by M Helbig
“Breaks my heart that I can’t join in on this. Unless someone would care to donate?” Alizia held out her hand.
The damage abruptly slowed nearly to a stop as the boss hit 11%. The raid knew what was coming and what it would mean.
“No matter what happens, I think we should invite that gnome to the guild,” Cedra said.
“Yes, but shouldn’t we get in there now? This is their last tank,” Noradine said. “The boss seems to only do that instakill ability at increments of 10%, so this will be the last one. Or you could let me cast Levitate on them? None of them have that spell yet.”
“Not always,” Cedra said. “Remember Dandan? He does an extra one at 5%. And again, no casting anything on them. We’re going to need you to rez them if they wipe and I can’t have you on her aggro list.”
Noradine grumbled under her breath but didn’t object as the boss’s HPs trickled down. Though when Miss Beatly predictably took to the air again, nothing Murderwinkle or the rest of the raid did affected her in the slightest, not even the large desk slowed her down when her wings clipped it on her way up.
“We should probably move out of this doorway,” Olaf said in group chat. “I would imagine a raid boss has a large aggro range, and even at 10%, I do not think we can finish it off.”
Alizia scanned the floor and the dozens of potion vials littered about the room. “Yeah, not worth it for empties.”
“The desk!” I said. “That’s it.”
“If she’s like my mom, she probably does keep a bottle of a little something, something in the bottom drawer behind some dusty old files, but I hardly—Horus, stop!” Alizia’s outstretched hand barely grazed my back as I shot in front of Cedra.
“Murderwinkle, you need to get on top of the desk,” I said as loud as I could. I still had to repeat it three times before she noticed over the sound of battle.
Murderwinkle’s eyes quickly found me and then the desk. Her four-foot frame made slow progress. Fortunately, most of the melee had followed her. One of the forest giants plucked her off the side with one hand and deposited her above. Almost as soon as the gnome’s feet hit the top, a portal appeared below the desk.
Tendrils of darkness slowly crept from the ground below, swirling toward Murderwinkle. The room took on an eerie silence as everyone’s breath caught in unison. The tendrils reached two feet, then three, before snapping hard just shy of four. When the raid let out a cheer, Murderwinkle ducked her tiny head beneath the eight-foot desk and taunted the hole.
Miss Beatly let out a cavern-shaking roar that brought everyone back to the present. She landed with a hard thump on the thickly polished desk. Murderwinkle met her with axe and shield. The raid joined in with the same exuberance as before; however, after over a minute Miss Beatly’s HPs had barely moved. My eyes darted about and I noticed that almost everyone was using mundane-ranged weapons. The melee had a hard time reaching the boss on top of the tall desk, and almost no potions were being tossed about by the casters. I assumed they were out.
The old me began to rear his head, but I pushed him aside. I needed to be decisive, and my instincts told me what I needed to do. “Guys, get in here. They need all the help they can get.”
I summoned my bow and Olaf’s dagger flashed beside me.
“You kids have fun,” Alizia said from the doorway. “I, ahh . . . don’t have any ranged weapons. Yup. Don’t at all have a fear of old-timey schoolmarms.”
I readied my bow, but then quickly dispelled it when I noticed the distinct lack of spells landing on Murderwinkle. Throughout the fight, it’d been very easy to find the main tank by the constant glow as spell after spell landed on them from the healers. However, at this point the only way I could locate the tiny gnome was by following the trail of arrows, bolts, and blasts to the boss and then looking down.
I fired off a Regrowth without even thinking and immediately started another one. “I don’t think she’s going to make it. I’m sorry, guys, this was a really bad idea.”
As soon as my old doubts began their “I told you sos,” Olaf laughed and reminded me why the lesson I’d learned was still right. Hopping off the head of a forest giant onto the desk, Olaf turned back and winked at me. “We have this.”
“Crap out of mana already. She’s gonna need a miracle or a truckload of potions to stay up.”
