by Oliver Mayes
Damien started running for the nearest tree as Aetherius Blinked, becoming visible but closing the gap between them to nearly nothing. The illusion of him drinking a potion faded and the minions immediately turned back to cover their master, but Aetherius had meticulously circumvented every single one of them. Even the hounds, who’d been on the verge of catching their prey, had been left far behind. Aetherius aimed a glowing-red left hand at Damien’s head, braced his feet and fired.
Damien slid forward and passed underneath the beam without stopping. Aetherius canceled it and threw his other hand up and around, curving an Arcane Bolt directly into Damien’s path. Damien had to veer right to avoid it, the bolt’s turning circle just too wide to keep up with him, and found himself on a collision course with his pursuer. Aetherius threw his hand back up, glowing with the light of a new beam, when the Chaotic Bolt the succubus had been charging slammed into his back. Aetherius staggered forward, caught completely unaware.
By the time Aetherius had recovered, Damien was already leaping toward him across the short distance that remained. Aetherius brought both hands around from his sides, where they’d been thrown for balance, in a desperate attempt to cast a double-handed beam at close range. Damien was faster. Each dagger met a separate outstretched palm, piercing through them as their bodies collided. Aetherius fell over backward and Damien landed squarely on top of him, his knee on his enemy’s chest and the daggers pinning the spell-casting hands to the floor on either side of his head.
Aetherius struggled to free his hands, but Damien kept them held down while he waited for his minions to come finish the job. After a few moments, Aetherius relaxed. Damien was just considering trying to remove a dagger to put it through Aetherius’s head when his latest victim’s face contorted. Not with anger, but mirth. He started chuckling, trying to hold it in, but it quickly deteriorated into full-on laughter. It was unnerving. Damien had expected insults, or curses, or at the very least a hearty glob of spit in his face. Not this.
The hounds were closing in, using the last of their stamina to reach them as soon as possible while the winged minions lagged behind. They were on the verge of seizing Aetherius’s head when Damien forced them to stop. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go down. If anything, Aetherius should have been madder than ever. He was still trying to figure out what to say when the laughter stopped. While that had indeed been annoying, the bored expression Aetherius had suddenly adopted, so reminiscent of that which once accompanied his old foot-tapping habit, was worse.
“What’s the holdup? Do you enjoy sitting on my chest? Just hurry up and kill me already, so I can go eat or do laundry or something.”
“I was just wondering what you thought was so funny. You seemed pretty bummed out last time I killed you. And took your Bag of Holding, I might add. It’s really useful by the way, but not the kind of thing you should be building a character around.”
Aetherius’s eyes briefly settled on the bag, narrowed, and then rose up to meet Damien’s again.
“Oh yeah, that thing. Glad you’re making good use of it. Means I’ll be able to reclaim it at some point. Don’t lose it before I kill you, ’kay?”
“Says the guy with daggers in his hands. You won’t kill me, you just blew the best shot you’re ever gonna get.”
“You think that was a serious attempt? I just heard that you were in the neighborhood and thought I’d try my luck. And holy crap, I almost got you on my first try! This will be easier than I thought. I can’t believe I gifted a pleb like you with the streaming competition. And that bag you’re so proud of? You stole it. If it happened any other way they’d call it griefing, but nooooo, killing the competition leader by stealing his inventory is totally cool. At least it fits your image; you’re a little kid with an edgy class and a superiority complex.”
Damien was shouting now, and Aetherius’s smirk just made everything even worse.
“For starters, I was about ten levels lower than you and had to fight pretty much a hundred people you threw in front of you as cannon fodder, and you’re getting hung up on your whole playstyle having a single glaring weakness that I exploited? You were spouting all kinds of crap about me being a noob, when all that time you were relying on a gimmick to win? Truth is, Andrew, your whole strategy relied on people not knowing what you were doing. It had nothing to do with skill at all. You’re just not that good a player.”
