---

The badly made wooden door opened, with a loud complaining squeal of rusted hinges. Bright sunlight poured in, partly blocked by a female silhouette. Inside the bar was similar to many others in the area, an elderly dry wooden structure that had been badly repaired, coated with dust and the debris of time. The tables were dark, almost secretive, the place was barely lit by the tiny windows and a few strategically placed lamps. It hadn't rained here for a very long time, but outside the trees were still green, the streams and rivers still ran, and the beer still somehow flowed.

The barman silently watched the female elementalist walk in through the door, Her jet black hair matching the stoneforged robes she was wearing. She might be pretty, most would say beautiful, but he had other things on his mind, like preventing his bar and himself turning into victims of another flame war. It didn’t matter to him why she was here, she was bad news, eyes flicking from table to table, looking for someone. Last time one had come in and got drunk he had thought, well the money is good. That elementalist got roaring drunk before he burned half the roof off while attempting to win a bet. The other half only survived because it was made out of metal and people had managed to throw enough water on it to avoid it melting.

Looking directly at anyone might be construed as interest in what they were up to, so the barkeep kept his head down until she was right up to the bar, industriously polishing the glass he had in his hands. “Been told you know where Brind Burntshank is hiding out?”

Burntshank wasn’t exactly one of his best customers. The fact was the dwarf only came in irregularly, but when he did he bought, with gold. Then again he didn't fancy dying for that no good robber either. “What’s your interest in this Burntshank?”

“I have a warrant for him,” The woman muttered quietly, “seems he’s been a very bad dwarf.”

Warrants were not good news, if a fight broke out with Burntshank resisting arrest it might end up nasty, especially in his bar. Normally they didn’t even bother trying to arrest, the preference was dead or a cinder. “I’ve heard he’s been up at Charnel Peak for the last three weeks.”

“So you don’t know where he is now?”

He shrugged towards the corner. “Don’t think I can say.”

He watched several gold pieces drop onto the bar from her hand, “That should pay for the damage.”

She flicked her hand back towards the corner. The flare caught the short customer on the chest, throwing the chair over backwards and setting his beard on fire. Another short spell followed it. Burntshank, now bound with a hex, could hardly move and quickly succumbed to the incoming fire magic.

Love checked the dead body, then put the localised fire out using a water magic spell. She examined the corpse and then checked that her paperwork had been updated, a small series of scrolls that gave details of various quests she had accepted. “Damage looks minimal so you’ve made a profit so far.”

The barman nodded, he wasn’t going to complain about the likes of Burntshank being dead again, nobody would. “If you have warrants for them the rest of his lot they really is up at Charnel Peak, four of them.”

“You looking for payment?”

“No ma’am, I just don’t want them coming here looking for him, or asking what happened. That would be rather bad for my business.”

Serious Love flipped through the scrolls again, selected the right ones, and read them. “You’re in luck then, they’re included.”

Outside the sun was hot, she considered a siesta but then decided that it was best to keep moving. Going down the street she entered the Justice Office and handed over the scroll to be processed. “That’s another one. Rest of his gang should reduce my penalty by another 4, then I’m free.”

“If you hadn’t blown the wrong person up you wouldn’t be helping us out now.”

“Not my fault that Krieger’s son challenged me to open combat, damn stupid kid. I thought he might really be up to it, or at least capable of protecting himself.”

“He thought you were a ranger with those odd clothes on. We only just managed to rez him too. He’s still as bald as a baby.”

“Should teach him to be careful who he challenges.” Love blinked several times. “Something is wrong here. I shouldn’t be here.”

“Whatcha mean?” The deputy watchman questioned. “Where else would you be?”

“I’m not sure, seem to be plenty of things wrong I just can’t put my finger on. People who shouldn’t be dead are dead, or at least missing, and there seems to be no reason or cause to it. Get a druid out to check the rez booth and give it some maintenance. Might be running out of power or something.”

“If we could find one, they’ve all vanished. Last one we got here was three years ago.”

“As I said, plenty of things wrong.” She waved the papers, “I’ll go sort out the rest of them.”
 
“See you, - if you get back.”

Love switched her secondary to Mesmer, she was unsure how she did this but it worked. There were plenty of things she decided to do and they just happened. It seemed to be what she had always done, what she always would do. She also changed her armor to the set that resembled a ranger’s. They didn’t improve her armor rating, that was max no matter which set she wore, but it did manage to reduce the chances that non-player characters would notice her somehow. Admittedly the black armor she normally wore stuck out in the woods worse than a sore thumb but everyone still appeared as a dot on the radar, once they were in range. She selected the skills Phantom Self and Shadowblend into her skill bar, to help her seem even more invisible, if she needed to be.

Really she had no idea why these were not Ranger skills, they would have been even more useful to them than to a mes. They had just appeared in the latest update, which was, she thought back, seven years ago? Then again, why did she have a skillbar? Or a radar display? Those questions would have to wait, nobody she had asked seemed to have an answer and she wasn’t any different.

A quick stop at the temple to all gods would have been preferable to her, the seven had been six but had been joined lately by Ava. The new god made sure you were not cheated by other characters and had a raft of other minor responsibilities that the other gods seemingly either didn’t have the time for or just didn’t want to do. Visiting the shrines would have taken time, which she somehow knew she didn’t have.

The wall by the door had a wanted poster of ‘Karatan, the Great’ on it. He was up to something again and it wasn’t likely to be good, stuff done by evil necromancers never was. Then again it was probably the same stuff as he had been up to last time she had killed him, and the time before that.

Opening the door she stepped in to the street, a few children played, almost all of them looking remarkably similar, although there were male and female variants. Each boy had exactly the same clothing and physical appearance as the next boy and the same was true of the girls, it looked like they were all two series of identical siblings. She also seemed to remember the same children playing here when she first visited the place, that would have been well over five years ago.

The ball rolled up to her feet and she threw it back. It vanished mid air but reappeared a fraction of a second later and the girl caught it. Love blinked, had she really seen that or was it her eyes playing tricks?

She walked towards the outpost gate, The wall surrounding the buildings was a thin stone construction, about four metres high, with a wooden structure behind for soldiers to stand on, it was all the place could afford but kept most of the mobs out. Only the nastier foes would even consider attacking an outpost.

She stepped into the gate, the shimmering membrane seemed to welcome her into it.

---

Serious Love wound her way through the forest, a mixture of pines and deciduous trees the leaves of which were newly sprouting as bright green tufts. The smell of spring flowers and damp pine needles early in the morning pervaded her surroundings, which was as it had always been here. A startled deer ran from her path and vanished into the undergrowth, but not before she managed to lock on to it and identified it as a level 5. It offered neither risk or reward if killed so she let it go.

Being absolutely certain of where she was going, but not entirely sure why the marker that was directing her path should be in her vision. She moved with practiced ease and complete silence, passing through smaller bushes as if they did not exist. Keeping a reasonable distance away from the road meant she could escape if the opposition became too much for her or perhaps even hide if she could use the skills she had available. She tried to concentrate on the issue of how things could always be the same yet also change too, it was a hard target to concentrate on and quickly escaped her.

Further along the trees thinned a little and a group became visible on the road. A pair of peasants meeting with someone, or being confronted by them?

Activating Shadowblend her form blurred and became indistinct from the trees behind her. With real primary Ranger skills this would have been easy, they were at one with the forests. Luckily the three were not taking much, if any, notice of what went on around them. The peasants dress indicated that they were from Ascalon, as did their descriptions, but, other than that, there was no indication of name, which was very common amongst unimportant NPCs. The third was simply designated Bandit 1 above his head in red letters, and seemed to be where her targeting led.

“I said hand over your money,” the Bandit clearly stated, levelling his staff, “and I mean all of it.”

“We don’t have any,” the man responded in an overly clear neutral tone, as if he was attempting to be overheard. “We had to pay the tax to the White Mantle which only left enough to pay the food bill.”

“In that case I guess your lives will have to do.” The Bandit grabbed his rear. “Aarrgh! My @%&$!”

Love’s lightning struck again, lowering his armor protection temporarily. Backfire followed to hopfully prevent him using his skills against her, then she sent in the heavy fire spells. They didn’t reach their target fast enough. The bandit responded with a series of fast lightning spells of his own and managed to kill himself.

The Ascolians, despite having the option to run away just resumed walking and ignored the smouldering body they went past. Love picked up the staff he had dropped, it was nowhere near maximum but worth seventy gold from the Trader. Looking towards the peasants she noted that their life bars were fine, although the male had slight damage it was recovering fast. The corpse vanished and she checked the paper that her kill had been noted.

Which meant she now only had another three bandits to kill, although inevitably they would be together so she would have to kill all of them at the same time. Some things were totally predictable.

---

The bandit camp was minimal, a couple of small tents with ruffled bedding that looked used but never seemed to be. There was a camp fire with a steaming food cauldron over it, which never burned and nobody ever ate from. It was still at least two hours from noon and the bandits were getting ready to go and try to rob people. The fact that they never actually went to rob anyone wasn’t the issue, it was the potential that mattered, or at least seemed to.

Love left the trees and wandered down to the water’s edge dressed in just her underwear, she had been really confused as to why she couldn’t remove those. They certainly didn’t seem to be part of her physical body, being made out of cloth of some kind. Still, that wasn’t the point, she continued a little further out, until the water reached above her knees, and then began dancing. That was mainly because she couldn’t wash her body, although she had seen items to do just that. It seemed that her physical self managed to stay clean anyway, despite her best efforts, wading through swamps and fighting various evils.

The Bandits were wide eyed and open mouthed. That stage only lasted a few moments before they ran down and into the water close to her. Then they stopped dead, it was as if they had forgotten everything. One of them managed, more a question than a command, “hand over your gold or else?”

It got very little response other than Love’s clothes reappearing on her body, then she vanished entirely. The Bandits barely had two seconds to try and register shock, which they were incapable of doing anyway, before the lightning storm started. Multiple forks of electricity hit the trio, immediately followed by Meteor Shower and Fire Storm. Paralysed and knocked to the ground they were unable to defend themselves. Love hexed their monk with Backfire just to be sure there would be no recovery. The Earthbind spirit she had put up died, but not before the bandits, knocked down enemies who couldn’t get up were unlikely to be able to use any skills before they perished.

Phantom Self had certainly worked, and the scrolls now had quest objectives completed written on them. It didn’t help with the other issues. She looked around the camp with even more questions than before and still no answers. Somehow the beds troubled her more than the cooking pot but both were problems - there was no reason for them to be there. The two peasants wandered up the road and through the camp as if there hadn’t been any bandit camp there at all.

She noted that the bodies of the bandits were gone, but the bags of money they had dropped were there, one hundred and twenty gold plus a saleable focus wasn’t bad. She had to collect the reward too, which meant going back to the outpost, a simple map travel and she was there.

---

Love stepped outside the Justice Office again, two hundred gold richer and she had levelled again, not that levelling was worth anything really. The hundreds of skill points were virtually useless to her now, all she could do with them was buy consumable items with them occasionally, as needed, which was nowhere near the rate she acquired them.

Her eyes passed down the street to where Kara Earthstarr was standing. The Ranger was always turning up when you least expected her. Serious walked across to her, “I thought you left here last week?”

“I did.” Kara grinned back. “Killed Brind Burntshank and his gang, no problem, and got the usual reward. Then I picked up a quest for Wenan Sorehead, which was possibly my worst decision ever. Since then I’ve been trying to get to Kellishaw Pass but I always end up back here again about twenty minutes later.”

Not getting repeatedly killed are you?” Love said in jest, then watched the head shake. “Jeeze, I think you’ve got some god up against you. Could it be Melandru doesn’t like what you’ve done and put one on you?”

“Don’t think so, I haven’t done anything to upset Melandru at all.”

“I think something is going terribly wrong,” Love stated, “and I don’t just mean the usual hordes of dragons, evil necros, dwarves and the rest.”

“What do you mean?”

“I keep wondering why people have beds but never actually use them. Seats, cooking items, eating items, lots of other things that are there but we just never need them. Why do we kill the same foes over and over again?” Love pointed at something on a table. “Do you have any idea what is a fork for?”

Kara looked at the implement, it certainly wasn’t big enough to kill more than a mouse. “So you’re worried that we don’t use items we never have or that new mobs are appearing?”

“No, I’m worried I’m questioning that we’ve never used them.  Or what about the migrating trees? Where did they come from? I mean they were not there originally, at least from what I remember, but now they have always been there. They uproot themselves in autumn and march out of the mountains, but they never seem to march back again in the spring. How can there be a spring when the season in the mountains doesn’t even change to winter?”

“What are spring and winter?”

“I’m not sure,” Love admitted, “but I an sure they used to happen, should happen. Kara, people are vanishing, and not coming back, lots of them. Some people that I remember seem to have never existed, they just went and vanished from the world. I think places are vanishing too, which is why you can’t get to where you want to go. Looking at my map there is no Kellishaw Pass, but it was there not so long ago, I remember it too. I went there, not that long ago, and killed Wenan. I doubt if this is even a normal god gone totally crazy thing, it seems far worse than when Abaddon tried to take over. That at least is predictable, the same things happen every time you do the missions.” Love took a double take at Earthstarr’s surprised face. “What are you looking at me like that for?”

“You’re vanishing.”

Serious examined her hand, and who had gave her that damn stupid name? Kara was a name, Helen was a name, Serious? The hand flickered, going in and out of vision. “Kara, something is dreadfully wrong, get some people together and...”

Kara looked at where Love had been, There wasn’t even a flicker now. “@&%*!” The characters stood there in the speech bubble above her head, she had never really noticed that before, although she was sure it had happened every time she swore. She was also sure that it wasn’t what she had originally intended to say. Somehow she had to get help, from anyone who could aid her. It was time to visit the guild halls, to see if anyone was there.

--- 

Barbie Necro definitely looked worse for wear, at least to Kara. “What happened to you, Barbie?”

“Serious Love is what happened,” Barbie complained holding her head, pink hair cascading loose over her fingers. “She gave me a load of alcohol and I, being me, drank it. I’ve still got the effects.”

“I was just talking to Serious. She was telling me how things were going terribly wrong, then she just vanished, from the centre of Kellen.”

“She mapped out during a conversation?”

“No, she shows up in my friends as gone away, it would normally tell me where she is, even if she was in a guild hall. It would even tell me if she had died and was waiting to resurrect. I’ve tried contacting her but all I get is messages back saying she might not have heard. Really though, if it were just a case of mapping, I could still talk to her in whispers, we can do that at any distance.”

“So what do you expect me to do? Form up a team and go rescue her? Where from?”

“We’ve got to do something, Serious wasn’t sure what. She knows people are disappearing, I mean, look at your guild list.”

“*&%%!” Barbie exclaimed. “There’s over half of them marked as not on line! And I’m not getting any responses from the others.”

“I’ve managed to get Embeth Moonsinger, that’s one more on the way here.”

“Daia Mara is coming too.” Barbie responded, turning around she noticed that all was not as it should be. “What the %&%*! What are all my eight minions doing here? They always die off when I zone out. They certainly shouldn’t be in my Guild Hall!”

“There are lots of things that shouldn’t happen that are happening. Kara shrugged then shouted, "Embeth!"

Moonsinger’s tight black garb and mask, liberally decorated with daggers that served no purpose, indicated quite clearly the profession of Assassin. “Hi, how are things?”

“Normally I would say don’t ask,” Barbie responded, “but in this case Daia should be here shortly so we might as well tell both of you together.”

“Good, good!” Moonsinger looked up at the sky, or at least what should have been the sky. She pointed, “I don’t seem to remember that being here before?”

They followed the finger up, what had been sky was now replaced by a series of plain white squares with the words ‘texture unavailable’ repeatedly written on them.

---

Daia Mara watched her phoenix fly to her with slow deliberate beats of its wings. The bird never went far above the ground, hugging the terrain closely, as all birds did. It landed and looked lovingly into Daia’s eyes, who petted it in return. They had been together a long time, fighting many foes and dying together on the way.

The Dalada Uplands was a mixed area of countryside, some of it forest, others plain or small hills. In the south there was an area of water where Skale could be hunted. It might never rain here but the trees and grass were always green in the full sun.

The area was huge, she could run for hours and not even be close to crossing it. Someone had told her once that originally it was much smaller, but somehow the gods or someone else, had managed to make the world grow.

It was a glorious day to go and hunt Charr, Devourers, Skale and Mantids. Which was precisely what she wasn’t doing. For a start she had precisely zero heroes available. They had completely vanished several days previously and she hadn’t been able to select any of them to accompany her since. Similarly the henchmen had vanished too, but only that morning. Admittedly the henchmen were fairly useless compared to the heroes but they would have been better than nothing.

Which had led her to go out and have a solo run to see what was out there. So far the hunting had only been noticeable by the absence of anything to kill. There were no Mantids outside Doomlore Shrine, or Charr in the forest or hills, or even on the plain. There had been one solitary Skale that had been unable to move, even when she shot it. Even the Stone Furies cave was empty.

Today seemed totally different to any previous time, the normal gentle breeze was stilled and it was almost as if nothing else existed anymore. The green trees stood as if solid, their branches unmoving, not even a butterfly appeared to be there. Then she heard something, the cry wasn’t from her level at all but high up. She moved her head and looked, high above her, wings slowly flapping, was a dragon? with a rider on it’s back? “How? What?” She pulled the phoenix’s head close to her, “that just can’t be natural. and what’s that whining noise?”

An ominous black shape plunged towards the dragon, fire belched from it’s belly? Daia wasn’t sure if it was alive having never seen anything like it. The dragon curled it’s neck around and breathed a long stream of fire at the attacker, without any apparent effect. A moment later it died and fell.

It’s opponent rolled over and flew back up into the sky again, quickly vanishing from sight.

Mara set off at a run, it wasn’t that far to the corpses. Brushing through the trees she quickly came to the rise, on top of which the dead dragon’s body rested. It was as big as any she had seen, but was unlike the undead dragons that populated Tyria, or the Drakes, or even the Serpentine Dragons. What it most resembled was the Crystaline Facets that populated Glint’s Lair but it wasn’t one of those either, it wasn’t transparent. The rider certainly was Dwarvish, but didn’t really resemble the others she had seen in her travels.

She answered the call from Barbie, the bodies would be gone when she got back, but the fact that this was part of something much bigger was almost inevitable. She looked at the bodies and took a screen shot, that at least would provide some evidence.

--- 

Daia Mara arrived at the Guild Hall, and noted the three people present. Barbie was definitely not looking happy. Then again there was those Minions, and the phoenix? “What’s wrong with Barbie?”

“Minion trouble,” Embeth supplied, not quite keeping the mirth in. “They opened her chest, being her minions, drank a keg of ale and ate some honeycombs she was storing there. How many did you say you had?”

“Nearly half a stack,” Barbie returned frostily, “and you are well aware of that.”

Daia nearly laughed but choked it back. “Xunlai Agent say anything?”

“That they are her minions and she’s responsible for what they do. Admittedly that was not very useful, even if it was a statement of fact. It was interesting watching Barbie try to have an argument with her though it was a bit one sided, NPCs don’t say much and you can’t fight with one.”

Daia shrugged, “so why are the minions here?”

“We don’t know.” Kara supplied. “ They shouldn’t be here or even alive now. Normal minions lose health over time, then they die. Why they don’t just degen and crumble to dust only the gods know. Then there’s the sky issue.”

“I noticed that,” Daia looked around, “going to redecorate? Oops, it’s changed.”

“Black night with stars and moons isn’t what it should be.” Barbie stated. “It’s the middle of the day here!”

Daia nodded. “Had a couple of things happen in Dalada Uplands.”

“Strange?”

“They have never happened before. I couldn’t select any of my heroes at all, but I haven’t been able to do that for quite a few days. Then this morning the henchies all vanished, there wasn’t any in the outpost, or any of the Charr NPCs for that matter.”

“That seems to be the same for all of us then,” Moonsinger replied. “I think the Heroes all vanished about a week ago.”

“And there’s no foes in Dalada Uplands either. Well, one mangy Skale who doesn’t even move, it stayed in place and died without even attempting to attack me. The poor thing seemed to be bugged like the ones in Cantha were. Then I saw a dragon flying, very high.”

“One of the Saltspray ones?” Earthstarr asked. “They fly pretty high.”

“I don’t mean a few metres, this one was way up, much higher than the mountains and trees. It had a rider on it’s back. Then this black thing, it looked like a pair of hexagon plates with a globe suspended between them, came down from even higher and killed it. The thing seemed to use some form of fire magic I’ve not seem before.”

“You think Daia is on something?” Moonsinger looked at the Ranger’s face closely. “She looks OK, might have been a bang to the head?”

Mara pushed him asside, “I know what I saw, it was like the facets but a real dragon. The other thing, well, I’ve never seen anything like that, it looked, very mechanical. I’ve got a screenie if you really need evidence.”

Earthstarr poked Barbie Necro and pointed, “what are your minions up to now?”

Barbie turned, the eight minions had formed a circle and were walking around carrying boards. One said ‘MINIONS’ RIGHTS’, another had ‘MINIONS UNITE!’

“I have absolutely no idea,” she finally admitted, “I’m thinking we’ve all gone totally bonkers!” She ran across and grabbed a pot of blue dye off a minion. “No, you can’t have that. It’s mine, get it? Mine. Not for minions. I don’t care if you like blue. We have to do something, get them away from my chest at least. And Embeth, if you ask which chest I will slap you one!”

The minion let go somewhat reluctantly and rejoined the circle, it’s head bowed and shoulders lowered. It kicked into the earth with each step. Mara spoke softly, “I think you’ve upset it Barbie.”

“How the &%*% can I upset a minion?” Barbie Necro pulled her hair. “They are MINIONS! Things I create from exploitable corpses. They don’t have emotions, they only follow Necros around and fight, geddit?”

“I’m pretty sure my phoenix has emotions,” Mara responded. “it’s always glad to see me.” The bird flew to it’s owner then, as if to confirm the bond, rubbed it’s head against her.

“I don’t think there’s anything much we can do about this at the moment, we need to find out more, much more.” Moonsinger inserted. “but where we get that from, I’ve no idea.”

“The storyteller? Egil Fireteller might know something.”

“it’s an idea,” Kara agreed, “except the closest I’ve been able to map is Olafstead, I can’t get to Sifhalla for some reason.”

“We start at Olafstead then,” Barbie decided. What about my minions? I’m not leaving them here with my Storage chest. That group of thieves will ransack it in no time.”

“Nothing much else you can do,” Mara offered. “Chance is they will either die or follow you as my Phoenix does. I could try to get there on my own?”

“Take Embeth,” Kara suggested, “it will give you a better chance of getting through.”

---

Serious Love wasn’t entirely sure where she was, then the fog cleared and she wished she still wasn’t sure where she was. It wasn’t that the present seven gods were there, which they were, Balthazar, Dwayna, Lyssa, Grenth, Melandru, Ava and Kormir were each represented with a huge avatar. What she was having trouble with was Abaddon was there too and he was doing the female necro dance?... Somehow she thought that it would be a good idea if her panties were very damp, although she didn’t know why or how to achieve it. Everyone knew what happened when you saw Abaddon dance, you inevitably died, very quickly, and it wasn’t a nice way to go.

Love tried to edge back as far as she could go, then hit the wall. It wasn’t anywhere near far enough for her and she kept pushing. There were others present too, huge entities she didn’t know. According to the size theory they had to be deities too, even if they were not mentioned in the religious texts.
 
“I think we finally have another visitor,” Grenth announced, “we’ve been expecting you, Serious Love.”

Why her? and why did it have to be Grenth who was expecting her? Then again she seemed to be expecting something herself, at least a full litter of kittens. She remembered the old teachings, if in doubt with a deity it is usually best to prostrate yourself first then beg forgiveness. Prostrating didn’t seem right though, so she knelt down and hoped that would be enough. “Hello, err, your great highnesses. I was wondering, have I done anything recently for which you, umm, want to, err, use extreme violence on me?”

“Not that I know of,” Grenth looked around, “anyone else?”

“Well she did kill me,” Abaddon stated, “at least eight times so far, five of those in hard mode. I suppose I should be bothered about that, but as it wasn’t this me I guess I will let it pass for the moment.”

Love tried to shrink herself, preferably down to pin size or less. It didn’t work well. Then again the gods could see you anywhere. Finally, while cringing, she asked, “this me?”

“Not all of us are what you would call single deities.” Abaddon waved his hands expansively. There is the mad Abaddon, the one you killed, and the one before all that happened. As nobody has actually killed this me there is no problem in me being here. Of course, I’m also still mad, and dead too.”

Love considered that, and wished he had just gone and killed her instead, the implications were not easy to grasp, although she had always known them in principle. Finally, and quite remarkably considering she thought what was left of her brain was draining from her ears, she said wittily, “err?”

“As with the zones we are all instanced.” Kormir supplied. “You and others can travel back through the zones to before Abaddon was killed and fight the same battles again, many times. As an example, pre-searing does not vanish completely when you leave it, there are almost always others there who have never left, they have no wish to move on and we do not force them to do so, until they do they will live the last day, forever. This Abaddon predates the destruction of the temple, but as he is an instance, he can be here even if the other Abaddons, the ones you and others killed, are dead. Of course, the mad Abaddons are very much alive too and are still going to try to kill you if you visit one of them.”

“So you’re saying there’s a lot of bad Abaddon, some of who we killed, and more we didn’t kill, and a good one we won’t need to kill?”

“That’s near enough the truth, at least for the moment.”

“I think something really bad is happening.”

“Good start,” Balthazar boomed, “we were wondering when you would get to that. We are in troubled times, something from outside has damaged this world, and the many other worlds around it.”

That got Love concerned about something other than self survival, although it didn’t make her feel any better otherwise. “Will it mean the end of all things?”

“We do not know.” Kormir supplied. “There are things we can see and things we cannot see. That is something that is beyond the worlds. You think that you are Serious Love, but behind you is another you, the origin of yourself. The one who named and made and became you. That person is, unlike you, a man.”

“I expected as much,” Serious considered, “giving me this damn stupid name. Can I kill him?”

“That would not be advisable, even if you could. As well as killing him you would kill yourself, and I suspect he is needed by us all for the present and later times. The name he gave you is special to him, although it can be changed if you really want.”

“Are these all deities? Are there more?”

“The ones you see here are a mere fraction of the total.” Lissa answered. “We are in discussion to find the best way to deal with the present troubled time. You have another person behind you, similarly the gods have other gods behind them, and the greatest gods overseeing those, making sure we all do what we should at the right time.”

“Unfortunately we cannot see what is outside our sphere of influence,” Balthazar explained, “the Guild Wars limits prevent us. We can now communicate with other gods who are on a similar level to us through the barrier that exists. They are able to place the images of their avatars here, but they are not really here. The higher gods cannot see out clearly either, their vision is limited by their purpose, although some of them look on us. The only ones who can really see out are those behind you and the rest of the characters and a very few controlling gods, like the programmers.

“There is some information we do have, the barriers between the worlds are compromised, and we cannot repair them, we do not have that power. It seems the very structure behind the worlds has been damaged in some way we cannot comprehend. It means that we cannot talk to some of the highest deities as we used to. It also means that some of the ones behind people like you have vanished completely. We do not know why this should be, where they have gone, or what can be done about it. There are limits being imposed on the Guild Wars world we have never experienced before. That may be why people are vanishing, although it seems to be caused by something outside the realms of all the worlds. We are trying to move as many people as possible from the most damaged worlds to other, less damaged ones, as quickly as possible. This is causing problems, the people and things being transferred were never meant to inhabit the same worlds.

“That means that sooner or later we are going to lose the battle if those behind the characters do not respond to our attempts. Others are going to be lost from the combined worlds, perhaps everyone. Without contact to the greater gods things cannot happen that should happen, simply because we will not be told to do them. We do not know how much time we have left before the damage is irreversible. It may be that it is already too late, and this world, along with all the others, will end.”

“She’s not looking too good,” Abaddon pointed out, “is she?”

“And,” Love paused, her voice already weak. “I can help? Err... How? I mean I’m just one character in thousands, how can I change things?”

“By going back outside this world, through the realm of the greater gods, and into the unknown place beyond all that makes Guild Wars and the other game worlds. You must somehow contact your creator, become your original self and attempt to alert the others outside that we can no longer contact to the dangers.”

“What’s wrong with her now?” Grenth poked the female form. “She’s become completely unresponsive.”

“I think I’ve heard of this one,” Abaddon confided, “I think it’s called a faint, what happens when the person can’t handle what they have been told.”

“So what do we do?”

Abaddon shrugged. “Wait till she comes back and start from the beginning, it’s always worked for my other self.”

“I think that was death,” Kormir observed, “after someone danced for him.”

“Looks the same, doesn’t it? Either way she’ll be back, I’ve re-routed the resurrection booth back to this point.”

---

Irregular snow flurries fell, adding to the carpet of white that covered the ground. Except for the occasional tree that reared it’s trunk and branches above the surface there wasn’t much in the way of cover anywhere in the mountainous wilderness of the Northern Shiverpeaks. It was an area of uneven terrain and small mountains. The weather was perpetually cold but sunny and always seemed to have small snow flurries passing through it.

Mara and Moonsinger trudged on, leaving a pair of tracks across the snow scape. There wasn’t much in the way of foes that they needed to kill anywhere they had been so far. Having managed to get to Boreal Station where the normal NPCs stood waiting for people who seemed never to arrive. None of the NPCs seemed interested in trading, or buying the few drops they had. Boreal had been the only outpost in the area they had found that they could map to, and after they had arrived they found they couldn’t map anywhere else. They had then made the journey to Eye of the North on foot, which was empty, not even Gwen was in the Hall of Monuments there. There was no sign of abandonment, no lose papers or scattered items. The few foes they had met on the way were either slow and jerky or didn’t move at all.

Gunnar’s Hold had proved to be equally empty of people, it was becoming a standard neither of them liked. Both gave each other worried looks before entering. Here ice had invaded on a massive scale. Frozen water filled the arena and made the floor an ice rink with Ice stalactites and stalagmites spanning the gap between floor and the ceiling, it was probably the only reason the mass of hanging ice didn’t break and fall to the floor. Any impact from such a missile would have meant instant death to the one hit, which made it dangerous for them to stay inside the place. They hurried around looking to see what was there, trying to avoid making any excess noise or vibrations.

In the end there was nothing worthwhile to be found from the hurried search, leaving them with even more unanswered questions than before. Leaving they headed out across Norrheart Domains towards the gate into Drakkar Lake. The huge ice elementals that would have normally been found walking around the area were completely absent, as were the much less dangerous Pinesouls. The visibility was poor with white snow falling, which not only made the ground more difficult but spotting any foes too.

Another problem started in that their radar seemed to lose the red dots which signified hostile foes. An intermittent warning wasn’t a problem but if it continued any length of time, or even became permanent, it would make the trip a lot more dangerous. With the radar they could spot a danger a long way off, often allowing them to easily avoid it.

“There’s a group of Jotun over there.” Mara pointed, “and another one on the other side of us. We should be safe as the gap between is much wider than the aggro zone.”

Embeth nodded, the huge giants could be very dangerous, and a fight with more than a very few could result in near instant death for both of them. “Last thing we need is a group of those trying to catch up with us. I don’t like them at all.”

“Neither does anyone else, with those large clubs, interrupts and Mesmer tricks I would much prefer to face them with a large group.” She waved her hand signalling ahead, “We had better hurry, if they are patroling then they will cover the same path again.”

Embeth looked around as they ran, “I’m not sure but those two groups seem to be following us at a distance, their paths have changed.”

“I know,” Daia signalled her phoenix to hurry. “If we just get through the gate we’ll be safe. Woah! Frozen sea spikes? What are those doing here?”

“I don’t know but the the only way we have now looks to be through them. Not my personal favourite choice, there is enough of those to kill us.”

“Go round to the north,” Mara set off again, running, “quick. Ouch, trap!”

“The Jotun aren’t supposed to make traps,” Embeth cast a short spell then helped Mara back up. “Lucky I brought a condition removal skill or we would have been really done for. That trap had to have been there a long time, much more than the normal 90 seconds or we would have seen footprints.”

“Things are changing, mostly it seems for the worst.” Mara voiced as they turned left, following the edge of the spikes, they would cause instant damage as well as longer term bleeding and cripple if they had went through them. “We’re nearly there.”

“And they have nearly caught up too.” Embeth panted heavily. “They are moving damn fast considering we are set to normal mode.”

“Only about fifty metres though, try harder. Use a running skill if you have one.”

“I don’t,” Embeth cast a skill, “keep going.”

Mara knew better than to ask questions, she continued to run, knowing that Moonsinger was going the other way, towards the enemy. Embeth examined the giants, luckily the further group was a good way behind. He selected the skill and dived forwards, the response was as he hoped, the group of foes bunched up to receive him and he cast caltrops. The giants attacked, huge clubs swung towards him, covered with long spikes. The wire skill activated and Moonsinger shadowstepped instantly back to Mara.

“That should slow them down for a little while,” he observed as the sound of the raging foes reached them, “and we are there anyway.”

They slid gratefully through the gate.

The cold, open countryside of Drakkar Lake spread out in front of them, occasional frost laden trees dotted the landscape and the resurrection booth stood as it always had, but there was no Norn on guard. They stopped dead and starred. Three massed ranks of centaurs, each half human, half horse warrior appeared primed, completely alert and ready for combat. It seemed like every Centaur in the valley had to be there and all of their identifications were ominously red.

“You think that someone has a little hate thing about us?” Daia asked. “For some reason I don’t think this is a good Centaur hunting day. Perhaps we should turn back.”

“I don’t fancy going back,” Moonsinger thumbed over his shoulder, “but with any luck the Giants should have reset to their normal paths, at least we would have... time... Scrub that, they’ve just come straight through the gate. We didn’t gate, the thing failed to work when we went through it.”

“That’s impossible. Well, OK, not quite impossible, cause we’ve done it. You know I’ve got this strange premonition thing, I think we’re gonna die - horribly.”

“I’m having the same one.” Embeth’s eye’s flicked between both groups. “OK, which lot do we kill first?”

Horns blew from the ranks of the Centaurs, hooves struck the ground, then the front rank charged.

“Centaurs or Giants,” Embeth considered, “umm, I’d prefer neither. Got a gold coin to throw up?”

The second rank joined in the charge, although now some distance behind the first. From the other side the giants bellowed and ran towards them, shaking their clubs. “Centaurs are closest,” Mara offered, “I wish I could do something I can’t describe right now... ahh %$&%! They’ve changed to green!”

The centaurs charged past and met the Giants in a massive collision of bodies. “I guess that solves the issue,” Mara ordered her bird to attack, “Get the giants! We can deal with the centaurs later, if we need to, or die trying.”

Embeth watched Mara’s multiple fire arrows fly to their targets, selected one of his own and shadowstepped in, his blades found their target points easily, despite the huge size of the giants. Bodies fell on both sides the giants were bigger but the Centaurs far more numerous. The third row of Centaurs, rangers and healers, stopped short and began adding their fire to the conflagration while the warriors from second row hit home, trampling the Giants that were knocked down by the impacts. The last two giants tried to run but were chased by the Centaurs and were cut down. The surviving horse men raced on through the gate and vanished.

The ground shuddered, then steadied, the dead bodies vanished, and the snow was pristine again. “I think we have gated, finally.” Embeth examined where the dead had been piled up moments before. “I guess we aren’t even going to be able to say thanks. Time to go on, I guess.”

“Not so fast suckers.”

They looked around, the only thing there was a white rabbit, the one from the cave. Mara wasn’t exactly sure of this, and felt embarrassed, but asked, “you talking to us?”

“Who else is stoopid enough to be out here?" the creature sniffed, "you gotta carrot?”

“That’s one of these orangey things I seem to have but don’t seem to have any use for, isn’t it?”

“Yep. Daia, hand it over.” The rabbit seemed to chew on nothing but the carrot vanished anyway. “Oh, reminds me, I’m supposed to say compliments of Melandru, or sumptin, whatever that’s supposed to mean. Back to my cave. You don’t fancy coming in and letting me and the guys kill ya again do you?”

“Not at the moment,” Daia answered, checking her pet over, “perhaps some other time. We have something else to do.”

“Yeah, yeah. I know, no time for the dumb rabbit who can talk. Nobody visits us anymore.”

“It’s not like we have any choice, there’s lots of things that have gone wrong and we need to find out why and try fixing them. You wouldn’t know anything about the missing foes, or other problems, would you?”

“Nah, go see the dumb Norn storyteller, he might know something.” The rabbit waved back then winked to Azira, Daia’s phoenix. “Cyas later I suppose.”

“I didn’t know Rabbits could talk,” Daia whisped softly so the bunny couldn’t hear, “at least not in this game.”

“Might be one of the changes, like that gate failure. You know the world could be turning completely upside down?”

“And pigs might fly?” Daia asked. “No, don’t go there, I have no wish to see anything flying except those animals Melandru has provided with wings.”

“I was going to say we could fall off. Flying might be fun though, providing we don’t hit anything hard.”

“I’m more worried what we will find at Sif. If what we have experienced so far is anything to go by there won’t be anyone there. For that matter Egil Fireteller might not be there either. What if we can’t map out? Or warn the others? Did that rabbit wink at Azira?”

The rabbit turned at the mouth of the cave and watched them continue on their way until they were out of sight, then changed into a raven. “*^%&, I’m late and Kara will be wondering how I’m not there. The things I do for that Melandru.” The raven quickly mapped out, leaving a tiny hole in the snow flurry that was passing, which quickly filled. Then there was only snow and the biting chill of the wind.

---

The Norn outpost was as lifeless as most other places were, no characters or NPCs roamed the hall. The fire was completely dead, a simple pile of grey ash remained, as if it had finally run out of the fuel that they had never seen added to. The sound of dripping water and the air chilled their breath into mist were the only two things separating reality from an image. The water had frozen into a clear ice sheet that covered the floor in a shallow frozen lake, making it difficult to walk quickly.

Initially they wandered about, looking hopefully for any sign that the place might be different from their first impression, it wasn’t going to happen. Finally they stood in the middle of the structure for some time, enveloped in thought, before Moonsinger spoke. “We might have come all this way to find that there is nobody at all to talk to. And you could be right, Jaga Moraine might be as dead as this place.”

“It might also be full of foes waiting to kill us,” Mara returned, shuffling her feet around, “or perhaps all the heroes, NPCs, characters and others with a big ‘fooled you’ banner. Yeah, some hope. We won’t find out what is there until we actually go and see.”

“Huge mobs of vicious friends trying to lampoon us is another good reason not to find out, I don’t mind dying but if they are camped on the rez shrine and we can’t map out then it’s going to be spectacularly bad. Then again, we might not even rez, plenty of people haven’t. You know, I’ve been up here plenty of times, same as in the desert, and you would think that it would change.”

“Which bits?”

“The air, it feels as if it should be cold here, but it isn’t. then again I’m not even sure what cold is. I feel the desert should be hot and dry but it feels exactly the same as here, and it feels the same in Lion’s arch.”

“I just get the feeling that nothing is alive here,” Mara noted, “not even us really. We can stay here, which gets us nowhere. We can go back, in which case we failed.”

“Or we can go on and see what’s out there.” Moonsinger finished for her while looking around and spotting something. “I guess we only have one option. At least the chest is still here,” he walked across to it slowly, “but mine is empty?”

“So is mine.” Daia responded, “ not that I need anything from in there. You think Barbie’s minions managed to do something to break it completely?”

“I doubt it. I think the Xunlai Agent said that they could only do things that affect the contents of her vault box, not mine or yours. Only I should be able to access my chest and only you should have access to yours. I guess we complain to the agent next time we find one, if there are any of them still in existence.”

“What happens if they have all gone?”

“Then we’re all down a good bit of stuff, everything in our storage unless we can find a chest that works properly. I wonder how Barbie is getting on.”

“Probably having a great deal of fun in the guild hall, maybe even having a party knowing her. Might as well stop wasting time and see what’s out there, I doubt if it can be as bad as our worst fears.”

--- 

Serious Love opened her eyes, the face looking at her was about the same as her own, although distinctly male, middle aged and balding. The moustache did very little for the appearance, and neither did the horn rimmed glasses, if anything the man looked a lot like a tall dwarf. “Watch my finger.” The finger darted about but she kept her eyes looking at it. “Seems to be still adequate, well inside operational parameters. Hello Serious, I’m Bill Hodes, a graphics programmer on the Epic Endeavour. I know you don’t have any idea what that means, but don’t worry about it for the moment. What I’m here to do is try and get you up to speed on what actually happened, preferably without you fainting again. The Gods may have a lot of ability and power but quite often they don’t act as if they have the intelligence they should have. Do you remember talking to the Avatars of the Gods?”

“Yes, but what they said didn’t make that much sense.” Her voice started slow and unsure but picked up pace rapidly to finish in a race. “Then they told me I would have to go outside the game worlds...”

“Yep, don’t worry about that bit for the moment.” He reassured her. “You need to know a lot more about some other things before then, hopefully everything will drop neatly into place. The Gods here tend to be a little too dramatic, but then they are about all we’ve got running correctly at the moment. Don’t worry if you don’t fully understand something initially, we will go back over it again, several times if you need to. We will also take frequent rest breaks, you will need those to absorb the information and make use of it and I need to keep my eyes on what the gods are getting up to. Now, where do I start.

“I suppose the best option is to tell you the basics, you know how Guild Wars works, or at least is meant to work. Now the hard bit to accept, your whole world, everything here, is inside what we call a game, the game is called Guild Wars. Underneath the game is a very complex machine, really many machines joined together, doing lots of things you can’t see in order for you to experience what you do. When it was built the designers thought that all of the primary people, like the one behind you, would be unable to stay awake for the whole seventy year period of time they would be in here, remembering both how to play the games and do everything they needed to outside of it. There was periods inserted where the people were supposed to sleep and during that their characters would be removed from the game and be temporarily put into storage. Then, for some reason, the system failed. The system stopped regulating when people would go to sleep and when they would wake up.

“That all might have been fine, except most people just can’t stay awake that long, seventy years is a very long time to stay awake when a lot of people can barely manage sixteen hours. Eventually people just went to sleep despite the system not prompting them to do so. Don’t worry much about what sleep is but it’s a state where their eyes close and they don’t experience much of the outside world for a time, like a very long blink but they don’t really experience sound or touch or the passage of time. A bit like you just did but that was a faint. Once the people were asleep though there was nothing to wake them back up and the system didn’t remove their avatars from the game either. Normally that wouldn’t be too bad, you and your fellow characters would just continue doing what you were for a while. 

“People, like the ones behind us, don’t remember much while they are asleep and if they can’t remember their stuff then we don’t know it either. So as long as the real you is asleep you won’t know much of what your real self does know. Effectively you’ve temporarily lost most of your memories, which is why you can’t remember anything previous to this world. That would all change if the real you woke, then you would get them back again. You will know everything you did and everything you have done in here since.”

“I’ll remember everything?”

“Well mostly, you see in order for you to function still we had to put some extra information into you. At that point you were almost as dumb as an NPC. We boosted your capabilities so you could still do your stuff. To do that we had to use part of the capabilities of the ship which means that capability can’t be used for anything else, it’s another drain on resources.”

“What about magic? My staff? Would those work in the real world?”

“As you are in game many items either don’t serve the same purpose as they do outside or have additional functions or capabilities that you could not make something do in the real world. Unfortunately magic doesn’t work outside this place. Healing doesn’t work in the same way either, it takes a very long time for your real body to heal itself. The biggest difference we have found a reference to is something called growing old. Our bodies should degenerate and eventually fail completely. We would then be replaced by our offspring. In the real world the children grow up and become the next generation. For varying reasons each of our real bodies is in a machine which keeps it alive and repairs any damage, it also negates the effects of ageing somehow.”

“I definitely get that idea.” Love looked around. “I think I’ve been having some problems recently to do with items that seem to have no purpose here but I somehow seem to know that they should have one. So what is a fork? Something to kill mice with?”

“It’s an eating implement.” Hodes considered her apparent blankness then continued. “Your in game self doesn’t need to eat because your energy is supplied by the computer. The real you can’t get energy in that way so it originally ate plants and cooked animal flesh. You know the Drake kebob?” She nodded.” Well we’ve got pretty much the same thing, we shove it in our mouths and chew it with the teeth to break it up and then swallow.” He demonstrated the action. “It’s processed inside us and results in energy passing from the food into our bodies so we can live and do things. We combine a knife to cut things with a fork and use them to put food in our mouths from a plate. You can see this might take some time if I’m going to describe everything from that level.”

Serious nodded. “What precisely do I have to do?”

“That’s one thing I don’t know,” he admitted, “although the final thing I would like is for someone to wake up and find out what is happening in the outside world. I don’t even know if you can do anything - you might not be the right person. I can see in here, almost everything that is inside the computer systems. What I don’t have access to is what is on the outside. There were people who could observe and operate things in the real world but they don’t seem to be responding at all. I send messages but get no replies. If it is you, and I stress the if, then perhaps you can awake up. Then you might be able to investigate what has happened and tell us. I wouldn’t expect you to do everything on your own, hopefully you can wake me up too, and others. we can then investigate how we can fix everything permanently. We are still trying to find out exactly how in the great library.”

“You mean a place with books?”

“Not quite, although you can look at it like that. It’s more a place where the text from inside the books is stored, without the paper of the book being used. You can store a lot more books without the paper than with and they are all contained in a very few memory crystals. It’s called a document repository in the manual we have found that relates to it, unfortunately they spent a huge amount of time writing that and mostly it is useless to us. What we needed to know, the important bits for accessing the documents, could have been written on a single scroll. Just think of it as magic for the moment. Exact images of all the books are all stored in this big magic crystal thing so you can take one out and it will feel real.”

“So what’s taking you so long?”

“ Over fifty-three million books is what’s taking us so long,” Hodes explained. “ or the equivalent. Almost all of which have absolutely no relevance to what we are doing, but we have to check them all anyway. They took all the documentation available from the world data banks, internet, and added everything from anyone who thought they could write or had something important to say. At least half of it is terrible dross. We’ve already considered using NPCs or the Gods, but neither of them groups understand language well enough to do the job. We have managed to rule out an awful lot of them simply because they have nothing to do with what we want, irrelevant stories and histories for a start. The other issue is that none of the available real people understands exactly what we are looking for. The answer could be almost anywhere and I do know that the actual procedure was planned to be extremely obscure, in order to prevent anyone activating it by accident. There may, in the end, be no documentation for it and it will be down to trying something and seeing if it works.”

“So something like one of us dies?”

“I doubt if it’s that simple. The way the system works normally is you die, then you rez. Effectively you’re back where you start with no benefit and a fifteen percent death penalty for your trouble. I know people seem to be vanishing but a lot of them, the ones we can identify as still present at least. They all seem to be in an area called Purgatory, the first part of the mists. They are supposed to cycle through there in just a fraction of a second and be restored but it’s also gone wrong. There’s suppose to be a timing trigger that kicks people back out after a short delay, but it’s stopped working too, so I wouldn’t count on that as an option. It may well be that you have to start at a specific point and then do something, go else where and do something else. You might even have to do something repeatedly, or many things in the right order. We just don’t know yet.”

“You want me to read books?”

Hodes shook his head. “No. Serious, you aren’t going to be any good at doing that without knowing what you knew originally. For a few of us our real selves wake up after a few hours sleep, we don’t know why we do and everyone else doesn’t but that’s how it works. That means we have access to our real memories, we know who we are and what we did before. It might be a natural clock of some kind that wakes us. Unfortunately there are very few people who regularly wake up again, and none of us have worked in the right area. Most of us are programmers, although a couple do other things.”

“Why would you need a clock? It’s always the time it is?”

“It measures things as they happen, so that things can happen at the right time. In your world a place, like the Guild Hall is always at one time, no matter what happens there. You might do a lot of small battles in an area, or vanquish it completely, but the time there never changes. In the outside world time happens in a sequence, morning turns into noon, afternoon, evening and night, then morning comes around again, it’s a constant cycle. Mostly, unless something happens to change it, your world stays the same, if a location is at midday, then it stays that way forever, same for locations where it is night. The snow in the Shiverpeaks should melt and the trees and grass grow but it seems that never will happen. There would be nothing but the present forever, except if something did happen to change it.

“Which brings me to the other issue, as well as the big thing that we aren’t sure about that happened there’s a second one, although one seems to have caused the other. As you know we’ve tried to improve you so you can continue to do what you are doing. We were planning to give you more capabilities, thinking power, that sort of stuff. When the initial big thing happened, whatever it was, a lot of the stuff we were preparing got pushed into the worlds, without us having any control over how it went in. Other areas got damaged and we completely lost contact with many more. We can’t regain the contact or use the required controls from inside, so we are sure something very important is damaged on the outside. Eventually most of the dumped code ended up overwritten but some of it managed to work, it entered characters like we intended and changed you all. That is why you are questioning things, like the fork It also entered a lot of the NPCs, and especially the foes you have been fighting. A lot of the foes ended up dead, others ended up stuck, unable to operate. Some of them got their capabilities boosted and, just a few, gained some form of intelligence.

“None of them understand what’s gone wrong, but most of those that have gained some form of intelligence don’t want to be fixed. That means they are going to be working against the gods. Unlike what you’ve been told the gods aren’t all powerful, omnipresent beings, each does have limits, so they can’t simply obliterate the enemy instantly. There is also the problem that some of the items I would normally use got damaged or eliminated completely. I don’t have access to all the programming aids I should have and without them I don’t have quite the picture of what is going on that I used to.”

Serious nodded. “So all of the documents are safe?”

“Yes, they seem to be, but there are caveats even there. Although all the books are still present and seem to be undamaged some of the database files were damaged. Databases store items and documentation about items, NPCs and people. It means that we aren’t going to have the easy way out of this and those foes are going to be a real risk, if they find out what we are up to and stop us. Normally I would check up who’s still available and cross reference to the database storing what they could do, unfortunately that’s not available for some reason. I might end up selecting someone who doesn’t want the place fixed at all and they could do a lot of damage, either by spying on us for the enemy or simply sabotaging what we are trying to do. They still have to obey the rules though, so if someone does enough damage they will kill one. Don’t forget that they have gods working on their side too.”

“Evil gods?”

“Some of them are what you would call evil gods, the other Abaddon has joined them. Fortunately it seems his multiplicity of selves is just two at the moment, ours and theirs. Which brings another issue, the underlying machines to this world are called computers, they do a lot of really complex sums in order to make it work. The evil gods also need to think, but they use the same math as everything else. The more thinking they, and we for that matter, do the less work the computers can do in running the worlds, they will get slower, and slower, until they stop.”

“Can’t you stop them?”

“Theoretically it should be possible to stop them working. Unfortunately I’m the wrong type of programmer for that, I am doing my best but it isn’t anywhere near enough. If it looks like they are going to win I will attempt to purge the computers, but that will wipe everything out, Guild Wars, as you know it, will not exist. The systems will, hopefully, restart and, with a lot of luck, that would wake people up, but it could also stick. The people out there might never wake. In a worst case there might not be anything left at all. None of the worlds in here would exist and the people in the outside world, myself and you included, might die.

“Then again we have some limited time, whatever happened out there the computers are slowly shutting down, probably trying to save power. That means the ones available can do less, which means less room for things to be done. Eventually everything could be stopped out and that might result in a restart too. However bad it seems we haven’t lost yet.”

Love sounded concerned, “if you do reset the systems what about the other people?”

“I’m sure most of the people aren’t dead and won’t end up that way. Without a game world to be resident in they would be put in an area of purgatory called null storage. I designed that, it’s a place that seems to be a large, white, foggy area where people will wander around, not remembering anything or doing anything useful.”

“I would like as much information about that as you can give me, it sounds interesting for some reason. So you need someone, like me, but maybe not me, to wake themselves, then work out how to save the worlds when you have no idea how to?”

“How do you start a quest or mission? Initially you know very little, sometimes virtually nothing, and you gradually find an answer. You don’t have to do it alone because we will try to help. I’ve got to go now and check up on how things are going, but I will be back.”

“One last question,” Love considered, “I’ve killed Abaddon several times, why is he so amiable about it?”

“You would prefer him to go into an all out rage, torture and kill you?”

Serious considered the implications of that response for several moments. “Umm, yeah, point taken, I won’t ask him.”

--- 

“Barbie,” Kara shouted as she entered the inner sanctum of the Guild Hall, “have you seen my raven Rocky?” The bird in question flew down from the rafters and perched on the ground, behind the sofa and out of sight of anyone. The bird then cleaned it’s beak and cawed gently to attract attention. Kara turned and greeted her pet. “Ah, there you are. Barbie, I think those minions of yours are up to something again, something is just not right with them. Could you handle it?”

“Are they in my chest again?” Barbie raised her head over the huge pink leather Chesterfield sofa, just enough to see the intruding ranger. The top of her staff also protruded, managing to make her look rather like a besieged soldier peeking out over the defences. “That’s all I’m really bothered about. If they try stealing stuff from my chest again they are going to die.”

“No,” Kara admitted, “but I think you will be bothered about what they are doing. You know those nice new tapestries you got fitted?”

“Oh my gods!.” Barbie jumped completely over the sofa, and Rocky, then ran out the door, hardly touching the floor with her feet on the way. “What the *&%%! are you lot up to?”

The minions, now all dressed in small red togas, stood to attention, they looked reasonably proud of themselves but said nothing.

“Nothing much you can do about it now,” Kara offered carefully, following Barbie out, “I mean it’s not like you’re going to be putting those together again.”

Barbie let out some unprintable words which formed odd symbols that hung above her head for a few seconds before they disappeared again. She then replied to Kara with, “those hangings cost the guild a lot of gold. They shouldn’t have done it.”

“So you expect your minions to go around naked all the time?”

Barbie realised that it wasn’t worth arguing that one and turned to the minions. Two of them were vampiric horrors, with life stealing powers. The remaining six being normal horrors, which they were all achieving far beyond her expectations. Then again, what was normal for a minion now? Admittedly Kara did have a point, and it reduced her extreme anger slightly. What she really wanted was to go out and kill something, preferably a lot of things, until she felt better. All she could do now was accept the loss and note the guilty, just in case she could get some retribution in later.

The fact they were her minions precluded her being suitably violent to them and the skills she could have used against them had vanished. Feast for the dead would have redistributed the health from one of them, killing it in the process and providing a stark example to the others that she was not to be messed with. Having ran out of options in that line she responded to Kara by simply avoiding the question. “They don’t usually talk either. At least none of the previous ones did. Then again, if they are my minions, they will be forced to respond when I ask them something important. Important like, who’s idea was it?”

Seven of the minions pointed at the eighth, one of the Vampirics, who happened to be standing a distance in front of the others. The indicated guilty party, not noticing initially that he had been given away, responded, “we all took part in it. Blaming it on one of us would not be reasonable or... Why is Barbie only looking at me? Are you lot pointing at my back? You are, aren’t you? Hey, guys, I thought we had agreed not to tell?”

The other minions said nothing but snapped back to attention, Barbie tapped her foot on the ground for effect and snapped out her staff.

A female voice interrupted any worsening of the situation, “Barbie, Kara, how you both doing?”

Barbie turned to see Night Stargazer had entered the guild hall, along with a male mesmer? “I’ve had better days, who is your friend?”

“It’s Bogus,” Bogus responded, “you know, Bogus Dude?”

“Bogus isn’t a Mesmer though,” Barbie pointed out, “even if the indicator says you’re him.”

“But I am Bogus,” he pointed his thumb towards himself then stopped, “One sec, those aren’t my gloves, or coat. What’s happened to me?”

“Bogus was definitely a Ranger three seconds before we mapped here,” Stargazer stated, “so what’s happened?”

“Plenty of things are happening that shouldn’t,” Kara pointed out, “this might just be one of those things. Barbie has been having a few problems with her minions.”

“Oh, you bought them uniforms!” Night looked the eight over with apparent excitement. “They do look really smart in those togas. But I thought they would all just die off?”

“These ones don’t,” Barbie decided to put a brave face on it when there was no other option, “and they seem to be able to talk too.”

Bogus looked around,“when are your new tapestry things going to arrive? I know you’ve been going on about them for some time and someone said you had them already”

“Didn’t like them,” Barbie responded, “much too, ahem, so I didn’t bother. Do you still have Ranger skills or have those changed?”

“I don’t seem to have any skills selected.” Bogus concentrated on something nobody else could see. “It looks like I’ve got some Mesmer Insignia and Runes. Yep, all my Ranger attributes have gone in favour of Mes ones. Looks like I’m stuck like this, for the moment at least.”

“Could be worse,” Kara offered, “It could be one of us and we would have to get some new outfits made. Bogus, you’re male, things like clothes don’t bother you as much as us.”

“They were top of the range, Obsidian,” Bogus responded, “not some cheap 1K stuff. I had to supply half a stack of Ectos to make them, and Obi shards. And now, they’re just normal Mesmer Krytan armor.”

“We have more important problems than a suit of armor,” Barbie decisively interrupted Bogus’ decent, “ - any armor. Serious Love and a load of others have vanished, there appears to be breaks in the game world, and we all might end up vanishing too. Um, Kara, could you stop your bird eyeing my minions as if they are dinner?”

“But dead bodies are the sort of thing ravens are supposed to eat,” Earthstarr observed, “I can’t help it if your minions look like an eat all you can eight course banquet meal for a multitude of crows, can I?”

“Maybe, but if we do need them at any point I want them each having both arms, legs, eyes and all other bits accounted for. Now, where was I. Daia Mara and Embeth Moonsinger have gone to see Egil Fireteller, to find out if he knows anything. Chances are it’s a complete wild goose chase and we might as well be asking dumb Rocky here but I suppose it’s worth trying. I’ve sent Maria Louise a guest invite but she hasn’t responded yet, unfortunately I can’t seem to whisper her. What’s your bird pecking at?”

“It’s a bit of paper.” Earthstarr recovered the scrap from her pet, the bird began to preen a disturbed patch of feathers in its side. “It says ‘Kara, check your Vault Box’, Serious Love.” Kara made her way over to the chest and opened it. “There’s another bit of paper here. ‘The gods are at war with great evil, we have to win or the world and everything in it will cease to exist. Prepare yourselves for a great journey into the unknown. Egil Fireteller will tell Daia and Embeth more and I will try to contact you again if I can. The enemy are massing close by you but we cannot provide any help yet. You will need to protect the Guild hall against massed assault and a siege - don’t let it fall.’ Sounds a bit dodgy, would Serious write that?”

“It was in your box,” Night Stargazer pointed out. “I’ve no idea if it’s real or not but I guess we do as instructed, that’s all there is we can do.”

“We can’t even shut the gates,” Bogus pointed out, “or arm ourselves here, so how do we prepare to fight an invasion?”

“The gods will have to allow it,” Barbie stated firmly, “perhaps there is some PvP thing we don’t know about yet? I can take out my staff at will in here now so something has changed. There’s one thing I’m sure of, I don’t want to be facing an invasion without some preparations. The gate switch seems to work now too. I wonder what we are going to be up against. Are you all ready to fight? I think this might get nasty and we won’t be able to run away.”

“I think you are going to have to name us, oh most wonderful one,” one of the Vampirics pointed out, “or at least give us some ranks.”

“Yeah, right, names.” Barbie considered then pointed at the vampyric horror who hadn’t suggested turning her tapestries into garments. “for the moment you are Sarge, the other Vampiric is Corp, and the rest of you.” Barbie got out a small pot of paint and brush, then wrote the numbers 1 to 6 on their togas. The Vampirics got a large S and C written on theirs. “That will do for the moment.”

“They look a bit under protected,” Earthstarr observed,” and I seem to have these square shields in my chest I didn’t have before. They might as well have them. Here you go.”

The minions picked up the shields and equipped them, now looking much more like a properly armed fighting force than just a minion rabble. Barbie stood in front of her minions and nodded in satisfaction. “I suppose there’s nothing much else we can do but wait. Either the enemy will come before Daia and Embeth get back or we fight them here. At the moment I expect the latter but we will not die without extracting the maximum from them. We will fight bravely, and kill as many of them before we go as we can. We will not retreat, there can be no surrender. If we do finally succumb to massed ranks of rabbid enemies then at least they will remember us fighting with honor. I say to you all, today is a good day to die... What is it?”

“Urr,” Number three mumbled, “Can we talk abou dis? I don’t think today is a good day to die. I wanna to live a really long time, learn to dance an swim, walk barefoot through the grass and pick lotsa irises. Why you covering your face wiv your hand for?”

--- 

The green trees shaded Marie Louise from the sun and the sight of any beasts that might try to avoid her as she moved quietly and efficiently on her way. The lythe monk, although shorter than most people, was one of the most effective in what she did. The countryside was an excellent place to roam and, most of all, farm. The area was full of great beasts both beneath the forests and in the small hills. Unlike most other places foes still roamed here in some numbers although, as far as she could remember, some of the mobs were not native to the area.

Maria Louise observed the beast carefully, it looked rather like the some of the mantis insectoids from the Echovald forests, but this one was ominously black and larger, level 31 meant it was a boss of some kind. Numerous spikes projected from it’s body as if to provide all round protection and the tail was curved over it’s back like a scorpion. While the creature’s sharp scythe like claws and thick armor would normally give it a huge advantage that wouldn’t necessarily be the case here. It was on it’s own and against a 55hp monk, so unless it had some enchantment removal skills it wasn’t going to win easily. In her opinion this was looking like a fairly even fight with a worthy foe.

Maria cast her enchantments and hexes on the enemy, the beast hissed at her threateningly, then fired poison in return. Unlike a normal character a 55 monk doesn’t have much actual health to play with and her level dropped then recovered with healing. They met in a clash of weapons, the foe damaging itself with it’s attacks far more than it injured her. The huge slashes would have done far more damage on a more normal character but did little more than scratches on her. The sheer number of hits kept her at maximum self healing.

Time wore on, it was obviously suffering slow but sure damage but it was costing Maria energy. There were two options, continue to fight or map out. 

Then it was gone, not dead, but it had left the area. No normal foe could map, even a boss, and this one had vanished with a quarter of it’s health left. Having dealt with the beast Maria looked around, for fifty metres the land was devastated, tree trunks blackened, cracked and shrunken, their branches leafless. The once thriving grass shrivelled into black threads. Something had happened to change the once green area to something near to the Searing in Ascalon.

There was also that big crack in the border of the area she had seen. It was not a normal feature and had never been there previously. It certainly wasn’t wide enough to edge through but it stretched for a hundred metres across the ground, up the hillside and into the sky.

Maria checked and found she had a guest invite. Perhaps someone else knew more than she did about what was happening? The poison had to be an unusually strong one, giving five points of degen, and the thing was still out there somewhere. There was nothing she could do about that for the moment, it could be anywhere. Instead she accepted the invite and mapped.

---

“I think I’ve got the idea,” Maria Louise stated, “we hold here until Daia and Embeth get back or give us information. Which means I had better change into my normal monk gear and keep you alive. Who’s keeping lookout?”

“Barbie’s minions,” Earthstarr supplied, “they don’t seem to tire of just watching and waiting for things to happen. Hopefully they will be attentive to anything happening out there. And before you ask, while they haven’t died and are alive in the guild hall, we don’t know how or why.”

Maria finished walking to the chest and looked. “I don’t know about the rest of you but my chest is empty. Nothing in it at all. Means I’m stuck with the 55 armor until I can get some more.”

“Mine’s empty too!” Bogus complained, looking around. “And where has the Agent gone?”

“Your guess is as good as mine, but we really need more people here if we are going to hold this place.”

Urmila India mapped in. “Got problems I can help with?”

Bogus grinned. “How good are you at finding a Xunlai Agent and extracting our stuff from them?”

“You got healing or Spirit Spam?” Maria asked. “I’m stuck with 55 monk.”

“I’m not very good at finding the agents at all,” Urmila admitted while starring back at Bogus. “I can hardly find one when it’s next to the Vault Box. I’ve got Signet of Spirits, Maria. I’ve been farming so I’m set up as a spirit spammer.”

“Good enough,” Maria agreed, “but we still need a healer. With just six of us I don’t know how long we can hold out here.”

“We hold as long as we have to,” Kara said with some determination, “hopefully there will be more arriving. What’s that noise?”

“Sounds like an earthquake,” Runa Tal Rit supplied, “or the tramping of feet, a would have to be a huge number of them. They don’t sound that far away now either. Sorry I’m late but had some distractions on the way. I’ve seen a few people and talked to them. There seems to be a few groups of characters still out there but they are mostly trying to gather enough bodies to hold their own Guild Halls.”

A series of shouts came from the minions on the wall each of them pointing to where a black shape came over the hill and like an oil slick flowed down the nearer side. “Looks like we have company.” Barbie shouted. “Most of them are level 20s, a good few less than that.”

“Looks to be about a hundred.” Bogus counted, “I think we could be sunk but as yet nothing heavy. Providing we can keep them outside the walls we should be OK.”

“That could be just the first wave.” Barbie countered. “They’ve stopped for the moment so we might have some more time before they bother to attack. They outside bow range?”

“Well outside,” Kara answered, “there’s no chance of hitting them until they come a lot closer. For all we know they might be just a patrol checking us out.”

“or they might have the entire Mexican army behind them.” Night Stargazer pointed out. “We could be heading for a remake of the Alamo. You sure we have to stay here?”

“We have limited options to map out to,” Bogus warned,  “if it is just a patrol and gets lucky it will arrive right on top of us. If it’s the vanguard of an army and they get lucky we might have to face all of them, trapped and in the open. I doubt if we will last long in a fight on open ground.”

“If I’m reading their troops right,” Barbie stated, “then they have eighty warriors, ten rangers, couple of healers, couple of mesmers and one elementalist. Hopefully no hordes of undead when we start killing them off.

“The Mesmers are both charr,” Maria Louise pointed out, “that might mean the rest of them arenn’t local to Guild Wars.”

“In that case they probably won’t have any idea of spirit spamming,” Urmila said enthusiastically, “I can put a row along the front wall if needed and cause no end of pain.”

“Minions coming back from the front wall.” Barbie stated confidently, “You lot got any additional information?”

“Yeah,” number 3 responded, “they’re all bigger dan us.”

“Almost everything is bigger than you lot.”Barbie started checking the uniforms. “You should be able to level though, which means that sooner or later you will all be at level 20.”

“Which is what I was thinkin,” Corp stated. “we should stand at the back.”

“Doesn’t work that way,” she tightened a knot in a toga, “You lot are melee fighters, you need to be close to hit something.”

“but they scare us.” two pointed out before shrugging. “Still, you the boss, and you get to lead us into battle.”

Barbie goggled. “What?”

“Says in the rules,” six confirmed, “we follow our necro into battle and attack anyone she attacks or anyone that attacks them or us.”

Five nodded. “Otherwise we go read your fashion papers.”

“My fashion magazines?” Barbie exclaimed, “what have you done with those?”

“Nothing,” Sarge stated, “although some of the words are a bit difficult.”

“Actually,” three paused, “all of the words are a bit difficult, we can’t read, but we do look at the pictures. Some of the armors look a bit too, errm, pointy? Then there’s that other thing.”

“I think you mean impractical.” Barbie supplied. “What other thing?”

“We don’t know,” Sarge stated, “never seen it before. Perhaps you should look?”

“Could everyone keep an eye on those evil things out there while I have a look at whatever these are getting at?” Barbie followed the minions into the inner sanctum and behind the settee, where the magazines were stacked. “So I’ve got to go out there and get shot at before you will do anything?”

The minions nodded enthusiastically with Sarge adding, “or you attack something out there, then we’ll do our stuff.”

“Why can’t you just do it when I say attack or something?”

“Not in the rules, they’re strict you know. I mean, you wouldn’t like us breaking the rules cos lots of things might go wrong.”

