The beetle’s hardened shell cracked under the titanic blow from one of Willow’s feet. Juice and smushed mushroom sprayed the battlefield, which I was thankfully far enough away from to avoid being hit by.

This was the second beetle that the massive undead tree had killed, with my friends and me protecting it from attempts by the Unseelie to stop its rampage. I wasn’t sure how to feel about the fact that the Silver Ridge airship had also taken out two beetles and was working on a third. On the one hand, we were fighting on the same side, but on the other hand… Marlon was going to be insufferable.

“Keiko! To your left!” Paisley shouted, throwing out a hand to point in that direction.

Instinctively, I twisted and brought my Katana up in a guard position. An unseelie warrior was barrelling in towards me from the sky, its long, thin blade reminding me of a rapier, although it dripped with a foul smelling black substance. I angled my blade and hooked it up under the incoming thrust, deflecting the sharp point of his weapon up and to the side.

Unfortunately, he was still flying and his wings buzzed while he flicked sideways in the air. Using my katana as a brace, he adjusted the direction of the thrust until it was coming right at the side of my head.

The entire clash took barely three seconds, and I was just barely fast enough ducking out of the way to avoid having my skull run through.

"You fight in vain, seelie," the fairy hissed in a voice both rough and high. "Just as the Faerym before us, and the Ielanaidd before them, the time of the seelie is ended."

"I have no idea what you're on about," I ground out, blocking yet more of his strikes. Damn but he could move.

The man gave an unhinged giggle and launched into a wild flurry of strikes. "The Ascendant Empire is dead! Dead, dead, dead! A husk, dried and shrivelled!"

"And what, you're going to create an Unseelie one?" I asked, turning one of his strikes and lashing out in turn.

"Unseelie?" He sneered, baring a set of teeth with double the normal number of canines. "We are Elysians, and we follow our lord in the deep!"

"You can throw as much wacky lore at me as you like, but it's not going to make any more sense to me," I replied.

"You will understand in time, should you live to see it," he said, disengaging to stare me down like a deranged genderbent tinkerbell.

It was at precisely that moment that I lost all patience and swapped from a two-handed stance to a one-handed casting stance. To him, it must've almost looked like a second version of me came in from his peripheral vision. He fell for the illusory feint, moving to block the insubstantial attack. I took the opening and ran with it all the way to a touchdown. A touchdown, in this context, was me running him through with my katana. Go sportsball!

World Quest Received: Threat from the Faelands!

An imperialist faction of the Elysian race hailing from the mysterious lands of the fae beyond the northern mountains have launched a surprise attack against the Kingdom of Porin and its neighbours. Defend the cities of the human realms and learn more about this new threat.

Assaults Defeated: 2
Cities Fallen: 4
Assaults in progress: 14

“Cities fallen?” I gasped, looking at my friends. “Does anyone know which ones?”

“Uh… Let me check,” Paisley replied. It seemed we had a slight breather during which to chat and regroup. “Redchamney down in Chisland is gone, although the players there are saying they’re moving to recapture it using a nearby spawn point. The rest are in Celkia way to the west. Rhair, Oltermuth, and Penkse.”

“Makes sense, nobody bases themselves in Celkia.” Ethan interjected, joining the conversation.

“That’s only in the human kingdoms,” Paisley gasped suddenly. “The Elven, Dwarven, Orcish, Demonic, and Lizardic lands are all facing similar threats, although theirs aren’t fae related. The elves are dealing with industrialist snow elves, the dwarves are fighting humanoid bats that apparently live in a vast underground region, and— ha! Get this, the Demons are being invaded by crusading vampires!”

“Seems like each region is dealing with different threats, so how does this all tie together into an expansion?” he mused.

She shrugged. “I guess we’ll see?”

This time, I wasn't distracted enough to be caught unaware by the homicidal unseelie that rushed me, bastard sword swinging. "You killed Mariab! I will make sure you do not live to wear chains in service to the Deep Lord!"

His swing was wild and vicious, but not terribly skilled and I shifted to deflect it. The expected impact and grinding sensation of steel on steel never came. Pain erupted in my stomach. What? How? His sword… it wasn't…?

I fell out of the air with the elysian man following just out of reach. His sword was coming in again, and this time I saw it. A subtle fuzzing around the edges of his arm and blade. It was my own damn skill used against me!

Try as I might, my arm wouldn't move to block the very real lunge that was nothing but a shimmer in the air. Then I noticed the pain in that limb. Somehow he'd hit me there too. I was so screwed.

Out of nowhere, a blur of muscles and red hair interposed itself between me and the coming coup de grace. The ground arrived a second later, and time sped back up to normal speed again, while my breath quickly evacuated the premises.

"Ethan, heal my daughter!"

Mum? That was her voice…

Warmth spread back through my body, expunging the lethargy of wounded limbs and low health. Sitting up, I looked over to see my mother, muscles bulging as she lifted the comparatively scrawny elysian guy over her head. He came down from on high at exceptional speed, until with a sickening crunch his spine met her knee.

No idea why, but I laughed. My previously tiny mother pulling wrestling moves like that was just too funny.

Hot on her heels came a couple dozen other players, all with muscles oiled and flexing, just like my mother. Chaos erupted in the vicinity of Willow as the friendly combatants tore into the mushroom creatures and hapless unseelie.

