Party List

Nyx Alaion (Zoe Fox)

[Shroud] : [Knife]

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Aleister Demian (Jasmine Burch)

[War] : [Ebon]

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Fiona Woods (Evan Woods)

[Plate] : [Aegis]

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Evie Lucian (Cassandra Bailey)

[Soul] : [Radiance]

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Mellody Softsong (Ashton Burch)

[Muse] : [Revel]

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Caoimhe Phadraig (Kieran Moor)

[Slayer] : [Tyrant]

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Firo Strix (Blake Walker)

[Mage] : [Invoker]

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Hibiscus Jade (Marissa Harper)

[Arrow] : [Seeker]

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Zoe

Zoe had to take an extra second or two to actually process what was happening, and judging by the silence in chat, everyone else did too.

She had expected the fight to essentially end when [Uris] was killed. The way [Áine] was dropping his HP by a set amount with every attack on a regular interval felt too much like a countdown to think anything else. And yet, [Uris] was dead, but the fight hadn't stopped.

There were still 12 adds on the field, several of which were attacking [Áine] already, and only Nyx, Evie, and Aleister were still alive. Even worse, [Áine] was under 20% of her own HP, which was still dropping as the adds continued to attack her while she apparently returned to finishing the major spell within the tower.

"Guys, wake up! Aleister's free now, do something!" Caoimhe shouted, and it did help Zoe shake out of her own head a bit. She never actually stopped attacking the adds she had been focused on, but she still needed to refocus.

"Right. I'll pick up whatever I can." Aleister said, then quickly moved to gather every enemy that responded to [Enmity] based skills. Which, unfortunately, wasn't many. It seemed like once a mob managed to focus on [Áine], they weren't able to be peeled off her, and needed to be killed instead.

On the plus side, Zoe was watching as many of her cooldowns were just about to come back online. If she could position well, even just a single [Dark Dance] followed by repeated AoE combo finishers could potentially take out all the remaining adds.

"Most of my cooldowns will be back up in, like, ten or fifteen seconds, if we can hold out that long." Zoe said as much. But [Áine's] HP was her main concern at this point.

"If we last a minute, I'll have rez back up." Cass offered, but Zoe was almost positive they wouldn't last that long.

"Vokes aren't really working." Aleister said, evidently giving up on trying to pull more enemies off [Áine]. "I'm switching to full damage. We need to kill these assholes, now."

"Right. Aleister, bring what you've got over to me." Zoe said, noting that despite what she said, Aleister still had five of the enemies trailing her like baby chicks, still focusing on the tank. "I'll shred through the lot of them asap."

"Focus on the ones on Áine first." Mellody said. "Her HP is the main priority."

"Shit." Fiona muttered, presumably watching as [Áine] dropped under 10%.

Zoe did as advised, moving Nyx into position to unload against the adds already on [Áine]. While she wanted to save [Dark Dance] to spam AoE finishers on a larger group to get the most out of the skill, she still had a few options to put in work against the enemies encircling the queen.

She prepared to dump all of her available single target skills into the enemies as she moved against the first one. There were still five of them surrounding [Áine], but they weren't close enough to one another to make AoE attacks worth it.

Instead, [Dagger Dance] and [Knife Work], two higher damage but non-combo skills were enough to drop the first, allowing Zoe to quickly move Nyx down the line. An [Ankle Pick] to knock the target down followed by [Cut], [Slice], and [Knife's Edge] ended the second one as well.

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Altogether, removing those two enemies from the board had taken around ten seconds. That was long enough that most of her cooldowns were becoming available again, but even with two of five enemies down, [Áine's] HP was in the single digits and still dropping.

"I have made a mistake."

The deadpan declaration from Aleister made Zoe's stomach drop, as she glanced up at the party's status to see only her and Cass still alive.

"What happened?"

"I ran out of MP!" Cass shouted. "Nyx, this is all up to you after this."

Zoe watched as Evie stepped into Aleister's spot to pick up the remaining enemies that hadn't yet locked onto [Áine].

"There's no way." Zoe breathed.

"Hang on, I've got one trick left." Cass said.

And suddenly [Áine's] HP was at 100% again. She was still taking damage, but they were suddenly no longer walking a tightrope made of floss.

Everyone who was dead but still watching started laughing, mostly in disbelief Zoe assumed.

"You saved Stoke the Flame? Until just now?" Mellody sputtered.

"Bruh, how come you didn't use that on us?" Fiona said, who could have likely been saved from the poorly timed crit with the instant full heal spell.

Cass ignored the party and just said, "Get 'em, Nyx," as she was buried by the adds that Aleister had gathered up.

Zoe growled, but was thankful that Aleister had done as promised before death - all five of the enemies had been whittled down to under 40%, which meant Nyx should be able to clean them up easily enough if she didn't die to damage first.

"Preservation, Nyx." Firo said, trying to be a calm voice of reason. "Áine is healthy now, and we wipe if you go down. Don't draw any damage your way."

"Oh. Right." Zoe muttered. She pulled back from interposing herself between the group of five and [Áine], allowing them to close in on the Fae queen to avoid drawing damage to herself. Conveniently, they had been gathered up in one spot and made a straight line for [Áine], too, which left them grouped up even as they attacked her ally.

Zoe began to move in to hopefully clean up the remaining seven enemies when [Áine] lifted her staff high, the top of it glowing brightly with a swirling pattern of the silver of her Fae magic.

"And now, we're finished!" [Áine] shouted and slammed her staff down onto the tower. All at once Zoe's screen went white, roughly matching the color of the Fae magic. The party, including Zoe, cheered as their screens cleared.

