Avara did indeed have a minute to talk. She told Starla to go to the launch site and see who was around and she would send out feelers to see who else would come.

Adelynn read the note she got from Zid the Shadow. High Lord Vantanius was being blackmailed by the goblin queen and could no longer be trusted! Adelynn stared at the note for a bit and finally said, “Well, yeah, I could tell Vantanius was guilty of something. He was really twitchy and paranoid.”

“The NPCs don’t hide their ‘feelings’ very well, do they?” said Starla.

“No, they don’t.”

“Maybe that’s a good thing.” Said Starla. “Oh boy, Nexy is bringing a friend. Glad I changed back; she’d never let me hear the end of it if she figured out who Nyx was.”

“Why’s that?”

Starla shrugged. “A myriad of little reasons; let’s just leave that there.”

“Alright, whatever.” Said Adelynn. A doorbell rang out in Starla’s house and Adelynn went over to open the door. “It’s Avara!” she said opening the door.

“Hi!” said Avara. “Grats on level thirty! Here!” She thrust a package toward Adelynn.

“You can’t keep doing this.” Said Adelynn taking it from her.

“I mean, you’re right about that.” Said Avara. “Soon you’ll hit fifty and have to travel all over doing weird things and getting exotic materials to make your own stuff and I won’t be able to spoil you anymore.”

Avara scurried in as she spotted Nexy coming down the path with her friend in tow. “Oh, by his fangs she brought a dwarf!” said Avara.

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” asked Adelynn.

Starla smirked. “Avara will be nice to everyone she can, even Dwarves, but they have to keep their distance.”

“Why’s that?”

“They smell so bad!” answered Avara. “Like year old gym shorts wrapped in a moldy bologna sandwich.”

The doorbell rang again and Adelynn opened it up. “Hi Nexy and friend.”

A four and a half foot tall and wide fella in clean, sparkling armor smiled at her. “Hey. Nice to meet you.” To Adelynn he was clean and well kept and smelled of old campfires and good times. His beard was well groomed and he wore his dirty blonde hair in a sort of longer-than-normal faux hawk, She glanced over to Avara who was getting a little blue in the face.

“Breathe!” she said to Avara, who shook her head before running deeper into the house.

“Silly elves.” Said the Dwarf holding up a meaty hand. Adelynn took it and he shook it gently and released it. “I’m Steve.”

Adelynn snorted. “Adelynn.” She said.

“What?” asked Steve.

“I expected a fantasy name, you know, like Nexy or Avara or…”

“Or your name princess?” he said with a little bow.

“Well, yeah.” She said.

“I’m Steve Storf, Dwarven Defender of Damsels.” Adelynn couldn’t help but smile, he was laying it on thick. She thought he was rather dashing for a dwarf, but she hadn’t met any others in the game yet. A message popped into her status window. ‘Avara is inviting you to a party, Join?’

“Yes?” she said aloud, but that was good enough. A section appeared in the corner of her eye with Avara, Nexy, Steve and Starla’s information.

Adelynn joined Avara in the back of the house and began to equip the armor she’d gotten her. She’d already slotted speed runes into the armor for her, higher level things than Adelynn could use or get at any rate.

“Avara, you’re spoiling me!”

Avara looked up and smiled, the color had returned to her face a bit. She popped a pill and downed it with a bottle of blue liquid. “Blech. And whatever! You’re a friend, I’m allowed to spoil you!”

Adelynn smiled. “I’ll pay you back someday!”

Avara shook her head. “I want you to imagine a swimming pool and then someone scooping a spoonful of water out.”

“Okay?”

“That’s how much it costs me to get you things.” Said Avara.

“Wow. That much?”

Avara winked. “I am a soothsayer after all and for whatever reason my soothsaying works outside of Mythticle as well as within.”

“You can get me the next SuperBall Lottery numbers?”

Avara looked up and back at her. “Twelve, sixteen, twenty-seven, thirty-three, fourty-five, seventy-eight, ninty-nine, one-oh-one and the extra number is a… two.”

Adelynn smirked. “Ha ha.”

Avara shrugged. “Teiresias had this problem too.”

Adelynn finished putting on her new armor and it looked fantastic on her. She pulled out a shield and long sword. “I’ve got this though.” She said and pulled out Arzuse.

