Spellcraft

by Andrew Beymer

  “Maybe,” Keia said, sounding more excited as she looked at the situation.

  “Rezzik, I want you to get into that tower on the other side and sneak up there as quiet as you can while I keep them distracted,” I said. “Got it?”

  “Got it,” Rezzik said, turning to some of the strike team and speaking to them in the goblin language as he gestured decisively.

  “What are you going to do?” Keia asked.

  “The same thing I do every time I’m confronted with Horizon,” I said. “Try to blow them the fuck up.”

  I turned back to the occupied tower.

  “Um, hello there again?” I asked. “I was wondering if maybe you wanted to go ahead and surrender now?”

  “Why would we ever surrender to you?” the voice shouted from on high.

  “Well here’s the thing,” I said. “You know who I am, right? The guy who keeps blowing you and all your friends up and killing your leaders every time they send you at me? I wanna make sure we’re on the same page here.”

  “Good start there,” Keia said. “I’m sure they’re going to want to surrender to you if they know you spend so much time killing their asses.”

  “They know there’s a good chance it’s going to happen to them if it’s something I keep doing to them and their friends,” I said.

  “Maybe,” she said. “It almost makes me wish I had my bow and arrow so I could snipe them or something.”

  “You’re doing great from healing,” I said. “If it weren’t for that I’d be dead right now.”

  “Oh I know,” she said. “And if you think I’m ever going to let you live that down you have another thing coming.”

  “Hey, I’ve got an idea!” one of the Horizon people up there finally shouted. “Why don’t you go fuck yourself, and we’ll stay up here keeping control of the tower so the reinforcements can kill you!”

  I sighed and looked up. Dawn was starting to break in the game world. It was still a couple of hours before people would be getting up for school in the real world, but if they were telling the truth then there were a lot of people being woken up right now and pulled into the game world against their wills.

  I really should’ve put a spy in the town, but there was no one else I could put in our party chat who I actually trusted to do spying like that.

  “How about this instead,” I shouted. “You guys surrender, and I don’t blow you up like I did all your friends!”

  “I like our earlier offer to blow you the fuck uuurk!”

  That last bit trailed off into something that seemed halfway between a scream and a pained cry. More shouting came from the tower up above, and when I looked around there were no arrows coming at me any longer.

  I still held myself back. The last thing I wanted was to take an arrow to the face because they were trying to lull me into a false sense of security. Though from the sounds that were going on up there, not to mention the crashing and the light flickering, I got a good feeling that the goblin strike team I’d sent around there was doing some of my dirty work for me.

  “Um, Conlan,” Kris said into party chat.

  “Not now,” I said into party chat. “I need to see if the goblins made it through that okay.”

  I turned back to the tower. Something appeared in one of the viewing slits up there, but it was difficult to tell if that was a goblin or a human. Then something came on in there that let me know it was definitely a goblin.

  Goblins were the only ones I knew of who carried around those glowing light gems. I suppose it was possible the Horizon Dawn people had killed the goblins and taken one, but then the goblins shouted down.

  “All clear up here! Kinda messy, but all clear.”

  I grinned and sighed in relief before stepping out into the open. Then my stomach turned when I saw what was waiting for me.

  “Seriously, Conlan?” Kris said again.

  “Y’all can come out now,” I said into party chat. “I think the coast is clear for now.”

  There were bodies all over the place. And by bodies I really meant there were bits and pieces of bodies that’d been tossed everywhere as a result of my improvised explosive gems and the spellcannons.

  The result was a charnel house of dead players. There were still a couple who were moaning and rocking back and forth holding nasty wounds that looked like they would rapidly deplete their hit points, but for the most part everyone in the Horizon Dawn emergency response team who’d managed to get on site fast enough to fight off the raid had been killed.

  I stared down as they all started to decompose, and I figured that meant it was time to start collecting loot.

  "Let's go!" I said.

  "What are you doing?" Keia asked, her voice taking on a long-suffering tone that said she thought I was about to do something very stupid. Which was entirely possible, but it was a chance I had to take.

  "That's a large group of Horizon players and we're not going to pass up this opportunity to relieve them of their stuff!" I said.

  Rezzik appeared with several other goblins who saluted. Then they all started gathering gear from the chests the Horizon Dawn people had left behind.

  I blinked. I didn’t know they could do that. Maybe it was something they could do now that they were working for me or something. Either way I wasn’t going to knock it.

  “So what now?” Rezzik asked.

  I looked at the still moaning bodies of Horizon Dawn people who hadn’t been killed by all the explosions and shots fired. This next part was going to suck, for them, but I told myself it was more a mercy than anything considering the state they were in.

  “Kill anyone still alive down there," I said.

  "Bloodthirsty much?" Keia asked.

  “Oh, that’s a good point,” I said. “Let Keia heal anyone who’s still alive to full health kill them. Got it?"

  "Got it," Rezzik said.

  I looked at Keia. She smiled a little smile. I guess giving her targets to heal was enough to get on her good side again.

