Marissa

  Hearing the words “Let’s dance” from [áine] put Marissa immediately on edge. The rest of the party sounded like they weren’t too sure what to expect either, as everyone’s characters shifted around awkwardly, trying to figure out exactly what was coming.

  [áine], for her part, began casting a new spell. The animation was incredibly concerning, as it seemed to include all sorts of different elemental effects, including the shadowy effect that they hadn’t seen yet. It was all tied together with the silvery-white effects of her clone spells, but they swirled about her in a pattern they hadn’t seen before.

  “Good luck!” she said, still in that sickly sweet voice that she had employed throughout the fight. If [áine] were a person, Marissa would’ve sworn up and down that the woman was entirely out to get her with the way she spoke. She sounded almost evil.

  The party was making various noises over the chat, things like grunts and gasps, but otherwise kept the line clear. That was at least a good sign as they moved into whatever this phase was going to be.

  As [áine] completed her cast, her laughter echoed around the room and she flew up toward the ceiling, entirely out of reach for everyone except the ranged players. Of course, the range didn’t matter when she followed it up by putting a barrier around herself and becoming untargetable.

  And then the room fell into chaos. [áine’s] massive vines spawned all around the room, just waiting to attack. Huge waves of water appeared outside of the thorny walls that encircled the room. There were balls of lightning scattered about the room, with arcs hopping from one to another, making the whole room look like it was charged with electricity.

  Marissa kept spinning her camera, trying to pick up the less obvious things that might have changed. The trees around the room spawned red flowers that seemed to have a fiery effect on them. There were other things that looked altered, but she didn’t have enough time to pick them out before red danger zones appeared on the floor in front of the vines all around the room.

  “If you survive this, consider it a win!” [áine] laughed from above. “Have fun!”

  The party was able to avoid the vines’ attacks easily enough. They were normally marked AoEs with easy to read floor markings, after all.

  “Northeast. Lightning ball is glowing.” Ash said.

  Marissa quickly faced her camera that way, and was pleased to see that the flowing effect on the ball of lightning was clear and easy to see. That was something, at least.

  The party quickly moved away from that, assuming being close would start up a chain lightning attack. As they moved away, Marissa saw a gust of wind pick up, swirling about with a bunch of leaves, cutting through the area they stood in.

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  “Keep moving!” She called, as everyone hurried through the wind storm that picked up. The red danger zone appeared a second later, marking the area for a donut AoE that they had all run into the center of already. Marissa took a deep breath to let it out in a small bit of relief, but more AoEs appeared before the wind storm had even triggered.

  AoEs from the vines chopped up their small safe zone even further, making the pocket of safety they all had to cram into just barely big enough for the eight of them to stand in. They cut it close as the AoEs all went off, but everyone managed to stay in one of the few pixels of safety.

  More AoEs followed. Another wind storm kicked up, but it was a solid circle of danger the second time, forcing everyone away from the middle of the room. Some of the vines had AoEs appearing, but they were fuzzy tells, so Ash called out the fake out. Marissa, having noticed the fiery flowers on the trees, had been keeping an eye on them, and saw on the other side of the room start burning.

  “Fire flower, on the tree, other side of the room.” She said quickly, as the party members all tried to adjust for the vine AoEs that were certainly about to change on them.

  “Fire beam?” Jazz asked. “Did we ever figure out a range on that?”

  “No. She’s always used it within a mid-range. This far away…I’ll still try to body block it.” Evan said.

  “Don’t bother, I got it.” Jazz said. Evan didn’t respond, but Aleister was already better positioned to take the attack, so it would require far less movement from everyone. The non-tank party members huddled up in a spot directly behind Aleister in a safe spot, making sure if any of them were the target for the beam, Aleister would catch it on his blocking skill.

  As the other AoEs went off, the fire beam lanced toward Aleister, who was able to take the shot easily enough with some mit and his [Ebony Guard] skill. In the same instant that the fire beam died off, there was a blast of water from outside the vines on the side of the room they were at, which flung everyone toward the center.

  “Oh god, that scared me.” Evie said.

  “Was there a tell for that?” Ash asked

  “Dunno, I was watching the fire beam.” Evan said.

  “I wasn’t watching either.” Kieran said.

  “Crap. Keep an eye out then.” Ash said.

  “If it helps, I did hear the water effect noises in my headphones?” Firo said. “So….keep an ear out, too?”

  “That works.”

  Several more rounds of AoEs followed, as the group narrowly avoided some of the mechanics. On the second tidal wave, they noticed that the side of the room that originated the wave had some water start to puddle near the vines as the apparent tell.

  There were five rounds, each capped with a fire beam that had to be dealt with. And once all five of the trees no longer had a fire flower attached, Marissa thought the ‘Survive’ phase was coming to an end.

  When she looked up to see what [áine] was doing during what she assumed to be the last part of the phase, she realized she was probably wrong.

  “Guys, áine is casting.”

  A chorus of “What?” was the response, as everyone else no doubt looked up. [áine’s] cast animation was surrounded in fiery effects, but not the same ones that denoted her fire beam. As the vines, wind storm, and last lightning ball went off, Marissa heard [áine’s] laugh echo around them.

