Zoe

  When Zoe heard the approaching chants, she flicked her camera toward the inner part of [Gorias] to try to get a glimpse of what was coming toward them, but she couldn’t actually see anything.

  It didn’t help that she was also in the middle of a fight with a ton of mobs that posed no challenge aside from their numbers. They went down so quickly that the combat was fairly boring, but with so many enemies, she still had to pay attention.

  Bisky and Firo were still on the wall over the gate, where the wall had thinner crenellations for archers and mages to launch attacks from, which thankfully didn’t leave as much space for ladders to latch on due to the height of the wall. The healers were standing behind them, also in the safer zone.

  Caoimhe was defending that half of the party the best she could - which was very well. Her [Greatsword] attacks cleaved through multiple enemies at a time, basically creating a wall of death that the enemies couldn’t pass.

  Nyx had used [Shadow Slip] to position herself on the far side of the wall, on the opposite side of the group of enemies from Caoimhe. She had positioned herself with a tower to her back, which hadn’t yet been breached, so she was able to keep all of the danger in front of her, pressed between her and Caoimhe.

  The section of the wall that they currently danced on had enough space for four ladders to be set, and the enemies were pushing up faster than they could take them out. Zoe was pretty sure if she could fight her way to a ladder, there would probably be a prompt to knock it down, or she could attack the spikes holding it in place.

  Unfortunately, she wasn’t gaining any ground despite how many enemies she was able to remove from her path. She considered using [Shadow Slip] to put herself right next to one of the ladders, but it would also leave her completely surrounded.

  Zoe flicked her camera out toward the city again, and still didn’t see whatever back up was headed their way. She sighed. “Should I try something stupid?”

  “How stupid we talking here?” Fiona asked.

  “Teleporting into the mass of enemies to try to knock down a ladder or two.”

  “You think you can slip in and out without dying?” Cass asked, as she kept throwing her firebombs over the edge of the wall while intermittently healing.

  “Not sure. My plan is to try stealth and see what happens. I might be able to fight my way out if the worst happens.” Zoe said, shrugging.

  “Fuck it, we’re like 3 minutes into this. If we wipe, we wipe. The intel is worth it.” Fiona said.

  “Yeah, just do it.” Firo echoed the sentiment, and that was enough for Zoe.

  She picked her target out among the crowd; a Fomorian that was just climbing over the wall. As soon as she felt safe that appearing behind it with [Shadow Slip] wouldn’t simply place her in the open air by the ladder, she hit the button. With a poof of shadowy wisps, Nyx vanished and reappeared just behind her target.

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  [Shadow Slip] came with a built in 2 seconds of [Stealth], which was enough time for her to pop [Cloak], her regular [Stealth] skill. Thankfully, because she never broke her [Stealth] after teleporting, the enemies didn’t seem to take note of her. They did start to fill up more of the wall, though, as she wasn’t culling their numbers anymore.

  Nyx turned toward the ladder, and found no prompt or anything to interact with. But she did see an HP bar pop up for the [Ladder Hooks]. She blew out a strained breath, which must have audibly gone over the chat.

  “What?”

  “I can attack the ladder’s hooks, presumably to remove it. But if I attack, it’ll break stealth.” Zoe said. She was at least relieved that [Stealth] effects in Mag Mell didn’t have time limits, so she wasn’t under that pressure. But she still had to decide fast.

  “Just do it.” Cass said, turning Evie away from her stash of firebombs. She was actually working from Zoe’s barrel now, so her own must have run out. “I’ll cover you.”

  “Be careful.” Mellody said, keeping up the firebombing. It seemed to be rather effective, so having someone on it was good. “Caoimhe, watch out for us drawing aggro this way.”

  “Gotcha.” Caoimhe said, still just acting as a wall of blades.

  Zoe took a deep breath and started to smash her attacks against the [Ladder Hooks]. The enemies surrounding her immediately turned toward her as a target just suddenly appeared for them.

  [Dagger Dance], [Knife Work], and [Knife’s Edge] were her first buttons pressed. They were each multi-hit, single target attacks without any real added effects. Zoe was regretting her choice to swap from [Knife] to [Dirge] as she hacked away at the ladder. [Dirge] was very focused on bleeds and poisons and the like, most of which wouldn’t have any effect on inanimate object enemies.

  By the time she had the [Ladder Hooks] almost destroyed at 20%, her own health was dropping under 5,000, even with the healing coming in from Evie. Zoe popped [Smoke Bomb], a mitigation type skill that made her harder to hit.

  “I’m not drawing them off you at all, Nyx.” Cass said. “I think you’re generating aggro by attacking the ladder.”

  “Well shit.” Zoe said. “At least this first one is down, just keep me up.”

  “I’m trying.”

  A final attack finally destroyed the [Ladder Hooks], and a prompt popped up for her to [Shove the Ladder] - which she did immediately. The third ladder in the row of four counting from the safe side was dislodged and flung backward from the wall. The metal crashed on some of the mobs in the army, which was a nice bonus.

  But even with her task done, it left Nyx standing near the edge of the wall completely surrounded and undefended, especially with [Smoke Bomb] wearing off. At worst, [Shadow Slip] would be off cooldown in ten seconds, so she could escape then if her HP held up.

