The crackle of arcane flame mingled with the howls of their unholy foe, a precursor to all-out war if there could ever have been one. Fourteen nervous warriors reaffirmed their defensive stances, ready to strike at a moment’s notice. And opposite, four smaller mobs snarled like attack dogs, begging to be unleashed by their colossal master.

“Hold steady, men,” bellowed Nyx, addressing the growing unease that was spreading through her troops. “Maintain snare formation. Let’s make the bastard come to us.”

Experience had taught the amazon that the boss would instantly classify its attacker (the warlock) as its primary target. Were it a tier 5 boss, it might show more intelligence, weighing up the risk against such simple considerations as ‘who struck last.’ But tier 4 bosses were nothing if not predictable. She could use that to her advantage.

The warlock also understood this, and it did a lot to explain why he was now sweating so heavily, his paltry robes sticking to his broad, muscular back. To make matters worse, the bag of merlin he’d purchased to calm his pre-raid nerves had already worked its way out of his system, leaving him alarmingly aware of the harsh reality before him. He was mob meat.

The flames that danced across the shadow stallions’ flesh were already fading, that sickening smell of burnt monster meat subsiding as quickly as it had emerged. His perception skill was telling him that the magical flame had dealt a measly 30HP worth of damage, half of the number intended.

Those flames should have burned for at least a minute, he thought to himself, studying the final embers as they flickered out. The big bastard must have magical resistance, and that’s all we bloody need.

Still, there was more than one way to wield magic. A less direct attack was in order, and he had scarce seconds to cast it before this hulking mass of muscle inevitably chose to repay the favor with a more physical attack.

Quick as a flash, Kriabal reached out with his mana, a tingling sensation traveling down his right arm and bursting out from his nicotine-stained fingertips, ensnaring his target with the dominate skill. The mob on the bosses left flank convulsed, writhing in his grasp. More mana was pushed into the unholy creature, shattering its will. He nervously released his grip, but to his relief, the spell held: the beast was enslaved. The lowly mob’s magical resistance paled in comparison to that of its master, allowing the mage to quickly take control. The icon representing the lowly mob that now hovered next to his avatar only confirmed his success. Without hesitation, he fed the beast a simple command that even its underdeveloped AI could grasp. Oi, Fuckface. Kill your brethren.

-[ Update: Your party has received a new associate. Name: Fuckface. Type: Level 2 shadow foal. HP250/250. ]-

The newly (albeit accidentally) christened creature would have stood no chance against its former master, but that was never the plan: Kriabal had picked a mob from the outskirts of the formation, ensuring that its closest target would be something it was capable of neutralizing. Without hesitation, ‘Fuckface’ pounced on its closest ‘ally’, sinking dual rows of yellow jagged teeth into the unexpecting creature’s neck.

Nyx observed this development and breathed a sigh of relief. This was a good start. The dominated creature and its sibling were tearing bloody chunks out of each other with their seemingly endless rows of teeth.

The other foals rushed to intervene, yet the shadow stallion simply held its place, regarding the warlock with its oddly inquisitive stare.

“It doesn’t make sense,” hissed Nyx. “Why isn’t the bastard attacking.”

“Must be my luck skill,” piped up Craynor, never one to shy away from taking the credit, justified or not. The tank turned to the pack of smaller barbarians behind him. “Garrack. NoobCrusher. DungeonDestroyer…”

The trio immediately turned to face the imposing tank. Each was a cookie cutter clone of the other, like action figures with customized heads.

“Stop standing around scratching your leather codpieces and intercept those two bastards,” he ordered, pointing his sword at the smaller mobs as they rushed to their fellow monster’s aid.

“Yessir,” they replied in unison, charging into action, swords and axes raised.

Nyx gritted her teeth as a small pack of barbarians began to break off, adding their might to that of the dominated creature. That damn Craynor was undermining her orders again. She’d have to pull him up on that. But not now. For now, she was more worried about the odd behavior of the boss.

“Everyone else hold your positions,” the amazon cried, “that’s an order. Kriabal, how long until you can use dominate again?

“Five-minute cooldown,” he gruffly replied.

“That’s useless to me,” she spat.

The warlock looked more than a little disgruntled by her blunt assessment of his skills. Grunting, he went back to charging another projectile attack. Magical resistance or not, he knew that if the shit hit the fan, it would be more effective than hitting the damn thing with his wooden staff.

“Spellslinger,” Nyx” cried, addressing the odd fusion of wizard and gunslinger lurking at the back of the room.

“Boss?” he replied, although reluctantly.

