As Ace hefts her hammer, I hear her roar. It’s hard to make out the exact words, but I catch enough obscenity to instantly justify the 'online interactions are not rated' disclaimer and violence to make a slasher movie look tame.

As she effortlessly swings her hammer around her, a windmill slicing through air, I catch the rest more clearly than I like.

“...Then DIE! Get out of my way, I’ll kill you! I’ll smash this whole damn WORLD, crack your gods like eggshells–!”

And my heart is, like Ace's limbs, gripped by ice.

I remember discussing Ace’s build, as she uses the spike end of her hammer to carve into the nearest tentacle. All Vigor and Agility, some Resolve for defense; Spirit and Mind, and the Breath it gave, was her last concern because she was deliberately optimized to mulch trash mobs at the expense of protracted combat.

Ace was tired before the fight even started, wielding a heavy warmaul. And then this. She should be out of Stamina by now.

I can't look away from Ace in all her apocalyptic fury as she screams death and deicide at the First of the Profane Beasts of the God-Queen of Monsters, and then I kick myself. 

Stamina is a number on a sheet. People surpass their limits every day, in moments of strong emotion, to survive.

Ace’s fury won’t let her stop until all the enemies are dead, or she is.

She absolutely took the "burn HP as SP" skill and I do not want to see the aftermath of her using it.

I hear crackling, like ice in a drink, at my feet and snap out of rubbernecking long enough to look down. Another magic circle is forming up under Alesha, Hikaru and I - not filled in yet, but it's probably not a good idea to stay.

I lunge, chanting under my breath, making hand signs to shape the chants. When my hands start glowing and wisps of bright wind swirl around them, I speak.

"Tayeb, stay back! Alesha! Cover her!"

I lay a hand over Alesha's gauntleted hand and squeeze, willing a Blessing of Zephyr's Grace to her. That's about all I can do, running at full tilt towards the battle to make sure Ace doesn't commit suicide by Cthulhu.

And I feel Leesh squeeze back. "Should we heal her?" she asks, and I can tell she hopes the answer is yes as much as I do.

"She took a tankbuster directly to her chest. Don't stop healing her," Hikaru barks, jogging out of the line of fire and raising his staff. "Levinpilum!"

The runic circle he placed crackles and glows, and a bolt of golden lightning leaps from it, forking around Ace while her hammer is behind her, blasting the eye in the center of the Right Hand of the Scyllan Horror into vitreous chunks.

Ace throws her head back and screams a savage note of victory, before launching herself hammer-first toward another tentacle. The two other graspers lash at her, cracking like whips, breaking the sound barrier. She idly slaps away the first, but her reckless, all-out attack stance leaves her open to the second.

Until Siobhan puts an arrow through it and it cringes away, keening like a drowning man.

"Death to the worldbreakers," Siobhan hisses. "Glory to those who stand against the slaver-queen."

"I owe you several drinks," Hikaru sighs.

The tentacles try for another slap. But suddenly, Alesha is there - in the literal blink of an eye, buoyed by Sylphans winds, by fear for her friend, by spent Tension - and they bounce ineffectually off of her shield.

"Fiat lux, et vidit quod esset bonum," she recites, and a ray of sunlight pierces through the clouds, illuminating an area that catches herself and Ace at the edge.

And I, on the other end, also get to feel the gentle, warm touch of Alesha and Aurora's resolve.

Alesha gathers that light around her sword in a shaft that contracts into a single, coherent ray of light, then brings that laser crashing down in an arc to cut through the monster's face and one of its tree-trunk thick arms alike. The drop of ocean suspended in the air boils, absorbing the worst of it - the beam refracts harmlessly in the water.

But me and my friends hear the pained bellow of Echidna's prototype, and that, too, is heartening.

Sekhmet has been leaping between tree branches the whole time, landing on four paws or two as the situation required. Now she stands tall on a limb that can almost see eye-to-monstrous-eye with Scylla's gigantic face, and their arm becomes as a looping blur from bowstring to quiver, as they lob arrows from above and downrange into the Unholy Beast and each of its remaining limbs, each broadhead drawing ichor.

She pauses, for a beat, to aim the last of these, just as Sio does the same - sighting down the fletching, hovering with those wings to hold a bow slightly taller than she is vertical.

"How does it go? I do not kill with my bow?" Sekh growls.

"For whoever kills with her bow has forgotten the face of her elders," Sio quotes. "I kill with my heart."

"Damn fucking straight," Sekh says, as they both release their bowstrings.

Two arrows find the eyes of the tentacles, and a rubbery, mottled orange tree-trunk comes crashing down. The other, Sio's target, doesn't have time to react as Alesha puts in her own sword swings, pale purple fluid spilling from the Beast's wounds.

