23 days remain of contest A, Saturday.

In the morning I take a shower and eat slowly, I want to avoid the news of the Leviathan Fortress for now. After brushing my teeth, I want to floss and have to dig around to find where I left the string. With nothing left to occupy my time—and my head still a little foggy from the SAINT yesterday—I see that it is time to meet online.

Logging in, I appear standing in the instance’s entrance and I see Bumblebzz the cleric is here, and it appears he is going through his interface. I notice that our buffs from last night are still there; buffs are timed based on logged-in usage and not on real-world time. He notices me appear, and his hand moves in a wipe motion as he clears away his view. I don’t see a notice that anyone has conquered a fortress.

“Hey there, I was just going through everything and making sure I was ready for this,” he says.

“That’s a good idea. We should all do that before we start out today.” I inspect him and ask, “What are you planning to do for your advanced classes?”

“I was thinking of playing a White Scholar. You know, the ones with the fairies who assist them?”

I am not at all familiar with it, so I just respond, “That sounds really cool—” In little showers of multi-colored light, Briar and Kian appear, followed quickly by FaydeOut and Roll. I watch the party list refill, which shows each player’s icons and buffs. Both Kian’s and Briar’s buffs are gone, and so the clerics rebuff the whole party.

“You log back on earlier or something?” Bumblebzz asks them.

“Something like that,” Kian says flatly. “Let’s get this show on the road. Briar filled me in. Esme—," he looks at the party, “Nightflowersee you shared the map with the party, so do we have a plan?”

“Avoid death traps, kill things, win the world!” I say, failing to muster enthusiasm. After my talk with Briar last night, Kian’s avoidance bothers me. I inspect him just to see if anything is different, but swipe away the window without ever reading it.

“Let’s go,” I say as I dive into the shadows and take off at nearly a run while listening to the party voice chat.

“What keeps killing Sauce and those guys?” Briar asks—I’m assuming—Roll.

“He doesn’t know, man!” Kian says.

“I really don’t. They mentioned a few things like that there is a dragon and weird puzzles, but I don’t have any specifics," Roll says.

“I’m good for whatever they wanna throw at us,” says FaydeOut, whom I realized I have not spent any time with. He is an impressive-looking fighter who prefers no helm. He wears long, stringy brown hair and carries a shield and a sword with a bow on his back as a secondary weapon. His partner Bumblebzz carries a two-handed hammer on his back and wears chainmail with his cleric’s tattoos on his arms. These tattoos mark him as a disciple of one the cults. They are where clerics gain their power. Mana focuses in the tattoos, which glow as a cleric uses their abilities.

We move out. I take the lead, and at the dead drop trap I found last night, I stop to make sure nobody sets it off. We move on, and I mark out the pit with the Shrieker. We cannot talk anywhere near that pit for fear of setting it off.

We back up and Roll starts a summoning spell. He pulls out his book and the face on the cover comes alive, making little strange gasping sounds. Roll has a feather-quill pen and writes furiously in the book. The floor around him lights up with spinning runes and the air begins to lift small stones. With a flourish, he finishes writing and whips his hand from the page, dragging the nib of the pen off the side. With the pen in the air he does a dab motion toward the ground where the stones begin coming together with a golden sinewy light that snaps them together. A floating creature forms of rock with club-like arms and no legs; golden veins pulse through its round body. Floating just off the ground, it is about five feet tall. From its body, an occasional pulsing mote of golden light falls down to the ground to fizzle like the welding sparks.

“This is a Colossus rank-one tank summon,” Roll says, smiling. “I can only have one at a time obviously, but I do have two other kinds of summons. I can summon a Djinn that does fire damage, and a Fay summon which does air buffs and attacks—it pushes stuff away," he adds.

