Party List

Evie Lucian (Cassandra Bailey)

[Soul] : [Radiance]

11,000 / 11,000

11,000 / 11,000

Aleister Demian (Jasmine Burch)

[War] : [Ebon]

11,000 / 11,000

11,000 / 11,000

Fiona Woods (Evan Woods)

[Plate] : [Aegis]

11,000 / 11,000

11,000 / 11,000

Mellody Softsong (Ashton Burch)

[Muse] : [Revel]

11,000 / 11,000

11,000 / 11,000

Caoimhe Phadraig (Kieran Moor)

[Slayer] : [Tyrant]

11,000 / 11,000

11,000 / 11,000

Firo Strix (Blake Walker)

[Mage] : [Invoker]

11,000 / 11,000

11,000 / 11,000

Nyx Alaion (Zoe Fox)

[Shroud] : [Knife]

11,000 / 11,000

11,000 / 11,000

Hibiscus Jade (Marissa Harper)

[Arrow] : [Seeker]

11,000 / 11,000

11,000 / 11,000

Cassandra

"Get out, get out." Mellody called as [Uris] readied his massive two-handed hammer. Everyone already knew the pattern, but having someone on callouts was still helpful. Everyone slid out of the boss's range easily. Cass watched as the melee players all hovered right around where the edge of AoE would be, waiting for the swing so they could slink back in to resume damage.

"Guys, remember this is -"

Before Cass could even finish her warning, [Uris] swung. His hammer crashed down on the tower, creating a shockwave around him. Caoimhe cursed, having toed the line a little too closely, resulting in getting clipped. And [Stunned] for not avoiding the attack.

"Like I was saying," Cass began again, "y'all didn't even need to risk it. That was the third weapon, so it's add time." She turned her camera around, counting how many adds were joining them on the platform. They had learned that the numbers weren't always the same, varying between six and ten in the first round.

"But damage." Caoimhe whined.

"Agreed. I need my damage." Zoe backed up her melee compatriot. Cass rolled her eyes while Zoe snuck in a few extra hits against the boss while Aleister went around to pick up the adds.

"You two are such DPS goblins." Cass sighed.

"Yeah, so?"

"I'm not sure I like it, but I take offense that you're not including me in that." Firo said. "I wanna be a DPS goblin, too."

"Oh, Firo. You and I are DPS sommeliers." Bisky said, laughing at her own joke. "We're too good to stand in AoEs to get a little extra uptime."

"Speak for yourself. If it wouldn't kill me, I'd stand in an AoE to avoid dropping a cast." Firo said haughtily.

"Is that worth bragging about?" Mellody chuckled.

"Fine, go join your goblin friends then!" Bisky said, putting a little bit of drama into her voice. Cass couldn't help but picture the quintessential tsundere as she said it.

"I. Will!" Firo said, and then immediately did the opposite of what he had said he'd do, and dropped a cast to walk over to stand with the melee players.

Cass looked up at her ceiling and sighed. She wanted to make it sound overly dramatic, and felt she accomplished her goal when she heard the beginning of laughter over the chat.

"Evie! Evie! Where are you going?"

"Huh?" Cass immediately swung her head back down to look at her screen, watching Evie run straight right. She didn't realize it, but she was holding down her 'D' key. "Oops."

"We've got the spear next." Mellody called.

"I've got the adds. Would someone like to help with them or what?" Aleister asked.

"I am!" Bisky shouted. "I'm sorry my DPS isn't good enough for you!"

"Aw, poor little archer can't keep up with my big ass sword!" Caoimhe said, as she came flying in from the side with a [Wild Swing]. The visual of it almost made Cass laugh, as the skill involved a decent amount of forward movement before the final leap and big, sweeping swing.

"Thanks, Caoimhe. Now watch the enemy casters."

"I know."

"Hey! I already silenced two of them!" Bisky shouted as she was ignored.

"Uh, guys?" Fiona tried to interject but was ignored as the others continued their little play.

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"Don't worry, I'm also here!" Zoe said as Nyx teleported into the fray with [Shadow Slip].

