“That’s the one,” Dovik says, pointing up the slope.
“That one!” I stare at the monster he points toward. It is another of the Armor of Forgotten Dead, though this one carries a spiked mace in either of its hands, and the armor that it wears is covered in six-inch spikes of steel. It does nothing more than stand where it is, halfway up the slope, its chest rising and falling as if it were breathing. I’m not certain whether it needs to breath. “What makes that one a better target than the ax one?”
“This one has a low speed,” Dovik says. He turns, smiling at his group. “Let’s figure out how we are going to kill it.”
“Overwhelming force,” a human woman toward the back of the group answers. She has straight black hair that falls far past her shoulders, tied tight into an intricate braid. Her green eyes are striking, but even more striking is the tattooed eye in the center of her forehead, a black outline set with an emerald as the iris. The woolen clothing she wears underneath her fur coat is similar to Dovik’s. I see an aura of yellow bleeding off her arms from something beneath the coat, but the Eye of Volaash is unable to identify it.
Rohinda Willian(Rank One)
Juggernaut Conflux
“How nice that would be,” Dovik says. He turns, looking down at my hand that continues to smolder with orange light. “How long can you keep that up?”
I bring my hand up, looking at it. “I’ve never hit a limit before.”
“Interesting.”
“Sure,” another man in Dovik’s group says. He is human, at least I think that he is. It is hard to tell since he has ram horns sprouting from the short black hair on his head, and a pair of bat-like wings folded behind his shoulders. The haft of a mace, similar to the once the Armor carries, peeks out from beneath his own fur coat. “That might be interesting and all, but perhaps we should figure out what these two are good at before we make a plan,” he says, gesturing toward Macille and myself.
Samielle Kraesh(Rank One)
Nightmare Conflux
“Not a bad point,” Dovik says. He steps back until the group is a semicircle in front of him, making several of us anxious as his heel comes to rest just in front of the cut-off to the snowy slope leading away from the forest. “I am Dovik Willian, I won’t mention my conflux or specific powers individually, but I typically fill the role of Striker.”
Strikers are front-line combatants that focus on dealing damage. They work well in groups when paired with a strong Guardian that can keep the attention of monsters off of them long enough to hit with their heavy attacks.
“Is eight enough people to fight that thing?” Samielle asks, motioning back toward the monster that Dovik picked out for us.
“It should be fine,” Dovik dismisses.
“We don’t want to get any more assistance?” I ask. Not more than ten feet away, a pair of women look on at us. On the opposite side of our small group, a man with a bundle of arrows and no bow is busy staring at the different armors that we can see.
“Looking for more would be a good and bad thing,” Dovik says. “Yes, more help is useful, but that red wall is probably still coming toward us, even now. If it continues to move at the same pace that it did, I would bet that we have less than an hour before it arrives. I would also guess that it will herd the Dire Bears in front of it, meaning that if we do not break through this battlefield in the next hour, we will be sandwiched and die.”
“Is that all,” Macille says. “I am still looking for my brother.”
“If he is as strong enough to survive this far, he will likely be strong enough to make it to the other side,” another woman from Dovik’s group says. She is a lizardkin, skin made of soft, red scales, and eyes slitted, yellow. Unlike the rest of us, she wears barely any clothing at all, leather straps bound tightly to her body to hold a steel chakram the size of a wagon wheel on her hip that gives off an aura of blue and yellow.
Chakram of Death and Warding(Rare):
This chakram, created long ago by a smith whose name is lost to time, was made for and given to the warrior Elfitesh. Made of feathersteel–the techniques of forging held tightly by the lizardkin smiths of Gravaan–this weapon is light and sturdy enough to be utilized as a shield in addition to being a weapon. Blows from metallic weapons landing against this chakram are slightly repelled by magical force.
Enhancement: +10 Defense, +10 Speed, +15 Strength
When the lizard woman catches me looking at her weapon, she winks at me. That alone might not be so strange, but she does so by closing a second set of eyelids that move side to side.