  I looked up at the open gates guarding the mine entrance. They’d been thrown wide open, but that could change. After all, why would they need to close the gates when they controlled everything in their territory? Who would be stupid enough to threaten them? Who would have the forces to threaten their territory, for that matter?

  Yeah, Horizon Dawn had gotten fat and lazy in their attempt to take over this region of the game, and I was going to show them what it meant to fuck with me. What it meant to fuck with the goblins, for that matter.

  Mostly the goblins, considering they were the ones gleefully butchering anyone from Horizon Dawn stupid enough to come on the scene, but I liked to think I had more than a little bit to do with this considering I was the one who came up with the plan to murder Horizon’s asses.

  My only regret was that I wasn't going to get to see the look on Torian’s stupid face when he realized his precious raid dungeon he thought he had on lockdown had fallen victim to a massive smash and grab. Something told me there wasn’t anyone out there in the game world audacious enough, and stupid enough if I was having a moment of total honesty, to pull something like this against any other Horizon holdings.

  I heard screams in the distance that told me the group tasked with watching the graveyard was teaching Horizon Dawn a lesson about fucking with the goblins. I grinned. I probably shouldn’t have been so happy at the sound of people being tortured, but I also had difficulty giving much of a fuck that they were suffering if they were wearing a Horizon Dawn tabard.

  Maybe that made me an asshole, but they started it.

  A couple of Horizon Dawn people logged in while the goblins were finishing up gathering chests, but their solo attempts at pushing the goblin raid away went about as well one might expect. No sooner did they appear and look around than they were swarmed by goblins hacking them to pieces with those nasty long knives that doubled as swords.

  Their screams weren’t exactly pleasant, but they didn’t interrupt the goblins as they
gathered. I was going to have a shitload of Horizon gear to sift through when this was all said and done.

  “Dawn is coming a little early today,” Keia said, looking towards Nilbog.

  “Yeah, but what a glorious dawn it’ll be!” I said, taking in a deep breath and then coughing because it turns out sniffing a bunch of dead bodies wasn’t the best idea.

  “Conlan!”

  I turned to see Kris running out of the treeline where she’d been hiding with the cannons. Goblins were pulling the cannons through the trees as well. They’d disassembled them and were carrying them at a run towards the gates.

  “Kris?” I asked. “What are you doing? Why aren’t you taking those back to the tunnels?”

  “I’ve been trying to get your attention!” she shouted, looking pissed off. “The scouts. They found something!”

  “What?” I asked, an icy chill running through me at her words.

  Kris wasn’t one to make shit up or act like the end of the world was coming, but she looked seriously worried now.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  Kris pointed off towards the rising dawn. Only there was something off about it. The dawn seemed to be flickering.

  “Fuck,” Keia said. “The dawn is coming from the wrong direction.”

  And it hit me. That wasn’t the sun rising over the game world in the distance. No, that was light being cast by something else, and from the way the light was flickering I had a pretty good idea of what that was.

  “There’s an army coming this way, isn’t there?” I asked.

  “They’re close,” Kris said. “Real close.”

  I turned to the goblins who were looking up with something between anticipation and fear. They looked to me. Clearly they were waiting on me to do something, and I knew I had to help them somehow.

  I looked at the massive gates and thought about how they could be held against an army. We were going to have to hope they could, because we were about to be in serious trouble.

  “Everyone inside, and close the gates!” I said. “Get strike teams into the ring mines leading up to those towers, and get ready to hold off an invasion force!”

  There was a pause as the goblins stared at me like they were wondering what was going on, then they all started to scramble. I had to give it to them, I didn’t have to tell them twice.

  “We’re fucked, aren’t we?” Keia asked.

  “Best case scenario we do a holding maneuver at the front gates and have everyone sneak out through the ring mines,” I said.

  “And the worst case?” Keia asked.

  “The worst case is they trap us in those mines and we’re about to lose a lot of goblins and get a one way trip to the graveyard, but we’re not down and out yet.”

  “Yet,” Keia said, and that one word seemed pretty ominous.

  I moved into the Goblinsteel Mines quarry, the gates closing behind us as the goblins moved the last of the cannons inside. Meanwhile I could hear the sounds of people crashing through the forest behind us, shouting for blood.

  I’d done way more than stir up a hornets’ next with this little raid. I’d stirred up an entire army.

  Rezzik looked to the mine entrance. To the quarry, and more specifically to a massive dark hole on the other side of that quarry that was presumably the entrance to the raid dungeon. It was a good distance away, the quarry was massive, and the dungeon entrance was a gaping maw that opened into darkness.

  The goblin king was deep in there, shoring up his forces and getting ready for whatever the next assault would be from Horizon Dawn. We could go in there now, but I was pretty sure it wouldn’t do a damn bit of good.

  “Going in there would be bad,” I said. “The last thing we want is to be trapped deep underground when Horizon comes calling. Better to man the defenses.”

  “I agree,” Rezzik said, glancing around. “But don’t tell any of the others I said that.”

  “It’s our little secret,” I said, turning to look at the preparations being made.

