Very quickly, Azalea was losing track of her surroundings. Surrounded on all sides by yelling, screaming, and fighting players, her world was reduced to a small space of about five feet in each direction. Sometimes, she wasn’t even granted that, and players mashed against her in the thick crowd, and both parties whirled around to see who had just touched them. Invariably, the players would try to attack her once they noticed she was standing there. But, thanks to the formation - not to mention the fact that there was so little room - she had yet to fall. Either Riley would stretch across the space to whack the offending player, or she’d managed to stick them with her spear. Sometimes, they were simply stabbed in the back by another attack before they could make a move toward her.
She made sure to keep the buffs up at all times, worried that if she didn’t, Caius would buckle. Despite the density of the crowd around him, he was still facing the worst of the fighting. She thought it might be intentional, for he was constantly yelling at the top of his voice as he slashed and blocked and moved forward. More and more players were taking notice of him above the fury. She was also quite certain that those who turned to target them did so because they were outsiders.
She had no way of knowing how long they were in the thick of it before the new players arrived. She was lost in her own world, after all. Contritely, she found herself wondering why she wasn’t panicking in this situation. After all, she’d never been the one to enjoy fighting. Why would the real thing - or as close as it got - be the exception? She was actually in the middle of a pitched battle, the sights and sounds were realistic enough to convince her brain that it was really happening. And yet, she wasn’t panicking. And even more strangely, this dramatic change in her character didn’t worry her.
The first sign of the new arrivals came when Azalea bumped into yet another enemy player. He spun around, and she drew back her spear, ready to attack. But then, her eye caught something floating through the air. It looked like a fishing line. The other player saw it too, and distractedly raised his free hand to swipe at it. Then it flashed tight around his throat, and yanked him back out of Azalea’s melee range. She tried to stab him before he was gone, but to no avail.
“Someone’s here!” She shouted to her allies. Some instinct, probably from hours spent training with Caius in strategy, told her she should make that announcement right away. “I can’t see them, but they’re using threads!”
The gap the player left filled quickly, and she was back to the fighting. For a moment, it seemed that everything was back to normal - or as normal as this battle could be considered - and she returned to watching over Caius and Oscar. The rogue was looking tired, she thought, and realized that her buff was fading. She replenished it, and his back straightened a little. But he still seemed exhausted, and his fighting was beginning to slow.
“Oscar’s starting to slow down!” She called to Caius, hoping he could hear her over his own shouting and the sounds of the battle. He reacted at once, his yelling dying away, and he took a quick step back, disengaging with the terrified player that he’d been about to strike down. He spared a quick glance over his shoulder at Oscar, but the rogue waved a hand dismissively.
“I’m fine,” he panted. “Just haven’t gotten this much exercise in a while. Don’t worry about me.”
Caius nodded, seeming to accept his words. Azalea wasn’t so sure Oscar should continue fighting, but there was no way at the moment for him to withdraw from the melee. She had no clue where the edge of the crowd was now, in fact. It was sure to have grown in the minute since Caius had led the charge forward. She resigned herself to the duty of watching over him. If she could, she’d make sure he had enough endurance to keep up with the fight. They could make it through.
Yet another player was thrown back a few feet away from her. This time, her senses sharp and ready for it, she saw the direction in which he’d flown. Logic dictated that, if that was the thread user, then they would be in a direct line across from her prey. And they wouldn’t be that far, or they wouldn’t have been in reach. She called out the attack to her party again, but she saw that Caius had already taken note of it.
“Push right!” Caius bellowed, immediately taking a forty-five-degree turn in that direction. He used the momentum of that shift to beat back an enemy player who was trying to make a run for it, cutting him on one shoulder but not killing him. Riley jumped to keep his position, as did Oscar behind him. Azalea, already at Caius’ shoulder, didn’t have to make any extraneous movements to keep up as the entire formation turned right.
That thread descended again. She was just barely able to make it out in the dim light as its silvery color reflected in the light of a nearby street lantern. With a pang of shock, she saw it was heading directly over her. Knowing what had become of the last two players that it looped, she hurriedly ducked low and to the left, avoiding what she could now see was a tight loop. The string floated harmlessly for a moment, then vanished out of sight once again. She wouldn’t be caught so easily by something she could see, she thought with a smirk.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
The crowd to the right parted, and Azalea turned to see a new figure. A tall man with cat ears and a tail. The name [Tsubasa] floated over his head, and his white-spotted black ears and tail were twitching this way and that as he slashed two wickedly sharp knives. For a moment, she could only watch him move, awed by the grace and balance of his body. With no armor, he looked incredibly vulnerable, but none of the players nearby could touch him. And with each strike of his knife, the gap in bodies around him widened a little more.
