Pella, the Territories of Ilsylvania. Day 03.
Saiph’s dragon breath spell had been enough to kill a full third of the players trapped by his Chains of Prometheus. A feat that was a strong testament to the insane power gap between a level twenty player and a level one hundred player.
He sighed inside as he remembered Sinnamon Roll saying the goal was to capture as many of those attacking Pella as possible. Someone named Halzy was coordinating the defense of the village and apparently he and his guild had found a way to hold a large number of players somewhere until it could be decided what to do with them. The idea of not even being able to escape using his Caer Fragment bothered Saiph on some deeper level. It wasn’t a great stretch of the imagination that it could be used against innocent players. And who got to be the decider of who went into the magical prison? Saiph knew it was still preferable to letting these players wipe out entire villages like they’d been doing.
Those players who hadn’t died from Saiph’s opening attack found themselves temporarily crystallized by the fires of his breath. Pirate-themed players from the Brotherhood of Pirates descended upon them, tying them up with enchanted chains and ropes before hauling them southwards to Araedi.
Another dragon, similar in appearance to Saiph, but with grey and white spikes down its spine, slammed onto the ground beside him and began putting out nearby fires with his ice breath.
“It wasn’t a race,” came Permaphrost’s joking words, deepened and distorted by the draconic nature of his stressed S’s and C’s.
“The only folks who say that come in second place.” Saiph ended his dragon form, dropping to the ground as his hammer and shield appeared in hand. “Thank you for getting everyone here so quickly, and especially for getting my armor and mount to Orleana.”
“I wish we’d gotten here sooner. Good thinking, letting those with their dragon forms lead. I think it sent a strong message.” Permaphrost dropped to the ground. He wore the same red, white, and black armor, though his was covered in furs to accent his hoarfrost theme.
Perma whistled and a large wooly rhino turned a corner. The Dragoon pulled himself onto the beast and shouted, “I’m taking several parties south to catch any stragglers. Make a hole!”
Saiph activated one of the grappling devices in the pouch at his waist. A rope shot out, buried itself in a wall, and retracted, quickly pulling him out of his friend’s path.
While Nix and Raine had been talking, Saiph’s friends had convinced him to return to his old Pirate subclass. The grappling hooks were useful for climbing onto the backs of thrashing sea monsters or returning to a ship after a hunt for sunken treasure. Though they did have their uses as an excellent dash on land.
Saiph looked around at the battle-worn village. The arrival of Saiph’s two forces meant the fighting had largely been pushed out of Pella. Now there was just the cleaning up to do.
Sinnamon had asked Saiph to find her in the library when everything had settled down. He started for the steps, but turned. He saw a woman in red armor kneeling over an unconscious man on the ground. He walked over to them.
“I'm no healer, but is there any way I can help?”
The woman didn't look up as she dressed the bleeding stump where an arm had been. “Not unless you're prepared to carry this man to the library for treatment. Otherwise, you should really be…”
She trailed off as she met Saiph's eyes. “You're the one who turned into the dragon? Quite the entrance.”
“I was a little afraid I might topple a building. I'm a little new at that, it's hard to remember the size change. Would have been a little embarrassing.” Saiph heaved the man in a fireman's carry. With his strength stat, he hadn't even noticed the man's weight.
“I'm Captain Pearce. Can you all do that? Turn into a dragon?” Captain Pearce pushed open the door for Saiph.
“Most of my guild. It was sort of a reward for protecting their eggs during the attack by Azeban. I'm Saiph, by the way.”
Captain Pearce stopped in the doorway and Saiph only then noticed her reddened eyes and her face had gone pale.
Saiph set the man down, passing him off to a medic. “Is everything alright?”
She shook her head as if coming out of a trance. “Yes. I… I know you. I never thought I'd meet the Saiph of North Remembers. I tell my children the story of Azeban almost every night. They love… loved when I got to the part where you charged into the cave.”
Saiph felt the barely concealed pain of loss in Captain Pearce's words. Knowing that pain all too well himself, Saiph offered as best a distraction as he could. “It took my guild over a dozen tries to beat him. It's still one of the hardest clears we've done. We use it to recruit new members to our guild by making them do a nutter run of it.”
Captain Pearce looked up at Saiph, her anguish giving way to genuine curiosity. “Nutter run?”
“No potions, no magic items besides your weapon and armor, and allies cannot cast spells on each other. The goal is to teach prospective members to use everything in their toolkit to the fullest extent.”
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“That sounds… I guess when you cannot die, you have to get inventive. But why do you call it a nutter run?”
“Because you have to be nuts to run ‘er” Saiph turned away with a smile, leaving a stunned Captain Pearce.
He spotted Sinnamon with a short girl with green hair and silver deer-like antlers on her head. Both of them looked as tired as he felt. Saiph reached into his bag, pulled out a small yellow potion, and tossed it to Sinnamon.
“Here, I think you need that more than I do.”
“Thanks. Treating non-guardians is way harder than it looks. We can’t just use our general healing spells on them.” Sinnamon clarified that the broader spells could be used in small bursts, but neither she nor the girl with her, AnnaLee, had gotten the technique down from the healer NPC who had been teaching them.