Aetherius sighed and rolled his eyes. How was it that he was becoming more annoying by the second? There was a pause, and then he pulled the rug out from under Damien’s feet.
“That’s rich, coming from the occultist. But you’re half right. I min-maxed my class and took an easy route. You know why? I was running a huge guild, looking after my players and keeping content on my channel up. Playing the class properly was secondary, so long as everything kept working.”
Damien adjusted his grip and brought the minions in a little closer, so they could all jump him together if he tried anything. Aetherius seemed entirely focused on the conversation, all but oblivious to the knees on his chest and the daggers piercing his palms.
“Thanks to you, those distractions are gone. I can play on my own terms. Meanwhile, your problems are just beginning! And oh boy, it’s a lot of fun watching you get yours! I saw that stream yesterday, the one where you killed all those innocent raiders. You enjoying being the bad guy, Damien? Being hated? Being Mobius’s little lapdog?”
Damien was stunned. Aetherius had hit the nail right on the head. Effortlessly.
“Aww, lookit those wittle puppy dog eyes! You are sad! While the pressure on you racks up, I’ll be focusing entirely on how to end the career you stole from me. If you kill me at this stage, it means nothing. But if I kill you? Man, I can only imagine how badly that’ll tank your ratings. Now you’re the one with everything to lose.”
His grin broadened as he watched the words sink in. It took a few moments but Damien had a thought and suddenly smirked back. He knew something Aetherius didn’t. Sharing is caring.
“I won’t be hanging around for your second go. I’m headed for the Outer Ring. By the time you respawn, I’ll be on the other side of Carlisle and you’ll still be penned in here. If you’ve heard the news about me, you’ve probably heard about Magnitude taking over Carlisle. I’m pretty much built for avoidance and evasion, but I don’t see you getting through. So you have fun here, with all the other trash, and maybe—”
Damien had really thought he was making headway. Aetherius had slowly been going redder and redder in the face, his eyes widening and his face contorting until it looked like it might explode. Then, he did. He screamed laughter into Damien’s face. Okay. He’d completely lost it. There didn’t seem to be much point in humoring him further. Damien looked up at a hound, ready to give the order, when Aetherius finally did start spitting into his face. Unfortunately, it was a secondary feature of a great deal of acerbic verbiage.
“What did I just say? A kid with an edgy class and a superiority complex! It’s so gratifying to see how far you’ve fallen, and how quickly. It took me months, but it only took you a few weeks before you started calling other players trash! For no reason at all! And in the same breath, you’re smugly talking about Magnitude penning me in? Oh, wow! What a disaster for you!”
He pealed off into a second laughing fit, through which he gleefully spluttered out the words Damien hadn’t known he didn’t want to hear.
“You’re not getting past Carlisle. You’re the whole reason Richard took that settlement so early! He wants to keep everyone else from getting out as well, but at least they have a small chance of serving him instead. I’ve fought Richard, trust me, he’ll handle you without help. And thanks to your player-killing adventures here today, he’ll know you’re coming. No. You’ll be here for a long, looong time. Your vapid supporters dwindling away as your dream fades and reality sets back in. I’ll have plenty—”
In unison, the hell hounds twisted their heads back the way Aetherius had come and
growled. Damien’s head darted upward, following the direction they were pointing in. Aetherius filled his lungs and bellowed.
“Over here!”
Damien looked down at Aetherius just in time to catch a cheeky wink. Then his adversary vanished from underneath him, causing Damien to plop into the empty cavity that had been left in the snow. What the hell? The only skill Aetherius had that would allow him to do that was Blink, but that required facing—
A dull, slightly delayed thud, followed by the snapping and creaking of branches far above, attracted Damien’s disbelieving gaze. Aetherius had Blinked upward, into the trees. Granted, with his low physical stats he looked like a complete tool, his legs kicking in the empty air as he struggled with the simple task of pulling himself up onto the branch. But he’d slipped out of Damien’s reach, from right between his fingertips.