Jess Keller(Rank One)
Blade Dancer Conflux
“My brother is strong,” Macille agrees.
“Look, Macille, my friend.” Dovik turns to Macille and sets a hand on his shoulder. “Once we have gotten past this initial stage of crisis, I will do all I can to help you reunite with your brother. If I don’t miss my guess, that shield on your back marks you as being a Guardian. Every Guardian I have ever met shares in common that they wish to help others, so let me state it to you in this way.”
Dovik points out into the woods. “When the light of that moving wall and the roars of the bears gets closer, things here are going to get very messy. I am willing to bet that the vast majority of people in this competition have never faced a rank two monster. Most don’t until they are rank two themselves. When the walls start closing in, rank two monsters on both sides, not to mention potentially hundreds of rank one monsters included, people will start to panic.
“The strong will form groups to push through the Armors, but they will be hasty. Mistakes will be made, and many people will die. Help me now Macille, we aren’t going to just kill this one Armor, but all the ones that we can see East and West of here for a good distance. I want to make a spot where people can climb the slope and not get crushed between the two sides of dangerous beasts. We do this now, we do it quickly, and we will save many lives. After that is done, and after we have all managed to get to some kind of stable position, I will help you find your brother.”
Macille looks at the other man for a long moment. He chews on his lip, leaving the rest of us to wait in silence, before with an audible groan, he smiles at Dovik. “You are one convincing bastard,” Macille says.
“It is a gift.”
“Fine,” Macille says. “I expect you to hold to your word.”
“Can a man do anything else?” Dovik asks. He slaps Macille’s shoulder, leaving the elven man grinning despite himself, and addresses the group again.
Before he can speak, Rohina buts in, “You said nothing about us killing multiple Armors.”
“Well,” Dovik says with a shrug, “we gotta.” He makes a show of holding up his hand. “Like I said before, I am a Striker, usually. It might be best for each of us to know what roles the others are going to be filling so that we can coordinate. I don’t know if you saw, but that big Armor with the maces looks pretty strong.”
“Didn’t you pick it because it was weak?” I ask.
“What? No, I picked it because it wasn’t fast. Its strength attribute is crazy high,” Dovik says earning a groan from someone in the group.
The groaner is a man, elven, that wears white cloth robes beneath his heavy fur coat. The metallic gleam of the man’s flaxen hair tells me that he must have at least some noble blood running through his veins, as if my Eye of Volaash couldn’t tell me that. The man, slight of build, looks at us with one violet eye that peers out from his angular face, the other eye being covered with a red velvet eyepatch. A small gemstone, uncut and purple, orbits his head as he looks over the group. Strangely, my eye tells me nothing about the gemstone, and my Dragon’s Eye picks up no glow of aura from it.
Adrius Bol(Rank One), Son of Count Ledomer Bol, Carrius Kingdom
Saint Conflux
“I will follow to get this conversation on the move as quickly as possible. If what you posit is correct, Dovik Willian, then time is not on our side. My name is Adrius Bol, I function as a Healer, but I also have some capacity to be a Guardian.”
“Good,” Dovik says. “Yes, we might want to get a bit of a move on this.”
“Fine,” Jess says, snorting, smoke actually coming out of her reptilian nostrils. “My name is Jess Keller, and I am a Guardian.” She looks at Macille. “I guess that means that I am your competition.”
“I guess so,” Macille says, hoisting his shield. “My name is Macille Esfelle, I am a Guardian as well.” He nods toward Adrius. “I also have some capacity to heal, though it is limited to touch.”
“Still useful,” Dovik encourages.
“Marksman,” a human man with a bow in the back of the group says. The man wears a dark hood that obscures his face but is otherwise dressed in winter clothing and furs like the rest of us. I can tell, even with barely any skin showing, that the man is a mountain of muscle. The bow on his back gives away his profession.
“Name?” I ask.
“You don’t need that,” he says, a grin on his face.
Eric Moyle(Rank One)
Sniper Conflux
“Do you need arrows to use your bow?” I ask the man. The grin on his face turns to a frown.