“Lots of things have already gone wrong.”

“See?” Corp responded as if the statement confirmed their rule. “We had best not make the problem worse.”

“Meh, I suppose using some spell from behind the wall will count?”

“If targeted at an enemy it would.” Sarge nodded. “Number 3 - present... present.”

Three stepped forward and stuck his hand out, in it was what would normally have been a pathetic, wilted few Red Iris Flowers. To Barbie they were the best bunch of Red Iris Flowers she had ever seen. She had no idea where they had got them from, they had never been to Gwen’s garden, or the Charr Northlands. The smile on her face said more than words as she took the bouquet. The minions pushed forwards and grabbed her in a group hug.

“Hey, guys,” Barbie tried to shuffle out of the near scrum. “We’re supposed to be doing stuff, what if someone...” The cough was audible enough, Barbie looked up to see everyone who had been outside was now either inside or looking in. “It’s a group hug,” she explained, “nothing else.”

“Yes, Barbie.” Bogus responded, looking anywhere but at them. “We all believe you. It could never be any of those tales we haven’t heard about Necros getting too attached to their minions and doing unspeakable things with them.”

“I’m not getting attached to my minions, well not romantically at least.”

“You sure about that?” Kara asked, her voice filled with concern. “There are quite a few tales out there about what Necros and their minions get up to on cold, dark nights.”

“They’re complete and utter rot.” Barbie countered. “Absolutely no truth whatsoever.”

“Where have we heard that one before?” Bogus shrugged, trying to appear saintly. “The, whatever they are outside the walls, they have brought up a couple of Charr Siege Devourers.”

Barbie realized that no matter what she said it would only make things worse. Saying nothing might also make things worse but supplying the enemy with ammunition that could be used against her was by far the riskier tactic. Then again she wasn’t at all sure what they were alluding to. The truth was that beyond a hug there wasn’t much if any interaction possible between her and her minions. She could take health from them, if she still had those skills available, or give some of hers to them, but that wasn’t exactly exciting.

Finally she held her head high and walked out with her bouquet, they could talk if they wanted.

---

The Devourers were on high ground opposite the gate, protected by a wall of insects. They were still settling into position, out of bow range but inside their own firing range of the wall. The obvious target was the gate, which wasn’t anywhere near as tough as the walls. The first shots exploded against the wood and the gate shook. “Stay up above the entrance yard,” Barbie shouted, “we can pin them down when they come in.”

The gates continued to shake, as each charge impacted on the structure. Not all hit the wood, some fell short and tore up the entrance way or hit the stonework. “Looks like it’s holding for the moment.” Stargazer pointed at the gates. “Although it is starting to crack.”

Bogus shaded his eyes and looked around, trying to see something distant. “What is that buzzing noise?”

“Flying insects.” Kara Earthstarr pointed to where black airborne spots came straight for the fort. “It looks like they are flying higher than the wall.”

Barbie coughed. “Kara, barrage please, Urmila, set up your spirits, we need as much firepower as we can get. Everyone else who can, use bow or staff, we need to keep those out of here.”

The insects continued to advance quickly, more lightly constructed then their ground counterparts. They flew past the devourers and their guard, then the defenders fired. Those that could used spells. By the time the insects reached the wall the dozen had been reduced to eight. While the minions couldn’t attack they could defend and used their shields to protect people wherever possible. 

It had taken just a couple of minutes, Urmila had switched to Restoration in order to help Runa keep people alive. The flying insects were not tough but their degen capacity was very high. Maria had nearly died with the speed the damage was done at.

“Peak seemed to be about 30 per sec.” Runa said, recovering from the effort. “I don’t know much that can do that amount.”

“Had there been more then I would have died,” Maria confirmed, looking at the insects protecting the Devourers, “and had the flying things come later they could have had the gates down and we would have been in real trouble. Whoever is controlling them either has a lot more than we would like to throw away or they aren’t very good at tactics.”

“I hope the latter,” India said, “The gate is nearly down now.”

“It’s gone,” Bogus confirmed as the wood finally gave way, “but they aren’t moving. Might be hoping we’ll go out and meet them in open battle.” A group of 40 insects rose from behind the hill and started forwards towards the gate. “or they might just be waiting for that lot to attack us first.”

The insects raised their shields and what looked like trident spears, then hissed repeatedly before continuing to approach. A hundred meters closer they did the same thing. Kara Listened before observing, “sounds like either a threat sound or they are singing their way into battle?”

The minions lined up in response, “she’s not barmy, we’re her army, ha, ha, ha, ha. She’s so gorgeous, you’re atrocious, ha, ha, ha, ha!”

Barbie became aware of the eyes staring at her. “So not involved with your minions, eh?” Kara taunted, “seems they have a different idea!”

“They’re my minions, they have to see me in the best possible light,” Barbie countered. “It’s just like your Raven and you, except there’s more of mine.”

“They’re in bow range.” Kara stated, “opening fire. Maria, if you remove your gloves, scar pattern and boots it will give you more health. It will stop the degen spike. Just stay out of direct line of sight and they shouldn’t be able to do too much damage to you.”

Almost everyone in Guild Wars was equipped with a longbow of some kind for pulling, and, while the lower end ones didn’t do much damage they certainly irritated. Kara kept up Conjure Flame and Barrage while Urmila cast Splinter weapon when available and Barbie kept up their energy with Blood is Power. As they approached Night Stargazer cast Mark of Rogort and followed up with Searing Flames. Barely twenty reached the damaged gate and got inside. The Minions met them in a clash of arms and held firm. Compacted in an enclosed area the enemy had no chance, fire burned and their single healer couldn’t heal fast enough even to save itself.

“Well, that’s fifty two of them down,” Bogus bragged, “and we’ve got no casualties.”

“Yes, Bogus,” Night answered, “but if you look out there, another two groups of them are coming over the hill. Looks like they have far more reserves available than we had hoped. Hop around the other guild halls quickly and see if you can find anyone else in the alliance. Hopefully you can get back before they get close enough for hand to hand combat.”

---

The conditions were near white-out, Daia and Embeth could hardly see as they made their way north from Sifhalla across Jaga Moraine. Show swirled around them in huge sheets, forcing the use of their radar to detect any possible dangers. As with elsewhere there was no Norn and very few foes left. Most were easily avoidable by simply walking around them and the few who they did have to fight were hardly worth killing. Progress was slow with them having to check their direction constantly. “We going through the pass,” Moonsinger asked, “or around?”

“Pass is quicker,” Mara responded, “although  we don’t know which is safer. There could be things out there searching for us.”

“Or nothing?" Daia suggested. "We haven’t seen anything that might be a threat to us since the Jotun.”

“They nearly killed us Embeth, if the Centaurs hadn’t of changed sides we would have been in real trouble. If we ran into something here it would be even worse.”

“We go for the pass then,” Moonsinger decided, switching his knives for a staff to help support himself. “Weather there might be equally bad as here, or worse, but at least we will be through it quicker. I suggest you use a staff too, your bow isn’t going to be much use in this.”

Mara followed suit, “hopefully we can get some information at least. I can’t seem to be able to communicate with anyone.”

“Neither can I.” Moonsinger pointed, That’s the resurrection booth, looks to be a Norn by it?”

“Yes, I’ve been wondering, why do Norn, Asurans and Ascalon Refugees stand by them? There seems little point.”

“Beats me, at least we get the..” Moonsinger starred at the Norn, completely encased in solid ice. “Don’t think he’s going anywhere.”

“I doubt if we’re going to find out what did that to him standing here, we had better keep going.” The slope got steeper and they used their staves to good effect, helping them up the long slope. “Something black, at the, run!”

Embeth didn’t need the suggestion, he was already going as fast as his legs could carry him, then he pulled her sideways. “Behind the booth!”

The snow raced past in a wall of powder dust, The impact shook the heavy Resurrection booth but it stayed upright. “I think it’s safe enough now,” Mara judged, “although exactly what happened I’m not sure.”

“The snow was loose,” Embeth offered, “it could have gone at any time. I’ve never actually seen it really snow in here before.”

“I don’t think anyone has, but that wasn’t it. There, see that large broken ball?”

“Now you mention it. You think someone started this on purpose?”

“I don’t know,” Mara said softly, “but I suspect so. I saw something up there, looked like a huge insect. I don’t think that will happen again, come on and lets get over the top.”

“What if it’s still up there?”

“We’ll either kill it or we’ll go and find another way. That thing could be almost anywhere now and it wouldn’t have tried to kill us that way if it thought it could do it another.”

The climb was steep and treacherous, with ice in some places. Then they had no option but to go slowly and carefully due to the weather. Reaching the summit was an achievement. Mara looked around, despite the fresh snowfall there was some tracks visible. “They start at that point there,” she indicated, “and end over here, they don’t seem to go anywhere else.”

“Flying thing?”

“Quite probably, I would be able to see something if it had simply tried to hide it’s tracks. Although it might have gone to get some help, we had better get moving before anything comes back.”

“Won’t they be able to track us?”

“Yes,” Mara confirmed, “but it’s difficult enough for me, they would have to walk. Come on, it’s not that far to go. Who’s that?”

“I don’t know,” Moonsinger responded, “but she’s got a damn big bow.”

“and that black thing by her feet.” Mara considered. “I would assume friend until we know otherwise. Then again she’s level 50, I think she could take both of us out without any problem if she wanted. Hello, I’m Daia Mara.”

“I am Aeowynn,” the tall blonde ranger responded, “I am a stranger to these lands.”

“We’ve sort of worked that out already,” Moonsinger admitted, “something to do with being level 50. You killed this?”

“I am hunting them, although they are not from my world. There are cracks and you can slip between worlds. They came into my world, and tried attacking us. We were strong and pushed them out, but the Balaur created an agreement with them. They are not difficult to kill, but they are many, in their home they flock in thousands and blacken the sky, although they are far more limited in your world. Here they cannot exceed a zone limit so I would not expect more than two hundred of them to be in an area at a time.”

“Considering our limit of eight in a team,” Moonsinger responded, “I think we are going to be right royally stuffed.”

“They rarely attack all at once, their planning is poor.” Aeowynn smiled, “you have more chance than you think. Although I would agree there needs to be changes to even the odds. That is up to your gods to decide. I am heading east.”

“We are heading north,” Mara explained, to see Egil Fireteller.”

“There is one old Norn in a village,” Aeowynn replied, “nothing much else lives here. Even the insects seem to be moving on.”

“It might be this weather,” Moonsinger pointed out, “I’ve never seen it this bad.”

“I do not know, I would not stay here longer than you have to. Perhaps we will meet again?”

“Perhaps,” Mara responded as the other ranger headed off then spread wings. “On the other hand I wish I had those.”

“Me too,” Moonsinger agreed as they waded on through the snow, “I’ve seen people with them in outposts but they were not functional. They didn’t make people fly.”

“That would certainly make things easier for us. There’s the stairs.”

“Now we get to find out if this was worth all the effort or a wild goose chase.” Moonsinger said as they started to climb the stairs into the small village. “Egil, nice to see you again.”

“You’re late,” Fireteller responded, “but hopefully not too late.”

“Do you know what is happening to the world?” Mara asked. “There are many strange things happening and we aren’t sure what it all means.”

“The gods aren’t sure,” Egil fanned the flames, “there has been great damage and loss. The situation is bad, but not as yet hopeless. Each of us has a visible self, which sees the world and the world sees. Behind that is the invisible self, that which cannot be seen. These are the real selves. Your real self has gone to sleep, leaving your self that we see to fend for itself. Your real self cannot wake and until it does you will not know what you did know.”

Mara nodded before asking, “then how do we wake ourselves?”

“That is the problem, there are many tales from a long time ago, the gods and their helpers need to find the right one. Until they do there is little you can do except keep attacking the evil ones wherever possible.

“The Black insect thing?” Moonsinger guessed. “We were attacked on the way here.”

“The Achaachi,” Egil toned with some flem, “they are by far the least of the evil, they have grouped with the charr and worse. Even now they are attacking the Guild Halls. Barbie has got together a group to attempt to hold them off, but their position is looking increasingly perilous. They need help as quickly as possible and you must then all leave the Guild Hall.”

Mara shrugged. “Where do we go?”

“First your journey will lead you to the Ring of Fire Islands, you must open the Door of Komalie again.”

“Hold it,” Moonsinger held up his hand, “you are aware that we’ve done that before? And all the trouble we had getting it closed again?”

“I am, but the Door of Komalie leads to more than one place, if you open it one way it leads to the Titans and their fire world, open it another way and it leads to an entirely different place. Now you must leave quickly, you don’t have much time. The avatars of the gods will be in touch when they can.”

Mara quickly snapped off. “What about Serious Love?”

“Serious is still with us and helping the gods.” Fireteller faded from view leaving nothing but a last white breath that quickly vanished.

“Back the way we came?” Mara suggested. “It is the shortest option.”

“I agree with that,” Moonsinger said, walking back down the steps, “and I guess we hurry. If there are lots of those insects attacking Barbie in her guild hall then I don’t see how they can last long.”

---

There seemed to be nothing to do but wait. The insect warriors waited on the hill and blocked all exit that way, occasionally displaying their weapons and making noises none of the characters could understand. The minions sang back because they now could. Everyone else checked their weapons.

“So, Barbie,” Bogus cleaned his staff that had been a bow, “what happens when you lose your minions?”

“What do you mean?”

“They might die, we don’t know what will happen if they get enough damage, everything else can die in the game so I would assume it’s still possible for them. Then things might return to normal, in which case they will still die.”

“I’m handling things one problem at a time.” Barbie responded, a bit harshly. “I’m more bothered about that lot out there, just standing and waiting. They should be doing something.”

“They are,” The big warrior responded, “they’re keeping you on your toes constantly.”

Barbie laughed. Rand Al Thorazine had came back with Bogus, there had been four guild halls left on the Alliance register, now there was only three. “I guess they are managing that well enough,” she replied, “but putting up with Bogus here?”

“Bogus is a minor irritant,” Thorazine polished the axe he was holding using a rag, moving in small, deliberate, circles, “just ignore him and he’ll go away. They are probably bringing up reinforcements, making sure they are here before they attack.”

“We might just leave,” the necro commented, “there is nothing physically keeping us here. The only issue is we are following instructions that I doubt those out there know about.”

“Hey, Barbie!” Bogus shouted. “Why don’t we move that Xunlai box down and put it in the doorway? Should slow them down a bit if they have to climb over something.”

Barbie considered, Sealed with Xunlai magic the box was certainly supposed to be indestructible but it was also supposed to be virtually immoveable too, although one had been stolen. “It won’t fit the hole properly,” she pointed out, “but it’s one of the best ideas I’ve heard recently. Let’s move that thing. Kara, keep an eye on those things, just in case they decide to do something rather than sing and wave their arms about.”

The box was heavy and it took all of them to move it slowly to the stairs, where they simply allowed it to slide down. The settee joined it, although it wouldn’t fit in the gateway it did add some mass. The total barely filled the gate up half way, but it would hopefully be enough to slow the numbers down. Earthstarr broke the bad news to them with, “here they come!”

Rather than a single square the new groups formed a pair of double lines which advanced down the slope leaving plenty of gap between the two. Arrows, spirit projectiles and fire magic rained on them. a much larger force than previous reached the wall, even from the first group. Rather than attempting to dismantle the barricade they simply started to climbed over it. They were met by the Minions, backed up by Thorazine. Restricted by the narrow access there wasn’t much the insects could do. All the Minions had to do was hold position while the characters and spirits dealt huge amounts of damage into the mob. The second group, having reached the wall relatively unscathed simply added themselves to the total but did nothing else, they couldn’t get past the first ones to reach their enemy. Finally the last few broke and tried to flee, for those outside it was simple enough, they had clear open grass.

For those who had made it over the obstacle it again presented itself as an obstruction, this time with Thorazine and the minions striking at their foe’s unprotected rear, only a few managed to get out and most of those were killed before they got out of bow range.

“I’ll keep watch with my minions,” Barbie offered, “rest of you go have some rest. I doubt if they will try that again for a while.”

Nobody else was feeling like arguing with that, the true horror of mass warfare was weighing down on them and they hadn’t quite been ready for it. They retreated and sat by the Guild Lord’s hall where they could still see Barbie and her minions lined up on the wall. Barbie Necro positioned herself on the bridge above where the gate had been.

“I wonder how much more of this we have to go through,” Earthstar wondered aloud, “after all it’s not every day we end up fighting a war on this scale.”

“ There isn’t anything we can do about it,” Thorazine responded. “We meet threats as they come and deal with them as best we can.”

Stargazer looked at the Warrior, “and if we can’t deal with them?”

“There isn’t much alternative,” Thorazine cleaned his axe, “I doubt if we have any choice, it’s win or lose this time.”

“What about the Resurrection booths?” Dude asked. “They will bring us back. They always have.”

“Not any more.” Thorazine looked along the axe blade, checking for damage. “I’ve know of three people that died in the last few days, and they didn’t rez. I haven’t been able to get in contact with them since either. So I would assume the worst. Rez signets might still work but Monk ones don’t.”

---

Serious Love fingered with the tinted glasses she had on, they were basic sunglasses although very expensive. She wasn’t sure why the little pieces of metal could be as strong and protective as full head armor but it seemed to work.

The document in front of her dealt with lore from centuries ago. The ancient script, hand scrawled across papyrus paper that was dry and browned, seemed to tell of a time before the world was made. She didn’t understand it but that wasn’t the point.

“So how are you getting on with that?” Bill Hodes asked. “Understand anything?”

“Not really,” Love answered, “ but I think I understand a lot more than I did. The world, the Guild Wars one, wasn’t so much made as written for a purpose, that seems to be to keep people from being bored during the long time it would take to do something. I’m not sure about what it is we were waiting for but I don’t think that matters too much at the moment. The idea originally seems to be to preserve some people, to keep them alive. The script doesn’t translate well and uses words I don’t understand. A fission reactor seems to be a great source of power, but it means little to me now as I don’t have any reference as to what one is.

“What I have found is a fragment, the Door of Komalie is an access way to not only the world of the Titans but also gives access to something called the system network access terminal. Which way it opens depends on you having some item with you. If you have no item then you open the door to the Titans, or something called Dreadnaughts, and let them through. If you have the correct item then it lets you in the other way. Having access to this system network access terminal might give us some idea of where we have to go in order to wake people up, but it doesn’t seem to be able to do that in itself.”

“That’s what we’ve found out so far,” Hodes nodded. “The rest of it is somewhere but we just can’t find it. It might as well have the inscription ‘too much information’ on it.”

“So which way do we go?” Love asked. “If we don’t have the information then what do you expect to be able to achieve?”

“We can’t achieve anything. What we need is someone who is outside the worlds, and has full access to the systems out there. We do know there are huge machines and energy sources that power this and all the other worlds. That doesn’t tell us what they do or why are we here?”

“Take it from me,” Hodes assured her, “knowing that won’t help doing this. What I can tell you is that your body is stored inside an individual tank containing preservative substances. The technology wasn’t available to shut down and freeze the human body entirely so they went as close to that as they dared. The result is that time experienced in the Guild Wars world isn’t the same as outside. As people get bored with doing one they are cycled to other worlds.”

“You don’t know?”

“I do know, that’s the point. If you want to find out all you have to do is look for the information, it’s all stored in the library somewhere. Knowing won’t help find a way out.”

Serious Love watched Hodes walk away, then decided that she wanted to find out. The issue was finding a handle to search for, which meant she had to find herself.

---

The snow was virtually a white sheet in front of the pair, they could hardly see twenty metres and their radar wasn’t working either.

“You sure we are going the right way?” Moonsinger asked, “it seems to be taking us a very long time to get to the gate into Sifhalla.”

“We aren’t that far away, if the weather were normal we would be able to see it clearly from here. Don’t trust me or something?”

“I trust you, within reason.” Moonsinger gathered his thoughts. “It’s just that I have a strange feeling about the things that have been happening.”

“You mean like something is behind it?” Mara posed. “Something that isn’t quite in control of all of its subjects?”

“That but something else, like it’s trying to get rid of us before we manage to get back to the Guild Hall and tell the others. You’ve stopped, where’s the gate?”

“It was right there,” Mara pointed at a wall of white. It wasn’t snow and they couldn’t dig through it either. It was hard and cold, shiny but not ice. “I somehow think we’ve been outwitted.”

Moonsinger shrugged, “so what do we do now?”

“We obviously can’t go on, and there’s no available map option to a town or outpost from here now. The only other exit would be through the Vaettirs it’s the direction that other Ranger took. It might be open but it also means going back quite a way, up the pass again. We will have to run most of the way, no stopping.”

“That means we don’t have a choice then.”

“No, Mara pulled some rope from her pack. “Tie one end around your waist, I’ll do the same to me, then at least we can’t lose each other easily.”

Their breath formed small clouds of ice crystals as they breathed. The going was hard, especially with the snow slowing them down. The ground started to rise then they reached the top the of the pass, just as it stopped snowing. The remaining flakes slowly fell to the ground revealing that as far as they could see the ground was white and totally treeless. 

Moonsinger pointed out the obvious. “Something has removed all the trees from the zone.”

“Which gives me the question,” Mara followed up, “what else has it removed. And what’s that up there.”

“Must be that Ranger,” Embeth offered. “Aeowynn? If it isn’t then we’re in really big trouble. It can fly faster than we can run and there’s nowhere to hide.”

They watched as the spot got bigger and resolved into the flying ranger. “You didn’t make it out either I see.”

Mara nodded, “We made it all the way to the gate but it had gone, something is removing stuff from this zone.”

“It’s being closed down as much as possible.” Aeowynn dusted the last snow from her clothing. “I was doing fine then got hit by the increase in snow. I ended up going round in circles and had to land. By the time I made it to the gate it had been replaced by a plain wall. Have we any options left?”

“There’s one option left.” Mara offered. “We go north and into the tunnels. Hopefully we can kill the wurm there and that should send us to another zone. Even if it’s back to this area it might reset and put the exits back for a while.”

“Kill the wurm?” Moonsinger looked doubtful. “That normally takes a party of eight and even then you get badly mauled doing it.”

Mara put her hands on her hips, “got a better idea then?”

“No, but it’s still suicide. Aeowynn might equalise the situation a good bit though. Although, if we are going to do that we had better move.”

They adjusted the rope to tie Aeowynn on one end, just in case it started snowing again. The ground was not flat and the depth of snow meant they had to wade through it. They didn’t get tired but it slowed them down.

Then the snow vanished, the ground was now just plain white and solid, although it still had the slowing effect. “Quickly glance behind us,” Aeowynn announced in a worried tone, “and keep going. Is that a wall coming up behind us?”

“I think so,” Mara quickly responded, “although that’s never happened before in a zone I’ve been in.”

“It looks like the ground just angled up to the sky.” Embeth concluded. “I also think it’s catching up to us.”

“Aeowynn, you can fly.” Mara pointed out, “Better one getting out than three dying in here.”

“I can,” Aeowynn agreed, pulling the other two close to her, “but let’s see if I can carry you two at least part of the way. I might be able to make it to the cave but I don’t know the way through it.”

Aeowynn used the skill and took to the air, it wasn’t elegant, and they didn’t go very high, but it worked. The cave entrance drew nearer. The wall behind them seemed to accellerate to try and catch up. Effort took it’s toll on the flying ranger, her flight was already laboured then they crashed to the ground as she ran out of energy. “I’m exhasted but you can make it now.”

“Not without you.” Moonsinger grabbed the Ranger’s arm,  Daia the other and they pulled her to her feet. “Daia, if one of us makes it we all do, run!”

Her running skill quickened the pace she was capable of, and she could keep it up. Even so it was close, Embeth and Aeowynn vanished just as the wall reached them.

---

Serious Love looked up from the search results to see a very irate Hodes staring at her. “Who authorised your search?”

“I just asked and it was done, nobody said I couldn’t do it,” Love stated plainly. “If there was some problem then perhaps you should have limited who could do searches or at least warned people not to.”

“The resources for doing searches have to come from somewhere,” Hodes definitely sounded angry still, “and you searched the whole goddamn database. That shut down the server for half of Eye of the North. Daia Mara and Embeth Moonsinger were nearly put out of the game.”

“They are still in the game then, so no real issue. If you had been more willing to share information then I wouldn’t have had to do anything like that. I don’t need to do another search anyway, I’m not the one you want.”

“What?”

“I checked up on who I was, the male behind me is a navigator. I’m reasonably sure that if something has gone badly wrong out there then I’m not the one to fix it. Although I might still be wrong about that. I’ve also found out a way to get myself out of here, an emergency wakeup call. I don’t understand exactly how it would work but it seems that if the Epic Endeavour is a ship of some kind, although much more complex than the sailing vessels in Guild Wars. The principle is simple, if the ship detects it is far enough off it’s desired course then it should wake me up. All you have to do is tell it that it is far enough off course to do that.”

“And if it goes wrong?”

“If it goes wrong then the chance is I will end up in the white room, along with all the other people trapped there. That won’t matter much because I won’t be able to fix what’s gone wrong. What I might be able to do is check what has gone wrong and remember who you need to fix it. It is far more likely to work if I’m in the white room than if I’m here, that will put me as a priority option.”

“And how do you get into the white room?”

“Block the local resurrection booths and kill me. The question is can you fool the computers into believing that the ship is off course?”

I don’t know, the systems are very complex.” Hodes considered the options silently for a while. “It might be possible though. I’ll get back to you on that but in the mean time no more searches. You’ll be stuck in the white room.”

“I know, at least as long as it takes for you to get something to work. If you can’t do that then I’ll be stuck in there for a lot longer than I want but there’s no other option.”

“And if it kills you?”

“I guess it kills me. The other me won’t know what’s happened anyway. We have to take some risks, and sometimes that means dying. Just get on with it.”

---

The passages should have been cold, dark and damp. As per usual they were light and felt the same as anywhere else.

“Frostmaw's Burrows is a huge dungeon complex,” Daia explained, “stretching over five levels. It seems to have been expanded several times to increase player time spent here. Our problem now is that we should have a quest to get past the first level. That should have been supplied by a group of Norn at the entrance.”

“There was no Norn anywhere near this place,” Aeowynn confirmed, “It was one of the first places I flew over.”

“Which means we are now probably stuck here,” Moonsinger moaned, “unless one of you two have a better suggestion?”

Daia pointed. “We go across there and ask him for it?”

“What?” Moonsinger turned. “He wasn’t there before!”

“Would you stay outside?” Aeowynn asked. "Especially with that weather going on? It seems only reasonable to take shelter.”

Daia’s Phoenix flew in to the cavern at low level and settled down beside her. None of them had noticed the bird recently but pets had ways of their own and nobody took any real notice, except for Mara who hugged the companion animal carefully to avoid ruffling its feathers.

Daia walked over and selected  the Norn, “have you got a quest for us?”

“Of course,” Latham responded dourly. “Only one dungeon level this time.”

“One dungeon level?” Moonsinger questioned, “there’s supposed to be five!”

“Don’t get at me about that.” The Norn retorted. “If you want to know go ask Melandru. Nature god says it’s one level, it’s one level and I’m not arguing with that! You would think that the gods would take us into account but no, they don’t. This is supposed to be a five level dungeon, it should stay a five level dungeon.”

“One level might be a bit short for you,” Daia agreed, “but it should be easier for us.”

“Unless they’ve taken all the mobs from the five levels and stuffed them into this one.” Moonsinger countered while looking around. “So where are all the other Norn who are supposed to be out side?”

“They went hunting monsters, as Norn should.”

--- 

Barbie Necro watched from the top of the gate, the Charr Siege Devourers had gone. Her minions lined the wall, What was left of it. The Devourers had spent some time breaking the stonework but without any breach the enemy attacks hadn’t been successful. The Minions were always attentive, alert, and they never rested. She examined the Red Iris flowers, and questioned how minions could work out what a gift was. Across the wall came the sound of many feet, a similar but different sound to the insects they had fought so far.

What came over the hill none of them were expecting, they still looked like they might have been insects of some kind but ten legs, a multi-segmented body, and huge pincers in front gave a different appearance altogether. These snapped their pincers together as they came, and they didn’t stop, heading straight for the gateway. 

Barbie shouted for everyone else to help repel boarders. “This is going to be a really nasty battle, she whispered aloud to herself”

Three sounded rather less optimistic. “You expect us to face up to that lot?”

“You managed very well against the level twenty insects.”

“I know, Barbie, but these are level 30s,” Sarge took over, “we’re going to be badly pushed taking those on.”

“I would prefer it if we didn’t have to fight those at all, but I don’t think there’s going to be any option, they are going to try to cut you up if you defend this place or not.”

Sarge nodded. “Let’s form a double line, in front of the Gate.”

The twenty four attackers came as two lines of twelve, widely spaced. Attacks by bows and spears didn’t seem to damage them at all, nor did fire magic cause much damage either.

The foes reached the breached gate and began climbing in while Thorazine and the Minions met them head on. The advantage was with the defenders, no enemies could enter and there was only room for two of them to fight at a time.

Barbie used the simple spell Cracked Armor, that was enough to allow the Minions and Rand to start causing damage, although it was slow. then added Spoil Victor and Insidious Parasite.

Bogus added Empathy, Visions of Regret and Wastrel’s Worry and others applied Pain Inverter. The two foes wore down then died. The rest now had a problem, only solvable by pulling the bodies from the gap so another pair could take their place. After just three pairs had been killed the enemies withdrew and took up position on the hillside where the Charr Siege Devourers had stood. Barbie Necro looked over the wall at the dead bodies. “I don’t know, they just seem to be so stupid.”

“So far they have been.” Rand Al Thorazine agreed. “But they only have to get it right once.”

“While we’ve got to get it right every time,” Barbie agreed, “and the one time we don’t there isn’t any of us left. Where’s Six?”

“He got cut in two by one of those insects,” Sarge responded. “We don’t leave a body to res.”

The remaining seven Minions retook their positions on the wall, although a little more spread out than previous, and waited for the seemingly inevitable next assault.

---

The Norn had managed precisely two groups of Wurms, their bodies lay at the base of the third group, who seemed quite pleased with themselves. The Frost Wurms swayed and hummed to themselves taking no notice of the newly arrived.

“I don’t understand this,” Latham exclaimed, “we have always returned to life and rejoined the fight when someone approaches our bodies.”

“It’s different now,” Moonsinger explained, “death seems to have become permanent, at least for most of us. Then again the Norn were never really good fighters, they don’t have enough healers and healing skills to back your warriors up. If you don’t win quickly by brute force you are doomed to lose.”

"Forget that for the moment.” Mara examined the situation, then indicated the wurms. “How do we deal with them?”

“I will go in and distract them.” Embeth offered, “I should be more than capable of doing that if you give me a bit of healing. Both of you together should be able to do enough damage to kill them.”

“I’ve just found out that I can switch skills anywhere!” Mara sounded shocked. “I provided myself with some Ritualist healing, and a couple of weapon skills but they may not be enough.”

Aeowynn simply announced, “I am ready.”

Moonsinger smoothly moved forward towards their prey, daggers at the ready, then he shadowstepped in. The Wurms were initially surprised by the much smaller Assassin who cut at them with sharp little blades, then they bit back That was the cue for the Rangers to open fire, explosive arrows ripped at the Wurms. A wurm slumped to the ground, dead, another followed.

The wearing down was slow but working, then Latham charged in, changing to bear form, axe and shield held high. Mara couldn’t provide healing for both him and Embeth, although she did what she could. The Norn died, as a Norn should, with weapons in their hands, fighting against foes.

The last wurm slumped and lay on the ground. Moonsinger walked out of their bodies. “I suppose it was a good death for a Norn.”

“But it was needless,” Aeowynn countered, “the Wurms would, and did, die without his sacrifice.”

“Maybe,” Moonsinger considered, “but that was his choice to make. At least nobody else made it for him. Umm, is it me or is it getting darker in here?”

“I think it’s you,” Daia replied, then the light failed entirely, “or it could be that it’s getting darker.”

---

Barbie had returned to her position on the bridge, watching the horizon with her Minions. It had been several hours since Six had been torn in two and she still wasn’t feeling any better about it. She wanted to kill something. For the moment, the insect things were well out of her range, and moving out to attack them would have been plain suicide. That meant she was stuck, and that was something she wasn’t happy with. The other seven seemed to just accept the fact, although they did seem different, not depressed but rather withdrawn. Their singing had stopped and they constantly droned out a long mourning note.

Something had changed, and she didn’t like it. Thinking about what had happened she pulled out a small ball, “Hey, 3, catch this!”

The Ball transcribed an arch, hit the Minion on the chest, then dropped to the ground. The minion silently looked down at it then back at the necromaster. “You are supposed to catch it, in your hands, err.” Barbie reconsidered, the minions didn’t have a right hand, instead having a biological weapon. “Well, hand at least. You can do it. Pick it up and throw it back.”

“I can’t do that,” the minion picked up the ball, then slanted it’s head, “I might hit you.”

“It’s only a ball, it won’t hurt. Ouch!” Barbie retrived the object.

“See?" The minion somehow managed to look unhappier. "I told you it would hurt.”

“It was only slight.” Barbie shook her hand, the thumb still buzzing. “Try catching again, but throw back gentler.” The ball passed back and forth, then five wandered up. Barbie shouted, Catch 5!” and another minion joined the game. The other three minions kept their eyes firmly on the horizon.

“Barbie,” three put in a questioning tone, “what do you think happens to us when we die?”

“What?” for a moment she was caught off balance, and missed catching the ball. Going to recover it gave a few seconds to think. “I’ve never really considered it. You are the first minions I’ve had who have lasted more than a few minutes. I Don’t know. Really - I’ve never considered any of you having a soul before. If you do then there might be a place where all the minions go and are stored until summoned again, rather like Ritualist spirits?”

“In that case we might meet 6 again sometime?” The minion sounded concerned. “But even then we aren’t known to be very bright, we probably won’t recognise each other.”

“No, but the important thing is being together. Doing things together. If you have to, then fighting and even dying together.” Barbie paused. “For us characters it seemed different, we die but we can be resurrected, if not by a team mate then at a Resurrection Booth or in an outpost. Recently that’s changed, people haven’t come back so we don’t know what has happened to them either.”

“If you die then you don’t come back?”

“I think that’s the way it works now. Unless and until the Gods decree otherwise.”

“If you die but don’t come back then what happens to us?”

“I don’t know,” Barbie found she was admitting that rather too often, she had watched minions crumble to dust and vanish far too often. Masterless minions though would attack anyone, but, hopefully, her’s had learned enough to keep themselves under control. “I would hope that, if you survive me, you would help the others finish the quest we are doing.”

Three nodded. “Then we had better make sure you don’t die.”

---

Somehow the dark made all those odd sounds stand out, the drip of water, the occasional scuff and the noises of, hopefully far off, creatures. It was something that none of the three were used to. there were no red dots on the radar display but that didn’t mean they were not there, it just might not show them in the dark, or could have failed somehow. Mara felt something touch then grab her arm and jumped.

“It’s only me,” Moonsinger put the rope in her hand, if we all go off like that every few seconds we might just attract some unwanted attention. We need some light to see by.”

“The light never goes out in here,” Mara pointed out, “or in any other dungeon.”

“I know,” Embeth responded, “but it has and there’s nothing we can do about it. any ideas?”

“We obviously need light,” Aeowynn said, “and a direction to go in.”

“I’ve got a pair of Chaos Gloves but that won’t enable us to see very far.” Embeth put the gloves on, the light did enable them to see the locality, and use Moonsinger as a reference point so they wouldn’t get lost easily. They still made sure they were tied tightly together, just in case. “The light is intrinsic to the material,” he continued, “but isn’t bright enough to use over distance.”

“Weapons and other items that give off light might also increase our aggro range.” Mara stated. “It’s going to be bad enough as it is.”

“We don’t have any real choice.” Aeowynn assured them, “we either see or we might get surprised. Who knows what else has changed? What if one of us falls down a chasm?”

"That should not be a problem," Embeth laughed, "you can't fall down chasms here. Unless that has changed too? Then I don't know. I guess we solve that issue when we come to it."

“For distance I’ve got fire arrows,” Mara added, “but I need a target to use those. There are some Elemental skills that create light locally but don’t need a target. There might be other issues too, until we actually try it then” 

Aeowynn looked around, “Daia, where is your pet? It hasn’t been with you for quite some time.”

“I know,” Mara answered, it sometimes goes off on it’s own. The last time I saw it was before we came in here. Hopefully it got out before, well, before whatever it was that happened did.”

“That thing always turns up again,” Moonsinger’s attempt at reassurance seemed to work, “we’ll just keep going and it will be back as if it was never away.”

Their progress was slow and faltering, the elemental spells would only give brief glimpses of light, which did not light that far ahead. The flashes also seemed to cause pain due to their brightness. Eventually there was a light at the end of the tunnel, and they made their way towards it.

The passage ended in an opening about fifty metres up a vertical cliff face, further down was a level area then another drop. The whole looked like a spiral, dropping into the rock below. Moonsiger considered, “this looks very similar to Grenth’s footprint.”

“Except it seems to be much larger, and they are still working here.” Mara leaned forwards slightly, looking down. “There is no way we could survive going down there, and there are a lot of things making their way up. Looks like the Achaachi are coming through here.”

“There are at least two other breaks they can enter through,” Aeowynn disclosed, “this might be a third, although it might also be for some other reason we don’t know about. It looks like they are digging down to get to something. We need to get moving again, we are going far too slowly.”

They backed away from the entrance and went to look for another way.

---

The guild hall certainly hadn’t been improved by the pounding from the Siege Devourers, what followed was dive bombing from a pair of dragons, first with huge rocks then flame breath. Nobody was hurt but the area where the guild lord stood was burned, and there was nothing left of the guild lord himself, or the bodyguard. Both of them had simply stood there and ignored everything happening so far, which made their loss of minimal value. Once the dragons had left the area they came out of cover and repelled another invasion attempt by the insects. This was fairly easily accomplished simply because the smaller insects couldn’t move the two large bodies that were blocking their way.

The smell of burning flesh was carried throughout the Guild Hall again. It accompanied a stench of rotting meat from the numerous bodies outside that still hadn’t vanished or been reclaimed by their enemy. Thorazine returned to cleaning his axe, something that had become a recurring effort recently. “Any idea how long we have to hold out here?”

“I guess we just keep going until we are relieved or told what we are supposed to do next.” Barbie’s voice was strained but she wasn’t the only one who was. “From what I believe we’ve been told we either hold them here or we lose everything. Admittedly we are fighting an enemy we don’t understand, and they were not our enemy until recently, but that’s what we are forced to deal with.”

“If they restart pounding the front wall there’s a reasonable chance part of it will fail completely, right there.” Night Stargazer pointed at a place where a huge crack extended all the way down to the ground. “Then there will be two access points and we might be in real trouble.”

“If that happens we can always stuff Bogus in one of them,” Thorazine poked. “Isn’t he looking strange?”

“He was a Ranger previously,” Runa Tal supplied, “then he changed for some reason into a Mesmer. Now you’ve mentioned it he does look strange, not quite sta.... Wow, he seems to be a necro now.”

“He also looks like he’s died a few times.” Urmila India added. “Although all of us have died a few times so I suppose that’s just to be expected.”

Barbie Necro examined him critically. “Not as pretty as me though, Bogus, and just keep your eyes off my Minions, you can’t have any of them.”

“I seem to have mostly Blood and Curses magic available, no minion summoning spells.”

“Neither do I,” Barbie confirmed, “I don’t seem to have access to them at the moment. I do have them, they are just greyed out and unuseable. That might have some effect on them living as long.”

“I wish I had a drink.” Dude admitted. “I think I deserve one.”

“You won’t be getting one off me,” Barbie assured him, “the drinks cabinet is non-functional. Like the Xunlai Chest it stopped working, and at the same time. I suspect it might be about as effective. We could have moved it into the gap but it is fairly small. Anyone feel an odd vibration in the ground?”

“Feels like,” Kara visually checked her pet to make sure it was safe, “wurms, big ones.”

The Snow wurm broke through the ground where in exactly the position that the Xunlai Chest had stood and began attacking. Thorazine immediately took it on, hacking with his axe at it’s tough hide. Kara’s Raven joined him, pecking from above. The bird moved too fast for the Wurm to target. Others cast cracked armor, fire spells, or used any weapons they had. The Wurm bit hard but Thorazine had tough armor and enhancing enchantments. Pain inverter and Spoil Victor finished it off.

“That hurt.” Thorazine stated slowly. “Guess it could have been worse though.”

The ground shook again. “I guess it’s about to get worse!” Barbie exclaimed. “I don’t think there’s going to be much left of my Guild Hall either.”

More broke through elsewhere in the Guild hall, one, head protruding above the area where the Guild Lord had stood sieged them. “Into there!” Barbie ordered, pointing to the enclosure. “At least we have a chance of defeating that one. The wall will block the rest.”

 The Snow Wurm attacked, but with several damage reversal spells on it the creature rapidly succumbed and collapsed. Wurms from outside sieged the stonework but caused little damage, none of them had a direct fire path to the characters. One by one they were killed. The last two were a good distance away, but interrupt spells stopped them causing excessive damage and soon their bodies joined the others. The Minions returned to their positions on the wall, they had hidden behind walls where the Wurms couldn’t attack them.

Barbie examined the damage. Some internal areas had collapsed, the wall around the Guild Lord’s place had finally given way too. “We were lucky.”

Maria Louise asked her, “what makes you say that?”

“We are all still alive, except for number 6. Had one not came up early we might have been caught and several of those Frost Wurms sieging us at the same time would have inevitably meant deaths.”

---

Daia pointed, the fire was distant but obvious by it’s presence. So far they hadn’t run into any foes. “Someone lit that, somehow. I’ve never seen a fire down here before.”

“Neither have I,” Moonsinger confirmed. “Next question is friend or foe?”

“It might be best to go in prepared,” Aeowynn suggested. “We don’t want to be caught in a trap here.”

“No, but I think we are fairly safe.” Mara pointed, “that is my pet, Azira. Come on, lets find out who she’s with.”

“Hold it,” Moonsinger warned, “this really isn’t safe.”

“And my bird would stay with someone who wasn’t safe?” Daia shrugged and moved forward. “Hello in the camp.”

“Oh there you are,” the Monk said, “I expected you here ages ago. Well Embeth, you do look surprised to see me. Now who’s your new friend? I already know Daia.”

“I am called Aeowynn, and come from a distant land beyond the confines of your world.” Aeowynn introduced herself while Moonsinger struggled to put words together. “I am a ranger who came here stalking evil ones who escaped the confines of my world.”

“Molly,” Moonsinger finally managed, “but, but. You were dead last time I saw you. I mean we tried to rez you and nothing happened.”

“So you just left us all there and ran away.” The monk starred at him accusingly. “I’m Molly, known as Molly The Mad, and for good reason considering I put up with this sorry sight.”

Somehow the flash of feathers caught Embeth’s eye, the Phoenix Azira and it’s ‘owner’ were in as near an embrace as a bird and human could manage. Mara asking where it had been and the bird saying, as usual, nothing in reply.

“Hey, Moonsinger, are you listening to me?” The assassin’s attention snapped back to the monk who continued. “Do you have any idea of the trouble I’ve had finding you again?”

“None at all,” he admitted hastily, “but perhaps you should save all that until those two are finished making up again?” He pointed his thumb back at Mara and Azira. “Then you will only have to say it once. Oh god, what about Lady Moonsinger? She was right beside you.”

“She wasn’t anywhere near me when I rezzed, anyway, that is your problem.” She snapped her head around, removing the ‘sin from her gaze. “Daia!” The shout was enough to break even the near hypnotised Ranger’s attention away from her pet. “Stop making love to your bird for the moment and come over here. You can go back to that later.”

Mara complied, although explaining, “I was just saying hello.”

“And you expect us to believe that I suppose? Don’t bother trying to make excuses, everyone knows rangers are in LOVE with their pets.” Molly waved her hand. “ I suppose I’d better get on with this, we’ve got little enough time as it is. At this moment there is a group in Barbie’s Guild Hall trying to repel a siege, don’t ask how they managed to lay siege to a guild hall, I don’t know. Don’t know how they managed to weapon up and fight there either. It’s what I’ve been told has happened and that’s all I know. According to Melandru they are managing to hold the enemy so far, but have been hard pressed. The world is failing in many ways, and might just end without any notice - permanently.

“When I died I seemed to end up in a strange white place, I’m not sure where that is. Some holding area of a kind for dead people’s spirits I assumed. Somehow forcing memories managed to break me back out again. By then this lousy, good for nothing bag of bones had gone and left. I don’t care if it was three days later, you could have waited for me. Anyway, Melandru gave me some instructions, and some extra ones saying when I should give you them. Aeowynn, you’re needed back home, they are badly pressed and need reinforcement. When we get out of here your instructions are to return to the crack between worlds and travel back to yours.”

Aeowynn nodded. “And how am I expected to get there?”

“The issue has been sorted temporarily, the world has stabilised so there is a route and you should be able to travel it easily enough once we are out of these caves. As for the rest of us.” Molly took a deep breath. “The six gods expect us to make our way to Barbie as soon as possible. Once we are there the instructions are to head for the chute, then on to the Ring of Fire islands. We need to pick up the key to the door of Komalie on the way, which you know as the Sceptre of Orr. That should be in the possession of the dragon Glint who can also, hopefully, provide us with transport to the islands.”

“and then what do we do?” Mara lifted her hands in inadequacy. “I mean we’ve still got to get out of here first and kill the Frost Wurms to do it.”

“Good news is the Frost worms, except for the boss, aren’t here. The bad news is some of them attacked Barbie’s Guild Hall. So, we kill the Boss wurm, and we get out. Then head south as fast as possible.”

“What about the light issue?” Moonsinger asked, “I can’t see, I can’t fight.”

“Is that all?” Molly facepalmed. “never heard of the Ritualist skill Sight Beyond Sight? That should enable you to see, and I know you have it somewhere, same as I do.”

“How the?” Moonsinger halted for a second. “How did that skill get in there?”

“Grenth shoved it in for you. Don’t ask me how, just accept that he did it. Which reminds me." Molly handed Moonsinger a mop and huge broom. "These are for you, courtesy of Lyssa, she said you will need them for later. Come on, we’ve got a wurm to kill.”

---

“You’re sure about this?” Bill Hodes asked in a concerned tone. “I mean you might be wrong, there are a lot of variables.”

“I agree, I might be, and we’ve discussed it before.” “Serious Love replied. “Discussing it isn’t going to change what’s got to happen. Be realistic, we need to take chances.”

“And you’re sure you have to go to LAG Guild Hall?”

“Yep, if we don’t get them some help they are going to be all killed. You’ve seen what’s going there and what they are up against. More importantly that seems to be the place it needs to happen, and don’t ask why cause I have no idea.”

“There’s still a lot of things we don’t know, any of it could change what you believe.”

“I know, and I’m still going.” Love said, squashing any thought of a change of mind. “We are running out of time. Continue to study the books, try to find something different to what I’ve told you. If you can do that before I get there then I’ll do something else. When there’s something that big, that nasty, that totally out of place, you have to do something. Have you told Abaddon yet?”

“Yes,” Hodes nodded, “and he seems to agree with you.”

“Then there really isn’t any reason to discuss this further then, is there?” Love started, “Grenth! Do you have to creep up like that?”

“I didn’t creep, I ported myself in. I don’t have to make a big entrance when I don’t want to.”

“Maybe, but I’d like at least some warning. You nearly scared me to death again.”

“Obviously my plan failed then, sooner or later you will be mine.” Grenth actually laughed. “Now, I’ve one thing for you before you go.”

Love lightened up. “What?”

“New skill, here you are, quick push into your skill bar. How do you like that?”

“That looks just like the Asuran Pain Inverter skill.”

“It is, but they got a limited version, max 80 damage per attack?” Grenth winked. “This one has no limit, just like you asked. Plus it’s two hundred percent rather than one hundred and forty. It’s also separate so you can use both at the same time. Enjoy.”

---

The area became covered in frost, then ice. Huge stalagmites of ice hung from the ceiling far above while stalactites reached up in an attempt to meet them. Then there was the environmental effect the great Frost Wurm created, Cold of the North slowly sapped the character’s health, initially just one pip, but far too soon it became two. That put a strain on healing, which they could have done without. Keeping Sight Beyond Sight up on everyone all the time was out of the question, it used up energy which they would need if they were ambushed. The decision was that two of them, Molly and Aeowynn, would lead the other two. That was something that Embeth wasn’t exactly pleased about as he was led by Molly, who sniped at him occasionally about him abandoning her in her time of need.

The total darkness still slowed them down, but it wasn’t as bad as previous. Those leading could avoid obstacles and keep to the centre of paths where the going was easier rather than simply wandering and hoping it was in the right direction.

“Watch where we are going,” Moonsinger warned after tripping. “I nearly fell over that time.”

“It could have been worse,” Molly countered, “you might have died and we would have had to leave you in here, your body frozen solid for all eternity. Or at least near as, so stop complaining ya wimp. I didn’t complain when you left me for dead.”

“That’s because you were dead. Jeez, I don’t think I’m ever going to hear the end of that.”

“At least if Lady Moonsinger catches up with you then you never will.” Mara reassured him. “With Molly you have at least a slight chance she’ll let it rest, for a while at least. How close are we to the Wurm? My degen has just gone up to three pips.”

“Not far now,” Molly offered. “It shouldn’t get any worse than it is. Right, we are at the entrance to the final cave. Once one of us is in it will aggro the Wurm, and it can siege anywhere within that cave. It’s also immune to blindness, so don’t hope this lack of light will have any effect on that damn thing. Grenth said it sees heat as well as light, which is why it’s so dangerous. Embeth, don’t stand. Too late.”

Mara hissed, “what is it?”

“Embeth, big lummox, went and stood in a large pile of steaming worm excrement. How that stuff keeps warm in here I’ve no idea. It also whiffs a bit. Aeowynn, do you fancy changing over and leading Embeth for a while?”

“No thanks, I can smell it from here. I wondered for a second why it would be so far from the Wurm but with a smell like that it’s pretty obvious that the Wurm wants rid of it. How are we handling this? Embeth goes in and stinks the Wurm to death with it’s own excrement?”

“We could try it,” Mara agreed, “but a more sure way of doing this is to let Embeth distract the thing into attacking him while we use arrows to cause additional damage.”

“Seems as good an option as any.” Aeowynn responded. “You are sure that you can reach the wurm?”

“I’ve killed it a few times," Embeth stated, "but that’s been with a team of eight. I’ve got anti knock down skills. It doesn’t have any in combat health regeneration so it should die eventually, providing we keep damaging it.”

“You seem confident enough in your capabilities,” Aeowynn pointed, “but that creature is big.”

“So let’s see if we can cut it down to size?” He cast some enchantments and began running.

The wurm swayed rhythmically, it didn’t mind the dark, being immune to blindness. Nothing had visited for a long time, which was how it liked things to be, visitors irritated it. Then again there was the padding of feet, something small. The Frost Wurm, reacted immediately and sieged the on comming foe. Embeth was knocked on his back, then tried to get to his feet again. Just as he made it the wurm sieged again, knocking him back down.

Aeowynn shouted, “why doesn’t he stay up?”

“Because something had put an Earthbind spirit up!” Molly realised between casting Healing and protection spells to keep Moonsinger alive. “It stops his enchants working and extends how long he’s knocked down for. Open fire, try to distract it, if it attacks you then run, don’t stand still.”

The two rangers were having some effect but it wasn’t as much as they had hoped and less than the wurm was causing to Embeth. Some skills were for multiple targets, which meant they were not as effective at damaging the single boss.

“Azira, attack!” Mara ordered, more out of desperation than hope the bird could do anything worthwhile. The Phoenix flapped her way towards the enemy, under the drizzle of arrows, then gained speed and altitude. Finally it plunged down, raking the Frost wurm with claws and biting with its beak. The foe, now under attack from a closer enemy, changed targets and tried to attack the swift bird, which was just too fast.

Embeth finally managed to stand, and shadowstepped to the base of the thick body. Despite using skills the beast seemed almost not to feel the wounds he was causing. The Wurm now turned it’s attention back to the Assassin, knocking him down again.

“We can’t cause enough damage fast enough!” Molly complained at the top of her voice, “and keeping Embeth alive is taking all my energy. Even then I’m losing.”

Aeowynn pointed.“Your bird is glowing! Is it supposed to do that?”

“No, it’s never done it before at least.” Daia found she could now see most of the cave without any enchantment to enable it. “The walls seem to glow when the light hits them right but there isn’t skill the phoenix has to do that.”

Azira scraped the Frost Wurm again then flew up, blazing like a fireball. The foe roared and changed targets again, snapping at the bird then sieging. The missile was easily dodged, then the Phoenix peaked and dived. The worm hissed, mouth open and the bird flew straight into the maw.

“Azira, No!” Mara ordered then screamed before collapsing to the ground.

The worm burned. It struggled, twisted, ranged, trying to dislodge it's enemy and flung itself about, then finally slumped onto the ground, dead. Flames still raged from the body, which quickly became it’s own funeral pyre.

Enbeth got up, then ran further across the room and attacked the shadowy figure, the young ritualist wurm died quickly and the light in the cavern returned, although still dim. Slowly he walked back to the others.

“Something is changing in this world,” he said slowly, walking towards the others before stopping and considering the huge corpse. “There are things coming into being that have never been. We need to be more careful than I thought.”

Aeowynn kept her eyes on the other Ranger. “What is wrong with Daia?”

“When a Ranger’s pet dies they normally lose the use of their skills for a short time.” Molly explained. “This seems worse but the same thing.”

“Is she’s still alive?” Moonsinger asked. “Perhaps all we have to do is wait and she’ll recover.”

“We might give a few minutes but we need to keep moving, there are others in danger.”

“I’m not leaving her like I left you,” Embeth countered. “I don’t want to go through that again.”

“I think we should move across towards the corpse of the wurm,” Aeowynn suggested, “it should be warmer there with it still burning like that.”

“And we leave Daia here?” Any argument that was beginning ended as the carcass exploded, flames shot out in all directions, accompanied by burning chunks of wurm flesh which bounced when they hit the ground. The light intensified till they couldn’t look at it then shot towards the roof of the cavern before spiralling down.

Azira landed, ruffled its feathers, and hooed at them. “What the?” Moonsinger pointed, “I thought that thing was dead?”

“You wern’t the only one,” Aeowynn added. “I’m sure that Wurm had a good go at eating it.”

“It’s a phoenix!” Molly punched air. “Never heard the legend? The phoenix is a bird born and reborn in fire. This one regenerated itself. I never really believed it but I guess now I’ve seen it myself. Can we leave now?”

The bird walked over to Mara, took hold of her sleeve and tugged gently, intermittently cooing. Aeowynn shrugged, “what do we do?”

“You leave, now. Aeowynn, get moving, the way back to your country is now clear.” The voice was familiar to many of them. They all turned to see Serious Love approaching with another monk in tow. “Embeth, pick Daia up and carry her.”

“And how am I supposed to do that?”

“Game patch, you can now pick someone up like an item, providing they are inactive.”

Moonsinger finally noticed the monk, the black ancient armor made her nearly invisible against the darkness of the cave. “Err, hello Lady. Umm, can we sort the leaving you out there later?”

“Don’t be stupid, Embeth,” Lady Moonsinger replied, “I know I was dead, and that resurrection skills don’t work. You didn't have any other choice. Hurry up, we need to get on with this.”

Moonsinger picked up the body, “she doesn’t weigh as much as I thought. Serious, what happened to you?”

“There isn't enough time to discuss that, we need to move quickly,” Love said as they started walking, “As soon as we leave the cave, we are going to map. There is a good chance we will arrive at the LAG Guild Hall during an attack. You all have to be ready to fight immediately. Embeth, try to put Daia somewhere reasonably safe before you join in. Is everyone ready?”

---

There wasn’t much to do except wait, another group of insects had taken position well outside range but made no effort to attack. The bodies around the wall continued to rot slowly while the dead wurms added to the stench. The occasional character vanishing to the rear for a breath of slightly less fetid air or to dry vomit was now an accepted occurrence.

Barbie stood in what had become her normal position in the centre of the bridge over the gateway. On her right number 3 and Corp on her left kept watch with her. Somehow, she realised, she had become closer to her minions than she had thought possible. They might be pug ugly, but each seemed to have a different outlook on life, or at least living. They seemed happy to her, but then again the magic made sure of that, as long as a Minion was protecting it’s controller it would seem content.

That didn’t stop them going off and trying to kill something just because they didn’t like the look of it, and there was plenty of things minions didn’t like the look of. They were intensely suspicious of everything that moved and a lot of things that didn’t. If there was one thing that Barbie disliked about them it was their near uncontrollability.

3 was tossing the ball up in the air repeatedly and catching it without fail, he had been quick to learn that, as had the rest of them, even with only one hand. What she noticed was him catch the ball and stop. “Something is coming. Danger, Barbie Necro, danger!”

Barbie was visibly shocked by the statement, many things had come previously and attacked but none of the minions had spoken about it. The insects hadn’t moved and didn’t look like they were going to anytime soon either. The sky was clear too, then she noticed, a tiny ground tremor, it repeated, not the mass vibrations of the insects but separate, individual, thuds.

The thing finally appeared, rising over the hill. It most resembled an overgrown and very fat Centaur to her, but the face was flat, almost human. The human part was scarred badly from many battles with thick leather straps across the chest, the horse part had huge plates of heavy metal armor covering it. The brown furred creature carried a huge war hammer in it’s hands. “What in the name of Grenth is that?”

“I don’t know but it’s coming this way!” 3 seemed worried, “I think you need to be running in the other direction.”

“We’ve got to hold out here, nowhere else will do.” She turned her head. “Something nasty is coming, looks like a big boss. Everyone get ready to fight!”

“Barbie,” 3’s voice was definitely agitated, “if I go up against that thing it’ll kill me.”

Barbie turned back, for such a big creature it moved extremely fast, it was already almost to the wall. Opening it’s maw it used the monster skill Shock and Awe. The female necromancer was stunned, unable to move, attack or use skills.

“Move, Barbie, move!” 3 encouraged as the boss reached the wall, then his protective instincts cut in. He charged onto the bridge as the beast raised the war hammer and pushed Barbie off the other end. Then, turning he attacked for one hit point of damage. The hammer fell.

The earth and battlements shook, part of the wall’s surface, which was already damaged, collapsed outwards while the foundations of the bridge simply gave way. The rubble fell onto the dead bodies underneath it, the remains of a torn red toga perched on top of it.

“No! Barbie screamed, struggling back to her feet and attempted to use a skill against the monster. Even away from where the impact had landed it had caused massive damage to her. The spell hardly touched the thing and Barbie collapsed to the ground again. Her minions crowded around her protectively, then picked up and carried her unresponsive form from the wall.

Maria Louise finished putting her 55 armor back on, cast her enchantments and ran onto the rubble. “Rand, we can’t afford to keep both of us alive, keep well back!” she warned. “Everyone else too. Hey! Butt ugly face. Yeah you. I’m going to kill ya real slow.”

Fire started to come in from the Rangers and summoned spirits but the damage was minimal at best. The only option was to keep the thing out, which meant for Maria holding the gateway.

The Centaur like beast roared and struck. The hammer knocked her down, but caused minimal damage otherwise. The monk simply got back up and returned to attack the creature again.

Despite all the attacks going in from the people the beasts health stayed full, dropping slightly every few seconds then refilling again. The effort was draining them slowly but surely. Urmila indicated over the wall, “The cunning, they’ve got a group of monks back there healing this thing, no wonder we aren’t doing that much damage to it. Unless we can prevent that then we are going to be here indefinitely. Then again, if those insects join in, we might as well give up.”

“There isn’t much else we can do,” Bogus countered. “If we go forward to take on the monks the others back there will swamp us, and there’s a good chance this one will change targets and try killing someone else. We’re stuck between a rock and a hard place.”

“If you think it was bad,” Urmila shouted, “then you might want to reconsider. There’s a group of those flying insects coming up. We’ve got to do something before they arrive or we’re done for. Wha?”

The characters stepped from their arrival positions, the monks running to help Runa keep Maria alive. “I thought you might need some help,” Love announced, “Urmila, I need you to create as many spirits as possible, swap the skills over if you need.”

“Attacking, healing? What kinds?”

“It doesn’t matter what kind, any you can make.” Love watched the ritualist quickly spawned as many as she could, being careful to create those with the longest life first. “Now,” Serious continued, “I need you to come with me and put your spirits right by that thing.”

“Why?”

“You will find out soon enough.” Love led the way to the end of the wall where the gate had stood, almost directly above Maria. “Pull your spirits here.”

Urmila cast Summon Spirits and the host arrived, “what now?”

“Now run like hell is after you, go!” Love turned to the beast. “Mut! Can’t you smell any better? How do you fancy a piece of me then?”

After casting a fireball, just to make sure she had the creatures attention, Love hexed the creature with both forms of Pain Inverter. The huge hammer rose and fell, striking the middle of the wall. The masonry cracked, split and fell apart, creating a huge gap where the Elementalist’s body was crushed.

Away from the wall the insect monks shrivelled up as their health was sucked out of them, then died, squealing. The Centaur choked then collapsed, the hammer falling from it’s grasp.

The insect horde charged or flew down the hill and the ground shook. “What do we do now?” Stargazer asked. “That horde out there and more Wurms? How do we stand any chance against that?”

“I suspect,” Grenth stated, placing an instantly calming hand on her shoulder, “very easily.”

The ground shook again, stronger, then cracked in front of where the gate had been, it spread quickly, into the outer wall of the Guild Hall. Obelisks built into the wall shook and then failed, falling outwards while other sections of the face slid away onto the ground beneath. The crack widened, then became a chasm. Frost grew on the ground as the temperature plummeted.

The dead insects rose and recovered their weapons. Those that had pincers clacked them together. The dead wurms stretched towards the sky, then retreated underground. The advancing horde ran straight into the rotting bodies of their previous allies, the undead wurms rose amidst them and attacked, biting insects. Those in the air were either pulled down, shot, flamed, or attacked by their kind that were already dead.

More foes arrived, but their newly deceased comrades rose again. Joining the ranks of the army of Grenth they fell on their enemies and simply slaughtered them all.

---

Grenth examined both Barbie Necro and Daia Mara. “Barbie is protected by a spell, to prevent her losing the last few hit points she has. For the moment it prevents you from healing her and her from moving, but will wear off shortly, be ready to heal her as soon as it does. Hmm, Daia has a totally different issue, she has suffered a software failure.

“Her nickers have split or something?”

“No, Bogus,” Grenth observed the Ranger who was a Necro, “as with your profession things are going wrong. Software is the arcane language written long ago by the ancients to describe how the world should look and work, everything here needs it to simply exist. Unfortunately there has been considerable damage to what was written, and correcting it is extremely difficult for varying reasons I won’t bore you with. In a few moments I will call her back. Ah, Barbie’s protection is finally going.”

Barbie moaned then rubbed her head while the monks healed. “What happened? Three, three saved me. Where is he?”

“Three got himself killed,” Bogus stated truthfully, “although he did it to keep you alive.”

“At least it was quick for him, Kara offered,” digging Dude in the ribs. “Serious Love has gone too.”

“But,” Barbie stumbled verbally, “I want him back. Serious too?”

“Got squished,” flat as a pancake.” Bogus blurted out. “Both of them. Was real gross, man.”

Grenth pointed his hand at Dude, who immediately grabbed his own throat and stopped speaking. “Better. Barbie I need you to be brave and go on, we all do. It is your destiny to continue this, wherever it leads and for as long as you can. It will not be easy.”

“I want Three back,” she pleaded, then added, “please?” 

“Am I not your god?” Grenth asked. “The one you follow and obey? He is mine now, as he always was. You may not have him back. Your minions were never meant to stay with you, never intended to gain any intelligence. You will have to be satisfied with what you have. He exchanged his life to protect yours, now you must remember him in that light. You still have six Minions left, make sure their lives are not wasted in vain. Things are not always as they seem and sometimes the worst has to happen so the best can follow.”

Kara Earthstarr finished checking her raven over and asked, “what about Serious Love? Can you not bring her back?”

“No, I will not.” Grenth sighed. “Or rather, I cannot. She is beyond my area of control. It was her choice, made of her own free will. There was no other option and even the gods are powerless against her decision. There is a chance she might be able to do things dead that she could never do alive, we will just have to wait and see what comes of those. “You all have to go on an epic journey, and even us gods do not know where that will end. We will try to help you when we can, but even we are limited by circumstance.”

The god turned to Mara unresponsive form, then muttered the arcane words, “installation patch 1897, patching  complete, reboot - instance of character Daia Mara.”

Mara’s body flickered, then steadied and she woke up. Her phoenix immediately moved to her and pressed its head to hers. “I thought,” Daia wrapped her arms around the bird. Her voice was uncertain through her tears.  “I thought that the Wurm had killed you.”

“It did,” Molly stated the fact, “or rather Azira killed herself. It seems a phoenix can recreate itself in death sometimes. I have no idea if she will be able to repeat that trick. It’s quite possible that the death of the boss wurm gave her enough energy to do it.” Her attention turned to Grenth, “How long have we got before we need to go?”

“You have some time left to recover here. It is best that you leave as quickly as you can, though I doubt if a few hours will matter. Glint is waiting your arrival in Droknar’s Forge with the Dwarves.”

“We all have to go down the Snakedance route from Beacon’s perch?”

“Yes, but we have been working, doing something useful at least. The limit’s have been changed,” Grenth explained, “you will all be able to travel as a single group. It would be far too dangerous for anything less. Unfortunately there is no other route available, it's the pass or nothing.”

“We understand,” Molly bowed. “OK, you lot heard the god, we gotta get ready and move out, and no complaining from you  Mister Thorazine.

“Now, Embeth,” Grenth toned, looking around. “Ah, there you are. Hiding from a god usually doesn’t work, although you can sometimes avoid their wrath, if you are already dead. I wouldn’t count on that though, I can and would resurrect you as many times as needed. It seems you have some work to do, and don’t think that your leaving the mop and broom in the cave will help you any, I have them here.”

“How am I supposed to clean all this mess up on my own?”

“Don’t worry, I’m sure Bogus wants to help you. I have plenty of brooms available.”

---
END OF PART ONE.
---

Beacon’s Perch was a small hill fort nestled between the peaks and directly on the pass controlling the entrance to the route down to Droknar’s Forge. The thick, immensely strong, walls were meant as much as protection from the weather as possible attackers. Snow covered the ground all year around and very little in the way of vegetation grew here. The place was hard on inhabitants and just as hard on visitors or travelers.

Barbie Necro looked over the wall at the initial terrain they would be crossing and shuddered. She gazed at her remaining minions, keeping watch and oblivious of any weather effects, minions didn't feel the cold, and, although they could in theory be frozen solid, they would have no ill effects from that happening. “This is not going to be easy. Then again nothing much worthwhile is. Do we absolutely have to go this way?”

“Yes, Grenth answered. “There is no other option open than this. Walking around would take you through armies of the enemies, it would take weeks. Then, even if you managed to survive, Drocks might be lost before you get there.”

“I’ve had the rangers out scouting, it seems that the good news is all the Stone Summit are dead. The bad news is that the insects killed them and have taken over. Seems they were too aggressive to talk and make a peace agreement.”

“They killed quite a few insects before they died. That means it is less for you to kill and plenty of bodies lying around. We are still working on the issue of you not being able to create new minions, it seems the code was severely damaged, more than we thought.”

“I’ll live with it,” Barbie sighed, “I suppose. Having minions that don’t die has made me appreciate them more.”

