by James Hunter
Your time is up, you cowardly thief. Turn yourself in now, or watch as the full weight of the Empire crushes you and all you love beneath our heel.
—High Commander Carrera
I read the message out loud to Abby, shouting to make myself heard. I should’ve been scared—Carrera was a bad man, one who wouldn’t hesitate to hurt me or kill me if he could—but instead I just felt exhilarated. Almost giddy. I dictated a hasty reply message:
Personal Message:
Oh, I’m here. Right outside your gates, in fact. You’ll be seeing me soon enough, though you might regret being such a colossal dickhead.
—Jack
“Okay,” I shouted to Abby as I sent the message. “Let’s light this powder keg.”
THIRTY-TWO:
Light it Up
Abby nodded, her eyes squinted against the biting wind, then thrust out one hand and unleashed a golden fireball, which streaked across the sky like a comet. In the growing darkness of the night, the spell probably looked like a fireworks display or maybe a shooting star, but one thing was for sure: it would be visible from the ground. Abundantly so. The fireball burned for only a few brief seconds, but by the time it died away, Rowanheath was teeming with anxious activity. Fires began to pop up below and screams cut through the night as armored guards rushed around in blind panic.
I smiled. Phase One was underway.
Cutter was down there somewhere, slinking through the warren of streets with his newly minted team of Rogues, Cutthroats, and lowbie Firebrands. Their job wasn’t to fight. No, it was to sow chaos, confusion, and panic, and most importantly to draw attention away from the movement of our troops and cannons. Cutter’s crew had carefully selected targets—guard commanders, high-level Viridian bureaucrats, Imperial-aligned priests and healers—and had spent the last few hours stalking them, waiting to murder them in very public places and in very spectacular ways.
There was a good chance most of those assassins wouldn’t come back alive—they were kamikaze soldiers, willing to die for the cause—but aside from Cutter, they were all players, so they’d respawn in a few hours.
Meanwhile, our Firebrands were setting vendor carts or trash heaps on fire, just to add an extra level of craziness for the city guards and Imperial-aligned players to sort out.
And it was working.
We swooped in low enough to watch the citizens of Rowanheath scramble:
Some tried to douse the growing flames. Others chased black-clad cutthroats through streets thick with people. A few even attempted to revive the victims. Squads of burly city guards swarmed from both the Keep proper and the barracks—located near the main gate—barking out orders as they rudely shoved people aside, trying to puzzle out what exactly was happening and how to stop it. Groups of players were also forming up, finally realizing that something big was going down. But, much to my amusement, those players more often than not blundered into the guard patrols, hurting their cause far more than they were helping.
Beautiful. Just beautiful.
A giant fireball exploded in an alleyway not far below—heat and light billowed up accompanied by a plume of curling smoke. I dropped us down and circled back around. One of our female Firebrands had just torched a silk-lined palanquin. Some nonnamed Viridian official, trapped inside, screamed as the wooden contraption blazed; his cry was both pitiful and reproachful. My stomach curled a little at the sound of someone burning alive. This was a game, I reminded myself, trying to dismiss the unease creeping through me. Besides, there wasn’t any other way.
I pushed my budding guilt away as a squad of lorica-clad sentries rounded the corner, trapping the Firebrand in a dead-end alleyway.
There was nowhere for her to flee. Nowhere to hide. Even from my high vantage, I could see how pale and scared the woman looked, her body shaking as she backpedaled, only to find a stone wall behind her. Instead of backing down, though, or pleading for mercy, she calmed herself and began to march toward the guards forming up at the alley mouth, her chin held high and proud. At ten feet out, she simply stopped, threw both hands forward, and roared out her defiance as she unleashed dual gouts of flame. Thick columns of orange washed over the sentries, scorching armor, setting cloaks ablaze, and charring exposed skin.
It was amazing and simultaneously disturbing to watch.