“Right!” She yelled, coming back to her senses and holding up her spear. Then, to the left, yet another player was yanked up and back, as if by a rope. How the hell had the thread user gotten over to that side already? Caius turned on a dime, also able to see the new threat, and charged forward, Riley on his heels. Azalea wasn’t expecting that. She’d thought that Caius would try to move them away from dangerous players. Why did he have such a determined, triumphant look on his face? And why did Oscar have almost the same exact look?
Caius charged Tsubasa without hesitation, barreling toward him in a straight line, his sword flashing out in a powerful thrust before he’d made contact. Tsubasa was like the wind, Azalea thought, swaying ever so slightly to the right, and bringing a knife up. Caius brought his sword back, catching the dagger on the hilt, and knocked it aside. He thrust one foot out in an attempt to kick the catman back, but the hit never landed. Tsubasa danced the side again, his eyes flashing with energy. If Azalea didn’t know any better, he’d say that this player and Caius were kindred spirits.
Before Tsubasa or Caius could move to strike each other again, Oscar flashed past Azalea’s eyes, breaking the formation and running right at Tsubasa, his own twin daggers drawn. All the exhaustion he’d shown before was gone as if the sight of this stranger had been a stimulant. He leaped forward in the last few feet, actually pouncing as if he were part cat himself. But Tsubasa avoided the gleaming tip of his knife by taking a quick step back, then countered. Oscar too blocked this, parrying one knife with the other.
“You’re the one who attacked the Shadow Guild, aren’t you?” Oscar asked, almost as if he’d forgotten he was in the middle of a loud battle. Azalea could barely make out his words. “I saw you watching us when we entered the city, you know.”
Tsubasa made no reply, instead stepping forward and launching into a bewildering series of lightning-fast thrusts and slashes with his smaller blades. Oscar responded in kind, and the two became a blur. Azalea watched in alarm, not sure if she could have an impact on that duel, not sure if she even wanted to. She could almost believe that if she tried to get in range, she’d be shredded by one of those streaks of silver as the two rogues battled it out in a ferocious combination of knife and hand work.
Behind Oscar, Caius and Riley both shifted their positions to stand on either side of Azalea, as the crowd reformed, claiming the empty space that had once been there before. She couldn’t be sure, but she thought the crowd might be a bit smaller now. That thread appeared for a fifth time and yanked away yet another player. It came for her again a few seconds later, but she avoided it. And then, as the bodies to her front left shifted slightly, she got a small glimpse of the market outside the - now definitely smaller - crowd to see a short, curvy figure. A fox-girl. And in one hand, a gleaming silvery thread.
Like Caius, she charged forward at once without a concern for the other players. She heard Caius call out in alarm from behind, but she couldn’t stop now if she wanted to. She wasn’t sure what had overtaken her in that moment, but something deep in her mind told her that she had to challenge this new player. She was too far away to see the girl’s name, but she knew one thing. This was a rival. The half-dozen players around her almost didn’t seem to matter now. One of them tried to strike her down as she dashed forward, but her spear was much longer than his sword, and she hit him long before he could reach her, spearing him through and killing him instantly.
Once she was free of the crowd, Riley a few steps behind her and held up fighting them off to protect her, Azalea drew her arm back and threw the spear at the fox girl. The weapon sailed through the air with a vicious hiss, and the fox girl just barely avoided its tip by swaying to the side. She gave the thread in one hand a tug, and a player appeared, flying through the air as he was pulled on it. The player collided with Azalea, knocking them both flat to the ground. With a grunt, Azalea pushed the stranger off of her, then fired a close-range firebolt into his chest, putting him down. She clambered back to her feet.
She really should learn how to fight with another weapon, she thought, looking to where her spear was now embedded in the wooden wall of a building. Judging by the nametag she could now see, the fox girl’s name was [Asami] A guild name was listed below her own. [Nobody]. It was the same guild listed under Tsubasa’s name, she realized. For members of the same guild, they were quite far away from each other. Well then, she’d just have to take advantage of that mistake. But first, she had to reclaim her spear, while avoiding that dangerous silvery thread.