Kieran

  By the end of their first handful of pulls, Kieran was really glad that the fight against [áine] was not a one off, because for as much as the party was absolutely failing the fight, they were having a fantastic time with it.

  [áine] was an absolute monster. Her damage was high, and she employed some brutal tricks. Swapping the orientation of the room randomly, the [Befuddled] stacks, unpredictable AoEs, and the like had not only kept the party on their toes, but tested them in ways that the game hadn’t really done so, yet.

  It wasn’t so much that [áine’s] spells were unfair. Her tricks and sudden mechanic swaps basically amounted to the party having less time to react to what was happening. But as long as everyone was patient and prepared, they were able to make it through most mechanics. It just required that everyone was on their toes, and didn’t react too quickly, because almost every mechanic that [áine] threw at them didn’t resolve the way it should at first glance.

  The thorny vine and forced-movement wave was only the first of many tricks she had apparently hidden up her sleeve.

  The pull immediately after that, [áine] didn’t even do the fire beam, swapping in a mechanic they hadn’t seen yet in that spot. She had prepared another lightning spell, and launched it at Fiona, who was still the main tank at that point. It had appeared as though a lightning bolt shot out through Fiona, who had taken a lot of damage and gotten [Paralyzed] by the attack.

  It wasn’t until Evie had noticed that the [Paralyzed] status had spread to two other party members in a matter of seconds along with a decent chunk of damage that the spell had been another instance of chain lightning, but [áine] had somehow hidden the visual effect of the spell. And sure enough, when she told Firo - who was next to take the damage - to run away from the party, him creating distance stopped the chain.

  The mechanic that followed that was the wave and thorns combo again, but she didn’t swap the sides of the arena like the party had expected, leading to another wipe.

  In their fourth attempt, Evan decided he wanted to see what some of the higher stack count effects of [Befuddled] were, so he asked the healers to baby him while he actively collected stacks.

  Kieran spent most of that pull laughing while Fiona ran around trying to get hit by [áine’s] attacks, but she simply wasn’t cooperating. The [Befuddled] stacks seemed to only go up on certain attacks, or when someone was hit by one of [áine’s] tricks. And she wasn’t pulling any funny business while Fiona was actively trying to get hit by them.

  The party had managed to limp their way through a couple mechanics, despite Fiona actively trying to sabotage the fight until [áine] finally used the fire beam. Fiona took the attack in the same way she had the first time, and clashed with it, but didn’t take any of the [Befuddled] stacks like she had the first time.

  As Evan began a string of controlled cursing under his breath, Kieran and a few others in the party just broke down laughing hysterically, no longer able to control themselves. Kieran did note that after the lack of stacks, the Queen didn’t do the sweeping portion of the attack that had originally hit him and Firo, and kept that knowledge tucked away, but was unable to stop laughing.

  “She knew!” Nyx said, sounding like she was on the verge of tears from laughing too hard as she wheezed. “She fucking knew you wanted it.”

  “I hate this boss!” Evan ranted in faux anger, “I hate this boss, I hate this game, I hate these stupid Befuddled stacks, I just want to know what they do, goddamn it!” He yelled, getting progressively louder as he went on. And then suddenly, his mic completely cut off.

  “Uh, Fiona?” Marissa asked, after the party had wiped to a mechanic they hadn’t seen yet, but were too busy laughing during to even begin to try to solve.

  There was a short gap before Evan’s mic seemed to click back on. “Sorry. Sam came in to yell at me, because she was trying to get Eli to sleep a bit.”

  The way that Evan suddenly sounded so incredibly cowed had reignited the party’s laughter, and they had to take a short break to calm down before they were in any sort of state to try the fight again.

  Thankfully, when they did, [áine] cooperated with Evan’s plan to get Fiona so [Befuddled] that she couldn’t function. They confirmed the effect of the first stack, noting that on the second mechanic, Evan couldn’t see the tells that the AoE was a fake one. The second stack once again made the rest of the party members look like [áine] clones, even adjusting their size to be correct.

  The third stack didn’t seem too dangerous at the stage of the fight they were at, as it seemed to alter whichever casting effect [áine] was working with. While the rest of the party saw [áine] preparing for the water elemented cast, Evan saw her casting a lightning spell. That trick could still be overcome with communication, thankfully.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Stack four was where things got more immediately dangerous. And hilarious.

  “Wait, why am I running away from - Oh, this bitch.” Evan said, as soon as he got the fourth stack. “My controls are fucked,” he said, as Fiona was sent off in weird directions, and performing random skills. “Oh yay. They’re not even reversed. It’s actually just random.” He sighed, then continued, “Oh hey. Moving forward is on the F key, back is on A, moving right is my left click.”

  “Bro, what?” Firo said, as the chat devolved into laughter again. “Oh, uh, Fiona. Fire beam is coming.”

