by TJ Reynolds
The enfield showed off her new clothes by rearing up and flapping her wings, sending dust billowing in the air. Her black and crimson fur and feathers popped even more vividly with the fiery armor on top. She was stunning.
Having restrained myself this long, I gawked at the armor’s stats.
Spark of Anwar Scale Armor Peytral
Quality: Legendary: Armor 120
Durability 380/380
+5 Vitality, +10 Dexterity, +10% Blunt Weapon Damage Resistance, +5% flying speed
Spark of Anwar Scale Armor Chanfron
Quality: Legendary: Armor 85
Durability 300/300
+15 Dexterity, +15 Stamina, +10% Elemental Resistance, +10% Piercing Weapon Damage Resistance
Spark of Anwar Scale Armor Crupper
Quality: Legendary: Armor 180
Durability 600/600
+20 Stamina, +30 Dexterity, +5% movement speed
Spark of Anwar Scale Armor Crinet
Quality: Legendary: Armor 125
Durability 225/225
+5 to all attributes, +10% bonus to Light Damage
Spark of Anwar Matching set bonus: Equipping all pieces of the armor grants an additional 5% Light Damage and 5% Fire Damage to all attacks.
Special Ability: Solar Beam
Solar Beam (Active): By combining the celestial light of Citlali’s power and the flame affinity of the Anwar scales, a concentrated pillar of fiery light bursts from enfield’s chest, searing all enemies caught in the blast. Causes 200-2000 base damage depending on distance from attack origin and epicenter. Damage increased based upon enfield’s elemental bonuses and the resistances and weaknesses of enemies. Causes Blindness for 30 seconds. Causes Burn, reducing total HP by 1% every 3 seconds for 15 seconds. Cooldown: 24 hours.
I practically shouted my excitement. “Solar Beam? Damn, girl. Pachi is gonna fry some rats today!”
If I’d thought Pachi was preening before, my compliment and the chorus of approval that followed pushed her over the edge. She looked as proud as a puppy with a ribbon around its neck.
“I have something to show you, too,” Hana said, looking a bit sheepish. I wasn’t sure if it was my imagination, but the scale armor she now wore seemed to bring out subtle notes of copper and chocolate in her eyes. I cleared my throat and gestured for her to hurry up and show me, then.
She took a step back and unsheathed her katana. I hadn’t noticed until now, but the blade was completely different. Well, not the blade itself, but the handle. It was made of a darker wood and had a weave of the braid Hana had taken from Marduk’s hide. It also had the metal cap on the end and the metal hand guard—the tsuba, if memory served. I took a gander at its stats as well and whistled. “Damn, girl! Nice piece of iron you got there. That Second Chance skill is nuts.”
She laughed nervously and added, “Yeah, I actually had to use that last night. Things got pretty intense. Pachi and I killed a Karinon. It was like a demon-bat thing that morphed its wings into mega-claws.”
I was shocked and, at the same time, impressed, “Yeah? How’d it go down?”
She smiled and said proudly, “Well, it started out by killing me.” We all laughed, then Hana told the rest of the story and a few soldiers gathered around, nodding at specific parts. Apparently, this little hunter had gained more respect than she knew.
Adalee sent a few kids to run off and bring us bowls of stew that the cook had made. We sat down right there in the street and passed around stories of the things we’d missed out on. I focused on the arena, but also mentioned the trow ambush as well. Hana told me about her sky-high fort, the wyverns, and the Ichneumon she’d slain.
I shook my head. “Gotta be honest. I’m a little jealous. I killed lots of stuff, too, but what is the deal with you taking on mythical and mysterious monsters?”
She shrugged and took a bite out of a loaf of bread we’d broken apart.
Then the clang of traded blows pulled us all out of our reverie. I was up, my axes in hand in a matter of seconds, and we all ran to the gate. A handful of riders came charging up to the gates with a group of ratkin pursuing. The archers on the towers dropped the five or six enemies in a single volley.
