“Now we’re talking!” Dean immediately opens fire with his elemental charges.
Flaming balls of fire bounce across the street, and cars behind us swerve as they try to avoid them.
While I’m glancing behind us, an errant ice beam hits the front bumper as I crest the hill from the tunnel, dropping our shield by a quarter and slowing our speed. The icy effect makes it incredibly hard to steer, and the hovercar drifts to the right, almost colliding with the wall before the effect wears off.
“You okay up there?” asks Dean.
“Yeah, I’m good, just getting the hang of things.” I activate one of the shield cells and it repairs our shield immediately.
For the moment, we’re caught in no man’s land between those that were able to escape the beginning chaos and everyone who got caught in the pileup.
“Up ahead!” I shout. “There’s a car just getting up to speed, see if you can hit them.”
Two dwarves sit in a car as their shield reforms and ghost mode fades. The thrusters glow yellow as they accelerate, but we’re catching up quickly. The turret shifts overhead, and a stream of fireballs hits the dwarves’ car, sending splinters cracking through their shield.
They point their gun at us, but their water beams turn to steam as Dean counters them with fire.
I wave to the dwarves as we speed past.
“We’re almost out of fire.” Dean alerts me.
I check the elemental gauge, and the fire emblem is nearly empty. “Nice job back there. I’ll keep an eye out for more charges.”
A glowing lightning bolt hovers in the air near the edge of the track. I swerve to hit it, filling a second gauge with electricity. I also unlock a speed boost that shows up as a picture of winged shoes.
As we hit the next stretch of flat track, there are three cars within striking distance. Beyond them, the first portal awaits. Only instead of one portal, there are three. Each one is circular, their center filled with purplish-black energy and their edges covered in glowing runes.
So it looks like there is more than one way to finish this race.
One of the cars disappears into the portal on the left. Another appears to be on track for the right portal.
“Hold on tight!” I activate the speed boost and the front of the car tilts up as we’re thrust forward. “Trouble at two o’ clock.”
Dean points the gun in their direction, and I recognize a familiar face as Lyle, the vampire, showcases his predatory incisors while he fires on us. A gale of wind erupts from his turret toward us.
Dean hits the gale with a bolt of electricity and the two elements converge in a thunderous explosion. A dark cloud forms and tiny bolts of lightning arc out from it for several feet. I swerve around the thunderstorm just as Lyle’s apprentice Aliyah hits the far-right portal.
“Someone’s catching up,” Dean warns.
I glance over my shoulder just as an unlucky minotaur drives too close to the thunderstorm. A bolt of lightning hits the car, stunning them in place as we pass through the center portal.
For a moment, we travel through space and time before the portal dumps us into a desert wasteland at full speed. The track is nothing more than a dried-out riverbed. We hit the ground at top speed, and it takes a second for my eyes to adjust to the scorching sun.
For the first time since starting the race, I check our positioning.
Position: 113/163
Stage: 2/10
We’re thirteen spots out of advancement currently, and way behind where we started.
As we speed through the winding riverbed, it’s hard to gauge who might be in front of us. The riverbank and twisting track obscures my view of anything other than what is right in front of us. Our plan of staying by Talia has gone completely to hell. I hope that every other alliance faced the same problem we did.
The sun blazes overhead. Everything around us is a shade of brown or yellow. I hit an elemental charge for poison, and then one for earth. Since we can only keep three at a time, Dean is forced to choose which elements to keep, and discards the nearly-depleted fire charges. I also manage to snag a couple more shield cells, a second speed boost, and temporary invisibility—one of the new items.
The track is so windy that it demands all my attention to keep from crashing into the riverbank.
I turn another corner and slam on the brakes as a car sits stalled in the middle of the track. In the front seat, a knight in silver armor raises his hands into the air. I focus on the knight and his name appears in the air above his head.
Paul Campbell.
I remember him from the highlights Grayson showed us.
“Don’t shoot!” He lifts his hands higher.
In the back seat, a purple fairy with green wings has her arms raised as well.
Dean aims the turret at them but holds his fire.
“What do you want?” I ask, hesitant of a trap.
It won’t be long before someone shows up behind us, so we need to deal with this quick.
“We need to hurry, just hear me out. We lost our allies, and we’re never going to catch up at this rate if we stay solo. Can we team up until we are in better positioning, then you can go your own way?”
I don’t know that I want to let my guard down around someone I don’t know, but I defer to Dean. “What do you think?”
“I don’t like it, but he’s got a point. Our entire plan is ruined, so it’s worth a shot.”
I nod. “Alright, we need to get moving before someone catches us. What charges are you running?”
“Right now, we have fire, wind, and water. You?”
“That’ll work. We have poison, electricity, and earth. If we can coordinate our shots, then we should have some good effects. Water and poison make acid, fire and earth make lava, wind and poison make toxic gas, and the wind and electricity create a thunderstorm.”
“Someone’s coming!” Dean warns. He points to the fairy gunner. “Switch to wind. I’ll hit them with electricity.”
A hovercar turns the corner, and the eyes of the half-dragon driving goes wide when he sees us. A gale of wind and bolt of electricity hit the car at the same time, engulfing it in a thunderstorm and stunning it in place.
