West of the Spiderlings’ Website, Godsfall Mountains. Day 05.
“Were there this many peryton out here even in the game?” Saiph asked as he caught one of the charging moose-like beasts with his shield, its twin sets of antlers jutting past either side of his shield. He grunted, shoving it off just as its scorpion-like tail rose to stab him.
Orbnus swooped down and opened a rend in reality, pulling white liquid fire from the hole, splashing it on the peryton Saiph had knocked back, the spell’s area of effect caught fire to two more of the beasts beside it. All three bellowed and roared in pain as the flames consumed them.
“This and more!” Shouted Spiderren as he thrust his lance into the side of another peryton. The Dragoon laughed as he added, “Whole herd of them!”
Saiph raised his hammer and slammed the head into the ground, electrocuting and knocking down a group of peryton in front of him. More Spiderlings in their spider forms leapt to take advantage of the disarray, delivering venomous bites that paralyzed and weakened the stunned peryton.
It had taken the better part of the day to fight from the spiderlings’ website at the first safe zone to the second and third. Once they'd found the second, a logic to their new positions had been found. They'd shifted in roughly the same ratio as the distance between Castera and Araedi, which Orbnus and Jack had confirmed.
Not everyone had flying mounts and so the combined forces of Saiph’s party and the spiderling guild had had to battle their way through scores of goblins, peryton, and other monsters hiding in the lands beneath the floating Godsfall Mountains. Saiph was beginning to feel like someone out there was intentionally throwing everything on the continent at them to slow them down.
Saiph removed his helmet and wiped sweat from his brow in the brief respite. Looking due west, he could just make out the faint dot that was Pallas’ Watch, which floated like a grey buoy in a sea of earthen greens and browns. Hundreds of little black dots flew between the floating mountains, though Saiph knew those were no birds.
Long, slender-necked with a head crossed between a chicken and the long extinct terror birds Saiph had seen in history documents, cockatrices were also very large. Upwards of the size of a bus, with long, feathery wings.
The cockatrices the spiderlings had seen had chosen the nearby cliffs surrounding Pallas’ Watch as their roosting grounds before heading south for the winter. The truck-sized, fire-breathing, bird-like monsters patrolled the sky with vicious aggression, hunting and killing whatever other flying wildlife had the misfortune of wandering into their airspace.
After clearing the small herd of peryton they'd walked into, the group doubled back and those that could fly helped get those who couldn't up into the flying mountains. From there, they proceeded slowly to get as close as possible to better see what they were up against.
Saiph swore as he looked through his telescope. “So many.”
Nix clapped Saiph on the shoulder. “You knew it couldn’t be that easy. Giant spiders, moose with scorpion tails? Of course something in the sky has to be just as messed up.”
“No, but I hadn’t expected all of the cockatrices on the whole continent to be here. I’m not sure how we’re gonna get through them all. As soon as anything gets closer than about three-quarters of a mile in, they rush it.”
As if to add impact to the statement, a lone eagle-like bird, far larger than any Saiph had ever seen on earth, was torn to shreds by a pair of cockatrices before it had the chance to alter its course after spotting the cabal too late. The pieces of its corpse were fought over, sending meaty chunks falling groundward in the bloody mayhem.
Nix looked through his own telescope, speaking as he scanned the area. “Think we might be able to use that aggression? We lure a few over, kill them, rinse and repeat. Might take a while, but luring's the easiest option.”
It would have been a good plan if the monsters of this world still followed the aggro rules common to most MMOs, where a few could be pulled away from the larger mob without attracting the attention of the rest. That would make clearing the horde easier by breaking it down into smaller steps.
But their fighting from safe zone to safe zone had drawn the attention of everything around them, greatly drawing out each skirmish as new monsters, attracted by the sounds of battle, replaced the ranks of the fallen ones. It would be their luck if they lured a few cockatrices and then all of them came at the sound of their fighting.
“No, I don’t think that’ll work. At least, we’ll have to figure out a way to do it without getting the attention of the whole cabal.” Saiph sat on the ground and played with his dreadlocks as he thought. He watched the spiderlings pulling thick cocoons up from the ground to the top of the asweyr island they had set up camp on. Watching the spiderlings stack their bounty on the island below him made the beginnings of a plan take root in his head. “Or… We only need to get one person to the castle. That way the rest of us could just fast travel to them…”
Saiph stood and called for Nix to follow him. They found WickedWeaver in his spider form, pulling on a long, rope-like strand of webbing up the side of the cliff. He hauled the cocoon up and over, set it on the ground, then turned to Saiph and Nix.