Avara stared at Arzuse for a moment. “I didn’t see this coming.” She muttered something to herself and paced the room while Adelynn assigned skill points to herself and something to Silver. She’d check out what ‘Nightmare Riding’ was later.

“Alright, well, I guess hiccups happen?” said Avara without additional context. “Let’s get the others.”

They stepped out and Starla smiled at her. “The new armor looks good.”

“Thanks.”

“Let’s go down to the docks and pick up anyone who is waiting for this battle.” Said Starla. The five of them made their way down to the water and found a good pile of people waiting. “Hey, who is waiting for the Leviathan fight? Avara is going to invite you.”

Several people raised their hand while others held up a hand and then started sending notices out to friends who didn’t want to wait by the waters edge. Names started popping up down a list in various colors to denote what role they would play in the party. Red for those who could tank a monster, or keep its attention while the damage dealers did the damage. The damage dealers appeared in purple, healers in yellow and party buffers in green.

Starla noticed a green name in the list. Keth’thon Ne’erwell. She looked over and there he was waving at her.

“Why are you here Keth?” she asked.

“Oh, just thought I’d help out these people, you know, same as you, right?” he paused for a moment. “You’ve never been the charitable kind, why are you fighting this?”

“The Leviathan drops a tooth I want to turn into a desk lamp.” Replied Starla.

“You must have many desk lamps.” He replied. Adelynn got the idea that Starla’s go to answer was that she needed a new desk lamp.

“I do love a good desk lamp.” Said Starla. Starla wrote a quick note to Adelynn and sent it over. It was titled ‘Don’t show that you have mail and don’t talk with this guy’. There wasn’t a message in the body of the note.

Adelynn got the idea that she shouldn’t trust that bard and she would be right. She mingled with the other level thirtysomethings who were here to do the quest. There were several handsome and strong looking warrior types, several smaller sized wizard or priestly types and a few shifty looking rogue types. They introduced themselves around and with a final accounting Avara announced she’d be starting the event.

With a short minute countdown everyone was ready to go. Avara was telling Nexy to stay on hold and wait for her signal to fire a full power dark giga blast. Avara turned to Starla. “No Meteors, it’ll capsize the ship.”

“What if we’re losing?” said Starla with a smile.

Avara looked her in the eye and knew she would drop one without hesitation if she sensed the battle was going very poorly. “Fine.” She turned her attention to Steve and started to explain to him a contingency plan and asked if he could handle it.

“Aye, Steve can hold that back.” Said the dwarf.

Starla’s grin got wider. “Are you sure Steve-o?” she asked. “Have you ever seen the meteor spell in action?”

“Nay, but it can’t be that bad.”

Avara was rather green in the gills as the ship took off and floated toward the surface. Through the numerous portholes they could see light getting brighter as they approached the surface. The trip should have been hours long and would have been if the designers of the game hadn’t realized that sitting on a ship for two hours would be dull as dishwater only for a monster to attack and wipe the party.

A klaxon went off all around them and magical red lights flashed. The captain announced they were doing an emergency surface to try to get some speed because of a large creature approaching the ship. Everyone was on edge as the ship shuddered and shook from an impact. The captain swore and announced an emergency surface maneuver.

Normally, a maneuver such as this would create terrible decompression sickness, but well, supposedly, they were at the same atmospheric pressure as the surface. With a whoosh and a fwump, the ship surfaced and the captain announced that anyone who could help with the monster needed to get up on deck now.

The large party ran as one up into the near blinding sunlight. Avara held her hand aloft and screamed out some elven words and clouds began to swirl overhead and darkened the whole area to everyone’s relief.

“Wait, can she just control the weather?” asked Adelynn. “All those times she gave reports and she can just do that?”

Avara smiled. “Only natural weather patterns spawn the things you were looking for.” She explained. “Nexy! Get into position! Tanks, catch incoming bombardment, healers keep them up! Hit it when you can DPS.”

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Before them a massive creature, easily miles long roared to the surface. Adelynn hadn’t ever seen anything so large that could move that easily. Its mouth could almost close around the entire ship.

