Expedition Newb

by M Helbig

  I waved to Alizia. This time she understood me perfectly. Her scepter clanged against her shield and she opened her mouth. “Half of him is still Laffy’s son, but I’m more than half not going to let you kill him. I Shout at you, not-old-Yary!”

  Yary automatically spun to face Alizia. Her face contorted as she tried to force her body to turn back around, but it refused. Her feet moved toward the Warrior, powered by the pull of Alizia’s Shout.

  Tunk took a step forward and stopped in confusion. “Uhh, orders, Boss? Which side do we be on? Or do we even be on a side?”

  “I vote you help the side that’s not going to murder a person.” Alizia’s shield barely held as Yary’s blow put a foot-long, fist-shaped indent in it.

  “I vote you help the side that wants to kill the thing that murders people,” Yary said.

  Yary spun to the left, past the edge of the shield, but Alizia pivoted just as fast. This time her fist did breach the hole. Alizia’s HPs dropped to 83%, but more importantly, the shield clanged to the ground, falling limply from her hand. The Disabled icon floated from her arm, though the sound of breaking bone relayed the same information just as effectively. My Regrowth took Alizia’s HPs back up, but without a shield, I knew it wouldn’t be enough.

  Yary’s fist sailed toward Alizia’s face. The only defense Alizia could offer was to cover her eyes with her one good hand. I began another Regrowth, but my fingers stumbled on the last motion. I was caught completely off guard as my eyes became fixated on Yary’s fist. Why did it sail off course at the last second? Alizia had the wherewithal to slide to the left to avoid the rest of the flying Yary as she tumbled to the ground. There was another body on top of her.

  Georgius bounded off Yary and summoned a dagger. “Where is my sister?”

  Yary’s hand arched behind her, stopping as her index finger reached her “brother.” Twin columns of purple and orange energy merged at the point of contact and spread out to pool over the blue-clad Gladiator. Georgius’s body flew across the room like he’d been punched by an ogre, finally stopping when he hit the wall with a sickening clang. The energy held him in place right above Olaf, though the limpness of his limbs made me doubt it was needed.

  Yary mumbled an apology as she faced Alizia. A red energy pooled in her eyes, bringing to mind our fight with Gerinashu.

  “Someone cast a fire resist on her!” I said.

  Amazingly, one of the Mages in the raid listened. The red energy of her buff snuggled against Alizia’s body, producing a satisfied smile. Seconds later, a raging inferno shot from Yary’s eyes not unlike the dragon’s breath I’d seen in the demo for the game; however, unlike the demo, Alizia did not melt like a cheap candle. The flames puffed out on contact after slightly singeing her chin for 4.

  Alizia picked up her scepter and grinned. “My turn.” Her weapon connected against Yary’s shoulder for 27, but when Alizia reached back to swing again, she suddenly pivoted and advanced on me instead. “Alizia kill mentor!”

  I assumed this wasn’t one of her of random bits of stupid. Her glazed-over eyes confirmed that as I recalled the same look from our fight with the Hylf Overseer. I hit Alizia with Root and backpedaled. Yary was close behind, so I hit her with Root too. Three steps later, I tripped over a gnome’s long, blue robes. “She’s Charmed. Can someone dispel that?” I asked.

  Three different raid members hit Alizia with spells and she stopped. Her eyes returned to normal and she scratched her head.

  “Who told you guys to help him?” Cedra said in raid chat.

  Variations of “sorry” came from multiple sources.

  “Should we be helpin’ that Yary girl then, Boss?” Tunk asked. “Think they was figuring since Georgius attacked her that we was against her too.”

  “I didn’t say that either,” Cedra said.

  “Then what are you saying, Dra?” Noradine asked.

  “I—I don’t know.”

  “Good thing I do, then.” A glowing white energy flowed from Noradine's hands covering my and Alizia’s bodies. A number of buff icons floated above us. “I choose the side of stopping the person who impersonated our fellow officer’s sister and is currently trying to kill another person.”

  The wrinkles of doubt faded from Cedra’s brow. “Right. I mean, that’s what I was about to say. After this is over, we’re going to have to have a talk about you interrupting me in the middle of a raid. Anyway, raid attack! Tunk is your primary tank. Healers, focus on him.”