This guy didn’t know when to quit. If he thought Damien would let him go he had another thing coming. He was totally out of his element in the tree, but Damien would be quite comfortable there. He was sending an imp up for his Demon Gate, the hounds getting louder with every passing moment, when something collided with the side of his head and his hit points plummeted. It had hit him so hard that he staggered over sideways, then toppled into the snow.
He had 120/1,160 hit points remaining. 2x damage for being unaware of the enemy, then another 2x damage on top for being struck in a critical zone. That’s a lot of damage. He much preferred being on the other end of such attacks. Still lying in the snow, his hand traced its way up to the side of his head and found an arrow sticking out of it. Wonderful. And he was bleeding as well. Marvelous. Bleeding arrows sure were popular around here.
He had to hide. He looked over to where the attack had come from, hoping to catch a glimpse of his enemy, and found something much worse. Without Noigel present to guide them while he was occupied, his minions had all run with maximum aggression in the direction of the attack, following their prime directive to protect their master.
In his brief absence, they were getting mown down. There was more than one enemy. That was clear from the variety of attacks being levied against them. His hounds were the fastest, and thus the first to run into the overwhelming odds. The first was hit by an arrow, the damage of which was much mitigated by the armored plates, only to have its head blown off by a bullet. Not the typical close-range clump of buckshot Damien had seen firsthand in his own altercations with gunslingers, but a long-range, accurate, instant projectile.
That was dwarven tech! Here? The second hound was hit by an Ice Bolt, freezing its forelimbs and reducing its pace to a crawl. Without speed on its side to close the gap, the hound was practically harmless.
This group seemed dangerous to tangle with in the best of circumstances, never mind when they’d got the jump on him. Damien needed to get out of here. He commanded his imps to flee as he scrabbled behind the tree Aetherius was balancing in, bleeding profusely the whole while. It was already too late for the rest of them. The succubus had proven easy prey when acting of her own accord, flying in the open straight to her inevitable demise. She dodged an arrow and managed to release her Chaotic Bolt before an Ice Bolt hit her wing, sending her into a nosedive. She hadn’t even hit the floor before a second bullet had improbably struck her through the neck. A remarkable feat given her rapid, uncontrolled descent.
Dwarven ranged weapons were some of the best in the game, but at least they had long reloading times. The next shot would likely be reserved for him. They had an ice mage as well, somewhere, who was stacking the environmental effects of the zone with his own to devastating effect. So there were at least three players. Damien had chugged a health potion while he watched and was about to draw his head back when the number increased to four.
While everyone else remained in hiding, a warrior closed in to deal with the frosted hound. It was a tank who was making use of the Behemoth trait, a tower shield that looked normal-sized on him but had the approximate dimensions of a bank-vault door and an obscene black flail, complete with a spiky ball on a long chain. It passed straight through the chilled hell hound at the end of its arc, shattering the beast into myriad fleshy shards of ice which burst and disintegrated in midair.
The rest of the party had not revealed themselves, but this player provided enough information to confirm how much trouble Damien was in. Level 48. Off to a bad start. Damien spied his name and gleaned that the whole character was very much designed based on the principle of size mattering. He was called ‘BiggusDickus’. Damien couldn’t agree more. Best of all, his guild was ‘Carlisle-Elite’. So these were Magnitude’s boys. That went some way to explaining why they were causing so much grief. They’d already killed ten players consecutively here, they knew exactly what they were doing.
Damien could try to run, but the bleed effect on the arrow would kill him before he got very far. Assuming he didn’t get shot in the back first. If he did manage to escape, they’d follow the trail of blood he’d be leaving behind for the next fifty seconds. The only way he was getting out of this would be by Demon Gating, but he’d have to get it right. Which would be difficult, because one of his three remaining imps had already been shot out of the air.