“Watch out for damage zones!” yelled Starla as pustules on the Leviathan’s back exploded open and launched solid blobs at the ship. Steve Storf ran for the largest one and with a battle cry and a good use of his own mana pool, struck it and stopped it cold while trying to launch it back. It didn’t go as far as it needed to, but it didn’t hit anyone. The smaller blobs mostly were stopped, but that weren’t launched away stuck to the ship.

“Stay away from those!” Avara shouted. “Or cut them in half! One of the two!”

The lower-level mages were throwing attack spells as fast as they could. Fire and lightning lanced out and struck the creature, dealing damage, but its health bar was barely moving. Adelynn moved to a nodule and brought Arzuse down on it with a splorch. It squealed a bit and dissolved into slime. She ran to hit another.

“I’m so slow like this!” thought Adelynn. “I’ll never get to these in time…”

They started glowing and flashing and she ran away from the next one before it exploded in a ball of sticky fire. The healers were throwing spells at the lower-level tanks and picking up one of the players who stayed too close to a nodule as it exploded.

It was a bit of chaos and Adelynn wasn’t used to it. She felt herself getting lost not really knowing what to do next, but she took a deep breath and listened to Avara’s instructions. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a lance of light slice across the heavens and strike the Leviathan in the eye. Its scream was loud, but Adelynn had heard worse noises.

The nodules stopped raining down and the Leviathan grew thousands of spindly tentacles from all around its head. They started shooting down toward the party and Adelynn heard singing from someone. She turned to see Keth’thon Ne’erwell playing a flashing guitar and singing a song that was at least seventy-five years old to avoid copyright issues.

I wrote her off for the tenth time today

And practiced all the things I would say,

Adelynn felt the strength and speed buff in her body. He was post fifty, so his song and buffs would do quite a bit, even to a lower-level character. She slashed at the thin tentacles as she went and she felt a big dippy grin on her face. She was enjoying this way too much.

But she came over I lost my nerve

I took her back and made her dessert!

Adelynn had never heard that song before, since most music she listened to was from the twenty-sixties, but it seemed to have a good beat and the lyrics could just be yelled over the din of battle.

“Storf!” yelled Avara. “Prepare to—” she looked over at Adelynn. “Handle the smaller stuff!”

“Aye.” Yelled Steve Storf back. He thought she must have a plan.

Adelynn saw the pustules on the Leviathan’s back growing back and squirming. Did Avara think that she would do something about the large one? Could she just cut it in half as it was coming in? Adelynn thought she could.

“Silver!” she called and her horse appeared on deck. He was a bit brighter and shinier than last time and his eyes and hooves burned with a silver and gold radiance. She got on him thinking to inquire as to why he’d changed a bit while other players looked at her like she’d lost her mind. With a rapid fire barrage the pustules were launched again at the ship. The mages tried to keep their focus on the Leviathan while the others kept them safe, but the tanks were having a difficult time.

“Wall of Light!” Yelled Steve as he held up his shield. It covered half the ship with a force field that most of the players scurried behind for cover.

Adelynn ran toward the location of the large one that needed to be dealt with. It approached her at high speed and she held up Arzuse and swung him down with a shout of “Divide!” She hadn’t used Divide in quite a bit, or with as strong a weapon, or with the pile of skill points she just dumped into it. The wedge she threw sliced entirely through the glob and kept going before striking the Leviathan in a nostril and opening a deep gash.

I may be dumb but I'm not a dweeb

I'm just a sucker with—What the hell was that!?

The bardic music buff would last for another thirty seconds since he was interrupted. Adelynn looked down and realized they were not on the deck of the ship. Silver was running through the air. “You’re supposed to grow wings!” she yelled at him with a smile on her face. “Forward!” A beam of light sliced through the sky and bored into the Leviathan as she rode over to it. The Leviathan was enormous, but she felt no fear and no hesitation. Silver took her very close to it and she slashed a long shallow cut along its face.

“I need to get closer Silver!” she yelled over the wind and he charged up into the sky as she held on. She turned to see Starla shining surrounded in flames and Nexy surrounded in a thick, deep purple energy. “Let’s make her a good spot to throw that megaflare.” She said to Silver.

What she hadn’t noticed was Avara throwing out slowly moving magical circles the size of barn door and as thick as paper. They occasionally caught the light and shimmered with a purple sheen, but mostly they just hung in the air.