Morrigan, perched on the tombstone on my back, caws at the creature and shifts uncomfortably. In here she is of little use, so she tries to stay out of the way behind us. I can only assume she has night vision. This Colossus summon looks menacing; I can see why Morrigan does not like it. Roll begins to issue commands to the tank summon to go into the room and issue a taunt. It will then start smashing things up to gain the aggro of all the trolls and goblins. Trolls and goblins are not intelligent creatures, so we can taunt them easily. I see its smaller icon next to Roll in the party list section of the interface and see that it has nearly 500 hit points. With basic maintenance from a cleric this thing should be able to tank most any normal mobs.

I want to watch the fight, so I maneuver my way into the hallway and climb along the upper part of the wall near the ceiling. Once I get to a vantage point, I will let the group know when the Colossus has managed to piss everything off. I just get settled in when the Colossus barrels into the room, flexes, and then does a low roar—its taunt. I see a red glow affect the creatures in the room. As one they charge the summon and start smashing it. The colossus takes some hard smacks lowering its hit point pool. I hear a hum and see a golden glow under the goblins and trolls. Everything in the glow is flung in all directions as the tank summon does a wild spinning maneuver.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“Good to come in,” I say over voice comms.

I hear the yelling of the party charging down the hallway. I shift forward as I see a goblin running to a lever in the wall—he is limping from damage sustained from the Colossus. The damage apparently broke the focus of the taunt. I know I can’t let him get to that lever. With only that thought, I have my dagger in my hand, moving already as I mentally use my new skill, Teleport. I pop into place mid-air with my arm still swinging which continues into the goblin’s head.

You hit Goblin for 13 (+6 flank) (scaled) damage.

Goblin died

My feet touch down silently, I spin low into the shadows and see a troll trying to flank the Colossus. The tank is thrashing around like a bull and does some kind of self-heal that makes it pulse gold and green and spray sparks.

I leap at the troll.

You hit Troll for 53 (+12 backstab) damage.

Troll is poisoned.

Troll died.

I turn and get out of the way as my party bursts into the room and quickly dispatches the remainder. This was easy, but I get the feeling that if the goblin had made it to the lever, we would have had quite a different experience. I don’t bother looting—I want to inspect the lever while the party is hooting about how awesome the summon was.

Made of roots, the lever is connected to a metal plate. I follow the line back and see that it would have pulled a string going down a hallway, our way forward.

“I’m gonna scout up there,” I say as I dip into the dark and dive into the tunnel with the shadows of my cloak clawing at the torchlight.

I carefully check for traps following the taut rope which goes into a larger cavern. I see it attached to a bell on a rock that obstructs my view. This larger cavern smells bad. I move farther in and around the rock to see the source of the smell. Below me, down a path through jagged rocks, there are caged pits with large dog-like creatures, and I see several goblins on the backs of them in the open. I inspect the dogs and see that they are Worgs. These goblins are called Goblin Outriders and have around twenty-six hit points. The Worgs are the real danger here though, as they have 80-90 hit points and poison bites.

Near the center of the cavern in a raised area I see one large goblin, a Goblin Chieftain, who has 65 hit points. This chief is with a Worgmother, which is a mini-boss. This is much a more challenging fight for our group than the guards we killed back in the tunnel. If we can find a way to split up this group, we could take them. I count at least twenty Worgs and riders, as well as a few additional trolls who are asleep. I am sure there are more here I cannot see.

I can see an opening where daylight shines in, far across the cavern. As I am watching, a group of six Worg riders come through it and back into the cavern. They trill and growl as they haltingly drag a carcass of a large shaggy creature to waiting knives. This new group makes the count twenty-six Worgs, and at least as many riders. The sleeping trolls also look massive. We don’t want to do this fight, that is for sure. I look around and see a small ledge along the right which looks as if it may continue through another tunnel to the outside. We can entirely avoid this for now. My mind has been busy on assessing the cavem when my attention snaps back to the voice chat.

“What is this lever?” Briar asks, and then says. “I bet it opens a secret treasure room.”

Before I can react, a clear and crisp sound of a bell reverberates through the entire cavern and sixty pairs of eyes turn to where I am at.