  Goblins from my strike team were running all through the quarry and preparing for a fight. Then I heard more shouting from the front. I turned, expecting to see someone from Horizon Dawn waiting there, but what I saw instead were goblins from the gopher teams.

  “Open the gates!” I shouted, and they started to pull open once more. I looked beyond them to where the trees were swaying.

  This was one instance where I was pretty sure that was a massive army moving through the forest, and not Kravos trying to make it look like something big was moving through the forest with his spells.

  Fuck.

  The gates opened enough for the gopher teams to start streaming through, but it looked like there were a lot of them out there. I felt sick to my stomach as I realized that there were suddenly a hell of a lot goblins potentially dying out here when that Horizon Dawn army got here.

  “What the hell are they doing here?” Keia asked.

  “What in the name of the king’s ballsack are you doing back here?” Rezzik bellowed, surprising me with how loud he got.

  One of the goblins paused and sketched one of those ridiculous salutes to Rezzik. He looked at me nervously, then back to Rezzik.

  “Reporting to liberate the king, sir!” the goblin said.

  “To do what?” I growled.

  “Liberate the king!” the goblin said. “The raid was so successful that we thought…”

  That sinking feeling turned to a twisting in my stomach. These goblins thought the raid was going so well that naturally we were going to go and rescue their king, when that hadn’t been part of the plan at all.

  “Son of a bitch,” I growled, watching the gates start to swing closed as the last of the goblins streamed through.

  And not a moment too soon. The glow in the forest turned to torches as a massive crowd of players in Horizon Syndicate armor and Horizon Dawn tabards rounded a bend in the road and broke towards the gates at a run.

  I even saw Gregor, Kravos, and Torian at the front looking really pissed off.

  “That’s the biggest group of Horizon Dawn people I’ve ever seen,” Keia said. “Like that has to be all of them.”

  “Shit,” I said as the gates slammed shut with a loud clang just in time for the Horizon Dawn army to slam against them.

  75

  Under Siege

  I looked up at the massive gates. They were thrumming with the sounds of the Horizon army slamming against them on the other side.

  I looked up to the towers. As with all the ring mines there were stairs leading up to them from the inside.

  “I’m going up there to have a look,” I said.

  “Is it really a good idea for you to go in there when there’s an army on the other side?” Keia asked.

  “We’re going to have to hope the goblins hold the choke point,” I said, glancing inside, but then I started looking around the quarry.

  I’d always called it a quarry in my mind because that’s what it looked like. The place was mostly a big hole dug out of the ground, but as I looked around the inside, really looked at it for the first time without someone trying to shoot me, I realized there was a faint glow all around.

  Like the game was telling me there was ore in them thar hills. It wasn’t a quarry. It was part of the mine.

  “Rezzik,” I said. “Get over here.”

  “What is it, boss?” he asked, coming over and looking up at me.

  “I want you to get members of the strike team up to the ring mines. Have them guard the exits so no Horizon Dawn people are able to get through. They need to hold those mines.”

  “Got it,” he said, turning to give orders, but I put a hand on his shoulder and stopped him.

  “Something else?” he asked.

  I looked at the mine all around us. We’d hit the mother lode of goblinsteel. We had a regular supply here ready to go.

  There were other glowing things all around as well. I squinted in the twilight of dawn and realized that goblinsteel wasn�
�t the only thing in abundant supply here. There were other materials needed for crafting. The kind of stuff that Horizon Dawn had let sit around because they had no use for it.

  They’d inadvertently left me with one hell of a supply base to draw from, and in an MMO that’d suddenly turned to a strategy game that was exactly what I needed.

  “We have goblinsteel all around us here,” I said. “I want you to get the gopher crews working on mining as much of it as possible. I’m going to go take a look at the situation at the front gate, but when I’m back we’re going to start making use of all that goblinsteel.”

  Rezzik nodded, then turned and started barking orders at the goblins. They hopped to it and it looked like they were still in good spirits, which was about as much as I figured we could hope for right now.

  “What are you planning on doing?” Keia asked.

  “I’m not totally sure yet,” I said. “It might be a terrible idea, this place isn’t quite as defensible as I’d hoped, but we’ll have to do what we can.”

  “Why is this place like that?” she asked. “Seems kind of weird to have literal holes all around a place you want to defend.”

  “For the same reason anything happens in a videogame,” I said, thinking back to the walkway behind the Blood King’s throne in a Horizon module I’d played what felt like an eternity ago. “The dictates of game design and making a fun experience the players can take advantage of outweigh the needs of verisimilitude.”

  “Well game design sucks, then,” Keia said.

  “You’ll get no disagreement from me on that score,” I said.

  I took the stairs up to the tower two at a time. When I stepped inside I was treated to a view of a mage gleefully throwing fireballs down into the Horizon Dawn crowd below, but it was also pretty clear that one mage in either tower didn’t have much of a chance of making any difference against the horde out there.

  The crowd was massive. Keia hadn’t been lying when she said they’d brought every person in Horizon Dawn out to attack the place. It was an angry mob throwing themselves against the gates again and again, though there was movement in the forest that said they were also working on something in there.