Nexy had noticed the magical circles and thought Avara must be mad to think that they’d line up the way she wanted them to, but whatever, it was her show. There must have been twenty of them floating around and just lazily getting to wherever they needed to be. The Leviathan wasn’t even near half of them yet. Nexy just kept building power in the Dark Gigablast, she hadn’t reached her limit yet, but it fed on dark emotions and keeping that up for a long time was taxing.

Adelynn soared over the Leviathan and said to Silver, “I know you’ll catch me if I fall.” Before she leapt off. Silver’s eyes grew wide because while that was true, he wasn’t expecting that in the slightest. He muttered the horse equivalent of “Wait, what?” before he chased after her.

Adelynn increased speed and her theory, while untested, was that speed effected the power of the Divide and Conquer. She felt the magic welling up inside her as she plunged headfirst into the fat snout of the Leviathan with a cry of “Divide this!”

The wedge pushed through layers of blubber into bone and cartilage, through nasal slime into the roof of its mouth and through its many tongues and out the bottom jaw with Adelynn right behind it. She had a moment to see the water far below her before a flash of Silver slammed into her and knocked the wind out of her momentarily.

The Leviathan screamed out in pain and the boat shook from the noise. A large split had opened across its face, but due to the size of the creature, it still looked barely wounded.

Show them the fury of Mega Flare!

Starla finished the spell and the split lit up with the light the sun with the familiar zwoop zwoop noise before detonating. The Leviathan thrashed and screamed and sent the boat rocking. Several lower-level players were thrown up into the air or launched directly into the ocean. Steve Storf was making an area of stability and anyone behind him barely felt the rocking motion.

Avara threw out one last magic circle that floated closer to Nexy. “Alright, hit that one! Now!”

From where darkness comes darkness now goes! Gigablast!

Nexy unleashed the spell and the power she’d gathered slammed into Avara’s circle which amplified and redirected the beam. The purplish black energy hit another of Avara’s magic circles and bounced to another magic circle, blasted through the Leviathan and then bounced again to another. Avara’s magic reflectors were in the perfect spot to redirect the dark gigablast through the Leviathan over and over. With each reflection the creature screamed and thrashed to get out of the way, only to blunder into where the next beam would bounce to. When the dark gigablast was finally done, the Leviathan was full of large, weeping holes and all it could do was thrash around; wounded and angry.

Keth’thon just stared at the sight of it all. First of all, how did she know where it would be? Secondly, surely the fight was over now, it had reached the point where the Leviathan would turn and run like it was scripted to. He looked over and saw some of the healers raising some falling players and figured that would be that. Victory signal should come any second now.

The Leviathan should have just turned and run at this moment, but something was different this time. This time, the Leviathan felt angry, an emotion it rarely experienced. Before it had been magically compelled to eat this ship with a promise that it was delicious and full of squishy treats, but now, now the ship had hurt it and it was enraged. It reared back and launched an assault of its tongue tentacles while screaming out its fury.

Avara hadn’t seen this behavior from the Leviathan either, but she knew something was going to go wrong with it today. “Alright Steve, be ready to keep the ship from rolling.”

“Aye.” He replied. His shielding protected the squishy wizards and healers while the others were hacking away at thrashing tentacles. One of the rogues didn’t notice a tentacle in time and it snagged his leg and dragged him towards the Leviathan’s mouth. He was halfway to the maw when a silver blur cut the tentacle and rescued him, returning him to the ship. He looked up at Adelynn, her body covered in greenish slime and thanked her.

Adelynn slid off Silver and staggered over to where Steve Storf was protecting the pile of squishy players. “I need a heal please.” She said sitting down. One of the healers rushed to her aid, a rather tall skinny girl who made a face of disgust as she pushed her hands through the thick slime to administer the spell. Adelynn smirked at her facial expression, but understood completely. She felt like she’d never be clean again.

Nexy joined the group from where she’d been on the back of the ship and held out a hand to throw the ‘instant shower’ spell at Adelynn. The healer got herself splattered in clean water, but it was better than Leviathan snot any day.

“Thanks…” Adelynn read the name on the party list. “Rhynna?”

