Marissa

  Marissa read the text three times before it vanished without input.

  “Oh shit.” Nyx said, as soon as the party was released from the stun. They had been gathered by the whirlpool, and deposited neatly in a familiar blue ring. They would be safe inside it for the moment to mentally prepare for the coming fight, but that was about it.

  “Come on, then! Come play!” [áine] taunted from beyond the small barrier.

  “Well, we’ve now been clearly told that we’ve only got one shot at this. So at least we know that much.” Evan said.

  “Yeah, because that’s helpful,” Jazz said, and Marissa could hear the eye roll included with it.

  “Just stay on your toes. I don’t think this phase will be all that long, given her HP percentage, so I’d bet it’s going to be a bunch of high difficulty mechanics back to back until one side wins.” Evan said.

  “Agreed. We’ve only got one go at this, so keep the comms clear and chatter to a minimum. I know it’s not our strong suit or our normal process, but we need to take this one seriously.” Ash said.

  “Only if we want to win.” Evie joked.

  “Yes. Only if we want to win.” Ash said flatly. “Which I assume we do. For the reward that is almost certainly bound to be unique.”

  “I’m only joking,” Evie said, “I’ll take it seriously.”

  “Okay, everybody. Take a minute. Take a breath. We got this.” Marissa said, and took her own advice, steadying herself. One shot battles like this weren’t common for MMOs in general, so she wasn’t exactly mentally prepared for this sort of trial.

  Oddly, hearing at least some of the party take her advice with a few long, drawn out breaths helped her calm her jitters. She shook out her right hand; it wasn’t just that she was nervous of failing - she was excited to see what a one-time, special battle had to offer.

  Well. She guessed that she’d have another shot at the fight after the reset the following week if they played the scenario out the same way. Probably.

  But there was still something special about this first attempt, given they had no guarantee they could ever try again, no matter how much sense it made for the fight to be repeatable each week.

  Marissa breathed in again, feeling good. “Alright, R’s in chat when you’re ready.” She said, typing in an ‘R’ herself into their in-game party chat.

  They didn’t usually call for ready checks for most pulls, but they also didn’t usually care too much about a perfect start.

  Once they knew everyone was ready, Evan began the countdown for the pull.

  No one even needed to leave their little blue circle of safety. Fiona launched a basic ranged skill, throwing a few swords made of light, to start things off. As soon as they hit [áine], the blue circle disappeared and the fight began.

  The first move [áine] made was to drag the flower side of her staff on the ground in a circle around her as she twirled in the air. The grass that she touched bled to a vibrant red, matching the vermillion flower on her staff, and the colors slowly seeped through the entire room.

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  It took about as long as the party’s openers did for the entire room to go from a healthy, spring-like green to a vibrant red with autumn colors. While the autumnal colors were absolutely gorgeous, the deep reds carried a sense of danger and wrath with them too. It made [áine] suddenly feel much more dangerous than before, despite her having not actually made any attacks against the party yet.

  When the color reached the edges of the grass, large thorny vines grew out of the ground to trap the combatants within the area. Even the vines matched the color scheme, colored a dangerous brown with red-tipped thorns.

  “That’s a death wall, if I’ve ever seen one.” Jazz chuckled. Marissa was inclined to agree - if anyone touched the wall, they’d probably die immediately. Or at least get a very dangerous bleed applied.

  “Okay, so stay in-bounds,” Firo said, “Noted.”

  “At least she gave us plenty of space.” Evan added.

  “Eyes up.” Ash said, as [áine] moved into her first spell.

  The effects were a similar white-silver to her close spell from before, but the way they moved around her was different - instead of the wispy smoke drifting off her body, it actively swirled around her.

  “Better keep your eyes open.” [áine] teased, her voice sounding sickly-sweet. “Or you might not live to regret it.”

  As she completed her spell, four copies of her appeared, one in each of the cardinal directions. She quickly moved into a lightning-based cast, but after only a second, launched the spell effect off the end of her staff toward the western copy. The copy took the same stance as her casting animation, but without the elemental tell.

  “West is lightning. West is lightning.” Ash repeated twice, trying to commit it to memory.

  As [áine] moved through the beginning of the mechanic, Marissa began to relax if only slightly. This was a fairly standard type of mechanic, although she expected the Queen to make it a little bit more interesting with some kind of mix-up. [áine] started three more spells, passing each one off to one of her copies while hiding the elemental tell for each one after they were passed on.

  “West, lightning, South, water, East, wind, North, fire.” Ash repeated in the silence of the chat as each new spell was added.

  [áine] began to cast a fifth spell with an ice effect on it as the party scrambled to decipher what was about to happen. Marissa remained quiet as to not interrupt Ash’s mantra of directions but her mind was working overtime to try to decide how exactly this was going to go.

  “And now we dance on the wind!” [áine] declared, as a gust kicked up in the room. It had no effect on the party, but [áine] and all of her clones flew up into the air and weaved in and out of each other as a group.

  The party members, in a jumble, called out that they would watch one or another of the clones while Ash struggled to watch them all to the best of his ability. Marissa focused on the fire clone, watching it as it weaved through the air in increasingly complex patterns. By the time it looked like the various clones were returning to the ground, Marissa felt like she had been watching the cups in a cup game move at very vast speeds.

  “Where do we go?” Evan said.

  “Find the water one. That’s gotta be a knockback.” Ash said.

  “East.” Evie declared quickly, “Water is East.”

  “Better decide quickly!” [áine] called out, as she let her spell go, covering the entire room in a layer of ice. Apparently, the real [áine] had ended up at North. As the party members were already in motion toward the East side, they suddenly began sliding toward the eastern copy.