  “And now, for my final trick!” [áine] declared, as he casting finished. “Well, maybe not so much a trick this time…”

  As her voice line trailed off, AoEs began appearing all over the room. Her previously casted vines remained, and some of them were winding up attacks as well. But the new AoEs were small circles that appeared and disappeared quickly, with a small meteor crashing in the spot, each landing with a small explosion.

  “Oh.” Evie said.

  After the rest of the first round of meteors landed, Nyx started laughing as everyone ran around, trying to escape the damage. There were so many meteors coming down, and so quickly, that completely escaping damage was nearly impossible. And the way the vines kept doing their thing made it even harder.

  But, as the whole group ran around in the chaos like chickens with their heads cut off, Marissa found herself laughing with Nyx. Despite the absolute chaos, running around just trying to dodge AoEs was fun.

  Others started laughing with them, too, except for Evie and Mellody, who were both struggling to heal the party members that got clipped by an AoE here and there. With so many danger spots appearing, the group was also completely scattered about the room, as each person found their own safe path through the AoEs. Or at least tried to.

  Unfortunately, the way everyone scattered also meant that they weren’t always in range for healing, leaving Evie and Mellody trying desperately to stay toward the middle to keep everyone in reach, while the tanks and DPS all skirted around the edges of the room.

  “Fuck, I love fights like this!” Nyx shouted happily.

  “Sure, but how long is this going to go on for?” Evie said, sounding like she was also enjoying herself despite the struggle.

  “It’s been thirty seconds already,” Firo laughed, “I’d guess a minute maybe?”

  “Y’all need to stop getting clipped or someone is gonna die,” Ash said.

  “Are the AoEs getting bigger?” Kieran asked suddenly.

  “Sure are.” Nyx said. “And the safe spots are getting smaller.”

  “Great.”

  It wasn’t long before Firo took two meteors in a row, and got dropped. With so much movement involved, there was simply no way for the healers to get him up without risking letting someone else die. Even using [Skip Cast] would make them stand still for a full second instead of the much longer five second normal cast time, and that one second could mean death.

  Fiona was the second to get taken out, as she got clipped by one of the vines. Evan immediately complained then he was definitely out of the AoE, and that he was in a safe spot.

  Thankfully, it was only a few seconds after that that the meteors seemed to slow and finally stop. Evie and Mellody immediately sent out their rezzes to Firo and Fiona, getting everyone back up as [áine] slowly floated down toward the grassy ground.

  As she did, the room began to return to its original state. The autumn colors faded back to a spring-like, vibrant green. The thorny vines that surrounded the room retreated into the ground, leaving a clear view to the palace walls from the center of the courtyard again.

  Marissa sighed in relief as [áine] clearly looked like she had no intention of continuing the fight. She wasn’t even holding her staff any longer, letting the flower-topped rod simply float in the air beside her as she looked over the group - all of whom were in remarkably good health, all things considered.

  “Can I say it?” Firo asked with a slight chuckle.

  “No.” Evie, Nyx, Evan, and Ash shot back immediately.

  Firo laughed but said nothing else as [áine] touched down on the ground for a moment before visibly deciding against it and floating just off the ground again.

  “Wow. You all are quite impressive! And that was fun!” She said happily. The unnerving smile that she had been wearing before the fight that had stretched nearly ear to ear was no longer there, replaced with a much cuter, happy smile. The sickly-sweet tone of voice was gone, too, which made her sound far less dangerous.

  “Now, as promised, I’ll let you have a special reward. But, before that, I suppose we should create the new [Fae Contract]. The [Dagda] said things on the [Human World] side were getting somewhat…dangerous, so we shouldn’t delay. Even if it’s unlikely anyone realizes what has happened without you all returning with the news.”

  “Now you can say it,” Evan said, sounding like he rolled his eyes.

  “Yeah? Y’all, that felt really easy,” Firo chuckled. “Like…Only two of us died?”

  “I guess despite it being a special fight, they wanted it to be clearable in one go?” Evie offered. “If they had put a single gotcha mechanic in there, they could’ve wiped us, easy.”

  “To be fair,” Nyx said, “as much as I love the ‘lots and lots of fast moving AoE’ type mechanics, that part of the fight could’ve easily wiped us. There’s some skill involved, sure, but part of it definitely depends a bit on the luck of the draw.”

  “I swear to you all that I was out of that stupid vine attack,” Evan said, clearly still sulking over it. “I don’t know if it was lag or a bad snapshot, but it was bullshit.”

  “Yeah, and if that had happened early on to our healers? We’d have died, no contest.” Nyx said. “There was definitely some luck involved in who got hit and when.”

  “True enough, I guess.” Marissa shrugged. “But what’s the plan now? Do we want to keep moving on tonight? I don’t know when the next fight is, but I’m looking at the quest marker floating over [áine’s] head, so this is potentially a good place to stop for the night.”

  “Fuck that,” Nyx said. “We’ve got…like forty minutes before we’re supposed to end for the night. Let’s keep going and see what flying is like.”

  “Yeah?” Marissa asked, allowing everyone to weigh in. She knew that she desperately wanted to move on, but she didn’t want to push forward if others wanted to sleep a little early.

  “Let’s keep going. Forty minutes is a good chunk of time to work with, still.” Kieran said, and the sentiment was immediately echoed by Evan - who had been her main concern.

  When there was not a single negative reply, she shrugged to herself and muttered, “Alright, then let’s see where this goes,” as she walked up to [áine].