As powerful as her spells were, however, the guards broke into a charge, fighting against the onslaught of flame like salmon swimming against the river current. In seconds, the fireworks ceased as swords and cruel maces flashed out. I knew from experience that Firebrands could deal out a lot of concentrated damage, but most were classic glass cannons. Blood flew and bones snapped as Imperial weaponry sliced through thin fabric and into unprotected flesh. Our mage didn’t last long, not outnumbered against a bunch of melee tanks.
I willed Devil skyward, eager to put the scene behind me. The Drake arched his neck and pumped his wings, carrying us well away from the action on the streets, before wheeling back
toward the main gate and the wall.
I glanced down. Perfect. So far, everything was going according to plan.
Rowanheath’s citizens were so focused on the unfolding drama inside the walls that next to no one was manning the gate or focusing on the possibility of a frontal assault. “Do it,” I yelled at Abby over one shoulder, my voice barely carrying over the clamor below. A heartbeat later, a pair of fireballs streaked across the star-strewn sky, leaving twin tails of embers burning brightly in their wake. It didn’t take long for our mercs to break away from the tree line, sprinting into the open, while teams of beefy warriors hauled the Shadow Cannons into position.
Although there were only about seventy people, between the mercs and faction members, the wave pouring from both the east and west looked far more impressive: hundreds of fighters, easily. But that was because the vast majority of mercs were Warlocks and Summoners of one variety or another, and all the extra warriors on the field were actually conjured minions: Skeletons. Undead Archers. Minor Elementals. Lesser Demon Lords. In the light of the day, anyone with a working pair of eyes would’ve easily figured out what we’d done, but in the dark of night, with chaos ripping its way through the city, no one would realize we were pulling a fast one.
Not in time to stop it, anyway.
In mere minutes, the twelve cannons had formed up into a staggered line running the length of the wall. At nearly two hundred feet out, there was no way they would have the oomph needed to break through the thick slabs of reinforced stone, but they would certainly get Carrera’s attention.
“Fire,” someone roared below, the voice barely a murmur on the slapping wind. The order carried down the line, repeated over and over again. The Arcane Shadow Cannons, little more than blots of black steel against the darkening landscape, exploded in a cacophony of sound and magic. Orbs—the size of actual wrecking balls and burning with ghostly purple flame—ripped through the dark, screaming their way toward Rowanheath’s outer wall. The barrage of shadowy cannon fire smashed against the stone, splashing unnatural fire over everything in a ten-foot radius of impact.
The wall quivered under the assault. Chunks of rock cracked and tumbled away. The plains grass below began to burn.
This was the first time I’d seen the weapons in action, and I was more than a little impressed. Vlad had delivered big time—I was going to kiss that crazy Russian the next time I saw him.
I leaned into Devil, and brought us sweeping over the city again.
The few guards and warriors unoccupied with Cutter and his crew were now pouring toward the wall. There were also a few travelers, clad in heavy plate mail, tentatively creeping out through the main gate in groups of two or three. These were the glory seekers, hoping to gain favor with Osmark, Carrera, or both, by charging out and bringing the enemy cannons down. They were ballsy, but stupid. The second they cleared the gatehouse, mercenary arrows and devastating spells began to fall like rain.
Though the heavy armor deflected a great
number of the shots, there were a lot of arrows to contend with, and before long even those in the bulkiest steel looked like armored porcupines. As for the spells … Well, they didn’t seem troubled by the plate armor at all. Giant javelins of ice ripped through metal and left more than a few warriors limping along, or crawling through the dirt, their legs broken and useless. Most of the severely injured retreated, pulling themselves back toward the gatehouse—only to find someone had lowered the metal portcullis, trapping them outside the city walls.
They’d been given over as arrow fodder.
Another round of cannon fire collided into the wall, showering those cowering below with ghostly shadow flame.