They have the monster's whole attention, which means I can slip in.

First I fling a ball of healing wind, and in the heat of the moment I use "HEALDOKEN" as the incantation instead of the proper one. Fortunately, Sylphan has enough of a sense of humor to let that slide, and I feel the cool breeze lick my weariness away as angry red scratches close up on Ace and Alesha alike. 

I'm not entirely sure how I was able to run as fast as I did to close the gap, but I have, and when I arrive I'm a whirlwind of punches and kicks and slashes - ducking and weaving between the undulations of the final tentacle and Ace's wild and reckless swings alike to batter it with every arm, leg and armament I've got.

I see it struggle to hold itself up, as I slash and slash and slash.

It's not quite enough, and I can clearly see the main body focus its eye on me as the spell it laid seconds ago explodes upwards into a pillar of ice chains and it starts laying another Cavitation Bubble Implosion's runes under the feet of everyone in melee.

Hikaru steps well back, hoarsely bellows "morglawdd alfsaethu!" and fires a barrage of pale blue egg-like spheres from the runic circle at the thing's tentacle and eye, and that still isn't enough.

Tayeb and Shadi, from the cart, well away, can't stop looking on in horror; it's all Tayeb can do to stop the horses from finding their own exit.

As I glance back from them, though, I realize too late: I shouldn’t have taken my eyes off Ace.

“Kill with your ‘heart’?” Ace snarls. “‘Worldbreaker,’ Slaver-queen?!” And I hadn’t realized she was close enough to hear Sekhmet, but then she keeps going- “Who gives a shit?!”

She leaps forward, and with far too much force, she pivots her hips, and plants one foot against Alesha’s shield. “We’re fighting- for our god damn LIVES here- and you can’t stop quoting this stupid lore- and this STUPID game- As if any of it MATTERS!”

Bracing a leg against Alesha’s shield, she swings low, more a golf club than a hammer. The force of her leg shoves Alesha back, hard, and that extra torsion goes into the horrible tentacle, ripping it from the ground and hurling it unceremoniously into the Horror’s eye.

“As if this - stupid game world matters! This whole world is a shitty game and I’m not going to DIE here! Why won’t any of you take this SERIOUSLY?!”

She turns toward the rift, as if to leap into the water at the Beast; but there is movement in the water, and a cloud of deep purple ink, and then nothing.

The Scyllan Horror had fled, presumably to find easier prey. 

I breathe a sigh of relief as Ace turns around.

And still see red in her eyes.

Hikaru and I discussed once, over Ralph's weekly Dungeoncrawlers game, about the launch of AWOo. Among other bugs, there was Berserker's unintended effect at launch: It targeted allies when necessary, he had said, and so sometimes the script to end battles didn’t register properly. A berserk player could continue to fight their own allies until they were defeated, healed above critical, or TPKed.

At the time, I'd laughed. "Who forgot to toggle a bit?" I'd asked. It got patched out in the first major update, and the detail was forgotten to time except as a silly story.

And now, with all enemies gone, my friend - a Berserker - stands in front of me with bloodthirst in her eyes, and I are forced to wonder what version of the game this world is running on.

“This whole shitty make-believe world should just… fucking… BURN!” Ace charges at the person standing the closest - me - and I can hear Shadi gasp behind me as I rush over-

Dark, deep red-purple fingertips brush sunlight against her naked, bleeding cheek.

"Be healed," Alesha says, softly.

As her wounds close, I see the red drain from her eyes.

“...What was I.” She suddenly sags, no longer supporting her weight with fury but with limbs that had passed their limits ages ago. “I… I don’t. Feel well.”

I catch her as she falls. Once I know I'm safe from her, I check her pulse.

She has one.

I sigh relief, and hold her close, and want to cry into her hair.

Siobhan's shout snaps you back to the moment.

"Everyone in the cart, NOW!" she booms, louder than anything from those small lungs have the right to be, and I comply before I collapse, and lay Ace down as swiftly as I can without hurting her, resting her head on a bag of flour, as Shadi scoots away from us both.

Soon everyone has joined you with haste fueled by terror.

"You've - you've saved our lives," Tayeb starts.

"After my fuckup nearly cost it," Sio snarls, looking over Shadi in the corner - and Alesha pouring her water, offering a cup from an un-gauntleted hand. "Get us out of here, along the road, and don't stop till we see open blue skies."

"Hai, madam," he says, and snaps the reins. The horses whinny, and the ride gets bumpy.

And none of us can breathe again until we see wheat fields, and windmills, and the setting sun to our left.