Marissa

  Marissa’s entire Thursday was a struggle. She got up early as usual, but was elbow deep in baking when she received a call from Julie - the woman had caught either a cold or the flu, and wouldn’t be in for work. That left Marissa alone for the day, which would make the work that much more difficult, but she’d also have relative peace and quiet, which wasn’t so bad every now and then.

  She spent the hours before opening in overdrive, trying to get as much prepared and baked as she could, to avoid having to overburden herself later when there were customers. She was thankful that it was at least a Thursday, and Sarah would be in for Friday and Saturday, which would be much busier.

  By the time lunch rolled around and Marissa had to close the shop for a break to eat and replenish herself somewhat, she was already exhausted. She only took a half hour, between 12:30 and 1:00 to eat and relax for a bit before the last push to 3:00 when she closed for the day. Running between the front and the kitchen was exhausting enough, but having to deal with customers on top of the physical movement left her feeling drained by the end of the day.

  She decided it was, at least, the good kind of drained that you get after a solid workout or going for a tough run. Keeping a strong mentality was enough to carry her through the clean up and closing process. She even went over her normal closing checklist twice, just to be sure that she didn’t miss anything while she was exhausted.

  It wasn’t until she turned off all the lights and started up the stairs to her apartment that she let herself think about raid for the night. The thought of getting back in there and taking on [áine] again was enough to get her spirits back up, but not enough to do anything for the heavy physical exhaustion that pulled her body down.

  Once she got upstairs and turned her PC on, she decided that a long, hot shower - maybe a bath - was the way to go. She was worried that relaxing too much would make her sore, but figured the heat should counteract that somewhat.

  An hour later, after a relaxing bath and a good meal, she was ready to go. Maybe not quite at what she felt was 100%, but she felt good enough to be confident.

  As she logged into Mag Mell and then into the Nettle Tea chat, it was the bright and excited voices of her team that finally seemed to give her the last refreshing push she needed to get her excitement up.

  “Aight, I hope everyone is ready for this today,” Evan was saying, and Marissa could immediately tell from the party’s excited responses that the low energy issue they had run into at the end of the night previously was definitely gone.

  It wasn’t even 5:05 before they had started with their first pull of the night, and Marissa was easily infected with the high energy around her as they charged at [áine], ready to win that night.

  “Oh, god damn it. I hit three stacks - Aleister, swap with me.” Evan called, as the fire beam drilled into him. They had collectively decided that swapping tanks at three stacks seemed to be wise, because four or five stacks was likely to cause a wipe.

  “On it.” Jazz said, as Aleister slipped in front of [áine] and picked up [Threat]. Now it was just up to Evan to not get hit by any avoidable mechanics, and hope that Fiona didn’t get hit by any unavoidable ones.

  The party was regularly getting [áine] down to half HP, sometimes less, before either the [Befuddled] build up was simply too much to deal with, or a new trick put the party behind enough that they couldn’t recover.

  Marissa, and she imagined everyone else, was shocked at the sheer variation that [áine] brought to the table in this fight. The Queen of the Fae had something like 14 different, individual spells. Each of them were dangerous, but not likely to cause a wipe on their own.

  The issue was that [áine] seemed to be able to alter each of them to the point that they may as well be different spells and mechanics altogether. And she was as ‘creative’ as Marissa imagined a human would have been with all the options she devised.

  Which, Marissa supposed, was fair, given she had no doubt that [áine’s] AI had been made by a person after all. But when she was layering spells together to create new effects or using illusions and tricks to actively screw with the party, it made the fight a learning nightmare.

  And even with more than three hours of prog under their belts, [áine] was randomly pulling out new mechanics. The party hadn’t been shown until their third pull on Thursday night that [áine] could use her tidal wave and thorns combo, but rather than swap the sides they were on, she could also rotate them 90 degrees instead, moving from the wave coming from the east and the thorns being on the west, to the wave starting in the north, and the vines being south.

  The group had gotten lucky that Kieran caught that the tell for the fake out was different than normal, but no one had any idea what that meant. They still got wiped by it, but at least they knew to watch for [áine] to sweep her staff in a certain way to indicate the new trick.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Still, the party soldiered on, and were managing to keep their spirits up. For as much as they were regularly losing around the 50% mark, they felt like the progress they were making was still solid. They were cleaning up the various mechanics more and more, and wiping to the [Befuddled] stacks building up less and less.

  Instead, they were starting to wipe to new tricks around the same point in the fight more and more often. And Marissa was beginning to suspect something was actively working against them.

