Spellcraft

by Andrew Beymer

  It’d taken a couple of test runs to see if I could even infuse a gem when it was buried a few inches under the ground, or if I could infuse several gems at the same time, but in the end it’d been possible.

  The ground started to glow. Torian kept running, heedless of the danger, but the army behind him started to falter once more as they looked down and realized that the ground was acting very odd. They didn’t quite come to a stop, but it was enough that they gave the gems just enough time to blow the fuck up under them.

  The ground fountained up all along the front line and people went flying through the air. At least the lucky ones went flying through the air. The unlucky ones, like Gregor and Kravos, were turned into mincemeat where they stood and their various bits and pieces went flying through the air instead.

  Torian was saved because he continued his ill-advised charge even after the rest of his army started to bunch up. He was coming right for us, and it would only be a moment before he was on me. He raised his sword, a crazed look in his eyes as he got ready for a killing blow, then let out a surprised “oof!” as Kris’s hammer took him directly in the stomach.

  “Eat hammer motherfucker!” Kris shouted, landing on top of him and looking a lot like the god of thunder as she brought her hammer up and slammed it down on his head which did its best impression of a watermelon at one of those ancient Gallagher routine that’d lived on in so many other bits of pop culture referencing it.

  I winced, but didn’t look away. It sucked to think of anyone going like that, sure, but at the same time I couldn’t help but think that it couldn’t have happened to a more deserving person.

  “Damn,” Keia said, coming up next to me. “All this time we’ve been using Kris like a punching bag, and it turns out she’s actually kinda a badass!”

  “Of course she’s a badass,” I said. “We joke with each other, but there’s a reason we game together all the time. We complete each other.”

  “Really?” Keia said, her voice unreadable.

  “Well not like that,” I said. “Trust me. She’s like a sister, and neither one of us is interested.”

  “I know,” Keia said. “Just had to give you some shit.”

  “Well save the shit until we’re done with this battle,” I said. “We’re still not close to being done here.”

  The confusion on the frontline was starting to turn to rage. The ones who hadn’t been killed in that first blast, and who importantly hadn’t been close enough to the blast to see the consequences of all those gems going off at the same time, were starting to burst through the shellshocked front ranks who looked like they’d rather be anywhere but on the front lines.

  It was an odd situation where there were groups of Horizon Dawn people who were trying their best to get the hell away from us while at the same time there was another mass trying to press forward which resulted in a confusing jumble of terrified and furious players looking to cause some damage or get the hell away from us.

  Well it was time to make them reconsider whether or not it was a good idea to try and take us on. I held my hand up, and again the Horizon Dawn people stopped. They looked around like they were trying to figure out what fresh hell I was about to bring down on them.

  “I gave you your chance,” I shouted. “And you have elected for the way of pain!”

  You could never go wrong with a Christopher Lee quote. The dude had been badass.

  I brought my hand down, and the cannons that’d been placed on the walls next to the towers erupted at the same time as the mages up there started raining down fireballs on the Horizon Dawn people from behind.

  It was a drop of spit in the ocean considering how many Horizon Dawn players were out there looking to mix things up with us, but the point wasn’t to try and kill Horizon Dawn people.

  Okay, so that was part of the point, and I was pretty sure there were plenty of them down there who were meeting an untimely end. But mostly the point was to shock and awe them to the point that they decided it would be a good idea to be anywhere but here.

  The cannons roared over and over as they fired into the crowd. One of the nice things about using spellcrafted cannons that were meant to focus exploding fireballs was we didn’t have to worry about reloading them.

  The goblins claimed we did have to worry about the barrels overheating and warping, but at the moment we were in a situation where it was a race to see whether or not the cannons were destroyed by Horizon Dawn getting to them or warped by the fireballs they were laying into the crowd of Horizon Dawn assholes.

  Basically they weren’t long for the world either way, so I’d told the crews to fire as much as they could and take out as many as they could.

  There were more screams of dismay as they realized they were being attacked from behind. More confusion. Confusion was the biggest ally that I had right about now considering the numbers and gear advantage that they had.

  The stuff I had might be better, but if you had better in limited supply in a war it was usually eventually beaten out by crappy in greater supply. Just ask the Germans fighting the Soviets on the steppe in World War II, or Uncle Sam learning a harsh lesson at the hands of a bunch of farmers sneaking through the jungle in Vietnam.

  “Attack!” I shouted.

  The goblins behind me who’d done such a good job of holding the line roared and surged forward. Seeing the look of terror in the eyes of all the Horizon Dawn people on the front lines as they saw a group of fully armed goblins coming for them was delicious.

  Again I didn’t get to see the look in Torian’s eyes as he realized what was happening, the one thing that I’d really wanted since all of this started, but seeing the other Horizon Dawn people losing their shit was almost the same.

  The goblins slammed into their line, and it was nothing short of spectacular. It was the murder rampage I’d wanted to see ever since I’d first seen the goblins holding back from attacking their oppressors, and it was beautiful.

  “Amazing,” Keia breathed.