  Yary has been removed from the raid.

  “I Shout at You!” Tunk raised his shield in front of him and lowered his stance in preparation for Yary’s charge.

  Yary dutifully turned away from me and headed toward Tunk. When she was only a few feet away, she stopped. Tunk hit her with another Shout but she didn’t advance. “You know, when you’re watching it on videos Shout looks completely normal, but up close it’s pretty silly. Why would someone who knows exactly what that skill does ever fall for it? Good thing I figured out a loophole. I bet none of the other meanie GMs figured this out. I have to keep hitting Tunk as long as his skill’s still affecting me, but there isn’t anything preventing me from doing this.”

  Yary lowered her neck and opened her mouth. A bluish gas poured out like she had the world’s worst morning breath—or a soul was slowly escaping from her body.

  I yelled a warning a few seconds later, but by then Tunk and two-thirds of the raid were enveloped in the substance. “Breath of the Dead!”

  “Raid fall back!” Cedra said. “All Dark Mages and Holy Fists cast Cure Disease as soon as you’re sure you’re out of range of that stuff. Focus on Tunk and then the healers first.”

  The remainder of the raid was moving before she even finished talking. Fortunately, Alizia and I were respectively behind and to the side of Yary, so we were in no danger of being hit. Yary wasted no time diving into the air and landing with both feet hard on top of Tunk before moving on to the rest of the stunned raid members. None of them survived a stomp until a Dark Mage removed the debuff from Murderwinkle. The brave gnome just managed to roll to the side before she would have joined her friends in pancakeville. Murderwinkle hit Yary with Shout and now that she was ready, easily dodged the remaining stomps while the raid removed the debuff on the remaining members.

  “I’ve never seen GMs use anything like this before,” Cedra said. “I think she’s lying again.”

  Yary stuck her tongue out at Cedra. “Everything I’ve said is the truth—after when I told you I was a GM. When you’re invulnerable, can teleport anywhere, and teleport anyone anywhere, there really isn’t a reason to do much else. But none of the normal GM powers have been working for months, so I had to use some of the backup stuff. The other GMs forgot about them, but I found them. Now who’s an idiot, Thomas? Took me a while to find them in the interface, though. Not really sure what most of them do either. Like this one.” The questioning look on Yary’s face was soon repeated on at least twenty identical faces. The copies of Yary cracked their knuckles and smiled.

  “Oooh,” Alizia said. “I remember these guys. You just have to trick 'em so they’ll open the door out.”

  “Those were copies of us, not enemies, though,” I said.

  The duplicates leisurely strolled forward and attacked. Murderwinkle and Nibble Shouted to draw two of the copies off the raid, but that still left eighteen more free. The clones didn’t hit too hard individually, but with so many, it all added up. The healers’ mana bars—including my own—were plummeting.

  “This is like the Anansi and Loki fights,” Cedra said. “Everyone use area effects. The copies shouldn’t have that many Hit Points.”

  Not having an area effect, I stuck to healing. Alizia just swung her scepter at the closest copy. Thankfully, a good third of the remaining raid did have AEs, though I think Noradine’s shimmering white bomb that rocked the cavern would’ve done the job by itself several times over. When Cedra called the assault to a halt a minute later, there was only one left.r />
  The original Yary picked herself off the floor. “Phooey. Well, five abilities down, five hundred plus to go. Ohh, this one looks fun.”

  She waved goodbye but halfway through her hand disappeared. I assumed invisibility at first until a hard breeze pushed me back as a red and brown blur shot toward the raid. Murderwinkle barely managed to get a Shout off before Yary got to a healer, though I was sure the ridiculous quantity of red numbers that poured off the gnome represented both damage and the amount of regret she was experiencing.

  “Superspeed,” Alizia said. “The only way to fix that is—oh, God, I can’t say it. Horus you tell them the plan while I start weeping.”

  “Break some potions on the ground between Murderwinkle and Nibble,” I said. “Make a big, slippery pool and then have Nibble Shout at Yary.”

  “Crude though inventive solution,” Cedra said. “But there’re several spells and items specifically designed for that.” She pointed at a wood elf in goggles. “Grease, please.”