It was Marshal Dandre and the ranger that Hana knew. I forgot her name, but she had a face you couldn’t forget. A handful of others among them were dressed like her, too. All rangers I assumed, a total of twelve riders in all. It was the last face I saw that made me smile.
I called out to the stiff old man in his saddle. “Alice! You came back for me!”
Not missing a beat, Alysand yelled out, “Is that Madi? I should have known you were here. Smelled something sour a few leagues away.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Dandre said impatiently. “You guys can all flirt later. Open the gates, damn it!”
The group trotted in and leapt off their horses. A few squires in training, little more than children, ran up and led the horses away by their reins. The marshal looked around her, hands on her hips, and said, “So where’s Quinn? And where is your father, Adalee?”
“Quinn is recovering,” Hana said. “He…”
Adalee covered for her. “We were attacked last night by a Karinon. Went straight for Quinn. If it wasn’t for Hana and Pachi, we’d have lost our Elder.”
Dandre’s face went pale, her lips pursed. Then she walked closer to Hana and squeezed her shoulder. “Thank you. You do not know what you’ve saved us from.”
Hana shuddered. “I’m pretty sure I do. That beast was evil to its core. Anyway, we improved the defense where we could, convinced Corell to move everybody but a contingent of guards into town, and prepared a few nasty surprises.” The marshal nodded as Hana caught her up on the changes she’d made to the defenses. Her brows lifted a few times, but I could see that Dandre approved of Hana’s suggestions, even if they were drastic in spots.
“You are a woman of frightening determination,” she said when Hana had finished. “Not at all like the trout poacher I first met.”
Hana grinned at the reference, and I could only imagine that the girl had gotten herself in some trouble upon first arriving to town. Then all thought fled my mind when a warhorn pierced the air, several more echoing its call. I would never call myself knowledgeable about war, but it sounded a lot like a call to attack.
The marshal seemed to think so, too, and she put on her commander’s hat and screamed in a voice that belied her size, “To your positions! Everyone, man your positions! Battle is coming!”
I watched as Hana ran up to one of the towers, her new bow in hand. Each tower was little more than a guarded platform large enough for a dozen archers. Another group of archers ran to make a formation a few dozen feet behind the gate, perhaps another twenty in total. I had to scramble out of the way as a squad of spearmen from Bridgerun stood immediately behind the gate, no doubt a reserve in case the gate should fall.
Others disappeared to positions all over the town. I wished that I’d had time to get a full accounting of the defense before the battle began, but an old friend came to my rescue. Oliver ran up to me, a cluster of players behind him. “Oy! Ready to do some serious killing?” His teeth flashed white through his green face.
“You’re nuts, man. But hell yeah. What do we do, though?”
“Just follow me. We have a special task. I’m in charge of one group, and Akira and Xiao Pang are in charge of the other. Consider us fire extinguishers,” he said as we jogged through the town. “A quick response force if you will. If crap goes down that we don’t expect, we are the ones to jump on it.”
The simplicity of my role made me feel a lot better. The Battle of the Bridges had been a relatively simple strategy. Ambush, fall back, defend a highly defensible point. This was a lot crazier, and the town hadn’t been built to withstand bandits, let alone a small army.
Tejón and Pachi were in our group, along with eight other high-level players. We all ran to a dead-end alley between a couple of houses and stopped. The clash of battle was hard to listen t
o without doing a thing, but I was all about following orders on a day this hectic. Still, after we had been waiting for a few minutes, I got impatient. “What the hell, man? We just gonna wait out the battle?”
Tejón and Pachi twitched with impatience as well and I could see the same frustration in the other player’s eyes.
Oliver held up a hand. “Some of the casters made speaking stones. Apparently, they are annoying to make, but worth it. We are supposed to wait here until we hear otherwise. Just trust me. When the time comes, we are going to rush out that gate and kill stuff, okay?”
“What gate?” I asked, still not satisfied.
Oliver pointed at the boarded-up wall, and after I inspected it, I saw a pair of hinges on one side. “Oh! Alright then.”
