The first waves came at dusk.

It was a Friday, which was good and bad for both the attackers and the resistance. It meant that both sides had the full weekend to devote to the fight. Dusk was about the time Rich had expected them to show, given that the bulk of the Warmers had to finish work or school before they could settle in for a long raid.

By that time, the Resistance had gotten the vital parts of their operation heading west. And Rich found himself talking to the last of the cleanup crew.

Last, but certainly not least.

“I think we have the space left,” Trust-Not-the-Devils Bortiz said, as he scooped gold coins into a bag that appeared to be entirely too small to contain the hoard that it did. Across the room, Bortiz's countrymen, and fellow Merchants, did the same with the rest of Rotgoriel's treasure. “But there was that special handling request.”

That had been a bitch to fill out with crappy dragon dexterity. But Rich had persevered. Pat had insisted on bringing modern logistical order to the resistance, and they had benefited from it, so Rich couldn't complain too hard.

“Yes, I need you to take very good care of this,” Rich said, opening his hand to reveal Geebo's egg.

It pulsed at Bortiz.

Bortiz stared at it.

“What.”

“It's Geebo,” Rich explained.

“This is what he became? What went wrong?”

“He is still developing. It's like a caterpillar's chrysalis.”

“What?”

“Like a silkworm's cocoon?”

Bortiz shook his head.

Right, right, Rich remembered. Bortiz and all the other members of his coterie had come from Fimble, a small and snowy mountain village that spent most of the year well-below the freezing point. It didn't have much in the way of insect life, etymology specialists, or proper education for its members.

Time to make it simple.

“It's an egg. Geebo is in it. He will hatch, eventually. Carry this on you, not in a bag. Take very good care of it. The egg is tough, but it's best not to take chances.”

Bortiz's eyes grew wide. “The little guy's in here?”

“Yes,” Rich nodded, then paused. “He was taller than you when you met him.”

“Yeah, but he always acted like he was tiny. So cautious and cute, for something that should have been scary.” Bortiz looked at the lump of flesh, then tucked it into the inner pocket of his robe. “Relax, Geebo. I got you.”

Rich smiled, and walked out as they finished the job with his hoard. Agnezsharron's was packed already, and she would fly both it and the villagers West, before returning to the fight.

If there was a fight still going, by then.

The war room was crowded, which told him that shit hadn't gotten serious yet. He used his draconic shape to his advantage, craning his head over the crowd to stare at the map.

It was a beautiful map, three-dimensional and rendered, with tiny little moving figures and arrows to show lines of assault. This was courtesy of one of Pat's friends, FourDHordy, who had figured out how to combine Duelist and Grifter to unlock a Master Strategist job.

“Okay. So we don't have any movement our way at all?” Pat asked FourDHordy, who shrugged, and indicated one of the lines.

“This one could be coming our way but I doubt it. The scouts in the most direct path haven't reported any contact. Odds are good they're just looking to occupy the hills, to prevent rich merchants from fleeing that way. They think they'll roll over this place, so they greedy ones are already trying to ensure that they secure the loot.”

“That tells me they don't know about us,” Rich rumbled. “Or they don't think we have a significant enough presence to be much trouble.”

“Yeah they're probably coming in cocky. Problem is, they're not wrong.” He pointed at the biggest cluster of arrows, and the long lines of figures popping in around an old monolith deep in the wastes. “This has to be their main assembly point. The Widow's Delight. If they keep bringing in people at the rate they're going, then they'll swamp us with numbers.”

“They're using the monolith as a waypoint, then. Can we destroy it? Would that make a difference?”

FourDHordy leaned over, and pointed at a small but growing cluster of arrows at the edge of the map. “They still have the bulk of their NPC forces coming up this way. It'll be a fight regardless. But from what the Scouts say it's all players coming in through the Widow's Delight. Taking out the monolith would delay their elite forces, give us time to give the mainline troops a bloody nose. The problem is, it's their elite forces over by the monolith.”

“They're cocky, but they're not stupid enough to let a strike force take out their waypoint. Not without a struggle.” Pat rubbed his chin, tugged on his goatee. “How sneaky do you think you can be, Rich?”

Rich smiled. “If I tunnel in, it's a moot point.”