  “It totally is,” I said. “Aren’t you glad we got those goblins on our side?”

  “Totally,” Keia said. “Now I’m going to go and try to heal the front lines. You be careful back here, and don’t do anything stupid!”

  “Me?” I said with a grin. “What in our time together makes you think I’d ever do something stupid?”

  She hit me with a long suffering look and then walked forward so she was just in range to hit goblins with healing spells but far enough back that there wasn’t much danger of someone in the Horizon Dawn front lines breaking free and catching her.

  I nodded to Rezzik regardless, and he motioned for a line of reserve soldiers to move up behind her and keep an eye on her. A group also moved up around me, but I wasn’t complaining.

  I’d learned the hard way that I wasn’t invincible, and I was more than happy to have a group of murdery guards ready to keep me safe if anyone from Horizon Dawn managed to break through.

  The last place I wanted to be was back at the graveyard where there’d be a bunch of angry recently-murdered Horizon Dawn people who’d be more than happy to take out their own revenge on me.

  I didn’t have anything else to do now that I’d tripped the couple of surprises I’d prepared at the entrance, and there was nothing else for me to do at this point but watch the battle in front of me and on the tactical screen that I pulled up and moved to a corner of the screen so I could look at both at the same time.

  I frowned. The fight at the front lines looked good, but what I was seeing on the larger tactical display wasn’t great. There was a thin line of green, my troops, against a raging horde of red streaming through the front entrance.

  Even worse, I was also starting to see lines of red moving from the graveyard to the front gates, and some of the people near the back of the front gates moving around to some of the ring mine entrances.

  Son of a bitch!

  “Get word to the strike teams in the ring mines and the people crafting in there!”
I shouted. “They’re about to have company!”

  This had been going well so far and I got to look like a badass, but I could look at the writing on the tactical screen, and it wasn’t pretty.

  77

  Enemy Among Us

  “Fire in the hole!”

  The goblin’s voice carried across the quarry even over the sound of the battle raging all around us. Horizon Dawn was pressing in a semicircle around the goblins, but as I glanced at my tactical screen hovering above me I could see that it would only be a matter of time before they’d circled us completely.

  An explosion shot out from the last of the ring mine exits we held, sending chunks of rock and dust flying out of the thing. Some of those chunks landed in the crowd and took out some of the Horizon Dawn people.

  It was a last ditch effort. Once we’d lost the ring mines I told them to set as many explosive gems as they could on their way out, and that was the last one. The goblins streamed down the stairs to join us where we were slowly getting encircled.

  I searched the crowd of Horizon Dawn faces to see if any of them were familiar, but there were so many in the Dorkish Horde that it was difficult to tell exactly who was who.

  “Fall back!” I shouted.

  On command the goblins at the front lines disengaged where they could and moved back into a tight circle. I was impressed with their discipline when it came to battle. If we had an army that was just a little larger then we might’ve won the day.

  As it was, things were looking like we were going to have to come back and avenge the goblins who’d come out here in an attempt to save us and rescue their king. My eyes burned with the enormity of my failure here tonight.

  “It’s my fault,” I said. “I tried to push too much, and we allowed ourselves to get captured.”

  “Don’t feel too bad,” Kris said. “You’re not the first person to bet it all on a sure thing and get your ass handed to you, after all.”

  “If that’s meant to be reassuring then you’re doing a terrible job of it,” I growled.

  “I mean she’s right,” Keia said. “This is all your fault, and maybe I told you it was a bad idea to hang around, but all you can do is the best with what you have.”

  “Right,” I said, strangely feeling better that Keia was being honest with me rather than trying to blow smoke up my ass.

  It didn’t make me feel better about the terrible situation we found ourselves in, but it was nice to know she wasn’t going to try and make me feel better about something that was ultimately my bad.

  Mages all around us sent fireballs slamming into the Horizon Dawn crowd to add to the confusion as they tried to press in on us. There were cries of pain and dismay as the Horizon Dawn troops were immolated, but there were enough of them to replace the ones who went down that it didn’t really matter.

  I checked tactical again. The red dots were all around us, now. They were streaming in through the ring mines and through the front entrance. There was also an odd clump on the other side of the front entrance, and a clump at the graveyard with a stream of red running from that clump to the front entrance clump and then inside.

  What the hell was going on there? Not that I had time to think about what might or might not be going on there considering it looked like I was on the verge of a very painful death.

  “Looks like this is it,” Kris said, looking at the Horizon Dawn people moving in all around us.

  “It was a hell of a fight, though,” I said.

  “It’s been an honor serving with you,” Rezzik said, looking up at me and hitting me with that salute that somehow didn’t look nearly as ridiculous now as it had the first time I saw it.

  “I’m sorry we couldn’t do better for you,” I said, my voice quiet.

  “Avenge us,” he said. “That’s all you can do.”

  “Oh you bet your ass this isn’t over,” I said.