“Nice! Now let’s go.” I punch the gas, and we take off down the riverbed.
Paul follows behind closely, his silver armor looking almost yellow as it reflects the landscape. The turret swivels back and forth as his apprentice scopes the area for threats.
When we arrive at the next portal, a car sits in front debating which one to take. We hit them with a thunderstorm and zoom through the right. The portal spits us out going full speed in the jungle.
We speed down the dirt track when something crashes into us from the side, knocking us off course. I search for our assailant, but all I see is a log hanging by two ropes just as we fall into a ravine.
We lose five seconds to ghost mode before we respawn on the track. Not far up ahead, Paul respawns from a similar fate. Row after row of swinging logs sway back and forth like a pendulum.
I slowly inch us forward, waiting for the log to pass before accelerating through. “We need to take this one slow or we’ll lose even more time.”
We’ve managed to gain five spots, but we’re still out of placement.
The drive through the jungle is slow-going. It seems like there’s a new trap every few seconds, from spiked pits to rope bridges, and more swinging logs. They definitely made this stage much harder than the one we trained on.
We pass another handful of teams as we take our time. A team of robots curses us to seven hells as we hit them with a toxic cloud the moment they respawn on the track.
Position: 105/163
Stage: 3/10
With careful effort, we slowly gain on our competitors. After the jungle, we go through a tunnel track that winds all the way down a volcano. Ramps force us to jump over molten lava, and random geysers send us soaring through the sky between tunnels.
After the volcano, the race is l
ess stressful as we pass through a medieval town and countryside. By the end of that stage, we are running fire, ice, and poison charges. Ice has the effect of slowing whoever we hit, fire leaves lingering burn damage, and poison does damage over time. By hitting our opponents with the ice beam first, it allows us to spam the other elements. Even if they manage to get away, the burn and poison damage keeps them hurting and a few times, we force a respawn even after they’ve escaped.
At the end of the medieval stage, we enter ninety-ninth place right as the portal spits us out onto a rainbow bridge. There are still six stages left, but things are finally looking up. Teaming up with Paul turned out to be a good idea after all. For as far as I can see, there’s nothing but brightly-colored empty track that arches through the sky. Currently, we have two shield cells, three speed boosts, and one invisibility burst that makes us invisible for five seconds.
“I’m gonna use the speed boosts now,” I tell Paul. “There’s nothing but straight track ahead.”
His eyes cut at me through his visor and he smashes into us from the side. The car swerves, nearly falling off the edge.
“What the hell!” I shout as he attempts to hit us again. “Dean, hit him.”
“It’s nothing personal.” He scowls.
I hit the brakes and Paul swerves past, nearly falling off the edge himself. His fairy apprentice opens fire on us with a giant boulder from the earth elemental. Dean blasts it with fire and molten lava coats our shield, ticking down its health by the second.
Paul is beginning to pull away when Dean lands an ice beam. He must know he can’t escape while slowed, because he shifts into reverse and tries to ram us again. I activate speed boost and hit reverse at the same time, blasting us out of the way. Dean hits him with another slow as I shift back to forward and use a second speed boost. Our shield continues to crack as we’re hit with more and more boulders, but our increased speed rockets us around Paul before he can run us off the road.
“What an ass!” Dean yells at Paul as we pass.
Karma strikes hard when a cluster of cars emerge from the portal on top of Paul. I use the final speed boost to put as much distance between us as possible.
As we exit the rainbow bridge, we’re in ninety-seventh position.
A blood-caked body smashes against the front of the car, and I fight back the urge to scream. We find ourselves in a desolate city, fires raging all around. Overturned vehicles are scattered across the road. The entire scene is gray and haunting. Dark figures shamble across the street, forcing me to slow to avoid them.
There’s something very familiar about this level. As we pass an overturned semi-truck, I realize what it is. This track is based off of Apocalyptica, the first stage of the Developer’s Tournament.
“Hey, Dean, I need you focused up front. We’ve got zombies.”
He shoots a fire blast at the nearest zombie and it turns to ash. “Try to get me another fire charge, we’re running low. These guys should burn like tinder.”
I hit several item spawns, but the elemental spawns are nowhere to be found. A shield cell replaces the damage from the first two zombies I hit. The more noise we make, the more zombies turn in our direction.
I slow down slightly in an attempt to mitigate the sound from the thrusters. “Dean, hold off. We’re drawing more to us.”
He stops firing, but the undead are already shambling in our direction. Up ahead, a swarm of them have at least five cars pinned in place and unable to move. Each time they respawn, the zombies swarm them again.
“Help us!” someone shouts when they see us.
It’s the two gnomes who made it through stage one without fighting.
“Help us and we will owe you one,” the second gnome pleads.
“Should we help?” I ask Dean.
Every second we wait, more zombies enclose around us.
Dean grimaces as he thinks it over. “Do it. We might need help getting through this.”
I look over our elemental charges again. We have fire, poison, and ice.
The first zombie reaches us and starts beating against our shield. One zombie isn’t enough to break it, but more approach by the moment.
I call out to the gnomes. “Do any of you have a wind charge?”