And thank the god of mezcal and molle, we didn’t have to wait long. A few minutes later, the rattle of armor passed by the gate we hid behind. There was no way to tell how many enemies had passed us, but I’d guess a few dozen. Moments later, Oliver held up a burning red stone and the voice of some mage came through. “Now! Charge the Pond Gate!”
Oliver looked around at us and counted to three. Then he yanked the wall back and we poured through. A few ratkin were still trying to make their way past when we emerged, our axes and swords dispatching them quickly.
“This way!” Oliver shouted and we followed him as he sprinted down the lip of the pond toward a shabby-looking fence. In front of it, and quickly overwhelming the soldiers who manned the structure, were twenty or so heavily armed ratkin and a few hulking trow.
The fight should be quick, I thought, until Oliver thankfully reminded us of something that should have been obvious. “Be careful with your AOE skills! We need to keep that gate intact. Just kill these bastards quick and then we run back.”
When our lines clashed, I couldn’t use Quake Stomp, and Tejón couldn’t use Gravel Storm. No, we just did it the old-fashioned way.
The hardest part was the fact that we had about ten feet of firm land to fight on, and then the pond turned the last few feet into mud. So we kept Pachi and Tejón behind to act as reserves. Wanting to reduce the enemy quickly and keep some degree of surprise on our side, I used Rampage and then Whirlwind three times in quick succession, raining axe blades on the backs of the ratkin. These wore chainmail and leather vests, but my weapons easily cleaved through them.
After seven or eight of them had fallen in a few seconds, the others turned to defend themselves, shields lifted to fend off our blows. I switched to using Sunder and brought down two more. I expected the fight to go on a while longer until I saw that the soldiers behind the gate were thrusting their spears through holes in the defense. The would-be attackers were dead in a few short minutes.
“Fall back! Fall back!” Oliver shouted, and we sprinted back to our hiding place, waiting for another summons.
Another few minutes of stillness passed, and I watched my Stamina and HP slowly refill. The next call to action came quicker than the last.
“Trouble near the gate!” the same mage shouted through another stone, the last having been expended. “Clear the enemies that are swarming the wall on the side of the gate!”
We burst out and turned to the right, not left toward the Pond Gate. A short run later we came upon a writhing mass of ratkin who were clambering up a makeshift siege tower. It was more like a ramp hammered onto tow poles with crude steps added, but it was helping them practically sprint over the top of the wall, and the breach had already allowed a dozen or so enemies in.
This time, I ran to the front and activated Quake Stomp. The rippling earth split their siege tower and knocked down a half-dozen ratkin. We fought savagely, but with more reserve this time. Even though we had stopped the breach almost instantly, a quick glance down the way showed three other towers being used in the same fashion.
Our group cleared one after the other, leapfrogging who took the front. Tejón and Pachi went next, crushing the tower and dropping the ratkin around it in seconds. Then Oliver and I led the charge on the one after.
When we knocked down all four of the towers, Oliver got a gleam in his eye. “We have to be quick, but I say we flank the enemies who are so rudely knocking at our door.”
The Paladin from his team spoke sensibly, though. “Wait. I want to as well, but what if we get called to go somewhere else?”
As if by some miracle of chaos and combat, another calling stone was activated. The mage said in a fevered tone, “The gate! The gate is about to fall! They have a battering ram and it won’t last much longer!”
Oliver just grinned like a kid who’d stolen someone else’s halloween bag. He gestured with his hand out, bowing slightly. “After you.”
Getting set loose was exciting to say the least, and our group high-tailed it around the rim of the pond, heading straight for the gate. But when the chaos there came into view, I nearly stumbled.
At least a hundred ratkin were crowding the gate. Only the narrowness of the road held back their numbers. In their midst, a thirty-foot maldrille tree, stripped of most of its branches, was being smashed into the center of the gate. Already, fractures split the wood beams that closed off the entrance into town. Holding the tree by iron grips that had been nailed onto the trunk were no less than a dozen huge trow warriors.
These looked different than those I’d seen at the mine or in the mountains outside of Bridgerun. As we sprinted closer, I inspected them.
