“You’re not one of them,” Cuby said, voice thick with emotion as she rose away from the corpse of their healer. “You’re not.”
“I’m not,” I said. I began casting a Supercharged Moment of Mastery, which I could mostly talk through—except for the command word at the end.
“I know you’re not because I said all those things before to test you, I know them.” Her eyes were challenging, her voice filled with urgency. “I know them and you’re not one of them.”
“I’m not one of them,” I said, stepping closer.
She stepped back. It didn’t matter that we couldn’t even attack each other, here… she still stepped back. “What are you?”
My Moment of Mastery finished as I barked out the single word. I began to cast a Supercharged Fragmented Implosive Missile, scanning the mountainside for more attackers and seeing none.
“I’m one of the chosen,” I said. “But not one of them. There was a malfunction, I think… something I think may have never happened, happened. I started with a boon card.”
“How?” she demanded. “You… you’re using that False Identity spell, but… you didn’t use the card? Not at first?”
“Listen, Cuby: I hid it from you because you’d kill me for it—don’t pretend you wouldn’t at least think about it.”
A pause. “I won’t,” she said quietly.
“I hid it from you and I should have, and I need you to stay with me, stay my friend—and we can kill this fucking monster Haroshi, here, tonight, and you can take his card. Mutual benefit. I know it’s what you want. You understand?”
She nodded uncertainly… then nodded again, more decisively, moments later. “We didn’t go over our abilities when we bedded down. Tell me what you’re doing and we’ll loot.”
“Right,” I said, moving to the rogue I’d killed—my only lootable—as I finished storing my Implosive Missile.
You receive:
Currency – Gold (71)
Common Equipment – Simple Leather Armor
Uncommon Equipment – Steelfire Kukri Knife
Uncommon Equipment – Steelfire Kukri Knife
Uncommon Equipment – Sturdy Mountaineering Boots
Common Item – Stamina Potion (2)
Common Item – Demonstone (14)
Common Item – Great Machine Fragment (8)
Common Item – Derunite-Infused Scale (52)
Common Item – Steel Ingot (2)
Common Item – Poison-Gas Bomb (3)
Uncommon Item – Spike Bomb (2)
Then I looked down at her now underwear clad elven body, twisted so badly it was like every bone had been crushed, and I saw at last how thoroughly Cuby’s potion had worked to suppress my emotions. It had turned me into a kind of psychopath, I realized: none of this bothered me, none at all. And in my current state, I realized how good a thing that was even as I knew, rationally, that I would be horrified to see myself like this if I weren’t on the potion.
I took it all in a moment, then rushed to the edge of the platform. “I’m a Mage / Psychic. Psychic gives me a buff I can use to guarantee a crit, and a Spell Augment that I can use to break up a spell’s casting and store it once it’s done to loose it later.”
Below, I saw fighting at the entrance to the mine-lift. The dwarf guards might have formed a line, but now they were scattered, bodies strewn across the ground with only a handful of mixed-HP defenders, both NPC guards and players, left among more attackers—I counted five, with more potentially out of sight inside. At a glance, the defenders seemed to be losing, but it was a close thing.
I started casting a Supercharged Implosive Missile at the nearest attacker—a level 7 named Therana, a small ratfolk from the looks of it, currently wielding a crossbow and attacking someone further inside and out of sight along with a spellcasting ally, a human in mage starter robes, as I continued my explanation. “You know how Supercharged Spell works already, and I grabbed a high-cast time damage spell to use with the three other abilities. It takes almost twenty seconds preparation—less with this Focus potion on—but I can store an instant 400 or so damage.”
Someone noticed us, shouted that we were above, and everyone—including my target Therana—looked up and saw us. But they were engaged with lower-HP targets, and limited in how they could engage us. None of them rushed us immediately, and Therana didn’t dive out of the way or anything.
Cuby had come to join me by the time I was almost finished the next casting.
“This is the non-crit,” I said, then barked the single word that concluded the cast and sent it at Therana.
It did 280 damage—three quarters of Therana’s HP.
“I’ll get her!” Cuby cried eagerly. I saw her knife fly through the air, followed shortly thereafter by a device that struck the ground and caused an explosion of shrapnel. The two might have killed Therana, but just before the knife struck her, she was healed—almost a third of her HP filled instantly as a blue-white light flashed around her. A moment later my Magic Arrow finished and struck home, but by then she was disappearing beneath us, a potion already in her hand.
Cuby made a sound of distaste. “I suppose we won that….” she said. “Look: the poison I can open with on my weapon will absorb about 200 healing, so that heal she received had to be excellent—probably a miracle. I’ve got flash bombs and shrapnel bombs, I can swap an equipped item instantly to throw my grapple gun on, and—dear humanity, Alatar.”
While she’d been speaking, I had, naturally, begun another Supercharged Implosive Missile, an 8-second cast after my buffed Celerity knocked off just over a third of its cast time. It had completed, and I’d aimed it at another one of the attackers—I assumed a shifter, because he was a giant wolf named Tirax. It had stricken him for 291, leaving him at about a third.
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I started casting a Magic Arrow. “We should trade,” I said. “I’ve got fire weapons and you’ve got—” My Magic Arrow was loosed to strike Tirax, who had just noticed how much HP he was missing and was looking around for the attacker. “—A shock staff. I’ve got bombs too.”
Tirax took the second Magic Arrow, shifted into the form of a tapir, then was stricken by Cuby’s dagger-bomb combo… and fell dead, reverting to the shape of a gnome.
“Also,” I said, espying someone at four-fifths HP who had just run into view wearing scale mail. They had stopped when Tirax fell—perhaps they’d been intending to help them? “This is the crit combo,” I said, cracking my Moment of Mastery and loosing the Supercharged Fragmented Implosive Missile….