“Ginga! Run up here NOW!” I half-scream into the chat. “There is an army up here and we won’t stand a chance in the tunnels.”

I summon the cloak spider and prepare my new skill Shadow Web. I could use my Deck of Transmutation again if I have to, but after the rhino I am afraid there is no guarantee of anything. I could attack my own party as some half-crazed beast, or I could just turn into an earthworm.

A roar erupts in the cavern as they release Worgs from their containment and goblins leap to their backs, joining the already mounted ones. I position my spider at a choke point and ready my throwing knives. We are probably going to wipe, but hopefully we can make a stand.

The colossus appears and quickly takes up a position next to me—it moves faster than the party so Roll must have sent it ahead to guard us. Then Briar and FaydeOut charge through the opening and up to me, stopping when they see the cavern, their mouths agape. Kian and Bumblebzz come in next with Roll and after seeing the wall of rabid dogs and crazed goblins charging. They start to look around.

“The ledge right there.” I frantically wave to the ledge and we all start toward it. “Can you have the colossus hold our backs?” I ask Roll, who nods. “Clerics go first,” I bark at the group. Thankfully, the don’t even blink at this small girl taking control. Single file the clerics go, then Roll and me, and finally the fighters. My spider backs up with the Colossus summon and they make a valiant effort fighting. They manage killing several goblins and two Worgs before the Worgs tear apart the spider. The Worgmother gets to the summon and attacks. Without anyone healing the summon, the Worgmother’s quick, savage bites bring it to ten percent of its health in seconds. I see Roll make a strange hand gesture, and then I hear a roar as a golden light pulses. The Colossus breaks apart, spinning wildly and smashing everything away from itself before reforming. It cleared a sizeable area around itself, but didn’t kill the Worgs which leap and tear it apart, a rapid slaughter. The summons icon disappears from the party list.

The goblin chieftain makes a wild sound in the goblin language and riders start shooting arrows toward our group, some circling around below to get better shots. I see that some Worgs are being sent down the path after us. The chieftain pulls back his bow and nocks a wicked-looking arrow. I feel the tug of several arrows hitting me in the legs and one in the hip. Luck on my side, I don’t get an interface ping of a critical hit or a crippling blow. I pull the arrow out of my hip and keep moving.

“Faster!” I yell, arrows bouncing off the wall next to me. I see the chieftain loose his arrow and Bumblebzz takes it in the neck, a critical hit that has both bleed and poison effects. Kian catches him mid-fall and drags him farther down the narrow path. They reach the tunnel entrance ahead of me. I make it just after and wait, dodging an arrow, to verify that Roll and the fighters make it. We get into the tunnel as a Worg leaps and pins FaydeOut on the ground, tearing at his armor and sending blood everywhere. I slip in and flank the beast just as Briar stabs it through the eye and gets the kill. Blood gushes out over our fighter it had pinned.

“Dammit, Briar, you almost killed us all!” I say with a shrill voice. “That lever you pulled rang a bell and alerted all of those things. I was about to move back and warn you guys so we could make a plan. Instead, you just advertised us to the whole instance. It’s a miracle we are still all alive, no thanks to—”

“He didn’t know. None of us did. You could have told us what you were doing and to not touch it,” Kian breaks into my rant.

“Who walks around pulling random levers in a dungeon full of traps?”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know what it was,” Briar sheepishly says and then notices FaydeOut still stuck under the dead worg. “Help me out here.”

We drag FaydeOut from underneath the stinking dead dog. Once we get him free, we pull back farther into the tunnel, Kian working a considerable cleric heal on Bumblebzz, who is sitting up and casting his own healing pool spell. The spell he casts fills the floor area with pulsing, yellowish-green healing light. The arrows in my legs pop out and fall to the ground as the healing works from the inside out. I can hear the goblin army rumble in the cavern with growls and the howling of the Worgmother. They likely won’t follow us into this tunnel, as the Worgs could barely fit and would be easy to take out one by one.

They circle around to cut off our escape, hunting us.