The fact that the spiderlings were trapping and eating the still-living monsters they fought was a little gross, the goblins especially. Saiph forced his discomfort aside by intentionally not looking at the still wriggling cocoons.
“How long did it take you all to put up all that webbing around the first safe zone?” Saiph asked.
That webbing had been some seriously tough stuff when he’d tried to cut through it with Orbnus’ chainsword. His own claymore hadn't been up to the task. Her sword’s spinning saw blade combined with its flame enchantment was what it had taken to cut through.
WickedWeaver’s front-most right leg scratched the top of his head, just above his eight eyes in an unnervingly human gesture. “Took us about a day to put it up, why?”
Saiph let a grin form on his face. “How would you like to catch us some cockatrices?"
***
“A little more to the left!” Spiderren shouted as Saiph and a group of spiderlings heaved a floating asweyr boulder over to the one they had set up camp on.
Saiph and three spiderlings adjusted the direction they were pulling and suddenly two spiderlings dropped from the sky, landing on the asweyr boulder with a long trail of spider silk behind them. They quickly got to work spinning the final football field-sized net while everyone else checked over their gear and got themselves ready.
Saiph, Will-I-Am, Kamila, Quark, Orbnus, and Jack O’Lantern each had the Dragon Warrior variant of their respective classes, which meant each of them could turn into a dragon. All except Kamila would act as the lures to drive the cabal of cockatrices into the nets set up by the spiderlings, the idea being to clear enough of them from the skies to give Kamila a window to break for it.
There were five nets total, positioned in a large semicircle with large gaps between them so as not to crowd each other. As the swiftest and stealthiest of the dragons, Kamila would lead their formation, scouting and watching from above to give important callouts while also waiting for an opening to dash to the guild castle unseen once enough of the cockatrices were dealt with.
Nix, Lueur Rose, Lunette Soleil, and Gimm Easmile would work to distract any stragglers as well as support the dragons and spiderlings as needed.
“Are we ready?” Saiph asked over the raid party chat. A chorus of dozens of “yes’s” answered him back and Saiph gave the thumbs up to the other dragon warriors.
Saiph activated his Dragon Form spell and immediately felt its magic taking hold of him. A third set of limbs sprouted from his shoulders, shifting bone and muscle around as they grew to form wings larger than his now gigantic body. His skin hardened into black scales and the nails on his fingers changed to ice-blue talons.
Saiph let out a roar that was answered by his fellow dragons. They all watched as Kamila, small and slender with black and purple markings, slipped into the sky, the beat of her wings making no sound. They gave her a good head start and were soon off themselves.
Saiph worked powerful wing muscles in fluid movements that felt as natural to him as walking. He rode the updrafts in the air currents, climbing higher into the sky.
“First island on the right, I count six hanging out near a small cave, who wants them?” Kamila called out.
“I’ve got them.” Saiph was already in a dive, holding his wings close to his body as he let gravity pull him groundward.
Opening his wings to their full extension, Saiph caught the wind, slowing considerably as he slammed into the side of the cliff.
Two cockatrices plummeted to the ground, unable to catch themselves from the sudden surprise. Saiph ignored them and blew crystal fire into the cave, sealing it before pulling off into the air again. Three of the extraordinarily territorial monsters immediately gave chase.
The spiderlings’ web was just ahead of Saiph. He pulled his wings in and slipped through a hole slightly off of center that was just large enough for him to fit through with tucked wings.
The three cockatrices slammed into the nearly invisible spider web. It flexed slightly from the impact, but the tough spider silk held. The cockatrices struggled and shrieked as they tried to rip themselves free. Two spiderlings quickly descended from their hiding places above, cocooned them, and reset the trap.
Saiph flew back, catching sight of Quark heading in the opposite direction, his regal red and gold markings standing out against the darkening sky as he led six cockatrices towards his own trap.
They continued their lures, waiting for Kamila to point out a cabal of cockatrices that had drifted far enough away from the others to not attract more than that group.