“Bad idea,” FourDHordy interjected. “By now the ones you ambushed on the road will have talked about your tactics. And that is a waypoint, to boot. If they don't have Earth Elementalists guarding it then they're being far sloppier than I expect.”

“Doesn't mean it isn't doable,” Pat said, moving around the map to get a better view of the target. “Just means we have to get a little creative...”

Almost thirty minutes later, Rich was flying nape-of-the-Earth style across the desert. He was kicking up sand in his wake, but the moon was low and to the east, and he was moving west. And the clouds their resident Weather Wizard had called up were doing a pretty good job of dimming the moon and stars anyway.

It wasn't a perfect solution, nothing was guaranteed, but then Rich was only part of the plan for this op.

The other part of the plan whispered in his ear as lights in the distance grew, reflecting off of the armor and weapons of the enemy's main player camp.

VictorVector: We have eyes on you. Which means they'll see you inside of a minute.

Rutger: How many of them do you clock?

VictorVector: Thirty so far. And the fact they haven't started moving out yet worries me.

Rutger: Yeah. That breaks the pattern.

The Bharstool Warmers had risen to prominence in the game by being the first guild to actually unlock official guild status. But people will be people, and people talk, and the secret of unlocking guilds leaked within weeks. They had kept prominence through two main method: firstly, they had tried to corner the market on the Ruler job by deposing kings, killing nobles, and otherwise keeping it out of player hands. If you wanted to be a Ruler, which was one of the requisites for becoming a Guildmaster, you had to either be in good with them or work overtime to track down one of the options that they had missed.

Secondly, the Bharstool Warmers had kept recruitment and morale high by making continuous and expanding war on everything they could reach. There were no rules of engagement; entire cities could be razed to the ground and looted if a minor guild officer took it into their head to go pillaging and murdering through a population center. It was a horde, secretly led by things alien to humanity, and uncaring of the fact that this actually wasn't a game, and that the thousands of people who were senselessly slaughtered every weekend were actual people.

Rutger: If this were the usual sort of raid, they'd be moving out by now. Going after the good loot before the main army gets here.

VictorVector: They're up to something. Keep an eye out for clues, if you can.

Shouts from up ahead told him that he'd been spotted.

Rutger: I'll do what I can later, but right now I'm gonna be a little busy...

“Burninate!” he roared, and pumped his wings to gain altitude as he blazed fire across the sand below.

Yells of outrage from the camp, and he was sure that he hadn't gotten anyone, not seriously enough to cause real harm. But that wasn't the goal, here. And so he turned and wheeled around and fled back into the night, laughing as evilly as he could manage.

As tactics went, it wasn't the most brilliant ploy in the world. And most of the players he was taunting probably knew that.

But Rich had been active for almost a year, now. And he knew one of the fundamental truths of this world.

There was nothing more boring than waiting for other people. Especially when you were waiting to raid.

He wasn't sure how many were chasing him, didn't dare look back, but the spells and arrows crackling around him and slamming into his hide told him that it was a pretty significant portion.

VictorVector: Heal!

Already? “Greater Healing,” he muttered, and some of the discomfort washed away from him... to be replaced by more irritation a few seconds later. He knew that if Rotgoriel were piloting this body right now, he'd be dealing with pain and shock from the injuries that were mounting up.

Whatever magic shielded players from pain didn't extend to natives of this land. Just one of the many advantages that players had over them.

Rich was going to use another advantage shortly, but it was a bit early yet.

VictorVector: Heal!

He'd grouped up with VictorVector and his band for this operation. The Master Scout's Party Whisper skill let him instantly talk to anyone in his group, and share that ability with the rest of the team. Victor was watching Rich's HP in the party status window, and letting him know when he was dipping low.

Rich liked Victor. The guy was a disabled vet in real life, who had come back from the black glass wars with nerve damage and some nasty tumors. At first Rich thought he'd been shitting about it, god knew that Rich had met his share of “special forces black belt veteran badasses,” online. But a few quiet inquiries through Cutter had confirmed that yeah, he was the real thing. And the fact that he didn't talk about it much, didn't make a big deal about it, reinforced the inquiry. This guy had walked the walk.