  As she turned around to try to fight her way out in the meantime, she finally saw the source of the war chanting coming toward the wall. There was a whole unit of [Tuatha Dé] soldiers headed toward their position, at least. They were fully armored and looked more official than most of the soldiers around them now, who looked more like city guards or militia.

  “Back up's finally here.” She said, while striking at the nearest Fomorians. They still folded just as quickly as before, but there were enough already on the wall and still climbing up to replace the fallen.

  Right as Nyx fell to under 2,000 HP, Evie blasted her with one of her big cooldowns, popping her back up to 10,000 in an instant. She used that boost to fight her way to a point where she could [Shadow Slip] out to an enemy right in front of Caoimhe - who was then cut down, setting her free.

  Zoe let out a relieved breath. Even if it turned out that she may have put herself in real danger there for little return.

  “Fancy seeing you here, Nyx.” Caoimhe said, chuckling, as they immediately went to work together.

  “Happy to be here, boss.”

  “Where’s that back up?” Fiona called, sounding bored. “I desperately want them to take over here and give us something actually fun to fight.”

  Bisky laughed at that. “This turned out to be much more boring than I expected, given how badly we failed earlier.”

  “We just did what we were supposed to this time.” Mello said. “Also, they're just about here, Fiona.”

  “Thank god.”

  “You’re welcome.” Caoimhe said, sounding distinctly smug.

  “Shut up, dad.” Zoe snarked with a light chuckle. There were a few scattered chuckles in chat too, which made her smile, especially when she saw Caoimhe use [Mass Devastation], for which the animation just looked fed up and annoyed, as if she was responding to being called out.

  And then, finally, a text box popped up as the new NPC reinforcements arrived.

  “Fan out! Reinforce the gate!” The soldier in the lead called, and motioned with a hand for their troops to continue on. And they did so, moving to assist in all the areas that Clan Nettle Tea had held up until now. Several of them took up the spots by the crenels above the gate, nodding to Firo and Bisky before taking up their positions.

  Four soldiers took over for Nyx and Caoimhe, who looked like they were equipped as a small party - one carried a big shield, one an axe, and the other two had staves. They slipped into the spot where Caoimhe and Nyx had been fighting and waved them off.

  As Zoe was running Nyx down the steps, she saw Fiona and Aleister running away from the gate, so they must have been relieved as well. And then the [Tuatha Dé] commander that had arrived waving caught her attention, and the entire party flowed in that direction.

  Once she got closer, Zoe realized that the area directly in front of the commander was a lightly glowing blue circle.

  “No way we cleared this already.” She muttered. “It’d be too short.”

  “Basically a trash pull then, I guess?” Firo asked.

  “Well, we didn’t get the cleared message so it’s still anyone’s guess.” Mello said, as he and Evie pulled up the rear. Everyone gathered into the circle with plenty of room to spare, and as soon as Evie crossed into the circle, completing the group, the commander spoke.

  “[Uathach] has called for you all. Her contingent is being deployed shortly as a strike force, and she wants you all to report to the field command base by the main gate.” The NPC pointed off to the East, the opposite from the gate they had originally entered the city from.

  “Head there. I’m told your mounts are already waiting for you.”

  A soldier from the wall screamed and suddenly a body thudded to the ground near the party while they were talking with the NPC. They were a ways from the wall, which meant the body had to be flung quite the distance to land there; the entire party swung around at once to see what was happening.

  There was a large, heavily armored Fomorian standing on the wall. They were covered in huge dark red plates of spiked armor, many of which were rounded in weird ways. They even appeared to have two huge spiked shields attached to the gauntlets instead of a weapon.

  “I wonder if we knocked more of the ladders down, if we could’ve skipped this?” Zoe wondered aloud as they watched the enemy jump and do a cannonball onto the soldiers below.

  To the [Tuathe dé] soldiers’ credit, they quickly closed ranks and returned to fighting on and around the wall. Some formed up around the new enemy, but they were being shrugged off.

  “Alright. Let’s deal with that one before you go,” the commander said, before charging toward the melee at the gate.

  “That tracks.” Bisky laughed.

  “Let’s get in there!” Fiona yelled and immediately charged. The party followed behind, everyone raring to have some real combat, even though no one said it aloud.

  As they approached the enemy, their design became more apparent to Zoe. The metal armor plates were indeed red, but it was from dried blood. The color was dark and splotchy rather than appearing to be a dye job or painted.

  And notably the lack of a weapon didn’t seem to hinder this thing from fighting at all. It was easily dealing with the soldiers attacking it, impaling attackers on the spiked armor pieces before shoving them off the spikes.

  In the final moments of the party’s approach, a ring of soldiers attacked in unison, only to be easily rebuffed. The enemy had curled into a ball, the oddly shaped metal plates fitting neatly together into a round, completed - and spiked - shell. When the NPCs’ attacks landed, the Fomorian quickly rolled around unfazed by the attacks, rolling straight over some of the soldiers.

  “Oh for fuck’s sake. It’s a giant metal hedgehog,” Aleister sighed.

  “Sure is. Good luck, melee.” Bisky laughed.

  By the time they were in range to start the fight, most of the NPC allies they had were either wounded, or being pulled away by those who could still walk unaided.

  As the boss uncurled itself back into its hunched but standing stance, the nameplate appeared above its head.

  [Spio the Bastion]

  Fiona laughed, a long and hearty sound. “Oh, I bet this guy’ll drop a really good shield.”