  Even if I’d really hoped I might be able to clinch the victory here and now without going back to the Underground. Not to mention now that we’d come out here with this raiding party the countryside was going to be swarming with Horizon Dawn people looking for wherever the hell all these goblins had come from.

  It would only be a matter of time before they found those secret entrances now, and from there things were going to get very hairy indeed for the goblins.

  Miraculously, the Horizon Dawn hordes stopped on the verge of charging at us.

  “What the hell are they doing?” Kris asked, standing there with her hammer in hand looking like she was ready to do some serious damage.

  “I have no clue,” I said, looking back and forth across the crowd and wondering the same thing.

  “Trouble’s coming,” Keia said, spitting on the ground in a most unladylike fashion.

  And then I saw it. Someone was moving through the horde of Horizon Dawn players, and when they stepped through the front lines it was none other than the three stooges themselves.

  “Torian,” I said. “Come here to surrender, no doubt?”

  “Your smart mouth is going to cost you, Colin,” he said, grinning an easy smile as he stood there in his gear that he’d somehow gotten back despite getting blown the fuck up.

  There was something to that, only it’s not like trying to steal his gear at this point was going to do a damn bit of good. We were beaten, he knew it, and the only thing we could do now was try to make it as costly as possible.

  “You were never going to win,” Torian said. “We’re respawning every time we lose one of our troops, and you lose a troop for good when we kill one of yours.”

  My fists clenched and unclenched. He was right, of course. It was one of the problems with world PVP rather than wiping in a dungeon. They could keep coming back because there was a convenient respawn location, on top of the numbers they already had.

  “I’m coming back for you, Torian,” I said.

  “Oh don’t you worry, he said, that cruel smile never leaving his face. “I’m coming for you in the real world and in the game world. I’m going to make you regret the day you ever decided to take me on.”

  Well now that seemed nice and ominous. I can’t say that I was looking forward to an ass beating in the real world, but at least that ass beating in the real world wouldn’t involve getting stabbed and skewered like the ass beating I was about to get in the game world.

  “Get ready boys!” I shouted. “Take as many of them as you can, and take as much of their gear as you can when they go down!”

  That was a new order. I didn’t know that it was going to do us much good now, but it’d occurred to me, too late, that gear was the great equalizer in a game like this.

  They were respawning, sure, but they were respawning with nothing but their skivvies. They had to gather their gear up to use it again. Maybe we could stop them from resupplying on some small level.

  It would’ve been a hell of a lot better if I’d realized that at the beginning of the battle, but I’d had a lot to think about and it’d just slipped my mind.

  Torian held his hand up in triumph. “Horizon Dawn!”

  The crowd behind him echoed what he was shouting, so he did it again, and they echoed it again. He grinned a maniacal sociopathic grin at me that said he was looking forward to killing my ass, and shouted for what I imagined was going to be the final time before he ordered the attack that was going to kill us all.

  “Horizon Dawn!”

  Only this time the call and response didn’t work quite like it had before. No, the people behind him were quiet, and a lot of them were pointing up for some reason. Torian turned behind him to see why the fuck they weren’t responding, then turned to look up in the skies as well.

  “Son of a b…”

  I got the gist of what he was trying to say, but he never got a chance to finish it before a fireball slammed into him, bounced into the crowd behind him, then exploded in that crowd sending bodies flying all over again.

  I stared, my mouth agape, wondering where the hell that’d c
ome from. Had another mage managed to make it up on the walls? If so the effort was admirable, but it’s not like…

  “Conlan!” Keia said, giggling with glee as she looked up and behind us.

  I turned and looked, up in the sky, in time to see a volley of exploding fireballs fire out of an airship and down into the crowd of Horizon Dawn people surrounding us.

  The reaction from the crowd was immediate and spectacular. They went from surrounding us and getting ready to move in for the kill to turning and running in terror from the death from above that was raining down on them.

  They weren’t all running in terror, though. No, some of them charged at the lines, and thankfully the goblins were ready for the charge and hit back with all the ferocity I’d expect from them at this point.

  “Keep hitting them!” I said. “And take their stuff where you can!”

  Already goblins along the line were skittering forward and grabbing at any treasure chests that landed where Horizon Dawn people died and were respawning. I still wasn’t sure if it was going to be enough to turn the tide of the battle, but one could hope.

  The tactical screen showed that Horizon Dawn was confused, but not necessarily down for the count just yet. Which meant there was still a good chance all of this could go the wrong way.

  Two more airships appeared over the quarry, and they started firing into the crowd as well. Meanwhile the one that’d been hovering over us providing some good old fashioned suppressing fire moved down closer to the ground. A rope ladder came down from the thing, and none other than Korsob appeared over the edge of the airship waving at me.

  I looked to Keia and Kris, then up to the airship. Both of them stopped to stare, then Keia grinned.

  “Go on and have your fun,” she said.

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  “You are’t any good down here,” Kris said. “You just waste resources with goblins who have to protect your ass. Get up there and do some damage.”

  “She’s right,” Keia said. “Make sure you don’t need to rescue our asses and it’ll be worth it.”