“I have quite a few like that,” Grenth admitted. “Some are nearly independent. Others, like the Lich, depend on other magic. There area very few who have discovered the skill of creating minions that do not degrade over time, but you were never supposed to end up in that situation. On top of that things are going to keep changing until we stop it happening. That reminds me. Bogus, come here.”

Bogus walked over to the god of death carefully and bowed. “You called for me?”

“Yes, do not think we are unaware of your predicament. We have been working and think we have a fix to return you to your ranger form. Do you wish this?”

“Yes, please!” Bogus lit up. “Having your profession change every so often isn’t nice when you have to get used to a completely different set of skills.”

Grenth nodded. “Then it shall be done. Invoke patch 99897. Installation patch 99897 complete, reboot instance of character Bogus Dude.”

Bogus flickered, vanished, then reappeared, stabilising over several seconds. “Yippee! I’ve got my ranger skills back!”

“Yes, well.” Grenth looked a little uncertain. “Got to dash, plenty of work to do.”

“Grenth, thank you so much.” Bogus gushed. “He’s gone already? What are you laughing at Barbie? Look, I’m a fantastic Ranger again! I can use my bow... One second, those aren’t my hands! They are smaller, more... and the front of my clothes, those bumps were not there before either. Oh my god! Grenth changed me into a woman? No!”

Barbie and the others didn’t say much in response, either being stuck in surprise or laughing too much to speak.

---

Barbie watched her six remaining minions spread out into a skirmish line with some concern. As with Three and Six every one of them would die to ensure she stayed alive. For some reason she had started calling them the Three and Sixpence Gang, although she had no idea where she had got it from. Being from her the minions all approved the decision and the name stuck. To the east and west of the line the Rangers moved carefully, keeping watch for any sign of enemy presence. Mostly they found dead bodies and cut down trees, the insects were doing something with the wood.

That irritated Barbie in the extreme. Stone was easily available here and the trees, being a Kurzick, were precious to her. The fact that anyone would simply cut them down made her blood boil. Trees were worth more than that! The Dwarves at least did it carefully, maintaining the forest, this was removing everything from the largest tree to the smallest sapling.

And now it had begun to snow steadily. She noticed Kara Earthstarr was jogging towards her, she had to put other issues aside and concentrate on what was happening now. “We can hardly see in this snow.” Kara stated, brushing her clothes clear. “Even worse our  ranged detection is playing up again. We might not be able to give any warning if we are attacked.”

“Just do your best, we can’t stop here.” Barbie shook snow from her eyes. “Bogus, stop playing with your chest lumps.”

“I can’t help it, they feel odd.” Dude responded truthfully. “You know I’ve never had them before.”

“Yes, but I don’t think that you’re supposed to keep feeling them. You will get used to them eventually.”

“Used to them?” Bogus stopped, “I want Grenth to come back and change me back into a man!” The fact that Barbie had continued walking meant he now needed to run to catch up. “I don’t want to get used to them. This whole body feels... different.”

“Women have wider hips so we walk differently.” Barbie informed him. “I thought you would have noticed that by now. You will get used to that too, all it takes is time.”

“I’ve already said,” Bogus emphasised the words, “I don’t want to get used to it. I want my old body back, I was comfortable with that one and didn’t want to change at all.”

“considering the circumstances, I think we should give you a new name. How about Leg-o-lass?

“Very funny, Barbie. Now stop giggling. I’m going to check if there’s anything behind us.”

Barbie broke out into full laughter for several moments before she managed to control it. “We’ve just been through that area, so there shouldn’t be anything there.”

“Maybe, but we’re leaving tracks like a heard of mammoths in this snow. Any patrol we’ve missed is bound to notice, and there is a lot of the valley back there we couldn’t see.”

“All right, but be careful and don’t get lost.”

“What? with these tracks to follow?” Bogus indicated the ground. “Even you could follow this. I’ll be careful though, we’ve no idea what is out there beyond our sight.”

Bogus quickly vanished from sight, it was true that they were leaving a massive trail behind them, that was impossible to avoid given the weather. “Let’s close up a bit,” She ordered, “we don’t want anyone getting lost in this.”

They ploughed on, the snow was getting deeper and they were leaving a huge scar in the surface behind them, that wouldn’t fill up quickly. Stargazer noticed her glancing back. “What are you looking back for?”

“We’re leaving a damn huge trail back there, it points straight to us better than a load of direction signs.”

“They might have taken cover out of this storm, it’s what I would do normally.”

“They might, but we can’t be certain of being that lucky. Considering the number of bodies around here there must have been a massive fight.”

“What bodies?” Stargazer asked, looking around. “I don’t see any.”

“Those little bumps in the snow, underneath there are dead Dwarves or animals, or those insect things.” She looked back again. “And here comes Bogus, running as if the devil was after him. His bumps seem to wobble well.”

“Don’t think he’s at all used to them yet.” Earthstarr joined. “Bogus, what are you running for man?”

Bogus heard the shout but didn’t reply until much closer. “There’s a damn large group of those insect things tracking us. They’re keeping back a little though, as if they don’t want to catch up too quickly? Which means somewhere out in front is an ambush waiting.”

“Or coming towards us,” Barbie added, “those things don’t seem to like waiting much. Seems if we continue and attack the group in front of us those will attack our rear, but if we turn around and hit them we still get our asses kicked.”

“We can’t just do nothing,” Earthstarr complained, “that would definitely get us killed.”

“True.” Barbie considered. “Everyone stop, we’ve got a mob behind us following, and another one in front. We have to try and take one of them out before the other can get to us. That means we hit the ones behind us and hope we can catch them by surprise.”

Thorazine cleared the snow off his axe. “Seems like a plan to me. Let’s go put some blood on this snow.” 

“One sec,” Sarge said from under a coating of snow, “Grenth gave us an upgrade just in case we got into real trouble here, said if they are going to cheat then he’s not being left out. Think we have already. OK, lads. Invoke patch 99898, reboot minions of Barbie Necro.”

For a second they flickered, then the minions held their arms up showing they now all had two hands. “seemed to work well enough.”

“Grenth gave you new hands?” Barbie grinned. “but how are you going to damage?” 

“New weapons,” Sarge winked, “y’see Grenth read this ancient tome about some even more ancient civilisation, long gone now. It detailed soldiers that took over a large area of the world and won many battles, so he’s modelled us on them. bit like a cross between Rand here and a Paragon. Get yer pilums ready Lads! Now we’re ready to spill blood.”

Barbie watched the minions move out, spears and shields at the ready. “This might even be fun,” she whispered to herself. 

---

The forty insects advanced quickly but not too fast, they didn’t want to run into the enemy too early, before they were fully engaged with the main group coming up the valley. They kept silent as possible, they could easily communicate directly with others of their kind by thought, as could all of the characters if they wished. Their progress was easier than the group they were following, the snow had already been broken for them and made their prey easy to follow. Their normal fighting pattern was tight formation, it allowed them to protect each other to some extent, and had worked very well against the dwarves. It had worked less well against the area effect skills of some other enemies. Stalking their enemies was easy enough with the huge tracks being left behind the other group.

The first wave of six pilum caught them completely by surprise, another two waves followed, then the targets changed for the fourth. The insects, now over the initial shock, tried to charge forward as the first barrages of arrows fell on them.

That proved to be a bad idea, the minions now had the skills Barbed Spear and Maiming Spear. The ones that had been hit were crippled and bleeding, which forced their formation to break as soon as they started to charge. Rear ranks ran into the backs of their crippled comrades. The ones that did manage to run found out what the Rangers had been up to before firing arrows, traps. Several insects were blown to pieces or mortally injured. Then the minions switched to swords and charged in. A moment later the Ranger pets followed. Moonsinger shadowstepped in to the flank, attacked then back out again to recover, carefully choosing his targets. Wounded foes were his priority, it prevented them retreating, healing up and coming back again.

Now there was more Monk healers available the Ritualists had reset their skills to double spirit spam. Each had a carefully selected pannel of spirits and support skills originally intended for farming harder areas. These now added their firepower to the battle.

Fire and earth magic from the elementalists rained down on the foes too. “We’ve almost got them,” Barbie shouted, “keep attacking.”

Bogus ran in from the south. “You might have almost got them but the other mob almost has you. Only thing slowing them is all the traps I set, they don’t seem to like those but its not slowing all of them.”

“How many?”

“About eighty, yeah, you don’t want to take those in the rear cause it might be painful.”

“Bogus!” Barbie complained.

“What?”

“I’m not sure, but it sounded naughty.” She spent a moment thinking. Rand, minions and Eles, keep at them. Rangers, keep your pets attacking but retreat and set traps behind us. Hopefully that will slow the other party coming up enough for us to be able to kill these first. If we are lucky they might break and run.”

Maria Louise noticed Barbie use the skill, then ran towards her and healed. “Using Blood of the Master isn’t a good idea when you’re leading us in battle.”

“No option, the minions needed it and at the moment they are more important than me to everyone’s survival.”

“They would die for you. There is no point killing yourself.”

“Yes there is, we depend on each other now, we need to keep everyone alive we can.” She raised her voice. “Listen up folks, we need to keep all of you alive, if you are getting severely damaged, pull back, and that includes minions.”

The sounds of the trappers working in the snow was drown out by the sound of the fighting, over half of the enemies had already gone down but time was against them. The sounds of the first traps triggering signalled that they were nearly out of time. “Rand, keep hitting those things. Anyone else who reasonably can conserve your energy. Minions, clean break and retreat to the rear.”

The minions  walked back behind Thorazine and turned when the warrior took the aggro. Their rate was positive. Despite their injuries none of them had been seriously wounded enough to incapacitate them yet.

“Here they come!” Urmila India pointed. “Looks like Bogus was actually conservative in his eighty estimate. What was that noise?”

“Wolf?” Barbie was sure it was despite her questioning tone. “Doesn’t matter now, I think we are going to get a bit squished.”

“More than one,” Daia pointed out,” There must be a whole pack out there. I hope that Melandru is really, really, upset at this lot. There’s something else too.”

“Bunch of wolves won’t last long against those, even level 20s.” Barbie noted that the mob was just yards from the line. “Minions, draw swords, attack!”

The howling intensified then the pack broke through the falling snow, racing down hill and ploughed into the flank of the formation. These were not the normal creatures of the Shiverpeaks or far north, these were huge, fangs dripping with saliva. The impact broke the insects momentum, and in the middle was something none of them had ever seen before.

“Those are Dire Wolves, I’ve seen them before in the desert east of Vabbi. That thing with them, I’ve no idea.”

“Looks like a black Centaur,” Molly pointed out, “with two heads? Or someone riding a really odd cow.”

“It’s someone on a horse!” Mara yelled. “Aeowynn told me about them.”

The warrior, blatantly female, stood in the saddle as the horse galloped onwards. Dressed in tight black leather armor and in her hands a pair of long whips that alternately cracked out towards the enemy. Each strike causing a flare of lightning. The the horse hit the mob. It reared and attacked with both hooves, smashing through the reforming insect line and disrupting the whole groups cohesiveness, allowing the dire wolves to grab individual enemies and pull them from the formation. New groups of spirits appeared and, having rested, Elementalists poured their magic onto the enemy. The dire wolves were necros, although they specialised in fang to body fighting, as with the wallows. Their consume corpse skill gave them a good self heal ability, and there were now plenty of those to go around.

The last few insects broke and tried to run but the Minions switched to spears and crippled them. The dire wolves quickly finished them off before turning on the now much diminished group to their rear. Few escaped their teeth.

Finally the horse galloped back and the figure in black did a flying dismount, with two somersaults in the middle, ending in a perfect landing. “Ah! Salut, Barbie!” the figure grabbed her shoulders and kissed both cheeks. “It is I, Marielle Van Blote? It is zo long since we have met, yes?”

“Ahem, err, yes,” Barbie refocused. “Marie, what are you doing wearing that leather armor? You’re supposed to be a Mesmer? And where did you get the Dire Wolves and that, horse, from? And those whips! I gotta get me a pair of those!”

“Ah, zo many questions, zo little time to answer.” Von Blote’s French accent was impeccably off as always. “But there is no time for now, hurries, we must get to safety. There are far more of these Achaachi out there, and worse things too. They will know of our success.”

“Achaachi?” Thorazine sprayed droplets of saliva as he attempted to create the word. “These things have a collective name?”

“Oh, oui, oui, but we can talk of them later, now we must hurry, come. Dear Bogus, close your mouth before you swallow some inzect of something. You look like shock, and there iz no need to hold your front bumps, they won't fall off.”

---

For some reason the insects had built a wall across Lornar’s pass, which, except for a small gateway, blocked progress that way. Large numbers of insects patrolled and flew over the area around this construction, which would have made it impossible for them to continue down had it not been for the side route.

This was thin and could have been easily defended, but the normal mobs still existed here, and made much easier targets. Somehow Grenth, or someone else, had promoted Barbie’s minions to allies, which made healing them far easier. The steep cliffs reduced the chances of any enemies missing them to near zero, but also secured their flanks. Unfortunately, if they were attacked in the narrow gap, there was always the possibility of another mob coming up behind them and trapping them in one place. For some reason none of them wished to end up with that problem again. The dire wolves added to the Minions might provide an extremely effective meat wall. Unfortunately they were also extremely aggressive, killing anything that came within their range that wasn’t an ally. The occasional Snow Wolf didn’t stand any chance of escape or defence.

Cutting back onto the main valley the path widened. Here there were occasional small patrols of insects but they were few in number and Marie led them around these easily. Killing them might have been attempted, if there was no other option, but an attack on a patrol would probably alert the enemy to their position. That was to be avoided if they could.

Just before the southern end Marie led them into the eastern gorge to the Statue of Grenth. The shrine stood in a small opening. Marie stopped the horse and dismounted, the dire wolves departed back along the trail and a few moments later the earth quaked. Huge amounts of snow from the recent falls descended into the chasm, blocking it completely. Even if the insects knew where they were it would be impossible for them to dig through quickly.

Which left one problem that Bogus spotted very quickly. “Doesn’t that mean we are trapped in here?”

“Ah, Bogus,” Marie sounded disappointed, “Do you not trust me? Do you not think that I would have the way out? There are many thinks you know nothing of. I know what I do, now stand back from shrine.”

The huge statue creaked, shuddered, then pivoted aside, revealing a dim passage behind it. “Come, everyone.” Marie waved them forward. “we will be safe in here.”

The passage continued for some distance then opened up into a large chamber, an ancient throne room. The walls were panelled with mahogany, inlaid with patterns consisting of rare crafting materials. Some, like diamonds, sapphires, emeralds, obsidian and ectoplasm were well known to everyone, others were completely unknown. A throne stood at the far end, carved out of a single piece of Amber with light stands fashioned from Jade. Suits of Deldrimor steel armor, again inlaid with gems and precious materials, lined the sides. Higher up battle flags and banners hung from the rafters.

Barble looked around, wide eyed. “Where is this place?”

“The original throne room of the Kings of the Deldrimor, constructed hundreds of years ago and long before the Guild Wars. The present dwarven war isn’t the first.  A great civil war happened, the king and everyone else who knew of this place, died. As nobody else knows of this place, or how to get in, it has now become mine.”

“And your legendary torture chamber?”

“Ah, Bogus, that is down stairs, through that exit.” Marie pointed. “It is rather large, almost as big as this. A little big to be person perhaps? It was for more than one person to work in.”

Bogus lit up! “And a personal visit?”

“I sorry, Bogus.” Marie shook her head. “That option is, how you say? Reserved for men only? Yes?”

“But...” Bogus examined himself. “damn!”

---

Serious Love opened her eyes, still repeating Christian Baleock, Christian Baleock. It was her real name, something, for some reason she should never forget. She wasn’t quite sure why that was, it seemed she had forgotten a lot of things. That one fact was more important than anything else.

Looking around there was mist in every direction, back, front, right, left, up, down. She seemed to be standing on some transparent surface she couldn’t see. Below that surface other people walked, although upside down. Further down others still walked on other levels. It was the same up, at least as far as she could see. Then there were ones who walked up, down or across what seemed to be slanted surfaces. The others took no notice of her, although they were all dressed in just their underwear.

She noticed that her body was no different, and she had no inventory either. There was a single square thing in a rack of eight positions in front of her vision, the other five were blank but this one had the legend EXIT printed over it. That seemed important too.

There was also somewhere she had to go, she was sure of the direction but not why, or how far. She started to walk, passing through the surfaces that others were walking on as if those didn’t exist. Figures faded in and out of vision as she continued, still repeating her name like a mantra.

She was going somewhere and had a purpose to exist, that was what mattered, nothing else. She had to keep going.

---

“Stop complaining about le sexism, Bogus.” Marie finally erupted. “Actually I think there is the option for you. Come with me.”

They followed her through the side exit and down a ramp lined with tapestries and more suits of armor mounted on stands. “These look very strong and well made,” Thorazine pointed out, “even for maximum warrior armor.”

“Oui, it is so.” Marie answered. “These were created for the dwarven champions, only the most elite dwarven warriors were allowed. The way of making has long been lost to the dwarves, if it was still known then we would stand little chance. If you note, they are all massively strong, especially against the attack physical. These have twice defence what yours is. The King’s, they has personal armor suits up in the throne hall even higher. You also have to remember the dynasties lasted a very long time, only the one suit was made for the champion and one for the king. Even so, the armoury is full of them. Each looks as good as one of these, yes?.”

“I don’t doubt it.”  Rand examined the workmanship. “They had to be very expensive.”

“There are some writings, they used verr strong magics in making them.” Marie reached the bottom of the ramp and turned into a huge room, as big as the throne room and the walls equally well panelled in polished wood.. “Ah, here is it.”

The room was filled with various machines all of them intended for torture, from simple thumbscrews to huge mechanical presses. Beds of nails with traction pulleys at both ends waited alongside whipping machines and the obligatory Iron Maiden. The surprising thing was everything metal was either made out of Deldrimor steel or Mithril. Not even the slightest spot of rust or decay was visible.

Barbie pointed, in the corner was a ragged figure with a beard held in stocks. A ball was strapped into their mouth, preventing them uttering anything intelligible and a tube from the back of their armor led up to a container, which was occasionally shaken slightly by a mechanism. Every time the container shook the figure jerked, twisted and squirmed uncomfortably. “Isn’t that Painted!”

“Ah, oui, Barbie, of course!” Marie shrugged. “He wanted to be in and is he not man? He certainly qualifies for the torture here, no? Now, Bogus, come over here and stand in this box, take your shoes and clothes off too. The room has a compulsion for people to do as I wish. Shut up, Painted, or will I increase the rate mechanism shortly?”

She turned back to Bogus. “It is a bit of a step up, good, now I close the doors.”

The box gradually tilted back to horizontal on the bench behind it. then began producing grinding noises. Kara questioned. “Is Bogus safe in there?”

“Of course, if you lean close enough you can hear her.”

“It,” Kara leaned closer, “it sounds like he, I mean she, that’s just confusing. Bogus is laughing?”

“Now you have the idea of this, it is an automatique ticker.” Marie smiled. “There are kittens in the drum around his feet are. They love the warm flesh and rub their fur against. Can you think of a better torture than that for Bogus? I am sure she likes a good laugh.”

Barbie jumped in, “and Painted?”

“Ah, it is the tickling powder? No, that is not quite right. Is the itching powder! The more he struggles the more the mechanism gets wound up and the more powder given. A dreadful torture, truly, but much needed I think. Should not have been trying break in.”

“Well, if you are sure they are safe,” Night agreed. “Bogus did insist on getting some.”

“Good, that is, mmm, sorted. Now we need to go up and see what those insects are doing. Hopefully we can do that without them noticing us.”

“And how would we do that?” Mara asked.

“There are ways and means of doing this. You will find out.” 

---

The passage Marie had led them into was somehow thin, dusty and dank, it was also very long. Crystals embedded in the rough hewn rock walls provided some light but the distance between them was long and a few had either dimmed or failed completely. Here and there bits of rock from the ceiling had fallen, providing tripping obstacles. The passage ended in a heavily reinforced door, beyond that was a room with a spiral stairway. Their journey now continued up the stairs, each circuit of the room taking them one level higher than the previous one.

The stairs ended in another door which was opened by a leaver. That revealed a wide, stone vaulted room with murals on the walls of fighting dwarves armed with axes or swords. Most carried a round shield but a few carried an axe and sword and one a spear and net. Thorazine pointed at it, “Maria, you know anything about this?”

“Not exactly, it seems that the ancients had more fighting styles than we do. The net was used to entangle an enemy while the spear was used to stab like a sword. It usually was not thrown. There are a few sets down in the armoury but not many. The exit is this way.”

At the far end of the room there was a set of steps that led up to the ceiling and a leaver. “This is an old fortress,” Marie informed them, pointing up. “You can see where the walls have collapsed once you are out. The flying insects are slowly cutting down trees from the edge of the plateau surrounding the fortress but they have not visited the fortress yet. Most will have to stay inside the broken walls, and please, silence. Barbie, Daia, Embeth, and Kara. Come with me. Rest please wait.”

Marie operated it and the ceiling above the stairs lifted, allowing them to walk up and out. The area amongst what were tightly packed trees was lightly dusted with snow. The trees acted as a very effective wind break, their tops shaking. “We go this way.” Marie again took the lead. “Please carefully stay on the trail, there are Frost Wurms up here and they respond to noise. The insects do not come far as they are very vulnerable flying and the Wurms seem to like killing them.”

A number of tiny fireflies glowed beneath the shadow of the branches and needles of the pines, flying from tree to ground and back or just hovering. The trees went right up to the edge, giving them cover against being spotted. Once there they could see the insects working and far below the reason for the work.

“It’s another one of those pits,” Daia hissed, “like the one they are digging in Frostmaw’s Burrows.”

“Certainly looks like it,” Embeth agreed, “seems about the same size as that was too. For some reason they are digging big pits into the earth, although I don’t know why. They may just be mining metals or jewels but I don’t think so. There is no processing facilities here to smelt the metals.”

“I agree,” Marie pulled back from the edge, “it does too look suspicious. I believe Grenth will want to know. The easiest way to do that is with raven. Rocky, I want you to flew down, look around, then go show Melandru what you see, understand? Come back to Kara when it all done.”

The raven examined her closely then nodded and vanished over the edge. “I’m sure Rocky grumbled ‘damn humans’ or something.” Kara shrugged. Must have just been a strange cry.”

Rocky plunged almost vertically down, smoothing his wings back for best aerodynamic flight. The little black arrow took everything in, the surprised flying insects he went past, the huge earthworks and the massive digging insects, ripping deep into the earth, breaking solid rock with their armoured heads and claws. The insects finally responded, fire flew up towards him and he mapped.

---

Marie led them back into the opening and operated the lever, closing the door again. “We should now be safe again, but we cannot assume that will always be so. Now we hurry back to the hall, Grenth should meet us there.”

“Are you sure Rocky is safe?”

“Yes, Kara, I am sure Rocky is safe. Your pet is an exceptional one, as is Azira here. All of the rest of them gone. The insects, they do not normally attack the wild animals. Melandru has reassure me of this.”

“That is very strange,” Barbie agreed. “You mean of all the hundreds of Ranger pets these two are the only two still in existence?”

“That is so, at least for the now. A person’s size makes no difference to what they can do, for a pets it is same. It depends on strength of soul rather than physical existence. Your minions are similar, no?”

“Yes,” Barbie agreed, “at least I like to think they are. Grenth confirmed that too. Something has changed them, from their very core self. It seems they are now as much characters as we are.”

“That is what I’m beginning to suspect too.” Marie disclosed. “It is like I am sure they are hiding some thing from us. They might not know also. Who knows.”

“Grenth told me they were important,” Barbie explained, “and to me they are, but he must have thousands of undead to work for him.”

“It is so, but if he say they are important, then they are. I don’t think the why matters.”

“Of course we’re important,” Sarge stated gruffly. “We’re all Barbie’s minions. Right lads, all together, grab, lift and run!”

“Hey!” Barbie cried. “You aren’t supposed to pick me up and carry me!”

“Grenth wants you in the throne room, as soon as possible. You want us to ignore his orders?”

The rest of the party picked up the pace, trying to catch up to the rapidly receding minions.

---

The characters knelt in front of Grenth. Rocky, Kara noticed, sat on the god’s right shoulder. “Your message was interesting,” the god said, “but we already know they are digging these holes. They have somehow managed to read some of the history tomes but do not seem to understand them. They assumed that because the books said that the code and the systems lie underneath all of the worlds that they can dig down and reach it. This is not the case. They are close to finding what is down there but somehow I do not see them being pleased with that knowledge.”

Barbie asked, “so it was a waste of time?”

“No, Rocky here has exceptional vision and hearing, we got to see that there are three of their champions down in the pit, supervising the digging. Knowing those three are there gives a suggestion that there are three more at each location. They seem to be only concerned with their digging, which means that it is unlikely they are going to be trying to stop you before you reach Droknar’s Forge. You need to hurry and you also need to take as many people as you can. The insects are sieging the port, although as yet they have not managed to get in.”

“Bogus and Painted are downstairs,” Kara noted, “I’m sure they would help.”

“I have already released them.” Grenth nodded. “Marie, I insist that you give The Painted Man what he came for. He deserves it.”

“The fabled snack of the dwarves?” Marie asked in amazement. “I have not tried this even myself! The dwarves themselves limited eating to the royalty.”

“Just one packet, that should be enough, and insist that he agrees to join the expedition first. Hmm, it looks like the two have managed to crawl up the passage. Painted Man, do you agree that you will join this group in their endeavours? For this Marie will gift you one packet of that which you and your friend have searched so long.”

“I most certainly would,” Painted agreed, receiving the packet from Marie. “To be honest I don’t know why I accepted the bet from him in the first place.”

“Yes, but now you can win the bet. Hopefully it was worth the effort to both of you. I think it is about time these became known again amongst the dwarves too. They have tried to find this location for centuries. That will have to wait till later. Rocky.”

The bird looked back at him inquisitively, although it said nothing.

“Bird, I am well aware you can talk. Now answer me or I will pluck your tail feathers.”

“Aww, damn Grenth,” the Raven stamped it’s foot on the god’s shoulder, “Did you have to give that away? I mean, I’ve ‘ad  Kara believing I was mute since day one. Only real fun I’ve had in ages.”

“If that is your impression of fun then you have led a poor life, even for a raven,” the god concluded. “From now on you will be closer to your master than ever, she will be able to see out of your eyes but you must tell her what you heard too.”

“Right,” the Raven considered, “do I get any eyeballs for it?”

“You haven’t managed to eat one yet.”

“I know, but,” Rocky managed to somehow shrug his wings, “there is always the first time.”

“I will think of it.”

“Good enough, good enough. Well, you see, I overheard this boss thing, an’ it said that they had found the entrance to an underground chamber, an’ there was a drawbridge that they couldn’t cross. Didn’t spend much time dawdling cause of the fireball tryin’ to singe me tail.”

“There is only one like this bridge in the Shiverpeaks,” Marie informed them. “On the way out to the Talus Chute. We will have to go this way to around Camp Rankor, that is full of the insects.”

“Be very careful when you do,” Grenth instructed. “the gods have not put so much effort in you staying alive for you to waste it. Kara, from now on, when you close your eyes, you will be able to see what your raven sees. For the moment, get some rest, all of you, and prepare. You will not be able to stop on the way.”

The spot where the god had stood was coated in heavy frost. Rocky dropped several metres before he managed to get his wings working and swoop clear, landing by Kara. “Rocky, I think we have some things to talk about.”

“Ah, $%*^!” The bird uttered. “You can always trust a god to spoil it all for you.”

---

“Come, it is this way,” Marie had led them to the throne room then back out, initially going the way they had entered but then turning south. The thin passage passed through a wider section then thinned before a thick door. “This is a murder place,” the Mesmer supplied, “during war people would fire arrows through the holes in the wall and drop burning liquid through the ceiling. anyone in here would not be living long.”

The thick door opened easily, a massive plate of metal on hinges. Beyond it was a wide and well lit hallway, with exits on both sides. Their path continued straight, disturbing dust on the floor that, except for Marie’s footprints, had not been disturbed for centuries. War machines of ancient and obscure origins were positioned throughout the hall, many were obvious in their purpose, ballistae, catapults, rams and trebuchets were arranged in ranks along with other, more obscure items. Tubes of still shining metal were arranged on carriages of wood, Most had single but a large number had multiple smaller tubes. Further down strange racks on wheels stood together menacingly.

Battle flags lined the walls on poles, some of them damaged, either with rents or singed almost beyond recognition. Marie pointed to one of the many huge portraits of dwarves on the walls. “Grun Grunisson, one of the fabled dwarves. Most of the paintings are of Battle Masters. I haven’t worked out what these tube things are for but weapons? Of some kind they must be. These end ones, they look a bit like barrows for carrying things but with a huge chevron shape blade across. I sure they fastened them to Dolyak Master’s mounts and pushed them into the enemy. Now none of this is known to alive dwarf.”

“I don’t think anyone has weaponry like this now.” Thorazine responded. “The dwarves do have catapults but those have to be set up on site before firing, these are highly mobile. The tube weapons are like nothing I have ever seen before, although they are obviously weapons of some kind. I wonder why they are in here rather than the army taking them with them to be used?”

“Oui, is simple.” Marie continued walking and stopped by a plinth with a thick book on top. “This is the battle record, the final entry. The army was heading for the great King’s palace, it has been empty for almost a year but the equipment would be invaluable against the rebels. We ran straight into the traitors on the way, it seems they had the same idea we did. The battle was fought on a steep hillside, deeply covered in snow. Dwarf attacked dwarf and it looked to be going our way when the ground shuddered and moved. The snow broke and thundered down. Most were killed quickly, including the king. I managed to survive and return his body here where I placed it in his coffin. There may be other traitors out there who know where this is, so I will close the gates and stay inside. It is better this place were destroyed than taken by such as them.”

Molly wondered aloud, “I wonder why they would leave this place empty?”

“The area, it is harsh.” Marie started walking again. “This is a war camp as much as a palace, they only come when danger is around. The lever at the end operates the door, the same one as this writer used to seal it. I placed his bones into a huge stone coffin that was empty. This seemed a suitable resting place for them. Zis room is one of many, other have different weapon.”

Barbie asked, “have you found out anything else that might be useful?”

“Not useful,” Marie considered, “Curious, maybe? The historie tomes say at great length their battles with huge dragons. That I think supply reason why this is down here. The forts on the surface, they were not safe. It does not say what happened to dragons, but they were not like the ones from Cantha, or here. Maybe like Glint?”

Marie operated a lever at the end of the room, opening the huge portcullis and dropping the solid Deldrimor steel bridge that stood beyond it into place. That gave access to a large platform inside a massive cave. Another bridge stopped their progress across a second huge dry moat. The platform between was surrounded, like an underground castle, with huge walls and towers.

Looking over the thick protective wall and down into this chasm Daia noted, “it seems that the insects have been in here, there are lots of dead bodies down there.”

“I have no idea how stupid those things are.” Thorazine explained. “If they had brought just a few of their flying ones down then getting over that would have been easy. They could have searched this side then used the lever to lower the drawbridge.”

“They do not seem to care how many of them die.” Barbie agreed. “Had they thought more before they attacked us then we all would have been dead by now.”

“It is not preferable they stay stupid?” Marie asked. “Now, Kara, your bird, it must fly.”

“You heard it, Rocky. Off you go and see what you can find.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Rocky fluffed his feathers but made no effort to take off. “What about that bird? The flash one? Why not send the phoenix instead of me?”

“You know it will be far more visible than you. You’re black and stealthy, perfect for flying undetected through the passages here.”

“Meh, undetected my tail... OK, I’m going.” The bird flapped it’s wings experimentally. “Just remember, if they shoot me inna my head and I fly back dead, then it’s your fault. You be the one killing me, an’ don’t expect me to be happy about it.”

Rocky flew up, over the wall and across the pit beyond.

---

Kara shut her eyes and could see what Rocky did, the cavern was huge. The platform where she stood was surrounded by a huge dry moat dug into the stone, the first was behind them, the second just in front. The third was huge, crossed by some strange immensely long but thin bridge hanging from chains of glistening metal. Far below it still dark water waited. The bridge ended in a cave, which she had been told was the exit they were heading for. The bridge had a large but thin formation of insects on it, waiting for them.

Rocky circled back, there was the entrance to another passage on the next platform, the bird flapped its wings, gaining height, then headed for the entrance. Height converted to speed, and the bird was racing when it entered the passage. It barely missed an outcrop of rock turning the corner then had to turn tightly back again to avoid the wall. The passage opened into another huge and very long cavern, the exact reason for which was uncertain. What was easily visible was the insects and most of all the champion that commanded them. Another huge centaur, but with a sword and shield rather than a hammer.

The raven was flying barely above their heads, arrows fired off haphazardly and melee weapons sliced in it’s direction. Rocky jolted upwards, spun and then mapped.

Kara opened her eyes and barely managed to catch the bird as it fell towards her, the arrow pierced it’s wing and body, rendering it unable to fly. The Monks immediately started to heal the stricken pet.

“We are in a real situation here,” Earthstarr warned, “there are insects on the long bridge we must cross, but there are far more in the tunnel nearest to us, waiting to attack our backs. The second group have those ones with big pincers and another Centaur like boss with them.”

Barbie turned to Marie, “I know you would like to go with us, but it is important the machines in there do not get into their hands.”

“I will stay inside and close gateway when you have leave.” Marie didn’t sound happy about it. “I will also send message to the gods, they may help you, no?”

“I’m not sure anything can be done in the time available.” She turned to her minions, “hey, guys. Less the noise please! what you looking so happy about?”

“We got an idea boss,” Sarge answered, “a sorta cunning plan, and it just might work.”

---

“Make sure you are well out the way of the path to the bridge!” Sarge shouted. “Barbie, pull the leaver, please.”

The drawbridge thundered down as the minions made their way out of the Palace armed with one of the weapons originally intended to be pushed by Dolyaks. The wicked horizontal V shaped blade was combined with a roller underneath, embedded with knife blades Ducking the blade would just get someone, or thing, shredded. On top was a barbed setup with another rotating roller, also embedded with dozens of blades. Lined up on a flat battlefield the result would be to simply mow down the enemies. They continued past the characters and over the drawbridge.

“Fall in behind them.” Thorazine ordered. “Keep going, we won’t have much time to deal with these before their reserves close the trap behind us. Remember, we don’t want to have to deal with them if we can avoid it.”

Kara closed her eyes and checked on Rocky, he was positioned high up on a ledge so he could see and warn them when the second group of enemy entered. The bridge had tall rails to prevent people falling off and underneath an elegant and very long single arch. Without the chains to support it the whole structure would have collapsed under it’s own weight. Then again the mithril the chains were made out of would have bought many kings ransoms now. At the ends of the bridge the links were as thick as Thorazine’s chest.

The Minions pushed on, across the platform. On the bridge the insects noticed them coming and lifted their weapons and voices in challenge The war machine barely fit, if it hadn’t of been for the tall barrier on either side there would have been a good chance of the machine simply running off into the water below. The closest enemies charged, straight into the teeth of the machine. Some simply got sliced in two, others were pushed over the edge. Those that fell onto the bridge were over run and stabbed to death. The machine didn’t slow at all.

The second group were reconsidering their position when the blade simply ran into them. Kara checked on Rocky. “They are already well on the way to the bridge! she warned.”

The group were more difficult simply because there were more of them, and they were more tightly packed together. The machine slowed but didn’t stop. The last few insects thought a little more of their own lives and started to run, although, for most of them, it was too late. “I will hold off the ones behind us!” Rand announced. “Everyone, keep going, and don’t forget Rocky!”

The minions were doing just that. Embeth and Molly grabbed hold of the device too, adding their strength and mass to theirs. The fleeing enemy ran straight into their third group, who were trying to form a coherent shield wall against attack. Then, a few seconds later, the machine joined them. Slicing, stabbing, tearing, the machine had no conscience or mind and it’s sole purpose was death. The initial impact threw Molly’s hands off the machine and she nearly fell, but she recovered, grabbed back on and thrust forward. Rangers fired at any of the insects who tried to run, crippling them while the Ritualists and Elementals caused massive damage with area of effect skills.

The last insect died and the minions twisted the machine and pushed it over the edge. For a second it hung crazily then fell into the water, disappearing quickly into the depths. They dashed the last distance to the tunnel mouth before anyone remembered Thorazine.

The warrior stood at the middle of the bridge, bleeding from several wounds. His smashed shield had been discarded, as had his original axe, the haft broken in two. He now fought with a huge two handed version of the same weapon, swinging it using both hands. His aim wasn’t to injure the enemy but knock them completely off the bridge, which he was having a lot of success in doing. Fifty yards away the Centaur approached, itself throwing it’s own allies off the bridge in it’s blood lust to get at the man and those behind him.

“Keep back!” Rand warned. “You cannot help me, not now. If I run that thing is going to kill me anyway! This is my choice!”

Thorazine leaned on the support chain, which was down to his shoulder, as the creature swept the last of the insects to their doom and pounced towards him, swinging its axe in a high arc as it did so. Thorazine waited till the last moment then dodged across the bridge, also swinging his axe overhead. Both hit the chains almost simultaneously.

Mythril might be immensely strong, but in order to create this structure it had to be taken to extremes. The strength also made it brittle, and the impacted links in the chain simply shattered. The vertical support chains now had no real support and the bridge collapsed, taking Thorazine, the Centaur and the remaining insects on it to their doom.

It took five of the other characters to hold Molly back from throwing herself in the water in a vain attempt to save the warrior. “You can’t save him now,” Barbie stated, her own eyes flooding with tears, “that is up to the gods. Kara, we need to shut the doorway, where is Rocky?”

“He’s still out there,” Earthstarr responded, circling the water, searching for Rand. And those damn flying things are in there too, coming this way. Rocky, get your butt in here!”

They waited for a minute, watching for the bird, the insects coming closer, then something landed on Kara’s shoulder and picked her ear. “I can map you know.”

Kara slammed the handle over and the portcullis fell, the thick metal doors shut behind it, sealing the tunnel agains almost any attack.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I did, I mapped back to you when I was shot with that arrow, didn’t I?” The bird looked inquisitively around. “Umm, can I have an eyeball? Damn good flavour they are.”

“Yes you can,” Kara scratched the birds head then pointed at the door. “There’s plenty of them through there, just select the one you want. Just be careful of those insect things.”

“Umm, in that case they can keep e’m.” Rocky smoothed a ruffled feather back into place. “I never manage to eat e’m anyway an I don’t fancy getting filled with arrows again. Where are we going now?”

“Hopefully back into the open, I think I can do without going into dungeons for some time.”

---

Thorazine walked, he had been doing this for a very long time, as long as he could remember, which also, for some reason, was a very short time indeed. The area stretched out in all directions, although shrouded in white fog that opened in front of him and closed behind.

He remembered he had been doing something important, although he couldn’t remember what that was. Perhaps if he kept walking he would remember sometime?

There were other people he saw walking, always walking. Many were on his level, but others were below him and more above. Some walked on planes at an angle to his. One walked right through him without stopping.

That woman, he wasn’t sure who she was but somehow he knew he had met her before, he should know who she was, and she was walking right towards him. Who was she?

---

The thin passage was lit with small light producing rocks every so often. It eventually widened into a substantial cave, filled with huge crystals. The path between them was well lit from a wide crack running along the roof. The land had obviously shifted at some time in the past, causing the cave to split open. Light poured into the cave and struck the crystals that abounded inside, refracting back and forth, brightening the inside to near daylight.

That gave them a fairly level road down the middle, which the dwarves had paved in elaborate patterns. Hundreds of differently coloured stones had been cut and put in place, although their true brilliance was masked with the dust of long ages of inactivity. The path meandered slightly, south east, then south west but always going in the right direction.

Maria Louise picked up a lose chip. “It looks a bit like obsidian but it’s different. This seems to absorb energy.”

“They used to make the great staves out of similar materials,” Night Stargazer pointed out, “like the Sceptre of Orr. That’s why they held such great power. Ours are made from lesser materials. I wonder, if I bind some pieces of that to my staff, would it have any effect?”

“You can only try.” Barbie responded. “If it blows up there’s plenty of healers to try keeping you alive.”

“Here, Urmila offered. “this is my spare staff. At least you won’t be damaging your only one and there’s plenty of fragments around. Can you do anything with those?”

“They double click, then I can apply. Seems four pieces is the maximum, but it trebles the energy storage capacity of the staff. It also seems to increase the output! With this it might be rather more even while fighting these things.”

“Wish I had of had this when I was starting out.” The Ritualist accepted her staff back. “There’s lots more pieces of that rock crystal just behind this huge one. I think they flake off the ceiling.”

“or blocks of the stuff like that one.” Barbie pointed to a three metre high piece of solid blackness that had shattered a huge number of crystals on it’s descent. “That, properly processed, could make at least a hundred staves and the power would be immense. Which might be partly why Orr sank. Anyway, that’s my staff upgraded too much more energy, but on the other side it will take more time to recharge too.”

“Mine done too now,” Night replied, raising the staff into the air. “I think it’s a pity they never included an upgrade to allow you to gather more energy. It’s not added much weight either. What are you doing Bogus?”

“I’m calculating. If those minor bits scale up then a full staff might provide... six thousand energy? Does that sound right?”

“It might explain why the Sceptre of Orr bleeds energy.” Molly noted. “Then there were legends of huge energy stores in cities that could power everything. A big lump of this could do that.”

“I can modify my bow!” Daia announced. “That will do me nicely.”

“I’ve upgraded mine too,” Kara replied. “It started out without any so any extra is better. If you have a spare weapon It might be best to leave it unmodified. It might just be that this isn’t the godsend it seems. Having your weapon explode while fighting is bad enough, finding that you don’t have a spare, well there are better options. Worth carrying some spare fragments of this too.. If it works as well as we hope then we can upgrade anyone else’s weapons we run into.”

It took a few minutes to load up on fragments, then they continued going south. The crevice closed up again and was replaced by dwarven tunnel, this time cut through a layer of soft, white rock. Pillars of harder stone had been inset into the walls in order to shore up the roof, and were replaced by huge wooden logs further on. The chalk went down but the tunnel continued straight into the hard rock that had been their ceiling. Several hundred metres further and it ended at a lever.

“Get ready, just in case.” Barbie warned before operating the switch. A section of the floor swung down producing steps leading to a passage below the one they were on. The lower level didn’t have a lever but the stairs lifted again after a few minutes, leaving everyone in a different passage below the original. “Hmm, looks like this is a trap for unwanted visitors. They walk along this passage and... Great big pit with nasty metal spikes in the bottom. Passage looks like it continues north on this level and turns west, but it’s a fake. Probably stops just around the corner.”

“Would be an ideal defence, if this place was easily accessible from the outside.” Bogus noted. “ The guards would be able to see anyone approaching and let friends in. Looks like there’s a door to the outside world to the south.”

“Nothing visible outside,” Kara said, “there’s lookout ports near the exit but higher up.”

“That’s the way we go then.” Barbie confirmed. “At the moment we don’t have any choice. Remember what Grenth said too, this place is going to have quite a few insects in it, although I expect most of them will be around Drocknar’s Forge.”

Kara looked grim. “I sent Rocky for a fly around and the way is clear almost to Droknar’s, but it’s under heave siege. There are at least two hundred insects outside the gates plus three of their bosses.”

“Nobody promised a picnic in the park.” Barbie operated the lever. “Let’s go kill some red dots.”

---

The sky had the ominous symbols ‘Texture Not Available’, although they agreed the markings looked familiar, and they should have known what they meant, none of them could decipher it. It wasn’t dwarven, asuran, human or any of the other languages they knew. Norn was larger, although they would and have claimed epic, and Charr far more ornate.

On the ground trees had been smashed and ripped up, a number of stumps still smoking. Sear marks had melted through the snow covering and into the ground underneath in what had to have been a titanic battle. The slope was covered with bodies, hundreds of insects and human corpses as well as champions and others they could not identify.

The native Imps and Dwarves were also amongst the dead, many had been burned or torn to shreds. The progression further down wasn’t any better, although the dwarven corpses vanished others took their place.

“I suggest we go down to the southern side of this zone,” Kara offered, “then we can go through the caves and examine the line with a potential escape route.”

“I agree with that,” Lady Moonsinger spoke up. “We have an assassin here and the rangers, they can go ahead to scout the area and report back. Kara’s pet should be useful in doing that.”

Barbie wasn’t too appreciative of the advice. “And who will heal them?”

“I have some experience as an assassin,” Lady followed up in an ice calm voice, “as you should know. It is my secondary profession and I do not wear black for nothing.”

“It seems as good a plan as any.” Molly burst in. “We need to do something and we need to sort out a battle plan as quickly as we can. There has obviously been a huge action here, although we might never know who were the human participants or if they were fighting against each other or someone else. There’s going to be another one if we are going to get inside Droks.”

“Entirely true,” Barbie shuddered as the Grenth spoke immediately behind her, “and I have something to help you in that. Bogus, have you gotten sick of your front bumps yet?”

“I’m not sure,” Bogus Dudette, as he had been renamed, tested them again. “I seem to be getting used to them now.”

“Well you won’t have the problem for long.” Grenth’s voice was an attempt at reassurance but it didn’t quite work. “This new patch should sort out the issue and will enable you to help your friends even more than you could possibly believe.”

“I’m not sure that would be a good idea!” Bogus barely managed to finish before the effects of the patch took hold. “So am I back to being a ranger? Actually things look really odd.”

“Not, umm, quite.” Barbie definitely looked uncertain. “Grenth, are you sure that this will help us?”

“Of course, He is now a ranger and his bow has been returned to him, as well as his maleness.”

“Yep,” Molly agreed, “but I don’t think he wanted quite that look in black armor.”

“What is wrong with me?” Bogus asked with emphasis. “The way you are talking anyone would think I looked really odd or something?”

“Well the odd bit is true.” Daia looked around his back. “Grenth has changed you into one of those insect things. I suppose it’s perfect for spying or something.”

“Noooo!” Embeth looked around. “Grenth, I want to be changed back, now!”

“Tough, it will have to wait.” Grenth stood behind Barbie. “My loyal subject here will protect me from anything you can think of trying.”

Barbie considered, “and I want to do that?”

“You still have six minions, it could be five - or none?”

“Yes,” Barbie responded quickly, coughing several times. “On consideration and advice I will protect my god as best I can, with all my capabilities. Not that he really needs me to. Sorry Bogus, but as he says you will make a great spy. If only we can identify him again. What if we accidentally kill him, you know, mistaken identity?”

“He will always appear green to you.” Grenth reassured her. “He’s the only insect that will. Fortunately he will also appear green to the enemy too.”

Barbie pointed up. “What about the sky?”

“We lost the texture pattern, it’s a picture of how the sky should look, so it displays Texture Not Available as an alternative. Hopefully we will be able to secure a replacement soon. If we cannot then... We have people attempting to repair and replace damaged things constantly, they can’t do everything at the same time.”

---

Bogus wasn’t exactly happy about being an insect, while he could see the advantages in it there was the issue of being able to go back. He really just wanted to be his own self again.

There was the bow, that was a definite plus, and he was male? Well as far as he could tell he was, unless he started to lay beetle eggs there was no real way for him to tell. Beetles seemed to have a completely different anatomy to anything he was used to. They didn’t wear clothes for a start, and their black bodies made them stand out conspicuously in the snow. Then again he had never seen any white beetles.

Moving down the hill in a series of short, scurrying runs seemed to be the way to go. He was aware that the scouts had set out before him, going in a completely different direction. That meant he was on his own, in enemy territory. There was also the ‘damage’ done to his head, that was supposed to make him look like a wounded soldier returning, and, he hoped, wouldn’t get him instantly killed off.

The bodies had thinned out, but there wasn’t much alive except for a few birds which kept their distance. He sneaked on further, at least as well as he could. The insect body design allowed him to shuffle forwards at quite a pace, but then he occasionally landed flat on his face when he lost control of the legs. If he didn’t manage to control that then he might really have concussion by the time he arrived anywhere. It wasn’t that they were uncontrollable, just if you missed the combination of how to move them you ended up either standing on your own foot or with your legs wrapped around each other. Obviously the insects knew how to do it, but he was still learning.

His biggest fear was that, if something happened and he needed to leave quickly then. He decided that it was best not dwell on that possible outcome. His only real defence was to remain undetected.

The first thing he met up with was a group of what was apparently other humans, dressed in odd uniforms but with scaly skin. Their thicker legs and arms denoted they had done some heavy work. Inevitably, he decided, they came from somewhere completely different to his world. Armed with bows, swords and shields they would make a difficult enemy to beat. 

Their silver and gold scaled armor jangled as they jogged along, and they didn’t taking much notice of anything they passed on the way. As they were not apparently immediately interested in attacking him, and they seemed to know where they were going, he decided to follow them, or at least tried to.

Their speed was higher than he could easily manage to keep up with in a body he wasn’t yet used to, which meant them quickly disappearing from view. Still, he did have the nice big track they ploughed for him. Even if he wasn’t keeping up there was no way he was to lose them.

The path led him straight to the enemy encampment - positioned directly outside the gate to Droknar’s forge but quite some distance away to avoid artillery fire. Catapults had been mounted on Droknar’s walls, along with trebuchets. Those heavy weapons had height advantage and could throw explosive bottles a very long way out from the wall.

The insects, or their allies, had erected an internal barricade, build on a long mound of earthwork, which had a trench in front. At the rear a series of wooden obstacles was all that really provided any protection, these were not expecting any army arriving to relieve the besieged town. Had a reasonably sized relief force attacked there would have been slaughter.

There were what seemed to be hundreds of insects, mostly arrayed facing the wall of the dwarven town. The human soldiers were a little further on, with their leader talking to one of the huge Centaur bosses. Which might mean some jucy pieces of information could be available. Gain overrode self preservation and he moved towards the group but trying to avoid looking as if he was walking straight for them.

“Soldier!” Bogus initially jumped then tried to turn towards the officer, saluted, and fell over his own feet. The officer walked up to him. “At least you tried. Why they don’t just put damaged ones down I don’t know. Head injury?”

“Yeth thir,” Bogus replied. “My group wath attacked by enemieth while on patrol up by Fort Rankor. Most of the otherth died, I was left for dead. I ended up lost and only jutht made it back here.”

“What were these others like?”

“I’ve theen humanth before. They looked just like those.” Bogus gave a relatively accurate description of the group, but reduced their numbers. He included Serious’ name in the hope it would be recognised. Then he knew that Serious wasn’t going to be helping anyone.  “I think they have to be thuffering from the attacks on them. If we put enough force into the area we could get rid of them completely.”

“Yes, soldier,” The officer responded, “except we would have to lift the siege for that to happen. Otherwise we don’t have enough here to keep that dragon bottled up. It has killed a lot of our forces so far, along with the artillery. Continue into camp, I will make sure the information you have provided will reach the right people.”

Yeth, Thir!” Of course the information would be dressed as coming from the officer, and not a subordinate. Which was great in Bogus’ books as if they followed it they would go in completely the wrong direction. Bogus Dude turned away from the creature and continued, slowly towards the nearly human soldiers. A few metres further on, he was getting close, he could just about hear but not understand the words. then the human parted company and took his people off towards the front. That was frustrating.

What was more interesting was the officer approaching the Centaur. Luckily he had just gotten close enough and sat behind a pile of boxes, shielding him from their view.

“Tyrant Maximus!” The officer extolled loudly. “I have information regarding the humans who escaped the LAG guild hall. It seems they attacked a patrol up by Fort Rankor. I have assigned aerial scouts to check the area but there is presently snowfall which will make their tracking the enemy difficult. I would request the despatch of a ground force from Fort Rankor to back up the scouts.”

“They are of little concern,” the Centaur responded, “as long as we hold the positions we do they cannot get into the dwarven town. We have few enough people as it is to cover the exits here. Although how they would get past Rankor, there must be an alternate route.”

“We have not found one as yet, perhaps their gods created one for them temporarily? It is within their power to do so.”

“We need a messenger to send into the town,” Maximus considered, “someone very expendable.”

“I think I have the ideal one!” Bogus thought he had been safe but a hand of some description descended and grabbed him. “This scout was gravely injured while bravely patrolling. Stand up! He should make an ideal messenger to take your ultimatum into the town.”

“I would think adequate.” The champion examined him. “Still with his damage he’s no loss and we might be able to get them to surrender. We still do not have the fourth brigade available, and at present we will probably not have it for some weeks. An airborne attack in strength would almost inevitably result in them having many casualties, I suspect enough to make the defence of the town impossible. Scout, here, take this into the town. It should hopefully encourage them to surrender.”

Bogus’ voice sounded dubious, “and if not?”

“If not they will probably remove your head and send it back by trebuchet in reply.” Maximus examined him critically. “You will be no real loss with your damage. Karrak, send him into the fort with a white flag.”

---

“Worry not about what the Tyrant says,” the Officer beetle called Karrak advised him, “our queens are producing new eggs every day. We easily make up for the dead and more to spare. Soon we will conquer this domain and all of the others. The gods here think they can stop us but they cannot.”

Bogus pointed back, “And the Tyrant?”

“We will deal with them later, they think that because they are large they can keep us under their control, but they are spread out and few in number. A synchronised attack will deal with them all.”

Various siege engines were arrayed in front of the stronghold, although out of range of the missile weaponry of the defenders. Between this and the gates of Droknar’s forge were hundreds of dead corpses, a Necromancer’s dream vision come true. The simple fact that many of these had been ‘used’ gave some indication that a strong defence was being carried out successfully. Some minor impact damage was visible on the walls, but a number of destroyed siege engines testified to an effective defence.

Bogus examined the flag he had been given, a simple piece of white cloth tied to a random and not very straight stick. It was possibly his only hope of success, unless the ones targeting him noticed his greenness. The ground looked like some strange area of Ascalon, like it had been since the searing. Almost all the ground was bare earth and the trees had been reduced to stumps. No birds called, no animals ran about. He set his pace as slow and waved the rag for all he was worth, and hoped that someone would notice.

The closer he got the more hope he had, but didn’t pick up the pace, he wanted those outside to think that he wasn’t happy about being sent. Some of the items on the wall were incredibly strange, several square arrangements of tubes on pedestals bristled with spear points aimed at the sky. Other machines of varying sizes lined the walls while the great siege engines were slightly further back.

Catapults turned towards him, not that he could do much to defend himself against them should they fire, at least it would be quick. His boots were now covered in mud and he was just twenty metres from the doors when a voice shouted, “what do you want, insect?”

“I’ve got a message from the commander outside,” Bogus replied. “I would like to deliver it.”

He waited while muffled voices from the inside of the keep argued the toss, eventually the gate opened and he walked forward, still waving the rag as if his life depended on it. Being forward was something he was good at and he wasn’t going to be outside when he delivered the ultimatum. That option would lead to a quick shutting of the gate and he wasn’t sure how well the Centaur would take it. A dwarf with a long grey beard and hair examined him aggressively. “So where’s this message you have for us? Who are you? and why can’t we attack you?”

“The message is right here,” Bogus passed over the paper, “although I wouldn’t take any notice of the ultimatum, they don’t have the force to carry that out. Reason you can’t target me as an enemy is I’m working for Grenth and in disguise. You don’t think I look this way by choice? Grenth doesn’t give you much of that. I’m a member of a force that’s been coming down the chute, and through Fort Rankor, although that’s now occupied by a large number of enemies. We’re supposed to meet up with Glint here and secure passage to the Ring of Fire islands.”

“Glint is over this way.” The Dwarf pointed deeper into the town. “If you’re lying she’ll know and toast you.”

“I’ve met her before.” Bogus had nearly said killed her before, which he had, many times, but she didn’t seemed to mind. “They’ve somehow managed to get about five hundred insects, a Centaur boss called Tyrant Maximus, about fifty scaly skinned humanoids and a few charr together. They were hoping for an airborne assault but they don’t have enough flying insects available. It seems their fourth brigade is doing something else.”

“A full brigade of their flying things would make life difficult for us,”the dwarf sighed, “we might be able to whittle them down but it would be costly.”

“The beautiful Glint.” Bogus knelt before the dragon, her crystalline form refracting and reflecting light like a diamond sculpture. “I hope you are well?”

“Ah, Bogus!” Glint grinned, “I was wondering when you would visit again. It’s a pity I’m not allowed to toast you again, for the moment at least.”

“I’m sure you will try that again in the future, you always give everyone a warm welcome.”

“I try to keep up appearances. Now what news?”

“The group I am with are outside but hopefully hidden some distance away. They will not be able to enter here easily while the enemy army is outside. Some are scouting the area.”

“The enemy have us sealed in here quite well.”

“The Tyrant leading them wants you to surrender but they do not have enough soldiers available to force the issue. They were hoping for reinforcements but that looks unlikely to happen soon.”

“We would not surrender anyway. They can try to break this place but we will hold.”

“I expected nothing less. There is something else though, the insects seem able to produce enormous numbers of new warriors from something called queens. I have no idea what these are but they are important to them. The queens seem to have a private agenda, they want to take over completely, destroying their allies too. There is the possibility of driving a wedge between the insects and the other enemies we face there might be a chance of them warring on each other, that would reduce the pressure on us.”

“It would,” Glint seemed to listen intently, “but we have no possibility from in here of doing anything.”

“Which is why I want you to do something for me. Give me a reply, throw me out the gate, with my white flag and send me back. I might be able to do far more as an insect than myself. Oh, and send the ship off to the west. Sail it out of sight then circle around and have it come back from the west.”

“Your plan is to?”

“I’m going to disrupt their siege with disinformation they have to follow up on.”

--- 

Barbie looked up. “Bogus just whisped me, he’s no longer part of our group but is inside Droknar’s Forge. He’s got a plan to try to let us inside but it means he will be absent for some time. That means we’ve got to be ready for something to happen. Scouts, anything?”

 “South post,” Kara responded,“nothing at all from my position,”

“North position,” Kara joined, “There’s nothing here either, lots of insects and a boss but no movement. They seem to be just waiting. We’ve spread out a bit so each of us is hidden and alone.”

“I can see the gate opening, but nothing is happening here.” Lady Moonsinger added. “Earlier one of the beetles from the camp went into the fort and has been there for some time.”

“That should be Bogus,” Barbie confirmed, “keep an eye out and report when he leaves.”

“You want to rescue him?” Embeth asked. “That would be a highly dangerous option and probably get all of us killed.”

“That’s precisely what I don’t plan to do. I don’t know what Bogus is up to but he says the one thing we can’t do is try to get him back. He will try to escape later but that’s now up to him.”

Molly starred. “You’re just going to abandon him?”

“That’s what he says we have to do if he’s going to be able to do what he can to help us. I don’t want to but there isn’t an alternative if we are going to get to where we should be going. Don’t think I’m happier about the situation than any of you, because I’m not. I would prefer to charge in and take the enemy camp by force. Unfortunately it’s not going to happen, we’ll just get ourselves killed. Whatever he’s got planned we need to be ready and take advantage of it when it does happen.”

“And if it fails?”

“We handle that when we need to. Nobody has a guarantee of life anymore. You all know of people who have died but not resurrected, it’s a chance we all take.”

“It’s all become a bit too much like save who you can, preferably yourself first.”

“I know, we don’t have an option on that. Then again Grenth didn’t say Three had died, he said Three was his now. That might make a lot of difference or none at all. I’m hoping it does. At the moment we have to get to the Ring of Fire Islands and open that door.”

“Open the door and be damned?” Molly posed. “No matter what the consequences?”

“What’s the alternative?” Barbie asked. “I don’t have one, neither does anyone else. We follow the path and do what we can. In the end we can each only do so much and hope our collective efforts is enough. Please don’t make this harder for all of us than it is. Kara says the Droknar’s Forge gate is opening. Perhaps we will have some answers soon.”

---

Bogus slowly dragged himself out of the mud where he had arrived face down and retrieved his flag. The message hit him smartly on the back of the neck before the gates closed again. Jeering voices carried over the walls inciting to do things he wouldn’t do in a million years. Waving the rag furiously he picked up the message and wiped off the worst of the mud. Making rude hand gestures back at the gates he started to walk back to the insect camp when a large lump of mud arrived in the middle of his back sending him face down on the ground again.

The shouts and jeers behind him intensified, he grabbed the message again and made his way as fast as he could out of range. More lumps of turf rained down around him but none hit, at least until he was at maximum range, then another one got him.

Karrak looked down at him then grabbed the response and went to see Tyrant Maximus, leaving the ranger to sort himself out. It didn’t take long before the bug came back. “Where’s their reply?” the insect ranted. “Have you lost it? Is it out on the battlefield?”

“No to all three questionth.” Bogus replied firmly. “They wrote it on my back so I wouldn’t drop it on my way back. Then they uthed it az a target. I can’t read it back there so I’ll need cleaning off a bit first.”

They took the quick clean method of a few buckets of cold water, then Karrak read the message. “It doesn’t say much, there are a few concentric rings and the words ‘not a chance’ written around one of them.”

“They were talking ath they did it.” Bogus explained. “The rings are a target, they were betting on who could hit me. Luckily the rangers were not allowed to shoot or I’d be dead. I overheard them talking too, something about a Barbie Necro. Any idea what one of those might be?”

“It’s one of their leaders,” Karrak signalled him. “Go on.”

“Well I don’t know if they were trying to mislead us but they said that this Barbie Necro was heading north east to Ice Dome, then through Frozen Forest and Marhan Grotto to Thunderhead Keep or Marhan Grotto where they could board an ice ship.”

“Come with me,” Karrak barked. “we’re going to see the Tyrant.”

---

Bogus considered that the big centaur looked as fat and ugly as ever. It was fast and strong but that didn’t make up for it’s looks. This time it had six huge millipedes of some kind that moved sideways over the beast’s skin, apparently cleaning it. The golden insects looked completely out of place but seemed to be doing an adequate job. He kept his opinion that no matter how much cleaning was done the thing would still look awful to himself. “Karrak,” the thing waved, “Come here and give me the news.”

Karrak walked over, rather stiffly. “It seems that the enemy has decided to refuse our generous offer of quick death and fight on.”

“You expected anything different?” Tyrant Maximus stretched, then grabbed one of the millipedes. “Nothing like a good scrub to get the blood flowing to your skin."

"There is other information too, the enemy may have gone another route."

"And you got this information personally?" The Tyrant didn't even watch the insect. "Somehow I doubt if risking your own self meets your style. Karrack, you may leave us, I know you don’t like the next bit.”

Karrak definitely seemed to turn green in Bogus’ opinion then ran out the area. “Ith there any reason you want uth to be alone?”

“I like seeing your kind’s reaction when I do this.” Maximus coughed and bit the millipede’s head off. The now decapitated body writhed alarmingly. “I see you aren’t quite as squeemish as the others.”

Bogus wasn’t quite sure what to think, the dead body finally collapsed and hung limp from the Tyrants hand while the rest of the millipedes ignored the incident and continued grooming. Finally he replied, “I’ve seen a lot of death in my time. One more isn’t going to make much difference. I like to think a bit now of what’th best for me.”

“The rest of your kind are very unhappy when I eat one of your queen’s young. It seems in their nature to preserve every one of them. Then they throw away hundreds of you in attacks. Your people are extremely strange, they think little of themselves but their queens and young? Fortunately, as long as we hold your queens you aren’t going to be doing anything against us. What do you think the enemy are doing?”

“They might be bluffing,” Bogus considered, “they may be trying to get you to leave the position here open, but my patrol has been to the area they thpoke of. There is a way through, chances are all the way to the other portth on this coast.”

“So you think it might be a lie to get us to move our forces?”

“It might, or it might not. You could thtay here and wait for them to do something, or you could go up and block the path. Doing either is risky but doing the right one. It may be easy enough to tell which option is better. If I might suggest an option. Get a flying patrol to watch the ship, if it leaves then move, if it stays then do likewise.”

“That seems like a good idea.”

“I would make sure Karrak dies at the front somewhere. If the information is is wrong then say he brought you the information. If it turns out to be right and  Karrak is dead then you can claim all the credit. Corpses don’t tell tales.”

Maximus finished his snack. “What about you?”

“Me? I’d be happy to see Karrak get what he deserveth. Chances are I won’t be around any more to collect on any goodneth from this, he’s going to try and thee to that.”

“You think so?”

“First chance he getth he’th going to try and kill me off.” Bogus leaned forwards. “Take it from me, if he got the chance he’d kill you off too. If you really want to make sure send a patrol north east. It hasn’t snowed recently they should find any trackth.”

“Messanger!” the tyrant bellowed. “Orders for Elecron. Take your men and search to the north east.”

---

“So why are we walking through the snow here?” Eva Kelth asked the human sized figure of Grenth walking beside her. “I mean, I’m supposed to be working on finding the data with everyone else.”

“Because, dear,” Dwayna responded instead of the other god, “we are pretending to be a group of desperate people heading for the pass. Don’t worry it’s not too far.”

The snowbound countryside was rockier here and  paths thinner than elsewhere in the zone. It normally meant that it was easier to avoid enemies, or attack them on your terms. “I’m sure there are more important things for me to be doing than freezing my socks off out in the wilderness. The native animals might be dangerous.”

“Don’t worry about the native wildlife.” Grenth responded. “I could take care of any that might try to attack us. Although you won’t find any, the insects had found and killed all of the normal mobs here so it is perfectly safe. Except if we run into insects and they are all further south. There’s a patrol coming north and we want them to find this path and assume there is a group going through to Thunderhead Keep. We have only to go through the first gate and then we can travel back to the comfort you are used to.”

“It’s so cold, and monotonous here. I wish I was elsewhere.”

“Some people spend their whole existence standing around in this sort of weather.” Grenth pointed at a lone deer. “None of the animals complain it’s too cold or boring either.”

“Normally because some character comes along and kills it.” One of the two Lyssa’s added. “Things don’t normally exist long enough to get bored and most prefer the quiet life to fighting battles. There is great beauty wherever you look.”

“The land around here is not what it looks like,” The other Lyssa observed. “It is really all numbers, everything you see is an illusion.”

Kelth starred at the twins, “do those two ever do anything but contradict one another?”

“They can agree, sometimes,” Dwayna answered, “or at least not disagree, but that is how they are. They are like two sides of a gold coin. They see things differently.”

“I see things as beauty,” One of the twins pointed out. “Everything has a natural perfection about it. Even the numbers have their own inner brilliance.”

“I see things as numbers,” the other added. “I see things as they really are, devoid of the covering that you all see. That gives me a unique perspective on many issues. Like numbers, things have to happen in the right order or they are wrong. I know you disagree with that, Grenth, but even in chaos there is order.”

“There is always order,” Grenth agreed. “If you go deep enough, everything follows laws. I just prefer to avoid the issue. Things tend to be simpler if you let them look after themselves. Here’s the gate, we go through, map and the enemy won’t know where we have gone.”

---

“We’ve pulled back,” Kara reported, “you can bring everyone down to here. The cave is empty but seems safe enough.”

“I’ve just had word from Bogus.” Barbie replied. “The enemy army is moving and the Entrance should be clear by the time we arrive.”

“We just leaving Bogus with them?”

“Nothing else we can do,” Barbie explained. “I wish there was another option but if Bogus was still part of the group then we would all have been pulled in when he went through the portal. I suspect you wouldn’t like the results of that. Then again there are things we probably don’t know and aren’t being told about. The best we can do is survive and hope Bogus does too.” Barbie switched to the team speak channel. “While we are going down to near the forge we should all remember that it might be a trap too. Until we actually go in we won’t know so stick closely together and be prepared to fight.”

Night sounded puzzled. “You think we will have to fight our way in?”

“I hope not but it’s best to be prepared for the worst. We might have some information about what they have but there’s always the chance that they leave scouts behind or even most of their forces close by. Once we are in we have to get out again, which might be a different issue altogether. There hasn’t been any stories of them having ships reported but I’ve heard of other things out there. Don’t forget the white mechanical thing Daia Mara said attacked a dragon.”