  “Does anyone else feel like there’s something up with this fight?” She eventually asked, after the party fell to a particularly evil trick, in which [áine] had cast her tornado AoE and done the fake out. When the party reacted to the fake out, she chided them the way someone would a child with a finger wag, and the original AoE that should have been changed went off, hitting everyone.

  “It’s starting to feel like we’re playing toyed with, yeah.” Nyx said. “Like, that last wipe was actually just mean.”

  “It’s frustrating because it feels like she just has so many possible mechanics to get us with,” Kieran said, “But the worst part is that, so far, literally every trick she’s thrown at us has a tell. We should be able to read her like a book once we’ve seen everything.”

  “Should seems to be the operative word there, bud.” Evan sighed. “I feel like we’ve got a list that’s half a mile long of ways she can mess with us, and it’s just getting longer.”

  “And it’s still getting longer,” Evie stressed. “I don’t feel like we should be seeing new tricks like four hours into progging.”

  “I feel that.” Jazz said. “On the other hand, the mechanics themselves aren’t that hard, and most of her tricks are just one-off gotchas. After we see them all, we should be able to do this just fine, so long as we manage our stacks well.”

  Firo breathed in deeply then let it out in a rush. “I guess we just keep at it then. We’re doing pretty well, I think. We’re regularly getting her to around 50%, and we’ve seen 40% three times tonight, too.”

  “I’m worried about whatever phase two is gonna look like.” Ash said. “If this is supposed to be a challenge fight, there’s no way this is the whole thing.”

  “You know, it’s kinda funny, thinking about it,” Kieran said.

  “What?”

  “For a fight so based around tricks and subtle illusions and the like, the way to get through this has been with brute forcing our way through to see as much as we can.”

  Marissa snorted. “A rare brawn over brain moment?”

  “I don’t know I’d go that far. But it’s just funny to me that we’re just pushing through with raw force against a boss that is so heavily built around playing tricks and being “smart”.”

  Marissa swore she could hear Kieran make the air quotes through the tone of his voice.

  “Well, back to it, yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  An hour and a half later, the party had been making more and more progress. Marissa was pretty sure, in classic gaming fashion, her stopping to complain about [áine’s] seemingly endless bag of tricks had done the trick. In the nearly two hours of raid that night, they hadn’t seen the Queen pull anything entirely new. She had shown a few new spell patterns, like linking the fire beam sweep with a vine-based root for the party, but nothing that landed them in boiling water.

  As it was, it was still [Befuddled] that was their limiting factor. Aside from stupid mistakes - which did keep happening - it was always the entire party reaching three [Befuddled] stacks, or too many people hitting four or five that ended each run.

  But even that was getting pushed further and further into the fight.

  Without any more new surprises, [áine] was dropping the group less and less in sudden wipes, and instead winning through longer battles of attrition. But that also meant the party was getting closer and closer to reaching notable HP marks. They were starting to regularly see [áine’s] HP reach 40%. And then it was 35%. And then 30%.

  As it was nearing 7pm for Marissa, the group decided to take a short break. Raid buffs typically lasted for two hours, so they would need to refresh them shortly anyway, and having even a couple percent buffs run out mid-pull could be disastrous if it was the one pull that got them to a new checkpoint.

  So, with less than ten minutes before the buffs ran out, Marissa suggested everyone get up for a few minutes, stretch, get new drinks, and just generally get ready for the final push of the night.

  “We all feeling good?” She asked, as she ventured off to refill her tea for the day - a relaxing sleepytime blend that she really liked.

  “All good here.” Kieran said, but interrupted himself with a groan.

  “You sure?” Marissa laughed.

  “Yup.” He answered, then groaned again. “Just stretching. My back hurts.”

  “Alright, old man.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” He said, then when he went entirely quiet, Marissa suspected he may have muted so he could stretch without broadcasting his groans.

  “Everyone else?” She asked, though she wasn’t sure who was still around.

  “I’m good.” Firo said, “Honestly, I’m having a great time. Even with us getting pounded into the dirt, the fights have been fun.”

  “Hey, I don’t think I’d say we’re ‘getting pounded into the dirt’,” Evie chimed in. “It’s not like we’ve been losing badly. And most of our wipes in this fight have been either gotcha mechanics or losing to normal stuff. Nothing has shut us down entirely.”

  “That’s true.” Firo said. “Either way, I’m having fun.”

  “Me too.” Evie agreed. “It’s pretty neat that the fights have been somewhat different challenges. Like, for as much as we’re focused on doing damage in this one, the fight is far, far more reliant on us puzzling out the mechanics.”