Damien thought for an instant, then flew the last two in different directions. One flew straight past him without stopping, putting itself as far away from the combat as possible. The other flew upward toward its previous target, Aetherius. The blood leading to the foot of the tree meant they’d quickly discover Damien, but he was more concerned with concealing the whereabouts of his escape imp. Since Aetherius had caused so much trouble, the least he could do was provide a distraction.
Damien looked up and waited till the imp was in range. He’d previously intended to off Aetherius himself, up in the branches where the mage’s low agility would render him helpless. However, this was more important, and considerably more amusing. He Imp-loded it, enjoying the spectacle of Aetherius being torn out of the tree. There was a dull thud as he landed, but Damien couldn’t risk watching without endangering himself. Unless...
“Possession.”
Now flying his escape imp, Damien waited until Aetherius’s body was starting to blur out in the snow before flying in a wide circle. His old nemesis had dropped face-first between the Carlisle-Elite members and Damien’s evacuated, bleeding body. Keeping Aetherius in his sights would give him a fair amount of warning if anyone was getting close to his position. Aetherius wasn’t moving. He was lying facedown in the snow exactly where he’d fallen.
After a few seconds, BiggusDickus unceremoniously walked up to him and threw the flail through his prone form. Aetherius’s body dissipated, the choice of illusion so subtle that even Damien himself hadn’t clocked it. Aetherius reappeared, coming around the very tree Damien’s body was propped up on, hands glowing.
This guy was relentless. Damien canceled the Possession and cast his eyes up for the imp, the thrum of Aetherius’s held spell-cast ringing in his ear. He found the imp where he’d left it and Demon Gated instantly, arriving exactly as the Arcane Beam tore through the spot where he’d been lying. He hadn’t even had time to land the imp, resulting in a brief fall and a splatter of blood at Damien’s new location.
Time to leave. He ran directly away from the combat, spamming his Portal spell as the same repeated notification informed him the spell could not be cast while there were enemies nearby. When it was finally replaced with a notification saying that he had to stand still in order to cast, Damien darted behind the nearest cover and strained to focus on it. Far behind him a single gunshot rang out, muffled by the distance and the thick white blanket coating the environment. He didn’t have the luxury of finding out if it had connected. The moment the portal appeared, he leapt through it and it quickly closed behind him.
Damien had failed in his objective of erecting a Gateway nearby. He’d acquired 17 souls’ worth of minions, only to lose 16 of them. He had little to no experience gain. Yet considering what he’d come up against, he was
lucky to be alive.
So much for his productive morning.
6
Quid Pro Quo
There was one thing Damien felt like doing above all others, and he still had a soul left over in his Sacrificial Dagger to do it with. He pointed it at the floor and started summoning an imp. Not just any imp, but the one that had inadvertently brought his morning’s efforts to a standstill. As he resummoned Noigel, he sent the Soul Well-bound succubus to the furthest corner of the base. He’d be Noigel’s sole concern, this time round.
“You ungrateful little swine! Do you know what happened, thanks to you? You knew what you were supposed to be doing, Noigel, and you decided fulfilling your disgusting urges was more important!”
Damien was jabbing his finger into Noigel’s ribs, mere words not enough to express his discontent. The imp surprisingly backed away without a word of retort, cowering and remorseful. It wasn’t enough to satisfy Damien, given the setback his summon had propagated.
“I told you to stand watch and you waited until I needed you most to indulge yourself? Are your disgusting urges more important than keeping your master alive? Tell me! Are they?”
Noigel had no response. He’d only just been reincarnated and had no inkling of what had transpired while he was away. He was defenseless. The same state of being he’d inflicted on Damien minutes earlier, by not doing as he was told.
“Aetherius showed up! That’s who you got blasted by, and what were you doing? Bobbing up and down on a tactical asset. So not only did you not keep me safe, you were stopping the succubus from keeping me safe as well. And look where we are: back where we started, with nothing to show for it! Do I need to go back to giving you direct orders, like when we first met?”