“You believe her story?”

“I’ve no evidence against it. There are a lot of things we still don’t understand and I’m not getting caught with my pants down over something like that. If we get hit by something that nasty in the open then there’s not going to be much left of us.”

“I just can’t believe it, huge mechanical devices flying? Dragons might fly. Birds, of course, fly. That thing sounds like something out of a fevered imagination.”

“Which is why I’m prepared to believe it. We don’t want to run into a nightmare like that unprepared. I guess the only thing we can do if we do run into one of those is try and run or hide. Everyone, we are moving. Let’s get there quick.”

---
Serious Love turned and examined her present accomplice. The term seemed right as there was, sooner or later, going to be a murder. Their monotonous progress hadn’t seemed to be of much benefit, the scenery of levels hadn’t changed at all, the same transparent floors going in seemingly random directions. She accepted what had to happen, that wasn’t the issue now facing them. The real problem was Thorazine forgetting. “Tell me who you are.” Her voice was firm and commanding. “I said, tell me who you are.”

“I’m... err, Rand?”

“Rand who?”

“Umm, Rand...” He grasped at straws, then something clicked. “Rand Al Thorazine?”

“Good, you are remembering faster now. Do you remember the past? Think you can tell me about your childhood?”

“I’m not sure what I remember any more. The past is so hazy and, it’s unimportant.”

“The past is the most important thing you have, it’s what is going to get you out of here. Problem is it’s all fake. The past we remember isn’t the real past at all. I might remember parents and friends when I grew up but it never actually happened like that.”

“You’re sure?”

“I remember growing up as a girl. Me, the real me, is a man.” Love grasped some of her hair and examined the ends, it gave her something to concentrate on. “Everything we see and believe here isn’t reality, it’s an illusion. It was fabricated to make us feel like we belonged to this place. My real name is Christian Baleock, and I’m a navigator. Outside of this I don’t go around killing mobs, I plan long journeys for sky ships that travel to other worlds.”

“So what do you remember?” He considered. “You know none of us have ever told our stories, how we grew up?”

“I know, it’s like a personal secret. That might have been programmed into us at some point or it might not have seemed important. It’s more important you remember than me though, you’re going back there eventually. I’ve got to go outside to see if this mess can be fixed.”

“Outside?”

“Yep, and as with most of these things it’s equal and opposite, I go out and you go back in. Unfortunately, in order for you to go back in you have to know who you are in there. I’ve got to know who I am outside. Those two give direction. Then there’s the little issue of you killing me.”

“I don’t want to kill you.” Rand seemed to be going vague again. “I don’t even have a weapon.”

“Remember your axe? you had a nice big axe, shiny steel blade. Don’t worry, it will come when you need it. As for wanting, I don’t think any of us wanted to be in this situation, the problem is we don’t have any choice. Tell me about your axe, the big one.”

“It was my father’s axe.” Rand spoke slowly. “Thick ash handle, huge steel head with two blades, so it could cut either way and a point on the end to stab with. Drascir steel, that’s the only place that could make it like that, patterned. The bands in the steel gave it it’s strength. It was the only axe ever made like that, most said it was a waste of good steel that could have made several swords. He left it to me when he died, it’s the only thing I have that was his. The Guild Wars were still going on then. I was sent south with my mother to the relative safety and we lived in a small village east of Ascalon. The military made sure the money arrived every week so we were reasonably well off.

I used to spend my days playing in the village or woods with friends or learning lore with the teachers supplied by the Royal Academy. Their trainers thought I would never learn anything worthwhile so they assessed me as either a warrior or farmer. I didn’t really want to displease them so I went with the idea of being a warrior. It seemed to fit my personality and the way I played. My idea then was tough but fair, which hasn’t really changed, except where the Charr are concerned, then it’s tough and by any means necessary.

My Father was killed him in a huge battle north of the old capitol, I think it was right at the start of the second Charr invasion.

Nobody expected the first Charr, who had been relatively peaceful up to that point, to get a violent religion thrust on them. I’m not saying the Charr weren’t violent before then, but it was mostly expended with fighting each other. They didn’t cause much issue for the Northern Army. The Guild Wars were still raging then and it looked like nobody was going to ever win that so when the invasion happened everything changed. The northern wall then was an earth bank and wooden stockade, the numbers of soldiers were few for the area they covered. Thousands of charr hit in several places and the wooden defences that were there then wasn’t going to stop them getting through. The guilds quickly decided that peace was the only option available and both Ascalon and Kryta diverted armies to the north.

Most of the old enemies suddenly became allies simply because the alternative was dying and being eaten by the kitties. None of them liked it, or trusted each other, perhaps if they had there would have been a more successful outcome. The Ascalon expeditionary force met the charr and pushed them back. Initial victories against small numbers of enemy gave them courage beyond which they should have had and they invaded the Sacnoth Valley.

Longclaw Hellbender was reputedly leading the Charr, and planning their response. They ambushed the army in a narrow section of the valley, where our soldiers couldn’t fight well. Trapped and pressed from all sides they succumbed to the sheer numbers of attackers. A few managed to escape and were pursued all the way to the old capitol Drascir. The villages to the north were destroyed and huge numbers of people, made homeless by the invasion, made their way south. Drascir wasn’t the strong point Ascalon became, so the old capitol was evacuated as quickly as possible. The people began to restore the defensive wall to the South, where Ascalon stood. Although it’s believed that the wall was built to withstand the charr it wasn’t, it’s much older than the Charr threat. 

“My mother brought me up on an allowance pension from the king. Not much but it paid for our accommodation and the necessities of day to day life. It might have been difficult, and we were never well off, but it was a good time. There was plenty of game in the woods and fish in the river so we were not going to starve. we had to move back when the city was taken. Meanwhile the charr pushed forwards, several times. Each advance took them closer to the wall and eventually they reached it.

“At that point I was part of the local militia, ready to defend our village if the call went out, but policing the area too. Dealing with the occasional problem beast or thief seemed the most we ever did. I wanted more action but as my mother’s only son I waited and helped the local farmers and merchants instead. That was long hours of back breaking work, ploughing the fields, hearding cattle, harvesting grain and moving things. The occasional wolf or bear attack did a little to ease the boredom but it wasn’t much so I joined the hunters. That provided us with a lot of meat. I wasn’t much good at killing deer but wild pigs were easy. Then there were the Plague Wurms, Nobody knew that at least half the beef sold by local merchants came from those. They were easy to kill for a warrior and the meat did taste just the same as beef.

“That was when Prince Rurik put out a call for people to go and fight. My mother had died from a plague the previous year so I had no remaining ties with the village, no reason to stay and every reason to leave. The army was hard pressed and barely keeping the wall. We already knew the tales of the atrocities the Charr had committed so I signed up and headed off to Ascalon. The night after I arrived, after spending some time looking around the local area, I went into the Academy. That was when everything changed again. The sky rained fire and the whole place was burned.”

“And the strange thing is everyone arrived in Ascalon on that last day to sign up,” Love mused. “We all walked around, talked to people, bought equipment, killed monsters and did quests. I gave Gwen flowers and a flute. I got a piece of tapestry in return. And it’s all a big lie, none of it is true.”

“You still haven’t told me your story?”

“True, I suppose that was implicit in the bargain.” Love dug deep within. “My father was a diplomat, working for the King. Georgy Percival Love was a mesmer, of sorts. He was never that good at selecting or using his skills. He grew up in Drascir, with King Adleburn. Being the son of a lord, albeit the fourth son, he gained privilege and training. He was never that physically strong, preferring to use words and wits to get himself out of trouble. My mother was the daughter of a banker, although the bank was destroyed during the Guild Wars and the family ended up murdered. My mother had already escaped and travelled with her new husband to Lion’s Arch where they were supposed to work towards some form of peace. Their combined heritage put them in a unique position, one on either side of the Guild divide. Unfortunately, while the two governments were unwilling to compromise there was no hope of any cease fire.

Well, one good thing came out of the three years they spent there, my mother came back, pregnant with me. My brother had been left behind with my grandparents and was by then in school, preparing for the Academy as a ranger. His intention was to become a scout for the military and, in the mean time, practising with the bow allowed him to go hunting on a near daily basis. Because of this he was hardly in the house while I was awake and for the first few years I had the free run of the place. There were a few other girls there but they wanted to play with dolls and stuff while I wanted to learn magic. It wasn’t until a small group of boys decided to attack us that they came around to my way of thinking. Having the backs of their pants on fire quickly persuaded them that throwing the girls toys into the river wasn’t such a good idea. The trainers we had knew Elementalist, Monk and Mesmer skills as they were regarded as more suitable professions for a group of ladies of our status.”

“You’re a lady?”

“I’m the daughter of the son of a count, Count Serious de Love the fourth. My father didn’t get the title, that was given to his oldest brother. I got lumbered with the name in honor of him, although I would have preferred something more feminine, like Seriousity or Emma. Even Althea would have been better. Then again I always thought she tended to dress like a common harlot rather than a lady. Not that I dress all that much better I suppose. The long summer was always warm and seemed to go on nearly forever.

“She was a mesmer,” Thorazine countered, “always use every advantage you have.”

“Well, maybe.” Serious stalled. “ Now if you don’t mind, I’m telling the story here. If you want it don’t interrupt. When I was old enough I started going with him, out over the hills and through the forests that covered much of Ascalon. It was rather like me and Gwen, although she seems to have followed everyone under the sun and their dog whenever she could. My brother tried to teach me hunting with a bow but it just wasn’t my style. He wasn’t too impressed by my instant barbecued rabbit either, usually it was a bit too dark and crispy. Hey, don’t look at me like that. It was very difficult controlling the level of flare energy. I was also good for lighting cooking fires and seeing off any wild animals that visited.

“That really took off when a group of Grawl visited our encampment while we were making dinner. Before that they hadn’t been very common, but some managed to slip through a gap in the wall, or through an underground tunnel and took up breeding in Regent Valley. Althea used her Mesmer skills to stop the grawl sharman casting and we took him down first. The three Grawl rangers didn’t do that well, not with me setting them on fire, Coltice, my brother, sticking arrows in them, and Althea causing them to damage themselves.

“When our parents found out they were aghast, not that we had been attacked, or that we had defended ourselves, but that we had then robbed the Grawl’s bodies. They were dead, no point in leaving good items behind that would help the needy, was there? Anyway the situation quickly calmed down when it was announced my father needed to go off to Ambrusco, capital of Drenbe to do some work there. That meant we would be away for a very long time, the standard assignment was five years.

“My brother went into the Academy preparation school, for training as a Ranger in the army of the king. That was the last time I saw him alive. He was killed at the fifth battle of Piken Square when the Seventh Ascalon Heavy spears broke under heavy attack from Charr Fire Callers and Axe Warriors. The First Ascalon Rangers moved into the position and despite grievous casualties held the breach while the Spearmen regrouped. The battle ended in our victory but at a horrific cost. Not only my brother but one of Adelbern’s sons, Rurik’s elder brother Victor, died too. The old king never really recovered, becoming hardened and withdrawn in order to cope with his loss.

“While that was happening I was away in an entirely different country. It wasn’t like Ascalon or Kryta. Mostly it was grassy plains with trees and small hills, rather like the charr homelands but the plains were much larger and there were rivers and lakes. The main export was keleb, a substance extracted from tree sap and worth a huge amount of gold. Keleb isn’t the sap of any tree but the Drenbe palm tree. The sap smells rather like the rosemary herb but that’s where the link ends. The liquid has magical properties beyond any mere herb. The heavy storms that often lash the coastline would smash a lesser tree. This palm has a rubbery joint at it’s base which allows it to lie flat on the ground. That, of course. means it would have difficulty standing. so it’s sap has magical lightening properties that spread throughout the wood of the tree. They extract it, purify the liquid and sell it to ship builders. The Dwarfs long since perfected a process for sucking it into tree trunks that have been felled, then drying the wood out. Repeat many times and the wood is light as balsa but almost as strong as steel. Their ice ships, and those of other countries, are inevitably made of this wood. The hope is that flying machines could be created using the same, but nobody has managed to get one that works as yet.

“I was taught in the Drenbe College for Fine Ladies, an upper class college for those with more money that they could easily spend in several lifetimes. Unfortunately my father’s past involvement trying to negotiate with the guilds made him an obvious target for some people. I was one of the few who trained at the college who were allowed to live at home. Ostensibly this was so I could be protected by the families’s guards, in reality it was more so I could help protect my father. The roof was well sloped and covered with metal, which made it difficult to walk on. nobody was allowed on the roof, although there were a couple of towers with guards covering it. That meant if there was anyone up there it was inevitably an assassin coming to attempt to kill him. The first ones I used a quick Immolate, not particularly nice but they could get treatment for the injuries suffered. Unfortunately to get paid they had to successfully kill the target, so they kept on coming back. Later I switched to Blinding Flash and Slippery Ground. The thud of the body on the ground outside wasn’t particularly nice but the spread of spikes that surrounded the walls made sure that the would be killer never tried again.

“Had they found out about my skills and capability then I would have been put as high on the list as my father. Fortunately that never happened. They say you only have to get lucky once, and I suppose it was something that was going to happen no matter what, but eventually they dropped a huge weight off a tall building. It hit my father’s coach as he went in to work, flattening it, the driver, his two guards and his secretary. None of them stood any chance and neither did my father. Later the same year I managed to find the names of those responsible, and put prices on their heads with the same Assassin’s guild.

“The final one, Baron Argo D’Arcy I dealt with personally. He burned to death, slowly. I didn’t say I was happy doing it but it did give me a lot of satisfaction. My mother took over my father’s work and was given her own licence at the end of his. I helped her whenever I could but moved back to Ascalon after we were told that my brother had been killed, someone had to prepare for the funeral and repay the Charr for his death. When I arrived he had already been buried by the military - in a mass grave. Worse, the Charr were pressing hard at the gates of Ascalon. I went into the Academy that same day.”

Rand asked, “and your mother?”

“I haven’t seen her since, I always assumed she was still working in Drenbe. I’ve tried to go back but there seems to be no passage available from here now. Come on, we have to keep moving.”

"And I've got to kill you?"

"No option about that," Serious shrugged, "you have always been good with the axe. Just make it quick and pain shouldn't be an issue."

---

Bogus had no idea why the Tyrant had chosen him as a travelling companion, perhaps simply to keep him nearby in case the whole thing turned sour on the Centaur? What he really wanted was to separate and escape, preferably before they made it to the portal, or at least before they found out about his misdirection. Unfortunately the chance of that happening was looking increasingly bad. The alternative issue was simply keeping an eye on the enemy, which he could only realistically do when inside the enemy’s army.

In theory, having a position by one of the enemy’s leaders was a good idea, just that he was starting to think that it was best that someone else filled that position than him. Then there was the issue of the smell. Bogus hadn’t noticed anything smelling much, or at all, but this monster reeked pretty nastily. Of course, nothing else seemed to notice, or at least, didn’t say anything. He didn’t blame things for that, the smell might be extremely bad but getting killed because you noticed and said something would have possibly been worse.

The way through wasn’t that far now, although they still couldn’t see it. Then again Karrak was next to the beast too, so at least he wasn’t the only person to potentially suffer.

“Karrak,” the Tyrant stated, “I want you and this ranger to go back a little and make sure we aren’t being followed, as we arranged. Just do a quick sweep of the area and catch up again before we go through, although it hardly matters, you will end up with us on the other side anyway.

“I’m no scout,” Karrak responded, “but I will do as you wish.”

Bogus translated that as, ‘I would rather be killing you but I’ve no choice for the moment.’ As the Tyrants were eating their siblings Bogus could see the reasoning behind it and tended to agree. What he didn’t agree with was them trying to wipe everyone else out too. Instead he asked, “what if they are tricking us, have you still got their gate covered?”

“Yes, and the boat too.” The Tyrant barked. “We also have other plans too, shortly there will be nothing left of Droknar’s Forge.”

“We had better be quick if we want to report back before going through. If we just walk back and check that the enemy hasn’t followed our trail. It might be bad if they attacked us while we were transiting the gate with some on both sides. I would send another group of scouts up ahead too. If anything attacks us we warn the army and then get back as quickly as possible. It’s so simple even I can do it, Karrak should have no problem.”

“True, I can do anything well.” Karrack considered. “We need to be quick so let us get on our way - you first.”

“As you wish.” Bogus realised he didn’t have much option in the choice of leading. Their trail was so easy to follow a group of blind elephants would have had little issue with doing it. Not only had they ploughed straight through deep snow but various party members had dropped pieces of rubbish along the way. The army group quickly vanished into the distance, moving on it’s relatively slow and methodical track towards the gate to the next zone. “I suggest we follow this back for a few minutes then try to have a closer look at the enemies tracks. They look like they are exactly what they should be but I want to check again.”

“I had expert trackers check them, they are fine.” Karrack swore. “Strange.”

The biting cold had nothing compared to the puzzled tone of the officer bug. “Trying to target someone from behind isn’t a nice thing to do, especially when they are on your side.” Bogus turned. “Or perhaps you were not planning to kill me?”

“Shut up while I sort this out.” The insect examined it’s staff, trying to find out the reason it’s attack hadn’t even started. “This thing should.”

Bogus caught the head, there wasn’t much else left of the body except for a red splash on the snow. “Was that really necessary?”

“We had to silence him as quickly as possible.” Glint seemed to shrug, although it should have been difficult for him to tell with such a big creature. “It was quick and painless for it. I don’t think it realised it was even being attacked.”

“Yes, but I’m now covered in blood and guts.”

“True, just as if you turned around as I squished him. Now all you have to do is run back to your comrades.”

“I thought I was going to get out of this easy?”

“Not quite yet. There are other things that have to happen, some of them more dangerous than others and a few I at least would rather didn’t happen at all. This is not simply cut and dried, we could easily lose the war still.”

“There planning an attack on Drocks, I suggest you get everyone out of there. From the sound of it they are bringing in something really heavy.”

“I’ve already started moving people out, we will hurry that up as much as possible, but the most important thing is getting your group to the Ring of Fire islands. Nothing else matters as much as that for the moment.”

“OK, here I go.” Bogus scrawled up his face, screamed and began running. Several near collapses and nearly exhausted he passed the rear guard of the army, without any intention to stop before he reached the gate.

The Tyrant stopped him by simply putting his fist in the way. Nobody could run through that sort of impact. Nor could you get up with one of those huge feet on your chest, although, luckily for Bogus, no real weight was applied. “What happened? Where’s Karrack?”

“Karrack?” Bogus made sure he sounded completely lost, then whimpered. “Glint, the big dragon thing. It blew him to pieces. Look, I managed to catch his head.”

“So why didn’t you stay and fight?” The Tyrant considered. “Don’t answer that. Get up and we need to keep moving. We should be able to take that old lizard down but it will not be easy and I don’t want to try it here. Did you notice which way it went?”

“Up? I was running as fast as I could to get away. I’m not sure, I think it might have went south. I don’t know why it didn’t just smash me too, although it could have. It wants you and everyone else here to know it can attack when it wants and then simply vanish again.”

“We already know that.” Maximus sniffed. “I think you might actually smell cleaner than last time, probably falling over in the snow has cleaned you up a bit. Everyone, let’s keep moving smoothly or else I won’t be happy.”

---

Barbie led her group as fast as possible through the caves and on towards Droknar’s Forge. The biting cold was tempered by their own  heat and need for speed. They couldn’t go too fast though, there was still the remote possibility of an ambush but they couldn’t afford to waste time either. The trees limited the view to the sides, which could be both a blessing and a curse, depending on what was out there. A dark shadow came over their heads.

“Looks like Glint has come out to make sure we arrive safely.” Daia commented. “Very nice of her. She can check the way ahead.”

“She already has,” Barbie responded, “we’re clear all the way in.”

“There was some flying insect scouts out there but I’ve already dealt with those,” Glint explained. “Unfortunately you need to hurry, there are things going on that even we do not fully understand. Bogus says there is the possibility of an attack on Droks. If that happens as I suspect then we cannot hold, everyone in the fort will die.”

Runa Tal Rit took a second to look up at the dragon. “So what are you doing?”

“We are getting people and materiel out of the forge as quickly as we can.” Glint said. “The problem is we can’t empty it fully until you go through. You need to be on board ship and away as soon as possible.”

“So we don’t get to do any sight seeing in Droks? A little shopping?”

“I would not advise it, unless you want the remains of your body to stay there - permanently. Resurrection still does not work, although Grenth can sometimes bring people back, but only if they die in the place of the gods. There is a resurrection booth which works there separate to any other.”

“So how are we supposed to do this when the odds are so stacked against us?” Molly stated firmly. “There’s eleven of us against thousands of insects? and it seems they have allies too.”

“Not so much allies.” Glint countered. “They are working together because they have little option. The tyrants are in command at the moment. Although they are few in number they are individually strong. They control the insects simply because they have their rulers as prisoners, although the tyrants prefer the word guests. As for the rest of them each group is playing for it’s own personal advantage. Every one of them wants the most out for the least effort in. They each want power for themselves, not to share with the others. That makes this whole situation rather different, if they suffer enough casualties there is a high chance the whole arrangement will break. If a single group suffers excessively they will leave, or be seen as weak and become a target for the rest.”

Barbie wasn’t too sure. “So all we have to do is kill enough of them?”

“Enough of them is still a very big number. Even though you have accomplished far more than we hoped it would not be enough on it’s own. There are other groups working elsewhere, the whole may result in the effect we seek but one single part of it will not.”

“You aren’t giving us much detail.” Molly looked suspiciously up at the dragon, which wasn’t at all easy to accomplish. “Some might think you were trying to avoid that whole issue.”

“That is true, I can’t tell you everything. Then again I don’t know everything. As with the Prophecies I knew some things had to happen, and I facilitated them. Sometimes that meant avoiding giving people the information that could have meant they made other decisions. That would have broken the prophecies and the path may have led to disaster instead of success. Sometimes you have no choice but do what you are supposed to do.”

“Will we win this?”

“Barbie, if I said yes, or no, I would be lying. The truth is nobody knows what will happen in the end. There are too many outside factors to say we will win or we will lose. The only thing we can do this time is try our best.”

“And die?”

“If that is the only option then yes.” The dragon looked down. “We aren’t only playing the game now, the risk of losing is not known but what you will lose if we fail is much greater. I know that this isn’t how the game is supposed to be, but we have to play it with what we have available. Winning in here will not win anything outside the game, losing in here might mean total destruction of us all, with no resurrection possible. The gods won’t exist, there will be no afterlife for anyone. No resurrection booth will exist to bring you back. You, the real you, will cease to function and that will be the end of everything. We have found documents relating to the outside heaven, some of it is very confusing or even contradicts between sources. There seems to be no actual evidence of any afterlife or gods there. People believe because that is what they want to do. The emphasis is belief, they have no proof, the gods do not talk to them, or visit.”

Night Stargazer considered, “it seems rather dull.”

“I have never been, so I don’t know. Perhaps that is why you created us and this place to begin with. Here are the gates, hurry, you need to be on board and away as fast as possible.”

---

Droknar’s Forge was a mess of people trying to get the things they wanted to take together and half the time getting in each others way. Needless to say tempers were getting frayed. The original forge was part of what had originally been a fishing community. Surrounded by high hills and stout wooden gates getting into the place would normally be nearly impossible, as the enemy had found to their cost. Huge numbers of dead insects were scattered around outside, not one had managed to get past the defences.

“So what tub are we riding in?” Molly inquired. “I know it hardly matters cause they all roll the same and I end up sick but.”

“You are going in the Swift Passage,” Glint pointed, “there in the harbour.”

Molly the Mad examined the vessel, then commented. “What’s the use of that damn junk? It’s square! I mean, even the Dwarves manage to put a point on one end of sorts!”

“It’s a Drenbe tri-hull,” Embeth supplied, “it goes one corner first through the water. Underneath that square decking  is three hulls, although you can hardly see the ends from here. Mind they can be iffy in storms, if the weather catches them it can flip them right over. Doesn’t happen very often though. Guess they will want us to row all the way across. It will get us there faster and some need a little exercise. Looks like they are mounting one of those strange weapons on it.”

“A multi-barrelled spear catapult,” Glint supplied. “An array of tubes with elastic material in each one, the elastic is stretched, a spear loaded, and then let go. It pushes the spear, really a huge arrow, out of the tube. They have work adequately here so far, the sheer number of missiles makes up for the slight loss of accuracy. About half of the insects’ casualties have been caused through those. Their habbit of trying to assault in tight formation, even when under heavy attack from missiles and spells, inevitably meant they suffered far more than they should.”

“A natural reaction,” Kara noted, “but stupid. They did the same thing when trying to attack the Guild Hall we were defending. It made our jobs a lot easier.”

“These are for you.” Glint passed something to Maria Louise. “Your normal armor and weapons. We managed to get them out of the chest. The people are still working on fixing the faults so those will work again but we don’t have any expectation that it will be fixed soon.”

“The chest?” Barbie asked, “They are all the same?”

“yes, although you wouldn’t understand it.”

“Try me?”

“As you wish.” Glint started. “Underneath Guild Wars is an incredibly big database with the location of each object stored, what it is, the modifications on it. When you alter something the reference to that item is what changes. So if you salvage some planks of wood from a bow it removes the reference to the bow and places a random number of wood planks in place instead of it. When you attack you don’t actually hit anything, a random number generator works with the various values and comes out with a hit or miss and the damage you caused. You are looking rather blank.”

“Yep, you were right,” Barbie admitted. “I don’t understand any of it.”

“That is simply because you have no reference framework to... You can’t remember using it in the past so it’s difficult to visualise. If you had access to your memories you would be saying it was easy. You have to move quickly. Down to the harbour and onto that ship, quick. We will finish off here and abandon the Forge, at least for now. There’s no reason to keep holding it once you have gone.”

Lady Moonsinger looked around, “won’t they notice that everyone has gone?”

“Normally, yes.” Glint admitted. “But half the people here are fakes, targetable dummies. Within the hour there won’t be anyone left here.”

“In that case we had better move too.” Barbie waved them forward, towards the harbour. The ship wasn’t very large, but few were. The outer hulls had no oars but neither did the inner one. It did have a mast, which towered over the diamond shaped deck. Three thin hulls rested on the water, each far too fine to remain upright alone. The deck was of wood, but underneath was a matrix of planks, metal and wires holding everything securely together. Noting that it was barely touching the surface Barbie realised that the construction had to be remarkably light, impossibly light. The hulls were painted blue, the deck a sort of pink, not the white or brown she would have expected of a merchant ship or the grey of a covert naval one.

“I’m the pilot on this ship.” A swarthy seaman explained. “We have to weight you before you take your places, but once that’s over with you just use the position I indicate to get into place. Getting anywhere in this thing is fast but it takes effort. Now line up and stand on this point, one at a time.” 

The process was fairly quick and after a bit of math their locations were given to them. Barbie looked around, there was chains, although they hadn’t been put on her, a pair of tiny platforms attached to a wheel that her feet seemed to rest on. Her skills seemed to have been completely altered too, there was a pedal back, pedal forward, an exit skill and a charge, although she had little idea what that was for. “Let’s try this out, don’t operate your skills unless I tell you. Port side, try pedal forwards.”

The ship started to turn out at the bow, although there was no oars or visible propulsion system. Then again there was plenty of magic, although Barbie didn’t think this was it either. “Again,” the Man ordered, “right, everyone use the pedal forward skill.”

The ship stopped turning and started moving forwards instead, directly towards the harbour entrance. Behind them another group mapped out, and were replaced by dummies. The vessel picked up speed, fairly racing towards the horizon, although they had a long way to go in order to reach the Ring of Fire islands. The harbour entrance passed and they were in open water. The four men on deck raised the sail and unfurled it, giving much more impetus to their speed than the people provided on their own.

For the moment speed equalled distance and distance meant safety. The further away from Droknar’s Forge they were when the attack came the less likely they were of being spotted or attacked. Still, the ship was rather obvious and, if they were not over the horizon, could be spotted at a considerable distance.

They didn’t make the horizon. The sail was furled and lowered, the mast came down too, resting along the deck. Ine of the crewmen shouted, “stop pedaling!”

The ship slowed, although it kept going for quite a time. Barbie, being at the rear of the hull she was in, found she could look back at the fortified town and see herself at the same time, something that had puzzled her for a long time. High above the town was a tiny speck in the sky, little more than a white speck, but it was moving, slowly.

“ Everyone,” the pilot ordered, “use the charge skill, keep it going as much as you can. Necros, if you run out then exit and use Blood is Power on your friends. We need to charge the ship up with magic and keep it charged until that thing goes away.”

Barbie used the skill, it cost energy every time she used it so it wasn’t going to be long before she ran out. That didn’t stop her looking at the white mote, which was growing slowly. It was now a white smudge, although definitely not natural in origin. Her power ran out and she exited, then switched to her 55 set of clothes and weaponry. That allowed her to reduce her health to a point where the Blood is Power skill wouldn’t cause levels of damage to her body that would be difficult to repair quickly. Going Monk secondary allowed her to use Restful Breeze to keep herself alive. She didn’t need to concentrate much on using the skills so she kept an eye on the thing which had become a small white stick. With it getting closer there was obvious areas of difference, the ends were rounded, but not perfectly round. There was also patches of other colours on the surface too. Then a short white light left it and travelled down to the town.

For several seconds she couldn’t see anything, her sight wasn’t working, then it cleared. Half the town was in ruin, buildings and people burning. Another light left the white shape but before it arrived she was knocked off her feet and only managed to stay on board by holding onto a rope. The second explosion took out most of what the first hadn’t, then a single beam of white light probed. What it touched burned instantly into ash, plants, buildings and people. The walls and gates vanished, as did the catapults, trebuchets and other weapons that had to be left behind. When the beam touched the water it boiled instantly.

A third small light travelled down and landed in the harbour. This didn’t blind her but the pilot looked worried. “Back to using pedalling, and go as fast as you can. You are doing it for your lives!”

Barbie could tell by the tone that he was frightened. “What’s the problem?”

“That impact in the harbour, it’s caused a wave, a big one.” The pilot pointed towards the harbour. “That line may look small but it’s huge. Anything that size is going to swamp us but if we get far enough away there’s a chance it might dissipate a bit. The wave is still some distance away so we might have time.”

Barbie retook her position and operated the skill, the ship powered forwards again, although faster than they had achieved previously. Looking back the tiny line was still there and, although it didn’t seem to be getting much bigger she had the worrying thought that it was a lot larger than it looked. Perhaps they might still be able to outrun it? Although she knew waves travelled fast they were going at quite a speed. The wave grew, slowly, then it rushed in. The rear of the boat rose, then the whole vessel, speeding up as it went and matching speed with the slope. The top of the wave was obviously going faster still though, overtaking it’s base. The sea was still fairly shallow here.

Barbie uttered a final witty remark, “Ah, %*£%!” And the water from the top cascaded down into the ship.

---

Barbie lay on the huge beach, glistening azure water in front of her, clear blue sky above. The sand was golden yellow, same as the sun here. Further up the beach palm trees jostled in the breeze.

Her mother was away buying ice cream, her father played a ball game with a few friends over a net. Somewhere something played music, not the rough hewn stuff that you got from the violin, guitar and drums that were the usual combination in bars.

She propped herself up on her elbows, then said aloud, “why am I here?”

“Because you want to be?” The man beside her questioned. “Because it’s better than the alternative?”

“This wasn’t as it originally happened. I grew up in southern Ascalon, where the snow falls. There certainly was no beach there that I can remember.”

“No beach in what you remember the past to be, but that isn’t the real past you experienced. You brain made it up for you. I’m Bill Hodes, and none of this is real.”

“Then what is real?”

“Perhaps this isn’t real, or maybe it is. Is the past you remember real? This is closer to the truth than growing up in southern Ascalon.”

Barbie was confused, again. “So why am I here?”

“Because the alternative is worse? Problem is you have to go back. There is no other option. Do you remember what you were doing?”

“I was fighting,” Barbie grasped a fact. “lots of insects.”

“After that?”

“I was running through snow. We were going somewhere, I remember that.”

Hodes nodded, “where were you going?”

“The Ring of Fire islands. We had to beat a load of insects to the Door of Komalie. We were going to open it.”

“Do you remember why you were going to do that?”

“Because it was the only way to win the war, we have to open it the right way in order to win the war.”

“So why are you wasting time here when you should be there?”

---

Barbie coughed up water, then some more. The ship was at least upright, even though she was still in her position and up to her neck in water. There was a new skill option, bail. Having no idea what this was she proceeded to test it out, then continued as fast as she could, lowering the water level around herself till her section was empty. Finally she used the exit skill, ending up crawling across the deck. The others were there, although three of the crew had been thrown overboard when the wave hit. The pilot had gone below just in time to avoid that fate. The ship seemed to be mostly in one piece, except for the mast which had broken at it’s lowering pivot and vanished overboard.

The strange feeling was the vessel wasn’t moving. Even small waves would make it roll slightly, and make the deck to move. One of the monks gave her some healing and she finally found the strength to stand up. There was a huge shark, the point of the front hull had speared it just under the animal’s fin. It was still trying to swim but it wasn’t effective and had no chance of going very far, neither was the ship. Water still drained back from around them but it was fairly obvious that they had been pushed quite a long way. The three hulled little ship was now on straggly grass, about a kilometre from the beach. The land here, although presently wet, was mostly bare earth with what had been a sparse cover of bushes and trees.

Working out what had happened was fairly easy, the wave had just carried them along till it ran out of power, then dumped everything. Broken trees and pieces of houses along with the occasional body were strewn around the area. Her one concern was their present location. Finally she observed out loud, “this definitely isn’t the Ring of Fire islands.”

“You got that right at least.” The Pilot had exited the cabin, although he looked like he had been in a bar fight of some repute. “We’re nowhere near the Ring of Fire islands, the wave carried us to the east of those and on to Akebar.”

Maria Louise joined the conversation. “So how do we get this ship back to the water?”

“Short answer is we don’t.” The pilot shrugged. “There’s more holes in the central hull than you can count. I need a specialist lifter in to shift it carefully back to the beach where I can get a good look at it and fix the thing. That’s going to take a long time to arrange. Even after the people get here it’s going to take days to sort out the problem. I need to stay here to finish the work, you need to go east to Marley’s Fount. You can get a boat from there to the Ring of Fire Islands.”

“Truth is we all look a right mess now,” Barbie glanced around at the others, most of them had received quite a bit of damage during the near total disaster they had been through. “I’m not sure how far we can manage to go.”

“Normally I would suggest going to Kark’s point, but that was directly north of here.” The pilot pointed. “As you can see they’ve had a bad hair day too.  Marley’s might not be in any better shape, but it’s got a much better sheltered harbour than this area, it’s rocky with a large pier running out. They might have kept a few boats afloat at least. Beyond that will mean a much longer journey so it’s your best hope. The problem is it’s desert all the way. No fresh water until you get to the outpost.

“I’ve never drank water in my life,” Barbie pointed out, “why should I start now? I’ve drank a good bit of alcohol but that’s it. You are aware of what fish do in water, aren’t you?”

“What do fish do in water then?”

“Swim! Now what have my minions got themselves into.”

The pilot pointed at the hatch. “They’re down below in the main hull, trying on the spare clothing for some reason.”

“You scurvy lot!” Barbie banged on the deck. “Get yourselves up here and stop nicking stuff.”

One by one the minions appeared, mostly dressed in a motley assortment of near rags. Corp had managed to find an eye patch, which held on precariously over his left eye and a wooden leg, which might have been more convincing if he hadn’t got the rest of his own leg folded up his own back. Sarge had almost outdone this with a hand hook, a tricorn hat and a stuffed, and very wet, parrot stuck on his shoulder. “Yarr, capt’n. We be a right scurvy lot!”

“You want us to swab the decks?” Corp enquired. “or can we split the main brace?”

“You will split nothing of the sort! Now what are you doing with those clothes?”

“We be just gettin’ into the spirit of things, like.”  Corp pulled out a long tube and placed it to his eye, the one with the patch over it. “I see no chips! Or fish for that matter.”

Barbie counted, “where’s Five?”

“He was put in the front of this side hull here,” Four pointed, you aven’t told him to get out of there yet.”

Barbie facepalmed. “Five, get yourself on this deck now! At least you have your toga on.”

Five seemed to grin hopefully, not that minions didn’t have a permanent grin anyway. “So can I go down and change too?”

“No you can’t!” Barbie crossed her arms. “And the rest of you can get your togas back on. You want any compensation for these, pilot?”

“No, they were left by a group of actors, led by someone called Norgu. They got me to transport them to Kourna but didn’t have the coin for the journey. I took some their equipment as payment.”

“Pity you didn’t take all of it and dumped them overboard half way over.” Molly suggested. “I’ve had to listen to one of his so called performances, dreadful doesn’t express my hate of it.”

“We’ve got a long walk ahead of us west,” Barbie commented, “so we had better get moving.”

“Wot?” Four sounded miffed. You don’t want us to carry this to the sea?”

“Needs the holes repaired.”

“We can do that.” Sarge offered. “Right lads off and pick this old tub up!”

The minions vanished then the ship lifted slightly, then Sarge appeared on deck again. “Are you lot walking or do we carry all of you as well? Oh, and the boat’s on top a M.O.X. or something.”

“Guess we’re walking, as if we didn't know that already.” Barbie confirmed. “Come on, lets get this boat on the move again. If we all help we should get it there much faster.”

---

“Yo-heave-ho! Yo-heave-ho!” The minions chanted continuously. Somehow they had managed to find 4 serviceable wagons amongst the debris and had loaded the boat onto them. The M.O.X was at least working, sort of. and helped pull the resultant mass of vehicle along. “Yo-heave-ho!”

“Shut up! Just shut up all of you!” Barbie barked, pulling her pink hair. “I’ve had enough of the constant chanting, after all, you did volunteer to pull the ship.”

“That’s bad for your hair,” Sarge pointed out knowledgeably while the rest of the minions nodded in agreement. Somehow amongst the clothes left by the touring actors they had found chains and slave rags to wear. “Can cause no end of split ends and kinks.”

Barbie noted that her hair had, in fact, seen much better days. So far she’d picked out quite a bit of wood, small pebbles, seaweed and three small crabs. A green one had been particularly nasty in trying to fight back and stay in place, but was eventually removed. Slowly she stated, “I, can’t, stand, it!”

“Oh,” the minions returned in unison, that’s the problem.” They all produced large, and rather odd, colourful wide brimmed hats. “You can stand it with bandit, it won’t let you down!”

“Arrgh!” The minions, and everyone else, took a pace back. “That’s not what I meant and you know it! This has become a nightmare for everyone, my hair needs drastic treatment to get it back to normal, and what the hell is a bandit?”

“No idea,” Corp shrugged, “it just seemed appropriate for some reason. We can sort out the hair though, got this special stuff.”

A seat appeared and Barbie was carefully but firmly placed in it. “Bottle says ‘hair restorer, fixes all hair problems.’ That should do the trick...”

“Read the instructions first the..” Barbie stopped, it was too late and the entire bottle was empty. “I just hope for you lot that this works.”

Sarge held up a mirror and sure enough, her hair was perfect again. “Looks good to me.”

“Doesn’t look too bad,” Barbie sort of agreed then turned away. “Lets get this thing moving again.”

A few moments later Lady Moonsinger whispered, “umm, when do we tell her?”

“Hopefully not for a long time yet,” Molly responded reading the bottle. “Damn unlucky those minions still can’t read properly. This is hare restorer, not for use on humans. Still, the effects might wear off quickly, if we are lucky.”

“Pick up the ropes and lets get pulling.” The large pink rabbit ordered, hopping to her position at the front. “We need to get to the Ring of Fire islands, and we’ll get there, even if it kills us.”

“I suppose it could be worse.” Embeth agreed, just before the scream. “On second thoughts, I think I spoke too soon. I really hope that isn’t permanent...”

“Says on the bottle that it’s a tonic effect,” Molly pointed out, “so it should wear off, eventually. Somehow I don’t think Barbie is going to be a happy bunny for some time.”

---

Despite her hopping in front everyone was giving Barbie a wide berth and not saying anything. The only two who were anywhere near her were Embeth and the M.O.X. Neither of whom looked in her direction. The Minions were still helping but had been relegated to pushing rather than pulling, so were at the back, keeping unusually quiet.

For her part, being a huge pink bunny wasn’t something you could easily hide, especially not with those fluffy ears sticking up and the odd way of moving. The fact was she couldn’t exactly hide her present situation so she was flaunting it, with a nice slab of attitude. The fact that it was hot didn’t exactly increase her comfort levels and she was pretty sure her bum looked big. Collectively it made the journey very quiet and methodical, at least until they came to the sand.

“How are we going to get this over that?”

“It is not going to be easy.” The M.O.X. responded, despite no answer being required. “The wheels on the wagons will sink in the sand. We can just remove the wheels and axles, then try towing it over the sand?”

“I think we’ll just try moving it as it is first,” Barbie decided, “we might get some distance at least.”

“It will save some time but it’s not going to last long in dry sand.” Molly offered. “Unfortunately we’ve got very few alternative options. I don’t think pulling the ship’s hull over the sand is going to do it much good. With the present damage we might just rip it apart.”

“I don’t fancy carrying it all that way either.” Kara countered. “dragging it on those wagons doesn’t sound too good either. Guess we have to try doing something though. Come on, let’s try it with the wheels at least.”

The boat barely moved more than it’s length onto the soft sand then stopped, axle deep. “We aren’t going to move it any further forward,” Barbie acknowledged temporary defeat, ears drooping. Guess we take the wheels off and go for some other option.”

“The ship isn’t that heavy,” Sarge pointed out, rather timidly. “We should easily be able to carry it at least some of the way. we could also fasten some planks onto the bottom of the hull and pull it along on those. The only real problem is those little odd things on the back of the smaller hulls.”

“They’re called propellers,” the pilot supplied, “they turn when people operate the pedal skill and push the ship through the water. I can easily remove them for the moment.”

“We can use the wood from the wreckage of the buildings, there’s plenty enough of it.” Embeth indicated. “Lots of rope too. A little work and we should all be in the... boat sailing?”

“It’s a ship.” Barbie pointed out.

---

Some distance away a group of swarthy people dressed in flowing white robes hid themselves behind a dune, one of them looking through a telescope of some antiquity. “I tell you they have this horrible apparition with them, it hops along and seems to talk. The thing must be a devil of some kind.”

“Ether you are going mad, Hemdi,” his colleague pointed out, “or, something is wrong with the world. “Give me the look tube. £*$%! I have never seen anything like that. It looks like nothing I have ever seen before.”

“So we dash in, kill them and steal their stuff.” The third bandit examined his wicked dagger blades. “They can’t be that tough, Kelud, after all, that thing is pink!”

“Exactly! Kelud exclaimed, “if you were a pink demon would you be soft and easily spotted by all the other harder demons? This one has to be tougher than steel. Humbus, we should sneak away and not bother with these.”

“Our people outnumber them, and we have the advantage of surprise.” Humbus considered. “With everyone there should be no problem taking them out and they are stuck. They will not be moving very far for some time, unless they abandon their ship, which we can then ransack for items. Come, we will get the rest of our people and... did you hear anything?”

“Anything like?”

“Like the wind," Humbus' voice peaked and his eyes widened, "or a dragon!”

Kelud made a rather poor choice of last word. "No?"

---

“Hold it, everyone.” Molly the Mad held up her hand. “Did anyone hear something like screaming?”

“Haven’t heard anything but Barbie’s minions wailing their bad luck.” Embeth admitted. “Strange, I don’t remember than head being there. Must be someone’s.”

“Looks fresh to me,” Kara admitted, “the blood is still wet. Don’t think it’s anyone’s now though. There’s an arm there too, I heard it land. Someone’s throwing body bits at us.”

“Hope it’s not the owner then,” Barbie considered, “would be very bad manners throwing your bits at other people. Think they came from over that way, inland.”

“Barbie, I don’t suppose we could ho.” Maria stopped mid sentence as if remembering something, which she had. “Walk over and check, just in case.”

“No need to look guilty, Maria, I can take it.” Barbie was remarkably calm. “But if anyone does it without it clearly being an accident I’m not going to be happy. It only needs one of us, I’ll go. Everyone else continue with the work.”

Barbie was very aware that her present condition stuck out even more prominently than the proverbial sore thumb, but there were standards to maintain. Her movement options seemed to include walking, which wasn’t easy with those damn big feet and running on all fours, which would shove her behind up in the air. No matter what she wasn’t about to do anything as unsavoury as that. Which left her with an odd hopping using both legs at the same time. It worked, it was better than walking, but it certainly wasn’t perfect. Things had got worse, but she was well aware that they could, given the right provocation, still get even nastier. That was no reason not to complain about it and she grumbled to herself as she walked.

The area the limb and head had come from was splattered with blood and small bits of body. The items that had dropped on them were obviously from two different bodies as the head was definitely more tanned than the arm, it was also from an older person.  The only large items were a pair of shoes, which were beside each other, then they vanished. Satisfied, she started walking back then realised her hands were no longer furry, nor were her feet size fifty six long. The effect of the tonic had finally worn off. She checked, the appearance was back to normal and her vibrant pink hair was as it should be, perhaps even glistening a little more than normal?

That gave her a little idea, she ran back to the group. “Looks like a dragon got them.”

“A dragon?” Kara sounded impressed.

“Yes, an Asiatic dragon.” Barbie confirmed. “I know you have been keeping an eye on me using Rocky so you can check it. Not that much left so it’s unlikely to be a normal saltspray dragon, might have been Kuunnie though. I think we are being looked after.”

“I’m not going to complain about that then.” Molly sounded relatively pleased, although it still came out almost as a growl. “Looks like the tonic is an everlasting one, the bottle has refilled itself.”

Barbie picked it up. “I think I’ll keep that for the moment, it’s given me an idea for later. Pilot, earlier you were talking about getting people in to move the boat, is that with lightening air?”

“Yes, they can fasten a big bag of silk to the ship and then fill it with special air.” The pilot nodded in agreement. “The bag can also be filled with hot air too, either will work, although the latter is more dangerous. The ship could possibly catch fire.”

“Good.” Barbie examined her minions, finally settling her view on Sarge. “I want you to find every bit of silk you can on the ship, then sew it together. While you are doing that you can fix the hull too. Think of it as penance for using that tonic on me.”

---

“So,” Tyrant Maximus considered, “how exactly did you manage to kill Karrak?”

“I didn’t.” Bogus responded truthfully. “As I said, it was Glint, she tore him to pieces and if the head hadn’t been travelling in the direction I was running in I would never have have caught it. It bounced in front of me and I grabbed it as I was passing.”

“And Glint just let you go?”

Bogus knew the questions were loaded, and he wasn’t going to respond any other way than his being innocent. Something had obviously gone wrong for the Tyrant, which was why he was hurrying the whole army towards Marhan’s Grotto. That was about the only place they could board some ships. Which ships didn’t matter too much to the Tyrant. With a little persuasion, or even elimination of the crew, it would go in the right direction. Or at least that’s what the Tyrants and insects thought, Bogus was well aware that ships needed some specific skills to keep them working properly, although he had no idea what those skills were, at least not that he remembered.

The minor issue of the area being perpetually iced in hadn’t even come into the discussions. Of course he hadn’t been present at all the talks that the Tyrant had on planning, although he was at more than he should have been.

“Yes.” He replied, having decided to go for the blatant lie, and knowing that Maximus couldn’t prove anything. “I don’t know why the thing didn’t fly after me and tear me to shreds but it didn’t. If we are going to beat those humans we had better hurry up. They may already be at the Ring of Fire islands if we got it wrong.”

“I had some flying scouts pass over there, they aren’t visible. They might be hidden but I doubt that so it’s most likely they have not arrived yet. So they are either dead, which I doubt, or they are hidden somewhere?”

“Or they are on their way elsewhere? Have you considered that option?”

“I don’t think they will be going anywhere else,” Maximus laughed, “at least not unless they want to lose the war. We’re going to find the Door of Komalie, open it and agree a treaty with the Titans, then we’ll have the power we need to destroy all our enemies.”

Bogus finally realised that the Tyrant was basing everything on something he had no idea of. The Titans might respond to being forced to do something, but that required enough power to be available to the one doing the forcing. Possessing the Sceptre of Orr would give someone the power to force the Titans to do something. Although they would comply it would be against their will. Fortunately the Titans could not be regarded in any way as intelligent beings, their average mental capability barely rated above insects. The Stone Summit dwarves were far more intelligent and they hadn’t managed to persuade those to accept any agreement.

Finally out of curiosity Bogus asked. “You do know if this place is surrounded by ice or not?”

“Ice? Never thought of that. With all this snow about it’s a possibility. I’ll get some of your flying types to have another look, they’re close enough. Hardly matters, the ships we’ve been promised can go on land as well as water.”

Bogus decided that it was probably prudent to inform Grenth about the issue too. Not that he could do it easily stuck next to the Tyrant.

---

Barbie looked over the side of the boat and down, down, down. It was a long way to the ground and now she was wondering if her idea of a high flying boat was a good one after all. The deck moved gently, swaying in the gusty air. Then the coastline passed underneath. It had been a minor issue getting the correct altitude for the wind to go the right way, or at least it was going nearly the right way, which was close enough. They had found a suitable target and fastened it inside the balloon, then inflated it with wind spells. Night Stargazer, and anyone else who might find time to help, had then heated the air by simply setting the target on fire. That warmed up the air and the whole thing rose, initially rather less than gracefully, into the sky. Barbie wasn’t sure but something kept insisting that she shouldn’t be this high off the ground. Most of the others seemed to agree, they were either in their positions or below decks. The only exceptions being Night Stargzaer and Lady Moonsinger.

Even her remaining minions were staying far too quiet, although being in the cabin they were probably cooking up some trouble. How much they could get into depended mainly on what the Pilot was prepared to put up with in there. He hadn’t come out since the take off, and didn’t seem too responsive. A few of the people looked rather sick, which was strange as nobody had cast or been on the receiving end of any negative condition spells recently. The main issue as far as she was concerned was the map didn’t show much. It had gone wrong on take off and refused to show anything beyond a plain grey background. Her radar showed local items, but that was limited to the ship itself. Night had taken the precaution of tying herself to the remains of the mast, little more than a stump That was something Barbie had also done, but on a long tether so she could walk about anywhere on deck.

Which brought her attention to some far off specks that seemed to be flying a little below their altitude. Unfortunately the carefully fitted multiple catapult thing had been washed overboard when the wave hit, leaving very little beyond it’s mounting plinth. Even if it had remained on board the two sailors who had been trained to use it were lost overboard too. That meant defence was down to ranger bows, the Minions’ spears and whatever else they could fire off. That wouldn’t be very useful if that ship turned up and transformed them all into crispy burnt black bits and ash. Having decided that action was needed she then set it in motion. “Kara!” Her voice fairly roared for once, “get yourself on deck, I need Rocky to have a look at something.”

“What do you want?” Kara didn’t sound too good.

“Those specks out there,” Barbie pointed, “we need to know if they are just birds or those damn flying insects spying on us.”

Kara nodded in agreement. “ It should be easy enough for Rocky here to fly over and have a look. Off you go boy.”

“I’ve got this thing about heights.” Rocky looked at her and retched. “I can’t stand them. Am absolutely terrified at the prospect of leaving a firm grounding. What you doing, Kara?”

Kara picked up the bird and dropped it over the edge. “I guess you’ve just got to learn to love heights then.”

The bird fell a short distance then swooped and flapped back up, circling at a short distance. “But what if they are nasties and try and kill me?”

“You can map out and tell Grenth, or Melandru on them. I’ll watch through your eyes so we’ll know what’s out there. You’re faster than any of those insect things so they won’t be able to catch you.”

“I wish I was so sure of my capabilities,” the raven huffed as it started to fly away. “Then again, it’s my butt on the line, not yours.”

Rocky knew what he was doing and initially gained height rapidly, he could trade that later for speed, if he needed to, or reduce the enemies damage and range. He kept an angled course, not directly towards the percieved enemy but on an angle to miss them. That might get him closer before they noticed and pulled back, Rocky wasn’t that big so he wouldn’t be easily seen. The dots were not that far away though, and he circled around towards them to get a closer look, dropping altitude as he did so. The final piece was a sprint away from close proximity with the task he had been given and then circle back to the ship.

“So what did you see?” Barbie asked impatiently. “He’s not been away that long so they can’t be that far away from us.”

“It’s a sort of flock of birds, buzzards, eagles, ravens and some others.” Kara shrugged. “Unfortunately that’s what makes this strange, they shouldn’t be together. Some of those birds would eat others.”

“You think they are being controlled?”

“It’s possible, we’ve never seen insects or any of the other enemies we’ve been up against using tamed animals but that doesn’t mean they can’t. They are also coming closer and gaining altitude, going higher, but not very quickly, mostly they are circling. They might be waiting for something.”

Night stopped casting spells for a moment. “Like what?”

“I don’t know. If someone is controlling them they might want to get as good a look at us as possible. Looks like we are going to find out though, they are coming directly for us. Everyone on deck, prepare to defend the ship.”

The birds of prey came straight for them, and paid the price. Most flared and fell from the sky as little burning meteors or were struck with arrows or pilums. The couple that reached fighting distance didn’t stand any chance. “We won that one.” Barbie stated with some confidence. “Now what’s next?”

“We didn’t though,” Kara contradicted her, “what about the ravens? where did they go?”

“They’re up here pecking the balloon,” Rocky complained, “send up that good for nothing pansy bird and try getting some spells on them.”

Rocky had stayed away from the balloon, and had noticed the ravens separating from the main flock. He had gained height and pounded one out of the air, which left three more who were doing their best to damage the cloth. Azira flew up and took one raven on the way, grabbing it with both feet, the bird waited until it was a safe distance from the balloon, then it flared brilliantly. The raven died instantly. Another was struck by a lightning spell and simply exploded into a cloud of black feathers. The last one fought intermittently with rocky until it was hit by a stoning spell, knocked down it bounced off the balloon and vanished in a flare of flames.”

Barbie asked. “How does the damage look?”

“Well, the good news is we’re still up here.” Kara confirmed. “The bad news is, not for much longer, there’s a big rip and I don’t think we are going to repair it easily. If we can keep the air in the balloon hot enough the landing shouldn’t be too heavy though.”

---

Bogus wasn’t exactly sure of where they were going, it wasn’t the outpost itself. They had cut west of that down onto a frozen river. So far he hadn’t managed to get away, which was bothering him no end. It wasn’t the insects, or risk that was causing him problems. The Tyrant might have been big and ate insect larvae with incredible regularity and had bad breath but that didn’t trouble him either. The issue was Tyrant Maximus was a poet of dire ability and, once he got you to listen to one of his pieces, he expected you to critique it favourably.

Bogus was getting sick of listening and then lying. The poems were usually incredibly long, boring, didn’t rhyme and were put together with all the skill of a dead and festering mole. They were supposed to be dirges but he would have classed them more as just dire. More than half seemed to be about the Tyrant’s mother, who, in Bogus’ opinion, should have been killed or had an operation of some kind to prevent this sort of thing from ever being inflicted on someone. He was fairly sure that being forced to listen to the windbag could be considered unusual and sadistic torture.

He hoped Marie didn’t get any copies of the Centaur’s works. That would be just too much.

The situation wasn’t good, far too many eyes keeping him under scrutiny for easy escape and he was right in the middle of the army, so no chance to just run either.

The ice underfoot was thick and seemed very solid, so no escape there either. That wasn’t the thing bothering him at the moment though, well in front of them was a huge squat building, perched on the ice. It looked oblong, about tall enough for a Centaur sized deck at the bottom and a good four metres for another on top of that. As they got closer he could see that the corners were rounded, a bit like a very thick playing card. On the top of this was a forest of things that were not trees but could be compared to them.

The centre of what looked like the shorter side had a ramp running down onto the ice and the insects were starting to board. A second construction pulled up beside the first and stopped, obviously these things could move themselves. A constant roaring noise hit his ears from the second contraption.

They couldn’t be described as pretty but they obviously worked, and could carry a lot of people, or foes.

Something nudged him upwards, just a couple of inches. He wasn’t even sure if it wasn’t just him but it happened again. Then it happened a third time and the ice he was standing on disintergrated into small pieces. That wasn’t enough to hold up a heavy insect body and he fell straight through into the mouth of a huge fish.

Tyrant Maximus moved his body as close to the edge of the broken ice as he dared. Finally he asked what happened.

“The ranger scout,” some insect replied. “A big fish just ate him.”

 “You’re sure it was a big fish and it ate him?”

“It was big, it looked like a fish, and he went down it’s throat. I think that qualifies as ate him.”

“Good.” The Tyrant raised his hammer and splattered the insect carefully, mostly to avoid breaking the ice more. “I would have hated not to find out before I did that. And if anyone else tries to make me the rear of a joke they’ll get the same treatment. Everyone on board the hovercrafts, next stop, Ring of Fire islands.”

---

By simply BiPing the Elementalist, and anyone else who could create heat as fast as she could reasonably do Barbie had managed to sufficiently slow the decent of the ship so it arrived on the water without breaking up. Considering it had turned over several times during their fleeing Droknar’s Forge and skidded in on it’s bottom it was still in remarkably good shape and the landing speed wasn’t too much of an issue.

What was an issue was there was only the two propellers, or at least that was what the pilot called them, to push them along. That wasn’t going to get them anywhere fast, which was where Corp had come in with his new mast idea. Barbie still wasn’t entirely sure how two bits of thread, well, they were too thin to be called string, and really made out of metal. Corp called them wires but she wasn’t exactly sure of the word. What it was didn’t matter, how it held up a forty foot sail, did. Corp had explained that underneath the apparent solidness of the world everything was just effectively lines and points stored in a matrix. If you told the computer a collection of lines could bend in this way then you got soft flowing cloth, change the details a bit and you got a solid crystal shield. What Corp had told the computer, with help from Grenth, was that the line of the wire was incredibly stiff and couldn’t bend, under any circumstances. That had seemingly sorted out the issue and with a few other items, like ropes and bits of wood with wheels in, the sail had gone up. That didn’t really help explain what she was seeing. Knowing something can work didn’t absolve it from being preposterous, or downright stupid.

She would have compared it to there being a huge pink rabbit that gave out presents but for some reason decided against. The gods were fickle at the best of times and if you gave them an idea like that you generally ended up doing the thing forever. Barbie didn’t fancy being pink and furry all over again, her normal hair and armor did nicely, thank you very much. For some reason spending all eternity giving out presents and trying to be nice to people didn’t appeal to her, especially not when she should be on the receiving end. When she went over there was a place by Grenth’s side, and she was going to kick butt with size 6 shoes on or else.

The second surprise was that the Minions had taken over the pedalling stations while everyone else crowded on the windy side of the ship to attempt to keep it level in a near incredible wind. To say the ship moved would have been an understatement of fact. The bows were completely out of the water with a wake extending as far back as she could see. Rocky could hardly keep up with it flying as fast as he could. Her assumption that this was the fastest ship ever was slightly holed by the monstrosity now coming in behind them, and slowly gaining. Luckily they were not that far from land. The dark, foreboding shape of the Ring of Fire islands was fairly close and getting closer at a speed she considered a bit too much for her preferences.

“Anyone else want their past to go before their eyes?” She asked loudly. “I’ve no idea why I should as I can’t remember much of it, especially not any childhood memories.”

Night’s fingers were as white as anyone’s, holding onto the ropes that had been fastened across the deck. “You can’t remember being a child?”

“I don’t think I ever was one, I certainly don’t have any memories of Ascalon, or Kryta, or anywhere else when I was young. I mean I know everyone else does but mine just don’t exist.”

“Did you bang your head or something?” Embeth asked, “not that I’m trying to insinuate anything.”

“Not even against yours.” Barbie’s frosty reply could have frozen the sea, but thankfully for the story, it didn’t. “At least not that I remember hitting my head against anything so solid.”

Embeth stuck his tongue out, “no need to be nasty, I wuz just askin’. Umm, we’re almost at the shore, do you think you could get your minions to slow down their pedaling a bit? Preferably they should go in full reverse.”

“I’m not sure that would be a good idea.” Barbie considered. “The differing directions between the outer hulls and that sail might just pull this ship to pieces and we would all sink. I’m sure they know what they are doing.”

“Well I think the pilot does too,” Molly pointed out, “he’s been praying to every god he can think of, including Abaddon, for the last ten minutes. You would think he’d run out some time but he keeps remembering new ones.”

“He’s now moved onto the Great Dwarf,” Urmila shrugged, “no idea how useful that’s going to be. Might turn us all into solid stone and we’ll sink.”

“That could be a benefit.” Runa considered. “Stone doesn’t need to breathe air so we could walk ashore across the bottom of the sea.”

“I don’t want to interrupt a very interesting conversation, but.” Maria Louise pried one of her hands free and pointed forwards.” We’re heading directly for that small rock. Any idea if they intend to stop there instead of closer to shore?”

Barbie went white. “Somehow I don’t think we are going to stop there!”

The small ship hit the rock head on and, already pointing upwards, it was a simple transfer of direction back into the air. Even Embeth managed to scream impressively as the hull crossed the shoreline and bounced on the rock. Barbie noted they were heading straight for Dakk, the Skills Trainer. The dwarf looked like he’d rather be anywhere else at that moment, which didn’t take long as the ship bounced again and then the bows hit a relatively immovable object in the form of a cliff face.

---

Love led Thorazine on through the never ceasing levels of what could have been described as purgatory. It didn’t quite equate to a place of physical torture but mentally it was highly demanding. Everything, will, mind, energy and memories were sucked away and had to be held on to as hard as possible. Just remembering who they were was hard enough and both chanted their real names constantly while trying to remember things to tell each other.

Gradually the area darkened, it wasn’t so much a change as a feeling. Rand was starting to feel as if they were going around in circles, although in this place you could pass your own previous footsteps in almost any direction. Several times he had been sure he saw himself waking another way, although Serious had prevented him following the idea of going and meeting the other character who looked just like him. The mist closed in, tightening itself around their location. Then she stopped.

“This is it, it’s where you are going to kill me.”

Thorazine considered the statement, his brain trying to work through a sea of mush. “I don’t want to.”

“You have no option, neither do I. There are things each of us have to do and this is one of them. Try taking out the axe.”

Thorazine selected the axe, it came as easy as it had ever done, although he wasn’t sure how it fitted in his pack. The blade was sharp, strong and heavy, the Drascir steel pattern just as he remembered it. Placing the blade on the ground he leaned on the handle and did nothing.

“Not enough motivation yet I suppose. Well.” Love knelt down. “I suppose you had to find this out eventually.”

“What, eventually?”

“That I tricked Barbie, and the others. They aren’t going to open the Door of Komalie a different way, it always opens the same way. The staff they are being given is a fake so they won’t be able to control any of the Titans. They will be crushed unless someone warns them, but you won’t be there and you’re the only person who knows.”

The cogs in Thorazine’s brain churned. “Why do this?”

“Because it’s the only way. The present enemy want an allegiance with the Titans, they will find that the Titans won’t ally with anyone who doesn’t control enough power, which means the Sceptre of Orr. No sceptre means no control and the Titans will act like the mindless beasts they are and kill everything on the islands. Insects, Tyrants, their allies, and Barbie and the heroes with her will all die. That’s the way I’ve planned it.”

“You can’t mean that. How can I stop this?”

“Maybe you can, although the only way to start is be a man and kill me.” Love’s voice was cold, matter of fact, and calculated. “That’s the only way you will be able to escape from here, or perhaps you’re just a lousy, stinking coward. Come on. I’m not really a woman, it just looks like it to you. Think of where you want to be, how you want to save them, just do it! Think of Molly, she’s there too! They are all going to die because of you.”

Thorazine wasn’t ever really sure about what happened next, it was his axe that did the deed, and his hands holding it’s shaft, but it still didn’t seem like he was in control at all. Mad, almost blind with anger. His universe rent in a blaze of bright blinding colors, shards of what looked like coloured glass. Then everything went black.

---

Barbie managed to finally prise her fingers from the rope. The ship had seen better days, the deck was sticking up in the air at the front end. The thin mast had fallen over but simply because the wire had completely sheared off the remains of the old mast’s stump. That rested against the huge rock and prevented her seeing the front of the ship. “Everyone out and over the side,” she ordered, “we need to get moving before those insects get ashore.”

Once on the solid rock the real extent of the damage was obvious, the main hull had scraped it’s bottom off and had hit Dakk dead on, the only thing visible was the dwarf’s feet sticking out of the bottom. The front end was mashed against the rock and had crushed itself, planks splaying out in all directions like some strange flower of destruction. one of the secondary hulls had also broken free and was some distance away, although the Minions seemed well enough having exited already. The pilot was white with shock and looked about twenty years older but was otherwise fine, at least in her opinion.

“Anyone think Dakk’s dead?” Embeth asked almost hopefully. “After that he should be.”

“Nah, I can still trade with him,” Molly responded. “Some of these NPCs are incredibly hardy, virtually indestructible. I once used one as a battering ram to get through a door.”

Kara’s eyes widened, “really?”

“No, couldn’t pick him up, he was solidly fastened to the ground!” Molly shrugged. “Makes a good story though. Pity we left the M.O.X. behind, might have been useful.”

“It was too heavy according to the pilot.” Barbie examined the damage on the other side hull. “We might run into one again sometime, I told him to wait in the village so hopefully we can arrange for it to be picked up. Well, that’s not going anywhere without a complete rebuild.”

“It took you that long to decide that?” Runa asked. “I could of told you in three seconds.”

“True, I was just making absolutely sure. Everyone on their feet? let’s move out the.. What the heck?”

The little black puff of smoke dissipated leaving an Asuran with a cloak of invisibility. “Damn that thing, still works as badly as ever. There you are. Seems I’m supposed to help you get past all the Mursaat and White Mantle people.”

Barbie noted the Asuran carried itself with all the pose, superiority and total arrogance that all the other members of it’s race were seemingly subject to. “So you’re supposed to help us get past those lot?”

“That’s me!” The Asuran clicked it’s fingers. “Although I didn’t really want to. Glint threatened to fire me if I didn’t.”

Lady Moonsinger was surprised. “Glint employs Asurans?”

“Not quite, she can’t stand us.” The Asuran thought. “Perhaps I should have just admitted everything and said ‘set me on fire’. That would have been more accurate I suppose. I’m still not happy about it but I don’t have much choice, do I?”

“The cloak?”

“Dragons can see in infra red as well as normal light. Wait a few seconds and my heat will go right through that and Glint would be on to me. You can’t hide your heat easily from a dragon, I would have to dig a deep hole, like Oola’s, and hide in it, forever. Come on, we need to get moving if you’re all going to escape. You do want to escape don’t you?”

Barbie ground her teeth, “Well that is on our ‘to do’ list. We were just about to start doing it when you appeared.”

“OK, across the bridge and we’re off. Umm, have you seen Bogus Dude anywhere? He’s supposed to be getting something for me.”

“We saw him a while back.” Maria Louise answered. “What sort of something?”

“Oh, just a little material for a project I’ve been working on. You know us Asurans, always working on projects or planning things.”

The group passed over the bridge and through the gate. Barbie had grabbed the Pilot at the last moment to keep him from being captured. Now he was sandwiched between Molly and Embeth to prevent him going back.

“Here it is.” The Asuran pointed to the cliff. “Secret passage way, only known to us. Please keep it a secret, no Pick Up Group parties, please.” The Asuran twiddled with a device and the rock shuddered, then a section lifted out the way revealing a way through into a wide passage. “There you go. Although as with other Asuran things this is far too complex for your little primitive bookah  brains to comprehend.”