I must’ve accidentally said that aloud from frustration instead of in group chat, as Noradine chuckled next to me. “Not a miracle, just a fellow guildee.”
The white light of Noradine’s spell completely covered Murderwinkle. Even the boss had to shield her eyes from the spell’s brightness. When my sight returned, Murderwinkle’s HP bar was back to full and didn’t move even when Miss Beatly landed a trio of brutal strikes around the tank’s shield.
“We’re going to have a talk about this later,” Cedra said with a sigh.
When the boss finally did manage to do some damage, Noradine casually flicked her wrists and her spell undid it. “This fight would go faster with some help, Dra.”
Cedra nodded slowly and then summoned a glowing spear with a tip larger than the thin shaft could possibly support. She leapt into the air, just like Georgius had before, and slammed down on top of the boss. To her credit, Miss Beatly somehow managed to stay on her feet. While Georgius had hit the boss with such speed that my mind couldn’t even register a quarter of the damage numbers that flew up, the numbers from Cedra’s blows were very easy to read. They were so huge that they could probably be read through the earth and dozens of miles away in Grimrag. She finished the last 2% of the boss’s HPs in only three brutal blows, smashing Miss Beatly hard against the cavern wall. My breath caught as I waited for her to topple, but she just sort of stuck there.
When I finally finished staring at the defeated sub-boss in awe, I was surprised to find that I must’ve been the only one who couldn’t believe she was really, finally defeated. I’d assumed everyone was as amazed as I was by the epic fight, but everyone besides my groupmates were going about their business nonchalantly, like they’d seen this hundreds of time before. With the senior members of the guild, it occurred to me that they just might have. Had their applicants participated in fights like this on their way in? Was our back door way into this dungeon really that much easier?
I spun around as someone punched me on the shoulder. I reflexively summoned my sword and pointed it at my would-be attacker only to lower it when I saw the red-headed Bruiser.
“Sorry, forget my strength sometimes.” Yary shrugged apologetically.
Alizia bumped against me in her rush to hug her friend. “Yarykins!”
Yary had to activate a special ability to escape Alizia’s grasp. “Great to see you too, Alizia. Where’s Olaf?”
Olaf appeared right next to my hip and gave her a lopsided grin. She playfully rubbed his head, and he pretended to be annoyed by it.
“That was close,” Yary said “Even with my healing, we almost didn’t make it.”
“That was very impressive.” Olaf pointed to the door where the mole people had come from. “It would be even more impressive if you could get Cedra to allow us to interrogate Clewd in that room.”
Yary turned to the side and beckoned her brother over. “Georgius, would it be OK if our friends watched the next fight too? I’m sure they’ll stay out of the way and be real quiet—right, guys?”
Georgius scratched his chin.
“Sure. We’ll be extra quiet.” A slight grin formed on Alizia’s face. “Or we will be once you pay us the hundred bucks you owe us.”
“I’ll see what I can do about letting you stay. You can have the money after this is over.”
“You go do that, Georgie Porgy. And don’t forget to mention how our boy Horus just saved your raid.”
Georgius’s hand shot out as if it had been fired from a cannon to cover Alizia’s mouth. “Don’t ever mention that around Cedra. She considers herself the most knowledgeable person in the game about boss fights. There’s no surer way to
set her off than to bring up something like that.”
Yary dangled a healing potion in front of Alizia. Georgius reluctantly removed his hand when Alizia sloshed tiny bits of potion on it as she tried to bring it to her mouth.
Abruptly, everyone in the room besides our group turned toward the desk to stare intently at Cedra. No one spoke a word, yet several of them raised their hands every minute or so, followed by one of their number walking forward to kneel at Cedra’s feet.
“Who said miming was a dead art form?” Alizia asked between chugs of her potion.
“I believe that was you. And if it wasn’t, you vowed to beat it to death with this.” Olaf summoned a wooden spoon and handed it to Alizia. “Now go let her know what you think of her performance.”