  The elf pulled out a machine the size of a coffee maker. As she turned the crank, a thick brown liquid quickly spread on the ground in the space between Murderwinkle and Nibble. She motioned to Nibble ten seconds later. The beaverkin cleared his throat and let out a mighty Shout.

  The blurring form coalesced back into Yary for a split second as she turned to face Nibble and raced forward. Her feet came out from under her halfway and she skidded to rest against the thick, furry feet of the smirking Nibble.

  “Any last words?” Nibble said.

  “No,” Yary said. “Because these aren’t gonna to be my last ones. But you can say ‘bye,’ if you want.”

  Yary rolled over to barely miss being sucked down the black portal that appeared below the beaverkin. All Nibble could manage was a quick wave before he was sucked into oblivion. The hole unceremoniously spit out his furry, unmoving form soon after.

  Yary hopped up and stared at Cedra. “You can say ‘bye’ now too.”

  Cedra stared emotionlessly at Yary and tapped her bracers. The hole appeared below her, but instead of sucking her in, she floated from the ground. As Yary’s mouth dropped open in shock, Noradine’s hands quickly wove a spell. The white and blue energy hit everyone in the raid and soon we were all floating several feet off the ground like Cedra.

  “Sorry to have to do this to you guys, but I need to end this quick. Time for the big guns.” Yary’s hands came together with one, thunderous clap. A green energy shot across the cavern hitting everyone but her.

  A red 5 popped above my head to go with a new debuff: Aura of Apophis. The damage wasn’t much until I realized it was hitting everyone else as well. To make matters worse, the next tick was a 6 and the one after a 7. Regrowth easily took care of the damage, but for how much longer?

  “Apophis is a test of DPS,” Cedra said. “You have to kill him as fast as possible before the debuff overwhelms the healers. If you want to make this fast, Yary, then it’s game on.” Cedra summoned her spear and flew through the air.

  Yary smiled as a blue force shield appeared in front of her. Cedra crashed into it and her spear flew across the room, almost taking a high elf’s head off. The raid watched in horror as she slowly slid down the barrier, unconscious but still barely alive.

  “She’s using the shield from the Emperor De’Ang fight,” Noradine said. “The only way to knock it down is to defeat the sub-bosses, but there aren’t any sub-bosses here.”

  Alizia experimentally tapped the force shield with her scepter. “So we can’t remove this icky poison that’s slowly killing us unless we kill her first, and we can’t kill her until we knock this shield down, which there’s no way to do?”

  Noradine raised her hands and unleashed a spell that healed the whole raid. “That’s about the size of it.”

  “No fair,” Alizia said. “What kind of stupid boss fight is this? I’m going to complain to one of those Pyrite employees who handles this kind of thing. Where can I find one of them?”

  “I’m most sorry for having to do this to you, Alizia. I’ve never had a friend before, but this’s the right thing to do. You’re not supposed to be able to kill a GM. That’s why they gave us all these neat powers.” Yary waved goodbye.

  “Didn’t you say your normal Invulnerability isn’t working?” Alizia asked.

  Yary stopped waving. “Yeah, along with our teleportation powers.”

  “Perfect.” Alizia winked at her and crossed her arms.

  “What do you have planned?” Yary and I asked at the same time.

  “Oh, nothing. Just keep standing there inside that airtight bubble,” Alizia said out loud. In group chat, she added, “Only a little something I learned from my other role model, Bugs Bunny. After she drops the barrier, my plan kind of falls apart since I’m fresh out of anvils. I’m going to need you to take over, Mr. Mentor.”

  Why is it when you do something well a few times, people keep expecting you to do it again? Shouldn’t the reward for a good job be that you get to take it easy next time? Here I was, in a raid with twenty-four other people, and all the pressure was on me. No. That’s the old me talking. Besides Alizia, no one’s expecting me to save us all, and even then Alizia won’t hold it against me if I fail. The pressure is in my imagination—along with something else.