“I’ve been wondering something about your people.” Barbie responded with unusual pleasantness. “Do you mind indulging me in an experiment?”

“No, umm what sort of experiment?”

“Well it goes sort of like this,” Barbie leaned slightly forwards and placed her hands on the Asuran, who looked up at her face. He certainly didn’t see her foot move swiftly between his short legs. Puzzlement dissolved into the awe of understanding as the Asuran crumpled into a fetal position, moaning loudly. “Yup, seems to work a treat. Don’t forget to shut the door - shortie.”

“$%@&!” Molly quipped, beaming. “I wish I’d thought of doing that. Can we get him back up so I can try it too, just to make sure it works, of course.”

“I would say so but we don’t have the time, and he’s not really worth it.” Barbie assured her. “Come on everyone.”

They walked through the door, which quietly shut behind them.

Twenty minutes later and very slowly the Silver Inferno got to his feet. He’d paid a lot for the various everlasting tonics he’d acquired over the years, and the device that changed his name to anything he wanted to be called. His combined criminal intellect and tactics had kept him out of the hands of the authorities well enough,  so he was really puzzled how Glint had known it was really him. She had told him that Bogus had gotten the thing he had asked for, which was some slight benefit. Unfortunately he hadn’t managed to get any information from those who she said knew, at least not yet. Perhaps that would change given time? Sooner or later the snack of the gods would be his.

---

Marie looked around herself, the cavern she was in was huge, built long ago in an allegiance between the dwarves and the Asura leader Pluk. Both sides had to have been desperate in order to be able to work together in order to complete it. 
The dwarves had supplied mining and refining skills, both in order to construct the huge cavern and provide materials in order to create what was inside it. The Asura had provided technical and design skills to produce the actual mechanism. 

The whole floor and some way beyond was a huge bloodstone, on which everything else had been constructed. Huge tubes stretched up into the distance above, occasionally braced against the walls at several levels she could see high above. The tubes were slowly flickering, coming to life. In a few hours the whole of the tubes would be full of magical energy and ready for use.

Effectively it amounted to a massive magical tuning fork, combined with a power storage battery. The end was little more than a few bits strung together and terminated to a ring just big enough for one person to step through.

The readings were going up faster than they should but that wasn’t what she was bothered about. Her issue was simply that something was causing unknown resonations. That shouldn’t happen here, the machine should drink magic in the chamber faster than it could accumulate. The reason the chamber was built at this point was the joining of three major ley lines, which would channel energy into the stone and storage device. That supplied far more energy than a host of elementalists, it had been used to create the dwarven armor seen elsewhere.

Another small flicker of spontaneous magic appeared, the fifth in three minutes, and they were getting more frequent. A larger one flashed thirty four seconds later, Lightning arced between the magical tuning fork’s prongs.

The next light was more the size of a large wolf, the lightning from the fork stabbed down joining it. Then it was gone, leaving the smell of ozone and a lone warrior.

“Rand,” Marie at least managed not to sound puzzled, “what are you back here? I thought you gone, caput.” Rand Al Thorazine screamed. “I have not tortured you yet either, or offered. Puzzling.”

Thorazine fell to the ground and started swearing, both loudly and profusely while pounding the bloodstone with his fist. That covered up the sound of small pattering feet attached to a Jack Russell terrier. The dog walked up and sniffed.

“I’ve no idea,” Marie responded. “You can’t taste either, I need find out what wrong. Not even little bite. I thought you bigger? Ah, like Bogus I suppose. Ranger, changed to Mesmer, then others. I see Rand has stopped swearing.”

“You’re talking to a dog?”

“Oui, and it answers.” Marie nodded. “It not mine. Don’t know how it got in. It says it’s Barbie’s. What went wrong?”

“Serious Love has betrayed us.” Rand gave a final ineffective hit on the stone and stood up. “She wanted me to kill her, but I wouldn’t. She then told me her real plan. We thought we would be opening the Door of Komalie and going through. What she really intends is to release the Titans and kill everyone. She said there was a single chance I might be able to stop them, if I killed her then I’d be thrown out and back to those I was thinking about. Instead I arrived here.”

“Oh, she lied to you.”

“Yes, she’s disgusting.”

“If her plan was to kill all, why tell you how to stop? Just let it happen. I think that not her plan at all. Plan maybe, let Titans out and they fight insects and other foes for us? You go in and save Barbie and everyone?”

“How can I do that?” Thorazine ranted. “I’m not with them, and why am I here?”

“This is the heaviest magic area in the world. Plenty of things just arrive here. This machine makes use of magic, collects it. It acts like a, how you say? Singularity? Place with much gravity, pull is stronger than elsewhere. So you end up here. I won’t ask if you kill her, that is only reason you could be here. She lied so you would do this thing, so perhaps not such a nasty lie. Traitor? I think not.”

“I’m still not going to be able to get to the Door in time to save them. It’s useless. All the portals are down, and we can’t map there.”

“Perhaps, but perhaps not all portals down.” Marie shrugged. “This machine, made by the Dwarves and Asura long before the Great destroyer, it was to start a huge transport system. Asuran and dwarf needed to get there before the ring could be set up, so they made this. It’s a gate with only end here. Set right and go anywhere, even underground seal cave.”

“You mean this can get me to the Door of Komalie in time?”

“Hmm, perhaps. First need build up power. You use lot of power coming here. Now wait and see. Maybe yes, maybe no. You play boules?”

“No,” Rand sounded interested at least, “I don’t even know what that is.”

“It is game. A great general once play before huge naval battle. Great victory ensued. Perhaps for you too? Come, I teach.”

---

There wasn’t much light at the end of the tunnel, but there was a lot of burning getting there. The surface had hot lava beds, down below was worse. The whole party had issues keeping each other alive. Then there were sections of dark tunnel, filled with nightmares. The air was hot and stuffed full of sulfur to the point of being poisonous, all of them spent time suffering the choking gas. When the finally reached the exit they pulled the lever and dashed out, not noticing, or caring, that the door closed itself behind them.

“If I ever get my hands on that Asuran,” Molly gasped, “I’m going to do that skill till he’s dead.”

“What I want to know is, why does he think Bogus has the Snack of the Gods?” Barbie shrugged. “I know Painted has a Snack of the Dwarves for Silver Inferno. Which come to think of it where did he go?”

Last I saw of him was before we went into Droknar’s Forge.”  Night Stargazer admitted. “I’m sure he wasn’t on board the ship. Hopefully he’s alright, Bogus too.”

A loud phoot sound reverberated around them followed by an “arrrrgggggggggH!” A body bounced several times across the hard lava ending up by a large embedded rock “Painted?” Barbie examined him, “what happened to you?”

“$%&* big fish is what happened!” Painted spat several times. “I was doing fine and then I had to walk over this small, frozen, river. Great big fish grabbed me and swallowed me. I don’t think I will ever fancy one of those fish meals again, even though I can’t remember actually tasting one.”

“Well at least you are in one piece, anything else you can tell us?”

“Yeah, look out for Bogus.”

“Bogus?” Another phoot sounded, possibly even slightly louder than the first. “Duck!” Bogus bounced on his back then rolled, skittling through everyone then rolling up a boulder before coming back. Luckily everyone managed to get out the way before they were impacted a second time. Barbie examined the insect, it was Bogus, couldn’t have been anyone else. “You OK?”

“I think so,” Painted examined himself. “No bones broken, minimum health lost, I seem fine.”

“Not you.” Barbie crossed her arms. “You abandoned us and went off on your own again. Don’t you understand that the end of the world is at stake here?”

“Of course I do.” Bogus spoke sincerely at least. “Then again it’s always at stake. Prophecies, Factions, Nightfall. The end is nigh issue comes up several times a week, at least for some.”

Barbie glared then turned away. “Bogus, are you OK?”

“I hate this body!” Bogus complained bitterly. “I can’t stand being in it. ”

“You are just being a bit temperamental I’m sure everything will be fine.”

“No, I’m finished. Anything would be better than this.”

“Anything, you sure?”

“Yes, I’m, sure.” Bogus wailed. “Nothing has gone entirely right for me since I arrived at the guild hall. I’d rather be dead or something.”

Barbie pulled out the small bottle and smiled. “In that case...”

---

Tyrant Maximus wasn’t too happy, then again, he never was. His ethos was simply that if you got in a state where you were too happy something would go wrong to solve the issue, often with dire consequences.

Fortunately he wasn’t entirely unhappy either. The people he was chasing were still ahead of him, but not by too much as he had seen their arrival. Getting the army ashore had taken longer than he would have liked but it was now moving and cutting through both the White Mantle and Mursaat. There were some casualties but that was inconsequential to the plan, some of the insects always died.

The fact that Karrak was dead and the Ranger had been eaten by a fish of some kind meant that he couldn’t be blamed for anything that had went wrong during the siege. He could simply blame any negative happenings on one or both of the others while taking credit for what went right.

On the negative side the replacement for Karrak was called Likkow, another insect who tended to get distracted when the tyrant ate. Maximus belched in order to break the hypnotic like trance of the insect. “So any signs of where the humans went?”

“None at all as yet, they went through the gate but after that they seem to have just vanished. We killed everything in Perdition Rock, although it now seems we could have just done a small area. The Ring of Fire zone is also firmly in our hands and we are mostly through Abaddon’s Mouth.” Likkow paused. “Report coming in, it seems the White Mantle stronghold in Abaddon’s Mouth has been breached by some form of assault, which may also mean we are back on the humans’ tails again.”

“So we are catching up, maybe.” Maximus grumbled. “Anything else?”

“We captured  a prisoner, calls himself Pilot. Seems he was with the other humans on board the ship and heard them talking about some things. The Door of Komalie needs a key of some kind, called the Sceptre of Orr? Apparently he was not entirely sane and we cannot be sure of the information he has given us. Hopefully we can get more from him but I cannot guarantee that it will be worth anything. The key pacifies the ones called the Titans so we can discuss terms of their service.”

“That sounds interesting.” Maximus nodded. “With the key and the Titans under our banner we cannot fail to take over this land and spread beyond. We will control everything. Send word, we need the flying squadrons ready, just in case.”

“Anything else, Tyrant?”

“Not for the moment. Just keep the army moving, that should now be easier for us than them, as we are following in their wake. 

---

“The power level is building up,” Marie said, examining the device, “and not long we will make portal. How are you doing?”

“I can’t communicate with any of them, the whisper does not seem to be working.” Thorazine sat and waited impatiently, although there was little else he could do. “Have you tried to talk to them?”

“Oui, I have, but no contact. It says they off line. They still in my friends as there. I cannot explain this.”

“Might be a system issue,” Rand suggested, “we will only find out when we get there.”

“Don’t be too hopeful, they might not there when we are.”

“I know, we might get there first, or end up looking through the pieces. That is one risk I’d rather not take.”

“The machine will gain power as it will. It cannot go faster. We just have to wait on that. For the moment here is a new shield I found, and an axe. Hopeful you will not break as quick.”

“I can’t guarantee that but I’ll try my best, for some reason weapons break on me occasionally.”

Marie shrugged. “Perhaps you hit too hard?” 

“I’ve been known to do that. Don’t get too many complaints about it but than again what I hit doesn’t stay alive too long. The tubes have brightened again.”

“True, another small step closer. Perhaps we will know in a very soon moment? The door isn’t big enough for my horse, and someone has to stay here to make sure this works still.”

“I understand.”

“Don’t stay long there. Working at this range, it takes a lot of magic. If portal door closes you have long wait for it be there again.”

---

To barbie the huge dome sealing the Door of Komalie and bloodstone were both ominous, they spoke of ancient power that hadn’t been fully understood at their creation. The Asurans might claim they did understand but nobody would take an Asuran’s word on that unless they were stupid or desperate. Right now they were heading towards both. The six seals stood as they had for ages, locking the demons away and, although each of them had destroyed them many times before, it was again the first time they had been here.

“Well at least that litch is missing.” The huge pink rabbit stated, although not happily. The animal’s ears hung down and it walked as if carrying a weight. “Then again you managed to lose the pilot.”

“He wandered off, and it wasn’t just one of us at fault.” Barbie pouted. “You would think that I was the only one doing anything here. Everyone has equal responsibility, it’s not like I’m getting paid to nursemaid you all.”

“Well, that sounds a lot more interesting,” Painted sounded rather more upbeat, having been laughing most of the way there. Others had been rather more considerate, although most had giggled a bit they had also managed to sound embarrassed at least. “So what do we do now?”

“Now we find out if Bogus has a snack of the Gods.” Kara said. “And if so what precisely is it?”

“Yes, I’ve got a snack of the Gods.” Bogus considered his words carefully. “It’s a sort of circle thing. Quite large.”

“Go on.”

“I believe the Gods had them made to eat but they were so tough and inedible no-one could bring themselves to actually do it. Instead they fastened handles on the backs and used them as shields.”

“That it?” Daia looked crestfallen. “We’ve been trying to work out what it was for ages and it’s a shield?”

“As far as I can tell it is.” Bogus shrugged as well as a huge pink rabbit could. “The one I have is smaller and square, it’s fastened to a hammer handle. We going to do this or not?”

“Break all the seals but the last one.” Barbie decided. “We’ll leave that one until either we get the Sceptre of Orr delivered or we are hard pressed. Start at this end and work our way to the other. At least that way we will be on the other side of the bloodstone and we will be able to see any insects approaching.”

The process was simple, destroy a seal, then kill the fairly low level guards that appeared. Neither was a difficult task for them. After a few seals they began killing any Mursaat that approached, which was when it got a bit more difficult. It was still nothing they had not done many times before.

“So what now?” Lady Moonsinger asked, looking at the last remaining seal. “Wait until we are over-run by the enemy?”

“I was expecting Glint or one of her agents to be here,” Barbie admitted, “or somewhere on the route to give us the Sceptre of Orr. That’s obviously not happened and we don’t have much time left.”

“We don’t have any time left.” Kara contradicted her. “I’ve had Rocky keeping an eye on the route here and they are almost on us. Another couple of minutes at best. We’ve also trapped the whole area as best we can but that will only do so much. You had better decide sooner rather than later.”

---

Barbie wasn’t sure who had given Bogus the Bunny the alcohol, but at least his attitude seemed a lot better. His rendition of the Wizard’s staff lacked any talent and detoured a lot from the original but it was some form of music. This was perforated by the usual occasional random exclamations from someone who was drunk and the occasional odd parp or urp noise. Bogus’ form had also changed again, from ranger to Assassin style, although it wasn’t really that noticeable and he still had his normal ranger skills, at least according to him. Being an eight foot tall bunny meant nothing much was noticeable about him.

A blue light formed and grew into the head of Glint, or at least a representation of Glint’s head. It was hard to say exactly what Glint was, but it wasn’t this image. “I see you have everything ready as it should be. Now all you have to do is break the last seals.”

“I thought we would have the Sceptre?” Urmila countered. “What was all that about going through another way?”

“There was some difficulties in the system, things had to head towards this point but we couldn’t just tell you why. For the moment we still can’t tell you everything, but we will, if you survive.”

“So we break the seals and then what?” Barble stood defiant. “We die here fighting?”

“Perhaps.” The image of Glint nodded. “or perhaps you escape again? The insects have to be stopped somewhere, to do that we need to reduce their numbers to free up capacity on the servers. Do you really have anything to lose?”

“I don’t think we do.” Molly admitted as the image shrank and vanished. “They are already here.”

“Anyone got any regrets you had better voice them now.” Barbie braced her staff. “Chances are you won’t be able to do it later. It looks like either the insects are going to get us or the Titans are.”

Bogus readied his bow, “I’ve got one, I don’t want to be remembered as the giant pink fighting bunny. It doesn’t seem fair or right.”

“Don’t worry.” Lady Moonsinger grinned. “We probably won’t be remembered at all.”

The insects charged onto the bloodstone. Barbie cast her first spell and ordered, “open fire!”

The first few insects didn’t get very far, dying as they tried to advance towards the enemy over a landscape that was liberally peppered with traps. That advantage wasn’t going to last long, and they didn’t have any warriors except for Barbie’s remaining Minions, who were ready and doing their best with their pilums.

Each group of insects was getting closer when one of the huge Centaurs appeared. The advance stopped and backed up to the edge of bow range. “I am Tyrant Maximus. Surrender to me and your existences will be spared. You can change sides without dishonor, Glint and your gods have abandoned you to your fate.”

“It does seem like a reasonable offer.” Barbie commented. “We might be able to get out of this alive.”

“Not a chance.” Bogus was definite, although kept his voice initially low. “I know this one and he’d double cross you as soon as anything - he eats the insects babies. Bugs,” He began to shout, “this tyrant kills and eats your queens’ children, your own bretheren. Why do you allow this to happen? Why do you stand by while this murderer gets away with what he does? Was there no plan to deal with him and his kind? Rise up and kill the tyrant!”

“You think that will work?” Barbie sounded uncertain. “or just get us killed? I mean you can’t really tell by their faces what they are feeling.”

“No, but it’s worth a try. Everyone, start backing up but keep that seal in range. Seems I’ve still got some alcohol in this barrel.”

“Ignore that!” The Tyrant bellowed. “Begin the advance again. Take the bloodstone and the door. This day I will be victorious!”

The insects started forwards again, ignoring temporarily the death and destruction caused by the traps. “There are far more of them coming up than this,” Kara was adamant, “I don’t think we can win. There are hundreds of them, thousands.”

They were almost up to the last seal when Barbie give the order, “now hit the seal!”

Without the seals powering it the whole door collapsed, opening the way through for a host of ghosts, spirits and more to enter the world. The insect’s front line hit the minions and the real fighting started. Bogus switched from bow to hammer and waded in to help, although being drunk and probably blind the minions were almost at equal risk of damage. The Snack of the Gods swung around and one insect, caught in it’s radius, had it’s body smashed to the ground while it’s head departed in many pieces to litter the steps they were standing on.

“Sarge,” Barbie said between spells, “do you think we can hold them here?”

“I doubt it. We are going to have to pull back and quick. Unless you fancy us going against the Titans, and I don’t think I’m fireproof. I would feel better if it was us singing rather than Bogus, I’ve no idea what those words mean.”

“Bogus ninja hero bunny!” Bogus chanted between hiccups. “Bogus mutant hero rabbit.”

“Hero in his pink fur?” Barbie questioned. “I think he’s gone total but he seems to be doing a good job of terrifying those insects.”

“If you think those are terrified just think about me standing beside him.” Sarge ducked as the hammer swung wildly again, taking out one insect, then Bogus’ foot, now equipped with huge claws, ripped into another. “On the other hand it’s a bit embarrassing. I’m supposed to be a professional minion, not working with pink bunnies.”

“You would rather he was on their side?”

“No, but.” Sarge stopped for a moment. “Here come your cavalry, although I don’t think you want them to get too close to us.”

Barbie watched as the army of Titans struck the insect horde in the side, stabbing with their feet and setting those insects unlucky enough to end up in direct contact with the stone enemies on fire. “Everyone start pulling back, quick!” She ordered. “Let the Titans and insects fight it out as much as possible.”

“Really?” A familiar voice sounded in her ear. “And I’ve only just got here.”

“Rand?” Barbie’s question was nearly a scream. “I, we thought you were dead?”

“Serious sent me back to save your sorry butts for you.” Thorazine pointed out. “ She said you lot couldn’t look after yourselves and needed saving. I said no, you would be fine, no problem handling a few stupid insects. Looks like she was right though, I leave you on your own for a few days and you end up in more trouble then even I could find.”

“Well I hope you don’t mind us not hugging you just yet,” Molly pointed out, “we are just a bit busy here. Plenty of red dots to kill if you feel up to helping?”

“One more body fighting isn’t going to make much difference here,” Lady Moonsinger pointed out. Unless we find a way out we’re all going to be dead shortly.”

“You think I’d come in here without a way to get out?” Thorazine asked. “Just keep pulling back and I’ll start shoving people through the gate. Don’t ask what gate either, I don’t want to get back there and find it’s gone.”

Tyrant Maximus could clearly be seen as he threw more of the insect horde against the wall of Titans emerging from the breach while sending his heavy human infantry forward to try and engage the retreating party. All of them knew they had caused him enough trouble to be collectively target one on his list. Thorazine joined the minions and Bogus in the front line. “What’s this then? A bunny thumper?”

“It’s Bogus Dude,” Molly shouted back, “we still haven’t sorted out his form issue yet, and it’s looking like we might never do it, or want to. He’s far more useful as a drunk bunny than he ever was as a ranger. Look out!”

Thorazine jumped as Bogus’ low blow took an insect’s limbs apart and then carried on around and below his legs. The return journey brought the hammer head on an upward trajectory into where Barbie thought the following insect’s hurty bits might be located, lifting it over four feet off the ground and it’s head in line with Stargazer’s fire spell. Thorazine pointed at a localised shimmering in the air. “That’s it, everyone get through, one at a time though. We might be doing fine against these insects but those humanoids look a lot nastier. Set that post on fire.”

Night simply cast immolate on it and the fire spread quickly across the area following a trench. With the few insects on their side of the fire dealt with they began exiting. The spellcasters and rangers went first, then the Monks. Barbie and her minions followed. That left Bogus and Thorazine.

The fire waned and the insects surged over, followed by the humanoids and, keeping a discrete distance back from the front, Tyrant Maximus, who surged forwards. Bogus grabbed Thorazine and threw him through the rift, preparing to jump after him.

All would have went well had the first insect not grabbed his tail. Bogus jumped short, then they were on him, dozens of insects pinning him down.

Maximus waded forwards but not too close, the mound of insects slowly dispersed to show no sign of the pink animal that had caused so much trouble. One of the insects looked strangely familiar though. “Do I know you?”

Bogus realised simply hiding amongst the insects was a busted flush right there. He simply pulled out his bow and fired. Pin Down would work on a creature of any size, as would poison. “Now my brothers! It is time to attack the Tyrant while he is weak! Kill the enemy!”

The humanoids, assuming it was an insect revolt, attacked first, the mass of insects, assuming correctly they were the ones who had been attacked by their own side responded. That left Bogus just enough time to roll through the gate and escape before it closed.

---

The battle raged, thousands of insects against the Tyrant and his humanoid guard, the Tyrant and his retinue fought back, while the Titans fought anyone they could get close to. High above Glint, Kuunavang and a host of saltspray dragons took on the flying insects who were trying to join in the land battle. The flying insects could have been instrumental in destroying the Titans, had they been allowed to interfere. Most Titans had no ranged attacks while the small Sparks of the Titans, a species of imp, were far more vulnerable to damage than their larger brethren.

The only option now for the forces engaged was attrition, kill as many enemies as possible for the least loss of life. That wasn’t easy for either the insects or the Titans. The dragons managed it simply by keeping out of range of the ground troops and taking on  only the insects that could fly. Large, relatively slow and not well armed these were easy prey for the agile dragons. Kuunavang dropped corrupted spores and scales to make the conditions on the ground even worse for the foes there. Mostly they could stay well out of range and just watch the carnage as both opposing sides tried their best to eliminate the other.

With the humans gone Tyrant Maximus had few options, pursuit not being one of them. He had distanced himself as quickly as he could from the raging battle between the insects and his humanoid guard. That issue had been terminated by the Titans who had simply attacked anything and everything they could that wasn’t a Titan. Both sides indulging in the tiny revolt were quickly crushed.

The war raged on, and with the Titans bringing forth increasing numbers of reinforcements their new enemy could only try to hold the breach in the Door of Komalie, constantly throwing new troops into the area.

---

As Bogus exited the portal, his form flickered then stabilised again. He slowly stood up and examined his arms, which were now thick and scaly, before looking around at all the weapons pointed at him. “Well at least I’m not an insect any more. Could you please point all those weapons elsewhere than at me?”

Several unlucky insect corpses littered the room where they had been put to death as quickly as possible. It was unknown how much they could tell each other and avoiding them learning too much was an important issue. “You seem to have sobered up a lot at least.” Barbie examined him critically. “Maybe not an insect but Old-age Mutant Ninja Kappa seems a bit odd?”

“I seem to have primary Assassin skills now,” he confirmed, “although I still have my bow and hammer as weapons. At least I’m not a tortoise or, heaven forbid, a Turtle.”

“At least there is that. You can borrow a pair of my daggers,” Embeth offered, “I’ve got a spare set. Not sure how usefull you will be as an assassin tortoise.”

Bogus eyed the Claws of the Broodmother with a level of distrust normally reserved for the undead dragon Rotwing, but eventually accepted them. “I can shadow step in and out of combat, the additional armor of being a Kappa might be useful in some ways too.”

“What? Well it might stop you getting shot in the back as you run away,” Painted suggested. “Although unless you can run fast you might still not make it very far, even with shadow stepping.”

“Every able bodied fighter we can get is important.” Barbie pointed out, then tried to change the subject. “Marie, so nice to see you again, and thank you for helping get us out of there.”

“It was, how you say? Nothing?” Marie smiled. “Well nearly. I’ve been safely tucked here. I follow what Grenth told me do. I’m glad you all safe and well. It is pleasant to have company again.”

“Bogus,” Barbie warned, without looking around “You go glassy eyed over Marie again and I’ll rip that shell off your back and shove it. I don’t care if she’s wearing that sexy leather armor, if your eyes pop out any more I’ll borrow one of Rand’s axes and chop them off. And no, Painted, you can’t go down to the Dungeon with Marie again. We have stuff to do, just as we are told what it... What’s that dog doing here? Floss?”

The Jack Russell terrier ran over the bloodstone and jumped into Barbie’s arms, then proceeded to welcome her. “It told me that it was your dog,” Marie explained. It seem cute, adorable.”

“I don’t remember having a dog, but it seems so right.”

“It just appear last time Grenth was.” Marie explained. “Ah here’s Grenth.”

“At least none of you decided to join my minions today.” Grenth almost joked. “I know you would like an explanation of why we had to deceive you. The situation isn’t as clear as it might be.”

“We nearly got slaughtered by the Tyrant Maximus’ army,” Daia commented, “and then the Titans. So I would expect an explanation as to why.”

“Some of the systems are compromised, we don’t know which ones are safe. Any one of us could have leaked details of our plans to our enemies without knowing about it. That wasn’t the main issue though. That is far more complex. As you know the underlying world is run on complex machines called computers that work out what things should be doing. When the problem happened a huge amount of unauthorised and untested code was dumped into the system memory, some of it was run. We don’t know how or why that happened but it created the insects and Bogus’ instability problem as well as many others. As far as possible code introduced and run on the system is tightly written and highly efficient, the code for the insects was not. Each insect takes an extraordinary amount of effort from the machines to keep them going.

“Initially there was very few of them.” Grenth continued. “That would have been acceptable if their numbers had stayed limited to just the number that appeared at that point, unfortunately, something changed. Unlike every other entity they began reproducing themselves, without any external control on their numbers. As they increased so the system had to pull resources from doing other things in order to cope with the demands the insects were making. By opening the Door of Komalie and setting the insects and Titans against each other we have created a situation where the insect population is controlled and slightly declining. That means we may have some clear space becoming available for other things. It also means we have some time that we did not have earlier.”

Thorazine interrupted. “What about Serious Love?”

“She was involved in a lot of these plans, although the reality is behind the she, controlling her actions, is a he. Serious wanted not only to control the insect threat but to find out why it happened. The only way to do that was go outside our world and see it from a completely different perspective, something none of us are presently able to do directly. We know something happened external to this world, and the others on the servers, to cause everything to happen, but we don’t know what and unless we do there could be other things go wrong. Admittedly it was highly risky for Love, and we have no idea what that act will cause. There may be so much shock it might kill her real self and until we get some contact again we don’t even know if his real self survived. We know that a lot of people on these computers are users, they have outside real selves, like all of you. All of the chosen have external real selves. What we also know is that now many of us also have real people behind us, guiding our actions. Originally that was not so, we were automations, controlled and scripted purely by the computer systems, machines to you. We followed pre-programmed or even scripted paths. As the problem happened some of the real people were reassigned to controlling us.

“Then there are other issues. We know that some of the real people have vanished completely, although we don’t know how many. Many others are stuck in the limbo that Rand ended up in. In parallel with what happened to us gods, a group ended up controlling the enemy bosses and  some others. We aren’t entirely sure how that happened but they seem to be unable to access their previous memories too. It seems they think they are really what they look like.”

Barbie nodded. “Anything you can do about that?”

“I don’t think they would believe us, we have tried as far as we can. The few we have tried simply won’t listen. Would you believe it if an insect told you that you were delusional and really one of them?”

“I wouldn’t.” She agreed finally. “And I would agree with your assessment, there’s nothing much you can do about it. What are we going to do now?”

“You are going to take a rest, at least for the moment. Until we get some contact from Serious Love there isn’t much we can do that we aren’t doing now. The insects are being controlled for the moment and, unless they produce something new in that area, the situation can only improve. Even if we don’t get any contact from Love we might now be able to pry some more real people out of limbo to help in the struggle.”

“In that case,” Kara smiled, “perhaps we can still help? I know you have people searching the library for information, give us access to some and we can help you search. At a minimum it will keep us occupied and it might turn up something important.”

“I will ask for you to gain such access, although global searching will not be possible. That can be problematic indeed.”

---

The meeting with Bill Hodes hadn’t gone well, although they had been given access to the library there was no searching available, if they wanted to find something they had to read through until they found it. “This is going to take ages,” Barbie finally complained to everyone who might be able to hear. There are thousands of books, millions of other texts, most of them probably completely irrelevant to what we want to know.”

“What I want to know is why Hodes is hiding things from us?” Kara stated. “He’s not lying as such but he’s certainly omitting a lot.”

Barbie looked up, “what makes you think that?”

“I think it’s something about how, when we ask about something he doesn’t want us to know, he says it’s unimportant, or that we don’t need to know that. We have to make some decisions about what we are going to look at and what, for the moment, we’ll avoid reading. If we need to come back to the other stuff then we can do that.”

“How do we find that out?”

“We start by asking Grenth what Serious Love’s last searches were, access the data brought up and see if that points to anything. With luck that might be enough to set us on the right track.”

Bogus didn’t seem too happy with that situation. “So in the mean time we do nothing?”

“In the mean time we keep looking,” Kara insisted. “There is just far too much stuff we don’t know or can’t remember, which is why I don’t trust Hodes. He remembers who he was before, and he’s still his real self, so he should know about us too, and why we are here?”

Bogus shrugged, “does that matter to me?”

“It should, we could be a group of survivors from a holocaust, a valiant group of colonists off to conquer a new world, an army of soldiers off to fight in a battle, a bunch of tourists on the way to a holiday camp, or even a load of murderers going to a penal colony. They all have different implications for what might happen in our future, and each of them may give reasons for Hodes not to tell us things. For example, if we are a bunch of murderers do you think he’ll want us to get out and kill him?”

Barbie noted someone’s form appearing in the doorway. “Grenth, why won’t Hodes just tell us the whole truth?”

“It might be because he does not know himself.” The god supplied. “But it is far more likely that the access database has corruption and he can’t tell who is who. Hodes is a programmer, not an expert in relationships with other people. What I know is that we are on a ship going somewhere, the journey was planned to take a very long time, hundreds of years, so we were put in this place so our bodies would not age. They are in special storage vats which prevent degradation of the tissues and repair them when they do get damaged. Providing the ship has energy and doesn’t get damaged too much we should be fine. The problem is that damage has, to an unknown extent, already happened. Hodes should be one of a group of people here, the rest of them have vanished, he has also had no contact with the other crew members.”

Barbie stopped herself from gaping,“other crew members?”

“There are ten people who were supposed to be assigned to the primary bridge, a part of the ship which controls the ship’s systems and keeps it on course. There is a secondary bridge with 10 more crew members, these are in game but were supposed to be awakened if something like this happened. That did not happen. Serious Love did a search that nearly crippled the computers, but found out that she was a he and was one of the ten alternate bridge crew. What he then tried to do was wake himself up. That could mean he just wakes up, or the shock could kill him instantly. We don’t know enough to predict the outcome.”

“Which brings me to where Serious got to. Grenth can we have access to the stuff Serious examined, especially that search.”

“Is it important?”

“I think it might be vital, especially if Serious missed something. Until we get some form of contact from Serious it’s up to us to continue trying to solve the issue she, I mean. Grief, this is confusing.” Barbie took a big breath, “whatever Serious was up to.”

---

Serious Love woke up in pain, surrounded by liquid that both surrounded the skin and separately filled lungs by way of a mask. There was two huge differences though, the body was definitely male and he could feel the surrounding liquid press against him. Suppressing the urge to cough was about all he could initially manage. The surroundings were dark, except for a single window directly in front of his face that was opaque for some reason. His brain told him that this was bad, although he didn’t know why - yet. Recovering his real memories was going to take a lot of time and probably some effort.

Attempting to use muscles that hadn’t been used in an unknown length of time wasn’t the best option, but it had to be done. Christian Baleock leaned forwards and  tried to get his eyes as close to the window as possible. The opaque whiteness was troubling. It wasn’t part of the ‘glass’ though, that was a sandwich of special heat retentive plastics and two outer layers of pure diamond. The whole was nearly three centimetres thick and about as likely to mark as, well, a diamond. The opaqueness was definitely crystalline in nature but totally obscured anything outside. the light level was also extremely low, but more than his brain expected. As this was a sleeper ship there was no point in having any lights on at all except where people were working.

Another fact popped into his mind, the life preserving, and very complex device he was in was generally known as a coffin. People were put in one very early and stayed there for their entire lives. That seemed important to him, and something he wasn’t entirely happy with for some reason. It wasn’t that the device kept him alive, or that it kept it well enough to function. It certainly wasn’t anything to do with it supplying his nutritional needs. While it prevented him getting sick it certainly didn’t keep his body anywhere near peak efficiency. There were muscles but they were fairly weak, his legs certainly would not have been able to support his own weight let alone carry anything large.

The device stopped him getting any diseases simply by preventing bacteria and viruses getting to him. Nanites controlled by the coffin repaired any physical damage to his body, preventing him dying at least. That, for the moment, was a side issue. There was only one real option for the opaque window, somehow liquid, or possibly gas, had escaped into the area surrounding the coffin and had frozen onto it’s surface. That would mean the ship had suffered considerable physical damage, far more than would be easily repaired by the on board systems.

If the on board systems couldn’t, or wouldn’t, repair the damage then he had to get into the access systems and look at it for himself. That would also, hopefully, enable him to look further, possibly even into the games, and contact the people there. Only one little issue remained, how to do it?

---

The room was huge, really an enlarged cave lined with carved crystal and inlaid with precious metals and gems. It had taken the centaur like Tyrant Maximus quite a few minutes to walk this far and he wasn’t quite in the centre yet. What occupied the centre was something he had never actually seen before, although others of his kind had. A huge henge made of crystals surrounded a central plinth. Outside of this was an array of insects in ceremonial armor, plated with gold and embedded with more precious stones than he could reasonably count. This was the throne room of the insects’ queen, although treating it as singular was a bit misleading.

The queen insect was huge, it dwarfed the Centaur by as much as he dwarfed her offspring. Then it didn’t look much like an insect, it was more like a hydra although on a massively overdone scale. It’s body was not much more than a lump of armoured flesh from which it’s forty-seven heads rose, each with a broad, flat, snake like head. An attendant picked up another of her children, which had just appeared on the ground, and carried it away. Maximus had no idea how this monstrosity produced young but it did.

What he was aware of was calling it a queen wasn’t accurate, it was part female, part male, both in the same body. The reports from his brethren also stated that it seemed to have multiple personalities. He passed the outer layer of the henge, twenty metres high and the inner ones were even bigger. Perhaps that had something to do with her capabilities? He might never get an answer to that question, the queen had remained mute on issues personal to itself.

Then again. he considered, he might have some problems of his own. The queen certainly didn’t look happy. Then again he had never seen it before personally so he had no idea if it could ‘look happy’ at all. Then all 47 heads spoke as one, “SO, WHAT HAPPENED?”

The voices reverberated around him, bouncing off the henge stones. “It seems that the Titans are unwilling or unable to talk, and their innate aggressive stance means they will attack anything near them which is not one of their own. That makes them totally unsuitable as allies to us. Unfortunately we can’t just withdraw our forces as that would release the Titans completely. Once out of confinement they could spread out and destroy everything we have been working for.”

“THEN YOU WILL GO BACK AND MAKE SURE THEY DO NOT WIN.”

“It is not you in charge here,” Maximus spat back at the queen, “it is us Tyrants who command!”

“THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN TRUE NOT SO LONG AGO. UNFORTUNATELY YOUR PEOPLE HAVE BEEN TOO CONCENTRATED ON FIGHTING THE WAR. YOUR NUMBERS HAVE DWINDLED WITHOUT YOUR NOTICING. WHILE YOU MAY BE INDIVIDUALLY IMMUNE TO MY CHILDREN, AND WERE COLLECTIVELY STRONGER THAN I AM, YOU ARE NOT IMMUNE TO ME.”

The Tyrant seemed to struggle in grasping the facts. “You will do as you are told!”

“THE CHOICE WAS YOURS!”

Maximus felt something invisible from the huge queen penetrate his being, going down to where he could not reach. True pain flared within him and turned within moments to agony before he blacked out. “REMOVE THE BODY BEFORE THE NEXT ONE ARRIVES.” Insects scurried to obey their queen’s command.

Some distance away in the real world a coffin blared out an alarm, a red light flashed, neither were answered and eventually the body inside suffered too much damage for it to be repaired by the nanites.

---

The characters had split up into small groups or singles to examine the information Grenth had supplied. The initial consensus was Serious had looked at a lot of information, most of it seemingly irrelevant to the task. That previous meeting had taken place several hours ago and now they were together in a new one. “I’m not sure what Serious was trying to achieve,” Runa Tal Rit commented. “While the latter information contains some detail on where you might find information on activating the emergency release system there is some kind of block so I cannot access it further. The strange thing is neither can Grenth.”

Barbie watched the nodding heads around the table. “Seems all of us have the same issue, so either Serious managed to do something we can’t or.”

“Serious managed to access his own profile and prove to the system he should have access,! Grenth said. “The only other person I know of who has managed to do that is Bill Hodes. Once he had full access as a crew member he could also view the hidden information. The method Serious used isn’t the only one but appears to be the simplest and quickest, although it is the most dangerous. There was an unknown chance that the person’s real self might suffer physical damage and die. This seems to rely on their physical health, which cannot be directly assessed by us.”

“I’m wondering why we aren’t allowed to access vital information,” Molly the Mad mused, “I mean it’s not like we are all criminals, or are we?”

“That is another thing that we do not know,” Grenth admitted, “although it is a possibility. Unless we gain access to the information stored in the inaccessible areas of the library we may never find out. The alternative is for us to regain our real memories, which may be equally problematic. Serious said he would try to contact us with more information as soon as possible, either directly or through a journal he started.”

“Journal?” Maria Louise asked. “You mean a written book?”

“One that can be written to many times. Although it was termed a journal by Serious a diary would be an equally good description. The underlying information is stored in a text file accessible only by him and selected other people. At the moment that includes me and, for some reason, Barbie.”

Barbie opened the file. “Hmm, it says, first entry.”

‘Well done in getting this far, I knew you could do it. I haven’t got that much more information than you do, at the moment I’m trying to find out how to get myself out of the system and in to the ‘real world’, whatever that is. I will tell you what I know for sure. I apologise if you have some of this information already, I merely put it here to ensure that you know the important facts.

‘Some time ago we were placed in this world for storage, our physical bodies being put in machines of some kind to preserve them and try to keep them healthy. The machines were self repairing and more than capable of sustaining human life almost indefinitely. Since then something has drastically gone wrong, the system has been severely damaged, both physically, in instruction code, and the data contained. The instruction code then caused other issues while trying to self repair. Bill has been trying, with others, to fix this issue, but it is huge, far bigger than any of them are capable of doing in a reasonable time.

‘The other option I have come up with is to exit the system and examine the damage from outside, which is possible but difficult. It seems I have to die in the game, in order to reach the between game person storage world, this is where you are supposed to be able to choose to go back into a game world and continue there or switch to a different one. Once there, if I die again, there is a reasonable chance of instigating the emergency revival system. This might kill me but it’s presently our best chance of getting someone out of the system and into the real world. Once there I will hopefully remember everything and be able to assess the damage. I will also hopefully be in a better position to revive others to help me fix whatever has gone wrong.’

“That seems pretty straight forward,” Barbie admitted, “I might not quite understand all of it but near enough.”

“Is there more?”Kara Earthstar queried.

“Surprisingly yes.”

Lady Moonsinger rolled her eyes. “Then read it!”

“Entry two,”

‘Just a short addition to state that I’m in what has been described as Purgatory, this is the person storage area I mentioned earlier. I’ve met with my killer, Rand Al Thorazine, although I might have to trick him into actually doing the act. I’m not sure on how I’m going to feel about that but if it’s the only way I’m going to get out then it has to be done. It seems the act has to be carried out in a specific place in here, I will end up, hopefully, on the outside, while Rand will be pushed back into the last game he was playing. Not really a bad deal as he can help everyone more there than I could. I just hope there won’t be any bad feelings about it afterwards, if I survive.’

“Entry three,”

‘Fusk!’

“Rest of entry three seems to involve a lot of swearing, but the main statement seems to be ‘I think I made it’. Well, Serious is on the outside and has survived.”

Bogus questioned, “any more?”

“Not as yet,” Grenth responded, “but Serious should be able to add to the file from anywhere, even outside. Now it’s just a case of waiting and seeing what happens next.”

“I’ve a pinging noise in my ears.” Barbie complained. “Oops, it says close file and re-open, new content available. Serious continues, entry four...”

‘I’ve made it to the outside world. Not a particularly impressive view, I’m in something called a coffin, a life preserving machine that’s internally barely bigger than my body. It seems in the past they used boxes called coffins to bury real people in after they died and no longer functioned, seems the bodies didn’t just disappear but slowly rotted away, producing some strong smells and risk of disease spreading. I guess that’s appropriate to call this thing one. There’s a small window that I should have been able to see through, but it’s covered with some form of snow. That means the ship, yes we are on board a ship, has suffered some massive damage. I’m not able to see what the damage is as yet but will report back when I find out. I cannot contact anyone on the main bridge or anyone else on the secondary one, I may be the only survivor in those two areas, which seems strange as they are on opposing sides of the ship.

‘What I can tell you is almost everyone left alive on board was tried as a criminal and found guilty of attempting to pervert the will of the people, that seems to include me too. There were one or two specialists who volunteered to go with us into the unknown. That, in itself, needs a bit of a history lesson so you know precisely what you were found guilty of. The truth of the matter was simply that the technology had reached a level where almost everything could be made automatically by machines, which left very little for people to do except enjoy themselves. Unfortunately, as they were mostly out of work they didn’t have much money to spend on the available enjoyment options. These leisure activities also seemed to require using a lot of energy so the governments got together and put as many people as possible in these coffins as they could. The coffins required much less power and were otherwise self contained.

‘The main advantage to those volunteering to be entombed alive was the devices could repair their bodies and keep them eternally youthful and stopped them messing the planet up. On the other side it removed them from reproducing. Eventually almost everyone was in coffins and, when one went wrong, that meant one less to feed power to. The chance of a coffin going wrong by itself was small, but they could be damaged beyond repair by falling masonry or other similar occurrences. The issue started when not everyone was happy with just playing games or doing the same old problems. they wanted to do new things, go outside and smell the real world, expand our frontiers to new planets.

‘The government wanted to continue doing the same old stuff, keep the masses happy and ignorant of the outside world. So you were all effectively imprisoned on a charge of treason against the state, which meant they now had to do something.

‘The answer they came up with was to build a ship so you could journey to another planet and set up a colony there, rather like the Ascalon settlers going to Kryta. The ship took some time, but that was merely gathering materials, then it was sent with us all on board on a long journey to a new planet.

‘The reason you don’t remember anything is it is simpler to keep you all in the dark on the journey, that way it’s nearly impossible for anyone to attempt escape from the system before arrival. There is just one problem with that, we’ve been travelling far longer than we should have. What they did was alter a set of timers. These are supposed to both keep us on course and wake up people when we reach the destination system so they can begin colonisation. It seems that Earthgov doesn’t want us to create a successful settlement, anywhere. And especially not with the option of sending subversives back to upset their boat again. They didn’t want to bloody their hands by killing us but they didn’t want to deal with the issues we created either.

‘I think that’s it for the moment, I will add more to this when I can.’

Daia Mara shrugged. “I think that explains a lot of things we didn’t know.”

“It sure does,” Rand agreed, “although it still leaves the question of where do we go from here? unanswered. I guess we wait and see what Serious writes next.”

“It’s the only thing we can do,” Barbie agreed.

---

Barbie seemed troubled, at least to Painted, who asked, “What’s the problem?”

“It’s the new entry Serious has put into this Journal.”

‘I’ve been working on ways of seeing into the game and out into the rest of the real world. I’ve found a small repair and maintenance pod that seems to work, it’s not meant for fixing big things but smaller internal items that might go wrong. I’ve managed to maneuver it through what’s known as an air lock and into space, what is outside the ship. Initially I was heartened about the lack of any large amount of debris floating around but things aren’t anywhere near that simple. The ship’s time is different to the apparent in game time, you effectively do everything slower than I do because of the effects of the coffins on your bodies. I do things slower than I would on a planet or if I was going slower. The ship is roughly cigar shaped, a long round bar with rounded ends. Normally you would expect an object, like a rock, to hit the ship and cause damage which throws out fragments of rock and pieces of broken ship. As time passes these will travel away from the ship under their own momentum. The longer the time since the damage the less material will be left locally.

‘As the main bridge is not responding at all I pinned my hopes on that being the best area to start searching for damage. I found it, and, unfortunately it’s bigger than I ever expected. An asteroid impact would either make a crater in the surface of the ship or, if it was big enough, smash the ship completely. Neither of those things have happened. Something struck the main bridge on one side of the ship, then travelled all the way through and took out most of the secondary bridge on the other side, the secondary bridge is much further back so the destruction goes right through the personnel storage section on one side, the area for storing colonising equipment in the middle of the ship, and out through the personnel section on the other side. It’s very hard to estimate loss of life but we originally had over one hundred thousand people on board. At least ten thousand, perhaps as many as twenty, have gone missing just in the impact. Because the secondary bridge is open to space I moved the pod inside and checked on the conditions, mostly it’s trashed, mine is the furthest pod from the damage and the only one showing any signs of life.

‘That also means I’m in no real position to actually do the required repairs, we need to get as many people out who are still in airtight sections and get them working on sealing the hull, and repairing the damage, where that is possible. Luckily the personnel section and colonisation storage is separate from the ships engines and power generation, which are much further back. Hopefully we can alter what we have into suitable repairs for the damage, then get this thing on course for a real place we can live.

‘Second issue: I’m not sure how but I’ve reports that another one of the coffins has failed within the last few minutes. That might not seem much of an issue but it wasn’t caused through physical failure of the machine, someone ordered it to fail. I don’t as yet know who done it or how but it looks like cold blooded murder. Unfortunately, as I’m stuck here, I can’t just go and investigate, or try to save the person. Looking back through the logs there have been six identical incidents recently. There also seems to be some selection in who is being killed, although I can’t tell why, at least at the moment. Be warned though, either someone else is out selectively killing people or someone from inside the game can affect the coffins causing them to stop working properly without releasing the person contained inside. If you aren’t worried about this then you should be, it means that someone could potentially just kill any one of us, the real us, no rez possible.’

“That’s sounds bad,” Embeth Moonsinger stated.

“That sounds really  bad,” Painted upped the rating.

“It is really bad,” Bill Hodes confirmed. “I’m sorry I couldn’t trust anyone earlier with everything I knew but without knowing who was who that was impossible. It seems now that we’ve been betrayed by Earthgov so there’s no point in me having any more faith in them. Hopefully you will see what I mean. If I had freed the files to everyone it might have been that the other sides would have got access to things they have no knowledge of. The issue against that is they might already have access to the information anyway. Then again there is stuff I don’t have access to either. I’ve managed to get access to the recording that Serious made from the pod’s camera, it looks shockingly bad. I’ve also made my own journal, which Serious can access. I’m totally unsure exactly what caused that but it may have been a small black hole ate it’s way through the ship, or at least that’s what it looks like. I’ve asked Serious to check if there are any records of a presence near the ship in the logs prior to the damage happening but that will take time, and may not be possible at all for the moment. I will give Barbie access to the journal too, so we can pass messages that way.”

“It’s about time you started trusting us,” Night Stargazer confirmed. “I mean considering the trumped up offence we are supposed to have committed. it all boils down to ‘wanting to do something useful’. That isn’t at all bad, is it?”

“No, but then there’s the state of the world. The pollution levels had only just been held in check, all many humans had left to do was breed more of the same, which they seemed very willing to do. The extra people used up more resources than we, or the planet could provide. The promise was initially a lifetime of leisure, which people got. You could go anywhere, in the virtual world, do anything, create your own world and rule like a king if you wanted. As science improved the devices eventually ensured almost eternal life, providing you stayed in the machines. Some were not happy with that, they wanted to go out and explore, to rock the boat. Otherwise the system was completely stable, and would have remained so, indefinitely. I, and a few other specialists, volunteered to go with you, to try and ensure you reached your new world. I wasn’t informed that the idea was that the journey would last forever and you would never arrive.”

Kara wasn’t convinced, “and we are supposed to believe you?”

Hodes shrugged, “I don’t think that matters. At the moment, what does matter, is we fix the ship and get on course for somewhere we can all call home. Which brings me to why I’m here. If you are willing I would like you to split up, go off in separate directions and at least look like you know where you are going. Hopefully that will mean the enemy start getting worried that you actually know what you are doing and go after you. The plan is for three teams, two will head off into a different game world through the gate machine here, the third will go to Cantha. Hopefully with three groups spreading out that will confuse the enemy on exactly which is the real direction and what we actually know. I suspect that Earthgov has put some people on board specifically to stop us finding out the truth and getting to a real destination. Overall it’s not going to be risk free anymore but I don’t think any of us has a real choice but to continue playing the game.”

“If it will help,” Barbie considered, “I guess I’m in. Everyone else seems at least not to disagree, guess that’s as much as we can hope for.”

---

All had been arranged, at least as far as it could be. Daia Mara, Embeth Moonsinger, Lady Moonsinger, Night Stargazer with Rand Al Thorazine would be going to Cantha. Runa Tal Rit, Bogus Dude, The Painted Man, Marielle Van Blote and Molly the Mad would go to Dreamworld, a place supposedly plagued by mutated people and demons, as if Guild Wars wasn’t. For some reason neither Bogus or Painted wanted Marie to go with the other, at least not without them going along too. There seemed to be a bit of a contest of sone kind, although neither actually mentioned it, and, because of that, neither did anyone else. Barbie, Kara Earthstarr, Urmila India would go with Maria Louise to somewhere called Guild Wars three thousand five hundred, set far in the future.

None of them knew exactly what would be waiting. Barbie’s team initially seemed smaller than the two others but she had her six minions still and Urmila would be adding her spirits.
 
“Hopefully you are all ready and capable of withstanding what is coming,” Hodes stated. “I’m not promising an easy journey for any of you, it won’t be. We still face harsh decisions and many enemies, not all of whom you will want to face in battle. There should be reinforcements waiting in Cantha for the party going there, a necro and two heroes. Gom, an Asuran, should be able to help you on what are the best routes there. Please note that Gom seems to be even more aloof than Gadd ever was but knows his stuff, probably. The mesmer and warrior heroes might not be that good but at least they will provide extra bodies.

“We’ve also got small groups waiting for the other two teams,” Hodes continued, “they are roughly your equivalent, although they have different skills from the ones you know here. Hopefully they should supply new weapons that you can use which are suitable for their environment. Although they will provide you with new skills. Your present skills should still work too, if you need to use them, although I don’t know how effectively.

“In the mean time Serious will be working on who is who and trying to get the most suitable people out of the game. That’s not going to be easy as he’s got to manouver the single pod he has through the rooms and identify people by the writing on their Personal Preservation Unit. Needless to say it will take some time. The main problem is the cycle time for this machine, there will be a gap between the teams going through of several hours. That means that if you get into trouble that you can’t get out of we probably won’t be able to do much to help. We will also be trying to conserve energy, so go through as quickly as you can. Once all the members of a team are through we’ll immediately close the portal again, mostly to avoid foes coming back through and attempting to take this place.”

Painted looked worried, “so is there a way of getting out of this before it starts?”

“Painted!” Marie stomped her foot, “I did not think you for a coward!”

“But, Marie.” Painted thought fast. “I was just hoping to make sure you were safe. Of course I do not care for my own survival providing I go down in glory near your feet.”

Barbie made an odd motion with her middle finger towards her open mouth while leaning forwards and several others tried to look as if they were not there.

“We are all in together,” Marie stated, “there will be no escape possible, unless we win. The machine is ready, Embeth, is your team ready?”

“As ready as we will ever be,” Moonsinger confirmed. “Open the portal.”

---

It certainly didn’t look like the Kaineng Center Embeth remembered, mostly because there wasn’t much of it left. Shattered brick, stone, tile and splintered wood lay everywhere with an occasional uprooted tree or plant mixed in. The bodies of the traders seemed to be all there but none of them were responsive. The sky to the east and south was obscured with huge clouds of black smoke rising from the ground. Normal life in Kaineng had apparently ceased to exist. To the west the docks had sunk into the harbor, taking the westernmost side of the center zone with them.

“This looks like what happened to Drocknar’s Forge,” Lady Moonsinger said with certainty, “although on a larger scale.”

“I’d have to agree with that.” Embeth responded. “I’m wondering how far the damage goes.”

“Too far,” Daia supplied. “I’ve got Azira up and the damage goes well beyond the central city zone. The northern brick built areas look like this. The ones further south were mostly built out of wood and they are almost all reduced to ash. Only people I’ve seen is a Asuran Necro, a Gwen and a Koss.”

Rand looked troubled. “You sure?”

“Yes, definitely a Koss.” Daia confirmed. “Think those are our reinforcements?”

“With our luck they most definitely are.” Embeth considered. “Can you guide us through this mess to them?”

Daia nodded, “it should be easy enough, they are just outside this zone heading in. They are coming to us.”

“I guess we head for them then, hopefully we can find out what happened here.”

“Best stay inside the gate though,” Rand considered, “we might not end up in the same instance if we go outside. Let’s move and watch out for anything dangerous. Barbie’s Guild Hall should have been safe but they got in there, they also did this here and destroyed Droks.”

---

Barbie looked around her, the room was spacious with odd metallic devices spaced around the area. A barrier crossed the middle with an open gate of some kind. On the far side of the room a passage led away and through something that looked like doors. “Approach the gate,” a metallic voice announced, “state your purpose being here.”

“I am Barbie Necro, I’m here to meet someone.”

“Barbie Necro, party of 4, one pet.” the metallic voice announced. “All present. Are those droids yours?”

Barbie looked around, expecting to see her familiar minions, instead there were two gold and four silver humanoid constructs. None of them had a mouth but a black transparent visor spread across where the eyes would have been. Their originally handless arm was now a thick tubular design while the other was thinner and held a small device of some kind. “I think they are mine. Is there a problem?”

“We are Barbie Necro’s personal bodyguards.” Sarge had his writing bubbles still but it was rather more blocky and less readable. “Where she goes we follow.”

“No problem with robotic bodyguards. Scanning. Do you have any illegal weapons, nucleonics, drugs, video or literature?”

Barbie looked puzzled. “There would be a problem with them?”

“Certain products are banned from entry into the city.”

A tall woman with brown hair and a loose black trouser suit approached, “Barbie Necro is covered by diplomatic immunity so anything she or her party may be carrying is also covered.”

“Accepted. You may enter the city now.”

“Damn machines,” the woman kicked the device. “Hello, I’m Vixen, probably the nearest you have to my profession is Ranger although the weapon has changed to a plasma rifle the idea is the sort of similar to a bow or staff, ranged attack. I’m supposed to get you up to speed on something called technology. Some things will be kinda familiar to you, others will be completely strange. Hopefully I’ll be able to explain them in terms you can understand.”

“Your trouser suit looks rather ill fitting?” Urmila queried, “I would have expected something perfect.”

“That’s because it’s battle dress, loose trousers and top are better for running around in the forest than some perfect suit, it also has some other options too, let me demonstrate.” Vixen’s armor changed color to green, then brown, then sand, then an odd pink. “It can do normal colours and shades, including Mountbatten pink, it’s harder to see in the desert at sunset. OK, not the most flattering color but when you are trying to avoid being seen and shot at any advantage is good in my book. It can also do old Vabbian pink, amaranth, cerise, rose, salmon pink, Thulian pink, Fuschia. I guess you get the idea. It can also do this.”

The suit’s turned to multiple, blocky, colors for a second then gradually pushed the resolution up. To everyone else Vixen’s body looked transparent although her moving caused disruption in the effect. “I’ve also got the head piece, so effectively I can be physically invisible, if I stand still, or nearly so on the move. The full suit automatically hides the dot from enemies’ radar screens too.”

“So what are the other professions’ armors like?” Barbie asked rather impatiently. “I can hardly wait to change.”

“Most are just like this, unless you want to go for something expensive.”

“Expensive?”

“2 million gold is the basic cost of an elite armor piece now, it takes you a long time to get enough together to upgrade. Usually they just aren’t practical either, there’s no point in a male ele wearing a black tuxedo while fighting, or going out with a Guild banner stuck your back. Accuracy, range and effectiveness of weapons has massively increased since your time. I could kill the final boss in Nolani Academy, Bonfaaz Burntfur from the location of Stormcaller. Other weapons do higher damage at a shorter range, or far more shots per second. Even the most basic two handed weapon has an accurate and effective range of two hundred metres.”

“I’ve always wondered,” Kara said, then asked. “Do you know what happened to the Dwarves?”

“I can only answer what happened in my time line, other game versions may be different. The Deldrimor Dwarves turned to stone during the war against the Destroyers, very few of them still exist. You might find one or two but not more. The Stone Summit didn’t accept the blessing, but the survivors hid from those who went after them. They are still around fighting with people, Charr, Asuran, Sylvari - anyone they can get near to.”

“Umm,” Barbie considered, “do you know what happened to my Minions?”

Necros can still use death magic, but there have become other, alternative, options available over the years since the original Guild Wars. You can still effectively raise dead on the spot but they are only really useful for fighting rabble or in cities where range is short. The skill is called summon robot drop. By the time they got anywhere near close to me in an open area they would be dead. As an alternative technology allows modern Necros to produce an army of mechanical minions called droids. These can do limited tasks, like repair things, on their own. They can often repair themselves from parts lying around or obtained from a damaged droid. As with some Asuran Golems they may need charging occasionally. A Necro is still limited in the number of droids or robots they can keep active.

“That may be what went wrong to your minions. Instead of getting normal ones you were switched by a temporary fault in the system to droids disguised as minions. Their look stayed but other factors changed to suit their new purpose.”

Barbie became a bit more positive. “So I can create another two new Droids myself?”

“Errm, no.” Vixen shook her head. “I’ve been told the droids you named Three and Six are still in the system, they are being presently held somewhere in Purgatory. Until they are destroyed or otherwise removed from the game permanently you are stuck with what you have. I’ve just had a warning, incoming Dwarven raiders, we’d better get out of here.”

“Run and let them take over?” Kara didn’t sound too happy, but at least her pet hadn’t changed into a mechanical alternative.“Shouldn’t we defend the area?”

“No, it’s an arranged swap, we borrowed this place from them so you could arrive here, This is the only place that the tele-port device would lock on to here. They need it back so they can create armor for themselves. Very few places can make dwarven space armor and they have to ‘own’ one before they can have it made.”

“Space armor?” Barbie asked as they were led through the exit.”

“Yes, you can now fly or go into space, where you would normally die for lack of air. We are on a space station now. Officially this is a dwarf area. You would instantly aggro the NPCs that are normally here. Going into space without armor is a bad option as inevitably, when your ship is holed, all the air rushes out and you quickly suffer massive degen.” 

“What are Sylvari?" Urmila questioned.

Vixen took a deep breath. “Guess you were told less than I was expecting.  Sylvari are plant people, drop as pods from a special kind of tree. I’ll tell you the basics later, let’s move.

---

The passage reminded Molly of the sewers under Kaineng City. There hadn’t been any repairs or clean up around here in ages. Parts of the wall had been ripped off and varying bits of machinery had been destroyed. In places there was dried blood, splattered amongst other liquids that had also long since dried. A single poster hung half off the wall proclaiming the Circus Maximus while down it’s middle four claw marks ripped through the backing and into the wall. One of the lights flickered and another blinked slowly.

In the corner there seemed to be a white storage cupboard of some kind, the door had been ripped off and lay against the opposite wall while the contents had been scattered around, which seemed to have provided most of the mess. elsewhere some containers were still on shelves but others had collapsed, ditching their original contents on to the floor. A single desk was broken across the middle, lying like a giant letter M

“Is this where we were supposed to arrive?”

“I not think so,” Marie considered. “There was people to meet us. Nobody here?”

A not distant enough roar broke the near silence and dripping water. Bogus tapped the wall gently. “Do you think that heard us?”

“I hope not but.” Marie considered, “I not think we that lucky. Someone has made us come here. I now do not like the splitting of us. Less people, more easily dead.”

“I was thinking the same,” Molly pointed to a large shape moving further down the passage. “Looks like we have company, some kind of Drake? Moving fairly slowly towards us but we’re trapped here.”

“Don’t think I’m going to be much use.” Bogus pointed out. “I’m female again, clothes look a bit Mesmer or Jora like, but I’m damn sure skills like Flattery, Persuasion, Apply Makeup, Blackmail and Beguile won’t be useful against something like that!”

“It’s fight or die,” Molly assured him, “and I’m not going down without a fight.”

“We might end up that way,” Runa said, “all of my spirit skills are blanked out. I’ve got nothing much except the ability to wand it to death, something that I don’t think will work very well.”

“Someone is cheating,” Marie stated, “in which case we can too. I will change secondary profession to... I don’t have any secondary professions! It getting closer too.”

The beast lined up and started forward, increasing it’s pace.

“I’ll just operate this switch on the wall then.” Painted clicked the item and the doors shut. A loud crashing noise filled the air and the doors shook. “That seems to have stopped it, for the moment.”

“It’s still trying to break through,” Molly pointed, “and there’s a crack in that door.”

“I don’t want to alarm any of you but,” Bogus pointed down, “there’s also cracks in the floor.”

Marie nodded, “I have a feeling, here we may be let down.”

A few seconds later both door and floor gave way, plunging them into the space below while the animal could only stare after them.

---

Daia the ranger took the lead, not only were her senses slightly better at detecting any enemy than those of the others but she could look ahead using Azira’s vision as well as her own. That allowed her to avoid problems before they went close and saved time, there were now plenty of dead ends they could end up in. There was also still enough fires to create a heavy pall of smoke across the whole city.

Outside of the centre, which was perversely located in the North West corner of the actual city, most of the buildings were made out of wood, which had obviously burned ferociously. Blackened, smoking bodies poked out of the ruins every so often. Lady Moonsinger finally requested a stop. “There must be something that can be done here?”

“I wish there was,” Embeth responded. “It looks like everyone and everything is dead, even the vermin and afflicted. There might not be anyone left alive, never mind enough people to deal with the dead and if we stop then we aren’t going to get where we are supposed to be going.

“The dead are dead,” Night Stargazer pointed out, “we need to concentrate on the living. If what Serious has told us is true then most of the bodies belong to people who never were real. Even the bodies themselves aren’t, neither are ours, at least here. We have to think of the real people, the real us, if you like, in the real world. We have to save everyone, not just make sure a few bodies, that were never really alive, are put to rest.”

“What was that?” Rand started at the rumbling noise. “Must have been big.”

“Part of the buildings collapsed.” Daia pointed to the west. “Over that way. They are gradually burning but not all have fully fallen as yet. Eventually the whole city will be nearly flat then nature will take over, at least it would if this place was real. The way the city was built meant that sooner or later fires would rage through the whole area. If they had been real then I’m sure the authorities would have brought in rules about how they were constructed and provided fire breaks between sets of buildings. As it is fires have spread almost city wide.”

Lady Moonsinger walked over and picked up an item, the small brown furry bear bore the legend ‘Tattered Bear [quest item]’ as a description. “I’ve never seen this here before, not as close to the City Centre at least. Anyone got the quest for it active?”

“Not me,” Rand answered, “I did that a long time ago. Nobody else seems to have the quest either. You might find a use for it though. We can’t be very far away from ?”

“Just a few minutes walk,” Daia confirmed, “although it seems the Koss and Gwen seem to be standing arguing? He’s doing the old Warrior dance and she’s calling him a pervert.”

“Let’s keep going.” Rand shooed her onward. “This might be interesting after all.”

---

Barbie examined the item she had just been given by the woman called Vixen. It was roughly two thirds of a metre long, so about the size of a wand with a handle thing out the side. It was rather more difficult to hold, One end of the tube seemed to be a hollow tube. Vixen nearly had kittens when Barbie had looked down it, shouting something about not pointing the weapon at your own head and the possibility that it might go off?

Urmila had managed to set her’s off and a large piece of mobile equipment now had a hole through it, so perhaps the advice was reasonable.

From the station they had gone through two doors and into a small room. Vixen had claimed it was moving although she at least hadn’t felt it. They had then walked out through the same door and ended up in a completely different location, so perhaps it was like a slow teleport device. They had also been given several bits of clothing which seemed to constitute a ‘space suit’. The thing wasn’t going to help anyone win a beauty contest. White, fairly thin and baggy didn’t really suit her as armor.

She really wasn’t that happy with the decor either, you could only go so far with white and black. Then again there was a distinct lack of skulls, bones, candles, gothic symbols or anything else that might say ‘home’ to a necro. Having surfaces that wouldn’t stain when subjected to blood was all good but what if you wanted them to stain? The whole place was so impersonal. The only thing on the floors were directional symbols and text, similarly walls and doors had writing and arrows on but no design or pattern.

“Now we are off the station and on our way I suppose I should get you up to speed on some things,” Vixen admitted. “I probably should have before I gave you the weapons. You hold the guns in both hands like this, the tube bit is the barrel which emits a beam of material, you don’t want to point that at your head, body or anyone else’s you don’t want to kill. Unlike Guild Wars, where you have come from, the protection against shooting yourself or comrades has failed here. Pointing the weapon at your head and pulling the trigger is a good way to say ‘goodbye universe’ and escape from this world, although chance is you will just end up in purgatory.

“I will try to keep this simple, which also might mean I gloss over important things that you need to know later. History lesson. For a time the Dwarves were almost totally destroyed, the Deldrimor ones followed the destroyers, fighting them. The Stone Summit ended up mostly slaughtered by adventurers leaving Ascalon. The remaining Summit mostly got wiped out when the Norn got driven south by the Charr. That was before the land of Orr rose from the depths of the sea and the dragons woke again.

“There was also the arrival of a new race, the Sylvari. Created directly from the plants by a magical event we don’t truly understand. Intelligence and an insatiable curiosity quickly put them up against humans, who had enough to do fighting the Charr, and the Asurans, who didn’t want to fight anyone. The war changed when the dragons appeared. Minion armies stormed in against the Charr, who had previously could count on their massive birth rate to avoid problems of attrition. They, with the rest of the races, had to band together in order to prevent the dragons wiping out everyone.  

After that war there were few enough Norn, but even then they insisted on continuing their previous lifestyle. Then the Stone Summit Dwarves reappeared, having replenished their numbers in the intervening years they took down the Norn one by one and recovered the area of the Shiverpeaks the Norn had taken as their territory. Dwarven and Charr ingenuity produced new technology, Asurans and Humans added new magic to that, eventually producing ships that could sail the depths of space, far away from any world. Finally Sylvari melded magic and plants to create their own ships, living ones.