"Me three!" Firo said, and followed Nyx with a [Blink].

"Aleister, you shouldn't be -"

"My heroes." Aleister said flatly.

"What am I, chopped liver?" Bisky asked, starting to laugh.

"No, you're alive." Fiona said, and Cass watched as Aleister, trying to keep the adds in check, and followed by the other three DPS walked right behind Fiona, who didn't have enough time to turn the boss around again.

[Uris] thrust his spear forward, which Fiona neatly [Perfect Blocked], but the thrust went past her and slammed into Aleister. The following explosion, which Fiona had been trying to warn everyone about, took out Aleister and the three DPS following her.

Cass didn't even bother trying to heal after that. Between the laughter and leaning back in her chair, she wasn't even able to watch the screen clearly.

"You idiots. I literally tried to warn you." Fiona laughed.

"Honestly, I wanted to see what would happen." Mellody said.

"What a drive-by…" Firo said.

"What do you mean 'drive-by'?" Fiona shouted. "I warned you guys like three times, but Aleister kept kiting backwards. And you lemmings just followed like good little puppies!"

"Did you just call us lemmings?" Caoimhe asked.

"Sure did! Prove me wrong, Mr Big-Ass-Sword! Lotta good it does you when you're dead!"

"Caoimhe, I don't know about you, but I think we should blame Firo." Zoe said.

"Oh?"

"I mean, everything was fine until we were joined by the melee faker with a staff. What is a mage doing in the frontline anyway. I blame him."

"You know? I'm inclined to agree." Caoimhe said.

"Firo! How could you ruin us like that?" Aleister joined in, still laughing.

"I hate you all."

"Love you too, buddy."

"Good shit, guys." Aleister said, as the last of the adds went down. The party quickly moved back to focus on the boss, as things had gone really well that round, with the adds gone before [Uris] even finished his second weapon in the set.

"Push that damage!"

"Oh yeah!"

As everyone closed in around the boss, [Uris] hunched over a little, tightening up into what looked like a boxing fighting stance, his large stone fists clearly displayed as his weapon.

"Mit, Fiona."

"I know." FIona responded, getting ready to mitigate and block the attacks that were to follow. The knuckles phase ended with a rush of a combination attack focused on the tank. It was functionally a tank buster made up of many smaller hits, just to be a little different. However, it also required careful positioning, because each hit had a small knockback, so if the tank didn't reposition a bit after each hit, they could easily find themselves flying off the tower.

As Fiona [Blocked] most of the hits, only managing [Perfect Blocks] against around a third of them, the melee chased the boss around the arena. Having seen the combo a couple times already, Fiona had already figured out how to position well for the mini-phase, rotating neatly around the space while being pushed back.

"Nice and clean."

"Aw yeah." Fiona said, satisfied with how nicely the attacks went.

"Good damage phase, too." Zoe added.

"Yup, let's get 'em." Caoimhe cheered as the party took the short bit of downtime between weapon phases to fit in a burst phase, spending cooldown skills to make some impact.

[Uris] barely even reacted, simply reaching back to pull a scythe from his floating cape of weapons.

"Scythe?"

"Have we seen that one yet?"

"I don't think so."

"We haven't." Cass said, almost positive they hadn't. They had been fighting [Uris] for over an hour at this point, and she was surprised they still hadn't seen all of his weapons. Admittedly, the phases were just short mechanics, but he apparently had a lot of options to pull from. Additionally, they were entirely random, and didn't seem to be relegated to specific groupings of his rounds either.

The boss spun the scythe as he prepared for the phase, which Cass thought looked really awesome.

"I want an emote of that." Caoimhe said. "At least to be used with Glaive."

"Yeah, that'd look sick." Bisky agreed.

"I wonder if they could adapt it for -" Firo was interrupted when [Uris's] first swing hit everyone around him. It was a twirling, flourishing attack that looked amazing, but had him scythe through the area around him. Notably, it didn't actually do an unusual amount of damage to Fiona, but everyone else that was nearby took almost 9,000 damage. Even Aleister, who should have had the same base damage mitigation as Fiona, which meant this wasn't stat based damage, but rather a static percentage.