The gnomes shake their head, but one of the other cars, the two pink-skinned cyberpunk girls, Annabelle and Kristen, I believe, say that they do.
“Alright, next time you respawn, shoot a gale in our direction. We’ll handle the rest.”
“Here we go,” Annabelle shouts.
Their car and bodies dematerialize and hover in the air. A moment later, they’re dropped to the ground and nearby zombies swarm them again.
“Shoot them with poison,” I order.
A stream of green liquid fires across the street. It’s feet from hitting the cars when Kristen fires a wind charge. The two elements converge in midair, forming a green blob of gas that hovers around them. The zombies charge at the cars again, but the toxic gas eats through their bodies like acid, leaving nothing but a pile of bones.
With the threat neutralized, we pass by the other cars as they wait for the zombies to fully decompose. I zone in on the track, avoiding broken-down vehicles and more zombies.
Dean discovers that shooting them with ice freezes the zombies in place, so that if we hit them with the car, they shatter like glass.
We travel a lot faster once we start smashing the zombies instead of trying to avoid them.
All of a sudden, our speed is cut in half. Ice crystals cover our shield.
Annabelle smirks at us as they creep closer. “Thanks for the help back there, but we didn’t make any promises.”
“Yeah, but we did.” The gnomes hit Annabelle and Kristen with an ice beam of their own. “Hit them with wind if you have it.”
Dean fires a gale of wind at the same time as the gnomes shoot a stream of water. The two elements combine as they hit the slowed car and a hurricane engulfs them, twisting them through the air and tossing them back a hundred yards.
The ice melts from our shield and we regain speed.
“We’re even now.” The gnomes nod to us as they use a speed boost and zoom by.
Soon, we hit another portal and emerge in a world of mushrooms. Shrooms of all shapes, sizes, and colors stretch for as far as the eye can see. Some are as tall as trees, other not much bigger than shrubs. Wooden fence posts separate the track from world beyond.
We pass too close to a mushroom that hangs over the railing, and it releases a toxic cloud that obscures my vision and damages our shield. Unable to see, I crash into the fence post and spin out.
As the smoke fades, a car comes passing by. It glows a bright pulsing yellow, and when Dean fires upon it with an ice blast, the beam has no effect.
“Suck it, loser!” The car swerves in our direction.
It crashes into us, knocking us into the railing again, but their vehicle takes no damage. They speed off like they hit nothing at all. Another mushroom explodes, cracking our shield and forcing a respawn.
“What the hell was that?” I hit the steering wheel as I wait for us to drop.
“No idea. Looked like invulnerability of some sort. Dammit!” Anger coats Dean’s voice. “We’re out of placing again.”
We drop in the middle of the track and I do my best to stay far away from the fences. We’re currently in position one hundred two. So close to placing, but there are still two stages left.
There’s a loud doink and suddenly we’re flying through the air. I look behind and see a mushroom that just sprouted on the track.
Our hovercar lands without losing much speed and I notice a dark spot on the track. A moment later, another mushroom sprouts up.
This is it! If I can hit the mushrooms as they sprout, then they’ll speed us through the stage.
I hit the next two I see, and we’re in ninety-ninth position.
We soar over a pileup of four cars caught in a toxic cloud. Dean hits the cloud with a fireball, setting
off an explosion and forcing all four cars to respawn.
“Nice one!” I pound my fist in the air.
Something intense must be happening on one of the other tracks, because by the time we reach the portal, we’ve moved up another forty places.
My neck whips forward when we exit the portal and slam into a wall of gray.
“Geez, what was that?” Dean grimaces.
The wall slides across in front of us and morphs into a tail fin. It’s not a wall at all, but some giant fish.
When the fish is gone, a sandy track stretches before us. Coral reef and anemones grow on both sides and hundreds of tropical fish swim about. Sparks flutter from the tentacles of a nearby jellyfish and I stomp the gas before it catches us.
We’re in an underwater track and our shield functions as a bubble dome to keep the water out.
If not for the fact that we were fighting for position, I could probably sit here and watch the fish swim by for hours. Even in the coral and anemones, there are hundreds of tiny colorful fish darting between them.
For a moment, I follow a yellow fish as it swims through the coral. It disappears into the depths of the tentacles, and two red eyes peer out from the darkness.
Sparks ignite around a long snake-like creature before something smashes into our car from the other side and I lose all steering. The car drifts across the track until we crash into the anemone’s tentacles. The stinging tentacles damage our shield by half before I’m able to pull away.
“Dude, eel!” Dean yells, and I see his arm waving out of the corner of my vision.
A long eel hovers across the track, electricity coursing down its body into the depths of the coral.
I activate a shield cell and curse myself for the distraction. That was a rookie mistake. I need to keep my focus on the track and save the sightseeing for when this is over.
The eel bares its teeth before recoiling back into the coral to wait for its next victim.
I speed down the track. Dean scares off a very dangerous-looking hammerhead shark, and I weave between a group of jellyfish.
Not far ahead, there’s a gap in the coral where the water appears to be moving differently. A stray fish swims into it and then disappears in an instant.
Pangea Online 3: Vials and Tribulations Page 21