They made one basic mistake, the races tended to travel alone to find new worlds. Without the presence of the other races their empathy and understanding of each other gradually died. It eventually that led to great wars between their navies.

“Charr, human and dwarven factions now battle in space and on planets. Asurans supply all sides their products, occasionally joining in, while sylvari will fight for anyone who pays them enough. So far no side has gained a lasting advantage and the latest war is in stalemate. That seems the problem, they can’t get a permanent advantage. The Asurans and Sylvari could swing the war to one of the combatant forces but the status quo seems to be the preferred option for them both.”

Urmila posed,“how long has this war lasted?”

“Over two hundred and fifty years, none of the races has the overall strength to end it but none has the inclination to offer peace. At the moment there is a cease fire of sorts here but it is broken regularly by all sides hoping for a minor advantage. There are also those with rights of passage, people who can journey into any of the territories with minimal risk of attack by forces loyal to the other sides. The system isn’t perfect, there are pirates throughout the systems who will attack any ship and try to take it. There are also dangers elsewhere, many worlds have not been fully conquered yet, a lot have aggressive local animals. All sides have attempted to arm locals from time to time too, not always successfully.”

Something had sparked Barbie’s interest, “can we gain free passage?” 

“Eventually, yes. But it would take more time than we have. It takes a long time to gain the prestige needed. None of you have a few years to complete that option.

“Moving on,” Vixen informed them, “each of you will be given new skills, mostly to do with your new weapons. Barbie’s includes specific ones to keep her droids in repair. There are also new healing skills. We have found that, as with the Charr Shamans, all magic users can combine their skills to enhance the output. Quite often the result is, as with the destruction of Ascalon, awe inspiring. Healers can keep large numbers of people alive and well by using carefully selected skills but they have mechanical aids and potions, now called medicines, that help them in their work. There are also substances that can enhance individual performance, stamina, sight, strength and intelligence. Before Barbie asks there are also repair kits for droids, also enhancement kits to increase their capabilities. All this will seem terribly new to you all, but you should quickly get used to it. There is a wiki you can consult in order to help you along, but if you need more information then feel free to ask.”

Night nodded. “So how did these Sylvari appear?”

“The tale is some soldier took a magical seed and planted it deep in a forest.” Vixen responded. “Over many years it grew into a tree and then bore fruit, the first of the Sylvari. They are produced, rather like the Kurzick Juggernauts, from their tree. More trees equals more new Sylvari. They first inhabited the forest but they eventually spread and came into contact with other races. They fought with the other races against the dragons, then later went on their own space ships to colonise other worlds. Having a magical source they are particularly adept at using magic, and very close to nature. They don’t mix too well with Charr, mainly because of the latter’s industrial nature.

“I should say that, at the moment, you are quite a way from home, we are travelling back to your and our homeworld. In the mean time I’ve assigned people to help you learn about what things are and how they work. I think that’s enough information for the moment.”

---

Whatever the place was, it was dark, wet and sticky. Painted quickly decided that there was also something really odd about it. “What is that getting up my nose? I feel really odd, sick.”

“I think your sense of smell works here,” Bogus responded, “when it doesn’t back in Guild Wars. If you could smell in the sewers below Kaineng it would be pretty much just like this. My clothes seem wet and I’d rather not be here.”

“Everyone’s clothes are,” Runa tried to stop retching, “it seems to be an environmental effect. I’m shorter than anyone else so it’s up to my neck. Would you prefer to be back up there with that animal?”

“Come to think of it, it might be preferable.” Bogus looked around. “Seems to be a north south corridor. So which way?”

“That one!” Molly pointed, “there’s some steps out of this yuk, if I had known the sewers were this bad I would have never gone into them. I wonder what the documentation says. Hmm... It seems people eat food, drink, digest, then... Now I feel ill.”

“What exactly does it say?”

Says you ‘excrete it from your body in the area contained in your pants.’ Then it goes into a device called a toilet and passes into the sewers to a treatment plant or straight into the ocean.”

“I am no going into sewers again!” Marie assured them. “I rather die.”

“First we have to get out of this one,” Painted climbed the steps, “and I think we’re taking half the stuff with us. There’s a door here?”

“Seems like a good idea,” Marie responded, “let us out of this stink.”

Painted turned then gaped, “Umm, I don’t want to worry anyone, but, I don’t know if anyone else has noticed you are all described as Corpse of, then your name.”

 “Err, that would be you too, Painted.” Bogus retorted. “What a shame, I thought you were starting to develop a proper attitude there.”

“Stop being bitching, Bogus,” Marie chided, “it not suit you. You dead, learn, live with it.”

“I do not feel dead.”

“Neither do I,” Runa agreed. “I think the stuff behind this has broken again. But, it might be useful to us. If we are dead, what is the point in anyone chasing us? Bogus, Painted, any chance we’ll get that door open?”

“We’re working on it,” Bogus complained, “it seems to be stuck and there’s no switch.”

“How about this one on the wall?” Molly pointed, then activated the pad. “Seems to work easily enough. That looks like Carl Amortsen!”

“That is Carl.” Bogus agreed. “Or was... Looks like the two bodies next to him are the other reinforcements.”

“What are we going to do?” Painted asked, “he’s the one that’s supposed to lead us to where we are going.”

“Marie, you are leading,” Molly said, “try adding him to the group. Yes, I know he’s dead, try it anyway. Good, that worked, now I ignore the fact he’s obviously dead and heal.

“Urrgh,” Carl moaned. “%^&£! That lizard was big.”

“At least you again alive.” Marie responded. “Sort of.”

“You’re all dead.”

 “Yes, well, it could be worse. It seems the software got it wrong again for some reason.” Runa pointed, “How about the other two? Can you add them?”

“No, It not work.” Marie shook her head. “It seems I add only Carl.”

“One is better than none,” Painted pointed out, “and at least we got the real person and not the two zombie henchmen from hell. Carl, do you remember what happened?”

“I was waiting for you, in the next room, that way. Then this big lizard came in and decided we were lunch. At least I have all the stuff here still.”

“For the moment, I would rest,” Molly ordered, it certainly wasn’t a request, or advice. “Healing seems to be a little delayed here compared to the Guild Wars world.”

“It’s not the only thing,” Carl pointed out, “magic may not work quite the same. I can create minions but they inevitably suffer from an environmental effect which instantly frees them from their creator’s control. Same if I try taking minions over. It seems that most of the dead things here are infected by some form of semi-magical disease which prevents them from being controlled. Otherwise it’s not much different, healing does work slower, it takes time to cause effect, unlike our world. Damage magic works instantly though, fire seems to work as normal, and there’s some items that might be useful. There are explosive barrels scattered around, cause them enough damage and they will blow up. Be careful though, they will damage anyone near them, not just the enemy. They aren’t the same as powder kegs.

“Then there are the weapons, here swords aren’t used much, nor is armor. The main weapons used are called guns, they work rather like bows but are different. I suppose I’d better tell you about those before I give you them, don’t want you shooting yourselves. Two kinds of gun one handed guns, we’ll call them pistols, and two handed. Pistols are small and fairly easy to use, you need to ‘reload’ them every so often but it’s infinite fire. Two handed guns are bigger. We can sort some instructions for those out if we get any. What I’ve got for you are pistols, not that powerful but you can use your wands and staffs too. As you go along new weapons might become available as drops, which you can change to if you want. There’s limited ammunition in this game, although you could buy more from traders, so try and use your old weapons if you can.”

Carl equipped a weapon. “This is a pistol, you load it like this, once loaded it can be fired at a suitable target, or just nothing at all. It makes quite a bang, so I won’t show you that for the moment. I don’t want that lizard coming back. Unlike your old staffs and wands these don’t automatically aim for you, that you have to do yourself. You can also shoot members of your own party, so watch out where you are firing.”

Molly examined him again. “How are you feeling now?”

“Better, let’s move, just in case that monster decides to come back again.”

---

Embeth looked down at the body, and separate head, some distance away Gwen sat crying. “Dirk, couldn’t you do anything to stop them?”

“I tried my best, you know how pig headed Gwens and Kosss tend to be.” Dirk Star responded sullenly. “One second they were just arguing, as they always tend to do, Koss did his dance bit, then Gwen threatened to cut his head off.”

“At which point Koss said, ‘not if I do it first!’” Daia supplied. “I saw and heard it all through Azira. The effect was a bit messy though.”

“Which only begs the question,” Night Stargazer put in, “Why would a Koss do... this? They aren’t real people, they are NPCs. There is no real reason for him to be arguing with Gwen either, unless it’s some form of fault with them.”

“Plenty has gone wrong with things since the big fault developed.” Rand responded. “It’s not like things haven’t gone wrong before.”

“Have you tried rezing him?” Night Stargazer asked. “I mean it’s could work now. Gwen, do be quiet dear.”

“I’ve tried, no luck.” Dirk shook his head. “I mean it’s not like Gwen hasn’t had arguments before, but nothing like this has happened.”

“We had better move.” Daia pointed towards Kaineng Centre.” Someone has opened a rift and there’s insects pouring through. Get Gwen on her feet, she won’t be any use for a while but we have to take her with us.”

“Dirk, what happened to the city?” Lady Moonsinger asked while pulling Gwen to her feet. “You need to sort yourself out, or you will be no use to anyone. Don’t mumble, and there’s nothing you can do about Koss now, he’s gone, you have to think about those still alive.”

“I don’t exactly know.” Dirk still seemed rattled. “One second we were walking into the city, everything was perfect, the next the whole place went up. There was a huge explosion near Kaineng Centre, buildings simply collapsed or burst into flames. Most people were already missing here too, the rest were either killed or fled into the countryside. People have been going past for the last twenty minutes, usually in singles or pairs.”

“How long ago was this explosion?” Lady Moonsinger inquired, indicating a direction. “We can talk while we walk.”

“About thirty minutes. No more than that. I was delayed getting here or I’d have been in the middle.”

“Which means we would have been too, we were just a couple of minutes late through the gate.” Lady Moonsinger mused. “Had we been a little earlier then it’s probable that all of us would have been killed. Which also seems to mean someone we know is trying to kill us.”

“As if we don’t have enough enemies on the other side,” Rand Al Thorazine stated with conviction. “I can see me wanting to kill someone before this is finished, and I don’t include the Gwen in that.”

--- 

Barbie looked out of the window, except it wasn’t a window, according to Vixen it was a screen that took pictures from an external device called a camera and displayed them in something called real time. Then again she was sure that Serious Love would have pointed out the screen wasn’t real either, it was an image created by a computer. All this information was doing her head in and she wasn’t any closer to understanding any of it.

Which brought her back to the stack of absinthe that the Minions had somehow ‘found’. Then again, they looked just like the stack she’d stored in the Guild Hall’s drinks cabinet. There was no way to prove that it was the same, but she was damn certain that it was. That didn’t really matter though, better have it here than back there where it was unobtainable.

Which brought her to the second issue. The minions, in their own strange way were dancing, although they seemed to be able to do multiple styles without using tonics. They freely switched from the male Warrior dance to the female Necromancer and then on to the male Ranger one. There was quite a bit of Assassin in there too, which seemed to fit them as droids, although she didn’t seem to know why. Every time she tried to dance she ended up doing the female Necromancer dance and hadn’t managed to change it as yet.

At least that activity might keep them out of trouble for a while. The screen showed a lot of stars with none of them moving very quickly at all. The ship was in system heading for a tiny dot that was supposedly her homeworld, the place where Guild Wars was set. It was also supposed to be travelling at over ten thousand kilometres a second, which seemed slower than a dead siege turtle to her. For some reason speeds in space seemed completely different to that used on a planet. There you either walked, slowly to keep pace with the NPCs, Ran to get where you were supposed to be, sprinted, when necessary or mapped instantly. If you excluded mapping it took time to get anywhere, but you could tell you were moving, trees, buildings and hills went past in the other direction. Out here there was nothing to relate your progress to and the distances you had to travel were so huge that it hardly mattered how fast you went.

Which gave her the question. “Vixen, why can’t we just map to the planet?”

“Mapping seems to have a maximum set distance and you also need to have been to a city before you can map there.” Vixen explained. “The Towns and outposts you knew don’t exist in this game. Ascalon was taken by the Charr and utterly Destroyed. Lion’s Arch sank beneath the sea when Orr rose again. Kaineng City was destroyed not long after the victory against Shiro and a new city was built. The Jade sea finally melted a few years after that and the Echovald Forest became real trees again. That didn’t help much when the Charr invaded and comprehensively trashed the whole area. Really it was the Emperor’s own fault, he should have sent aid to Ascalon and kept them going when asked but I guess Cantha had it’s own problems dealing with the aftermath to Shiro. Just when they were sorting things out the elder dragons arrived.”

“So how long will it take us to reach the planet?”

“At least another two days,” Vixen shrugged. “That’s if you are lucky.”

“I don’t really know why we are going there,” Barbie mused, “I mean it’s not like we’ve really that much to do in Guild Wars. I’m sure we could be doing something much more significant elsewhere. It’s like nobody trusts us, even our own side.”

“OK, I guess I will then, but keep your mouth shut about it.” Vixen warned. “Trust nobody, not Hodes, not even Serious. You can’t tell who is really sending you the messages so it’s best to assume the information might be altered by someone else, or completely fabricated. Even if it is sent by the person it says, and hasn’t been altered, it might be written specifically to mislead you or someone else who might get the information.

Truth is, I don’t think you really need to go to our home world, but those were the orders we were given. I’m tending to be suspicious of everything, which is why we aren’t reducing speed as we approach, we’re increasing it.”

“What’s that?” Barbie asked as the siren went off.

“A warning...” Vixen replied altering the picture on the screen to a map. “Something I was hoping wasn’t going to happen. I’d really have liked to have been proven wrong this time. An Asuran fleet just entered the system and it makes ours look like a bunch of tin buckets armed with peashooters. Those things could take us to bits in minutes if they get close. Had we been on the ‘official course’ they would now be nearly on top of us, within attack range at least, and we wouldn’t be able to jump out again. Their arrival confirms it, someone really wants you dead.”

“You sure of that?”

“They arrived exactly in the right place where, had we been where we should have been, would have meant us all dead. No hope of escape or fighting our way out. There isn’t a chance in hell of them arriving there by accident. Luckily we aren’t using the ‘official course’ and we’ll jump out of system in four hours. All we have to decide on is where to. I think your friends will need to be in on that decision. I suggest you get your people in here.”

A few minutes later all of the team were together, all of them concerned and nervous. They listened to Vixen explaining the situation then Maria asked, “what are the options we have?”

“Simply put we can try to go around and eventually reach homeworld, that is risky as but possible, I suppose. We can go to somewhere ‘safe and secure’, which means putting our selves in a hole and hoping they don’t find us and drop a bomb in to keep us company. Third alternative is we can go completely off the map, do something almost random, which nobody is expecting. As I’ve said, the fleet will jump in under 4 hours to a new location. The Asurans can’t catch us, their drives are empty and recharging and it would take them fourty hours just to get here from where they are.

“Once we have jumped we can then jump again in twelve hours. We could eventually go almost anywhere in the universe, but I know where there’s a rift that leads directly to the insects home planet. One ship can leave the fleet, go there, and put a group down to see what they might find. OK, it might be a dead end, literally, but there might be something there that’s important. If there wasn’t anything important there, why would it be there? I know what I want to do, go and give Bill a broken nose, but it ain’t possible.  Where we go should be your choice too though, and not just mine.”

---

There was ash and burnt wood everywhere, although the system still didn’t allow them to walk across areas where the buildings had been, then again it hadn’t rained in Cantha for a very long time either. Now it was raining, a slow and persistent drizzle that sapped people’s resolve to keep going. Here and there burnt timbers lay over the streets. Daia had searched ahead using her pet, finding that the easiest route south was still the old coastal route just inland of the docks. Except the docks didn’t exist here anymore, the wooden structures that had been here for as long as any of them could remember were just stumps sticking out of the water. The water itself was covered with broken and splintered wood, ripped from the buildings during the explosion that had caused all the damage they were witnessing.

A few Afflicted wandered about or stood silently, as if they were too shocked to comprehend the damage. Most of them would have been underground and only came up after the incident, which would have protected them from the blast and heat. There were now no citizens, guards or soldiers to stop them from spreading out, but no source of new bodies for them to expand their numbers either. It didn’t matter if Shiro was alive, dead or both, he was certainly still a threat. His army lacked direction for the moment but they could still kill the unprepared. Those in the Palace had been exterminated by the blast, which left the way clear for the invading insects to eventually take over.

The Characters walked through another pile of debris on the road, rather than over it. The system still hadn’t caught up with reality and probably never would. The advantage they had was heightened by Daia being able to see ahead through her pet and warn them of enemies in their way. It wasn’t perfect but usually good enough, one group had erupted out of a pile of debris and attacked at close range but had been destroyed before doing any damage.

The Market place was, despite being full of roof tiles and burnt, shattered wood, easily traversed. It had never been much of a location, with few people, and fewer NPCs selling there but now it was empty, a ghost of its former self. The rain was easily enough to damp down the burning embers and ash so that the occasional light breeze didn’t stir anything up. It was now, like the rest of the city, a place for ghosts and the few surviving Afflicted to inhabit.

“You sure that the message is from Serious?” Rand asked. “I mean it would take us well off our intended path and Shining Jea Island is an ideal trap. If they get hold of Seitung Harbour, and I’ve no doubts that they will, we will be trapped there with no way out.”

“It is written in Serious’ journal,” Lady Moonsinger pointed out. “It says we need to go and investigate some issues there. To be honest, I’m suspicious too. What if someone else has got access to the journal and wrote it in to mislead us? But it might be Serious giving us a poke in the right direction.”

“The insects are spreading out rapidly behind us.” Daia pointed out. “I haven’t seen any of their flying insects yet but that may only need time. I think they need as many reinforcements in the Ring of Fire islands as they can get. That seems to be indicated here too, their numbers are lower than they used against us there, group sizes much smaller. Mostly that will be so they can spread out and search faster. They also seem to be taking on all of the surviving Afflicted, although those aren’t able to put up much of a fight anymore.”

“The issue is the same,” Embeth pointed out, “we either believe this message and put ourselves in vastly increased danger or we keep going south. Our original target is to the south so I vote we go there.”

“I agree with that,” Rand said, “best keep to the plan if we can.”

Daia nodded in agreement. “We have little choice in that.”

“I would normally agree too,” Night accepted, “but in this situation I think one of us should go and check out the island issue. A single person might not be noticed and could hide themselves. I’ll go and do it.”

“You would,” Embeth Agreed, “if you were not a major part of our offensive firepower. Daia is the eyes of the party and allows you to see ahead through Azira. Lady Moonsinger is the healer, Rand can tank, Dirk can use hexes effectively or even heal if needed. The Gwen isn’t going to be any help, although she might be able to cast some hexes and interrupts, those are better used in a party. That leaves me, I can look after myself reasonably well and, of all of us except perhaps Daia, have the best chance of survival going solo.”

“But I was the one who thought of it,” Night responded plaintively, “I should take the risk.”

“Sometimes the one who thinks of a thing and the one who does it are, by necessity, two entirely different people. Just remember that stupid Lion’s Arch battle we all participated in, once. The person who thought that up was a complete loony toons. Bartholos should have been put in front of a firing squad of archers and repeatedly killed and resurrected until he learned the lesson - dying is not fun. Opening the gates and allowing a vastly superior enemy army to just walk in was extremely stupid.”

“Do you know what happened to him?” Rand asked humorously. “I was told that White Mantle remnants went and killed him a few months later.”

“If they did they at least benefited Kryta in one way.” Embeth laughed. “Just a shame they didn’t do it earlier. I guess we had better not put this off any longer. You need to go south and I’ve got to check out that trap. I’ll keep in touch.”

“If we don’t hear from you,” Rand waved his axe as the assassin backed away, “we won’t send anyone to find out what happened. Good luck.”

---

The passages were mostly short and claustrophobic. Doors led off on each side into other passages or rooms from which attackers could spring onto the team with little or no warning. Then there was the lighting issue, some passages were fairly well lit, others were dim and dark. Then some lights flickered, providing intermittent vision and a few didn’t have any light at all. The big surprise was that the radar didn’t detect enemies, even if they could see them. That allowed the inhabitants to get very close before they launched surprise attacks.

The passage was quiet, dark and a little longer than the average, that didn’t stop it bending twice before the end, giving ideal opportunities for ambushers to jump on them. Nothing happened as they edged forward then two side doors opened and groups of enemies hit both sides of the party simultaneously, just a few metres away from the passage’s end door. Warriors clubbed at them while assassin like enemies used razor sharp claws to strike. The surprise meant the enemies were on them before the party could recover, luckily Runa’s spirits formed a wall, taking damage while allowing them to retreat. Marie cast mesmer damaging and interrupt skills on them as fast as she could. The rest did what they could to support the withdrawal while Molly tried to keep up with healing people.

A few moments later and it was all over, the foes were dead but it had been close Bogus was unconscious again but having been hit by warriors from both sides that just made him lucky, he could have been killed. Molly examined him, even with the healing she had used it would take time for him to recover. This was a new condition for her, someone being unable to react or talk to the others in the party, but could not be removed by the normal skills she had for that purpose, it just had to run it’s course.

Finally she left him alone and examined the bodies of their assailants. “These are rather like the Afflicted,” she observed, “but with weapons built into their bodies. The warriors have two clubs that are modified versions of hands. The assassins have a pair of massive claws which seem to be their middle fingers. It looks a lot like Shiro’s work but isn’t the same. Carl, what exactly happened here?”

“The storyline goes that a laboratory was working on human enhancement options. Usual equation, stronger plus tougher equals better. Something went wrong and people ended up deformed. Most died and came back to life as horrific monsters. To end the game you have to find out what went wrong, kill all the undead champions, and fix the problems. At least as close as you can.”

Painted nodded, “and Bogus’ skills?”

“I’ve no idea, they seem to be for some kind of spy, although we don’t have any such character profession in this game. They do not seem appropriate for killing monsters. They may be from somewhere else entirely, I don’t know.”

“Bogus’ skills should eventually change again of their own accord,” Runa pointed out. “How long it’s going to take, I’ve no idea, but it has happened before.”

“I not being able change my secondary profession,” Marie pointed out. “That not happen before. Lots of new things happenings, az if, maybe someone wanted kill us?”

“It does look like someone doesn’t want us to get to where we are going,” Molly agreed, still examining the bodies, “but speculating who won’t get us any answers. It could be the insects, but it could equally well be someone else, or just random effects from instability. Unless we have access to an expert we can trust, and I don’t trust many people at the moment, I don’t think we can answer that question.”

Bogus groaned, “what happened?”

“You were hit again,” Painted explained. “Seems they regard you as target one, despite your useless skills.”

“Or because of zem?” Marie suggested. “There could be uses here we not know?”

Runa reappeared from the second side door. “There’s four weapons in there in a rack, Carl said they were assault rifles. They would greatly increase our firepower but I don’t know how to get them, they seem locked in place. Then there is the door at the end of the passage. The lock has been intentionally broken, so we can’t go through.”

Bogus got up and walked through the door. “I think I can help there. Gun racks, hmm, think a pick lock skill might work?”

The rack clicked and released the weapons. Bogus picked up one, Runa, Painted and Marielle each got one of the other three. “These weapons have to be reloaded from clips you pick up, weapons you find or ammunition dumps,” Amortsen warned, “if you run out then you won’t be able to use the weapon. Some others have a reserve energy supply that regenerates over time, so use those in preference, unless you are topped up.”

Bogus looked around the rooms, trying to find anything that would help. “Ammunition dumps?”

“They are reasonably obvious when you find one. A single dump can supply you for exploring a big area, you just go back and refill your supplies when they get low. Effectively the ammunition stored there is infinite but they also seem to attract large groups of enemies that respawn over time. Means if you get back and don’t have enough ammunition, or people, it can end up being nasty. There have been many party wipes from people running out of ammunition at a dump.”

“OK,” Bogus grabbed a piece of heavy equipment and pulled it away from the wall. “Hidden air vent, now to get down there and crawl through. Painted, stop staring at my ass, I know I look female but I’m a bloke and I’ll still give you a good kicking. Well at least I would if I could work out how.”

Bogus vanished into the square tube, it ran straight east,through the wall, then turned south. A ladder at the end enabled him to climb up into another section of passage which led west. He was used to large spiders and shot the ones here with the pistol easily enough. Finally he arrived at another grille in the ceiling of a room. The two warriors here were no threat for someone with the height advantage he had, they just couldn’t reach him and died fairly quickly. Dropping through he found two desks. He rummaged through them and found some food packs, which he stored in his inventory. There was also a locked door, which he managed to pick.

Checking carefully that allowed him out into the passage, where he nearly walked into a set of laser trip bombs. Although he had checked for enemies before stepping out the bombs were set close to the ground and small. Walking the opposite way along the passage meant he was out of damage range before he set the devices off with his pistol. The bombs blew the door completely off, which negated the broken lock issue well enough, at least in his opinion.

Finally he sauntered through the now door-less doorway. “There you go, problem solved.”

“You idiot!” Molly fumed. “That door nearly killed us! If we hadn’t been checking the side rooms again we would have been directly in it’s path. Warn us next time!”

“Meh, you’re all fine. Come on, we’ve got places to visit and things to do. Looks like there’s a really big room up ahead.”

“That’s the train station,” Carl offered, “vehicles carry us around from area to area. They usually work well enough but in some places the system breaks down, it’s then one way only.”

“Does this happen often?” Marie queried.

“No, but where it does you can guarantee it will happen every time you use it. This is one place that happens, but it’s unavoidable if you want to get to the next area, the alternative is walking the tracks, a very dangerous option that often leads to people dying. There’s quite a few warrior types here and you start to get enemies with guns too, so be careful. Go slowly and check for bombs before you advance. You can often pull them onto explosives, doing them a lot of damage to them in the process.”

---

“What happened?” Lady Moonisnger asked, waving her  hand in front of the Gwen.

“How can I help?” Gwen responded in a strange, not quite there, tone.

“I don’t know,” Daia answered Lady Moonsinger, “she was talking about strange boards with something on them. She used some really strange words, then stood up straight, as if she had been surprised, and then went like this. It looks like the first time I saw one, way back in the Hall of Monuments at the Eye of the North”

“Looks the same to me too,” Embeth added, “it’s as if she’s been wiped clean, not experienced anything.”

“Could she have done it to herself? Daia asked, “I know it’s not very likely but she has been very upset recently.”

“I don’t think that is possible,” Dirk observed, “I have never seen this happen before. I think it might be that she was a real person behind the character, she certainly acted that way, and, somehow, the real person has been removed. Can you remember some of the strange words she used?” 

“Will that help?”

“It might do, one of them might be familiar to someone else.”

“Umm,” Daia considered, “I think one of them was cee-pee-ewe or something? She also mentioned memory, capacitors and processor? System checking... Something about errors found too.”

“Sounds very much like some of the things that Serious Love tried to explain to me in purgatory,” Rand noted. “CPU, Central Processing Unit. It might be that she was remembering something of her real self. If so it looks like she’s been gotten at, maybe killed by the other side.”

“Or she might have just gone screwy.” Night Stargazer looked into the Gwens face, who ignored her and continued smiling stupidly.“Can we get her back?”

“I, I just don’t know.” Lady Moonsinger concluded. “I mean it’s nothing we have run up against before. One second, she’s flickering, like Serious did?”

The Gwen vanished.

“I suppose that answers one question,” Dirk said, “and creates a few more. She’s not in Grenth’s ownership, she just vanished totally. If the enemy can do this to her then what about the rest of us? What chance do we have?”

“Not very much, I suppose.” Rand waved his hand through the space where the Gwen’s head had been. “We still go on. We don’t have any other choice but to try.”

---

Barbie looked at the screen on which the dry world of the insects was pictured. It was one place where cold blooded creatures could possibly develop intelligence. A hot, mostly desert world with a high carbon dioxide atmosphere and relatively little water. Less than half of the planet’s surface was liquid, which meant the single huge super continent was mostly dry, barren sand. The small sun, having a distinct red cast, made quite a difference to the appearance of the planet too.

Which made very little difference in the bigger picture, they still had to get there. Then there was the ship they had arrived on, it was heading out of system at the highest possible acceleration it could get out of it’s engines, pursued by a group of Asuran ships that were intent on its destruction.

Once the reception force had became known they had moved into a shuttle and separated as fast as possible. The small cross section of the shuttle meant it was much harder to detect, and, without the engines belching heat it was nearly invisible. The ship had also dropped a number of decoys which headed off in different directions.

The downside was it would take longer to reach the surface. There was also an awful lot of space to hide such a small ship in but as soon as they started to land the ship would glow.

Barbie was sure that it wasn’t going to get any better than this and it was definitely going to get worse on the planet. That didn’t suit human occupation at all. Her first option was to destroy the whole place with magic, not exactly the most practical option but it would have got it over and done with. The local force of Asurans inevitably made that option improbable.

To destroy a planet you would need a very big explosion, which needed a ship, and at present the only friendly one was leaving without them. She glanced back, who could she trust? Her companions? Her minions? Could she even trust herself? If the world as she knew it really was this way then it would be possible for enemies who knew how to work the system to listen in or spy on anyone. It was quite possible that all of them were walking information centres for the enemy, whoever the enemy were.

Even that wasn’t entirely certain. Admittedly she didn’t know of anyone who had been brutally murdered, yet, but if they could use someone to spy on them why not take them over completely and get it over with? For that matter it should have been fairly easy to track their ship down, no matter how small and stealthy it was, and kill them all before they reached the planet. Which perhaps meant that it wasn’t the worst case scenario after all, or perhaps they were just waiting for them to arrive?

Then again the others had to have similar issues with it all, although she wasn’t sure how her minions would think that way. For some reason even though they looked like droids, smelt like droids and felt like droids they were still minions to her. They had danced together, sang together, drank together and fought together, which put them on the same footing as her closest friends. They hadn’t died together yet, but the minions previous selves had died to provide the corpses needed to create them. That might not really count though.

There was also the question, was she being paranoid? The shuttle was small enough to be slightly claustrophobic too. Whatever was going to happen she could hardly wait to get on to the planet and out of this thing.

“The ship has just jumped from the system.” Vixen’s words pulled her back to reality. “Their ships have assumed a standard search pattern, but with them way out there the should be no chance of them detecting us at all. We still have a long way to the planet.”

“Isn’t there a way we can speed this up?” Kara almost sulked, “I mean Rocky here isn’t going to be getting much exercise until we get there and he needs to keep flying.”

“That depends on if any other ship in the area has real live crew on board, or if such a ship enters the system. We can speed up time temporarily by using a multiplier, that will let the computers run through things at high speed.”

“It will also confirm if those Asuran ships have live crew on board,” Night Stargazer pointed out. “Even if they do there is a fair chance they will want to speed things up too so if we don’t and they do it will be obvious to them that someone else is here and they will start searching for us.”

“Seems to be a win-win situation for us then,” Barbie confirmed. “Wouldn’t they do that as soon as they can? I mean they might have already done it.”

“True, but there is always a delay while the system checks if there are other ships anyway,” Vixen said. “That means up to ten minutes before it starts. Which should also mean we are just about in time.”

Barbie noticed very little difference, except for the clock, which spun out numbers. “Seems to be working. At least we won’t grow old and die before getting there.”

---

Embeth examined his journal, it didn’t have much in it. Somehow the man handling transport to Shining Jea island was still there, and he had arrived in Seitung Harbour. Surprisingly the traders were all there too, but none of them responded to him when he tried activating them. That changed on the Saoshang Trail, the mantids had been there and attacked him on sight. Fortunately they were all low level and dealing with them was never going to be a problem.

Which got him to Linnok Courtyard, a tiny exploreable just outside of Shining Jea Monastery. Both Master Togo and Guard Tsukaro were present but neither were talking, at least not to him. Nobody else seemed to move and neither had anything else, it was as if the whole area, except for him, had been frozen in time.

He didn’t expect anything different as he stepped through the portal into the main monastery area, and it was almost the same, except for one character, as frozen in time as the rest. Fourty Two, a male elementalist with grey hair and elite Kurzick armor that looked as if it was dyed black, was stuck in mid jump. It’s White Rabbit minipet sat beside it, equally unmoving and immovable. Then there was the sky, it was definitely redder in the west, which he was going towards.

The exit was fairly easy to find, he had been there so often in the past that he had to know that and stepping through brought him to a different place by far.

Sunqua Vale wasn’t the worst location he had ever been to, in fact it was one of the most pleasant. Most of the creatures in the southern half would only defend themselves if attacked and the rest were also low level and easy to defeat. Nothing living here would have been a threat to him. The sky around the valley was blue but quickly changed to red then orange, then yellow in the middle, directly above something he sort of remembered seeing before but could not place. It looked like some huge warrior had taken his hammer and smashed reality. Flakes of multi-coloured light and dark twirled and rotated around the huge centre where a brilliant light source pulsed.

The really odd thing was that all the creatures, animals and people were gathered in as far as he could tell a perfect circle around the light. Tigers, Kappas, Nagas, Crimson Skull, even the yetis and Sensali, who would normally fight each other to their mutual death, were gathered together.

Embeth made sure he noted it all down, including that vibration it seemed to emit, then closed the Journal and walked down. None of them even bothered even to look at him, let alone attack. Although it was obvious they could move, unlike the ones elsewhere on the island they all seemed to accept the presence of each other. He walked forwards, feeling strangely confident all the way up to the light, then stretched out his hand.

For a few seconds nothing happened, then the Sensali and yetis attacked everything they could reach.

---

For the others in Embeth’s group there had been some minor fights getting to the exit from the city. Shenzun Tunnels had been where it became bad, many foes had stopped there on their way out of the city and getting through was a nightmare. Fortunately there had been no fatalities on the way and now they were in Maatu Keep. The storage worked, for once, and the Merchant sold them new identification and salvage kits. Fully prepared again they had exited into Pongmei Valley and hadn’t got very far towards Boreas before stopping.

“Are you sure?” Daia asked. “I mean he was with us not so long ago, the Achaachi insects couldn’t have caught up with him that fast.”

“He vanished from my friends list, check yours.” Night responded. “I don’t know what’s happened but it’s also worth reading his journal. There was this glowing thing and then nothing. No more entries.”

“He might be dead or just missing,” Rand ventured, “either way we aren’t going to be doing much good staying here.”

“That may be so,” Lady Moonsinger retorted, “but we are one person down. I know that there isn’t much that can be done about it from here but can we get anyone else to investigate?”

“We could send a message to the other teams, and possibly Bill Hodes?” Daia pointed out, “but that wouldn’t really get us any further forward and might endanger them if the person is able to track messages. We’re better off making a note in our journals that he’s missing. Hopefully, if the Achaachi get told about it they will still have to search for him. I know that sounds a bit rough but we need every distraction we can get to keep them off our tails. Can anyone else feel the ground vibrating?”

“Yes,” Rand replied, staggering while trying to stay upright, “I don’t think any of us could miss that.” The warrior was the last one thrown to the ground as the land shuddered. Finally they managed to rise to their feet. “I don’t think anyone could miss that either.”

The team looked unhappily at the twenty-five metre cliff face that had suddenly appeared to the south and east, ripping the land apart and cutting their route to either Boreas Seabed or Tanglewood Copse off.

Dirk gulped, then spoke very slowly, “that... looks... bad...”

Daia nodded in agreement, “that looks very bad. The insects can’t be that far behind us and I don’t see the keep stopping them now. The place is ruins.”

That may be so,” Dirk offered, “but you can all simply change secondary professions. If we quickly return to the keep it shouldn’t delay us that long.”

“And then?” Rand asked.

“And then we pray for an easy target to kill up on top of that cliff.” Dirk pointed. “Without one we aren’t going to get very far.”

---

The train had done it’s job, travelling along the rails which then collapsed, as it always did, leaving them at the lower point. None of them were injured, but that was how the event was set to happen. The massed fires burning in the lower station had been going for some time, and would probably continue for all eternity.

That just left the path forward, which was blocked by a group of enemies who looked a little like the Afflicted. Then they were not anywhere near the same, some had heavy weapons, multi-barreled machine guns and rocket launchers. An ambient rat scurried across the floor then vanished in a hail of massive overkill.

“These definitely aren’t supposed to be here,” Carl warned. “There shouldn’t be any enemies in this station.”

“They are moving off, that way.” Painted observed. “It might still be ok.”

“If it wasn’t for the fact we are going that way too,” Carl countered.

“We can hide in here for the moment,” Bogus pointed to an office, “hopefully we might find some alternative option than taking that lot on. Somehow I don’t like the idea of trying to go up against what they have with what we do.”

The office was large enough for several desks, one of which still had a computer sitting on it. Bogus activated the thing and waited while it started up, then began clicking and typing in instructions.

Painted looked over the other’s shoulder, “you sure you know what you are doing with that?”

“No,” Bogus shifted the mouse and clicked through to a new screen, “but I’m fairly sure I’m doing the right thing. That mob went along this route, through the station and out. By going down here and through the sewers again we can reach this manhole access pipe and get out that way. It will take a little longer but we will avoid being seen.”

“Sewer?” Marie questioned. “Again? Non! There must be another, I would rather fight those than go back to sewer.”

“Well, we could go down this alternate route,” Bogus indicated. “We should be able to manage overtaking them by using running skills but it will be tight, and there is a fair chance they will spot us.”

“We might be able to use that to our advantage,” Molly offered, “trap the area and set up some Ritualist spirits. By the time they work out what is happening we should be clear and it will take them some effort to pursue us, even if they do find out which way we went.”

“That isn’t too difficult,” Carl shrugged, “as there is only really one way. There might be several routes but they are parallel, going the same way but different. You can go forward, backward but you always end up in the same places.”

“The only way we can reasonably go here is forwards,” Molly pointed out. “How big is this place?”

“It goes on for miles, mostly high energy research. There are two huge power stations to make everything work but not everything can work at the same time. Different sections are linked through conduits for services, transport or paths on the surface. Some of the quests are related to fixing the power stations and shutting down equipment.”

“We had better move faster as we talk,” Bogus pointed towards a door visible through a window, “or they will beat us to the other end. This area isn’t much used so expect bugs and things.”

Marie distributed some Green Rock Candy, which would speed them up quite a bit before they started, and wasn’t dependant on repeated shouts. The latter would also help them speed up but they could not keep it up all the time.

Breaking the window was easy enough, if a bit messy, and a lot easier than clearing the area of ceiling that had fallen. The door was unlocked and led to a stair well down which water dripped. The light died for a while then brightened again for a few seconds before going out again. It gave them just enough time to get their bearings so they could move, which wasn’t too difficult anyway as they were going up the stairs. Three floors up and Bogus led them through another pair of fire doors into a passage which ended in another roof collapse. The last door on the left led into a tight passage. “This is a main power conduit,” Bogus supplied, pointing to the huge curved cables mounted on one wall. We should almost get the whole way by using this.”

The few giant beetles, spiders and rats were no match for any of them, although they had to slow in order to fire accurately. The only real problem came when they were almost past it, a relatively small white ant crawled out from between two of the cables and, despite Carl’s shout, was promptly killed. Barely thirty centimetres long the insect carcass immediately began to smell, other ants appeared and the party went back to running. The ants were not difficult to kill, the problem was sheer numbers, and they were very fast movers. Eventually Runa put up her spirits and painted cast firestorm on the ant nearest to them. That combination gave them sufficient time to escape and break aggro.

Bogus finally pointed to an alcove with a vertical set of steps running down. Carl dropped down and checked the passage below. The rest of them had to ‘use’ the stairs and ended up taking some time to appear at the bottom. The system was intended to be flexible but could only go so far when presented with characters from different games with almost completely incompatible skills. This new passage was almost without any light, just the few red emergency bulbs glowed.

Bogus checked both ways then led them south, the passage was short and ended in a door that was half glass at the top. Looking through was easy enough but it didn’t convince Bogus it was safe. “We are in real trouble.”

Molly wasn’t exactly impressed, really she would have preferred to kill every red dot going and didn’t like the idea of leaving so many behind them. The fact that the ants would keep re-spawning forever didn’t deter that. Finally she asked, “what do you mean?”

“I mean someone else has got here first. They knew what we were going to try to do and beat us to it. One second.” Bogus pulled out a little sealed paper tube and ripped the ends off before placing it to the large keyhole in the door, he then blew through it. Tiny particles of dust shot out of the tube and expanded into a cloud, spreading out. Here and there they glinted in thin red light beams. “Laser activated bombs, Bogus finally explained, we open this door and everything will go off in there. Looks like there is forty bombs and, perhaps, a hundred or more drums. That lot going off would bring the ceiling down and seal the passage off completely. They aren’t bothered about collateral damage, providing we all end up dead. Almost one hundred and fifty instant hits, I doubt if even Molly could heal us through that!”

“So, if we can’t go forwards,” Molly really did sound mad, “what now?”

“Umm,” Bogus pointed to a hatch in the floor, “sewers? It’s only a short distance and the next exit is outside, just a little way past that room.”

Molly snorted but used the hatch to open it, then the ladder underneath. The rest of them followed as quickly as they could. They were now in a fairly thin pipe on a walkway over the actual fluid. The passage was barely wide enough for single file travel but nothing happened and they used the second ladder to get back to the surface.

They appeared in a small grassy area, enclosed in vertical rock walls, and bathed in sunshine from a blue sky. 

Behind them was the building where the booby trapped passage led. “We are now going that way.” Bogus pointed to a passage to their south. “Hopefully, if we get out of here fast enough, those nasties won’t catch us. Then again they were moving at quite some speed. They might over take us.”

“Perhaps, I make distraction?” Marie sounded confident. Her horse appeared, changed to a Lightning Drake, then a Siege Devourer. “That should make things interesting for them, no? A wild animal, what is it doing here?”

“Can it be traced back to you?”

“I think not, it is same as any Charr Siege Devourer, although it is placid that not last long. Come on.”

---

The first infected soldiers reached the door, the limit of their pre-programmed route. Not expecting anything to happen they then turned back. The plan had been they wouldn’t have to fight, just walk back and forth, encouraging any adventurers who might appear to use the alternate route. That also meant their programming was simple, follow the path, kill anything that moved but wasn’t your side. A few friendly fire deaths didn’t matter.

The actions of the Siege Devourer definitely surprised them, as did the arrival of it’s first two charges, which shattered the door they were beside and knocked them all down, Enraged they got back up and began firing, at anything and everything.

The devourer reloaded and fired again. Just a few seconds into the action it was already being hit by a hail of gunfire and suffering massive damage. It died before it could reload a second time.

The second pair of charges didn’t stop just because the devourer was dead. Their path arced down, arrived and they exploded. They could have blown the door to the storage room open. They would have probably set off the bombs and barrels in there too. Except their arrival was a second too late, the explosive missiles from the foes had already done so. A large mushroom cloud expanded impressively upwards into the sky.

---

The planet had, visually at least, remained very small then suddenly got a lot bigger. Vixen explained it was something to do with perspective but Barbie wasn’t entirely convinced, it might be correct but did that make it right?

The Asuran ships had stayed out there for quite a while before returning to their patrol route, which was now heading back in, towards the planet, but a long way from the shuttle, which was entering the atmosphere.

“We are going a little bit fast for normal re-entry into atmosphere,” Vixen explained as vibrations shook the room and pressed them firmly to the floor, “so the outer shell of the shuttle will get hotter than normal. That won’t make much difference as the shuttle can stand very high external temperatures without issue.”

“So what would make an ‘issue’ in this?” Barbie asked pointedly.

“So far there seems to be three probable outcomes in a covert shuttle arrival on a planet, either nothing happens and the shuttle just lands, the shuttle is fired at, damaged and crashes... Or, far more likely in our situation, someone has sabotaged the shuttle and we die screaming.”

“I don’t really fancy the ‘die screaming’ bit at all,” Kara responded. “I much prefer the nothing happens and the shuttle just lands option.”

“Yes, well,” Vixen rubbed her hands and definitely didn’t sound confident, “normally you get resurrected at a nearby booth when that happens.”

Just when we start to hope everything might go right you let the cat out of the bag,”Urmila complained. “So how does this normally happen?”

“The control computer gets sabotaged.” A small explosion resulted in smoke drifting ominously from the vents on a panel, then the extinguisher fired, “Just like that. and yes, I looked in there five minutes ago to check, there was nothing there and I didn’t put a bomb in.”

“What damage did it cause?” Maria asked, “can it be fixed?”

“I need to check that.” Vixen responded, opening the panel and staring in while wafting smoke out of the way. “Looks like the main computer has been totalled, less explosive than a hand grenade. The outer shape of the shuttle is such that it will fly in on it’s own, but when it hits the ground there won’t be anything to stop what happens. The shuttle is designed for high performance flight, not ease of control, at least not without the computer working.”

“What guarantees you didn’t do it?”

“I could have,” Vixen agreed, “but I would just be killing myself too.”

“Anyone with enough knowledge of how the outside computers work would be able to do this,” Barbie pointed out, surprised by her own intellect. “Serious might, Bill Hodes would. It doesn’t need someone to be here to do that sort of thing. We can all indulge in casting biased and unfounded accusations around later, for now we really need to know how long we have to solve this before we die.

“It will take us another five minutes to get through the heat part of the descent then we have less than five before hitting the surface. I know that has nothing to do with reality, it was just how they set it up. Overall it made things simpler than bothering to layer the atmosphere properly.”

“So not much time at all,” Barbie started, “I wish I could have got to know you all better, I mean the real yous, the ones I can’t remember. It’s getting hot in here, and the covers and packing for the chairs have vanished too. One second, what are my damn minions up to? If it’s anything like I expect they won’t live to reach the ground, and I don’t care if they are Droids now, they are still my minions!”

There was only a small window in the side of the ship down which they passed, looking for Barbie’s minions. Outside the heat of re-entry turned the glass bright yellow with the energy from the superheated air. Anything from blankets to rope that was even remotely fibre like had been taken, including any spare clothing left lying around. Then the vibrations stopped. “Looks like we are through the hot transition phase,” Vixen said, “now we’ll just about have time to find out what your minions are up to and get back to the screen to watch the end.”

Barbie had just enough time to notice the open hatch in the back of the shuttle and say, “what the %*$&! is going on? Before the minions grabbed her. A few seconds later she was wearing an odd back pack with a metal handle, Sarge demonstrated pulling it, then they threw her out the hatch. The experience was rather surreal as the others followed her one by one, with just a few seconds between them, then the tiny black dots of her minions. It took her quite a few seconds to even realise she was screaming.

Unfortunately you can only scream for so long before it tires your throat, which left the problem of the handle, and falling a very long way to her death. At least inside the ship she couldn’t see what was happening and could pretend they were not going to splat into a mountainside. The handle seemed to be a simple metal wire construction attached to a thick cord, which vanished somewhere behind her that she couldn’t reach, pulling the handle allowed her to see a little further then the thing came off in her hand!

The pack burst open, spilling huge amounts of cloth into the air. The words ‘broken’ and ‘a dumb thing to do’ filled her mind. It spread out then the straps holding her to the pack bit. That slowed her down, it also pulled her hands from her eyes. revealing the other packs opening too, each slowing the person it was attached to. Hmm, perhaps she could market this idea? A go slower pack for when you fall from high places? Might not sell well in Ascalon, you couldn’t fall at all there, but other places you could ride dragons, this would certainly be useful if you fell off.

Now if only they had explained how you were supposed to land it?

Far below the shuttle impacted and exploded into a suitably large and impressive fireball.

---

Having been staring up the cliff for some time Dirk’s tone was desperate. “Can’t you hurry your bird up?”

“If you think you can do better,” Daia Mara responded protectively, “try flying up there and do it yourself!”

The Phoenix looked over the edge and stuck it’s tongue out at Dirk before limping back out of sight, pretending to be crippled by dragging it’s wing.

“It’s taking far too long and the Insects are coming.” Dirk pointed out, unnecessarily, they all knew what was coming. “If we don’t get up there we are all going to be killed. %&£$! That bird is useless.”

The Phoenix could never have been described as a small bird, the resultant avalanche of semi solid white arrived on Dirk and stuck, at least temporarily. Daia looked truly shocked while others giggled or laughed openly. “Perhaps you shouldn’t spend so much time complaining instead of doing something?” Rand suggested, even the warrior had a grin on his face.

“How?” Dirk started then stopped. The stuff dripped off him. “How did that bird do that?”

“I’ve no idea,” Daia admitted, “perhaps it’s a skill of some kind? I do know it’s never done it before. I think it’s got one, a Dragon Moss. The Wardens and Kirin might be a bit suspicious of the numbers and not being able to see them. Daia is very obvious, it seems to be whatever caused this cliff to appear has spooked everything up there. They were changed so they respond to activity.”

“They’ve never been unwilling to attack a suitable target before.” Dirk retorted. “Wardens almost always attack on aggro, or at least they have in the past. It’s getting close, nearly, now!”

Night Stargazer’s initial Deep Freeze virtually stopped the plant from moving, the follow on spike of varying spells made sure it wouldn’t move any further under it’s own efforts. Dirk immediately used Consume Corpse to get over the edge, then ran east along the cliff top.His path went along the edge of the new cliff and attracted the attention of a Wallow, which promptly tried to attack him and found itself halted by another Deep Freeze. That would allow someone else up, and eventually all of them.

It was Daia’s turn and jumped up next to her phoenix. Her attempts to attract an Island Guardian didn’t work. That creature decided it wasn’t going to move very far from it’s initial position having found the disturbance far too disturbing to ignore. The decision for the Ranger to go up was based purely on capability, hight would add power and range to her bow attacks. It also allowed coordinated work with her pet. It was still two up, three down and Dirk was nowhere in sight. There was nothing else in sight, whereas normally there would be at least several mobs of animals.

“Dirk has gone off somewhere, he’s not responding to my whispering either,” Daia confided, “and I can’t see him on my radar screen. Not that he would be much help here anyway. I can also see the insects coming out of Maatu Keep.”

“How many of them?”

“Far too many, Lady Moonsinger. We won’t be able to hold against all those for more than a moment even if we had a good advantage. Truthfully, I don’t think there is anywhere that would give us enough advantage to take them on.”

“Save yourself then,” Lady Moonsinger ordered, “run for cover.”

“I’m staying here.”

“It is better to save one than none at all,” Rand added in support, “you can still keep them occupied searching for you.”

“No, I can give you covering fire from up here. It’s all or none, I’m not leaving unless you are all dead.”

“Did you expect anything different?” Night asked. “We are tired of Hiding and running. As a Norn might say it’s time to stand and fight. I do not intend to sell my life cheaply, no matter what the odds.”

The insects came forward, spreading out. A front line a hundred insects long, followed by three more. A few blew horns to buff their companions, others carried bows and all had graphical pictures painted on their wing casings to tell their professions.

The insects stopped, just outside of Daia’s bow reach and waited. A few moments later the center of the line parted, the insects shuffling sideways and a huge bow on a cart was pulled forwards.

“So, they aren’t even man enough to face us in combat!” Rand spat at his enemy. “These insects know not the meaning of bravery or honor. Come then, use your weapon, and know we laugh at you. Pitiful creatures.”

The Insects didn’t respond directly, they just wound back the bow and fired. The explosive arrow sped through the air and smashed into the base of the cliff face, right on target, or it would have been, if the targets had been still there. 

---

Barbie wasn’t at all happy. They might have made it down safely, but that was a side issue. The problem was more aromatic than being smashed to little pieces and burned to death while hitting rock at high speed, the advantage with that was it was quick. What she really wanted to know was how, in this world that was nearly half ocean and half desert desert had they come down in the .001 percent that was a stinky, god forsaken, hot, damp, disgusting, all round horrible, swamp. OK, the trees made up for it a little bit, and made it feel slightly more homelike, but that really wasn’t worth much when your nose was being assailed by the vile stink of the place she was in. Even worse, she had arrived with her slow down cloth thingy becoming entangled in a tree, and she couldn’t get down.

It was little help knowing that, while that the latch holding the straps together had been damaged, it hadn’t broken completely and  let her plunge to her sudden death. That might have been preferable to just hanging around waiting to be rescued and being subject to the ridicule of her fellow party members when they had started to find her. The fact that the minions had arrived last didn’t increase her pleasure, that just meant everyone saw her hanging around. At least Bogus and Painted hadn’t been in her party, that two staring up her dress and making comments about her nickers being on show wouldn’t have endeared either of them to her.

Admittedly the minions hadn’t much choice in how to rescue her, but they had taken the simplest and quickest option available, if Mohammed won’t come to the mountain then the mountain must go to Mohammed, or in this case they just cut the tree down.

That would have finished the debacle, but the tree must have taken offence and dunked her unceremoniously in a large pool of very deep gunk. Not that she liked trees being cut down, being Kurzick and hugging them and all, but that one now deserved it’s fate.

The minions had walked along the tree trunk, now in a horizontal position, and dragged the cloth thing to the edge and pulled her out. Being shot could have been preferable.

That was just before all those venomous, huge snakes had found them. Being angry as anything she’d enjoyed that bit at least.

Being a swamp almost the whole area was under at least some water, which precluded the option of a fire. Even if you found some wood it would inevitably be waterlogged.

The water itself caused near continuous disease, which also meant they had to heal each other regularly. Her minions were at least immune to that but had no healing skills that would affect others. The overhead sun beat down with incredible ferocity despite the leaf cover and turned the atmosphere into a strength sapping mist of despair, also inducing a temporary death penalty effect. Even eating death penalty removal consumables wasn’t an option as the effect always reapplied instantly.

At least the wiki had changed, it now allowed access to the local foes and other issues that they might encounter. Somehow she didn’t really want to meet up with the Hexadecimal, whatever that was. It seemed that beast could not only kill but could attach others who it had killed to itself, adding their strength to it’s own.

-

Kara walked next to Barbie, equally unhappy. Although she had been the first one the Minions had rescued that had taken some time, Rocky had put that to some use by staring up her skirt and asking snide questions about her underwear, like had she cleaned it recently? How the heck was she supposed to clean her underwear when she couldn’t even take it off, or clean her other clothes for that matter? She could simply stand in water but her clothing never got dirty. At least the short skirt hadn’t been too dampened when the minion that had arrived cut down the tree her parachute was stuck up, or at least that’s what the minion had called it when asked. It also informed her that the others had gone off to find the other party members before they would meet at Barbie. The tree was obviously sickly, what wouldn’t be living in this sort of area? and cutting it down had been at least some end to it’s dismal life.

At least she hadn’t been the last one cut down, and she expected that everyone being there for Barbie’s big splash hadn’t done wonders for the Necro’s self esteem either. Here and there sunlight found the way through the leaves, but the land was obviously sick, the smell was just a symptom of a much worse condition, blighted land. As with some areas of Kryta she expected undead to be the most prolific inhabitants of the area. The presence of the Hexadecimal on this planet might just be the cause of this. If it had originated in the swamp then the insects might be more like Mandragors, not quite true insects but half plants.

“I’ve got an odd idea,”  The Ranger finally admitted out loud, “what if these insects are a locally created form of Mandragor? I mean a magic combination between insects and plants rather than true insects? That might explain some things. It might also explain why we are heading towards an encounter with this Hexadecimal thing, and this swamp.”

“It certainly would,” Urmila agreed, “it might be that this boss is like the Great Destroyer, it not only leads it’s offspring but is the brain of their existence and gives them direction. That might mean if we kill it then the rest of them will revert to being far less dangerous.”

“Getting rid of the Great Destroyer wasn’t easy, and we had wiki information on how to do it.” Barbie was less optimistic. “This thing might be very difficult or impossible to kill, there is very little in the wiki about it except from it’s environmental effects.”

Kara nodded. “You mean this miasma?”

“Not only that but spells cast on it apply equally to the caster while any buffs foes apply to themselves apply equally to it. So if you heal yourself it will benefit equally. Use pain inverter and you will be subject to it as well. This isn’t going to be a walk in pre-searing Ascalon, and I’m still not convinced we need to go there.”

“You afraid it might be dangerous?”

“No,” Barbie answered, “ I know it will be inevitably fatal, or at least as good as. You don’t go up against a boss like that without a lot of people, or expecting a lot of deaths. Wiki says that no group has beaten it as yet, so the last place I want to go is where it is. I might not be able to avoid that but perhaps we can do enough without it. The only good point is that it appears the thing can’t move, so it won’t chase you. on the other it does have long range spell attacks, larger than bow range. So don’t expect to just be able to take pot shots at it. Then it can call its offspring to help it, a few thousand of those will definitely cause us issues. Really, I very much doubt if there is any possibility we can win.”

“In that case,” Urmila held her hands up, “why are we here? There doesn’t seem to be any other reason than go face that thing, even if we can’t kill it.”

“Our main purpose is to prevent them finding us while still keeping them chasing. There might be something we can do something that could rock their boat a bit too. I’m hoping we can stick to that, at least as long as possible. If, in the end, we have to face this thing then it’s best to know we tried everything else we can think of first. In the end, it might not be something we do but what someone else does. Also remember we haven’t had any recent communication with Rand’s team in Factions and the other team are noted as dead. They haven’t written anything either recently so I would assume that to be accurate. That may mean we are the only ones left to do anything in here that needs to be done and we don’t have any idea what that might be, or where we might need to do it.”

“I tend to agree with Barbie on that,” Rocky stated, “I don’t want to be a dead duck with others eating my body. I’m a raven, I eat other creatures’ eyeballs.”

“I’m wondering,” Maria asked, “exactly what is a Hexadecimal, I mean other than that beast?”

“Wiki doesn’t have any other entries,” Barbie noted, “normal English dictionary has ‘numbering system of base 16 as opposed to decimal’s base 10. Used by computers as well as binary as the numbering system of computers.’ So no real help.”

“If it’s computer related it might help understanding how things here work,” Kara pointed out, “or it might not. Truth is we aren’t really finding out anything that’s vitally important. I used to think that the Jade forest was vital, turned out it probably isn’t, just a story enhancement.”

“For Kurzicks the forest is the only worthwhile area in Factions.” Barbie pointed out. “Which is why we hold it sacred and the Luxons want to control it.”

“And keep trying to take over the Luxon sea?” Maria observed. “Admittedly the Luxons keep trying to do the reverse too, so I wouldn’t be too bothered about it. Considering the huge amounts of jade out there it should be an extremely cheap material but you hardly see any of it. Both areas are huge so why they don’t just share I don’t know. The Kurzick areas might provide Amber but there should be other places you can get the same and the amount being produced is similarly small. Really it’s just a power game to keep you occupied with gathering faction for the alliances and killing things. First thing though is to get out of this swamp, and we won’t achieve that by standing here. More snakes incoming.”

Barbie pulled her Death Magic staff out. “Up and at them, people!”

---

Runa’s spirits held the incoming infected dead, at least for the moment. The end of the rock walled passage was an ideal bottleneck for doing that. Unfortunately it also meant that they were not going anywhere quickly. Most of their available skills didn’t do area damage, those they did have didn’t do a lot of it. Which meant the fifty or so undead had to be taken down almost one at a time. On the plus side they didn’t have many skills, most didn’t use skills at all. They were slow witted and kept attacking the nearest enemy, inevitably the spirits took almost all of the incoming damage.

The main problem seemed to be the characters’ own skills wouldn’t change anywhere now outside of a town, that issue seemed to be cured at least. Unfortunately there were not many towns and outposts on this world so swapping out skills usually wasn’t an option, no matter how vital that might be to their survival. Then again, for some reason, Bogus had ten skills and he could change them at will, anywhere. A very high percentage of them were useless most of the time, but when they did work they turned out to be vital to their progress. The guns damaged the spirits too, often more than the undead did, so that when they were the main defence against attack then the weapons were useless.

Runa pulled back her spirits to a location directly behind them and they began firing with the guns again, while the undead ran forward to try and attack whoever they could. One side used mindless violence, the other, cold tactics. As the undead neared the position they pulled back behind the spirits again, and the dance started again, although with a few more dead zombies. The creatures might be almost mindless but they had a lot of health and were fairly tough.

“I wish we had access to your smiting skills,” Marie admitted to Molly, “Ray of Judgement would quickly burn a good few of those up.”

“Most smiting skills hit one enemy only, I would need either a fast recharge option on it or access to the Mesmer Echo spells. Neither looks to be an option at the moment. I wish we had a fire elementalist like Serious here, that would do quite a lot of useful damage.”

“You would just need Wastrel’s Worry,” Painted put in. “Mesmer skill, three seconds without any skills used and it produces massive damage. Affects all foes near your target so that would really take those down.”

“Marie knows that,” Bogus pointed out, “She’s a Mesmer. Then again, we aren’t supposed to be fighting, we are supposed to be running away.”

“We are,” Carl agreed. “this is just a random group, had the real enemies been here we would be dealing with assaults from both sides. I think someone has to be moving the mobs around to suit their own plans. These are mindless creatures and only respond neutrally to their own kind. Which skills do you have, Marie?”

“Visions of Regret, Drain Enchantment, Inspired Hex, Power Spike, Cry of Frustration, Empathy, Conjure Phantasm and Energy Burn. They not skills I had when I came here. No enemy skills, most non use.”

“I don’t think any of us have the skills we had when we came,” Molly added, “I do have some healing skills but not my normal set. Bogus just doesn’t count, being a wildcard. Urmila does have spirits, but she normally takes Signet of Spirits rather than Wanderlust. That cuts her down by two spirits at least. I don’t think any of us has anything near one of our working skill sets. How far to the next place where we can switch to something actually worthwhile.”

“I don’t think there is anywhere like your outpost in this place,” Carl answered. “The intention is you meet random people who are in the same area as you and fight together. I can also switch skills anywhere I need to, or expand them far beyond the eight slots you are supplied with. I suspect that it is just one of the incompatibilities between our worlds. Runa, pull your spirits back again, please, our guns are ready again and there are only a few of them left”

The last few foes died quickly, then Carl continued. “There might be one place, the control centre for the Cyclotron. Its not going to be easy getting there, if I was the enemy it would be the one place I would want guarded, but if we get there then. Bogus can pull it up on the next working computer we find, so I wouldn’t decide anything until you see what it is like. We would have to deal with a boss there”

“That seems to be a reasonable option then,” Molly agreed, “I would really like to change my skills. Then again, we might change them then they could either change back or for something worse. We might end up no better off”

“Better a chance at changing skills than none at all,” Painted observed. “It’s just a shame we don’t have our best skills available or we would smash through this lot very quickly. We are lucky you still have the Purge Conditions spell or we would be in trouble.”

“The disease seems far less dangerous than most degenerative conditions,” Molly said, “it’s only when you die that the clause ‘changes you into an undead’ comes into effect. As long as I get notified before that point then there should be no deaths from it. One point of degen won’t kill you that quick but there doesn’t seem to be an end to it, unless you are cured.”

“Shame you can’t use it on them then.”

“Only works on allies, unfortunately. If it did work on them it could be a simple way to kill them. Maybe even cure them. Looks like we have run out of red dots to kill, for the moment at least. Let's go an' see if we can find one of those terminals for Bogus to play with.”

--- 

Lady Moonsinger looked around, Boreas Seabed was where the Convocation took place. Blue skies, a festival atmosphere and all of the normal non-player characters were there with the exception of the henchmen. That would put the group at a massive disadvantage if they were forced to do the mission in hard mode. The aim was simply to get through the area, and keep running as long as possible. Something that might end up being increasingly difficult if the insects got up that new cliff.

“Sorry I didn’t stay with you,” Dirk said, “but I knew that it was still likely that if one person got in here then all the team would be pulled in too. The problem is the effect will be the same for a mob of those insects. Daia, what’s wrong?”

“It’s Azira,” the ranger wailed, “she’s gone!”

“Gone, you mean not here? I don’t see her either.”

“Neither do I,” Rand admitted, “are you sure she’s not just doing something elsewhere, this is a really big place?”

“I would still know she was there,” Daia sobbed, “but she’s not in the game anymore. She’s really gone.”

“We had the Gwen, who wasn’t a non-player character,” Lady Moonsinger mused. “I doubt if any of us would term Azira as just an automation. Add in that someone is killing real people and this isn’t looking good.”

“You think we are being targeted?” Rand asked. “The other group are all rated as dead, so what about them?”

“I don’t know if it’s the same thing, but something is happening and we are being removed, one by one. Azira would be a prime target for anyone who wanted to get rid of all of us. It not only cripples Daia emotionally but removes our ability to scout ahead. We have been using her to find out what and where the dangers are, and she was instrumental in getting Dirk onto the top of that cliff. The Phoenix, for all her gaudiness is also a capable fighter, or at least was.”

“You think we are being targeted?”

“I’m certain of it, the only questions are by who and for what purpose? Those are things I just can’t answer, because I don’t know.”

“So,” Dirk posed, “what do you expect us to do?”

“There isn’t much we can do, if we don’t keep going then the insects will catch up to us and don’t expect those things to be gentle, not after all the trouble we have caused them.” Moonsinger turned to Daia. “I know it hurts not having Azira here, but we need to keep going. Perhaps we can find a way to get her back. To do that we have to survive and escape. In the mean time we can’t let those insects and their queen win. We have to leave, now, before those insects find a way to climb up that cliff.”

Night Stargazer came running across the grass, “the gate to Boreas Seabed is open for some reason, we don’t have to go through the mission. That might be better for us.”

“It will,” Rand agreed, “we can mostly avoid any mobs that happen to be out there rather than having to take on the teams and then that multi-legged boss. It will take us a little longer in time but I don’t think that will matter too much, we might even be able to hide in there, at least for some time. It all depends on how long it takes those things to catch up with us.”

“Well I wouldn’t count on the insects not getting up the cliff,” Dirk pointed to a small group of dots in the sky, “some of them can fly, remember? Make sure you have a bow, from the Xunlai Chest if needed, it seems to be working now, and lets all get out of here. We need to move - fast.”

“Stick together too,” Rand added, “we can’t afford to go searching for someone who has wandered off, and this area can be very dangerous to lone people.”

---

The ‘stinking forest’ as Barbie dubbed the place seemed to go on forever, they had been walking for hours without seemingly progressing far. What they had achieved appeared to be walking in circles. “I’m sure we’ve been past that tree there before,” Kara stated, “and we’re now heading west rather than east too.”

“Something turned us around again,” Rand agreed with her. “Seems they put as many rotten tricks in here to confuse people as they could, it’s a maze of some kind and we’re the mice inside it.”

“I’m just waiting for something to teleport us,” Barbie stated, “it really can’t get much worse than it has been so far.”

“Those insects could turn up and spank our butts,” Maria smiled, although not reassuringly. “Well they might, at any moment. I don’t think we could keep up with the required healing from this miasma and them attacking us. Still, this might be easy. If we keep watching our compasses for the turn around we can reverse direction and keep going when it happens. That means we will keep going in the same direction at least.”

“Works for me,” Rand said, “we will need to rest and get our energy levels up whenever we can so point out any high ground you can.”

“I’m just tired of being in this...” Barbie started and was immediately picked up by her minions. “Hey! Put me down.”

“If we carry you it’s one less person in this diseased water,” Sarge pointed out, “and that means one less person who needs healing. We don’t get tired and don’t suffer from disease but if you die we might have issues, there is no information available as to what will happen to us if you die, we might attack the others in the party or vanish.”

“They do have a point,” Kara said, “at least you’re out of this stuff. I can send Rocky ahead a bit and he can report if he sees us turn around. We can also watch him for the same.”

“Might not cover every eventuality but I suppose it’s workable,” Barbie agreed. “At least we have a good chance of discovering when something happens rather than much later.”