441 Damage dropped the mailed figure—named Lith—dead.
Beside me, Cuby leveled to 9.
I started casting another Supercharged Moment of Mastery. Cuby was silent, but I got a system message:
Cuby has requested to trade.
I was glad to see that bringing up the trade window didn’t break my casting, and tossed the daggers, bombs, and stamina potions into the slots immediately, hitting accept without looking at what she’d placed there.
You receive:
Uncommon Equipment – Derunium Lightning-Rod
Common Item – Mana Potion
I finished my Moment of Mastery, threw on my new staff, then backed away from the edge of the outcrop as an arrow took me in the chest, breaking my Mana Shield and applying a debuff I didn’t want to read. “I’m going to try leveling,” I said as I pumped two points into Spirit and opened up my ability selection menu. I watched Cuby dodge backward from an arrow herself, then seem to open her own menus.
I knew that level 6 on Mage was Haste and Slow, and I skimmed these two first because I had some suspicions I wanted verified. I wanted to know if they affected one or more targets, and if they affected attack speed—I knew that if Haste was a powerful enough buff, I’d be looking to throw it on Cuby and support her.
Here’s what I read:
Ability Selection
Choose a new spell to learn. You may replace this spell with any other spell you are eligible to learn by consuming its Spell Card or using a Spell Book.
Spell – Haste
Cost: 7 Mana
Cast Time: 2.2 Seconds
Cooldown: 22.3 Seconds
Duration: 10 Seconds
Effect: 3 Defense Rating; 6 Haste, and Celerity; 57.9% Movement Speed
This spell grants your target bonuses to their Defense Rating, Haste, Celerity, and Movement Speed.
Spell – Slow
Cost: 7 Mana
Cast Time: 2.2 Seconds
Cooldown: 22.3 Seconds
Duration: 10 Seconds
Effect: 3 Defense Rating; 6 Haste, and Celerity; 36.7% Movement Speed
This spell afflicts your target with heavy penalties to their Defense Rating, Haste, Celerity, and Movement Speed.
Then I brought up the psychic selection, conscious of the fact that my spell was mostly stored. My choices were:
Technique – Inspiring Command
Cost: 6 Stamina
Cast Time: Instantaneous
Cooldown: 44.6 Seconds
Duration: 5 Seconds
Effect: 80 HP, 16 Might and Power, 72% Movement Speed
This command grants your target bonus Hit Points, the remainder of which will expire as the buff does. It also grants your target bonus Might, Power, and Movement Speed.
A target of a command must be able to understand you in order for it to take effect, such as by hearing or thought speech.
Technique – Rousing Command
Cost: 6 Stamina
Cast Time: Instantaneous
Cooldown: 44.6 Seconds
Effect: 72% Duration removed
This command removes some portion of the initial duration of any debuff on your target, so long as that debuff impedes movement speed or disables your target’s ability to act in some fashion.
If no duration is left after this command resolves, the effect ends as normal.
A target of a command must be able to understand you in order for it to take effect, such as by hearing or thought speech.
I finished storing my Implosive Missile as I was eying these. Either would support a hasted Cuby, and both could save my own life. But wiping a crowd-control effect was the best choice in my opinion—we were in the middle of a PvP battle, after all.
I took Rousing Command, lamenting that none of my Spell Augments could buff it, then took Haste. Another thing had occurred to me while skimming the abilities—another mistake I’d made.
By the way, I said to Cuby, reaching out to her with my mind to speak in a way that felt perfectly natural. I have thought speech.
Oh, she said, looking over at me and cocking her head. Hello, Alatar!
I got a ten-second haste buff on a twenty-some second cooldown and an ability that wipes crowd controls, I said, recasting my Supercharged Mana Shield spell.
I got an attack that does loads of damage to people who are crowd-controlled! She answered. Somehow her thought-speech sounded even more enthusiastic than her normal voice.
I had finished my Mana Shield and cast Reactive Armor. I’m ready.
A few more seconds, Cuby said.
I gave her a curious look.
What? She asked. You’re all buffs, I’m all cooldowns. You didn’t know this?
I guess that makes sense, I said. Psychics are sort of half and half… very strange but very good for PvP.
Don’t forget to turn on your virtue resistance.
What?
Virtue, Alatar. We got a new ability. Because we’re virtuous.
I opened up my character sheet and sure enough, unbeknownst to me because I hadn’t read all the system messages, we’d gotten Virtue Points for killing so many people, enough to rank us up—more than halfway to 3, in fact.
The ability was called Boon of Resistance, but I barely read it, because as I opened the pane Cuby spoke in my head to say: Ready!
The buff was instant, and I used it without knowing what it did—probably, in my uneducated estimation, increased my resistances.
Both of us approached the edge again, knowing that the enemy knew we were above them and had been given ample time to prepare. But with any luck, the defenders had….
My heart sank as we reached the edge. The defenders were all dead or nowhere to be seen after more than 20 seconds of combat. What was more, only two of the attackers were in view—and they were clearly waiting for us.
Iriet – Level 8
Vuli – Level 7
“Now!” cried Iriet, a hulking elephant beastfolk. As she spoke, she hurled a kind of lasso my way, a sort of bolas on the end of a chain. These wrapped awkwardly around my feet, constrained as they ran into the invisible barrier of my Mana Shield—but not enough that I wasn’t yanked forward and off the platform as Iriet pulled on the chain.
And as I fell, many more players—all of them attackers—came into view where they had been out of view, just inside the mine. It was obvious what was coming.
I was about to be focused down.