification on Cayden's display. What he could read was enough to know that the spell was doing damage and that it had been perfectly chosen for the situation. Most of silver's pre-combat spells usually applied to only a single spell, but in the case of Fire Burst they applied to each and every one of the concussive blasts, drastically increasing the overall effectiveness and the ratio of MP spent to damage dealt.
Even better was the number of enemies hit. Despite its relatively small radius, the spell was centered in the middle of the archway separating the courtyard area from their party. Intelligent mobs, even ones as stupid as Goblins would shy away from the damage, waiting for the explosions to subside before racing after their foes. The undead, however? They were single-minded as any zombie movie would have Cayden believe, and more than willing to stride through the repeated explosions if it meant getting closer to prey.
The Blood Skeletons were half dead by the time the first ones reached them, and they were well on their way to full dead not long afterward. Apart from his taunt, Cayden didn't even feel it necessary to utilize his skills. He hacked at the creatures, chopping them limb from limb and interposing himself between them and his allies as they rushed them in ones and twos.
Somehow the zombies proved even less of a challenge despite their numbers and more hardy constitution. They were too slow, allowing th
e party to retreat whenever necessary, healing themselves and thinning out the enemy with ranged attacks before the melee fighters jumped back into the fray once again.
Even the Blood Skeleton's surprise ability proved to be a non-starter. Cayden could see what the Developer had intended when he'd designed it, an enemy type that respawned into a weaker version of itself mid-combat could give a group fits in a number of situations. This was not one of them, however. Their method of kiting the zombies had inevitably taken them some distance away from the fallen skeletons, so far away in fact, that they hadn't even realized the skeleton torsos had reanimated until they had already cleaned up the zombies and were on their way back to the keep.
“Anyone else feel like we over thought this?” Michael asked with a snicker as he sidestepped a groping hand from the prone upper body of a crimson skeleton. Without the element of surprise, the things weren't a threat to anyone, even if it did take a half-dozen stabs of the Juggernaut's rapier to put the thing to rest. “I mean, we have the level and skill advantage.”
“Are you willing to bet your life on that?” Cayden shot back, slicing away the last HP from another of the downed foes.
“... good point.”
And so it went. The courtyard ahead was vast, and even Cayden's conservative estimate had proven wildly low. They pulled the enemy in twos and threes, in fives and tens. Each wave came with a retreat, splitting the monsters by speed to tear them apart piecemeal before returning for another group. It was slow going, but crucially, it was safe going.
They kept their MP and TP up with short rests between draining fights, nibbling at snacks or taking advantage of low-level consumables whenever one party member had expended more resources than the others. Within a half hour they had cleared a path to the main doors of the keep, and within another thirty they had finished exterminating the last of the courtyard's undead to make sure they had a path to retreat.