  “Five stacks? Hell yeah.” Evan said, as he struggled to get Fiona in any sort of position to take the blast. Kieran could hear Evan smashing his keyboard, trying to trigger as many of his mitigations as possible to survive the attack - not that he had many left.

  “Heavy shielding, incoming.” Evie said between giggles, and while Ash couldn’t get any words out, he did manage to send some shielding to Fiona.

  The rest of the party called out that [áine] was using her left hand this time, so everyone moved to the right to avoid the 180 degree sweep that might follow the attack.

  Fiona took the blast on her shield, but didn’t get the full clash with it, as she didn’t manage a [Perfect Block]. When the [Befuddled] stack went up to five, it immediately became a different debuff entirely and Fiona stopped blocking to just stand in the attack.

  The mitigation plus some very quick thinking on their healers’ parts barely managed to keep Fiona alive until [áine] swept the attack away while laughing.

  “Oh, you poor thing.” The boss teased, “I thought you were a smart one.”

  Firo snorted and said to Evan, “She called you stupid, stupid,” which was more than enough to force everyone else to break down entirely again. Fiona, undeterred, ran toward Bisky and started attacking her. And it did damage.

  “Hey!”

  “It’s not me - I’ve entirely lost control of her.” Evan wheezed.

  “Discombobulated.” Evie read the best she could, “You are so confused that you no longer know what you’re doing. Good luck.”

  “There’s no way that’s the actual description.” Nyx whined.

  “It is…”

  “Okay!” Ash said, trying to get himself under control, “Five stacks is bad!”

  “Mello, I’m pretty sure even one stack is bad.” Marissa said.

  “Even then, four is just as much of a death sentence as five, anyway.” Jazz said. “That’s a level of fucked controls that I don’t think anyone wants to deal with.”

  “And I guarantee that the configuration is different every time. Totally random.” Evan said, as he watched the party get decimated by a round of chain lightning. Or at least, that’s what his screen showed.

  “Firo, you get that shit out of here, right now.”

  “On it.” Firo responded quickly, using [Blink] to separate himself from the party as quickly as possible so the [Lightning Bearer] debuff wouldn’t leap to anyone else. Evie quickly focused on healing him so the damage from it wouldn’t be lethal.

  “What’s next?” Bisky asked no one in particular.

  No one answered her, waiting for [áine’s] casting animation to begin. She didn’t spend much time in between casts doing anything, other than an occasional basic attack that tickled the tank, or laughing at the party when they failed to see through her tricks.

  When the animation started up, Nyx immediately called out “Lighting!” and began moving a bit in response.

  “It’s wind, not lightning. Nyx, you hit three stacks.” Ash said, as everyone began to move.

  “Oh, shit. My bad.”

  “All good.”

  “Guys, we can’t be having bad calls like that anymore.” Jazz said.

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m sorry.” Nyx said. “I’m not used to getting hit by her shit.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s what happens when there’s bad calls. Kieran.” Marissa accused.

  “I said I was sorry! Besides, we hadn’t seen the whole ice - fire - wind combo before. How was I supposed to know how to handle that?” Kieran said defensively.

  “Logic?” Evan laughed. “Half of us did it just fine.”

  “Shut your face, Fiona.” Kieran shot back. He was right though, it did make sense to stand where the ice was melted after the fire attack to avoid being flung across the ice by the room wide wind attack that followed.

  “Lightning is cleared.” Evie said, trying to keep everything on track as Firo moved back toward the group.

  “Fake wind, get out.” Ash said, as one of the few remaining party members who weren’t [Befuddled]. Everyone followed, avoiding the point-blank wind AoE by stepping into what was clearly marked as a danger zone for almost everyone else.

  “Okay, and next…Oh, that’s new.” Ash said, as [áine] began a cast with the white-silver effects similar to her clone spell, but there were some darker wisps mixed in.

  “Eyes up, everyone.” Kieran said as the spell completed.

  “Fuck, I have no eyes,” was the immediate response from Nyx.

  “Really?” Bisky said flatly, sounding disappointed.

  “No, like, actually. My screen is blac - oh there we…go. I’m trapped. Yay.”

  As Nyx trailed off, she, Firo, Fiona and Mellody were all teleported to the edge of the arena, alongside [áine] and her four copies. And as far as everyone remaining could tell, all eight began casting the chain lightning they had seen in this pattern before.

  “Oh what fresh hell is this?” Evie asked, defeated.

  “I dunno, man. Let’s pick one and get to it.” Kieran said, making a dash toward one of the eight [áines] around the edge of the field.

  Two seconds later, Firo said, “Wait, you’re headed straight toward me.”

  “Uh, I’m two to the left of him, then.” Nyx said quickly.