That changed when Saiph heard Will cursing over their party chat. “Damn it! There was another group hiding below that one—crap, they spotted me!”
“Come this way, we got you!” Lueur Rose replied.
Bright oranges and yellows lit up the sky to Saiph’s left. Will-I-Am was flying towards Lueur Rose and Lunette Soleil. Trailing him were over twenty cockatrices and more were joining from the opposite direction.
Rose was a machine gun. Her high attack speed build let her send rapid-fire flame-enchanted arrows which lit the path they intersected with the cockatrices like tracers, sending some reeling while lucky critical strikes outright killed a handful.
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A giant ball of fire erupted in the middle of the cabal chasing Will, the flames engulfing and knocking them out of the sky like burning twigs. As effective as Lunette’s pyromantic attack was, it also drew the attention of even more cockatrices from further away.
Well, there goes the element of surprise, Saiph thought as hundreds suddenly filled the skies, pouring out of the caves and forests along the floating asweyr mountains. They turned the dark blue sky black with their sea of shifting bodies.
“Get these things off of me!” Will shouted as the six cockatrices that had made it through the fireball latched onto him, tearing and biting at his flesh.
“Swing around to your right, I got you!” Jack O’Lantern replied.
Jack caught up to Will, latching onto one of the cockatrices on Will’s back with talons, throwing it aside and hitting another in flight. The two of them turned in the direction of Rose and Lunette. The bright yellow, rapid streaks of Rose’s arrows and the slow, orange trails of Lunette’s pyromantic magic looking like fireworks going off around the two dragons.
Saiph came to Will’s aid next, grabbing one cockatrice by the neck with his powerful jaws, he yanked it free of Will’s wing. He felt bone and spinal cord crushed by his teeth as the taste of blood filled his mouth. He tossed the limp, ragged form aside and reached for another.
The pair had been forced to change direction, pulling away from the aerial maelstrom that was opening above Lueur Rose and Lunette Soleil. Saiph only realized how close they'd been driven near his guild castle when a bright streak of white light filled the sky coming from the direction of Pallas’ Watch. A loud boom thundered around them, the shockwave and crystal shards from the explosion forcing even Saiph to fight to stay in the air. He had to dive to pick up the speed he'd lost and was now well below the fighting overhead.
Ba-doom. Another streak of white. Ba-doom. And another. Each one followed by explosions whose airbursts swatted more and more cockatrices out of the air around them.
“Kamila, fly towards the castle and get to the Caer Fragment!” Saiph called out. Someone at the castle knew they were out here and was giving them aid. Saiph was determined to make use of it. “The rest of us, this is now full on distraction mode. We'll fly into the horde if we have to, just keep all of them focused on us!”
The sky became a dazzling display of light as the fire breathing cockatrices clashed with Saiph and his group. He belted out blue crystal fire, catching many and sending their partially crystalized bodies plunging to their deaths.
Despite how many he took out, more seemed to fill in their ranks. Three cockatrices dropped onto Saiph’s back, followed by three more. They bit at the plates running down his spine, tearing them free as even more landed on him. Their added bulk sent Saiph and the cockatrices into freefall.
His health bar continued to drop and the wounds stopped their instantaneous healing as his health finally fell below a quarter.
Kamila cried out and Saiph saw her health plummeting in the corner of his HUD. He could just barely see her falling ahead of him.
Saiph let out a defiant roar, then grabbed at one of the cockatrices biting at his arm. He threw it aside and forced open his wings as wide as he could. The air catching him sent a shock of pain through his joints and he was almost certain he’d torn a wing membrane. But the act had had the effect he’d wanted, all of the monsters clinging to him had been thrown off of him by the sudden air braking.
Saiph landed on a floating asweyr boulder just large enough to hold him and pulled two more cockatrices off his back. He slammed their heads into each other and threw the stunned pair over the side of the cliff.
Wet and sticky blood poured down Saiph’s back, but he forced himself to ignore it. The other cockatrices hadn’t noticed him, which meant it would now be up to him to make the dash for his guild castle.
Allowing himself only a moment’s respite, Saiph threw himself over the edge of his momentary resting place and pushed himself onward. He flew low, barely a handful of dozens of feet above the ground. Even so, some of the territorial monsters spotted him and gave chase.
