Quest Unlocked – Defend Oromar’s Bastion
Objective:
Defend the four beacons of safety that keep Oromar’s Bastion a Safe Zone.
Accepting this quest will mark you as a Defender, removing the protections of the Safe Zone and preventing you from attacking other Defenders.
Reward: 20 Virtue Points, Iron Diadem of the Perfect
Quest Unlocked – Attack Oromar’s Bastion
Objective:
Seize control of all four beacons of safety to declassify Oromar’s Bastion as a Safe Zone.
Accepting this quest will mark you as an Attacker, removing the protections of the Safe Zone and preventing you from attacking other Attackers.
Reward: 20 Vice Points, Iron Diadem of the Perfect
“Wait!” Cuby said soon as the quests came up. I was scrambling out of my tent, looking over my buffs to make sure that falling asleep hadn’t disabled any of them—or the spell I’d put on Cuby’s weapon. “Don’t accept the quest yet.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll Mana Shield you, though. Here.”
As I cast the spell, Cuby explained: “Everyone is waking up and choosing which side they’ll be on. There’s people on this mountain who might choose attacker before they descend—and we should ambush them. Pick them off before they can reinforce their crew.”
My spell finished. “That’s cold, Cuby.”
“Drink your potion, Alatar. Both of them.” And she pulled out her potion of primeval resistance and downed it just after saying this. I did the same. Then I looked down at the other potion, the potion of steady focus—the one that made me immune to emotional effects.
“Why did you give me this?” I asked.
“You know why.”
I briefly closed my eyes.
“Think about why you want to do this,” said Cuby. “Why you want to be a defender. Whether it’s to protect them or to grow stronger, you need to be at your best.”
“My best,” I echoed.
Below us, I heard shouts from the town—then a scream.
“Fuck,” I hissed. “Fuck.”
“I thought you didn’t want to—”
“Fuck it,” I said. And I drank the potion.
At first the sensation was cool, liquid-like, spreading from my throat to my gut and then through my body before settling in my brain. My breathing steadied. My thoughts clarified. And then I felt like nothing had changed at all.
But it had definitely changed.
“There weren’t a lot of groups camped past us when we set up,” I said. “We should head further down, maybe camp just over the entrance to the mines—that will catch anyone headed for any beacon but the south gate, and give us plenty of room to fall back.”
“Let’s go—we’ll Charm of Gliding there.”
The mountain slope was barely steep enough, but it was no trouble to follow Cuby in making a running jump and then finishing the two-second cast time of the Charm of Gliding spell, spreading my arms and legs so that the conjured, translucent webbing would catch the air and propel us forward. The ground rushed beneath us, but slowly fell away until, at a height of five or so meters, and with the aide of my Heightened Sight skill, I caught sight of something odd on the massive slab of rock that formed the overhang of the entrance to the mine lift.
Narena – Level 7 Attacker
Metloff – Level 7 Attacker
Ardin – Level 6 Attacker
It was easy to see them and realize that Haroshi had set people in town to help spring the attack. There were bodies of two dwarves lying on the rock behind them as they attacked downward into the town, two of them with bows that fired flaming arrows and one of them with what appeared to be shock-attuned Magic Arrows. They’d sprung an ambush on the dwarves, no doubt, and now used the superior position to rain death from above. Had they made any consideration for defenders joining the fray?
A system message had appeared as we flew:
You have 28 seconds to accept quest(s): Defend Oromar’s Bastion, Attack Oromar’s Bastion
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So we had to choose quick—interesting.
Beside me, Cuby shouted to be heard over the passing wind. “Do you think we can fight—”
“Yes!” I shouted back.
“Narena first,” she said. And we both tilted in the air to move down toward the rocky outcrop.
They were focused on combat, all three of them, and so when we landed I accepted the defense quest and began to cast a Supercharged Magic Arrow, happy to see that Cuby held back and waited.
They saw us before it finished, their spellcaster—the level 6, turning and shouting to their allies that they were under attack. By the time they’d rounded on us and leveled their weapons in our direction, my spell had been loosed and Cuby had crossed half the distance between herself and their group, following a dagger she’d thrown.
The dagger impacted Narena, and a debuff appeared on her nameplate that I didn’t have time to read. Then, as my Magic Arrow reached her, she suddenly cartwheeled out of the way—a dodge ability, like Cuby’s base iconic. She was a rogue.
Narena turned to face Cuby, drawing her dagger, and the other fighter—who had shot a single arrow at me for scant damage—now drew his weapon and turned on Cuby.
Satisfied that both of them were distracted, I cracked my Moment of Mastery and loosed my Supercharged Fragmented Implosive Missile at Narena. It sped through the air between us, and she looked over at the glowing purple missile right before it struck her, critting for 390 damage and crushing her body into a mangled, wet heap as it put her to 0.
I heard a shout of surprise from the other fighter, Metloff, who I guessed was a warrior, or perhaps one of the hybrid classes, from his heavier armor. Their caster launched a spiraling missile of lightning at me, and the damage burnt away most of my mana shield. Cuby looked over at me as she turned to the fighter, then turned to him, then looked over at me again, her expression clearly incredulous.
