by Rachel Aaron
Her head shot up, then she took a step back. Maybe she was just seeing things differently without the interface, but the Dead Mountain fortress looked… bigger. Much bigger, like an actual mountain. With the wind blowing down it, she could hear screams coming from the upper levels, but she didn’t see the undead patrols on the battlements anymore. She also didn’t see the purple swirl of the instance portal. The giant gate was now just empty, standing wide-open to reveal the huge, dark hall of the dungeon’s first wing and the things moving in the dark inside it.
“SB?” Tina called, voice trembling. “I think we need to get out of here. How’s that healer coming?”
When the Assassin didn’t answer, Tina turned to see he was still wrestling with the Cleric. Trapped in sensory overload, the blue-scaled ichthyian thrashed at every touch, wrenching his mouth away whenever SilentBlayde tried to cram the pan-elixir between his fish lips. Tina was about to go help hold him down when a harsh metallic screech pierced the air.
She whirled back around with a curse. Every Dead Mountain raider knew that noise. It was the sound the skeleton patrols made when they detected a player. Wincing at the bad timing, Tina drew her sword and started searching the gray landscape for the enemy, but all she saw was the empty road.
Confused, Tina squinted down the gray road toward the mountain. As she’d noted before, the swirling purple vortex that used to mark the start of the dungeon was gone. Without it blocking her view, she could see undead moving inside the Dead Mountain’s grand entrance hall, but they were hundreds of feet away, much too far to have been triggered by the raid.
No one must have told them that, though. No sooner had her eyes adjusted to the dark than Tina spotted a pair of enormous armored skeletons as they ignited their flaming swords and rushed forward, bones rattling as they charged through the hall and out the mountain’s gate.
Straight toward her.
Scrambling, Tina bent down to grab her massive tower shield off the ground where she’d dropped it. By the time she’d gotten it back onto her right arm, the first skeleton was on top of her. It was even bigger up close, ten rattling feet of dusty bone, tarnished armor, and blue-white ghostfire filling her vision as it raised its flaming sword with both hands to chop at her head.
For an eternal second, mortal terror froze Tina in place. Then years of habit kicked in, and her body moved on its own, snapping her shield up just in time to catch the burning blade before it could land in her scalp. The impact sent Tina’s feet sliding backward down the dusty road, but she managed to stop the monster’s rush. She shoved the skeletal knight back next, swinging her own oversized sword to smack its blade off her shield with a ringing clang.
The parry was pure instinct. The undeads’ chopping attacks had always been repetitive and predictable, and Tina had spent so many years battling skeletons, bandits, dragons, and so forth that the motions of FFO’s active combat system had long since become second nature. But while all of those battles had felt as real as the game could make them, they were nothing like this. With the gritty wind blowing in her face and her muscles aching from deflecting the skeleton’s attack, Tina had never felt more heart-poundingly “here.” The rattle of animated bones, the cobblestones sliding under her metal boots, the so-cold-it-burned heat of the ghostfire rising from the monster’s blade—it all felt real, and the fear that brought was real as well, slowing down her practiced motions as the skeleton threw its sword up to hammer into her shield again.
Focused on the enemy with the blade over her head, Tina didn’t even notice the second skeleton rushing past her until it was several feet down the road. Confused and frantic, she considered letting it go until she realized it wasn’t trying to flank her. As the tank—the player in the party who taunted monsters into attacking them instead of going for smaller, squishier prey—Tina was used to being the only target, but the second skeleton hadn’t even glanced in her direction. It was going for the downed raid behind her, its sword already lifted to strike the helpless body of a human player lying on the ground.
By the time Tina realized what was about to happen, it was too late. She watched in horror as the skeleton’s blue-white flaming sword swept down, slicing the incapacitated player’s head off in a single strike. The head bounced away like a rotten melon while the neck stump pumped blood onto the gray rocks of the road.
As she watched the viscous red liquid soak into the dust, Tina forgot that there was a skeleton over her head as well. She forgot about the fight, forgot about the raid. All she could see was that red liquid pouring from the stump of what had once been a person.