Saiph blew threatening gouts of crystal flame at them, but the faster, more agile cockatrices dodged the attacks easily. He quickly gave up that idea and focused on pushing himself forward.
He could see the Caer Fragment in the castle’s courtyard.
His stamina dropped below a quarter. He was almost there. Just a little further.
Black crept into the corners of Saiph’s vision and it felt like he was trying to swim through molasses. He could feel his speed slowing as his stamina bar became a sliver.
A green orb of light flashed out of the corner of Saiph’s eye. It pulsed once, then again, enveloping Saiph in a shower of green mana that made him feel more energized and alert.
And suddenly Nix fell onto Saiph’s back, holding tightly, he shouted, “Get going! Don’t make us have to do this again or fight night spawns!”
Stamina bar replenishing, Saiph forced himself higher into the air. He'd begun to list low enough that he would have missed his guild castle.
Two cockatrices dove to meet Saiph with talons extended. He readied to blast them with flame when two arrows met them, catching one in the mouth and the other in the chest.
“Focus on flying, I got you!” Nix shouted.
The courtyard was quickly approaching. Saiph pulled up, clearing the cliff by mere feet before changing back into his human self, tumbling and rolling to a stop and sending Nix rolling as well.
His hammer appeared in his hands as he rolled and he used the momentum of the added weight to drive himself to his feet. Saiph cracked his hammer off the head of the remaining cocktrace that had reached the courtyard with them, noting the stunned debuff it had taken. Nix killed it with a follow up shot with his black, angular bow.
That taken care of, Saiph tapped the Caer fragment and accepted the message to attune himself.
He was instantly transported to Caer Siddi, where he sat on the ground of the chamber panting, though no air entered his lungs. Kamila sat beside him, lying on the ground looking equally as exhausted. She flashed him a thumbs up and a nod.
A notification of a new message from Sinnamon Roll appeared in Saiph’s heads up display. He dismissed it knowing he was far too tired to answer it just yet. Later, he told himself. Rest now.
But not too much rest. He had friends waiting for him to give them a way to his castle. Saiph heaved himself to his feet and reached over, giving Kamila a hand. “We should get back down there,” he mouthed, gesturing to the center crystal monolith.
Kamila clasped his hand and he pulled her to her feet. The central pillar flared to life, showing a view of the Pallas’ Watch’s courtyard. Saiph almost stepped through it before Lueur Rose and Lunette Soleil appeared inside the chamber, their health bars locked at a quarter. Saiph raised an eyebrow at the pair.
“Fastest way to leave combat. We jumped for it,” Rose answered through their voice chat, her face a large smirk.
Saiph smiled and stepped through the portal as more of their party joined them moments later, each dragon and spiderling following the lead to quickly leave combat.
Saiph waited for Will and the two walked towards the castle’s main doors. Will's eyes never left the castle's defenses as they continued their retorts, airburst explosions making short work of the few cockatrices bold enough to try and get to them.
“I have got to get me one of those cannons,” Will said with admiration.
“Where would you even put it?” Saiph asked, watching yet another white streak head away from the castle tower.
Will shrugged. “Who cares? I’d have a giant cannon.” He glanced back up at the tower, scratching his furry chin in thought. “Though I might have a few ideas…”
The two stopped at the door and Saiph took a deep breath. Somewhere on the other side, someone was using his dead girlfriend’s account. They had ignored his messages and calls, but he could still see their location on his map due to her account being on his friends list. They hadn’t left the guild castle in the last four days.
A part of him hoped he would find Riley alive and well. That part of him still hoped this was all a dream and that he'd wake up any minute now.
But the other part of him, the part that had accepted this new reality, dreaded what he'd find beyond these doors. It wouldn't be her and he would be angry with whoever had stolen her account and been pulled here with him and the millions of other players around the continent. It was almost a desecration to know someone was walking around in her body.
“Well, are we going in or not?” Will asked, pulling Saiph from his thoughts.
Saiph nodded and pushed open the doors. The central lobby looked almost like how Saiph remembered it had looked in the game. There were a few stark differences. The roof had partially collapsed, surrounding the fountain in the center of the lobby with greystone that had been weathered to a path. Weeds and vines had overrun what had once been a garden beside the fountain.
"Is anyone here?" Saiph shouted.
No answer.