“Don’t worry my friend,” Dovik says before Eric can reply. “I am certain that we will be able to scrounge some up for you somewhere. Once we have cleared out a few Armors, we will spend some time scavenging the bodies of these soldiers for armor and weapons.”
Despite his words, I notice that most of the people here who require them, brought weapons along with them as their one magic item for this competition. Even the bow that Eric wears is magical, the aura it gives off is clear and hard to see.
Bow of Night(Rare):
This bow, standard issue for the Night Rangers of Halferfelle, is made of iron wood to possess and incredible draw weight. Arrows fired from this bow carry with them the magic of darkness, reducing the target’s vision for each arrow they are struck with.
“My name is Rohinda Willian, and I am also a Striker,” Rohinda says. “I use my fists, so I do not require a weapon.” She looks hard at the mace-wielding armor up the slope. “Not sure I want to punch that thing though.”
“It is pretty spiky,” I agree.
“I am Samielle Kraesh. I can be a Shieldbreaker and Striker,” Samielle says. “That makes three of us.”
“I think we have a pretty excellent composition to attempt taking on these rank two monsters,” Dovik says.
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“My name is Charlene Devardem,” I say, the last of the group to introduce themselves. I hold up my hand that is still aglow with orange fire. “You might be able to tell, but I am a mage. I guess that means we have plenty of damage to lay into these monsters with.”
“If we take them one at a time,” Macille agrees. “Though, I am still unarmed.”
“Grab a sword as we make a run at the monster,” Dovik suggests. “Rohinda, you can do that too if you aren’t comfortable hitting the armors with your fists.”
“I’ll get over it.” Rohinda shrugs.
“If you give me the time, I can place all of the weapons and armor of the soldiers into my storage item,” I tell the group, patting the satchel on my belt. “We won’t have to spend time stripping the dead soldiers that way. It should make things faster. I can also disenchant the monsters that we manage to kill. My ability has made a few magical items that way before. Hopefully it can do so again.”
“You have a disenchantment ability?” Jess asks.
“I do.”
She nods enthusiastically in my direction. “I have experience with forging, one of my abilities can even produce a functioning forge. Loot all of the metal armor and weapons you can find. After we survive this, I can assist in adjusting armor for everyone, and if we find some magical components, I can even possibly create some pieces.”
“As insanely useful as that will be,” Dovik cuts in, “now is the time for action.” He turns, looking up the slope. “If no one has any complaints about it, I will try to fill the role as tactical lead.”
No one objects, and Dovik spends a long time looking up the slope, scratching his chin. Eventually, he gestures for me to join him at the foot of the slope while everyone else checks over what little equipment that they have with them.
“Earlier you were able to spot a magic sword out on the field,” he whispers to me. I feel cold ice race down my spine at his words. “Is there anything magical out on the field that might be able to assist us?”
My instinct is to brush him off, tell him that I don’t have such an ability to detect magical items. I disregard my instinct for once. I understand that trying to conceal such an ability when he is already aware of it will increase the danger for us all. The secret isn’t worth someone dying over.
I give a mental command for Galea to appear in the air next to us. She scans the battlefield, message windows for all of the items across the entirety of the field springing up over the bodies of the dead soldiers. I tell her to filter the windows for magical items, and all of the windows disappear once again.
“No,” I tell him. At his frown, I point toward the body of a soldier between us and the mace-wielding armor standing in the snow. “That soldier has sixteen arrows in a quiver on his back. They might be useful for Eric,” I say.
Dovik smiles at me and shakes his head. “You are going to need to tell me about that eye power of yours sometime. I am getting envious with all of the mystery going on.”
“No time for mystery,” I say.
“You still won’t explain it to me though,” he says. I keep silent. He laughs, turning back toward the group. “Alright, gather around.” When they do, joining Dovik and I at the base of the snowy slope, he begins. “The plan is simple. Macille and Jess will take point, getting the monster’s attention before any of the rest of us engage. Macille there is a decent looking sword just there, grab it as you head up the slope.