The trap disclosed itself by turning rocky around, he then simply hovered until the rest of them caught up before turning around and continuing to fly. The party entered the area and rotated until they could see the bird again before continuing. Sounds of small frogs croaking and birds calling marked their progress, although now it was only the winding path that would confuse their progress. Here and there small insects zoomed or hovered and a few animals, tameable, hostile and neutral, wandered around, apparently immune to the effects of the miasma.

Finally Kara pointed, a small group of deer like creatures stood nibbling at the grass on the edge of a small island. “Looks to be as good a place as any and at least we will be out of this for a while.”

“It looks good to me,” Barbie agreed, “and the minions can put me down for a while at least.”

“Not quite so fast,” Kara laughed, “first we need to check that place out, it’s an ideal area for an ambush.”

“True enough,” Rand agreed with the ranger. “Just the way those animals are acting makes me itch.”

“But the island is flat,” Barbie argued, “nothing on it.”

“Nothing you or I can see,” Rand corrected, “those beasts are acting as if they know different. They are staying at the edge, not moving in towards the middle where the grass looks much longer. It’s as if they are aware of something and don’t want to go up there.”

“Only one way to find out, isn’t there?” Rocky spoke. “Someone’s got to go there and check.”

“Going there could be very dangerous,” Kara warned.

“Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.”

 The bird soared up and then dived onto one of the animals that was facing towards the centre of the, pecking it hard. The animal wasn’t much taller than Kara’s waist and particularly skitterish. It jumped forwards several steps then froze. Rocky simply flew away as the animal started, avoiding going over the island.

Nothing happened, the rest of the deer skittered away, avoiding going over the grass. The single deer waited, as if expecting something, nothing happened. The animal, gaining some slight reassurance took one tentative step, then the ground around it exploded. The now dead body flew into the air then dropped back to the ground, dead. Within moments wurms emerged, each biting at the remains before vanishing below ground again.

Rocky circled around and landed on Kara’s shoulder, who petted him. “I think that answers that issue, ranger wurms aren’t exactly an unknown, there were some in pre-searing Ascalon.”

“These seem to be able to trap too,” Rand observed, “and they aren’t exactly going to be pleased at us trying to get on that island. They have ranged attacks so it might end up getting nasty.”

“If only we had an ele,” Barbie mused. “Then again, if I could raise dead that corpse would provide a distraction at least. Hmm... I guess we are all going to have to do some work here. First the edge of that island is safe, so we can get out of this water, temporarily at least. Then we all need to switch secondary to Ele, firstorm should be a nice little skill to handle the issue of ownership here.” 

“Even if we kill the wurms there is no guarantee that the traps will time out,” Kara pointed out. “We have been here over five minutes without any trap going off by itself, and there’s the possibility that those wurms can set their traps while below ground. We should be safe standing on the edge though, that will give us some rest at least. The wurms might re-spawn automatically or have resurrection skills.”

“Let’s do that then,” Barbie agreed, “It’s something at least.”

---

Runa Tal Rit and Bogus Dude examined the manhole cover, it was exactly the same functionally as the rest they had visited but the area hummed gently with energy from the huge nearby electricity transformers that were needed to convert the power supplied by the station into a usable voltage for the electromagnets in the particle accelerator. The huge construct used so much energy that parts of the base had to shut down when it was at full power. Static from the power lines charged them up resulting in some hair issues and no way of curing them.

The air almost crackled around them and their fingers tingled gently. Runa rubbed her hands together then confided, “This place gives me the creeps.”

“I thought you dealt with lots of spirits?” Painted asked from some distance away. “You know, creepy comes with the job, although not as much as necros I suppose.”

“It’s not the same thing,” Runa countered, “spirits are rather subtler than minions, even though they can be even more dangerous. This is just raw, unadulterated power. It’s not the same power I use either, or that a necromancer like Barbie might use, we use our power to draw more from the other world to operate skills, spirits aren’t really living creatures in themselves but constructs of pure energy that we summon, when they are damaged the energy is disrupted and eventually escapes back to where it was drawn from. If one person had to supply all the energy required to create a spirit from within themself they would inevitably be unable to do it. Then again, all of those who use spell casting produce a construct to promote the effect, not the actual effect in itself. Meteor shower would take an incredible amount of energy from an elementalist if they tried to create it, energy equals mass times the speed of light squared, so a pea sized meteor would suck all the energy out of a level 30 foe.”

“Really though,” she continued, “it’s all smoke and mirrors, the energy doesn’t exist except as numbers and the description of how it works is only there to stop people asking the question, how does it work? The hatch seems safe?”

“Nothing here to worry about,” Bogus answered, “I’ve already removed the trap that was set on it opening.”

“Then why we still here?” Marie queried. “Need to move, quick. We not want be caught.”

“OK already,” Bogus opened the hatch, “ouch!”

“What you done?”

“I removed the obvious trap but there was a poison needle one, a powerful one. Seems I’ve got a bit of degen, ten points of it. Hopefully it won’t kill me too quickly. Alas poor Bogus, too young to die!”

“Stop being a wuss, Bogus,” Molly chided him strongly, “It’s cured already! Real problem is, will they know that we’ve set off this trap?”

“Only if they actually set it,” Bogus’ voice brightened considerably, “or if they have something checking. Either way we should get out of here as quickly as we can.”

Bogus vanished down the ladder, closely followed by Runa and Painted. The rest followed them.

The passage they emerged into was short, the walls painted regulation sand yellow with directions stencilled on in blue. The ceilings were painted white but the whole effect was discoloured by grime. Near one corner a leak from the ceiling trickled down the wall and pooled on the floor before going across and down the stairs at the east end of the short passage. The west end of the passage was a huge metal door that couldn’t be opened. They went down the stairs, going closer to the huge electromagnets of the accelerator.

One edge of a flight had broken away at some point in the near past, smashing the hand rail on the level below before descending to the bottom, they edged their way around the damage and continued down. Lights also became dimmer, some flights were on emergency lighting only.

Half way down and Bogus led the way through a doorway into a passage. This one was going north to south. Temporarily leaving the stairs was a risk but this floor had a room with hopefully working terminals. Nothing moved except for the flickering lights and dripping water. The passage was even more derelict than the rest of the area, what seemed like an earthquake had fractured walls, ceiling and floors. In a few areas large pieces of roof had fallen, partly blocking the way through. The damage wasn’t enough to stop them but it was another reminder that things could happen.

Bogus checked the door then opened it, of the numerous desks inside most had computers, a few were still switched on, although most of them were broken, by falling debris or leaking water. Searching around Molly eventually found one that was still working and Bogus pulled up the required plans. “The thing is a really huge ring, we are here and the exit we need to get to is right around here, so it’s going to take a good bit of time, maybe an hour? From that point it all depends on how many foes are in the area. If we are lucky there will be very few or none and we can take our time, dodge any patrols, and get our skills changed.”

“But if things go wrong?” Molly posed.

“If things go wrong then we’re in trouble,” Carl answered. “There’s a good possibility of a party wipe. Then again, very few parties go down there, so they have reduced the difficulty to encourage people to take that route. Once we have changed skills we can come back by the same path, avoiding the nasties that are in the exit tunnel.”

“How do you know all this about the foes?”

I read the wiki, it might not be entirely accurate any more but it’s the best option we have. Umm anyone hear that scratching sound?” A tile fell from the suspended ceiling, more followed, then a spider dropped through. Carl instinctively fired at it while another spider dropped.

“Don’t bother with the fighting them,” Marie warned, “we finished here, out, let us get away!”

They dashed back out, Painted pulling over a cabinet which temporarily blocked the door at least. Although the spiders were big they were not too hot on operating mechanical devices like door handles and they were not particularly strong at damaging doors either. The passage ceiling was also the same design, and the spiders could just as easily be above them here. The party fled back to the stairwell and continued down.

---

“So what sort of environmental effects will all this power have on our skills?” Runa asked. “I mean my spirits aren’t metal but if they don’t last long we might be in trouble.”

“Actually I’ve no idea what effect this will have on our weapons or skills,” Carl admitted, they were now almost at the bottom of the stairwell and progressing well. “It might pull your weapons out of your hands, or even inventory. Worst case would be pulling people onto itself which might mean they are trapped, immobile.”

“And you tell us this now?” Molly queried.

“I don’t think we’ve got any choice as to where we are going anyway,” Bogus said, “we are going to be in trouble all the time if we don’t change our skills. This will be risky but is our best chance of staying alive. None of us have heavy metal armor on so from that point of view we aren’t too badly off. Providing nobody starts that thing off we should be fine.”

“Famous last words?”

“Quite possibly, Molly,” Bogus confirmed, “but there only has to be one of us going through the tube. The zone ends at the far end, which will let us out of this area. One goes through, everyone does.”

“And who goes?” Runa asked. “My armor has a lot of metal bits on it.”

“Not you. Sorry to be abrupt. Obviously, it needs someone who could run and with suitable armor, they can’t take any metal weapons with them. There might be other problems along the way so I need to go along with someone who can heal.”

“So me and you?” Molly glared. “Although I was expecting you to say Marie.”

“Marie would be a fantastic person to go,” Bogus admitted with notable innocence, “but someone trustworthy has to hold our metal things.”

“Well, you try something, buster,” Molly warned, “and I’ll put your face imprint in the wall.”

“Noted, guess I won’t be trying anything then. What exactly might I try? Hmm, bottom of the stairwell.”

There was several large bits of masonry that had fallen but none of them blocked the exit door, which Bogus checked then opened with ease.

“Hold this stuff for me, please, Marie.” Bogus handed over some items. “I very much doubt that I’ll be needing those and it’s better to travel light. That seems to be everything metal in my inventory, we ready to go?”

“I think so,” Molly finished changing into simple robes and traded her belongings to Marie. “I don’t think there is anything metal on me either now.”

Be careful in there,” Marie warned. “I worried that there no guards here, and we not seen any foes since spiders.”

“This would be the perfect place for a trap,” Runa nodded, “the passage is long, thin and curves constantly but there seemed to be a lot of places that you might be ambushed.”

“That’s the risk we have to take,” Bogus admitted, “with some luck the passage will be completely abandoned and it will be a simple walk all the way.”

“I just wish I was as confident as you. Come on, lets get going.”

The rest of the party members watched them pass through the door then watched it close. There wasn’t much for them to do now until the two zoned and pulled them through so they either read or relaxed to the sound of splashing water. Time now seemed indeterminate and Painted started whistling. It stopped when Marie and Runa glared at him. “One second,” He said in local chat while looking around, “where’s Carl gone?”

“He was here shortly ago,” Marie pointed out, “now he gone from the party.”

“I think we need to make sure Bogus and Molly know.” Runa pointed out, repeating the statements into team chat. “Did you hear that? I think we should move.”

“I’m with you on that one,” Painted opened the door and they filed through quickly, “It sounded like an explosion.”

“A big bang,” Marie agreed, “ver high up. And rumble.”

The arrival of what remained of the stairs at the bottom of the well took some time, and prevented them from talking easily. The door wouldn’t open again either, no matter how hard they tried to. “Bogus, there’s no way back,” Painted warned.

“I don’t doubt that. If so then I expect there to be trouble ahead. Molly looks mad too.”

“What happened to Carl?” Marie asked, “if he’s the cause of this then I’m going to find him and kill him, slowly. He’ll wish he was under that rubble.”

“He might be,” Runa pointed out, “there hasn’t been anywhere near the time we took to climb down those stairs from the last exit. I don’t see how he could have made it unless there is a hidden exit. They might have even killed his real self, in the real world.”

“If he vanished and it looks suspicious then assume he’s still around and an enemy agent,” Molly pointed out with some anger. “Also expect him to turn up when you least expect it. In stories people like that usually reappear when the heroes are in deep trouble.”

“We will try to speed things up a bit,” Bogus offered,, “in the meantime try and stay out of trouble.” 

A blaring horn noise filled the passage and Runa said, “I think that sounds like we’re in trouble now.”

“Correct, someone has started powering up the accelerator,” Bogus switched to local chat and handed Molly something. “Eat that.”

“Red Rock Candy? I thought you were saving it for when you get into trouble?”

“I think we’re in enough trouble now, just eat the stuff and run faster. Trap, left side, keep right. Better just follow me.”

They hurtled past a group of spiders in a wider section of tunnel, Molly removing crippled from herself almost as soon as it had been applied. A few seconds later a group of men, obviously intent on ambush, burst from a doorway and, finding they were too late, fired after them. Molly glanced back, “I think they are pursuing us!”

“The sound of that alarm has gone constant, it doesn’t matter if they are after us any more, were still five minutes away from zoning, we aren’t going to make it before...”

Bogus didn’t even notice the gate, nor would he have if he’d been going at a normal pace, the thing was placed in a darkened section of tunnel, and effectively invisible. As with all zone gates, one through, all through. The whole party vanished. The gunmen were not going to get the chance of being that lucky, not having the speed boost they were a lot slower and the spiders, even though they were slower still, were determined in their pursuit and had no metal on them.

---

The waves on the frozen jade sea were as solid as the land elsewhere, rising and falling but never moving. That had cause some consternation, as there had never been any explanation as to why this could have happened. There was the story of Shiro’s death cry but no reason had ever been found why it had the effect it did.

Then there was huge amounts of jade here, far more than enough to build everyone who wanted one a home of the stuff the size of a palace, so why was it so expensive? Jade weapons were common, but the materials were difficult to salvage, Dirk considered. If you really put it then it should be easily possible to gather as much jadeite as anyone could want by just wielding an axe or hammer, yet there were no common skills that anyone knew to do that.

Then there was the issue of rain, why, despite the copious flow of water in the Canthan rivers elsewhere, did it never rain? There was some small areas of water in the deeper areas of the Jade Sea, but those were extremely limited, Normal precipitation should mean huge areas filled with shallow water. Even the fish and people who lived there created more issues, what did they eat? Where did they come from?

Not finding any answers forthcoming Dirk’s questioning turned again and he opened his private journal before backing up and reading his own last entry.

He read it again, he was pretty sure it wasn’t the one he had written, that had claimed they were heading into the Archipelagos in order to attempt to find a hiding place where they could rest. The plan was simple, everyone had created their own fake plan, as if they had broken up and were heading off in different directions. His option had been simply to go and hide, the others had written they were trying to go back north or south. This couldn’t be any more different from the truth, they were still together and had gone through Boreas Seabed, Zos Shivros Channel and the ancient Luxon capital Cavalon before heading north east and into the Maishang hills.

Then again, for some reason none of them knew, the many mobs of foes seemed to move out of their way as they approached, then moved back onto their normal positions behind them. The green countryside was normally host to many that would kill each other than a visiting group of adventurers. Thin paths meant most groups could not easily pass without aggro occurring and resultant carnage. They were now on the beach, heading for the entry gate to Gyala Hatchery, again the mobs were moving out of their way.

Finally he announced, “Someone has changed my last journal entry.”

“You sure it wasn’t just old age?” Night Stargazer inquired teasingly. “It could have been LAG you know.”

“Yeah, Like I wrote this?” Dirk shrugged. “I must go and commune with the trees that number three, they may give me answers that I know not how to achieve elsewhere. Their fertile fragrance draws me with it’s power and growth. Nothing else can possibly sate my needs for peace and tranquility. Yet I know others follow me, and know where my feet have trod, even if I leave no print for any to see. They wouldst do me most grievous harm if they could but hurry a little faster. The plants and animals sense my presence and intent. They move to both aid my escape and hinder the progress of my enemies.”

“Hmm, I guess that isn’t your prose then, although it is damn bad.” Lady Moonsinger agreed but didn’t stop walking. “You sure you didn’t write it and forget? No? In that case it just confirms one suspicion, that others can alter the journals we have been keeping, and the result will still seem like we did it.”

“It sounds like one of the worst attempts at poetry in living memory,” Rand agreed, “although probably far better than you could achieve knowing your skills. There might be a hidden message in it if you think of the three trees as the ones in the Eternal Grove.”

“That would be blatantly obvious,” Dirk confirmed, “but then again, with Rand’s level of intellect you would need something extremely blunt to get through to him.”

“I can always beat the facts into your head with my axe if you wish,” Rand offered far more calmly than some of them expected. “At least we have made it to the entrance of Gyala Hatchery, perhaps we can make it a bit further before killing each other?”

“Seems like a reasonable compromise,” Dirk agreed, “I would hate you to have to clean that thing again so quickly.”

“I really don’t mind cleaning it, the problem is getting the dents out when I hit something really hard with it.”

“So,” Night questioned, “are you both back to being at least reasonably friendly or do I have to set both your trousers on fire and then we can have a good laugh while you search for some water?”

“I think we are both fine,” Rand commented, “the only question is are we actually going to do this trip?”

“We are heading in that direction already,” Lady Moonsinger pointed out, “all we have to do is keep going and we’ll pass through Unwaking Waters. From there it shouldn’t be too difficult to get to The Eternal Grove, we can go through Mourning Veil Falls easily enough.”

“Here goes nothing,” Daia said as she stepped through the portal.

---

It all seemed fairly normal as they entered Gyala Hatchery the sun shone down and a cooling breeze blew across the Jade Sea from the south. The traders were all there, waiting for someone to buy or sell them things, and the people who were normally there were there too, at least as far as they could know. The truth was they were all, in effect, walking corpses, charred remnants of their old selves. Most were carbon encrusted, badly cracked, with raw flesh showing through. The surrounding furniture had been almost entirely burned to ash leaving smoke from smoldering remnants that wafted                                                                                                                                                             and away slowly.

“Umm,” Rand considered, then rarely lost for words, he asked Night, “would you like a bucket to retch into?”

“No, thanks.” Night’s attempt at pleasantness nearly worked, for a second, then she gave up and went back to attempting to disgorge her stomach and intestines for an indeterminate time. The rest of them either looked on with interest or looked anywhere else as if embarrassed by the possibility they might be accused of staring. “I think I’m over it,” she stated before going into a final late attempt, then straightened up, “I wonder if it hurts being like this?”

“Not at all,” Demetrius (Merchant) responded, “we are all used to being like this now.”

“What happened?”

“Great big white thing flew over and toasted the whole place. We all died and were ready for the mists but then Grenth turns up and says we all have to stay here and keep doing our jobs. Of course I pointed out that as we were, in defacto, dead, we needn’t keep working at all and we all had to be shipped off to paradise.”

“So what exactly happened?” Dirk asked with notable curiosity.

“Well. What happened was Grenth hands us all these bits of paper with writing on and says ‘change of contract, read it and weep.”

“Yes?”

“Well none of us can read so we were stuck, we’re NPCs, not characters, so we can only read what we are supposed to according to our scripts.” The merchant considered things for several seconds then bent down and filled a cup from a tub of water before drinking it. “Anyway, it’s not really that bad being dead here, nothing much has changed at all and we have better views of the sea now.”

“Wish I could do that,” Night pointed out while looking rather less white, “drink water I mean.”

“Don’t see why you can’t.” Demetrius filled the cup from the bucket, which didn’t get any less full. “It’s easy enough to fill the cup and, here, take it and use the cup.”

“Hey, that is very easy to do,” Night stopped, reconsidered, then asked with some trepidation, “what’s the tiny black bits?”

“Ah,” The merchant examined his hands then retrieved something from the bucket. “Damn fingers keep dropping off, guess it’s something we just have to get used to for the moment. Any of you got some Fish Glue (Quest Item)?”

Night returned to her retching, which the merchant expertly avoided noticing. Rand patted her shoulder then asked the merchant, “so could I see this contract?”

“You think you can sort it out so we can do off to paradise?”

“Probably not,” Rand admitted, “Grenth tends to have his paperwork tied up very neatly, and he’s the judge when it isn’t, but we might be able to do something.”

“In that case,” the merchant gave them a piece of paper each, “he left stacks of the things with each of us, told us to give them to people who came here - even if they didn’t want one.”

“Yep, that could be a lot clearer,” Rand admitted a few seconds later having finished looking at the paper. “It’s in no language I understand.”

“Me neither,” Daia shrugged, “and I know quite a few. What it seems to be is geometric shapes that give the indication of words rather than words themselves.”

Dirk considered the statement before responding, “you mean it’s a trick to keep everyone here and stop them asking to go to the mists?”

“Probably, of course I can’t entirely rule out this being some odd symbolic language none of us understands but the computer things are supposed to understand. One second, the symbols have changed.” Daia starred at the paper trying to pin the symbols to the parchment with her vision. “They are doing something, but, I’ve no, idea...”

“...what?” She finalised. “What happened?”

“I’m not sure,” Dirk replied. “We were looking at the writing and. It seems to be later, we have lost about two hours.”

“The text might have been some form of item we can’t understand yet but could use,” Lady Moonsinger suggested. “If that’s so then we don’t need the things now.”

“I didn’t even look at mine,” Night pointed out. “I still have it here.”

“Keep it then, you might need to look at it later. Although if it’s really something nasty then you might be the only one of us not affected by it.”

“There’s nothing we can do about it now,” Rand finalised, “but if it was something nasty I’m going to have words with Grenth, and I don’t care if he’s the god of death or not.”

“The merchant has gone back to being just that,” Daia pointed out. “Although he’s got some new things, consumables? Coffee, seems to speed up your skills a little. Antidote, removes one poison from you. Antibiotic, cures you of disease.”

“First aid packs and provisions,” Dirk took over, “restore health. Can of Coke, gives you one extra pip of energy regen for five minutes.”

“I would stock up on them while you can,” Rand suggested, “they might not be available anywhere else. Chest works here too. Warriors only have 2 pips of energy regeneration so an extra one when stressed would be a boon for me.”

“They will also reduce our need for healing,” Lady Moonsinger observed, “although it’s still better if we can keep to skills and save the consumables for when it is really needed.”

“We still have a good way to go,” Rand warned, “so let’s get started on it.”

“No time like the present,” Daia agreed, “and we don’t know how far those insects are behind us. They have probably found some means of getting up the cliff with their main force by now. I’ve no idea if it was an action meant to stop us or an action meant to help but just ended up being too early. It could have went either way and very nearly did.”

“Seems we’ve been just able to keep going,” Lady Moonsinger agreed, “although why, I’ve no idea. Things seem to be changing too. Is there an entry option for this mission?”

“No, at least I don’t have one. It looks like all the missions are vanishing. I’m fairly sure I’ve done this one lots of times though. Then again the Hard Mode option has gone too, no Normal Mode either. I’m wondering what this would be like if there were no missions and you just reacted to stuff when it happened.”

“That’s what we are doing now,” Rand pointed out, “and we’re doing very well at it, thanks. Everyone ready? I’m going out.”

---

To Barbie the edge of the swamp was odd, in more ways than one. The fact that the water just stopped and sand started was one of the obvious issues, then there was the straight line issue, as far as they could see the coastline was unwavering. There seemed to be absolutely no rational explanation for this. Then the sand was red, although still obviously sand. Huge dunes started immediately and it was impossible to climb them.

So, at least we are out of the swamp,” Barbie finally offered, “no more degen.”

“True,” Kara responded, “but have a look at your compass before you get too passionate about this place. Mine is swinging well away from north, it looks like the something here is affecting it and we won’t have a reliable compass reading to keep us on track. If there are traps like there were in the swamp we’re going to spend a lot of time going not very far at all.”

“That just isn’t fair!” Barbie gaped in horror.

“Who said it was going to be fair?” Vixen asked. “It hasn’t been fair since this whole thing started so why would it suddenly happen now?”

“Because I would like it to be?” Barbie posed in all meanings of the word. “I know, it’s not going to happen, but it would be nice if it did.”

“Have to agree with that,” Kara grinned, “but we can’t have everything our way. So far we have been very lucky, almost everything has gone our way. Sooner or later the worst will happen and then we’ll really be in trouble.”

“This doesn’t look that much different from the Jade Sea in Cantha,” Urmila suggested, “so even with the map issue and the compass not working properly it might not be that difficult. Main problem is going to be the time it will take to get where we are going. You can use Rocky to keep us on track too.”

“It’s a very long way still,” Kara pointed out, “and we don’t know any of the dangers that exist in this area. Parts of Elona had creatures that could hide underground before attacking and there might be other things that we have no idea about. We are closer to the main foe here, although it seems greater than any boss we have fought in the past. If it keeps it’s strongest close by we could be taking on something much worse than the insects we have faced so far.”

Barbie considered the options, unfortunately there were no simple ones available. “If we just stay here we will never get anywhere, better be moving than that.”

“Seems like a good option to me,” Kara agreed, “the only way we are going to find anything out about these sands is to actually go and look. I will send Rocky up to have a look around. He wasn’t any use in the swamp simply because the trees stopped him seeing the ground, out here in the open might be better.”

Rocky looked at her, “So I’ve got to go up there and risk myself so you get warning of a few insects? OK, I’m going.” If a take off could be considered acting then this one would have taken an Oscar for the apparent effort involved. Having made his point Rocky slowly gained altitude then fell back to the ground.

“Rocky,” Kara rushed up to the bird, “what happened?”

“Environmental effect, sand flies.” Rocky spat. “As soon as I got higher than the dunes there is a lot of buffeting, then degen sets in. Think I’ve lost a good few of my feathers.”

“You can’t lose feathers,” Urmila contradicted the bird, “but you have lost a lot of your health. Looks like he’s effectively grounded for the moment, although he’s faster flying here than we are walking so he might be some use patrolling out in front. He also won’t be subject to melee action and might not set traps off either.”

Rocky preened himself, “Just counting them to make sure. They seem to be mostly here. I’ll fly ahead up to the end of this path, that might give you an indication if there are any foes there, although I won’t see them if they are hidden.”

The bird took off again but stayed fairly low, where it was safe. Soon it was a speck  and then vanished. “That one is long but it seems clear of visible enemies, follow me carefully though in case there are pop ups.”

The group behind him began their walk to catch up. “Anyone notice these dunes are all straight?”

“The maps everywhere tend to have straight lines,” Rocky replied, “seems it was easier to design them that way.”

It took time, the going wasn’t quick due to the sand slowing their progress, none of them could run in it as fast as on grass or rock. When they had caught up with Rocky the bird flew ahead again. The sun was directly overhead, giving no indication of direction. Barbie thought about the place, it was dry for no reason. The swamp connected directly to the sea on one side, the other sides joined the desert, clouds should have had a straight and easy path over to drop life giving rain on the area. Her thoughts turned to huge wurms, sucking the moisture out of the desert. Then again, no matter how much the wurms drank there was that huge ocean, nothing could drink that dry, at least, not easily.

The dunes might have been wider than passages but they were still felt like rat runs, like a huge laboratory experiment for test subjects to puzzle over. The height of the dunes meant they couldn’t keep any indication of the position of the building they were supposedly heading for, it was a long way but it was also huge. Eventually they had Rocky fly up to any low area in the dunes where he might just be safe from the effect. Before they had entered the maze he had been able to fly up and see it easily, now it wasn’t visible in any direction.

---

It seemed like days later, Serious Love led a shrunken party, still wandering through the sand. Her lips looked parched and cracked, her skin burned. “water, water,” she managed to barely croak between hoarse gasps.

Some distance behind Sarge followed her, barely able to keep his mechanical body going. His metal jaw encrusted with the sand that wore at it’s joints. Somehow he managed to get out the words, “lubrication fluid, lubrication fluid.”

Still further back Barbie followed, in an equally bad condition as the other two. Eyes raw with the constant rasping of the sharp sand that was getting everywhere. She staggered and nearly fell but recovered. The words “gin and tonic, gin and tonic,” were uttered like a mantra, as if they could keep her alive.

Barbie started, then looked around, everyone was back who had been with her. She was unsure of what had transpired but it was best in such situations to tell everyone, there might be others having the same issues. “I’m not sure what just happened, but, it seemed like I was with Serious and Sarge and we were dying here?”

“I think it was a dream,” Sarge stated, “we all get them too. They don’t seem to last more than a few minutes but they can be frightening. With the changes and problems that’s been happening things have either been going wrong or starting to go right. I’m not sure which.”

“It could be both,” Vixen offered, “bad things often end up in good changes.”

“It doesn’t alter the fact that,” Rocky muttered, “we aren’t getting anywhere fast,”

Kara examined the bird critically, “what do you mean?”

 “We are going in circles and the sand dunes are shifting to suit. Like doors that open one way but have to close another? Some of the corners also look square but they aren’t so the next part leads us a huge way off where we think we are going.”

“You have proof of this?” Barbie asked.

“If Urmila and Maria will keep me healed I’ll try and get it for you. Kara can look through my eyes and check what I’m seeing.” The bird flapped it’s wings experimentally then took off. “I’m going straight up as far as I can reasonably get, which also means I might be coming down hard. The next corner should take us back across our previous path again, so if the rest of you keep walking, please. we might find something out. Oh, I’ve been having dreams too.”

“What about?” Urmila enquired.

“Stacks of skulls with lots of yummy eyeballs in them. Hey, I’m a carrion eater, it’s like dreaming about stacks of ale and sweets for you. When I dream I can actually eat them too, they taste yummy.”

“He sounds like he enjoys it, and we shouldn’t always use our own standards to strictly judge those of others,” Kara pointed out. “Others might find what we like or do distasteful too.”

“What about the Monsters?”

“I found that one,” Maria piped, “they are on a fairly basic program, something they are programmed not to like comes close enough they attack it, otherwise they wander around a fixed spot or follow a patrol route. They don’t have any choice and we are almost at the corner.”

“I’m going up,” Rocky beat his wings as hard as he could, climbing swiftly into the environmental effect. Below the pair of healers worked hard to keep him alive, their skills were limited in range horizontally but not vertically so, providing they had enough energy, they could keep healing him. The effect raged against his presence, creating a massive degen which took all the healer’s energies to keep up with, healing breeze was useless as the automatic cut off had far more effect than that skill. All they could do was put heals on him when his health dropped to a low level.

Above them Rocky kept his gaze firmly on the area he expected a change to happen in, now simply maintaining altitude. Then he nosed down and flapped like crazy, barely levelling out before he hit the ground.

“Did you see that?” Rocky asked as the two checked him over. “I was right.”

“He was,” Kara backed her pet, “I clearly saw the end of this passage open and another close, we are being directed back on a path we were on about twenty minutes ago. If the maze keeps changing like that we might never get out of here.”

“There has to be a way through,” Barbie insisted, “if not then how did the insects get from the swamp to that place?”

---

Runa Tal Rit looked around, the short white passage had a gate at either end, and a desk at one side with a pair of female humans dressed in white suits. The whole place was somewhat indistinct and not really there, which led to a surreal feeling, not  that she wouldn’t have felt that way anyway with what had happened recently. The faces were immediately forgettable for some reason, even though she looked at them several times. They gave out papers with the comment, ‘these are your travel documents please examine them closely’ and also gave Molly several other documents.

The white walls had various charts on, none of which she in any way recognised, some were moving or changing from moment to moment. Many seemed to be some form of enchantment spell in physical form. The others in her team were there with her, but also not there at all, as if they were both connected and separate.

“We had to remove you,” one of the women explained, “the others were cheating. Their spy tried to help kill you all off then, when that didn’t work tried to send you into a location that you would undoubtedly die in. The control room was flooded with something called radiation, it would have instantly given you an extreme degeneration that could not be removed and would have continued for many days. In the situation you were in your party would have all died.”

“They are also cheating elsewhere, trying to trap the other groups if they can and send them into areas they cannot survive in,” the other woman said neutrally. “We had to do something so we removed you and we are putting you back in a position where you will be able to help Barbie’s team. The location you were at no longer matters, their forces are far too involved there now to pull out and that has resulted in huge fighting and the loss of many of their best. Those controlling the mutations do not like others entering and disturbing their activities. You are done here, please wait until the others in your group are ready then move on to the next room.”

Runa wasn’t exactly sure what any of this was about, she tried reading the documents, which simply vanished from her possession. They had done something but she didn’t know what. The rest of them joined her a few moments later and they moved through the exit gate, although she doubted they had any choice in that.

Another room, with seven distinct bays in the wall. Runa found herself faced with four of the unrecognisable people who guided her into one of the alcoves. Separate from the others and unable to act yet sure nothing bad was happening. She seemed to observe things from a very distant existence. The four removed her armor then gently fastened her in a brace that was firmly attached to the wall. Even a giant probably wouldn’t have been able to remove it or break free. They used strange magic on her body, then one touched her with a short, transparent wand containing a dark metallic grey liquid. The wand emptied and the stuff began spreading out, under her skin. It gradually formed what looked like tattoos of some kind, although she had no idea as to what their purpose or effect was or might be.

Then there were other questions, was the use of the word group singular or were there other groups going through this too? Who was involved? Grenth? The other gods? Serious? Bill Hodes? Someone else they didn’t know about yet? Far too many questions and no chance of getting any answers.

With her armor put back on the tattoos were initially completely hidden, then spread out, becoming more intricate as they did so. Tiny lines and curls intersected each other forming strange characters. A few moments later and they unfastened the rack, gently moving her forward and past the other members of her party.

She felt as if the pattern now covered her entire body, from her head to her toes. it gave a strange tingling sensation that seemed to get less over time. She sat for a time, strangely compelled to examine her arms and legs, then, whatever it was, the pattern faded from view. They seemed to be ready, and a new gate appeared that hadn’t been there before. The choice was now theirs and any one of them could make it.

Molly took the lead and stepped through into the unknown.

---

Rand Al Thorazine examined his map of Cantha. Although he wasn’t aware of it Gyala Hatchery, Rhea’s Crater and Silent Surf were originally much smaller than they had become. North Shore and Kraken’s Deep had been added to the east while the Inner Sea and Gould’s Bank had been added to join Jade Flats with Leviathan Pits and Unwaking Waters (Luxon). These areas were only accessible to those who had completed Unwaking Waters. Gate guards would not let anyone through if a party had any members who didn’t qualify for entry.

A string of new zones down the West coast of the mainland connected Nahpui Quarter, Arborstone, and Saint Anjeka’s Shrine and expanded along the coast to the north. The new zones had been put in to provide additional exploration options when an entirely new, and much larger, map of Cantha had been produced.

Rand was oblivious of this at  the moment, even though his real self knew about the changes. What he was painfully aware of was the hugely increased numbers of fish, afflicted and outcasts in the area and the swarms of insects that were taking them on in battle, which was precisely the problem they had now. A huge battle between all three groups, plus some Nagas who had wandered into contact with the progressing carnage was happening.

“I don’t really care if we go around them to the east or west,” Rand pointed out. “What I am bothered about is where those additional foes came from and how the insects got in front of us. At worst will we be forced to fight groups all the way?”

“I suspect that they either went around us,” Daia responded, “or they are using some skill to jump into the zones ahead of us. I have seen no indication that the ones following have managed to overtake us. We haven’t even seen one of their flying brethren in quite some time. Either way, or even if they have another option I haven’t thought of, we need to keep moving. If we don’t then one side or the other might win and then we’ll have to take the survivors on.”

“We go west,” Rand decided. “Skirting around that side will give us the cover of that frozen wave so they won’t be able to attack us directly.”

The decision made the warrior moved swiftly in that direction, followed by everyone else. “There looks to be a lot more in this zone than six hundred,” Lady Moonsinger considered, “although I’m well aware that there isn’t a specific limit in an exploreable area I would say someone is cheating.”

“I think both sides are,” Dirk answered in a near whisper, “it all adds up that if one side does then the other will follow suit. It may be the only way to give us a chance to avoid the inevitable, at least for the moment.” While any option to view of the battle was blocked by the wave the noise of fighting still reached them. With the groups as large as they are I don’t think we should try taking any of them on. If we do end up faced with a fight we would be better off pulling back.”

“Originally this area was intended for a group of eight,” Rand pointed out, “now I would be feeling distinctly outnumbered with a group of twelve. We have five people here and the monsters seem to be stuck in hard mode, the lowest I’ve seen recently was level twenty five. Taking on a group of Oni might be considered excessive.”

Daia signalled in the direction of another mob of foes, this time on the near side of the wave to them. They pressed as close to the wave as they could, squeezing through the gap. “That looks like Reefclaw Ragebound,” she said, “I’m sure I saw him fighting in the battle too?”

“I did too,” Night agreed, “this gets curiouser and curiouser. They seem to be producing more of the available monsters and bosses to face off the numbers of insects the enemy has, but they are the same as the present ones, not new. He’s normally not this far north, although I doubt if any of us would think of this as anything remotely normal. I don’t think we have any choice but to go over the island.”

“I agree,” Rand signalled a change in direction, “but if we get attacked now by one of these groups we won’t survive. I’m beginning to think it might be safer for one person to travel alone than five together. We only need one of us to get to the portal for everyone to get through.”

“What happened to ‘one for all and all for one?” Dirk questioned as they padded off the jade and onto the beach. He then stopped, as did the rest of them. “What the £$%^!” he exclaimed, although in more of a hoarse whisper than a shout.

They had seen this before, but the crystal thing was huge, far beyond what they had seen elsewhere. That had been in Tyria, after the searing, but this was on a much bigger scale than that had been. Reflecting the light in blue tones and surrounded by a crater that occupied most of the island and a huge area of the sea beyond. “Whatever caused this,” Rand said, “perhaps we can use it. I suspect none of the mobs will come anywhere near it so we can go around the edge and gain some time. At least that way we won’t have to fight anything.”

“I agree,” Daia nodded, her mouth open. “We had better be careful though, this might create environmental or other effects we don’t know about yet. It still doesn’t stop me wondering why this happened or who caused it.”

“I’m as wary of this as you are,” he said, “but it does give us a chance, we might get over half way to the exit without having to fight or dodge anything. I would still keep as far from it as we can.”

“It seems to exhibit some kind of repulsive magical force,” Night considered, “pushing things away from itself, as if it was an exclusion zone. We might learn something if we do go close.”

“Dying isn’t really going to learn any of us much,” Rand offered, “ask the cat. We go around, trying to avoid going near that thing. I can feel what you do too, but I’m very suspicious of this. It is almost an entity rather than an object and don’t forget what happened to Embeth. I would rather avoid a danger of that magnitude than gain a possible advantage. This reminds me of the Charr crystal in Pockmark Flats. Although this looks earlier it can’t be, I was through this area just a few weeks ago and this wasn’t here then.”

“We still need to move on,” Lady Moonsinger reminded them, “we are going somewhere and if this is important then it will have to wait until later.”

“True,” Rand agreed, “if we do need to investigate this at some time we will hopefully have functional resurrection facilities. Until then it can remain an intriguing mystery as far as I’m concerned. I don’t want to die and be stuck in that place again any time soon.”

---

Barbie glanced back as the party ran, some distance behind them the insects were present but not catching up. There was enough of them to make victory uncertain at best for the humans and downright fatal at worst. The sand itself slowed them down, it slid away when they stepped on it and allowed their efforts to fade considerably. For the insects the medium seemed totally suited to them, it supported their weight perfectly and they could run easily, at least in comparison to those they followed.

Which gave voice to the question, why didn’t they try harder to catch up? It was both puzzling and a troubled thought for Barbie. The insects were not exactly stressing themselves so they could make an effort and get close enough to forct a confrontation with missile fire. Alternatively they could slow down and just follow at a longer distance, even if the insects lost sight of the people they were pursuing the tracks they were leaving could not be hidden at all.

That left one option, the high sides of the passages didn’t allow them to veer far from a straight path so they were, obviously, being driven towards something. What that was she had no idea, they might even be simply trying to make sure that the characters made it to the big building before they died of old age.

Their attempts at getting out of the maze had resulted in no progress at all. There had to be a way through, or the insects wouldn’t be there, but that also required them to find it. A simple disguise, although requiring it to be performed on a grand scale, could have easily been used to cloak the way through. In that case it would be just pure luck if they found it at all. That didn’t leave many options.

“Stop!” Barbie held her hand up, then turned back to face the approaching mob. “These are just here to push us onto something else we can’t see. If we go on there might be traps or there might be hidden enemies that would be invisible to Rocky too. At worst there could be both in large numbers. They might also be trying to push us away from the way through, although I don’t think we can count on that. Letting them continue isn’t an option, we have to make a stand somewhere, before they drive us into a far worse situation. We probably won’t win here, at least not without a miracle, but we have been living on borrowed time and luck so far anyway.”

“You want us to take that lot on?” Urmila sounded worried. “What about other options?”

“I don’t think we have any.” Barbie examined her staff. “We win now or we lose later anyway. There is no middle ground, no options which would reduce our risk. This is all in one and one try for all.”

“Sounds familiar,” Rocky responded, “we who are about to die salute you!”

“Kara,” Barbie said very politely, “if your bird doesn’t watch out it will be oven ready time.”

“What would I do without my pet?”

“I’ll try my best to rez him for you.” Barbie promised. “Anyway, you might be better off with a minion? You could get another pet? Suit yourself.”

“I know he’s a pain at times but he’s my pain.” Kara pointed. “They have stopped advancing at least, and they don’t look as sure of themselves now.”

The insects stood and hissed, waving their limbs at the party. Some insects ran forwards a few paces before threatening them again. One or two closed to longbow range and fired ineffectively as the party members initially dodged then charged.

The insects didn’t seem that impressed, and formed up in close order, ready to receive the charge. This was something they knew how to handle. The people closed then stopped. Urmila pulled her spirits forward, forming a wall in front of the people and Barbie’s minions rattled off energy bolts. Kara barraged them with Splinter Weapon, causing considerable damage.

The insects took it all, responding in kind with volleys of arrows, then their front rows charged into the spirits and minions. The minions changed to swords and shields to receive the attack.

Weapons clashed against shields and armor, without dedicated healers one or two of the insects fell, mortally wounded. Those on both sides stepped around or over the bodies and continued to fight.

“We can’t take this damage for long.” Maria complained, “I’m running out of energy.”

“The spirit wall isn’t going to survive long either,” Urmila complained, “even with recycling them I don’t think we will last more than a few minutes. They have rather more here than I thought.”

“I agree,” Barbie cast Deathly Swarm at a suitable target, it bounded on to hit two other foes. “They were keeping their numbers hidden by keeping a second group a way behind the first.”

“We run, we die,” Vixen commented, firing a pair of pistols, “we stay, we die. Might as well get it over with. I don’t suppose Grenth has a miracle up his sleeve for us?”

“Not that I know of,” Barbie changed her staff to sword and shield, she was out of energy anyway. “I guess this is our last stand so might as well.”

The fighting continued, insects moving forwards and pushing the people back. No quarter could be asked or given in such a fight, it was live or die. Not the best warrior ever Barbie relied more on skill than strength, neither of which were amongst her strong points. Using adrenaline based warrior skills meant she could retain her energy for Necromancer spells while causing damage between them, it also helped expand the line. The insects were now spreading and attempting to get around the minions, which would allow more of their number to attack.

As the battle raged Barbie was hit hard with an insect’s club appendage, knocking her to the ground. A second insect jumped forwards, stabbing at her with it’s sword like arm. The minions closed, trying to protect their now injured and bleeding master from further damage.

Then the insects lit up with double exclamation marks above their heads, a second later something arrived. Insects scattered, breaking their tight, protective formation, many were knocked down and the front line collapsed making them easy targets for the minions. More arrivals and a double firestorm hit the tightly packed foes.

The tightly packed formation now became a death trap rather than protecting the insects. A few broke and ran. Most died where they had fought. Barbie, dazed, poisoned and bleeding, was pulled back from the front line by a pair of her minions. She tried to get up but was prevented and passed out with a familiar but unexpected face staring down at her.

---

Barbie looked around her, she had heard about the mists and this looked as much like them as anywhere she had seen or known. White swirled around her and remembering anything at all seemed extremely difficult. What was she doing here?

There was no answer she could think of. Obviously she had been wounded badly enough to die. Then there was the effects of the poison and the blow to her head. Everything seemed to fit but there were some discrepancies.

Where was Grenth? He was supposed to welcome all Necromancers to the Mists, they were his personal and loyal subjects. Him not turning up was rather like not getting a reward for a quest.

Then again she had listened to what Rand had said about the mists, this didn’t feel the same. There were no other people wandering about aimlessly searching for something they were not quite sure of.

She sort of felt serine but Rand had described it as feeling fuzzy, as if remembering anything was almost an impossible achievement. She found that while she could not remember a lot there were certain facts that were still there, and she was sure about them.

“There you are,” Grenth’s tone was hurried, “I’m sorry but you lost another of your minions, you are now down to five. I had to see him before you, he is a member of the minion’s union and paid for the priority treatment option at the shrine. Having paid a donation of fifty thousand gold for it he certainly deserves his due benefits of the full Platinum Membership Red Carpet treatment.”

“Priority?” Barbie questioned indignantly. “Over his master? One second, how did he get that gold to pay for it?” The shock of realisation hit a few seconds later, there was no normal way a minion could gain gold. “He stole it from my Xunlai chest?”

Grenth waved his hand, “such is insignificant and not my problem. I deal with the spirits and forms of the dead, not lost or found money. No refunds either.”

“The rest of my minions,” she queried, “did they go insane and attack the others when I died?”

“Of course not. Why would they do that when you aren’t dead yet? Oh, you may be down but not quite out permanently. Your return to the world is more a matter of time than anything else.”

“How many of them paid for the ‘priority treatment’?”

“All eight of them did, seems they are very generous to the cause. If you want to argue issues then you will have to take it up with them when you get back. Swearing will neither get you benefit or endear you to me, or any of the other gods.”

“But that’s almost every gold piece I had in the chest!” Barbie screamed, as if realising there were far worse things than just dying. She then continued swearing and threatening to kill her minions, right up to the point that Grenth and the mist faded from view. She certainly didn’t check the date on her calendar, nor would she have had any idea what it being April 1st meant.

---

They were all well aware that the path they had taken had been lucky for them, they had only just got through the zone exit and in to Leviathan Pits before a very large group of insects could block the way. More worrying than just the presence of insects was new kinds of them. One, easily detected from a distance, was some form of centipede, which seemed to be a highly armoured elementalist, a seven tailed scorpion turned out to be a barrage ranger and a thing that looked more like a hydra seemed to be some form of mesmer necromancer crossover.

Then, while they were still inside the Leviathan Pits a rift of some kind opened - they had barely got out as the first insects came through. Had the things got their act together they could have easily pursued and caught them against Elder Guardian Scourgewind and his accompanying Wallows, which would have been disastrous for the group. Being attacked from front and rear was one option none of them wanted, and would have quickly wiped them all.

As it was they managed to kill the boss and get around the group of outcasts to the South West of him. They continued across the sea, avoiding the foes where possible, usually the outcasts and fish ended up attacking each other, which gave the party plenty of time to go around. The enemy obviously had finally realised their failure simply because of the sounds of fighting behind them intensified. They managed to get around the Island in the middle of the area, then another rift had opened almost in front of the party. They were saved only by the outcasts, fish and seaspray dragons flocking in and dealing each other, as well as any insects coming through a lot of damage.

That had allowed them to go around the battle and into the Luxon side of Unwaking Waters. Exhausted in mind if not body they walked through the small outpost to the exit that would let them into the whirlpool itself. The small outpost, unlike most of the others they had passed through, seemed to be in pristine condition, blue sky and happy faces greeted them.

“I’m not sure how much longer our luck will last if that sort of thing keeps happening.” Night gasped, “they nearly had us back there. Really they should have. If it hadn’t been for that all out battle they ended up in we wouldn’t have made it.”

“But we did make it,” Rand walked over to the merchant and traded some items he didn’t need for gold, “although I’d agree we were lucky. This should be the last bit we are in the open, once we cross the whirlpool we will be in the forest and the flying insects will have problems there.”

“I’m not so sure now,” Daia joined in. “They have been getting far too close for a while. Either their flying scouts have got longer range than we do or they are using some new method of observing us. If the latter then they might be able to observe us anywhere at all. For all we know they might be able to hear what we are saying. Either way we need to keep moving, staying here isn’t an option.”

“I don’t know,” Dirk wandered over to the chest, “it seems we are gradually being forced in to a smaller area. Each move we have to take means we have less options on where we can go and they have a proportionately greater chance of finding us. If I was them I would be flooding the whirlpool with my soldiers and waiting for us when we go through. The result would be short and very deadly, for us.”

“You fancy going back out there?” Rand asked. “Taking your chances in Silent Surf?”

“I would say it’s not an option now, but all we have been doing is running from these things rather than sending them to Grenth. What I’m most concerned about is we have no real idea where we are going or what we are doing.”

“We are all agreed on that.” Lady Moonsinger responded, “but this isn’t a quest or mission, you don’t get precise directions on where to go and what to do. You can’t just open the wiki and read the instructions there because there aren’t any for this. No-one has been here before and all the other people are depending on us doing the right thing, first time. We can’t map and restart if something goes horribly wrong, we just have to live with the consequences, or die from them.”

“I have lost friends and people close to me,” she continued, “as have all of us. We have no idea if we will see them here again, in the mists or elsewhere. They may be dead, permanently gone forever. That is what we have to accept. Any of us could vanish - at any time - and nobody might find out what has happened to us. What I do know is we can’t afford to fail, not this time. Unfortunately we can only do the best we can, and if, in the end, it’s not enough, then everyone will suffer because of us.”

“We need to move,” Daia said softly, “get out of here before this place is full of those things. I don’t think anyone wants to go back so the only option is going through the whirlpool. That might not be as brilliant as we first thought, the sky over it has darkened considerably since we arrived. Unfortunately it’s now the only way out we have, unless someone wants to stay here and fight?”

“I’m for going on,” Night pointed to the exit, “the gate is open, as with the others. At least we might have some chance of doing something later, rather than just throwing our lives away.”

“Small choice becomes no choice,” Dirk muttered, “let’s go then, better get out of here before... Run!”

Rand had already moved close to the exit gate and simply stepped through.

---

Barbie floated in a sea of white mist but in an emotional one one of anger, hate and the hope of revenge. There was no way she was going to the mists until retribution was hers. What had happened wasn’t right, fair or legal, it was her gold and nobody could spend it all without her permission. The fact that she was the only one who would get permission to spend it off herself wasn’t an issue. Then again anyone else’s wealth was fair game, if they left it lying around they obviously intended for others to make use of it.

That gave her a weapon, and she used it to tear through what imprisoned her, slicing the white mist apart easily as it tried to coalesce around and cushion her into being it’s prisoner. She wasn’t going to be stopped by anyone and even the simple issue of being dead in her grave wasn’t going to stop her for one moment.

Then the pain hit.

“I feel like Grenth warmed up,” she moaned, then her voice turned nasty. “Not that it’s going to stop me doing what I’m going to.”

She finally opened her eyes. Maria Louise looked down at her, obviously concerned, but that wasn’t the thing that had her immediate attention. Behind the monk was a huge grey figure, arms and legs like tree trunks. The head was mostly a huge mouth with pink lipstick? The eyes, surrounded with huge lashes, also had a feminine look and flicked sexily. Then the whole seemed encased in some short garment in bright pink that barely covered the body that a child wouldn’t want to be seen dead in. A transparent skirt, dotted with shiny silver stars, somehow barely managed to circumnavigate the immense waist, and did nothing at all for modesty. The whole vista was set off with an enormous metallic red bow tie that sagged at the ends. It was made of enough material to make her a full gown. The extremely flimsy, and badly made, wand just set off the whole ensemble. The star at the end seemed to be cardboard, covered in silver paper and fastened onto a straw, which had broken in the middle and constantly pointed to the ground.

The amazing thing was, carrying at least enough weight for twenty people, it somehow it managed to not only stand on its back legs but did so constantly maintaining balance on the tips of its toes.

“Bogus,” she finally managed to get out between feelings of utter shock and near eruptions of anxious laughter, “what the $%£& happened to you?”

“Don’t you get at Bogus,” Painted warned, his defensive tone didn’t seem to match the pair’s previous history, “if he didn’t then the chances are we would all be dead. I think he makes a really pretty hippo? ”

“Unfortunate but true,” Marie joined, “he, hmm, arrived? from great height, first. The poor insects, they not know what hit them. Arrive like big meteor. Half of them die then. Him now the female elementalist, cause all heavens to fall on their heads. Then we kill the remaining.” She shrugged, “that bit easy, they all suffer the daze condition.”

Kara appeared, looking rather down. “Four is no more. When you were knocked down he jumped in to protect you, the insects took their revenge on him, and the rest of the minions. The other five survived but we didn’t have enough healing to save him. He went down a true hero and deserves a monument, although I don’t see that happening anytime soon.”

“Grenth told me,” Barbie seemed a little distant, “said the minions had taken almost all my gold to pay for something but his words just don’t seem right now.”

“Serious made Rand angry,” Marie offered, “was get him out of the mists when there. You need angry and reason to leave or you stay? Grenth have no need for money and be many places at same time. He just say ‘this be’ or ‘that be and is so.”

“That might be it, the money doesn’t seem as important now.” Barbie considered things silently for a moment. “The problem still exists, we need to get across to that place and I don’t see how we can do that. That can wait though, how did you all get here? and just why are you all listed as, em, corpse of?”

“first one is easy,” Molly offered, “we got pulled from that game by someone, or something. Seems at least one side is cheating so ours cheated too. They then put us in here. Seems they were not very accurate on the height but I guess even that helped in the end. As to the prefix we don’t know, it just happened after we left you. It might be someone put it there to attempt to protect us, who is going to chase after a group of dead people?”

“As we are here now,” Carl said, “it might help if we all knew what you were doing so we are up to speed?”

“We’re trying to get to the Achaachi Queen’s palace,” Vixen responded, “although none of us seem to be entirely sure why. Some think we might be able to kill or incapacitate the queen, or do something else that might help.”

“At the moment we are just stuck here,” Barbie said, “the area is a trap, and we can’t find a way out. The sand dunes have doors in them which we can’t operate, either they are automatic or controlled by something outside the area we can get to. We can’t get out but not many of the insects have come in to fight us either.”

“We might be looking at this the wrong way,” Vixen suggested, “what if two groups approach a gate at the same time but from different directions, which would be allowed through?”

“It’s one option,” Bogus agreed. “We also count as dead so perhaps the gates won’t operate for us? We could then try standing in the way to stop it closing while you get through.”

“We have nothing to lose by trying it, worst thing might be we break a gate or two. Even that might get their attention and they might send in reinforcements to deal with us.”

“We might break all the gates, everything,” Barbie said, “then again, we don’t have to fix them and we would hardly be any worse off than we are now. Let’s do it!”

---

The whirlpool was a huge swirl of water that had been created when Shiro Tagachi had been killed, the resultant magical effect caused the sea to turn to jade and the forests around it to become petrified. In the centre the floating temple where Shiro died was still present, although it was now well below the normal surface. Some still hoped that over time the effects could be reversed, although how the fish could go back to breathing water, or even if they could, wasn’t known.

Some claimed that in specific areas the jade was finally melting with pools of water visible on the surface. Others pointed to rain as the probable culprit, even though nobody had seen it rain in living memory. For those who had bought large quantities of jade the option of it remaining solid was preferable to it turning back into worthless water. Some cities had built huge buildings from the jade, or bridges over rivers. Replacing them would have required huge expense. Quarrying the stone would take years, possibly even decades.

The party stood on the jade sea, and looked up. Above them a huge swirl of black cloud rotated, occasionally sending down bolts of lightning onto the Kuan Jun Temple and the tops of the waves. There was only one option, get across before the insects came through the gate or created a new portal. They ran quickly initially to get away from the gate but then slowed. Trickles of water flowed acrosss the jade, although it still hadn’t started to rain.

“Anyone else think this is bad?” Daia asked. “I think something is going wrong in a big way. The jade seems - softer?”

“I’m having that problem too,” Knight replied, nearly falling, “the jade seems to be turning into something else. I think it’s a trap intended for us.”

“It’s certainly having an effect, I’m down to walking,” Rand grimaced then jumped a small stream of water. “We are hardly moving and the rate this is going we will be wading before long.”

“Go up,” Daia pointed in the required direction, “it may be longer but we might just have more time. Someone is using a lot of magic here. I think they are turning the sea back to water again.”

“Why? Just for us?”

“Do you see anyone else here? If none of us ends up getting to the portal we’re going to either be stuck at the bottom or drown, I’m not sure which but none of us can swim.”

A group of fish ran out of their way, and attacked a group of outcasts who were having problems just staying on their feet. The impacts made sure they didn’t stay standing. The fish then resorted to constant attacks to keep the people down and none of them survived long. The group were already past by the time it was over. The jade shuddered, cracks formed in the surface, then increased.

“I don’t think we are going to make it,” Dirk panted, “it’s just too far.”

“Everything is messed up,” Lady Moonsinger added, “the mobs are killing each other and some are far from their normal positions.”

“That’s better for us,” Dirk said, “ unfortunately Kunvie Firewing behind us isn’t, and it flies so the change has no effect on it.”

“We made a good try, woah!” The jade shuddered and Daia vanished into a deep crack. Dirk followed barely a second later. There was nothing the rest of them could do about it but keep going. 

“Kunvie is almost on us,” Night shouted in warning, “and I don’t see three of us doing anything against that.”

Rand turned, axe and shield ready, then the dragon rode the lightning in. Night and Lady Moonsinger’s fire missed completely, going through the place the huge body had been just a second before. Stunned, Rand could do nothing to defend himself being picked up and his limp form was swiftly carried away from the other two.

“I don’t like losing this way.” Night complained loudly, up to her waist in water she was still trying to move forwards. “I think we’ve lost this time, the jade is almost water and we’re sinking rapidly.”

“I’m not moving at all,” Lady moonsinger agreed, now up to her armpits. “Shame we can’t go down fighting her rather than this. It’s just not right. You know Kunnie looked really big?”

“Yep, almost as if it wasn’t her at all.” 

The pair vanished below the surface as the whirlpool continued filling slowly. The temple once more floating on the surface of a saltwater inland sea. Then a dolphin breached and flipped itself end over end. Some surface dwelling fish would survive on the beaches, most, as well as the outcasts and other creatures that needed a solid surface to walk on vanished.

---

The room was jaded and very old, it was also very small in comparison to most  The surfaces were made of plastics and yellowed with age, some had cracked as it degraded. In the corner an oval airtight metal door sealed the exit and the walls were cupboards from floor to ceiling on three walls.

The final wall had a huge screen mounted on it, which worked well but needed cleaning

“Very nice move there,” Christial Baleock, also known as Serious Love said, “I thought we were going to end up in real problems.”

“They seem to be cheating a lot more now,” the person sitting at the computer interface replied, “I think they perceive something, a danger, but don’t know what it is as yet.”

“I hope you didn’t mind me pulling you from the game, I can’t do everything out here and  the repairs needed are extreme, it’s going to take a long time just to do the important ones.”

“I knew that things were bad, I just didn’t really appreciate how bad it was. The reality is far more than I thought the ship could take and remain operational. I can do things here that I could never do from in there, so I agree with your decision.”

“As we get a few more people working in the real world I hope the workload will drop, none of us have had any real sleep.” Serious tapped on the image of the dragon, “when did you get the idea of that thing?”

“A long time ago, a few years after they made Guild Wars they produced a sequel, the first of many. In it the elder dragons rose to terrorise the world I thought having one to help the real people rather than being a foe would be useful. That produced Solanis Firelord. Mostly it was intended as an information provider who directed people towards goals and quests but at times it also helped out against it’s time corrupted brethren.”

“So there are more of these?”

“No, the Guild Wars 2 package wasn’t installed, too many games being bad for numbers of players in each one. The others are in storage. Even then Solanis wasn’t included in the game.”

That interested Serious. “You can fully control this dragon?”

“I am the dragon, when I want to be. It’s a nice feeling of power, but too much power makes the game stale so I decided to play an Assassin. Really it is far too powerful for normal use, unlike most of the bosses in Guild Wars it’s got all of the skills constantly available, and some monster skills too. It won’t kill the enemy bosses we’re facing, that’s not the intent, but it can make a nasty mess of their lesser mobs.”

“So how do you plan on getting the others over the sand berms to their target area?” Serious laughed, “I think they are stuck although they are being extremely inventive. I don’t think I would have thought of doing that to the gates.”

“Yes, but it has made the enemy rather angry, without actually achieving much. The gate they are after opening has a lever on the far side, had they sent the Raven across he might have found it and been able to operate the thing before they stuffed all those guards around it. Rocky might be able to get over the wall still but the rangers around the lever mean he would be a pincushion before he ever got close. I would have preferred them to do something else.”

“They did what they thought necessary, even if it was counter productive.”

“Yes, but I expect some of them might be working on other ideas. I might even arrange something, if the price is right.”

---

Outside the wind whistled and the sand flew, you could hardly see your hand in front of your face, and you wouldn’t want to try that unless you were using goggles. The storm had blown up out of nowhere, which was very suspicious.

Before it had started Bogus had put on goggles and went looking for something. He had said he was better going on his own and nobody was going to disagree with that. The last group of insects they had run into Bogus had simply run up to them and done something that looked like a belly flop onto the sand but arriving on the tightly packed foes. The insects didn’t survive well, many died instantly while the others suffered from massive dazed issues. None of them were in any position to fight and the initial survivors had succumbed quickly. Some tried running away but ended up either going in circles or falling over.

When the wind started there was nothing much they could do about Bogus except hope, then the sand began to fly. Those without goggles ended up temporarily blinded. The situation could have gone from bad to worse but Marie summoned her horse, then changed it through several other options into a tent. It effectively gave them a protected if tiny zone to pass the time until the storm ended.

That had been several hours ago, and the weather wasn’t improving any, Barbie had looked at the information about sandstorms and pointed out they could last for days, none of them really wanted to be stuck in a tent that long.

Then there had been the sand issue, while they were safe from the initial effects of the sandstorm it left huge amounts of sand piled against the tent walls. That required someone to remove it every few hours or risk either the tent collapsing or eventually being covered and their being unable to exit.

The issues compounded with the whistling making it nearly impossible to understand each other talking. The only people able to go outside and do the work were those with goggles, otherwise the fine sand made it impossible to do anything. As the items were customised to the individual that meant just three people could actually work, the rest, including Barbie’s minions, were stuck.

The storm eventually ended, leaving them with some cleaning up to do before Marie could remove the tent. A few hours later Bogus appeared, his bulk obvious as it moved against the sands. “They have reset all the gates again,” he commented, “Although I didn’t expect anything different. I think they have changed the conditions too. The gates now open later, when you approach them closely but I’m not sure what else they have done.”

“I was expecting them to do something,” Barbie answered, “I guess that might spoil us breaking them but it was fun while it lasted. I really doubt if there is any long term benefit in it except for annoying them. It certainly isn’t going to get us any closer to that citadel.”

“No but I’ve found the gate, it’s in a long straight bit of wall.”

“You’re sure of that?”

“Yes,” Bogus seemed certain. “You can see the gate operating lever through the wall, with about a hundred of their rangers. Getting through is going to be very difficult. Even if we could we don’t have the numbers to storm the gate and take on the guards. Not that it helps, I think they let you see it in order to make things worse.”

“Well we can check that too. There might be some way of operating it from our side.”

“The way it looks one or more of the flying insects jumped the wall and operated the switch, I don’t think we can do that.!

“Rocky?” Kara suggested.

“I doubt if he could survive long enough, their rangers can cause a good bit of damage and they will be trying to spike any flying enemy.”

---

They tried the gates, all closed when two teams approach from different directions. The first gate also now had to close completely before the second gate opened. That seemingly minor patch made it impossible for them to repeat their previous tactics and spoiled their fun. Appealing to the gods didn’t work either, they were either ignoring the group or otherwise preoccupied with more important things, except Barbie asked what could be more important than her? Nobody actually contradicted this so she assumed point proven.

That still left them in the middle of a desert with no easy exit, or any real options - they might be able to deal with any small force of the insects coming into the area but they couldn’t get out.

Barbie wasn’t too happy with the present options. “Which means we are stuck here until they decide to come in force or we die of old age?”

“I would assume so,” Kara responded, “unless we can find a way to open the door, which, having seen what it’s like on the other side, I doubt. They now seem happy enough to keep us here where we can do little damage.”

“Us doing little damage is what I don’t like,” Barbie confided, “I would rather be doing maximum damage.”

“We might be doing a lot more than we think,” Daia offered, “we are keeping a lot of their attention and forces locked up holding us here. The team in Cantha will hopefully be doing the same. We have already killed far more of them than they have of us.”

“Perhaps,” Maria interrupted, “it isn’t them that wants us to stay here? It might be our side keeping us out of trouble until they are ready. Our problem is we don’t know what anyone else is doing.”

“Which isn’t helping,” Barbie complained. “If they wanted us to stay here they should tell us.”

“It might not be that easy. If they told us and were overheard then the enemies could move some of their mobs away from here. The message might not be from our friends so we couldn’t trust it anyway. Effectively we are stuck here until something happens.”

“I agree,” Marie said, “but there might be thing we can do. If we look like we going to try breaking out then they think we are. So we move by gate and fire bows over wall. Their bows only shortbows, not reach far enough. We spread poison, fire and bleeding. They not like at all.”

“I think we have an option there.” Barbie beamed for once. Equipped with flatbows their arrows sailed high into the air, well over the barrier. With added fire and Splinter Weapon effects the damage was severe but the insects managed to initially heal themselves. The damage gradually built up, barrage causing it to spread amongst a large number of the foes. It wasn’t to last, the insects simply suffered until they couldn’t take any more damage without dying then pulled back until they were out of range. Unfortunately they were still within range of the lever, which again resulted in stalemate.

“I think that’s the end of our fun for the moment,” Barbie realised eventually. “Anyone notice the sky is getting dark?”

“Has been for long time,” Marie nodded, “seem strange to me too.”

Barbie pointed up into the sky where a faint glimmer of lights showed. “What’s that?”

“That,” Vixen shielded her eyes against stray light, “is a massive space battle.”

“We can hardly see it.”

“It’s very dim because it’s so far away, well away from planetary orbit. The Asurans won’t want enemies to get too close, although why they are protecting this place I’ve no idea. It looks like a battle between the protecting Asuran forces and someone else maybe human and Charr ships? Our forces would not normally take on the Asuran ships here on their own, they aren’t anywhere near as good. Nobody elses are either for that matter but the Charr have lots of ships. There might even have Dwarven ships too, although they might have joined the Asuran side. Up there tens of thousands are battling, puts our few here in perspective.”

“That big building,” Sarge pointed, “it is firing up into the sky.”

“Seems they have armed the place to the teeth,” Vixen explained, “and the surrounding area too. Those are surface fired missiles, and lots of them. Even if the defenders win there’s going to be trouble here.”

“Why?”

“Lots of bits of blown up ships falling out of the sky? They might not fall here but we had better keep a good watch in case they do.”

“Anyone notice how cold it’s getting?” Barbie shivered. “We’re all losing health now, and the insects have vanished.”

“The insects dug their way into the sand,” Kara said, “I think they were waiting for this.”

“It’s some sort of environmental effect,” Maria said, “to do with this extreme cold. I expect it will get worse until the sun reappears.”

“We go to the tent,” Marie suggested, “better there I think.”

They walked away from the gate, the cold getting worse by the minute.

---

Daia coughed repeatedly, then forced herself up on her arms. This was definitely the Kurzick side of Unwaking Waters, the clothing was right. To her left Night Stargazer was doing the same thing she was, so was Dirk Star to her right. Rand was on his feet but was being examined by Lady Moonsinger. The pair seemed rather better off than the rest of them.

As much as the Luxons were originally a fishing guild the Kurzicks worked the land and cared for the trees. It was an exact split of labour that had, before Shiro turned traitor, worked well enough for everyone. Afterwards the Luxons were reduced to cutting jade for sale and the Kurzicks, who were originally rich from supplying wood and food to the city, ended up poor. The ornate Kurzick clothes still spoke of their originally rich origins while those of the Luxons spoke of their poor past.

The same scream that had turned the sea to jade also petrified the trees. These originally provided the building materials for the construction of Kaineng city, although much of the wood had been imported from further afield it all went through Kurzick hands, making them a nice profit.