“Break off from the troop and fire a few shots of mana into that thing, see if that will get its attention. You’re supposed to be our sharpshooter, so try to find its weak spot. If possible, aim for the eyes.”

“What?” spluttered the gun mage.

“I don’t know why it’s so reluctant to retaliate against Kriabal, but I intend to capitalize with a few range attacks.”

The gun mage swallowed hard, before giving his own assessment of the amazon’s ‘plan.’

“What the hell sort of strategy is that?” he cried. “That thing clearly has magical resistance. All you’re doing is making me a target. Steel is required here, not sorcery.”

“Respect your leader, soldier,” yelled Craynor, casting Spellslinger a withering look.

“Damn you,” retaliated the mage. “Damn both of you. I get that I’m your most expendable magic user, but do you have to be so fucking obvious about it?”

“Get over there and do your damn job or I’ll kill you myself,” added Nyx, determined to reassert her authority.

Reluctantly, the gun mage followed his orders, breaking away from the party and channeling six rounds of hardened mana into the hide of the beast for a total of 24HP damage. Two of its eyes (a stationary target, still being fixed on the warlock) were hit. But just like the rest of its hulking frame, the supposed tender-spots resisted his magics attempts to burrow, inflicting little more than surface wounds on the creature. Again, the beast stood its ground, this time not even providing the small satisfaction of howling in pain. But one thing had been achieved. The shadow stallion’s gaze was now firmly fixed on the gun mage. Just as Nyx had hoped. Poison chalice passed, the warlock breathed a sigh of relief.

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“It’s not attacking because we’re like fucking mosquitos to it,” whispered the cigar-smoking barbarian to his closest comrade, his hushed voice that of one truly petrified. Nyx made a mental note of his username: Champion78. How dare he speak like that during a raid. If he was so determined to bleed her party’s morale, she would happily bleed him in return. But that would have to wait until later. For now, like it or not, she needed every grunt she could get.

Speaking of grunts, the three generic barbarians had now engaged the two smaller mobs, and were hacking and slashing at their flesh, easily overpowering the shadow foals through strength of numbers. It wouldn’t be long until they finished and began helping the party’s new pet mob with its foe. However, Nyx couldn’t imagine the biggest bastard would just stand by and watch while its little bastards were sliced to ribbons by the uppity humans. And oh, how she hated being right, sometimes.

“Magical buildup,” yelled Grandel.

The boss unleashed a deafening howl that echoed through the room. And if only that had been the extent of it. The chamber rippled, wave after wave of energy distorting the very air around them, washing over the unprepared raid party. A flurry of alerts began to sound inside Nyx’s head, status messages announcing that her troop had just been hit by an attack labeled ‘paralyzing howl’. And the debuff was more than living up to its name. Her treacherous limbs were frozen in place as if her entire avatar had somehow crashed. Her body had become a prison within a prison, her personaware doomed to watch the world continue on without it. She tried to turn to survey her troops, but dammit, she couldn’t even do so much as that. She couldn’t turn, but if the lack of sounds from behind her were to be of any indication, there was no movement behind her, either.

Forced to simply stare ahead, she quickly realized that six of her associates were still within her field of vision. Garrack, NoobCrusher and DungeonDestroyer were being badly mauled by the two foals they’d been sent to dispatch. They’d been frozen mid-battle and were unable to prevent their lower-tier enemies from picking them apart. She could only watch in silent frustration as their HP continued to drop with every strike, and quickly ruled them a lost cause: at the current rate they were taking damage, they’d be dead within the minute. The dwarf had remained at the head of the formation in an unofficial capacity as fodder, and was frozen in his attempts to retreat, his stricken form left completely vulnerable. Oh well, she thought to herself, coldly, at least he was serving his purpose.

She’d hoped that the gunslinger’s forced eviction from the party formation had put him out of range of the beast’s attack, but there was no such luck to be had. He too was immobilized, his arms outstretched, pistols pointed at the shadow stallion, trigger fingers frozen. To her dismay, the party’s only active combatant was now the dominated monster. Alone, the puppet would be easily overwhelmed, but at least for now, it continued to brawl with its original target, as their brethren occupied themselves by hacking away at her paralyzed troops.

Yet still, the shadow stallion silently stared, declining to advance on their vulnerable avatars. What the hell was it playing at, she wondered.

With a cold inevitability, a status message rang out in her head.

-[ User: DungeonDestroyer has died. Berserkers remaining under your command: 9 ]-

Dammit! she cursed to herself. She was at the mercy of a magical attack, and there wasn’t even a way to discuss strategy with the team’s magic users. Nyx still had access to her internal messaging system, but she understood that activating it would be a pointless endeavor. Messages had to be physically opened by clicking on an accept button, and no one in her party could reach their status panel.