“After the Guardians have engaged the monster, and only after they have engaged, our three strikers will charge up the slope. Mysterious Marksman, we spotted some arrows that you can use, grab them from that soldier, following along behind the strikers. I don’t know if you will be able to get a good shot off with how many of us there will be in front of this thing, so it might be best to be on the lookout for any more of the Armors coming to join the one we will attack.
“Charlene and Adrius, I am going to ask that you do not engage this Armor. We will save your mana for the next one. Actually, Charlene why don’t you go ahead and start looting all of the armor and weapons you can from the dead soldiers while we are fighting the Armor with the maces. Don’t take your eyes off of it while you go. We don’t know everything that it can do.”
“Outside of it being super strong and slow,” Samielle adds.
“It isn’t slow,” Dovik corrects. “It just doesn’t have a high speed.”
“Big difference,” Rohinda says, nodding.
“Right.” Dovik looks around the group, making certain that everyone is watching him. He gestures; Macille and Jess join him at the front. He points out to the bodies. “That’s the sword, sticking out of the snow there. It is probably your best shot.”
“Got it,” Macille says.
“Go.” Dovik taps their backs and the two take off at a sprint. The reaction from the Armor of Forgotten Dead further up the slope is immediate.
Snow crunches beneath the feet of Macille and Jess as they start their sprint up the slope, fifty feet from the monster. Jess outpaces Macille by the third step, the lizardkin woman clearly far faster than the elf. She spins her chakram off of her hip, literally bucks her hip to send it sailing in an arc into the air before catching it on her wrist as she runs. She lets the weapon spin around her arm like a hoop rather than grip it with her fingers. Half the distance behind, Macille grabs the hilt of a blade as he runs past, magic pooling into the metal of the sword as he pumps his legs to climb the rise.
Six of us wait at the bottom of the hill, and my senses tell me that there are far more than our group watching the fight that is about to begin. The Armor turns, fully facing the two racing up the slope towards it, and I see strength flow into the monster’s arms for the first time as it grips its maces tight. A ghostly blue radiates from where its eyes would be inside its helmet of rusted steel. It waits for Jess to reach it, not taking a step down the slope.
Jess makes it to the armor in the next instant. A mace swings her way, air rippling around the spiked head of the weapon as it cuts through the air with a whistle. She doesn’t stop in her charge. With a grace I can’t hope to match, she jumps, spinning her body horizontally in the air to flip over the Armor’s swing. The chakram spins, the circular blade slicing over the metal of the Armor, sending a scattering of sparks into the snow. Jess lands on her feet, the chakram still in her hand, and somersaults backward in the snow to avoid a strike of the Armor’s mace coming down on her head. She dodges death by the barest of margins.
Macille is at the monster now. He has managed to put the green glow into his sword faster than I have ever seen before, and roars as he brings the sword down toward the monster in an overhead strike. Without turning, the Armor lifts an arm and catches Macille’s sword on the haft of its metal mace, stopping it dead. Macille’s sword bites halfway through the haft of the Armor’s weapon. The Armor lashes out at Macille with a kick, and the man catches the blow on his shield, sliding back ten feet in the snow from the force of the blow.
“Now!” Dovik yells to the others still standing at the bottom of the rise. I am snapped out of the stupor of spectation that I have fallen into, remembering that I am a participant in this fight.
Dovik and Rohinda start their sprint up the slope, Dovik carrying Pokey in his hand as he runs. Samielle doesn’t join them, instead unfurling the wings on his back and jumping into the air. As he rises, he pulls a mace of his own from the belt inside his heavy fur coat. As he holds it high, no spikes adorn the mace, but a dangerous red fire springs to life over the head of the weapon. The flying man far outpaces the other strikers. He streaks toward the Armor, screaming as he goes, and giving away any attempt at stealth that he might have had.