One elysian man attempted to fly away, only for an honest to god weighted net to fly up and snatch him out of the sky. The thrower was a man with one entire arm covered by banded bronze armour, while his other one held a trident. Screeching and hissing like a trapped viper, the fae man attempted to claw his way out of the net, but his flailing only made the situation worse. His efforts were brought to a swift end by a single efficient thrust of the trident.

Another woman had heavy armour covering each of her limbs, plus a big bronze helmet with a million holes over the front plate for vision. In contrast, only the simplest cloth two-piece was worn on her torso, and I wondered if she'd forgotten to equip a breastplate. In her hands, twin short swords flashed, scything through fungal flesh with extreme skill.

Pushing myself to my feet, I watched my mum and her friends. It took me a few seconds, but I soon realised what their theme was. They were roman gladiators!

Another burst of healing hit me, and I flashed a look of thanks back towards Ethan. "Thanks healer!"

He gave me a smile and a thumbs up in return.

Jumping back into the fray, I slashed one mushroom in half with a swift diagonal cut, then took the next enemy in a similar manner with a flowing upwards strike. The attack served its purpose fine, but my body protested the movement just slightly. My footwork was off just a little, causing everything upwards of my ankles to be aligned poorly. I needed to put in some work doing kata again. It’d been way too long.

The gladiator players fought alongside us, their bronze weapons flashing while they hollered comically over the top war cries. My mum’s friends were so nerdy.

Paisley continued to weave her dark magic, tendrils of shadow entangling the larger foes with pitch black thorny vines that dragged them down into an unseen abyss. A moment later, they’d reappear leaking all sorts of fluids that definitely weren’t blood.

The battlefield was chaotic, far more so than I imagined even real battles from history had been. At one point, I saw a gladiator spinning two double bladed swords in an intricate dance that saw limbs flying. Another time, I spotted Elena laughing with glee while she rode one of Willow’s children, knives dealing instant death as they plunged through soft skulls.

With each strike, each parry, and each spell cast, we cut their numbers down. They might have the weight of numbers, but we had healers and that unique deathwish that all players possessed. It was hard to worry too much about dying when you’d come back to life, despite all the penalties it could impose on you.

“The fairies are giving up!” someone exclaimed, their voice carrying through the cacophony of battle.

Breathing heavily, I dispatched the overgrown fungal stag I was fighting and stepped quickly backwards under the safety of Willow. It was true! The unseelie were flying fast for the cover of the forest and the fog. For a brief moment, I pined after my old class. If I’d still been a Lightstalker, I could’ve used my bow to snipe a few out of the air. Others were working on that, though. Especially Paisley, whose sharp whistle sent a beam of inky black death out to pluck an elysian woman’s head from her shoulders like an apple.

Quest Progress: Threat from the Faelands!

You have successfully defended Ardgour!

Assaults Defeated: 4
Cities Fallen: 5
Assaults in progress: 11

The message and its many implications struck me like a series of lightning bolts. We did it! We beat the fuckers! At the same time, though, another city had fallen. The situation was dire, and time was running out for the other 11 besieged cities. Shit, there had to be a way to coordinate with everyone—maybe figure out who was available to get to what city in time to help. If this all happened six months ago, I’d have suggested Marlon take the lead in setting up some sort of communication with the many other large guilds.

I glanced at my friends and found expressions that mirrored my own mixed joy and apprehension.

“Eleven cities still in danger,” Ethan said, frowning thoughtfully at his map.

“There’s no way we can get to the struggling ones in time,” Paisley replied, putting her pan flute away. The other players, Willow, and the Dryads had the straggling mushroom zombies well under control.

Mum, covered in mushroom gore, trotted over with the net man and the girl with no torso armour. “Hey kiddos, are we having fun?”

“Yup!” I smiled. “Any ideas on how we might help the other cities?”

“Vesuvia!” Mum said, turning to the gladiator woman with her. “What was that about a gladiator distribution network?”

The woman laughed, lifting the visor of her helmet as she did so. “A bug with the arena system. Someone in one city can create a custom tournament, get everyone into the arena for the battle, and then cancel it. Everyone in the tournament will be spawned outside the colosseum in the city the tournament creator was in. If you die or use any recall spells, though, you’ll respawn back in your original city. Pretty much anything in the game that manually updates your position within the game will snap you back to the spot you were in before the tournament.”

“That’s so stupid,” Noah grinned. “Will we get banned if we use it to move people to fight the mushrooms?”

“We’ve been using it since the game launched. Hell, we’ve even reported it as a bug and everything,” Vesuvia giggled wickedly. “The devs haven’t said a goddamn thing about it, so I doubt they’ll start caring now. Plus… returning from the gladiator distribution network has some… side effects.”

That was all mum needed to hear, and she turned to the group at large. “Who wants to go on a magical journey?”

“Hold on, what were the side effects?” I asked suspiciously.

Vesuvia, who looked about the same age as my mum, shot me a sly look that dripped chaotic energy. “Nuh huh, little pixie girl. If you come along, you get to find that out the fun way.”

Oh shit.

QuietValerie

I finished elden ring! Time to do it all again! Weee! Oh also help I can't stop writing chaotic characters!!