A couple of the raid members scowled at us. Alizia pointed her potion at them threateningly until they turned back around.
Yary whispered to us. “Cedra’s congratulating the raid on a job well done in raid chat. She started using raid chat when she remembered that you guys aren’t in the raid so she couldn’t mute you. She’s calling out members who did particularly well in the fight and distributing loot. She even granted probationary guild member status to Murderwinkle and two of the healers. Oh, yeah, and she’s also taking credit for your idea to climb on top of the desk. Georgie made me promise not to say anything to her or I’d—” She shook her fist at Cedra, though I noted that she made sure to move behind a forest giant first, so there was no way Cedra would be able to see.
Olaf pointed at the spoon and then at Cedra.
Alizia grabbed the spoon and bounced it off his head. “Yeah, I ain’t that dumb. But still, how dare she? It’s my job to steal the credit for Horus’s awesome ideas.”
“I wouldn’t mind so much if you’d occasionally take credit for a few of my bad ones too,” I said.
“Right. Like the time you led us into that pack of level-fifteen boars because you ‘forgot’ to use Inspect on ’em first, when you crushed me to death with your giant feet, or your ‘Taco Tuesday’ idea.” She patted Olaf on the back. “Haven’t been able to stand downwind of my little friend here since then.”
The breath caught in my throat as the entire raid parted in front of me and turned to stare. I desperately wanted to look for help, but Cedra’s deep blue eyes had caught me like a tractor beam. I wasn’t sure what she wanted. Considering her twitching forehead, I was sure I’d regret it when I found out.
Nobody Ever Got Loot By Being Nice
After two minutes of deathly silence, I was finally able to shake loose from her penetrating gaze and look away. I felt like I’d just spectacularly failed a test in front of the whole school, my family, every crush I’d ever had, and all of my personal heroes while naked. The reactions of most of the faces nearby only reinforced that notion. Many of them were pointing. A few of them were laughing. Most of them only looked disgusted.
Cedra tapped her foot impatiently until Georgius whispered something in her ear. Her face relaxed from “about to eat me alive” to “probably still going to eat me alive but with a less pointy fork.”
“I hate repeating myself but somebody forgot to remind me that you couldn’t hear me since you aren’t in our raid,” Cedra said. “I’d like to congratulate you on figuring out how to avoid that sub-boss’s special attack after I did. No one else in our raid noticed that, not even my two lieutenants. It was probably a lucky guess, but I would like to see if you can figure out anything useful about the next boss as well.”
Cedra has invited you to a raid!
Do you accept?
Yes or No?
I stared at the invite in shock. Cedra had always struck me as arrogant and oblivious to the accomplishments and contributions of anyone not named Cedra. I should’ve known better. It would’ve been nearly impossible for a guild to accomplish as much as the Knights had with someone that bad leading them.
While I wasn’t exactly her biggest fan, being invited to a raid by one of the top guilds in the game wasn’t only a huge honor for a nobody like me, it might’ve also been a potential way to get in as full member someday. Georgius and Noradine had seemed fairly likeable, and Yary would probably get an invite soon too. There was no surer way to guarantee yourself the chance for fast leveling and wealth than getting into a guild. Besides, if I couldn’t deal with Cedra, I could always quit. People who quit top-level guilds on good terms were almost assured of getting an invite to one of the other guilds. Recruiting each other’s members was almost a second game to them. I was about to hit “accept” when someone cleared her throat behind me.
I turned around to find Alizia staring at me.
“I . . . ahh, can’t accept unless you invite my group too,” I said. “Sorry.”
Most of the raid exploded into an array of motions that I would have described as “raucous laughter” if there’d been any sounds whatsoever to accompany them. It was both confusing and insulting. (I was also insulted that I wasn’t sure why I was confused and confused on why I was insulted, too.)
Georgius mercifully broke the silence. “When someone invites you to a raid, it’s for your whole group. The raid leader invites a group leader and the group leader accepts on behalf of everyone in their group.”