There was no dismemberment in Forever Fantasy Online. Getting hit with a sword caused a stagger animation and lost hit points. There wasn’t even blood. Certainly nothing like this. This wasn’t just a new graphic. She could see the bright white vertebrae sticking out of the dead player’s neck. See the blood dripping down the sundered flesh to the ground where it sank like an oil spill into the gray dust of the—
The skeleton in front of her brought its blade down on her shield with enough force to make her stagger. The deafening crash of cursed metal on sunsteel snapped her out of her shock. Blinking frantically, Tina tore her eyes away from the corpse and shoved her shield at the skeleton attacking her to buy some room. While it was recovering, she looked frantically over her shoulder to get an eye on the skeleton behind her, which was already moving toward the next unconscious player.
Tina moved on instinct, slamming her foot down to activate her wide area taunt. The only way to prevent another disaster was to get the runaway skeleton focused on her, so she stomped as hard as she could, yelling for good measure. With no ability interface, she had no way of knowing if the ability would work, but the moment her boot landed, a brilliant shockwave pulsed out from her foot, running up the skeletons’ legs and through their bodies until the blue-white ghostfire in their eye sockets flashed red.
That was exactly what was supposed to happen. But before Tina could feel relieved about activating the right taunt by gesture alone, everything else went wrong.
Normally, the environment in FFO wasn’t collapsible. That must have changed too, though, because unlike every other time she’d used her taunt on this exact stretch of road, her stomp now sent a spiderweb of cracks through the ancient cobblestones. The ground fell apart a second later, toppling Tina and both skeletons over as the road collapsed into a wide crater of loose dust and rolling stones.
To Tina’s dismay, the skeletons were the first to make it up. They rolled back to their feet in unison, chopping at her with their swords while she was still scrambling to get her legs under her. She lurched backward just in time to avoid getting filleted, throwing out her arms for balance, which was a nearly fatal mistake. The moment her shield was out of the way, the first skeleton’s blue-white flaming sword shot through the gap in her defenses.
Tina gasped in terror as seven feet of flaming steel crashed into the heavy armor that guarded her neck. As expected of top-level raid gear, the runed metal deflected the blade with barely a scratch, but the ghostfire that coated the skeleton’s weapon flashed an angry white. As the light pulsed, Tina felt burning cold bite through her armor, down her neck, and into her collarbone on her right side. It wasn’t a dangerous hit, but the burn still hurt a hell of a lot more than the game should have allowed, and the unexpected pain destroyed what was left of Tina’s stability.
She went down with a pained yelp, smacking her head on a rock as she landed, which was how Tina learned that the “don’t show helmet” setting she used so she wouldn’t have to play the game while staring through a realistic-style visor now meant “you have no helmet.” The only things that saved her from an instant KO were the weird metal-but-not-metal copper dreadlocks of her hair, which softened the blow. Still, all Tina could do for the next several heartbeats was lie dazed on her back with her sword arm flung out and her shield over her chest as she stared up at the flat gray clouds of the Deadlands. Then the sky vanished as the two ske
letons appeared above her.
The skeleton on her left stomped her sword flat to the ground with its boot. Meanwhile, the one on the right bent down to grab her shield and wrench it away. Tina strained with all her might, but since she was stuck on her back at the bottom of the crater, their combined strength, weight, and superior angle were more than she could match. No matter how she fought, she couldn’t free her sword or stop the skeleton above her from yanking her shield to the side, leaving her body exposed to the sword the left skeleton was now raising over her.
Staring up at the executioner’s stance, the fear Tina had felt earlier came back with a vengeance. She still didn’t know what was going on, if this was even a game anymore, but her body was completely, one-hundred-percent convinced it was about to die. Her panicked brain raced in circles as she tried to remember which ability she needed to use to save herself, but without her interface, she had no idea what still worked. The sword was coming down, though, so Tina decided that if all bets were off for her enemy, she might as well try something crazy, too.