  “I’ve always rather liked puzzle fights.” Ash said. “They’re very satisfying to overcome once you figure them out.”

  “I do like them too, but man, I want some more dance fights.” Nyx said. “I really like fights where if you stop moving, you just die. Give me all the AoEs, all the time.”

  “Reaction speed was always your thing, huh?” Evie asked.

  “Hey man, I just like hitting buttons, alright?” Nyx laughed in response. “If I have to hit more buttons, I’m happy.”

  “If that’s true, I’m surprised you ended up playing Shroud and not Edge. They have so many more buttons to hit.” Marissa said.

  “True. I do rather like playing Edge, especially Brave, but the party support I get from playing Shroud is something I really like, too.”

  “She gets sick satisfaction from holding the key to others’ lives.” Evie chuckled. “I’ve seen her heal in other games, but apparently here it’s not interesting enough.”

  “Can you blame me? Mag Mell made the healing in this game fun and interactive, but for the most part, you just target the people that took damage and heal them. There’s not a lot of mechanics involved. Except for Muse.” She quickly added, before Ash could mention it.

  “That’s…fair, I guess.”

  “I think she also knows that in most cases, healers play around a Shroud’s Debilitating Pierce.” Evie said, sounding conspiratorial. “I’m sure that she knows that in most parties, if she decides she wants everyone to die to a big raid wide, all she has to do is not click that button, and they all fall down.”

  “...No?” Nyx said, but Marissa didn’t believe her for a second.

  “That sounds like the most obvious lie I’ve ever heard out of your mouth,” Evie laughed.

  “Look!” Nyx shouted, trying to regain face somewhat, “I like being important for party survival, but I also like hitting all the damage buttons! So I picked Shroud where I get to do both. Sue me!”

  As the group laughed, Marissa glanced over at the chat window to take a tally of who’s mics were lighting up. It looked to her like everyone was back, unless Kieran had stepped away while he was muted.

  “Caoimhe? You good to go?”

  “Hm? Yeah.” Kieran said quickly.

  “Alright, let’s get the buffs reapplied and get back in there.” Marissa declared, and received cheers and battle cries in return.

  It took just a few minutes for the buffs to get reapplied, and everyone was ready to fight [áine] again just after the turn of the hour.

  Marissa took a deep breath, let it out, and prepared for Fiona to pull the boss. As they moved through the early phase of the fight, Marissa felt good. The break had helped her feel reinvigorated, and it seemed she wasn’t the only one. The entire party was playing the sharpest they had all night, leaving the chatter behind to focus on call outs instead of jokes.

  She didn’t say anything, knowing it would jinx them, but she had a good feeling about that pull.

  Seven and a half minutes later, [áine] was sitting around 30% - about as close to zero as the party had ever managed - and no one had more than two stacks of [Befuddled]. Whether it was through luck or clean play, they had managed to avoid getting hit whenever they could and, by sheer luck, the unavoidable stacks had been spread out among them.

  Marissa was quietly sure that this was the one that would get them through to the end. Or at least the next phase.

  And when [áine’s] HP hit 25%, everything stopped. The spell she had been in the middle of casting changed abruptly, and a spherical blast of energy swept out from her, knocking the whole party back and stunning them.

  [áine] laughed. It was a joyous, excited one just tinged with a little bit of madness. “This is fun! Keep up, now!” She sounded delighted as she weaved another spell while the party was stunned - one with a casting animation that Marissa didn’t recognize.

  She double checked her debuffs to be sure that her [Befuddled] stacks hadn’t hit 3 when the stunning spell hit, but found that they had all been cleansed, instead. The entire party had been.

  “Uh…”

  “New phase?” Ash asked.

  “Guess so.” Nyx said.

  [áine’s] spell finished, and she conjured a whirlpool of water that covered the ground. With the party members still stunned, they could do nothing as the current whipped them up and dragged the whole group to the center of the whirling waves.

  And then the water just stopped, depositing the party together a little ways in front of [áine].

  “Don’t disappoint me now.” The Queen intoned, almost singing. “Let’s keep playing!”

  [áine] spun her staff around her hands, and the red flower atop it grew, blooming with more petals of brilliant, deeper reds than it had had at the start of the fight.

  Before Marissa was given control of Hibiscus again, a big raid text warning appeared in the center of the screen.

  [áine’s Test Begins!]

  [The Fae Queen has found you worthy of being her playmate.]

  [Do your best to impress her.]

  [Do not hesitate. You have but one chance.]

  maybe two), and then return to posting new chapters again!