Both of us ran after Haroshi as he made for the opening to the mines, Cuby’s kukris striking him a few times for only a few damage. I used my Mighty Leap, jumping ahead of him to start casting a Hex of Chains—but while the spell finished by the time he reached me, it bound him for less than half a second before he was shrugging himself free. He’d been effected by it twice already—his resistance was too high now.

I started casting a Fragmented Hardlight Construct, but like Hex of Chains it was a full gesture spell, and I couldn’t run and cast it at the same time. Cuby ran out ahead of me….

Cuby, I warned. Her Hit Points were so low that Haroshi could waste her in a few seconds, maybe less if he had more tricks or cooldowns we hadn’t seen.

I know! She said.

Haste was on cooldown for seven more seconds. If I could trap him in a box with myself, I was sure I could take him… he wouldn’t break my Mana Shield. But was a non-Supercharged Hardlight Construct going to have enough HP at only 212?

Haroshi moved out of my range just as the spell finished, and what I saw made my stomach lurch: he was drinking a potion, and not the red kind that I knew to be for HP.

I don’t have my blind yet! Cuby said.

I needed to get in range of him, put the box around him even if I wasn’t in it. But even as I took up the chase, his movement speed almost doubled, as if he’d gotten a Haste buff himself.

Then Cuby took aim with her grappling gun and fired, and I realized for the first time that they could target enemies. Hope soared in me… and then the grapnel deflected harmlessly off of Haroshi’s armor, either blocked by his Defense Rating or unable to target players in the first place.

We watched him peel away from us, his HP almost still at full, unable to act. If I could just get in range… then I realized that we still had a chace: the lift shaft. He’d have to get down it.

But then Haroshi did something I would never forgive: he reached the edge of the lift shaft and simply jumped. A moment later Cuby came to the edge, looked down, then looked back at me. I caught up with her just in time to see Haroshi below us, translucent wingflaps spread, dipping out of sight with his Charm of Gliding ability.

I moved to jump after him, but Cuby held out her arm. No, Alatar.

“I have Haste cooling down!” I said. “If I cast it on you at the bottom, you can run ahead—blind him and I’ll block off the passage with a Hardlight Construct so we can—”

“No,” Cuby said. She looked like she wanted to be sick. “I’ll have to run too far ahead. And he’s resistant to the blind, now. And we might not be able to track him through the mines.”

“But—”

“I know!” she said, voice breaking with frustration. “But it isn’t worth it. We’ll just have to… I don’t know. We’re good at this. We’ll have another chance.”

My heart sank, but if Cuby was the one who wanted to hold back, then she was almost certainly right: she was the one who had everything to gain, after all.

“All right,” I said, starting to cast a Supercharged Mana Shield for her. “You’re right.” I nodded, the rush that came with battle fading, somewhat. “You’re right.”

I nodded up above us. A red light was spilling from a gallery carved into the stone above, the only access point a narrow ramp. It was obviously the beacon. “Let’s take that, then help the rest of the town.”

“Yeah,” Cuby said, her voice strained with frustration and disappointment. We moved up the ramp and simply walked onto the beacon platform to turn the light from red to orange—it was completely undefended, though the bodies of dwarves around us showed that it hadn’t been, not at first. How many people had this town lost?

While I started replenishing my offensive toolkit, Cuby leaned against the pillar supporting the beacon. She took a few ragged breaths.

Then she threw back her head and screamed. The sound started out human, but then it went on and on, her lungs seemingly possessed of endless air as the scream became a kind of inhuman snarl. The sound echoed through the cave around us, and I wondered if Haroshi, presently fleeing through the mines below, could hear her.

“He doesn’t deserve it,” she said, her voice fevered. “We were perfect. He doesn’t deserve it.”

Stolen novel; please report.

“We need to focus,” I said. “Do we take the south gate or support the east?”

“Support the east gate,” she said. “It’s the only place the town still has a real defense force. If we—”

But a voice came calling through the cave a moment later, accompanied by the sound of boots on stone. “Haroshi?”

Then another voice joined the first, speaking in sudden, panicked tones: “Wait—the beacon!”

Cuby and I were looking at one another, and I knew that we both felt exactly the same way: like sharks smelling blood.