  “I’m two to the right.” Ash said.

  “Great. Let’s hit the one between then,” Kieran said, quickly changing his trajectory. Bisky, Aleister, and Evie followed, as they tried to close the gap toward the [áine] between Firo and Nyx. Caoimhe used [Driver] to close the gap and quickly moved into her speedy opening combo of [Diver], [Knock Down], and [Punishment], but when the damage didn’t cut her target’s HP by much, Kieran just sighed.

  “It’s the real one.”

  “Fuck.”

  There were no lightning attacks from the trapped players, nor did the lighting attacks from the [áine] clones target them. But the electricity still arced from the party members that were to the trapped players within range.

  “Why did y’all leave me alone with the crazy lady?” Evan whined as [áine] laughed at the party getting fried by the lightning attack.

  “...Honestly, thought you might want some alone time with your crush?” Nyx offered.

  “You know,” Evan said, “Good point. Come here, my beloved!” He shouted, running toward the middle of the arena and the waiting Fae Queen.

  As the group’s Wednesday night was wrapping up, Kieran finally felt like they were cleaning up their act. [áine] wasn’t catching them in as many tricks, and they were starting to get her HP closer to 50% with each attempt.

  However, it wasn’t easy. [áine] seemed to have an endless supply of tricks, and Kieran suspected that bottomless bag of options was what made this particular fight so difficult. Every time the party thought they had seen all of [áine’s] tricks, she seemed to pull out another twist or variation.

  Having spent several hours in the fight, the party had seen most of [áine’s] individual spells and tricks, but it was the variations on them that kept wiping the party. Well, that, and she seemed to randomly choose between any of her spells at any given moment. Unlike with [Bufon], who had clearly been set up with rules like not repeating skills during the same phase, [áine] didn’t seem to have any such limitations.

  The group learned that the hard way when she used three variations on her fire beam three times in a row in one of the pulls.

  One of the things that kept the group mentally stable, however, was that she did at least seem to be limited to what would be considered “fair”. Yes, she could use the fire beam three times in a row, but no, she couldn’t spam her spells that guaranteed stacks of [Befuddled] until the group was doomed.

  That didn’t mean that they weren’t regularly falling prey to the mechanic, of course. Over the course of the night, everyone in the party had ended up with the full five stacks at least once, and it wasn’t always the party at fault.

  They found out a bit later into the fight that some of her spells just gave people stacks without any recourse - for example, if you were chosen to be one of her fake clones if she used that skill, anyone chosen just gained a stack for free.

  One particular pull had been pretty silly, when she had just happened to pick Caoimhe, Evie, Firo, and Aleister, all of whom had been at four stacks because of earlier bad luck. The remaining party members had correctly solved the mechanic, but as soon as the four that had been restrained were let go, they immediately charged at the rest of the party to attack them.

  As the party finally rolled into what they agreed would be their last attempt for the night, emotions were high and everyone was mentally drained. The tricks that [áine] employed were enough to ensure that everyone was trying to be 100% “on” at all times, ready for the battlefield to turn against them at any moment, which had really done damage to their mental game over the course of three hours of wipes.

  Kieran was, however, exceedingly glad that while they were all wiped out mentally and running on fumes, the general mood was still positive.

  They were 9 of [áine’s] spells into the fight, with her HP around 70%, when she began casting another spell, and conflicting call outs came over the chat.

  “Lighting.”

  “Fire.”

  There was a moment where, like Kieran, everyone looked up at the party’s statuses and just gave up. Somehow, in the final pull, they had managed to get everyone up to three stacks, and therefore were unable to correctly see what spell was coming. When that wiped the party, there was a huge collective groan.

  “Y’all, I can’t. I’m dying over here.” Evan said, playing up the weakness in his voice.

  “We said that was the last one, anyway.” Ash agreed. “I think we’re all hitting that point.”

  “That was literally our worst pull in the last two hours.” Firo said.

  “No it wasn’t. There was that one where Fiona shot and killed -”

  “Hey, hey, hey,” Evan said quickly, stopping Nyx from finishing her sentence, “We all know what happened, no need to bring it up again.”

  Weak chuckling passed around the party, and Kieran was sure they collectively realized they were all fried for the evening.

  “Alright boys n’ girls, I think it’s bedtime.” Kieran said. “We’re clearly well past our prime tonight.”

  “Like I said, that was supposed to be the last one, anyway.” Ash said again.

  “Everyone good for tomorrow, yeah?” Marissa asked, and received a chorus of affirmatives. “Good, then we’ll come back tomorrow refreshed and ready to kick some faerie ass.”

  The party cheered, sounding half-hearted and tired. There was really just no energy left.

  “Good night, friends.” Jazz said, and was the first one to disconnect.

  “Night, y’all.”