"Ho, shit."

"Get back, get back, get back." Caoimhe was chanting as the melee all retreated quickly, recognizing that no amount of uptime would make up for taking that much damage.

"We got a stacking buff on the boss." Mellody called. "At three stacks, so one per player hit minus the tank?"

"Looks that way." Cass agreed, when the next two swings similarly swiped around the boss, but he gained no more stacks.

"Aw, man, not another forced disengage." Caoimhe sighed.

"There's so many in this fight." Zoe agreed.

"Oh." Mellody said, evidently having read the tooltip on the debuff. "Welp. They got us good that time."

"What do you mean?" Bisky asked, still trying to turn [Uris] into a pincushion at range.

"It looks like scythe is a healing contest." Mellody said.

"Say what?" Cass asked, suddenly intrigued, hovering over the buff to read it for herself. "Reaped and Sown; the scythe has fed and is becoming satiated -"

Cass didn't get to even finish reading the debuff as [Uris] performed a flourish with the scythe, spinning it horizontally around his body. It glowed a bright red, and with a final sweep around [Uris] sent a circular wave of energy out from him. The blade of energy swept through each member of the party, cutting them all down like wheat.

"The hell was that?" Caoimhe shouted.

"Apparently," Cass said flatly, "we need a bunch of us to get hit by the sweep attacks to 'feed' the scythe and reduce the damage of the final sweep."

"Which is going to be lots of damage, really fast." Mellody added.

"As if the adds don't add enough damage already!" Cass whined. "Ugh. At least we know for next time."

"How many of us need to get hit, you think?" Bisky asked.

"He had three stacks, so we at least know that's not enough." Mellody said.

"So…it was, what, five sweeps and then the final hit? How about Aleister, Caoimhe, and I take the first, third, and fifth hits? If we add one more person one time that'll be ten stacks." Zoe suggested.

"Ten's a solid number. It's at least worth a shot, I guess." Cass said.

"Any objections?"

"As long as you two keep us alive, nope." Caoimhe said. Everyone else agreed after that.

"Oh, I love the feeling of having lives in my slippery fingers." Cass joked.

"Evie, never say that again. It sounded gross."

"We've got it this time! Let's go!" Caoimhe shouted as everyone unloaded on the boss. They were five rounds deep into the phase, having fought off four rounds of adds, and [Uris] was holding his fifteenth weapon in the pull, and he was hovering just above 50% of his HP.

Cass agreed, somehow the numbers felt like the natural spot to evolve the fight. She was preparing for a phase transition, and given the amount of total time in the fight, she expected it to be the final phase.

"This has gotta be it." Alesiter said.

"Let's go!" Fiona shouted as [Uris] wound up for his final attack with the flail. Mellody and Evie layered extra shielding on Fiona, as they had learned in a previous pull that the flail ignored both [Block] and mitigation skills. It did a flat 1,250 damage, which was more than any of them had. On the plus side, it just meant that they needed to get a 151 HP shield in place on Fiona while she was at full HP.

It may have required stacking a few different shielding spells, but it wasn't too bad.

As the flail connected with Fiona, the party cheered as [Uris'] HP dropped to 48%.

"That's gotta be it."

"Shut up, Firo."

Cass snickered as [Uris] growled, discarded the flail, and drew another weapon from his back. It looked like a long spear with a scarf or big ribbon tied around the haft. But rather than attack, the boss began fiddling with the cloth on the spear until it untied and unfurled into a standard.

A symbol Cass wasn't sure she recognized was emblazoned on it, but she could only assume it was the banner for the [Unseelie Court].

"To me, my allies! To me! We will end this fight now!" [Uris] shouted while waving the banner around, which roused the remaining Fae still flying around the tower. They had cut the number down noticeably, but there were still far too many to fight back if they all attacked at once.

"I suppose this is it, then." [Áine's] voice made Cass smile. If the NPC Queen was getting involved, this must be the last phase. "We're too close to back down now. Rally here, my friends! We will end this together!"

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