The few warriors who managed to survive the initial onslaught of arrows and magic didn’t last long: they were quickly met by the slicing blades of the undead or the smashing hammers of summoned demon lords. Many of the enemy players dealt powerful blows, often one-shotting the summoned minions, but the sheer weight of numbers simply ground them down. A second later a new PM hit my inbox:
Personal Message:
I don’t know what you hope to accomplish here. This is a waste of your resources and can only end badly for you—I swear to God I will make you suffer for this. I’ll make it my personal mission to see you writhe in pain for the rest of eternity. I don’t know what kind of siege weapons you managed to acquire, but they’ll never penetrate our defenses. Rowanheath was built to stand against legions. It will certainly hold out against your shabby band of rejects, all of whom will be backlisted by the Empire. Now would be a good time to run away, little man, while you still can.
—Carrera
A thunderous BOOM ripped through the night, emphasizing Carrera’s threats.
I dismissed the message and watched in muted horror as enemy guards on top of the wall hauled out gigantic ballistae and unleashed enormous bolts at my troops. The bolts, which looked more like cruise missiles than arrows, punched into the earth with bone-shaking force, before exploding with the raw power of a bomb blast, releasing terrible heat and a geyser of earth and flame high into the air. Anyone too close was thrown clear, scattered like bowling pins. The first wave of ballista bolts took out a half dozen mercs—mostly summoned creatures, but still—and one of our twelve cannons.
That was bad, bad news.
I wasn’t sure how long we could hold out against that kind of firepower—I’d underestimated their defenses. On the plus side, though, Carrera’s forces were definitely focused on holding the wall and mopping up the chaos within the city itself, so they shouldn’t be looking toward the inner wall. Why would they? Our visible forces inside the city were minuscule in number, and no one could scale the wall.
Or so they thought.
“Last round,” I called out to Abby, tapping her on the leg to make sure she heard.
This time three fireballs blazed a trail overhead, cutting through the dark like razor blades made of light. The final signal. If everything had gone well with the smugglers, Otto and Amara would lead our spider-mounted forces out of the sewers, right up the face of the inner wall, and directly into the heart of the Keep itself. From what we’d been able to gather, all we needed to do was capture the Keep’s control room and hold it for half an hour—if we could do that, Rowanheath would be ours. And with it would come all of the city-aligned NPCs, including the roving sentries, those badass ballistae, and the Keep guardians.
Once that happened, we’d throw open the gates, and the mercs outside would pour into the streets and drive every Imperial-aligned player right out the front door. At least, that’s how it was supposed to work in theory. But it would all fall apart if we failed to buy our spider-riders as much time as possible—if they didn’t make it into the Keep, we couldn’t win this battle.
No way.
“Get ready to hit those ballistae!” I shouted.
Abby tapped me on the shoulder, then stuck one hand forward, giving me a thumbs-up.
I banked hard left, spinning us in a tight circle, before dropping Devil into a sharp dive, angling straight for the guards manning the giant weapons on the wall. The sentries below were so laser-focused on the mercs and the cannons, they didn’t see us swoop down like an avenging angel. The second we were in range, Abby lashed out with spurts of flame and balls of fire, which splashed against sentries with brutal force; guards flipped over the wall, falling ass over teakettle to the ground below. I left Abby to her work and homed in on a pair of ballistae.
Those were the real threat. Although I couldn’t take them out on my own, I was riding on the back of a mini-Dragon with a wide array of destructive capabilities.
In my mind’s eye, I recalled the super-heated column of shadow fire Devil had unleashed on me back in the Darkshard Mines. That’s what we needed right now. Dragon’s Fire. I willed the idea toward the new ball of nerves lingering in the back of my head. Fire, I thought, burn them all. We were ten feet out from the first oversized crossbow when Devil threw his jaws wide and let loose a floor-shaking roar as flame, so purple it was almost black, slapped against the ballista and the pair of sentries manning it.
The siege engine—built entirely of wood, string, leather, and bits of steel—didn’t stand a chance, not against the kind of heat and power my pet Drake was throwing around. The wood blackened, twisted, and snapped. String and leather frayed, cracked, and disintegrated. Even the steel smoldered and drooped in the intense heat. The pair of guards didn’t fare any better. One bolted away, arms raised overhead as he screamed and burned, only to trip and tumble from the wall. The other fought against the pain, standing proud and facing us down with an outthrust spear.