Saiph looked into Riley’s room, which was to the right of the statue. The room was dark, but a quick browse through the guild’s focus crystal’s options fixed that.
It was definitely her room. On the desk against the window were several books whose titles referenced potion crafting and other alchemical topics. If whoever was using Riley’s account wasn’t here, then where could they be? It was a large castle, he could spend days searching every inch.
Saiph left the room and went to WickedWeaver. “There are extra rooms on the upper floors, feel free to take as many as you need. Let me know if you guys find anything up there. I’m going to have a look around in our guildmates’ old rooms.”
Will called over to Saiph, “I wish I could help you look around more, but I have to get back to Ven Istera to finish that project I started. Let me know if you find anything, whatever it turns out to be.”
“You got it, Will.” Saiph flashed his friend a thumbs up before he stepped through a portal back to the floating city.
Nix sent Saiph a message that said he needed to speak with him privately. Quark and Kamila, both in their owl and bat forms, offered to search one the castle’s four towers. Jack and Orbnus took another, and the spiderlings split themselves among the remaining two and the castle’s upper floors.
“I think I’ve gotten a lead on my new subclass,” Nix said when the two of them were alone.
“Oh?”
Nix had unlocked a new subclass, Soul Forger, in the middle of a dungeon fight against what they’d thought was a monster, but turned out to be another player. There hadn’t been any information in the subclass description and the only two leads they’d had was that apparently one of Nix’s summons, Captain Raine von Alder, had been a soul forger and an item Saiph spawned with, a Token of the Vanguard, was said to have been soul forged from a piece of his own soul.
“Yeah.”
“Are you going to tell me or just drag this out?” Saiph rolled his eyes at Nix.
Nix rolled his back. “I was getting there. Give me a second.”
Nix held out his hand and an arrow appeared in it. He handed it to Saiph. “Notice anything about it?”
“No, it looks like a normal arrow, but it says it's soul forged,” Saiph answered.
“Exactly. Notice my subclass level?”
Saiph opened Nix’s character info. He had reached level four in his subclass.
“How’d you manage that?”
“I used my soul forged weapons while we were fighting those cockatrices. Turns out the subclass behaves the same way other class-altering subclasses work. Every weapon I create counts towards one of my four summoning slots. I haven’t had the chance to figure it out before because I’ve almost always had all my slots used by something else.”
Nix had told Saiph about Raine being a Soul Forger and the new spell she'd given him when the pair had been left alone for dinner the night before. That spell required him to be both a level one hundred summoner and a level five Soul Forger. At the time, he hadn't known how to level his subclass.
Saiph handed the arrow back to Nix. “So another level and you’ll be able to summon Raine using the spell she gave you, right?”
“I was hoping I’d get the last bit of XP in that fight, but I’m still a kill or two short. The amount of XP needed to level is way higher than any other subclass I’ve used.”
“Well, we are in a much more defensible position here at the castle than out there in the cliffs. It shouldn’t be too hard to get you that last bit.” Saiph stopped outside the first door in the hallway to the guildmates’ quarters. “This one’s my room. We can talk here.”
The room was vaguely how he remembered it. Dressers, cabinets, and shelving ringed the large, circular room and in the center, at the bottom a set of stairs, a circular bed large enough for a party of six to lay on made the centerpiece. Taking cues from his Draconic subclass, Saiph had designed it to resemble more of a nest than an actual bed.
He took in the sight of familiar trophies he'd collected from some of the quests he'd gone on with newbies, each one bringing back a memory of a joke, conversation, or funny moment that happened on the journey to getting the item. Though it was what was sitting in the middle of the bed that had Saiph running across the room, forgetting that Nix had even been with him.
He picked up the small, wooden jewelry box and opened the lid. It had its familiar soft creak of the hinges and inside he found a small perfume bottle with an earthy green liquid inside, an envelope stuffed with an assortment of dollar bills and change from earth, and a necklace with an amethyst pendant and an engagement ring with an amethyst halo stone flanked by two diamonds on either side.
Saiph gasped as he picked up the necklace. It had changed. The amethyst pendant had a soft glow to it which pulsed in the rhythm of a slow heartbeat. He pulled the necklace closer to examine it and a text box flashed across his vision.
The message’s introduction sent an icy chill down Saiph’s spine.
Isaac,
If you are reading this message, then I have failed.