-[ User: Garrack has died. Berserkers remaining under your command: 8 ]-

Shit! Two down. She prayed that the third barbarian would last long enough to buy them time to recover: even with no way to defend himself, he had a sizable amount of HP, and there was still a chance that the party members with higher resistance might be able to eventually shrug off the debuff. If so, they could keep the enemy at bay while the rest of the party got itself back into the fight. But those hopes were quickly dashed. She watched in horror as the third barbarian was plucked from the floor by the bosses huge, gaping jaws. Rows of needlelike teeth snapped down on the stricken form of the powerless warrior, slicing into his avatar and almost severing him at the waist. The near-corpse was violently swung from side to side, then bitten down on, her army powerless to assist.

-[ User: NoobCrusher has died. Berserkers remaining under your command: 7 ]-

The monstrous beast finished swallowing the warrior’s remains, while its two unchallenged children began to advance. Choosing their target based on proximity, not threat level, they pounced on the remaining dwarf, ripping him asunder in seconds.

-[ User: GrumpyGit has died. Scouts remaining under your command : 0 ]-

-[ Warning: Continued loss of non-combatant contractors may lead to reputation damage. ]-

Without warning, the emboldened boss launched itself into the air, propelled by its spindly yet powerful legs, landing right in the center of her frozen army. This had been her original plan, back when the warlock had first attacked: coax the beast into the center of the party, so that they might rain their blades down upon it from every angle. But she was unable to turn to meet the threat, as were those behind her. The amazon heard the unmistakable crack of bone, as another vulnerable fighter was clamped within the creatures vice-like jaws. Her troops watched in silent horror as a level 2 barbarian was plucked from the ground, his body violently shaken like a dog’s chew-toy, spraying blood in all directions before being tossed overhead and spectacularly impaled midair by the scorpion-like tail. For a moment the limp, frozen body dangled on the end of the stinger, before being tossed across the chamber, returning to Nyx’s field of vision as it hit the wall of the dungeon with a sickening wet thud.

-[ User: GravosTheGreat has died. Berserkers remaining under your command: 6 ]-

The boss casually strode over to the gory remains and began to feed. At the sight the Amazon, still powerless to act, silently cursed her early strategy. She was beginning to suspect that the creature had needed to remain still in order to charge its initial attack, and that they’d wasted that window of opportunity assuming it to be little more than a standoff. Worse, to the best of her knowledge, the shadow stallion wasn’t catalogued. So, for all she knew, it had other tricks yet to reveal. Either way, one question still remained: why was it ignoring both the gun mage and their dominated monster?

From the corner of her eye, she could see that the warlock’s new pet was being picked apart by its brethren in a three-on-one mauling. That explained the latter, then. ‘Fuckface’ was down to its last 20HP, and the stricken creature couldn’t last much longer against such a violent onslaught. But at least it was trying to fight back, and that helped their odds slightly, cutting the enemies numbers by one, while also drawing its brethren’s fire. Soon, she fretted, it would be her own stricken troops who would be torn apart in its stead.

In his mind, Craynor was screaming. This was no way for such a powerful raid party to die. Granted, Nyx would be held accountable, but the fighters he’d hoped to steal away from her were being slaughtered, and that would only decrease their future value. When the dust settled, the shield around the chamber would drop, and the other half of the raid party would charge blindly in to suffer the same fate, unless that runt G’rrak had the good sense to hold them back. The level 4’s weren’t so much a concern, they could be salvaged. But upon respawn, the level 3 barbarians would drop back down to level 2, and what the hell use would they be to his ambitions of leadership then? Not to mention the penalty his own death would bring: losing a level was bad enough, but Garrack, NoobCrusher and DungeonDestroyer had all died acting upon his orders, all but guaranteeing that his leadership stat would be penalized, too.

He cursed the so-called ‘shadow stallion.’ Nothing short of divine intervention was going to turn the tables, at this stage. And with only 20 faith points in his inventory, whatever small blessing that could possibly muster would hardly be enough to fell this unholy bastard. Perhaps, it occurred to him, he should activate them anyway, then pray to Siriso to send him worthy troops next time?

Awww, who am I kidding? The AI with the god-complex doesn’t exactly take requests, he thought to himself.

Still… unlike his new sword, at least he could still reach his meagre collection of faith points… faith was a thing of willpower, after all. Perhaps Siriso could be convinced to spare him a painful death, if nothing else.

So, with no other way to make a difference to his predicament, he activated them.

-[ You have been granted a boon by the great god Siriso. ]-

…announced the tank’s status system. And that was when something unexpected happened.