Which was why Rich chanted “Greater Heal,” again, even though he thought he could take more of a pounding. He was pulling farther away from the slower players, and the ones who lacked range.

A second later a chill wind washed over him, as a massive burst of ice crystallized around his hindquarters. His tail went numb, his back legs as well, and he growled and fought to counter the sudden shifting of weight and loss of maneuverability as the ground got closer and closer...

Your Fly skill is now level 28!

He didn't crash, at least. Though he plowed a good two hundred feet through the sand, kicking up a dust cloud, he knew he'd gotten down relatively unscathed. The earth resistance that his draconic subtype provided extended to impacts with stone, sand, and anything else even remotely rocklike or stone-adjacent.

And even better, the dust cloud gave him some obscurement to work with. He still felt some hits; he was still a big target, but this wasn't the constant barrage that the riled-up players had blasted him with earlier. This, he could take. Long enough to try and pull off the next part of the plan, anyway.

The dust cloud was definitely helping him, as he turned and rays and blasts and arrows shot past him, disappearing into the swirl of grit that covered him. Rich decided to add to that, and started swiping up the sand and hurling it into the air around him, muttering “Burrower,” as he did so.

Not a moment too soon, either. His freakishly-good hearing caught someone shouting “Manipulate Air!” No surprise there, really. Air Elementalism was one of the easiest paths to flight, and most would be faster than he in the air. Made sense that they'd be the closest on his tail.

So he burrowed fast, healing himself whenever VictorVector gave the call, and doing his best to ignore the lightning bolts that snapped down at his rump, as the winds cleared away the dust.

He burrowed and dug, and listened for tremors above him, angling for the biggest clusters. If fate was on his side, he could pull off an ambush, take a few down and—

—the earth closed around him like a giant hand, and before Rich could react, he was shoved up through the sand. Up to where metal glinted on oversized swords, and off huge-shouldered sets of armor, and light flared from dozens of magical items and active spells.

Rutger: I think this is it. At least one Earth guy came out to play. Get ready.

Lunging upward, he ripped himself free of the grasping earth, up to fight for his life.

He gave a pretty good accounting of himself, took down two of them before the next batch of pursuers caught up. But it was at least a dozen to one, and the end was never in question. And with Elementalists controlling the sky above and the earth below, there was no escape. One of the faster warriors buried a golden spear in his eye, and when he blinked, he was in the gray, whispering blankness that was death chat.

There he grinned, and paid his three tokens.

He paused there for a second, there before Konol, studying the chained dragon and the space around it.

It was hard to tell, but it did look like a patch of the sky had gone dark. Like several stars had been blotted out by something getting closer.

The thought disturbed him, reminded him that there was a time limit. So he chose his destination, and respawned back in the camp that VictorVector's team had set up before he started his approach on the enemy forces.

Rutger: Sitchrep?

VictorVector: Look our way in three, two, one...

A crack of thunder split the night, and a pillar of flame rose skyward.

Silhouetted against the moon, the somewhat obscene-looking pillar of the monolith known as the Widow's Delight cracked and toppled, as the Explodamancer and Mad Bomber on VictorVector's team finished their job.

Rutger: I'll cover your retreat.

Rich took to the air again, smiling.

He'd had the easy job. He'd been the distraction, pulling enough of the enemy's forces away from the monolith that the saboteurs could crack it. Now the waypoint was shut down, and the enemy would have to find another point to send their elites into the field.

The problem was that they would, probably had a few set up already. The bulk of the Bharstool Warmers were undisciplined thrill-seekers. But the upper echelons were smart.

Still, they'd well and truly fucked over the players who'd come in through the Widow's Delight. Now he'd get VictorVector's team some cover, and once they were clear, turn to helping the kill squads of the Resistance hunt down or drive off the thirty-odd players now stranded in this part of the wastes. Any they killed could just come back, true, but they'd leave their equipment behind; stuff that could be swiped and stashed.

It was pretty hard to do a corpse run when the closest bound landmark was gone.

This part of the plan had gone well. Rich settled in for a long night of killing and dying, hoping that the rest would go as smoothly. In an hour or three he'd switch over with Rotgoriel, handing the reins of the body over to its original owner. He could only hope that his partner was prepared for one hell of a fight.