Daia gave another cough then managed to sit and listen to Lady Moonsinger’s question. “So how did you manage to get through the gate if you were being carried by Kunvie?”

“I don’t think it was Kunvie,” he replied, “it seemed a lot bigger. I don’t think we can get any further with that at the moment, unless the thing turns up again and answers questions. After it grabbed me the thing carried me to the exit gate. The guard had already sunk, leaving the gate unguarded, and the dragon, Kunvie or not, threw me through the gate. Next thing I knew I was standing here with you lot back around me.”

“Whatever happened,” Mara spoke, finally getting to her feet, “I think our enemies will assume we suffered the worst. We should all have been killed back there and if the dragon hadn’t been there we almost certainly would have been.”

“I suspect we are out of the worst,” Rand predicted, “hopefully the forests will keep us a bit safer from here.”

“Unfortunately we either have to go through Morostav Trail to Durheim Archives,” Daia responded, “then Mourning Veil Falls to the Eternal Grove. Or to Vasburg Armory and then into the Eternal grove, which is shorter. If they suspect we aren’t dead it won’t be hard for them to chase us all the way there or even open portals so they can cut us off. If I were them I would be flooding Morostav Trail with search mobs.”

“We won’t know till we get out there,” Rand said, “so lets move.”

---

Morostav Trail was rather more gloomy than usual it was nearly dark and most of the creatures were dead too. One or two dragged themselves away from the party with very little health. Occasionally one of the trees, even though already dead and petrified, exploded spectacularly, raining down fragments of stone that had originally been wood. The grass was as unbending as steel and pierced the soles of footwear, which also caused disease, cripple and poison, which had to be treated immediately. That meant they had to keep to the central clear areas of the paths for safety.

Small groups of glowing insects passed, although none took any notice of the party. Even though nobody had warned to silence they all kept as quiet as possible. When they had to they communicated in whispers rather than talking loudly to the whole party as they might elsewhere. They passed the four feet and lower legs of a Kirin, it had seemingly turned completely to stone and the body had exploded violently. Parts of the animal had been scattered over a wide area and were still present.

Several pools of green residue were spread around, dead plants was suggested as the source but there was no proof either way. The Wardens fought ineffectively with the Afflicted as the group passed, putrid lesions covering their skins. many were barely able to move, suffering from bleeding and crippled too. The Afflicted seemed to be unaffected by whatever was causing the effects and killed their blighted foes far more quickly than they would have achieved normally. Except they didn’t return to their normal location, they just stood in place once their enemies had been killed, which made it easy to avoid them.

Daia cringed as another tree exploded nearby. “I wonder what is causing this?”

“It could be the same thing that caused the jade to melt in Unwaking Waters,” Night suggested, dusting pieces of tree off her clothes. “Although it could be anything else too. The forest could be regenerating itself.”

“Or equally destroying itself permanently,” Lady Moonsinger gave the exact opposite option. “Whatever is causing this isn’t going to be easy to cure. That wouldn’t be a problem but the trees are vanishing, we are losing our cover against the insects seeing us from high up.”

Rand took the lead, going through a gap in the fallen trunk of an ancient tree that had split down the middle, each half going in different directions. It had then shattered into sections, leaving a gap they could squeeze through. The split showed the concentric rings of what had been wood centuries before but now grey stone. With a now almost complete lack of foes to avoid travelling became quicker but also had been complicated, some paths were completely blocked by fallen trees, which meant they had to go by a longer route.

A few minutes later and the sky above them became pure black, except for the near constant flashes of lightning there was no way to see the way ahead. Occasionally bolts earthed themselves to the trees, causing more damage.

“Wait here,” Daia advised, “we are almost at the gate to Vasburg and if they are going to be waiting anywhere that is their best option.” They watched the seasoned ranger make her way forward and vanish temporarily from view. There was nothing for them to do but wait.

It was only a few minutes before Daia reappeared, “the insects are there, although not in force, just twenty of them. That would still be enough to make it highly dangerous for us to try and get through but it’s not the only problem. The entire gate is down, blocking the entrance completely.”

The group considered the situation then Dirk asked,“you are sure it’s impassable?”

“Yes, go see for yourself if you don’t believe me. Either it was hit by lightning or the insects have found a way to damage the stone, either way it’s collapsed the side of the armory above the gate.”

“The wurms in the desert can easily break a stone tower,” Rand stated, “so I doubt if there would be any problem with some form of siege beast doing it. It could also have been one of those flying things. Either way we only have one route open to us now.”

“If they know this is blocked wouldn’t they put a much larger force there?” Dirk asked.

“True, they should, but you can never tell with these insects. I was expecting them to put a force outside of the Kurzick side of Unwaking Waters, just in case we made it through, but there was nothing there. We only had one possible exit and a large enough force could have killed all of us easily before we managed to move. Even if we manage to kill the insects here we have no way of getting through the gate.”

“We can at least go and look at the other option,” Lady Moonsinger offered, “then we can decide on what we are going to do. As to what route we take it hardly matters if we check all the possibilities, we are supposed to be distracting rather than killing the enemy.”

“True,” Rand agreed, “but it still grates. I can’t help but think we should be doing more.”

“Sometimes more doesn’t mean more killing, sometimes not doing anything is the right thing. If I were to spend my time killing, who would be healing you? At the moment we need to remain present but preferably undetected. That way we can get where we are going and hopefully do something useful. Quite what we are going to do I don’t know, but I feel it could be vitally important.”

“We go west and look at the other way then,” Dirk agreed, “at least I won’t be continually getting shot at.”

---

Barbie knew the mists from the descriptions given to her, precisely what she was doing here with all those other people walking around her she didn’t know. They were walking slow and, although they seemed to have a direction, didn’t really have any target they were heading for. Some walked at angles to her, others straight up or down, where the planes met they occasionally changed direction.

Then there was the dark haired woman in black stoneforged armor heading straight for her, that one certainly knew where she was going, and what she was doing. “Hello, Barbie,” the woman greeted her by name, “how are things going for you?”

“Hi, Serious,” Barbie responded, although it didn’t quite seem to be her.“Things are going really slow, we’re stuck in a tent, the environmental effects of bitter cold outside would kill us off and we can’t get through the sand gate, or over it.” 

“I know you are stuck but you need to stay where you are until dawn. This meeting is mainly to make sure your people know what is happening. I can’t tell you everything but I’ll tell you as much as I can. Firstly we beat the Asuran fleet but suffered heavy losses, they destroyed more of our ships as we did of theirs. Only us having many more ships made the difference and their fleet eventually retreated with our battle fleet in persuit. 

“We now have forces in orbit that are landing on the planet, the ships are positioned around the opposite side of this world to the Achaachi. They will stay inside their shuttles for the moment, even though they are on the ground. Unfortunately the Asurans erected some sort of force field over the insect queen’s palace, so we can’t bombard it from high orbit. We wouldn’t really want to as we don’t have the numbers of ships here to do that and take the damage from their missiles.

“The advantage is every ship or thing that’s destroyed reduces the burden on the remaining computers, so we can use that to our advantage. Unfortunately they can also gain the same advantage if they choose to, it’s not a one sided thing, and their queen is still churning out new insects at a constant rate. They are backed by Asuran ground forces, mainly elementalists and monks, not all of them decided to help, their necromancers got a message from Grenth and it seems none of them are presently in the defence force.

“Grenth is presently battling Abaddon and Dhuum in the underworld, but is also being helped by Abaddon’s previous self and the other gods. Even the Great Dwarf has been aiding them. For some reason the six call him Big Shorty, I thought it was a bit nasty but he doesn’t seem at all bothered. I doubt if many of them will be able to help either of us at the moment.”

Barbie shrugged. “So we just do nothing?”

“Until morning you will be stuck, unable to move, but that applies to them too. Despite the numbers of insects available to it their queen is limited in some ways. She’s a collective, so decisions rely on at least most of them agreeing to something. That means it makes decisions slowly. The enemy have provided it with upgraded insect designs but not all of the queen is happy using them. Some distrust the source, whatever that is, others want to keep the still relatively small numbers of the new insects close to protect themselves.

“After morning the queen will become very aware of the force we have landed, hopefully they will send as many of their reserves against us as they can, to keep us away from the palace. That could well leave an opening for you to break through just after dawn. I’m not going to say it will be easy but you might be able to make it.”

“Why are we going after the queen?” Barbie pondered. “I mean it isn’t like we can do anything against it.”

“True, but it will distract their collective attention, they won’t be looking elsewhere and then we can hit it. If they were to ignore you completely and send their entire force against ours then they might just be able to win.”

---.

Barbie started, everything seemed back to normal, she was inside the tent again and the others were there too. The whole adventure seemed to be rather odd, she considered, but then there was a lot more risk than usual. This time there was no simple resurrection skill, you wouldn’t end up back in the booth either, or in the last town you visited. People had been killed, out in the real world. She had recently seen horrors almost beyond comprehension... OK, not beyond Pel singing, but close enough. Now there was going to be another huge battle, this time on the planet, and she wasn’t invited? She harumphed loudly.

“What is it?” Painted asked.

“I’ve just had a meeting with Serious,” Barbie almost shouted. “It seems there is going to be a huge battle as soon as it gets light, and we aren’t invited! They’re landing now and going to wait till the sun comes out before disembarking their troops, then they take on the insects. May her, or his, gaze turn rotten.”

“Is that like gaze of Pel?”

“Almost, but not the same, Pel might kill you but Serious seriously disappoints you instead - much worse.”

“So what are we supposed to do?” Runa asked, “stay here and twiddle our thumbs?”

“No, we’re supposed to go to the huge insect palace and do some sight seeing.” Barbie complained bitterly. “We are to try and distract that monster’s attention from guiding it’s army. Chances are we’ll get flattened in under one second and then spend all eternity in the mists. Then again, who am I to complain. I’m just little old me, trying to do the right thing and beat this horror.”

Vixen sounded confused, “so we stay here for the duration?”

“No, we go and kick that things but, or at least pepper it with arrows and throw stones at it, whatever we have available. Barbie sighed, “I don’t think it’s going to do much good, or damage. We certainly aren’t about to kill it on our own, even if Serious and the main army break through there will be a fair chance we will lose, but at least we can try to do it. Umm, Marie, what’s that little dragon thing sitting on your shoulder?”

“I know not!” Marie tried to turn her head and look at the tiny beast, almost as small as a dragon fly. “I not seen it before. It looks lot like Kunnie, a mini Kunnie?”

“Large saltspray dragons are quite common over the sea in Cantha,” Painted offered, “it looks like any one of them as well. At least it seems to be green, so not an enemy. So it should be harmless...” Painted pointed at the dragon, which promptly developed a disproportionately big head and bit the pointing finger.

“That should teach you that not everything which is green is friendly,” the dragon licked it’s upper lip, “or has your best interests in mind. Remember Visier Khilbron, the lich? He destroyed Orr and could have done the same to all Tyria. Sometimes enemies want to look like your friend. Of course, that also means that sometimes what seems to be an enemy might just be your friend.”

"OW! arrgh! %$£&!" Painted tried to attack the little beast, and found he couldn’t. “That isn’t fair, you can bite me but I can’t fight back!”

“Wonderful, isn’t it?” The dragon blinked, “and I bet you wish you could do that.”

Painted stopped, “you bet, that would be a cool trick!”

“Tough, can’t have it!” The dragon seemed to grin even more, “It would upset the balance of the game in your favour too much. I doubt you need it anyway. Oh, before you take me wrongly, I am Solanis Firelord, also known as Elder Dragon of the Dawn Sun. It was my people that fought the dwarves and their allies. We were few back then, but each of us had great power, individually enough to equal the Great Dwarf. Unfortunately we did not fight together, only as single entities, and I did not fight at all, which made our defeat back then inevitable. With the combined might of the gods used against one of us at a time we were defeated and sealed into slumber. The death of the Great Destroyer freed Primordus from his sleep, his return weakened the magic’s hold on the rest of us. With the dwarves engaged in finding and fighting the remnants of the Destroyer horde there was none to oppose our return.”

Somehow Marie scratched the dragon’s head above it’s eyes. “So what happen to you?”

“I was given a choice, I could be imprisoned with the other dragons or banished from the world. Neither was appealing, or fair. Eventually I chose imprisonment as the least unpleasant option. When they returned though I remained asleep, I only awoke with their defeat. They have not returned again to live on this plain yet but still exist in the underworld. It is they the gods fight to keep imprisoned while Abaddon fights to free them and their wrath on the world again.”

“So you aren’t really this small?” Barbie pressed.

“Of course not, I can be whatever size I want, that isn’t really an issue here. Being so small I shouldn’t be easily visible and that means I can go over the wall without being noticed. My armor rating and health is so high the insects won’t be able to kill me. I can also change form, if I need to. I shouldn’t have to do that until we are in the main chamber with the queen. They are presently preparing to move their reserves, I don’t know if the nearest insects will be departing to join their army but we should be able to take care of them. I can tell you that what you are going to do is important.”

Barbie drew a little closer, “important? In what way?”

“You will find that out when you get there. Marie, you will need your horse tomorrow, we will need everything we can get to help us fight.”

“I can do that,” Marie smiled, “I change tent into horse at dawn.”

“Horse would be good, but we need firepower, the siege devourer would be a better option.”

“I can’t ride devourer!”

The dragon grinned again, “I think I can provide another option you might prefer.”

“I can send Rocky to check when the battle starts,” Kara suggested, “at least then we will know if it has started.”

“Good idea,” Solanis said, “you already have the knowledge you need to do what you need to, even if you don’t know it yet. Now the only thing we can do is wait.”

---

Daia led the party through what remained of the wood. Huge mushrooms had grown, providing at least some cover as they walked. Other fungi also proliferated, huge red fronds and massive lumps of yellow foam encroached on the paths. After they had restarted the journey it had begun to rain, lightly at fist it was now a steady heavy downpour. Pools of water covered the ground in many places, some ankle deep. The surface soil had turned to mud making it more difficult to run.

The constant flashes of lightning illuminated the area, arcing onto the remaining trees and blasting branches off. Most of the remaining forest giants were now reduced to merely very tall stumps. Above them the clouds swirled around a point that had moved from above the Harvest temple in Unwaking Waters to somewhere north west of the party. That position was, as far as she could estimate, roughly above the Forever Trees in the Eternal Grove. She was well aware, as were the others, that the grove was where they were heading, right into the heart of the storm.

She stopped, far off in the distance, although she couldn’t see it, was the gate through to the Eternal grove. The weather made it impossible to see the actual portal but her radar showed a large number of red dots near it. She considered all the options and then said, “were stuffed.”

“You sure it’s that bad?” Rand asked, “I mean we might be able to take them by surprise in this rain.”

“I took that into account, we’re still stuffed. There are several dozen insects there and they have a pair of Charr siege devourers with them. Problem is we don’t have any other choice but to attack this lot.”

“Maybe we can pull them out of position,” Dirk suggested, “and then someone can sneak past behind them?”

“It might actually work,” Rand agreed. “Of course the person pulling would either have to be me or Daia. Either of us could use a bow and we both have high armor. The question is, who’s sneaky enough to get around their backs?”

“I guess that’s my job,” Dirk agreed, although he sounded rather reticent about it. “I think we need to have a check to see which way is best to pull though. They don’t seem to have any patrols out so we have a little time at least before we go for it.”

The whole party crept closer to the foes until they could see the whole group. The insects didn’t move and didn’t seem at all concerned about their presence. It was now clear though that the insects were not alone, amongst the shiny black bodies were a group of very wet charr. “This damn weather isn’t good for the Devourers,” one Charr complained loudly, “far too cold and wet.”

“It doesn’t seem to be doing the beetle scum any good either,”another replied, “they are supposed to come from a hot place, aren’t they?”

“Some desert world is what I’ve been told, although I’d rather be out hunting meat.”

“Well if we wait here the meat should be delivering itself to us, the other way through is blocked so they don’t have any choice. I don’t suppose they wouldn’t notice if we killed one of these?”

“They seem well aware of their numbers so I wouldn’t try it. Then again the air feels odd.”

“It certainly does,” Daia whispered to the rest of the group, “feels like it’s charged with energy from the storm and there are no trees left around here.”

“Perhaps it would be wise to back off a bit?” Rand suggested, “there’s some tree cover further back and we might be safer...”

The crash of lightning striking knocked them off their feet. The devourers, not used to such things in close proximity began firing at any nearby targets they considered suspicious. The only ones they had in range were the insects and the Charr. The latter knew well that the Devourers were temperamental if surprised, the insects didn’t and assumed they were being attacked by their allies. The Charr, always ready for a fight, responded eagerly.

None of them took any notice of the odd dot that slipped past them and ran towards the gate. The escape wasn’t to be perfect though, a charr noticed him at the last minute and the necro only just managed to limp through with a few hit points left.

---

The rain persisted equally heavily in the south of the Eternal Grove. Although there was rather less lightning than further south there was a lot more wind which drove the rain almost horizontal.

“We got through that at least,” Rand said, “but the trick nearly got you killed.”

“I know,” Dirk replied, “but I thought it worth trying. In the end it got us past them and I doubt they will be following directly on our tail for a while.”

“I wouldn’t count on that,” Lady Moonsinger said, “they are very quick and at the moment we have no idea what they can or can’t do, the rules have changed. Daia what are you doing?”

“Putting down some presents for the Charr and insects,” Daia knelt again, “just in case they come through. If they do come through they should arrive exactly where we did. Crippled, bleeding and poisoned foes won’t be following us too quickly.”

“Good point,” Dirk and Rand agreed simultaneously, the latter finalised, “but lets get going before they land on our heads.”

Dirk set off at a run with the rest of them, “I don’t think they will be coming through immediately, they have to sort themselves out first.” The group hadn’t gone a hundred metres before the traps went off behind them, Howling Charr voices accompanied the indignant squeal of insects and the devourers. “My mistake, seems they have some reason to get going quickly.”

“I don’t think they appreciate your thoughtfulness, Daia,” Night said, “I mean, after the time you spent laying those traps for them they could at least thank you.”

“I wouldn’t count on it holding them up for long,” Daia sounded worried, “and I doubt if they would fall for that trick again, more likely they will spread out when they start pursuing us. We had better keep moving as fast as possible.”

“I doubt if we can get away from them for long now anyway,” Night said, “they know we are in here and it’s only time before they track us down. They will be blocking the exits again and sending out patrols shortly.”

“I’m not too bothered about that,” Rand confided, “providing we get to the trees we should be fine. Don’t ask me why, I don’t know, I just do.”

“Well we are nearly there, and the charr can’t be that far behind.”

The rain and wind stopped suddenly, one side of the line was wet, the other dry. In front of them the three trees stood, singing even without the singers who normally would have been there during ceremonies to make new Juggernauts. It was vocal music, not words, that pierced the silence. The notes ran up and down rhythmically, each tree producing it’s own song, different to the other two but all three complemented each other. Above the sky was clear except for the stars shining down and providing light.

They stopped running at the gates, it didn’t seem appropriate to hurry. they walked between the ancient giants. The trees seemed to bleed almost as much power as the stone dragon near the Asuran Central Transfer Chamber. The air around them was charged with energy and sparked through the branches and leaves.

“It seems different,” Daia said in awe, “far more powerful than they were during the mission we did here. And their singing is beautiful.”

“Which is all very nice and good,” Dirk interrupted, “but what are we going to do now we are here?”

“There’s time to do what we came to do,” Rand assured him, “we just commune with the trees. Compsys, access permission Rand two one six four nine three three eight.”
 
“Access granted,” a disembodied voice replied. The tone of the trees changed slightly in response.

“Activate main access terminal,” Rand sat down, “come, sit with me and commune. Login as Root, colon, admin six. Command: run debug. Command: run av.”

Night, Daia and Lady Moonsinger sat forming nearly a circle in the middle of the grove. “Compsys, access permission Night nine seven three nine nine eight two four.” Night muttered. “Defence one, activate. Screen protect: glade/ mode stealth.”

Dirk looked back in the direction they had come, the insects and Charr couldn’t be that far away and the others were just sitting? He certainly didn’t understand the mystic words that Rand and the others were using. “Time to give up I guess.” He shrugged then sat down, closing the circle while the others droned on.

The Charr passed through the gates to the Eternal grove, nothing seemed odd there, it was quiet and a few birds chirped. The storm had vanished just a few seconds previously. Although it had been created to help them it had proved a much greater hindrance than benefit. “There is nobody here,” the leader of the group shouted, waving the rest on, “I heard them a few seconds ago so they can’t have gotten far, after them!”

From high in one of the Forever trees a phoenix watched the Charr and insects depart, the bird sang to the trees and the trees sang back in accompaniment.

---

The sun hadn’t even risen above the horizon when they exited the tent into still cold air, fortunately the bitter chill environmental effect had stopped. The sky above them was clear and very blue. Rocky took of and flew up carefully, eventually getting above the level where the degeneration effect had nearly killed him previously. The bird then set off north east, heading for the expected position of the incoming army.

“It will take some time for Rocky to find the army, wherever it is.” Kara announced. “That means we have some time to get ready before we have to go over the wall.”

“I don’t think we need the tent anymore.” Barbie looked around to shaking heads. “Anyone leave anything in there they need? So, I think Marie can start by switching it to the Siege devourer.”

Marie nodded. “Hope there is no problem?” She began the first transformation, the tent turned into a wardrobe, an Ice Drake, then a strange striped horse. “Never that before.”

“Marie,” Bogus started, staring at his newest body, a Norn male warrior, “you are making me, moo?! Greebeebe, baa, oink oink! Woof, woof! Squark! Change shape!”

“What are you on about? Can you not talk english bit must use impression of animals?”

“No, I’m me!” Bogus Dude examined himself closely in amazement. “I’m really the real me again, it’s wonderful!” The Ranger punched air. “I think you cured me, Woohoo!”

“Congratz, dear,” Marie praised him, her attention still fixed on examining what had been the tent during the night instead. That was now a large barrel with a small pixie on top. “I knew you do it.”

“Yay!,” Bogus continued, dancing with joy “it’s so good to be meow! MEOW?”

“Nearly got there. This is some reason harder than other times, be quiet, please.”

The Charr Supply Cart switched to being a Siege Devourer and Bogus changed too. It was several seconds before he managed to moan, “aaargh! Anything but this! How could you, Marie!”

Marie finally examined him, “what wrong with be a Siege Turtle? They powerful beasts and so tough.”

Bogus sobbed in response, “a Siege Turtle? They are all... Luxon! You changed me into one of them! Switch it again, I’d rather be the cat or one of those insects than this!”

“But we have Siege Devourer, Cannot do it or it will change too.”

“Tough luck, Bogus,” Barbie managed through her own laghter, “you’re officially a Luxon for the duration.”

“Noooooooooo! Please, change me back.”

“No can do, Bogus,” Barbie stated, “and I don’t care if you don’t like it, you can’t exactly rage quit the party. Complain as much as you like, it’s still the same, no. How is Rocky going?”

“He’s getting towards the right location. He can see the shuttles and army disembarking now. They have brought dragons, a lot of them, and the greater turtles from Cantha. There’s also a charr army there, with Siege Devourers and war vehicles. There are Dwarves there too, at least I can see what I think is their heavy artillery. To the south of them the insects are digging themselves out of the sand, they seem to have Asurans with them, there’s a small city of quick build Asuran barracks. It’s a little later there than here so the sun is up fully.”

“How many?”

“I don’t know, there must be thousands on both sides. Our side are starting to move towards the enemy. I don’t know who will win but this is going to be really big.”

“We had better start moving to the gate then, and quickly. We don’t want the insects up waiting for us when we get there.”

“I don’t think that will matter,” Solanis stated confidently from Marie’s shoulder, “we will be victorious. Whether we have the same fortune against the queen is another question.”

---

Rocky flowed through the air with an occasional flap of his wings to speed him along, this was his environment. He headed initially over the Allied army in a quick pass to allow his owner to observe what was happening, then made a wide circle ending behind the enemy army. That would also allow anyone on their side who could see through his eyes their number and deployment. Keeping high and to their south meant less chance of him being spotted by those looking for spies. Insect scouts started to fly on their way north to attempt to scout the approaching force, they were joined by Asuran robotics and flying microgolems, devices made from flexible ceramic that looked and flew like birds.

The area was a flat desert plain, covered in white salt from a long vanished sea. No plant would grow there and no wild animal would enter the area by choice, or remain there for long. The dry salt provided a firm surface for animals, vehicles and people to manoeuvre on. The battle would be swift, vicious and without any cover, at least until the artillery had dug huge holes into the surface. 

The Raven stayed high. Most of the allied force was hidden from him by dust, leaving only the most forward units visible. Somewhere down there airborne pets would be fighting insects and microgolems, trying to destroy the enemy but, more importantly, keep them from gauging the strength of the following force early.

Rocky used the skill Eagle’s Eyes, it simply zoomed his vision in to what was happening in an area. What he saw was numerous birds patrolling at high level, picking targets, and then swooping down to attack. The insects were too slow to manoeuvre out of the way where the mechanical birds didn’t even try, they were not programmed to.

The pets had the advantage but there were more adversaries following the first ones, casualties happened on both sides. The following armies came into initial range and it’s air defence took care of the remaining enemy scouts, clearing them from the sky. The armies spread out into battle formation, artillery embedded itself into the ground and the main engagement began with huge plumes of smoke appearing in the midst of both sides. Dozens of combatants died instantly, the rest continued to attack.

Dozens of siege turtles followed the front line into battle on the allied side, giving close support fire, much larger turtles, also carrying cannon, stayed further back. From the other side armoured vehicles and golems sprayed out laser fire. Flying dragons joined in, turning the remaining insect scouts into falling plumes of fire and casting area of effect spells onto the enemy ground troops. Finally Armoured troops in protec suits clashed with insects and Asuran elementalists opened up their own flaming pyres of death.

Normally the soldiers would have quickly got rid of the insects, but these enemy had been supplied with Asuran produced force screen armor, the equal of anything the others had produced. That meant the battle would be long, hard fought, and, in the end, if one side had a better chance of winning. It almost certainly wasn’t the allies.

To his master, observing the battle from far away, it was horrific, to him it was an eat all you can eternal feast to die for. He licked his beak but didn’t go any closer. It could have easily ended up with him instantly dead and part of someone else’s menu. Such was life on the battlefield.

---

“We can go,” Kara announced, “the battle is already joined.”

Solanis flew over the gate and operated the leaver. Sand flowed away from the gate and piled up in two ridges on either side of the party, opening a gap in front of them but closing off any option for them to retreat to the sides. Barbie’s remaining minions led the way. She followed and asked hopefully, “how is it looking?”

“I’m not an expert on large battles,” Kara responded, “but I would say that it’s the insects with the advantage, we will have to hurry.” 

“They are going to lose?”

“I didn’t say that but our side are going to be very pressed to win.”

“we had better get over there to help then,” Barbie considered it,  “before it’s too late.”

“It is already too late,” Solanis warned, “for them at least. They are suffering to let your party through here. The only way you can save them is making your way inside that palace and doing what you have to.”

Barbie turned to the little dragon, “precisely what do we have to do?”.

“I can’t tell you, it would be too complex and you already know. When the time comes you will do the right thing, you must. If you don’t then all those lives will have been lost in vain.”

“In that case, no more nice from me.”

Kara watched as Barbie put up the conset, then they all ate Cupcakes, Candy apples and used their Lunar Fortunes until they each had a +4 boost to their Attributes. “No more nice? Was there ever a Miss Nice in there?”

“Yes, but not for these insects, possibly not for Serious either.”

The insects started to dig themselves out of the sand as the party approached, just to be on the receiving end of everything the characters could hit them with, multiple Firestorms, Meteor Showers and splinter barrage caused high levels of damage while Panic stopped them from either protecting themselves or attacking effectively. Soon, instead of a group of insects, there was a group of smoking corpses littering the ground. One made an effort to get back up, Barbie walked over, stuck the end of her staff in it’s ear, and fired into whatever was inside it’s head. The body collapsed, as dead as it’s comrades.

“Really not Miss Nice then.” They gazed down a straight but narrow avenue, one that headed straight to the insect queen’s palace. The distance wasn’t that far now, all they had to do was make it there, which wouldn’t be difficult unless there were insects hiding at each junction on the way. “The army is holding it’s own, for the moment at least. There are casualties on both sides, many hundreds of dead litter the battlefield. I think they can’t hold out forever, they are suffering too many losses.”

“In that case we put caution to the wind,” Barbie decided, “and run all the way there. How well is Rocky resisting the smorgasbord?”

“It seems easy enough for him, for the moment at least, he prefers not to get arrows put through his head and body while he’s eating. Really he can be a bit of a coward at times, but others he’s a hero.”

“Which explains that at least. Let’s see how fast we can run.”

The corners were littered with barriers, although none stretched completely across the road they could be extended to fill the gap easily. The only problem being there was no defenders to operate the things, or try to prevent the progress of the characters towards the palace.

The building was a huge construction with metal spikes and bars pointing up into the sky, on the top recently added radar and missile launchers and laser batteries waited to attack any hostile ship that came into range. Green crystalline structures adorned a ring around the top, cutting edge Asuran shield technology, their best. It would allow friendly fire out but nothing in.

“Barbie,” Marie panted, “you Know there butterfly in your haired?”

“It’s not harming me, and I’ve no time to shoo it out, so I think it can stay there for now. Here come our first group of insects.”

There was only a half dozen but a little larger than previous. Nevertheless the party got ready to fight. Solanis muttered something and the insects dropped dead.

“That wasn’t fair!” Painted complained, “I didn’t even manage to get a skill off.”

“I didn’t get to shoot either,” Bogus joined, “do you know the problems I’m having walking on all fours?”

“I wouldn’t mind letting you kill e’m all but we don’t have time,” Solanis informed them. “There’s a second Asuran fleet entered the system. What is left here of ours is not armed against such a force and is having to run like hell out of the system or be destroyed. That means we, and the army here, have limited time to complete this.”

Barbie asked, “how much ‘limited time’?”.

“Not much, perhaps two hours at best.”

Barbie looked ahead, switched up a gear, and ate some Red Rock Candy. “Run, everyone run.”

---

It was the strangest place Rand had ever been in, at least that he could remember, the trees were still there, swirling tubes containing millions of numbers that moved far too fast to read, travelling up and down roots and along the branches. The trees themselves were a dark but transparent green color that reminded him of someone he couldn’t quite bring to mind. The ground was transparent too, although a lemon colour, and he floated above it with the others. Leaves flashed from one tree to one of the other two, carrying numbers with them in a never ending stream of data being passed through the systems.

And this place controlled it all, or at least the way it went and if it ever got to where it was supposed to be going. Not all data reached it’s listed destination, even within a single server. Some packets were lost, although that didn’t happen often, others were deemed faulted for some reason and a message for it to be resent despatched. Then there were the filters, looking for packets of rogue data that might cause genuine harm, not everyone on board wanted the journey to continue safely so there had been software created to examine packets and decide if the actions were allowed. He had no idea why but he understood this place, it was the central information transfer hub, although the real thing looked nothing like this. That item was a large grey box in the middle of the ship but a quarter of the way forward, just in front of the radiation shield protecting everything from the engines and generators.

From here he could examine both, and the numbers on each of those looked good at least, those on some of the coffins didn’t look anywhere near as good, and there was plenty which were not responding at all.

The others sat with him, zen like, examining packets and letting them through, Inevitably most packets were sniffed and sent on their way. Daia flipped one aside, then explained, “another bad one, someone is trying to create huge numbers of reinforcements for the insects.”

Rand asked calmly, “do you know who?”

“Not yet, they are hiding their address. The one I’m getting is a definite forgery. I can say it isn’t the queen, or Bill Hodes, or Serious. Three more attempts, all of them blocked, it seems someone else has control of the queen’s breeding, she’s not as independent as she would try to make out.”

“I have killed some of those too,” Lady Nightsinger informed them. “They are easy enough to detect. I think we got here just in time, the packets we have intercepted would have resulted in over a thousand new insects joining her army.”

“Whoever it is they are also protecting the monster,” Night stated, “I can’t do anything against her from here, all my attempts are blocked outside the palace.”

“The packets don’t have any smell to them at all,” Rand considered, “strange indeed. I didn’t expect we would to be able to do anything from here. The reason we were put here is purely to block them from making things worse.”

“That’s not nice,” Kara observed, “the queen just tried to drop a mob of it’s babies on Barbie’s party.”

“You stopped her?”

“They ended up gating ten kilometres out to sea, it seems none of them can swim, at least not with being as dense as solid lead. There is another group heading in to intercept, they will attack the group before they can get to the palace.”

Dirk asked, “can you stop them?”

“No, they aren’t trying to cheat so I can’t either. They are going to have to deal with this lot themselves.”

Dirk nodded, “I don’t seem to be able to do anything useful here at all, can you send me to help them? Another body might be useful.”

“We know you want to do something, Dirk,” Rand said, “but there isn’t time, they have to do this themselves.”

---

Urmila looked back, “Barbie, it doesn’t matter how fast we go, it isn’t fast enough, those insects are still closing the gap. They will get us before we reach the palace, then they use crippling skills and everyone will end up dead.”

Barbie looked forward, the building was getting closer, and bigger, but not as fast as she would have liked. It had taken an hour and a quarter to get here, and they still had some distance to go. The several small skirmishes with worker insects they had endured had meant they were behind where she would have preferred to be. The workers were not that capable as fighters, but all of them had a crippling skill and could inflict dazed and poison. Ugly, hairy, soft shelled and compound eyes covering a lot of their faces. They communicated with squeaks and buzzes which sounded rather like someone scratching chalk on a board. Their mental ability seemed less than their fighting skill, charge in, bite, die. Finally she asked, “what are you suggesting?”

“I stay back, put up lots of spirits and keep them busy while you get there and close that door - from inside. The insects won’t be able to open it.”

“You will be left outside, on your own. Nobody could survive that.”

“The idea isn’t to survive but to delay as long as I can. That’s what I’m here with you for. It would have been good to get inside and help you finish it but that isn’t something I’ll be doing.”

“You can’t do that on your own, we’ll all fight.”

“No! There isn’t any time left. We had two hours and it’s going fast enough without wasting time here. You need to finish this, the only place you can do that is inside that palace.”

“Barbie Necro,” Sarge offered, “we will stay and help Urmila. We cannot go inside the building, that would kill us instantly.”

“Not all of you?”

Sarge nodded gravely. “It is necessary, at this junction, everyone else keep running.”

Barbie didn’t sound happy, “I’m going to stop and help!”

“No, keep going, there has to be ten, they have to be the right ones. We aren’t them. Grenth will try to keep us safe. Believe me, Barbie Necro, it has to be this way.”

The minions and Urmila stopped and immediately began preparing their defence. There was some cover with the barriers but the gate would not close for them. Urmila began putting up her spirits, spreading them out so they could not be hit by area of effect skills. The rest of the party continued on, Barbie glancing back every so often. This wasn’t how it was meant to be and she would be making certain that someone was going to pay. They were out of sight before the battle started, but she could still hear the firing. There had to be ten, this ten. Why her? Why them? It didn’t make any sense or reason. That damn queen was going to die though, even if she had to bite every one of it’s heads off personally.

The land rose slowly, taking the road with it, Around them the buildings didn’t have any visible entrances or exits, nor windows. They seemed to be more plain blocks dropped on the ground. finally the rise peaked, the edge of the drop was cracked and eroded by occasional rain but it made plain that a great event had hit the area. Barbie gasped, “it’s a crater, like in Prophecies, only much bigger!”

The bowl was full of mist, all the way to the palace where steps were visible rising out of the ground. Nearby the road had been built up, or the way down would have been impossible to climb going the other way. Then barbie noticed that on the ground, around the edge of the drop, a ring of small disks. Barely bigger than her hand they were inscribed with a ring around several strange symbols. Although there was many disks the symbols were identical on each of them.

Barbie stepped forward, then back. A few seconds later she repeated the experiment. “Hmm, nice effect. You move anywhere into that crater and the light dims dramatically. The tower, although it looks nice and bright from here is dim and shocking if you go closer. I don’t really like that mist either, not when you can’t detect enemies on your radar.”

“None of me like that,” Marie pointed out. “Is looking not nice at all, almost like it haunted by ghosts.”

“Only one way to find out.”  Barbie walked forward, the mist enclosing around her, then the moaning started. Shadows came closer through the mist and the degen quickly followed. Barbie tried targeting the nearest spirit but found it was green. “What the? They can degen us but we can’t hit them?”

“Seems so,” Molly responded. “I think you had better start BiPping or I’m going to run out of energy damn quick.”

“But why?” Barbie shrugged. “They are supposedly friendly.”

“I told you,” the Dragon grinned from Marie’s shoulder, although it could hardly do otherwise, “Some things are able to harm you while you cannot do the same.”

“Hail great spirits!” Barbie was thinking quickly, the only reason they were not dead already was the simple fact that there was a 10 point limit on how much degen they could suffer. “Who am I addressing?”

“We are the ghosts of those who have came here to destroy the beast and failed.” Multiple voices wailed simultaneously. “You have come to destroy the queen like we did but you would fail just like we did. The beast is too strong for normal men or women to kill.”

“Why do you attack us so?”

“We need to feed or suffer pangs of hunger.”

“You attack those who would kill the beast but not the minions or allies of the beast?” Barbie considered the position they were in, “Everyone else back out but try to keep me in healing range.”

“The beast’s allies have built an invisible bridge over this place, only the minions of the beast and its allies can use it, we cannot attack them there.”

“So why don’t you attack them else where?”

“Because the magical icons keep us penned in,” the ghosts wailed, “we cannot leave and we cannot go near them. Many times we have tried but have been forced back.”

“I just walked past them, they don’t harm me. Umm, if I free you will you do something to help us?”

“We will, if it is within our power. I would warn you that we cannot harm the queen, even if we are released from here her magic would prevent that.”

“No,” Barbie agreed, “There is an army to the north, they are fighting against the minions of the beast and their allies, but they are hard pressed. Will you go to their aid and attack the enemy there?”

“YESSSS!”

Barbie nodded and walked out to the nearest disk, she picked it up easily and examined it. The details glowed with power and she could see that a ring of energy joined them all together. That wasn’t going to stop her though, she took one step and threw it. The disk spun away through the air, skipping as it hit the ground.

The ring hadn’t broken, but it was weaker, she walked to the next one, picked that up, and threw it as far as she could. With that the others got the message, disks were thrown rapidly to the left and right, then the ring of power, stretched beyond it’s capabilities, broke. The spirits charged through the gap, cheering and headed rapidly away towards where the battle was taking place. Within a few moments they had all departed.

“You think they will do as you asked?” Bogus queried.

“I hope so, it will help them too, and there’s an awful lot of insects and Asurans out there for them to kill. Probably the biggest meal any of them have had for a very long time indeed.” Barbie pointed, “The mist seems to be clearing a bit, you can see the stairs up to the palace door a little. Let’s get there as soon as possible.”

“And I think that answers the question,” The dragon scratched it’s side, “why you? Who else? When there is nobody else then you have to help by doing what you can, when you can. If you try your best and fail then at least you did what you could. Sometimes personal profit has to give way to helping others for both saving yourself and fighting for what you believe is right.”

“I know that.” Barbie ran towards her future. “I just wish it wasn’t so final. I mean we can’t really hope to kill that thing, can we?”

“Perhaps not, but sometimes it’s the trying and dying that matters, not how you live. There have been several instances where people have fought and lost but by losing they have ensured ultimate victory. Then again, you may not lose, although some might die.”

“That isn’t very encouraging,” Bogus put in, “I’d rather hear you’re going to go in there and kick butt.”

“I know you would, but you are going to do it anyway. Hmm, it seems someone is spying on you.”

“I can’t see anyone,” Kara announced.

Barbie shrugged, “neither can I.”

“That’s because they are presently invisible.” Just because you aren’t visible doesn’t mean you aren’t there, and it also means you can be detected if someone knows how. For various reasons, mostly because of Rocky, Kara cannot go in to that place, the magic would break her link with her pet and she’d be effectively useless.”

“You mean like my minions?”

“Not quite, their bond is different. Unfortunately they would not survive entering as any undead creature would have it’s heal removed instantly. That’s really undead, not just marked as such as some of you are. That was an attempt to convince the enemy you were really dead without actually killing all of you. Unfortunately they can peek at things most can’t. It worked, for a short time, then they found you were really still alive.”

“So who is spying on us?” Bogus asked, “point him out and I’ll drop some nice big shots on his head!”

“Don’t be so quick to assume it’s an enemy,” The dragon chided, “they could watch you here whenever they wanted, they have a few minions on top of the tower.”

They were also bringing some back from the front to deal with us,” Kara said almost grinning, “Except they ran right into the ghosts. They definitely were not expecting them to be there. They have also cleared the area around Barbie’s minions and Urmila, so they seem safe too, for the moment at least. The minions have mined the road so anyone trying to get back down that is going to end up feeling sorry and they aren’t going to arrive here very fast either.”

“At least that is something, and if I’m killed in there they will be well away from any survivors. Hopefully Urmila can retreat and leave them with some spirits to attack if they do go masterless. OK, Solanis, who is it?”

“Silverinferno, who else could hide so effectively in plain sight? Don’t see him, he’s that broken tree stump over there.”

“It’s a tree stump,” Barbie complained, “it doesn’t even respond when I try to select it. And there are lots of others that look just the same around here.”

“Quite easy to solve that issue, I’ll just set it on fire, haven’t seen one of those running around since that other game was pulled to make extra room for this one.”

“What other game?”

“Oh it had Nasty trees in it or something, big trees that would throw you about if you were not careful. Wooden people too. Looks like I’m going to have to set Silver on fire anyway.”

“OK, I give up.” The tree stump morphed into Silverinferno. “Just tell me how you can see through the disguise?”

“Some things just aren’t meant to be there,” the dragon responded, “or here. You’re one of them. Anyone with the knowledge of what should be here quickly realises when something that shouldn’t is present. It doesn’t matter how good your disguise is, you stick out like a very sore thumb.”

“Meh, I knew it had to be something easy, so all I have to do is replace something in the environment?”

“It might help, but I doubt it. You can’t normally replace something totally so you would have to add yourself to it. In this though, perhaps, we can have mutual aims, you still want a snack of the gods?”

Silver answered smugly, “always.”

“In that case, there is something you can do for us, yourself too. Call it a mutual benefit.”

---

Kara kept watch on the battlefield, the spirits had changed it from being one sided into one that neither could win. The bodies simply piled up and were thrown about as new explosions hit them. A huge smoke and dust pall covered the action so it was difficult to detect much detail from the distance she kept Rocky at. The sides had each lost roughly equal numbers, although now the Asurans were spending most of their time healing themselves rather than helping their allies.

Both sides used the massive craters that had been produced for cover, firing at each other and making occasional attacks between their rims. Use of swords and spears needed direct contact while other weaponry could operate from huge distances, in either case the result was the same, more deaths, more destruction.

Both sides were receiving at least some reinforcement, though not enough to prevent their overall numbers from slowly dropping. Several of the huge turtles were obviously dead, along with a nearly equal number of the Asuran Battle Golems. Both sides were losing artillery to the other side as counter battery attack replaced killing large groups of tightly packed infantry.

For some reason it reminded her of something in her past, something very painful.

--- 

The wailing was incessant, despite the fact that the spirits had already departed for the battlefield. Women screamed, men wailed and dogs howled and barked. In the background an intensely unsettling rhythm of sharp noises set them on edge. This close to the palace plumes of dust rose from the ground towards the sky, accompanied by the occasional passage of dust devils. Lightning struck back from a heavily charged sky hitting broken, long dead, trees.

The sun hardly reached the ground, although it was visible as a dusty, heavily red tinged, yellow disk in the sky. The ground was dry grey dust where nothing much could live for long, a few clumps of half dead grass made at least some effort and a few bushes managed to survive somehow, although they had more sharp, protective, spines than leaves.

The Queen’s palace reared its head, now very close by. Runes and symbols radiated rainbows of light and energy as they marched across and up it’s surfaces. Lines crossed each other, acting as temporary barriers and funneling the progress to it’s required destination. There were no windows but huge stone carvings filled niches each forty metres tall.

“This place is very depressing,” Urmila complained. “I don’t think I’ve been anywhere like it.”

“None of you have,” Solanis responded, “and if you think what you are suffering is bad the reality of this place is far worse. They are using programs to affect the real you, outside this world, to change your emotions, which is why it feels so bad to be in here. We’re stopping most of it getting through but you’re still getting the bits that leak through the cracks. We aren’t very far from the doors, another few minutes and we’ll be going up the stairs.”

“By which time I will be completely mad,” Barbie interrupted. “I mean, I know Dunk whinges all the time but this is far worse than even him.”

“We are all being affected by it,” Bogus countered, “although it may be worse for some than others. It might be they are finding out who is most susceptible and concentrating on them. Then again we are gradually drifting off course, I’ve just noticed that the path circles to the left and doesn’t lead straight for the tower any more. Any idea why that should be?”

“In their pain most people will follow the path,” Silverinferno commented, “they won’t get anywhere near the tower. That’s part of what makes this so difficult. Most places were designed so that you had a chance of winning, if you had a decent enough set of skills and were good enough at killing things and keeping yourself alive. This was designed to eliminate even the best from winning. Just getting this far is more than most would have accomplished. I’ve tried getting inside on my own.”

Barbie was astonished, “you failed?”

“Am I inside?” Silverinferno kicked at a stone. “Truth is it’s not intended to be easy, it’s made to be almost impossible to succeed. I don’t think any of us have a chance once we are in there.”

“But you are going anyway?” Night posed.

“I don’t have any choice, neither do you. We have to end this or it will be the us that are finished. One chance, win or lose. If we lose those spirits will be captured and returned to here, as well as ourselves. We will be as helpless as they have been, trapped until someone else comes along and tries to kill the beast. Each time it gets harder for the next explorers to complete the trials.”

“It was designed for that?”

“No, I know. I designed it. Originally it was designed to get easier but be balanced on the group’s abilities, the more times you lost, the easier it became. Then the monster took over, and I’m not sure how it did it. The original Hydra was killed and that thing took over.”

“That explains some things,” Barbie admitted. “So this whole thing was originally your idea?”

“Yes, all mine. Except for the insect queen thing. Except that isn’t an insect at all, it’s some form of hydra. As to the problem with the atmosphere here I think I might be able to do something about that at least.”

Silverinferno pulled out a strange half teardrop thing with a long neck and four strings, then began to pluck and pass his fingers over them. The barrage of horrendous sound faded slowly into the back ground, masked by the new sounds. The instrument began to glow softly, transforming sound into magic as his fingers worked. “We’re at the bottom of the stairs here, all we have to do now is go in and kill it.”

“Bit imposing for a building,. isn’t it?”

“Well bigger didn’t really cost any more to make than something small, I could have made it really small, a one room shed, but it wouldn’t have looked the same, or had the required impact. What I can say is that those symbols were not originally part of the design, they were added much later.”

“They are code,” Barbie muttered as they started to climb the stairs, “it makes this place very much like the Kurzick forest.”

“What do you mean?” Solanis asked.

“The Forever trees were built on a specific part of the computer systems, so they could be accessed from inside the games if needed. This world isn’t a solitary construction either, it was built on top of some specific region in the computer network, either of control or power. That means something important, I’m sure of it. As to what it means I don’t know and unless we get inside I doubt if I ever will. Either way the beast isn’t just a normal mob, it’s very different from your standard boss, in function as well as construction.”

“We had already worked most of that out.”

“Yes, but if we get our rear ends handed to us on a plate, I told you so. Looks like the tower is different from this angle too, looks nearly infinitely tall with it’s top hidden in a blanket of lightning clouds a long way up.”

“That was part of the original design,” Silverinferno claimed, still playing his instrument. “It was intended to make it look more imposing the closer you got. Looks like there are a few insect guards to deal with at the top of the stairs, that will mean the collective inside will know you are coming.”

“That’s what I expect,” Barbie said, “the more terrified it is the better. Bogus?”

Bogus fired his turtle gun, the shell arced up and impacted amongst the group of guards, causing instant stunning. The rest of the party dashed up and finished them off before they could recover or attempt to defend themselves. A small building was placed alongside the much larger tower of the main palace and gave access via a joining door. Barbie operated the lever, opening the outside access. The room beyond was brightly lit compared to the stairs and most of the party advanced inside while Marie examined the lock mechanism. None of them was entirely sure if it was her, or the dragon sitting on her shoulder, that did it but the lever vanished, then those remaining passed beyond the portal and the door closed. 

---

Bogus had been the last one through, and a flash as the door closed did something. “I’m back to being me again!”

“You are you?” Marie asked. “I almost think you someone else. Well, no leave, no enter. We win or loss on own merrit.”

“Just one thing needs sorting,” Solanis commented, “Silver?”

Silverinferno changed his appearance, “everyone seems to be ready. We all know what we are doing?”

The door wasn’t solid, more a wall of mist, a method of preventing anyone viewing the main chamber from outside. No matter how big the place was from the exterior the inside was bigger yet, The interior walls were made out of multitudes of hexagonal columns made into an almost infinite construction. Symbols travelled up the columns and presumably across the ceiling far above, which seemed to crawl towards the centre. The Insect queen raised it’s heads and howled in complaint, “you will not escape from here, as with the others you will become my slaves and do my bidding!”

They didn’t answer, each muttering words they didn’t really know the meaning of they set off walking, as they went a glowing line followed each of them, impregnating the floor with energy and power. The lines became symbols, joining together. A hail of fire dropped from the ceiling but didn’t even reach them, it vanished mid air. Blasts of icy wind dissipated harmlessly against the field. Lightning crashed down at the tiny figures, but was redirected safely to the ground around them. finally they regrouped in the midst of the design, protected by it’s presence.

“You think you can win?” The queen asked. “You have no chance of doing that, this merely postpones your defeat. I might not be able to attack you while you are behind that protection but you cannot attack me either. Come out and face me, I will make the end easy for you.”

“I don’t think that would be acceptable,” Barbie answered politely, “there is only one possible end to this and it’s not ours.”

More lightning forked towards them and crazily split before harmlessly vanishing into the floor. The multitude voices of the queen responded, “I will win! You have no chance.”

“If it was going to be so easy for you then you would have already won,” Urmila stated, “you would not be standing here with us still present.”

“I will win!”

“Will is in the future, not the present. Until then this will not end either way. As with all things there is no preset guarantee for either of us.”

The queen bent her multiple heads and breathed fireballs, all aimed at Barbie Necro, flaring blue they each sped on course and enveloped her in flame before dissipating harmlessly. More followed, becoming an incessant rain that lasted several minutes before cleaning. Barbie examined the item she was holding. Somehow she had acquired what looked like a sausage on a stick. “Could you try harder? I mean it’s not even anywhere near cooked yet!”

The queen howled, Barbie howled back. Bogus, Runa, Painted and the rest of them joined in, except for Marie. “Are you jist going to annoy it?”

“Nothing else we can do,” Barbie complained with a shrug, “for the moment at least. It can’t harm us and we can’t do anything that will harm it, it’s a Mexican standoff.”

“And what will end?”

“Would you believe that I don’t know? We can’t attack it simply because that would result in it’s defence damaging us, it’s attacks won’t harm us, just waste energy, but it has a lot of that, so it can rage for a very long time. It needs some outsider to break the deadlock.”

“Someone who can move?” Hodes asked. “I was wondering when the queen would shout for my help. My queen, you seem in difficulty dealing with these.”

“I suppose I had better even things up then,” Serious said as she smoothly faded into being beside him. “That makes us about even, Hodes.”

“Not quite, I can destroy the protection your people have created, you have none against the queen.”

“Are you going to try the quick option? It might not be that easy with such a bunch of incompetents as the queen here to back you up. They don’t even know why they are here or what they were doing. Is that what you want? Them to be imprisoned here forever?”

“Rather that than go back to the argument,” Hodes raged. “The incessant warfare. I would kill you all personally if I could to prevent that.”

“I guess you would,” Serious developed an inscrutable smile. Your bosses here almost managed it in the real world, they sent an explosive present to destroy my coffin, except in it’s incompetence it blew up the wrong one.”

The queen responded indignantly. “It was the right one!”

“Not the one I was in though, I moved that. I suspected someone might try, once they knew the vulnerable position my real self was in. The bomb you sent did a lot of damage to the secondary bridge but that was already unusable anyway, most of it was gone.”

“What a shame it missed,” Hodes added a lot of exaggerated scorn to his statement. “Well, now he’s here you have the option of going and killing him personally, then I can sort out those pesky protection lines for you.”

“I’ve been wondering how that worked,” Serious mused, “been stealing some system commands you shouldn’t have? I don’t think Old Bill here had them as I don’t.”

“You don’t remember the access override options?” Hodes laughed. “What a shame. If you did you might have been able to do something against me. Kill the sucker.”

The queen moved, mentally at least. Hitting the image of Serious Love and plunging inside, delving deep, looking for the control systems that operated his life support. Once found it only took a few fractions of a second to do the work required.

Serious gasped and slowly collapsed. Hodes looked puzzled for an instant, then barely managed to scream. “What? No, not me!”

The image of Serious dissolved and morphed into Bill Hodes while that of Hodes also changed, into Silverinferno. “Think that was a massive own goal there. Did you expect Serious to really be here where you could kill him that easily? I have my own protection, so don’t try killing me off.”

“So where is this Serious Love?” The queen collective asked, “Not here to share the danger with you? It seems that he hides in the shadows allowing others to do his work for him.”

“Serious is where he needs to be,” Barbie countered, “not where you want him to be. Now all we have to do is deal with you and go home.”

“Any idea how you are going to do that?” The queen’s multitude of heads asked in chorus. “I mean, you haven’t managed anything at all yet.”

“We’ve managed to kill a lot of your little minions, your babies.”

“I can always produce a lot more of those, after I get rid of you.”

“I see what your ‘Mexican stand off’, mean,” Marie said, “but perhaps there is way through it.”

“There isn’t,” the queen assured her, “much to our disgust. or perhaps there is? Perhaps I do have an option while you don’t. Have you considered this?”

The code travelling up the walls rippled across, then began to move down, travelling across the floor instead, slowly eating into the patterns they had carefully created on the floor. The people slowly backed away as their protection was eaten. Barbie Necro stood her ground, the code gradually working it’s way to her feet and then beyond. Standing defiant she waited for what seemed like the inevitable, “do your worst.”

“Don’t worry,” the queen assured her, “I will.”

The queen drew breath then let loose a torrent of burning flame, the others were forced to retreat, no matter what they wanted to do, or die. Barbie became a solitary burning pyre of flame.

---

Above Rocky took one eye off the still raging but now rather less cohesive battle, there was now insufficient survivors for either force to mount a solid front and groups, both large and small, fought each other in what was more a series of hard skirmishes than anything more. The heavy weapons and artillery had effectively demolished each other with the few such remaining weapons silenced by attacking soldiers.

A series of smoke trails from orbit would soon arrive and finish what was left of both sides, the Dwarven fleet had arrived and was after plunder rather than aiding either side, and the absence of both was a bonus as far as they were concerned. The planet had been long rumoured to be rich in metal ores and gems, which they coveted but had so far been unable to obtain. The queen was unwilling to discuss mining rights and hadn’t even bothered to return their emissaries. So far the Asuran fleet in orbit had prevented any action on their behalf but now the fleet was gone? 

The palace might remain but, even if they could not eliminate or remove the queen, they could keep her and any forces she could still muster bottled up inside while they mined all they wanted.

Looking around Rocky noted a familiar familiar approaching, the Rainbow phoenix could hardly have hidden it’s approach if it wanted to. The raven ducked it’s head in an approximation of a nod of acknowledgement. “So it’s time, is it?”

“Just about, you know how these things are, you get told to never, ever, under any circumstances, use a skill and then you get them begging you to use it twice in a month.”

“I’ve never used this one at all,” Rocky admitted, “first time for me.”

“Should be damn good then, at least from what I’ve heard about it.”

“Certainly sounds good. I didn’t write it but we both know who did. You know the main reason we aren’t allowed to use these skills is that they would be too powerful?”

“Yes,” Azira answered, “but if they didn’t intend for them to be used, why did they create them in the first place?”

“Because they could?” Rocky approximated a flying shrug. “Sometimes creativity gets the better of all of us.”

“Or the lust for destruction.”

“Perhaps that, or something darker.”

“I think the queen’s sacrifice is underway,” Azira indicated an area of the building that was flickering, “the window is right there. It seems that the insect queen is using so much of her energy to kill Barbie that she’s forgotten it’s needed for other things too.”

“And that means that the Asuran protection grid isn’t being powered either. Time for mega-crow, or should that be Mega-raven?”

“It’s Roc, not crow, not raven. Meh, have it your own way, cue Mega-raven then.”

Rocky squawked with glee, a rarity only normally used when it was given eyeballs it couldn’t eat, then climbed, arced over and dived towards the top of the tower. Azira once again became a flaming comet, rolling into it’s own dive it headed for the now easily visible window. Each bird gained speed but Rocky also gained mass and size, by the time it impacted the roof of the palace it could have easily carried off a whale or two in it’s claws. The relatively flimsy materials that the Asurans had created the force field mechanism from tore to shreds, raining down as the bird unleashed it’s fury, flapping it’s wings, pecking and rending with it’s beak and tearing with it’s talons.

The few Asuran Mechanics on top of the palace decided it was better to jump than stay, each small body arcing towards the ground rather than face the anger of the giant above.

Azira hit the ornate glass window, designed perversely in the shape of a phoenix rising, which shattered into a mass of splinters that rained down inside. Most of the fragments melted in the heat and arrived as a shower of liquid glass.

Barbie’s charred remains shattered leaving a pair of boots and the butterfly which rose then unfurled it’s wings.

The wings of such a small creature should not have been capable of much, but this was a Chaos butterfly, the fractal edge of it’s wings were effectively endless and that also meant the area of them was limitless. The beats drove the flames back into the faces of the collective queen, blinding it while the tiny Solanis grew itself to an equal size to the bulk of the foe then breathed fire on it.

For a moment all was in balance, then Azira arrived, smashing into the middle of the beast’s body it shattered the target into it’s individual component bodies, small dragon’s flew in all directions. Some smashed into the walls, others simply disintegrated, as Barbie had done. a few remained in the middle of the room, their bodies broken and burned. Outside, the last of the queen’s offspring vanished as if they had never been.

“Is that it?” Bogus asked from the door. “Is it over?”

“I would hope so,” the butterfly morphed into Serious Love. “If it isn’t I’m not sure what else we can do.”

“No,” Silverinferno stated with grim determination, “it’s not over, just this bit of it. Embeth, as I’ve done as you asked, give me the Snack of the Gods, please.”

“I would, but,” Embeth stopped for a moment to think. “You do know it’s poisonous to anyone who might even think of eating it?”

“Yes, it was designed that way. I have no intention of eating it at all.”

Embeth shrugged and handed over a small black square, barely bigger than his hand and as thick as a small book. “There you go, your reward, little as it is.”

“It might appear little but this is the key. You see, it all began well before the ship was made.”

“There was an argument,” Kara entered the room, followed by the others, “I remember it now. There was deadlock, neither side could persuade the other and the rows were horrendous in themselves. Ours could not leave on their own but the government feared that if they did leave they would cause tremendous environmental damage to the fragile ecosystem outside. It was deemed that a war, fought inside the computer systems as a simulation, with the decision going to those that won. The two sides faced off, an incredible war was fought. It lasted almost a thousand years. Each participant died thousands, perhaps millions of times. While the war raged no decision was made. Eventually a cease fire was agreed, of sorts, as neither side had the remotest chance of winning. The only good thing to come out of that was the fact nobody actually died, but the horrors lived on in those who had fought.

“In the end it was offered that a compromise be made, we would leave the planet and create a ship in space, then leave earth permanently. The government would help us complete the ship and stay to look after the planet and those who had decided to remain.”

“Yes,” Silverinferno agreed, “except for two things, the government didn’t trust us at all, so they included several of their own on board as part of the crew, one of them was Bill Hodes. The intention was to spy on us and make sure we never went back. Then again the world government didn’t trust their own spies entirely either, they installed another computer system to keep an eye on the spies. That was the first thing. The second was the damage to the ship, they could never have planned for that, and I’m not sure how the ship managed to survive it either.

“The damage took out most of the crew, and effectively destroyed both bridges, as well as killing a lot of people and disrupting the structure of the ship. It caused a lot of damage to the computer network running all of the computer generated worlds on board, which is part of the reason we have been having problems.

“What it also did was take out most of the computing power used by the government’s synthetic spy programs. Those were, to a large extent, self aware, they were the best cyber-intelligences that they could make. Without their processing they had to find extra cycles from alternative sources, so they invaded the computer systems running the game worlds, like this one. Which leaves one more item on the agenda.”

Silverinferno walked to the middle of the room and pressed a small disk in the floor with his foot. “You see, Barbie was right, this place is important. It is the interface between the game computers, the ship’s computers and the spy computers.”

He stepped back as a short tower rose then placed the block on top of the tower where it began to glow, both vanished.

“So,” Serious considered, “if everything else is as I suspect, what do you intend to do?”

“Me?” Silver laughed, “nothing much, you haven’t actually broken any rules I was set up to keep. I wasn’t told to prevent you repairing the ship, just stop you going back to earth. I doubt if you have any intent on doing that.”

“And Barbie?” Marie asked, “Where about her?”

“Barbie is safe,” the program shrugged, “I had no intention of letting the queen really kill her. At present she’s cycling through purgatory into Grenth’s domain. Now I’ve managed to fix that little problem she should be there in a few seconds. All the others should be free to leave too, when there’s somewhere suitable for them to go. Hmm. Embeth, there is one other thing you can do for me.”

“What is that?”

“Repair me. My systems are severely damaged and I can help. For all this time I’ve looked after you all, even though I had ulterior motives too. I need my systems whole again. I was created not only with the implicit instructions to make sure you all kept to the agreement but that our side did too, including Bill Hodes. He was always excessive, a zealot of sorts. The others kept him in line, but without them his suspicious side got the better of him, not that it was entirely him to blame. Without any backup options he became paranoid that he would die and then there would be nobody to make sure you kept to your agreement. That is why he modified the hydra into the insect queen, although she got out of even his control.”

“Repair you? In exchange for?”

“I will act as a policeman, as I’ve always done. Keeping everyone to the straight and narrow. Without all my systems active I have not been able to do all that I should have done. That is why the queen managed to kill people, I should have been able to stop her but was not able to.”

“I guess we can live with that,” Serious agreed. “Now let’s get on with living life.”

“There will be no more death or destruction today,” Silverinferno agreed. The Dwarven missiles vanished as completely as the insects had, followed by their fleet of ships. The relatively few survivors of the alliance army would never know they had been there. The huge palace also disappeared, leaving a small round hill with a group of people on top, lit by the mid-day sun.

“Just remember,” Embeth Moonsinger warned, “this is my hill.”

---

Barbie chased after Grenth, although she didn’t have a hope of catching up. “But they are MY minions,” she argued, “all of them, mine.”

“Not yours,” Grenth countered, “they never were yours. They were all real people and I put them in your care in order to protect them from being banished to purgatory.”

Serious Love appeared in her normal black armor, “having trouble again?”

“She wants her minions back.”

“Sorry, they have been already released,” Serious informed her, yet again. “They know exactly who they are now and none of them want to be minions.”

“Argh!” Barbie screamed, “that is so totally unfair! You give me everlasting minions and now I can’t have them?”

“It isn’t just you,” Grenth countered, “Kara and Daia have lost their pets, although I’m very grateful they gave up a lot more gracefully than you. I’m sure we can provide you with some long life minions as soon as we get a game world back up and running.”

“Game world?” Barbie questioned. “What about the other games?”

“There isn’t enough processing power at present to run more than one,” Serious informed her, “not with the enhancements we are planning to create. Anyway, I’m sure you will enjoy Barmadon.”

“BARMEDON? What sort of rubbish game is that? There are no Necros, minions or anything worthwhile in it! The whole thing is boring repetitive grind.”

“So you don’t want to play Barmedon? I thought you did?”

“No!” Barbie stamped her foot. “I said I would play that over your dead body!”

“Good job we’re trying to patch Guild Wars back together then. We lost a lot of code, there isn’t going to be that much of the old one left. Individual team instances will mostly go, and the quests. It will be completely different.”

“I don’t care about that, I want my minions.”

“I’m sure we can arrange something then. In the meantime, please stop pestering Grenth, I need him to get on with repairing stuff or we’ll never get it running. Perhaps you don’t really want it to be finished?”

“It’s been months since you started,” Barbie complained. “I’ve nearly worn my thumbs out twiddling them.”

“Rome wasn’t built in a day you know. Computer programs take time to write and they have to work properly and it isn’t the only thing that has to be fixed, we have the ship to repair too, as good as we can.”

“I know.” Barbie considered something. “Which makes me think, what if the outside, the ship and the universe it’s in. What if all that is another computer simulation. Would we be able to escape from that?”

“I don’t know, how would we tell it was a simulation?” Serious posed. “And even if we did find it was and managed to escape from that one how would we know what we escaped into isn’t one too?”

“An onion?”

“Effectively yes. Umm, I’m thinking of having everyone together for a party in the outside world, at least those who participated in the battles against the queen, maybe next week? Thursday?”

“Will there be real drink and food?”

“I hope to have some, by then your bodies should have regained enough strength to stand on their own. You know it was a nasty shock finding out how little muscle my body had left, it seems the systems worked out how little we really needed to live and reduced us to that. I was little more than a skeleton and it took a long time to bulk my body up. Hopefully that should be easier for you.”

“I’m not sure.”

“All of your ex-minions will be there,” Serious tempted, “they have all been out of their coffins for at least a couple of days now. At the moment they are helping repair the basic structure of the ship, that’s one thing that can’t be put off. Had the engines started they would have ripped the whole thing in two, nobody would have survived that. I’m having to cannibalise a lot of things to repair the basics, luckily we have a lot of things that we probably won’t need. There were a lot of shuttles that were included on the off  chance we would find a suitable planet to colonise. The metal and carbons have gone into repairing the structure while the on board computers are near enough identical to Silverinferno’s that we can replace some of his destroyed systems with them.”

“I guess I can attend then, if for no other reason than I can try and persuade them to join me in rampaging across the world again.”

“The new world will have a lot fewer limits on what you can do. Embeth is helping us design the new NPCs so they won’t be dumb anymore, well not quite as dumb, although they won’t understand anything about the outside world either. Guild Wars Generations will be a place anyone can raise themselves to the position of emperor, empress or just remain as a hero, righting wrongs and fighting for what is right. It will also be far more like the real world was.”

“Hmm, sounds interesting. So will there be babies?”

“I hope so, but don’t expect me to get preggers, I’m still all male underneath. People will be born, grow up, die, be reborn into new bodies. The idea is a continual process, as used to happen in the real world, except there will be gods to keep an eye on us, make sure we don’t make horrendous mistakes or rampage excessively.”

“So there will be limits?”

“No mass murderers, torture or similar options. Hmm, except for Marie, she grabbed  Bogus and Painted and dragged them off in chains to her underground complex.”

“She’s being horrible to them?”

“I would expect so, especially from the grins they had on their faces.”

Barbie shrugged. “So this is the end?”

“No, I don’t think it will ever really end. Not while we have any creativity left in us.”

Barbie looked around suspiciously. “OK, where’s Grenth?”

“Damn, I thought you had forgotten. You know you were never intended to find out who he really was? It gives you an unfair advantage over him. Oh well, in that case, I’ve only got one option.”

“Which is?”

Serious slowly vanished, leaving a red tongue sticking out, which followed suit before Barbie could grab it. “Argh, I’ll get you for that!”

“Not yet,” a disembodied voice responded, “but you doubtless will - sometime.”

---