Another blast of flame finished him on the spot.
Finally, Devil’s attack ceased and a cooldown bar appeared in the corner of my eye.
Interesting.
So my pet had some limitations of his own. That was too bad, but also understandable from a gaming perspective. A mount like this was already ridiculously powerful, but if he could spew unending gouts of shadow flame, he’d be nearly unstoppable.
The next ballista was almost in range, and these legionaries had certainly noticed our presence. I wasn’t quite sure what to do here, but I knew we needed to put as many of these weapons out of commission as possible. Attack, I sent to Devil, my desperation bleeding through the command.
The Drake responded in a blink.
We dropped from the air, landing on top of the wall, slinking forward with a sinuous grace and unbelievable speed. The creature had somehow co-opted the controls for the time being, so all I could do was sit back, hang on for dear life, and hope things turned out well. We careened into the first sentry head-on; the Drake used its monstrous, spiked skull and its considerable momentum to send the sword-wielding guard cartwheeling through the air like a ragdoll. Devil had paralyzed me with an almost identical attack during our first fight in the mines, so I felt genuine sympathy for the poor guy on the receiving end.
Another guard, this one brandishing a halberd, darted toward us, but Devil lashed out like a cobra, crushing the man’s head with his terrible jaws. The Drake didn’t stop to gloat though; no, he just barreled forward, throwing himself at a third and final guard. I lurched in my seat as Devil’s wings thrust down and we were suddenly airborne again—except now we had another passenger dangling from Devil’s front claws. The guard, a wide-eyed woman, jabbed at Devil’s belly, but she didn’t have the leverage or reach to do much damage. We climbed for a few seconds, before sharply wheeling back toward the wall.
With a bellow of utter rage and contempt, Devil released the hapless guard from his deathly grip. She dropped, shock painted across her face, and slammed into the unmanned ballista with devastating force. Wood snapped, and so did the guard’s back. She stared up at us with vacant eyes, her neck at an impossible angle.
“Look!” Abby yelled in my ear, frantically jabbing a finger toward the Keep.
I reined Devil in, and turned us back toward the domineering fortress looming high abo
ve the city. I couldn’t help but grin at what I saw: Spiderkin, of all different sizes and varieties, crept up the inner wall, their hairy legs scuttling along with ease, while their riders clung tightly for dear life, held in place by flimsy strands of silver webbing. Otto and Amara rode at the top of the arachnoid formation, leading the silent charge with their weapons drawn and ready to fight. It was a spectacular sight, and though I was having a fantastic time swooping through the air, a part of me wished I were there with them.
“We’ve got incoming,” Abby yelled again, directing my gaze further up, to the top of the fortress. My grin faltered, faded, and died on my face.
Bulky stone creatures, loping along on all fours, leapt from the Keep’s turrets, plunging toward the ground, then unfurled massive wings and drifted out on strong currents of air. Gargoyles of some sort. Those had to be the Keep’s guardians. Carrera had a whole platoon of them—thirty or forty strong—and though Rowanheath’s regular sentries hadn’t taken note of the spiderkin, those stone-winged freaks were beelining straight for them. The spider-riders were nearly two-thirds of the way up, but the Gargoyles would be on them long before they reached the top.
“Get ready to fight!” I hollered at Abby as I ran one hand over Devil’s scaly neck. “We need to distract those things.”
“Ready whenever you are!” she yelled back, her voice fierce and proud.
THIRTY-THREE:
Dogfight
Devil’s powerful wings pumped frantically as we drove toward the first wave of Gargoyles. At a distance, I hadn’t really appreciated their size, but up close I realized how massive they were. Each was easily the size of a male lion and built along the same lines: slick, streamlined bodies, broad chests, and hulking limbs rippling with stone muscle. Instead of feline faces, however, each had the head of a gigantic eagle—complete with sharp amber eyes and a cruel tearing beak—which perfectly matched the powerful, feathered wings protruding from their backs.