I’d already begun casting another Fragmented Implosive Missile, anticipating that they might now waste efforts trying to stop me, and I was right: the fighter leapt through the air in a familiar fashion, landed in front of me, and slammed me backwards and into the ground.
But this truly did nothing. I wasn’t low on HP, and so he wasn’t opening a window to burst me down while avoiding my defenses. And I didn’t lose my spell—it was fragmented. He’d wasted a perfectly good crowd control effect.
An axe came down and bit into my shoulder as I rolled to one side, then sprang to my feet and used my Mighty Leap to travel clear past him and land beside their spellcaster, Ardin. This wasn’t so that I could engage him—I just wanted him to see me so close and panic. Panic he did, backing away from me as he cast another one of his low-damage lightning spirals and I finished up the cast on my Fragmented Implosive Missile… then saved it.
Cuby had done more or less exactly as I’d have wanted. She hadn’t turned to their caster, the closer target, when Metloff had jumped after me, instead following the fighter to engage him. And she hadn’t burned her Blinding Strike or any other crowd control on him while I was at full HP. Instead she was just doing her normal thing: copious stabbing. Metloff tried to pursue me, perhaps also worried that I had some terrible intent for his caster, Ardin… but he got halfway before changing his mind and changing targets.
And I was… satisfied. They’d made all the bad decisions, we’d made all the good ones.
I threw a normal Magic Arrow into Metloff, whose Hit Points were dropping lower by the moment as Cuby’s intense melee damage—far stronger than his fiery axe—shaved off slice after slice of his health bar.
He let out a bellow that produced a rippling wave and gave us both a debuff, and my casting speed and Cuby’s attack speed both stopped momentarily, then began again, slowly and with increasing speed. But it wasn’t enough: these two didn’t have the damage, not against our resistances and not when they’d split their targets. Metloff’s HP went up by about 20%—Ardin had healed him—but he was still lower than Cuby. A silver light bathed him as Ardin cried out a dramatic command word, and my next Magic Arrow did only half damage, but the light faded a moment later, the ability gone. They were using everything they had, but it wasn’t enough. Metloff reached 40%.
“Run!” Ardin cried suddenly. “Metloff, go!”
He turned and ran away from me, toward the slope of the mountain, but even when he started sprinting Cuby could still catch up with him—and moments after he started running, the Hex of Chains that I’d begun casting as soon as his ally had called the retreat struck him.
I threw another Magic Arrow at him, ready to loose my Fragmented Implosive Missile… but Cuby’s knives did so much damage that it didn’t matter. He was at 15% by the time he broke free of the chains… and that was when Cuby immediately hit him with a blinding strike, and he stumbled along the rock slope, unable to move fast enough without his sight to outrun an attacking Cuby.
My next Magic Arrow struck him, brought him to mere percentage points… and then he took another heal from his spellcaster. The blind wore off after another two attacks from Cuby… and he took a few steps down the mountain before another Magic Arrow struck him dead, transmuting his shoulder to shattered glass, his arm dropping what looked like a healing potion onto the ground as his skull cracked audibly against the rock.
I had a lot of system messages, but the next one I couldn’t miss:
Congratulations, you are now a level 6 Mage/Psychic!
You have a new Spell slot. Open your Abilities pane to choose a new Spell.
You have a new Ability slot. Open your Abilities pane to choose a new Ability.
Your Hit Points have increased by 70 and your Energy has increased by 130.
Human Adaptability increases each of your Strength, Agility, Focus, and Spirit by 2. You gain 2 stat points to distribute.
I turned to Ardin and began casting Hex of Chains….
I was still close enough to see the whites of his eyes, the terror on his face. He was a beastkin, wolf-eared, it looked like, and he took one look at me, then past me at his dead comrade, and turned to run toward the edge.
But even though the edge was just a few steps away, Cuby’s bomb beat him to it, detonating with a concussive blast that rang in my ears, but sent poor Ardin flying through the air and onto his back.
Before he could scramble to his feet, my Hex of Chains finished, and he fell back from where he’d been struggling to stand. Then Cuby reached him and began her unrestrained downward stabbing, his HP bar starting the same vanishing act that his comrades’ had.
The Hex of Chains ended, but he was still on the ground—by the time Ardin had risen, I’d cast two Magic Arrows and Cuby had shredded his HP bar with melee attacks. He was at 45%—and I loosed the non-Supercharged Fragmented Implosive Missile, dealing 160 damage and putting him closer to 10%.
He reached the edge of the outcropping at last, but seemed to realize that the height, almost 10 meters by my estimate, would kill him if he jumped. For a moment he hesitated—and Cuby ended him with a dagger through his back, just next to his spine, cradling his body down to the ground so that it wouldn’t fall where we couldn’t loot.
Then she rose and looked at me, her expression confused, hurt, suspicious… and maybe even afraid.
I had some explaining to do.