  “Lightning and wind are probably point blank AoEs, so we need to go near the fire one and tank the fire beam.” Ash said, making the decision quickly. Indecision would get everyone killed even more quickly than making a potentially wrong decision might, after all.

  “Fire is West.” Marissa said, confident she had managed to track the fire-casting clone.

  “Knockback straight across the field then, nice and easy.” Ash said. Everyone gathered up the best they could directly in front of the water-casting clone. The ice made being exact difficult, but not impossible, and the group managed to loosely gather where they thought they needed to be.

  “Godspeed everyone.”

  “Get out from behind me ASAP.” Evan said, and then the casts all went off in succession. The lightning cast went off first, but the southernmost copy found no target in range for the chain lightning. The water cast went off next, and as expected, a tidal wave blasted outward from the caster, sending the party flying westward over the slick floor.

  The wind cast went off in the center almost immediately after the party was launched. Ash had read it slightly wrong, as the tornado whipped up around a center storm eye, leaving the party luckily unharmed as they slid through the center of the room. Marissa heard several of her friends gasp with her as they slid through the safe zone.

  “Scatter!” Evan called, as the fire beam was cast last, and slammed straight into Fiona’s readied shield. The party all dispersed on the ice, with the melee players sliding north toward the real [áine], while the ranged ones scattered. With the way everyone moved, no one was in danger when the clone swept the beam off to the south, sweeping over an empty section of the room.

  There was a collective sigh from the group as Fiona immediately made a break toward the real boss as the copies evaporated into silvery white smoke.

  With a quick gap closer to cover the last bit of distance, Fiona was able to re-engage [áine] before the Queen made any other actions. It didn’t seem like the hustle was necessary though, as [áine] simply rolled into her next spell.

  “Let’s see how you handle this!” The Queen said, keeping her madness-tinged playful tone. Her casting animation played the wind particle effects at first, but she added multiple effects to it. Marissa clearly caught the lightning and water effect added to it as well. “I hope you enjoy my spells as much as I do!” [áine] called, as she swept her staff out and the casting animation vanished, only for similar animations to appear around each party member.

  Both tanks received the lightning arcing around them, both healers had water bubbling at their feet, and the DPS all had mini tornados whipping around them.

  “Tidal wave,” Evie read from her debuff quickly, “Direct [áine’s] powerful Tidal wave spell as you see fit.”

  “Chain lightning,” Jazz read at the same time Evie did, “[áine] chose you to start the chain reaction!”

  “DPS is a donut.” Firo said quickly, as soon as the other had finished.

  The whole group could see the timers on their debuffs, so they had around 8 seconds to figure out how to handle the mechanic before everything went off.

  “Okay, so heals send out a knockback, tanks need to be away from everyone, DPS need to stack to overlap safe spots.” Firo said, trying his best to visualize it quickly. “Everyone stack mid.”

  The whole group moved quickly. The ice on the floor had vanished as soon as [áine] had given out the spell debuffs, so they were at least able to move normally for the moment. “Healers face out? Tanks get knocked back by the waves?” Kieran offered.

  “Fuck it, sounds good. We don’t have time to second guess it.” Ash was saying as everyone took up their positions, hoping Kieran was right.

  “Invuln.” Evan said, right as the debuff timers hit 2 seconds.

  “Aye.” Jazz responded, as all the effects exploded on screen. Two tidal waves erupted from the healers, thankfully only pushing away in front of them, as Kieran had suspected. As the tanks had each taken a spot in front of a healer, they were pushed back from the center and far enough away that the lightning that arced off of them didn’t manage to hit anyone.

  They were, however, standing in the middle of four tornados that ripped through the room, each centered on one of the DPS members. The eye of each storm left all of them and the healers safe, thankfully. And while it would have normally killed both tanks, they were unscathed thanks to using skills that left them impervious to damage.

  The skills had a very long cooldown, but for the moment, it wasn’t worth the risk to not use them. They didn’t know if they’d be helpful later, and they certainly helped now.

  “Whoo!” Evan cheered, as everyone congregated in the middle again.

  “Keep up the DPS. We’re at 15%.” Nyx said. Marissa suspected she avoided saying anything actually positive to avoid jinxing the group. Or, perhaps, just avoiding the chance anyone would give her shit for it if they failed.

  [áine] tossed her staff into the air, where it hovered in front of her so she could literally clap for the party. “Oh, so exciting! We’re not done playing yet, though!”

  Marissa took the moment to sneak in an uninterrupted burst phase, utilizing [Snipe] and [Critical Eye] to get as much damage in as she could in the brief window of [áine] clapping. She wasn’t the only one either, as she saw all of the DPS use the chance to drop big damage buttons during the break.

  “Nice!” Marissa shouted, seeing [áine’s] HP drop to almost 12% during the burst.

  “Heck yeah!”

  “Keep it up!”

  “Y’all, clear comms.” Ash said, ever the voice of reason for the group. Everyone quieted down, as [áine] moved into whatever mechanic was next.

  She began the cast for something with a shadowy casting animation. They hadn’t seen [áine] use any obvious [Shadow Magic] yet, so Marissa was immediately on her toes, ready for anything.

  However, the Queen hit 10% HP during the cast, before she got the spell off. She immediately stopped casting whatever the shadowy spell was, and twirled her staff around her, pushing the party back away from her.

  “Alright, alright. I suppose it’s time for the finale, right?” [áine] said cheerily. “Let’s dance!”