There were a lot of people in the library and curiously, most looked sick rather than a casualty of the fighting. In fact, the sick far, far outnumbered those providing care, even with the steady trickle of players coming in to assist them.
“There was an epidemic going on before we got dropped here. Most of Pella is sick. The attack could have been way worse if most of the sick weren’t already quarantined to the shelters built for night spawn attacks,” Sinnamon continued.
“Oddly good timing in a way,” Saiph mused. “North Remembers and the Brotherhood are sweeping in all directions trying to catch anyone with a red name and take them to Araedi. There was a lot more burned down than just around this city. A lot of farms between here and Delphianna went up in flames.”
Sinnamon shook her head at that news. “Can you head to the fort? Wisteria’s looking for you. She might want to know just how bad this was.”
“She’s also the one organizing the big guild meeting, right?” Saiph asked.
“Yeah.”
“Good, saves me some time hunting her down. Nix might have given us a lead on finding a way home.”
Sinnamon’s eyes widened. “Really?”
“Yeah. One of his sword princess summons had a necklace with Sonnet’s logo on it. She said it was a religious gift from a friend. The Revi, I think she called them.”
“Revi? No, that can’t be. There were books in our guild building… I thought the author’s name was Revi. Most of those books were indecipherable, but Malikela found some partially translated stuff.”
“The thick plottens, huh?” Saiph mused with one of his favorite malapropisms. “I wanna come look at those books. Maybe Nix can give you a hand as well.”
***
Wisteria Leothalis was standing over a table with a mix of players and the city’s guard in the courtyard of Pella’s fort. She looked up at Saiph and when their eyes met, she gave a nod and gestured for Saiph to take a seat. He accepted her invitation to a private voice chat.
“I heard you were looking for me, madam senator.”
She cast him a side eye. “Please, I’ve been retired for longer than you’ve been alive. I’m no politician now.”
“Doesn’t look that way to me. You’re making friends with some pretty powerful-looking people.”
“Someone has to be a leader,” She paused, saying something in response to one of the men at the table, then resumed their private conversation, “It seems I’ve been forced into the role. Which is why I was looking for you. I heard you’ve got friends going west. You would save my guild months of effort if you helped us get attuned with you along the way. The sooner we get everyone on the same page, the sooner we can stop things like this from happening again.”
“We plan on getting the old tuna runs going again. How did you guys get a response to Pella so quickly? From what I heard, this was pretty sudden.”
“They were broadcasting their plans for three straight days to anyone who would listen. And we were listening.” Wisteria paused. “There’s certainly enough of a mess here that if the devs were watching, they should have intervened.”
A dark thought entered Saiph’s mind. If Wisteria had been listening, why hadn’t she reached out to him sooner? Supposedly she’d been in talks with the Serethi about this prison of hers for the last day or so. His guild was more than willing to step up patrolling sooner if it meant avoiding disaster…
No, he wouldn’t go down that line of thought, he had enough to deal with than adding to it.
“I think I might have a lead on finding our disappearing devs.” Saiph filled Wisteria in on the last two days. “Raine’s agreed to help us find out more, but ultimately whatever she knows is likely five hundred years out of date.”
“Keep me in the loop on whatever you find. And tread carefully. Don’t forget: someone brought us here and gave us the power of gods. Part of why I am working so hard is I don’t want us to end up being someone’s Fat Man or Little Boy waiting to be dropped.”
The irony of that, given the destruction already caused, wasn’t lost on Saiph. But he agreed with her sentiments. The ease at which Sonnet had come to earth, established a game that had gone on to become the largest mouse and keyboard MMO ever released and then plucked all its players from their homes was frightening. How easily could they have just killed everyone on earth if they’d wanted to?
That sent a chill down Saiph’s spine. “You should probably also keep an eye out for anyone with the Soul Forger subclass. We don’t know what it does as there’s no description for it, but those Tokens of the Vanguard we all got said they were forged from our souls. I don’t think that's a coincidence.”
Like Saiph, Wisteria was one of the Vanguard, the first one thousand players who had been beta testers before Annwyn Online’s launch. The Token of the Vanguard had been a consumable item that granted Saiph a full one hundred stat points and an additional extra point for each new level he got.
Wisteria waved a dismissive hand. “I’ve been trying not to think about that. It messes with my atheism.”
“A part of me hopes I’m still dreaming.”
“Well if you are, kindly wake the fuck up. I want to go back to my own home, forget about all of this, and hold my new great, great granddaughter. Good night, Saiph. I need to get back to figuring out how to find an absentee god before everyone burns this world to the ground.”
Saiph left Wisteria with the assurance that his guild would take up regular patrols around the area to keep people safe. Will’s guild had a lot of high level crafters and those not fighting had already gone to the task of rebuilding Pella.
Saiph reached into his bag and pulled out the summoning whistle Permaphrost had sent him in addition to his armor. He blew into it, summoning his long-time mount, a seven-headed hydra he’d named Pleiades.
Pleiades took off climbing higher into the sky before turning southwards to Araedi, leaving Saiph to think with the weight of not one, but two worlds on his back.