The Armor looks up with its glowing eyes toward the man screaming down at it and brings its mace up to meet Samielle’s. Just before the two can collide and trade blows, Jess is at the monster’s side once again, her chakram hooking over the head of the monster’s weapon and pulling its arm down. The sound of Samielle’s mace colliding with the head of the monster is a metallic ping so loud that it makes my teeth ache. Samielle crashes into the snow behind the monster as Jess steps back again, kicking her own weapon as she goes to untangle it from the monster’s. The Armor is slow to recover. It remains standing, and when Macille charges into it again, I don’t think that it will be able to stop his blade. It does.
The mace in its left-hand whips up, knocking the sword from Macille’s hand before the monster spins toward him, its other mace tunneling through the air toward Macille. Ethereal armor sprouts over Macille as he catches the mace on his shield. Macille is lifted from his feet, flipping backwards through the air, tumbling through the snow when he falls. The Armor looks banefully down on my friend, hate in the glow of its eyes, the right side of the helmet’s face mask dented in.
“Our turn,” Adrius says, the healer already running up the slope.
With everyone momentarily away from the monster, Dovik and Rohinda still haven’t managed to climb the slope, I lob my fire at the Armor, ignoring Dovik’s earlier order not to attack it. The fire hits the Armor clear in the chest, forcing it to stumble backwards a step. Dovik takes advantage of its imbalance, activating some ability that makes his body disappear in a flash of blue light, reappearing just in front of the monster. He brings his weapon up, stabbing into the metal of the Armor’s neck. To anyone else, the strike would have looked ineffective, but my Dragon’s Eye catches a dense line of blue magic that spears into the Armor as Dovik strikes.
The Armor falls backwards, crashing into the snow. It uses the force of its fall to roll back to its feet, one of its maces already whipping out to catch Samielle who is coming up behind it. The blow connects with the surprised man, but before it can cave his chest in, a leather band around his right bicep explodes with the light of black mana, and his body turns to shadowy mist. The mist swirls away, landing further up the slope and condensing into the form of Samielle once again. The horned man collapses to a knee in the snow, spit falling from his mouth as he groans.
Band of Shadow and Bone(Artifact):
This band, woven from the flesh of a bone devil that had obtained true life, carries with it the pain and power of the monster it was made from. Once per day, this band may potentially save its wearer from a lethal blow, turning their body to shadowy mist to potentially avoid death.
Enhancement: +20 Strength, +20 Defense, +20 Magic Defense
Power: Shadowy Escape
I catch sight of Eric Moyle in my vision, racing up the hill to reach the arrows that Dovik had pointed out to him, and once again have to remember that I am a part of this fight. Further up the slope, the strikers form a loose triangle around the monster that continues to stand and glare at them, waiting for the guardians to move in to take its attention. I set my own feet to running. A glance to my side tells me that Adrius is taking a much more sedate pace, looking about to make certain that none of the other Armors on the rise are taking note of us. They don’t appear to be.
I make it to the body of the first soldier, just a few paces past the edge of the forest. My knees crash down into the snow next to him, and curiosity propels me to turn the body over onto its back. I find the face of the dead soldier completely whole, a human man with a bushy mustache and eyes closed in serenity. If I had not seen the bodies lying here the day before, I would not have believed that the man had been dead for a day at least. His skin is pale with death, but I cannot find a wound on his body anywhere.
I hear metal ringing against metal further up the slope and turn my mind to my task. It only takes a touch for me to make the armor of steel rings and padded leather disappear from the body, followed close behind by the gauntlets, steel boots, cuisse, and greaves. With a thought, I open the window that represents my inventory, seeing each of the pieces taking up an individual box inside of the inventory.
“Silk on my dick!” I swear. I had been hoping that the armor would all go into a single box.
Adrius is looking at me strangely when I stand to run to the next body. I take a quick look around at the battlefield, the other Armors I can see still seem content to mill about on the snowy battlefield alone. East, maybe a hundred and eighty feet away, an Armor with a sword on one arm and an ax in its other kneels in the snow. To the West, less than a hundred feet away, an Armor with a massive two-handed scythe stands like a statue in the snow.