“Ahh.” A quick glance back at Alizia and Olaf received enthusiastic confirmation.
Cedra loudly cleared her throat. “Any day now.”
“Sorry.” I hastily accepted her group invite.
Suddenly, the HP, MP, and AP bars of nearly everyone in the room grew bigger, brighter, and began displaying whole numbers instead of percentages. When I finally overcame the huge amount of new information, I noticed three rather sullen individuals off to the side, including the wood elf who’d tried to make a run for it. One of the mages in the raid created a glowing blue portal before them, and they marched into it to disappear. The last one made an obscene gesture at Cedra and quickly scurried through the portal when she turned her head in his direction.
The raid leader, Cedra, has moved Yary and Georgius into your group.
“Now that the dead weight has been removed, let us go over the plan,” Cedra said in raid chat.
“This is a new boss, right?” I said to Georgius in group chat. “Then, how can she possibly have a plan for this?”
“It’s new, all right,” Georgius said. “Pretty exciting. Been almost a year since a new raid boss was found. We don’t have a specific plan. She’s just going to go over a bunch of the more common boss scenarios, like stay out of the lava, run behind a large object if it charges up to do an AE, backup tanks should take on any adds that pop, need to pee on any tanks that get stung, etcetera.”
My mouth hung open at the last one, and he let out a loud laugh. Cedra stopped talking and glared at him. He ducked behind a forest giant and she continued her speech.
“Sorry, couldn’t resist making up the last one,” Georgius said in group chat. “My advice for you guys is to just hang toward the back, and when she shouts out an order, listen to it. With this being a new boss and the group being mostly recruits, we’ll probably wipe the first time anyway.”
“Does everyone have that?” Cedra asked.
“We are Knights! Feel our boots. Feel our steel. Then feel no more!” everyone else in the raid responded in unison.
“Great, now Tunk at the front and we follow in the same order as before,” Cedra said. “Once again, Georgius, Noradine, and I won’t participate, unless it gets desperate. We’re here to judge everyone’s individual performance for the possibility of inviting you as members of the greatest guild in the entire game.”
I reached over to put my hands over Alizia’s mouth but found Georgius’s and Yary’s hands already there. Olaf nearly fell over from trying to reach up, too.
“Jerks,” Alizia said in group chat. “I was only going to ask one question—Neat! I can still talk in group chat even with your hands blocking my beautiful mouth. Why doesn’t that work for raid chat?”
“Because Cedra just
muted everyone in raid chat but her, temporarily,” Yary said. “She always does this when she’s giving out pre-fight instructions.”
“Then why could our group hear her before the Miss Beatly fight?” Alizia asked.
“She only started using raid chat when she remembered we had outsiders,” Yary said.
Georgius pushed Alizia forward with a big smirk on his face and then pushed Olaf and me (though a lot more gently). “Go! It’s amazing you guys get anything done with all this talking. Almost everyone’s already through.”
Olaf snorted from the other room.
Alizia summoned her shield and shook it at Georgius. “Shouldn’t you be coming too, Lieutenant Pompadour?”
“Lesson one about raiding: if you’re not a healer or the main tank, worry about yourself first, second, and third. The other guys come fifth after worrying about the boss. I’m not participating. Now, go!”
Yary gave Alizia a hard push and she finally squeezed through the door. I, however, hesitated. Alizia’s large shield and tall body were in front of me, so I couldn’t see what was going on. I could hear what was going on, though, and it was terrifying.
The constant group chat had dulled all of the other sounds, so this was my first real chance to listen. I’d assumed I’d hear the sounds of explosions, screams, blades crashing together, and the zap of magic—all terrifying things—but what I heard was much worse. Silence. Did the boss cast Mute on everybody? Is everyone already dead? Or is he so overwhelmingly terrifying that he’s rendered everyone speechless? Maybe, he—
“Hey! I have one of those back on Earth,” Alizia said.
I should have known better. Nothing can render Alizia speechless.