  I quickly sprinted to the left and stopped. My eyes met Alizia’s. The rest of the plan fell to her, but could I trust her? If she was an NPC programmed to get me and other players killed, this would be the perfect time to do just that. She’d been good lately, but was that all an act to lull me into a false sense of security? However, there was no way for this plan to work without her. No one else was close enough. I couldn’t afford to stop and think about this. There wasn’t time. Hesitation means death. I had to decide quick.

  “Alizia, do you see that stalactite right above you?” I asked in group chat.

  Alizia giggled in group chat. “You want her under it, right?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  Yary dropped the bubble. “You shouldn’t have given me that hint, besty. I’m not going to stay in there and let the air run out. That would’ve killed me even if I still had my old GM Invulnerability.” Yary cracked her knuckles. “Sorry, but this has to be done.”

  Alizia raised her scepter protectively in front of her face and backed away. “Eep!”

  Yary advanced on her. Her hands glowed the same eerie orange they had before.

  Alizia kept backing up until she hit the wall. She peeked up and then scooted a few feet to the right. Yary stopped in front of Alizia and raised her fist.

  I cast Acid Pellet, applied it to my arrow, and let it fly. The arrow landed perfectly in the center of the large stalactite. The acid melted the edge of the rock formation. A small piece broke off and bounced off Yary’s head.

  Yary looked up and rolled her eyes. A few more bits of stalactite tumbled down, but she easily hopped to the left to avoid them. Even if she’d stayed put, she probably still wouldn’t have taken any damage from the gravel-sized pieces. “Thanks for making this easy, guys.”

  While she was busy looking up, I activated Sprint and charged. Yary tried to move out of the way, but Alizia had positioned her perfectly. Yary’s ankle caught the leg of Nibble’s corpse as she tried to pivot to the side. A stumble left her completely defenseless as I barreled into her chest and pushed her into the portal she’d created minutes ago.

  The two of us fell for what seemed like forever. Mercifully, the blackness was finally interrupted by a simple message.

  You Have Died.

  You have lost 12 gold. If you make it back to your corpse in less than 24 hours, you will recover 6 gold.

  Do you want to resurrect at your last bind location: The Town of Grimrag, or wait for another player to resurrect you?

  Say “Yes” or “No.”

  I Lost Him on Purpose This Time, I Swear

  Given what I’d seen with Nibble’s corpse being spat back out of the hole—and not falling forever into oblivion�
�I chose to wait it out. Fortunately, my wait wasn’t very long. My vision returned to give me a nice view of a handsome, dark-haired corpse. It looked incredibly pale, which made me consider spending the next week working on my tan—until a few important things occurred to me: Corpses are supposed to be a lot paler than their living counterparts, I wasn’t sure if you actually could tan in the game or if you had to pay for that upgrade, and everyone else in the area was “deathly” pale in my new, black-and-white ghost-o-vision.

  I waited patiently as Noradine and the other healers made a circuit of the room resurrecting the fallen. Thankfully, I could hear everything and even communicate with the living. The only thing I wasn’t capable of was touching things—something I needed almost immediately as Alizia headed straight for Cedra.

  “So, being as I just saved everyone, I’d like to talk about my reward.” Alizia pointed at Yary’s corpse. “I want first pick on loot.”

  “GMs are considered players. Players don’t drop loot.” Cedra looked around, finally locating her fallen spear. Her eyes moved back and forth between the weapon and Alizia. A grin spread across her face.

  Whether Alizia took the meaning of that look the wrong way or knew exactly what it meant was impossible to say. What I did know was that this was precisely the point at which I would have pushed Alizia as far away from Cedra as possible.

  “OK, fine. Then you Knight fellas own a town. I’ll settle for a parade. Nothing too grand, just a few hundred floats with mine being no fewer than two-stories tall, covered in gold, and twenty or thirty kegs of healing potions to wet my whistle with during the three-hour plus journey o’ parading.” Alizia put her hand on Cedra's shoulder.

  Cedra motioned for Murderwinkle to bring her spear to her. “Georgius, what is there left for me to ban her from?”

  Georgius didn’t respond. His eyes were still glued to Yary’s lifeless body.

  “Can he not be in the parade?” Alizia asked. “He’s been kind of a bummer ever since he found out that crazy GM had kidnapped his sister, taken her place for weeks, and that he didn’t even notice the difference.”