I land in the snow next to another of the soldiers, not bothering to turn the body over before stealing its armor. The disappearing armor reveals a woman, the same look, as if she were sleeping in the snow, on her face. A shiver runs through me.
A scream from up the slope pulls my attention away. Jess stumbles back from the monster’s bloody mace, bone peeking through the scales of her shin as she collapses into the snow. Macille is there in the next moment, his shield high, catching a strike from the monster’s mace that might have killed Jess, ethereal armor springing to life around him as he stops the blow. A few feet away from me, Adrius swears in the High Tongue, and purple light begins to condense in his hands as he walks up the slope. I start moving between the bodies, keeping my eyes solely on the fight further up the slope.
Rohinda throws her body at the monster’s arm as it tries to bring its second mace down on Macille, using her whole body to hold just its arm in place. The spikes of the monster’s armor cut trickling lines in Rohinda’s skin, but she grits her teeth, ignoring the damage.
It tries to bring its free mace down on Rohinda, intending to cave her skull in, but Macille interposes himself. He stands close to the Armor so that there is no way it can hit the woman. Dovik and Samielle crash into the grappled monster, Samielle’s mace ringing loudly every time he bashes the Armor, Dovik’s poker delivering blue spears of mana into the monster every time he thrusts his weapon forward.
“Break off!” I hear someone yell, taking a second to realize that it is Eric. He stands in the snow further down the rise, the bow in his hands fully drawn and so much power concentrated on the tip of the arrow he has knocked that I imagine everyone can see it. The man’s huge arms quake with the weight coiled through the bow he has drawn, but he holds it taught, waiting.
Dovik and Samielle jump away from the Armor as if on instinct. Eric fires his arrow with Macille and Rohinda still near the monster. My chest tightens as the arrow races forth. It hits the Armor just beneath its right armpit, the force of it lifting the monster from the ground. Rohinda takes the moment to put a kick into the monster’s side and I see her boot leave a dent in the monster’s side. It releases its grasp on the mace she is holding, spraying snow into the air as it slides up the slope.
A purple light falls over Jess, and, sickeningly, I see her splintered shin bone slide back into her leg. She screams and falls sideways as her leg snaps and is made to be straight, the gash in her leg healing enough to only leave a long scab running down the front of her leg. Ahead of me, Adrius pants as he continues his walk up the slope.
Silence falls over us for a moment. Rohinda laughs, flipping the mace head over haft in her hand before catching it. Green light begins to boil into Macille’s sword even as he offers a hand to help get Jess back on her feet.
The Armor begins to climb back to its feet, its movement is less fluid now. No one approaches it as it climbs back to its feet, an air of danger all around it. It glares out at Rohinda who flips its weapon again in the air, chuckling to herself. As I see the glow of its eyes shift from blue to a far more menacing purple, I start running, pushing Adrius to climb up the slope faster.
In time less than it takes to blink, the monster is in front of Rohinda, its hand clasped about the haft of the mace she had flipped into the air.
Before anyone can act, its other mace comes crashing down, smashing Rohinda’s head into bloody bits that spray across the snow. The woman’s body teeters for the barest of instants before it collapses to its knees and falls sideways.
“Bastard!” The rage in Samielle’s voice is plain. He swings his mace into the Armor’s side; the Armor lets him connect. Its feet skid a few inches in the snow, but it turns and brings its helmet down on Samielle’s head in a vicious headbutt. The man’s horns are the only thing that allow him to survive the hit, the left ram’s horn on his head cracks in half and tumbles into the snow as he collapses unconscious into it.
Macille and Jess leap forward to engage the Armor but are pushed back by the sudden force of mana that it unleashes in an explosion around itself. White, transparent mana explodes away from the Armor of Forgotten Dead as it rears its helmet back and roars a voice deep enough to wake the dead. Horror grips my heart as I make it to Eric, pushing the man’s back to get him also running up the slope. I already know before I look to the sides. The two other Armors of Forgotten Dead on either side of our battle are standing, their heads turned in our direction now. They each takes a step our way.