Zoe was standing on the center of the tower's top, still the only one alive, watching as some kind of magic pulsed out from the tower. Others like it lit up around the perimeter of the massive palace, matching the magical pulse. And while there wasn't any visible effect, Zoe could see the enemy Fae getting pushed back. The ones nearest the palace looked like they were vampires in the sun, getting burned by sunlight and struggling to retreat.

Whatever spell it was that [Áine] had stored in the network of towers around her palace could apparently distinguish friend from foe, and punish accordingly. As promised, simply activating it seemed to win them the day as the [Unseelie Court] fled away from the cheers of [Áine's] people.

"Holy shit." Cass breathed.

"We did it?" Bisky asked, completely in disbelief. "No way."

"With a few minutes to spare, even!" Caoimhe cheered.

"That was way too close though, damn." Fiona said.

Zoe slumped in her chair as the adrenaline started to fade, if only slightly. Her arms and hands were still shaking with it, but most of the fight had left her as soon as it was clear they had cleared the fight. She let out a massive sigh that she hadn't realized she was holding, and her friends cheered in response.

"Good shit, you two!" Mellody said, and was backed up by Firo, Aleister, and Bisky, while Caoimhe and Fiona whistled behind them.

"Now, I would love to say that I planned that. I really would." Cass said, her voice a little unsteady, "But we got lucky. Stoke the Flame just happened to come back up a few seconds before I used it."

That proved to be a stunning blow for the party before everyone started laughing again, joking about how they managed to survive basically entirely by luck.

"Now then. You all fought exceedingly well." [Áine] said, her voice line interrupting the group. She made a flourish with her staff, which apparently cast some kind of revival spell on the entire party. Nyx suddenly jumped back to full HP and MP, and even her cooldowns were all reset. Meanwhile, the rest of the party were in the middle of being revived and going through the brief screen change as they were relocated to near [Áine] from wherever their dead bodies had fallen.

"I am sorry for dragging you all into that, but I'm not sure any of my fighters could have done what you just did." [Áine] said, looking out over her palace. "Or, well, at least the available ones. Perhaps Macha or Nemain, but anyway." She turned to face the party. "You will all be rewarded for what you have done. But for now, I would suggest a bit of rest, and we can discuss what comes next. After this, I suspect things are about to get complicated."

"That's what we wanna hear!" Bisky said, though Zoe wasn't sure if it was sarcasm or not.

"Surely whatever raid is coming next isn't for a while." Mellody said. "And we'll have to farm these in the meantime, too."

"I have no doubt there will be a period of downtime, and the next raid will be whenever the [Unseelie Court] and the Fomorians attack again." Caoimhe said. "It makes the most sense."

"True. And like Mellody said, we'll have plenty to do until then." Firo said. "And that's not even counting whatever events like the PvP one pops up."

"Welp. Who's up for finishing up the raid cutscenes before we adjourn for the night?" Bisky asked.

"Honestly, given we cleared, I'm down to just finish out the quest before we break. Unless something crazy happens, I suppose." Aleister said.

"Agreed." Caoimhe said.

"Same." Fiona echoed. "We may as well just get it done."

"Alright, with no objections then, let's get going." Bisky said. She interacted with [Áine], who nodded.

"Follow me. I'll bring you to my salon, and we can get in touch with the [Dagda]. Whatever happens next, I suspect we'll want to combine our strategy to avoid whatever this was again."

With that, [Áine's] shimmering butterfly-like wings glowed with a dim light and fluttered, picking the queen up and she flew off at a lazy speed. The party, taking the hint, each hit their own flight-related skills and took off after her. As they gathered near her, she picked up speed to match the group's flight speed, leading them neatly back into the palace and weaving around in the wide spaces in the halls.

It occurred to Nyx then that the large imposing hallways were probably specifically designed to make room for people flying through them.

The party moved mostly in silence, which suited Zoe alright. She was still trying to calm down after their clear. Her heart was still beating quickly, and that excitement didn't seem to be fading much. She was sure it all came down to those last few seconds where she had believed it was all coming down to her. Being the last one alive on a team was always stressful, even if it was only for a moment.

"Here we are, this way." [Áine] said, as she zipped around a corner into a room. It looked like the doors had automatically opened for her as she approached, which must have been convenient for someone flying around all the time.

As Zoe turned into the room, she let out a "Wow". The room reminded her of the [Dagda's] space, with lots of plant life and nature around the interior. But it also looked a little less wild. There was furniture, but it was all shaped out of the natural elements of the room, but not a single piece looked 'made'.

There were several bookcases that held a variety of tomes, but the shelves were made up of a tree trunk twisting back and forth, rather than shelving hollowed out into the wood. There were seats and tables made of roots that erupted from the ground, circled around into the furniture, then dipped back into the dirt. The entire effect was very strange, but oddly alluring.

But one corner in particular caught Zoe's eye, as she was sure it did everyone else's. It looked like [Áine] had squirreled away an entire witch's workshop into the one corner of the large room. There were all sorts of dried plants hung up on strings, and jars of all sorts of things on natural furniture. Books were scattered about, both open and closed, with notes scrawled everywhere. And, of course, a large cauldron sat in the middle of it all. There was no fire underneath it, but that hardly took away from the impact of the sight. It all looked like a perfect drawing come to life in the game.

[Áine] settled on the side of the room away from the witchy workshop, near a circle of 'chairs' that centered on a natural basin of water that looked like a wooden birdbath. She breathed out heavily, then motioned to the small pool of water, which rose from the bath to form a rippling mirror made of water.

"[Dagda]. I have troubling news. Although I suspect you already know of the state of things." [Áine] said.

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