Trow Monstrosity
Level 34
HP: 20954/20954
Abilities: Rend, Smite, Frenzy
As we crashed into the ratkin nearest to our location, I realized how huge and terrifying the monstrosities were. They were perhaps eight feet tall, like the largest of the twisted trow, but their bodies were as thick as whiskey barrels. Their muscles were pulled tight over stretched skin, and had even torn in places, blood running down their gray skin as they exerted themselves with the battering ram.
Oliver cried as he threw his energy halberd, piercing the trow nearest us. “Drop all your skills! AOE, stuns, whatever you’ve got!”
Though I most likely didn’t need to, I shouted orders to the massive bear beside me. Tejón, Gravel Storm, Mauling Frenzy, and Crown of the Mountain King!
He roared loud enough to make a few ratkin fall in fright, then all three skills exploded from him. The stones tore into the enemies he plowed into, and diamond daggers grew from his head. He thrashed a hole in the enemy ranks and opened up a path to the battering ram.
Pachi surprised me as she dashed out, glinting in her new fire-colored armor, suddenly sprouting long claws of crackling white energy from her paws. Her normal claws were long and powerful enough now to tear though some types of metal, but these looked like a serious upgrade. Watching just a few seconds of her tearing through the armored troops around her confirmed my suspicion. The energy claws seemed to pass through the metal, wounding the unlucky ratkin with indifferent ferocity.
I charged in after the beasts and Quake Stomped the trow monstrosities who held the end of the ram.
Though they were strong as bears themselves, too many had fallen on one side of the battering ram, and the tree shifted and fell, crushing a score of legs and feet in the process. Our victory was short-lived, though. Before we could cheer or celebrate, the brutes turned on us, pulling weapons from the ratkin around them.
One smashed Tejón in his temple with a huge hammer, causing him to sway momentarily. The beast struck again, knocking teeth out of the bear’s mouth in a spray of blood. I was sure that Tejón could take care of himself, but his health had dropped quickly. I sent a Companion Mend over to him, and saw vigor return to his eyes. The trow died a breath later.
I used Dodge to avoid getting hacked in two but tripped over a body in the road. I held up my axe to attack the hulking terror. Instead of swinging at me with the sword again, it reached down and grabbed me. I was lifted up into the air, so I freaked out and used Sunder, smashing my axe into the trow’s chest. The blow sunk in, cuttin
g through flesh and bone, but stuck there. And, to my unending horror, the trow only spat blood in my face and began to pull against my arm, holding my body firm with the other.
I screamed, feeling the tendons in my shoulder slowly stretching. Unable to pull away, I kicked the trow in his chest, and though some of the skin split further, showing a glint of bloody sternum, the creature only grinned at me. Then an arrow struck the trow in the side of its head, snapping it to the side violently. It fell to the ground. I looked up at the tower above the gate and saw Hana nocking another arrow that glowed with an odd power, tendrils of green surrounding the tip.
She must have imbued her shot with Earth energy. It was a good thing that the trow were susceptible to the affinity. I raised a hand to her, then pulled my axe free of the monstrosity’s chest and attacked another of the brutes.
This time, I was rewarded as the beast’s head rolled from its shoulders and tumbled to the ground. I glanced around and saw an AOE spell forming above the kill zone, sparks of lightning beginning to lick down at the metal armor of the remaining attackers. The storm was going to wreak havoc on whoever was left standing. I used Quake Stomp again, the cooldown having recovered, and Oliver’s Paladin friend dropped a Holy Smite spell, which made a dozen hammers forged of light fall at once all around us.
Before I could indulge myself in a victory cry, another horn sounded, and I turned to see my hopes thoroughly crushed. A group of wyverns were flying toward the gate. At least a dozen of the beasts came, and I knew we had little chance exposed out here.
“Fall back!” I howled, and our small group pulled away just in time.
I looked behind me once before disappearing into the gate near the pond. The scaled horrors flapping madly toward us were closing in, just fifty feet away. Marching forward in ranks behind them was another wave of ratkin soldiers.