Letting go of her sword and shield, Tina grabbed a basketball-sized piece of rubble and hurled it with all her might at the left skeleton. The improvised move wouldn’t have been possible in normal FFO. Now, though, the mini-boulder flew like a meteor right into the skeleton’s face, exploding on impact and knocking the monster flat onto its back.
A sword flashed on Tina’s right as the other skeleton tried to stab her, but its grip on her shield forced it to attack from an awkward angle, and Tina easily smacked the blow away with her armored hand. As the skeleton reeled, Tina grabbed the shield it had tried to rip away from her with both hands and rolled backward. The skeleton clung desperately to its prize, but now that it was alone, she was the one who was stronger and heavier, and she yanked it off its feet, ending up on her back again with the massive skeleton on top of her and her shield in the middle.
It was a dangerous position, but now that she was no longer trying to hold on to her sword, Tina’s left hand was free to shove herself up. Once she got her legs underneath her, she pushed up with her entire body, hoisting the shield—and the skeleton on top of it—over her head. Then roaring with fury, she turned her shield and slammed it back down again, crushing the skeleton that was now beneath it into the shattered road. Since her legendary shield, forged during the Age of Skies, could take a beating, Tina stomped her boot down on it next, smashing the trapped skeleton several inches into the stony dirt. She was about to stomp again when she heard retching noises followed by SilentBlayde’s cry of distress.
“Oh shit, David! You’re not allowed to choke to death on a healing potion!”
The shout made her cringe. She was turning to ask SB if that was pan-elixir number one or two being barfed all over the road when the skeleton she’d knocked over with the rock clambered back to its feet. Her dropped sword was right beside it, just a few feet away, but if Tina took her weight off her shield, the skeleton she’d trapped beneath it would get up, too. That left her with no weapon and no door-like shield while facing an end-game monster meant to be fought by 3 or more players.
Tina wanted to run, or panic, or do anything other than fight this terrifying, un-winnable battle, but the image of that unknown player’s head bouncing across the broken cobblestones was seared into her memory. The blood was still on the ground, bright red and accusing, reminding her that it was her fault. She’d let the skeleton slip by. If she messed up again, someone else would die, so Tina swallowed her fear and raised her empty hands instead, curling them into metal-gloved fists as the monster charged.
Screeching like a band saw, the huge skeleton brought its curved sword down on her with both hands. It was an easy-to-follow attack, but when Tina raised her arm to knock the sword aside, she discovered that the injury she’d taken earlier wasn’t as minor as she’d thought. The burn from the ghostfire no longer hurt, but it was still there, sending a deathly numbness down her shoulder and into her arm as the skeleton’s sword slammed down.
She didn’t have the strength to block it, so the attack smashed Tina’s raised arm into her own face. Still unable to cut through her god-forged armor, the giant blade slid down her gauntlet in a shower of sparks and dropped to land between the knee and thigh plates of her left leg instead. No longer hampered by inch-thick rune-forged metal, the flaming sword chopped clean through the relatively thin chain that guarded her joint and into the stony flesh below.
Roaring in pain, Tina kicked the monster away and scrambled back, looking down to assess the damage. Sure enough, silver blood was welling up from the wound like a faucet, but terrifying as it was to see herself bleeding, part of Tina felt like laughing at how she only had a narrow gash instead of a whole missing leg. Just like the earlier wound in her shoulder, the ghostfire burned like crazy, but while she could already feel her leg going numb, it still worked. Not that that mattered.
In her rush to get back so she could check her leg, she’d stepped off her shield, which meant the other skeleton was now free to climb back to its feet. It didn’t even look damaged from its time in the dirt, its ghostfire eyes as bright as ever as it shook the gravel from its armor.