It’s shameful, perhaps immoral, and I doubted I would have been able to admit it if I hadn’t drunk the focus potion—but as much as their willingness to murder innocents had made me hate them, Haroshi’s escape had somehow added to that hatred. The frustration of it—of watching the legendary card disappear, of watching the man who’d orchestrated the whole massacre get away—had somehow stirred my emotions as much as the sight of the many, many dead.

Below us, the first voice that had spoken answered the second: “That doesn’t make sense. Haroshi was in here.”

I walked to the edge of the platform. Looked down on three more players that I guessed had followed Haroshi by splitting off from the South Gate when they saw the defenders gain another beacon.

They were all level 7: Morakir, a leather-clad cat-man beastfolk who wielded a heavy hammer; Eradrin, a dwarf wearing his priest starting robes; and Meli, a human who also wore leather, but who I guessed was a rogue by her twin blades. The three of them took me in with looks of confusion as I began to cast a Devour Magic.

Morakir and Meli began to charge up the ramp, and I ran down to meet them halfway, hoping they still wouldn’t see Cuby. My Devour Magic finished, and I noticed with a pang of disappointment that the extra Hit Points I’d added to my Mana Shield with Haroshi’s buffs were no longer there—apparently they wore off.

Right as they reached me, I cracked my Moment of Mastery and loosed my Supercharged Implosive Missile at the priest, getting a sense of profound satisfaction is Eradrin’s Hit Points dropped almost to nothing from almost full. Then, almost as a punctuation mark to a familiar, cruel joke, one of Cuby’s kukris flew through the air and planted itself in his neck, dropping him dead.

Then Morakir struck with some kind of enervating blow, and I felt for a brief moment that I’d licked a very large battery as I was incapacitated for almost two seconds. After that the rogue blinded me, and the two of them brought me down to 80% with whatever damaging abilities they could muster.

Apparently they were either oblivious to Cuby, or didn’t want to pursue the low-health rogue behind me—a foolish choice. What was worse, they’d frontloaded their crowd-control abilities in a way that was senseless and foolish, because they’d given up their ability to capitalize on the situation when Cuby came in for the attack.

It was all by the numbers, really: I hasted her, then started casting a Hex of Chains. Cuby joined the fray, dodged an attack, then used her flurry ability, along with her Blinding Strike, to make a window that she used to kill Meli in a matter of seconds—the other rogue’s dodge proved almost useless against the death of a thousand cuts.

A moment later Morakir was bound in chains, and shortly after that he was dead.

I forgot to reset the loot, Cuby said, quickly moving between the corpses to examine each. She burst into a sunny grin when she reached the priest. Hey! He still had both his Healing Potions! A moment later she was drinking one down. Do you mind if I keep the last one?

I don’t.

To the gate!

We left the bodies unlooted, and Cuby set the loot policy back to turn-based as we rushed down the ramp and back into the open air. Cuby reloaded her grappling gun, and we moved through town as we had before, gaining elevation and then gliding toward our destination.

But as we rounded the mountain and the east gate came into view, we saw something unexpected: there were no remaining attackers. In fact, there were several defenders coming toward us, no doubt heading to retake the south gate: after all, the indicator in my ui had been showing that the attackers only had one beacon.

Guess we’re turning around, I said, making an arc in the air before jumping back up onto a roof. Cuby followed, but it was seemingly unnecessary: a moment later our side took that beacon, too.

Let’s scale the bell tower, I said. Make sure it’s over.

I’m almost out of power cells, Cuby lamented.

I’ve still got a few.

We scaled the tower, but even before we had gotten to the top I was almost certain that the attackers had been fought off. It made too much sense: including Haroshi and the group we’d just killed in the mine, we’d taken out three small squads that were likely headed to reinforce the attacker force at the East Gate. With no reinforcements, it was believable that the defenders had fought the attackers off on their own—and that when they realized they were the only beacon remaining, that the tide had turned against them, the remaining attackers at the South Gate had fled.

“We did it,” I whispered, looking out at the town. I didn’t know what to feel about it—so many people were dead, just from the arrival of players. Was it like this everywhere? Were the people of this game world doomed to be massacred for nothing but experience and vice points?

“We did,” Cuby said softly. “I bet the quest will complete any second now.” Then she said: “Alatar?”

“Yeah?”

Cuby waited a moment before speaking. “Why are you one of the chosen?”