Rhynna smiled. “You pronounced it correctly! That’s a first.”

High above in the sky, sitting on her magic broom, Starla was pulling in more power and energy with each word spoken.

Brighter than all the stars,

I call out to you beyond time and space,

Hear my words and come to this place.

Adelynn heard a bit of the words and told Steve that a meteor was coming.

Our foes will forever fear my ire,

As we rain down incandescent fire.

The other mages looked up, they’d never seen this spell. The Leviathan even seemed to take a moment to wonder why the sky was turning black.

See your target with a baleful eye,

Break the heavens and shatter the sky!

“Now Steve!” called Avara. Steve Storf wasted no time in proving what a Dwarven Defender could do. He slammed the bottom edge of his shield into the ship and called out to the Dwarven kings of old to protect everyone on board with Maximum Defense! A bubble of golden light spread out from all the edges of his shield to penetrate the ship and cover the party. The stragglers who had not yet dived for cover ran to get inside. Even the ship stopped rocking in the waves, his action causing the ship to seemingly be bolted in place. The sky ran through with glowing cracks which shattered with a tumultuous crash.

Come forth … Meteor!

Adelynn had seen it before, but still sat transfixed on the white-hot boulder that came through the hole into space. For an instant everything seemed to stand still and even the ocean seemed to hold its breath, but then the meteor sped down and crashed into the Leviathan’s open maw. It didn’t have a chance to scream as the meteor kept going down its throat, splitting its body apart like an overstuffed sausage.

Steve Storf felt the shockwave of the meteor hit his shields and he and everything he was attached to shifted backwards, until he summoned additional Dwarven strength he didn’t know he had and pushed it into his defensive barrier. Nothing had yet moved him in Maximum Defense mode, and he was equal parts annoyed and impressed that he’d found something he couldn’t stop.

The gauge showing the Leviathan’s remaining health dropped to zero and its remains crashed down creating a massive wave that washed up and over Steve Storf and his shield and over the ship. The crew and captain were below decks scrambling to deal with the many leaks that had opened up, but they were in no danger of sinking. When Steve was certain that the Leviathan was no longer going to move, he dropped his shield and the ship again resumed its undulations in the waves.

All was quiet, save for the space hooker on her silly magic broom who scooped something out of the remains and returned to the ship. She planted a five-foot-long tooth-spine in the wood and looked at Keth’thon, “See, won’t this make a nice desk lamp?”

Victory music rang out from below decks and the somewhat shellshocked lower-level characters received rewards from the encounter. Adelynn looked at the list of things and was surprised to see a high-grade achievement of ‘Leviathan Slayer’.

“Good job everyone!” said Avara. “We didn’t just drive it off, but trounced it. I think we’re the first players to even get that achievement.”

A few of the lower-level characters made an attempt at a cheer, but were tired, wounded, traumatized or unconscious. Once everyone was up Avara made a point of getting everyone to squeeze in to get a picture, with the Leviathan’s half exploded corpse in the background. Avara managed to snag a picture of the higher-level group and included Adelynn, just so she could give her that photo later in a nice frame.

Once the ship was ready to continue, the rest of the ride was smooth sailing. Adelynn added Steve Storf and Rhynna Thallso to her friends list and the captain and his crew held a bit of a victory party for the victors which included a sweet rum that really took the edge off the experience that had just happened. Within a half an hour the trauma had vanished to be replaced with a mild drunkenness.

Starla was sitting at a table with Steve Storf and were discussing the ins and outs of various game mechanics and when Adelynn sat down with them they changed the topic. “I was just telling Steve that if I ever run into him in the PVP arena that I’m testing his shields with a proper direct hit meteor.” Said Starla.

“Aye.” Replied Steve. “I wouldn’t expect anything less. Now that I’ve seen it, I know I still have some way to go to perfect the defense.”

A bell rang out in the cabin signaling that the ride was coming to a close and to please disembark. Everyone stood up and Starla shook Steve Storf’s meaty hand. “Nice working with you.”

“Aye, thanks for accepting the friend request.”

Adelynn gave Steve Storf a friendly hug. “That was impressive. See you later.”

He gave her a wink. “But of course.” He replied.

Starla held her hand out and Adelynn took it and together they walked off toward their next stop.