As two pairs of white-fire eyes floating in empty skulls locked onto her, Tina had no choice but to back up again, climbing out of the crater and back up on the road. Her right arm was now completely numb thanks to the spreading ghostfire, and her bloody knee burned like acid where the sword had cut through. She desperately needed to take control of the situation, but she had no sword or shield. She couldn’t even see her available skills without her interface, but all of Tina’s experience said that this was big-ability time.
The skeletons advanced slowly until they reached the edge of the crater. The moment they stepped up on solid ground again, they charged in unison, the tongues of ghostfire in their eye sockets dancing as they hurtled toward her, swords raised high. Wincing, Tina turned her back on them and slammed her arms together, activating her race’s Earthen Fortitude ability.
For a terrifying second, nothing happened. Just the whistle of giant swords streaking through the air toward her undefended back. Then Tina felt the kiss of earth on the soles of her feet as the blessing of the Bedrock Kings flowed into her. Strength and stability settled in her bones, her skin, her armor, and even her metal hair. She felt colossal in its grip, a mountain that could take any storm. But with the power of bedrock came the immobility of it as well, and as her body hardened into position, Tina gritted her teeth for the beating.
Sparks flew over her shoulders in rivers as both skeletons hammered their swords into her back. The normally crushing blows felt like bee stings compared to the mountain within her, but it wouldn’t last forever. She couldn’t see the cooldown with the interface, but Tina knew she only had eight seconds before the near-invulnerability of Earthen Fortitude wore off. After that, she’d be mincemeat.
Unable to move, Tina used those precious seconds to look for help. She spotted SilentBlayde giving a Cleric the Heimlich maneuver. The white-robed healer was gagging and barfing rainbow-colored pan-elixir everywhere. That was no good for her, but surely someone else was up. SB had had two pan-elixirs on his belt, after all. The Cleric couldn’t have barfed them both up.
With her time rapidly running out, Tina desperately looked around for someone else. Aside from SB and the healer he was keeping from choking, though, there was only one figure who wasn’t sprawled on the ground. A dozen feet down the road, an ichthyian Cleric who looked almost exactly like the one SB was helping was cowering behind a rock. Hopes soaring, Tina opened her mouth to yell his name only to realize she had no idea who he was. She had to know him—all the healers in tonight’s raid were Roughnecks—but without a nameplate over his head, she couldn’t identify him by character model alone. It didn’t help that all the best-geared Clerics wore the exact same white robes and there were four in tonight’s raid who were ichthyians, scaly fish people whose bug-eyed character models all looked nearly identical.
&nb
sp; He was all she had, though, so Tina yelled anyway, screaming at the Cleric to heal her, but the fish-man just turned away.
“It’s just a dream,” he said, placing his webbed hands over his ear holes. “You aren’t real. I’m just having another lucid dreaming episode, that’s all. There’s no way this is real. It’s never real.”
There was more, but Tina didn’t bother listening to the rest of his babbling. “SB!” she cried instead, looking frantically at the elf since she was unable to lift her arms. “Help!”
Far down the road, SilentBlayde stopped flicking rainbow-colored puke off his leather armor and glanced up in surprise, his blue eyes widening into an Oh shit look as he realized her situation.
The mountain within her was starting to fade now, the magic falling out of her like the stone it was. As it left, Tina knew she was screwed. SB was on the opposite side of the raid group from her. Even if he was strong enough to stop the swords falling toward her back, he’d never make it in time. Once she was dead, the Assassin would be outmatched. The skeletons would kill him and everyone else, and it would be all her fault.
The moment Earthen Fortitude released her legs, Tina wheeled around. She might be outmatched, but it was her responsibility as a tank to be the wall between these things and the other players for as long as she could. If nothing else, maybe her blood spraying across the ground would snap that idiot healer out of his shock long enough to save the others.
The skeleton on her left went first. As it swung down, Tina lifted her right arm, choosing her numb limb for the first sacrifice. But even though she was anticipating the blow, the lingering ghostfire left her too slow by miles. She’d barely managed to get her hand up before the massive sword swept right past. It was about to land in her skull when its owner’s head was engulfed by a cloud of dark-purple powder.