7 Days remain of contest A, Monday

“We have to hit them where it hurts. We can’t let them travel anywhere. They will do no leveling, no shopping, no market, no travel of any kind,” Sauce says, clearly getting into the new war general roles we have. “We will control all the dungeons near their fortress. All the resources, those, will be ours. They will be stuck sitting in their fortress watching in fear.

“We have set up alliance chat channels for each of the various fronts we are waging war on. In this effort, each team will have a codename and a team lead who will talk in these comms. Your alliance leaders have discussed it. and when we win, for each AOW kill you get, we will give you a thousand gold. The team with the most kills of AOW members will get an extra 250,000 gold from each of us when we win. In your alliance interface is a new tab with a leaderboard. You will need to register your party for the board and stick with them until Friday.”

Excited chatter and grins overtake the alliance members. Incentivizing them to hunt and kill enemies is not needed, but this makes it more likely they will be ruthless.

I step forward. “First up, everyone get into the party you will use for the contest and join the alliance board,” I say, looking around. In the translucent window I have open, with the alliance leaderboard, I start seeing more parties show up.

Sauce waves and says, “If your party is not all online yet, just form a party and give yourself a name and then invite them. No party jumping okay? —Alright, get going.”

“We need volunteers,” I say. Every hand raises, and laughter bursts out. I select one group I have seen work well together before during the outpost quests and assign them to the resources. Another group I assign to the story dungeon that [Art of War] has been running. I am careful not to limit them to only those areas, they are going to want to participate in the competition. I just ask that they specifically clear them routinely to looking for targets.

“Don’t forget,” Sauce hollers at the throng. “Weekend-only war declarations are off during the week, so we are going to all be flagged for PVP and maybe pick us up some tombstones like Nightflower here. Flagged for PVP means guards will attack. We have several full-time crafters who can go to town on shopping runs should you need anything.”

For Port Yarrow we have four parties—including the Falling Knives, which includes myself and Briar. Sauce wants to patrol around their fortress with a group of ranged fighters and Roll with his summons. Roll leveled up and got a new rank of his air summon he wanted to try out. The summons now looks like a Chinese temple guardian, almost like a mix of dragon and pit-bull that floats instead of using wings. Their party will locking down the road to the Leviathan Fortress for anyone not in .

I turn to my Falling Knives and smile; they proudly display their knife and snowbird insignias. This wild little pack of assassins is going to tear apart the town and the surrounding areas with a special emphasis on destruction.

This—this, is the fun part.

***

Watching the splinters of the enemy’s clan house rain down in burning pieces satisfies me in ways I could not have foreseen. I paid an NPC to tell a new character that if they carry a package into the [Art of War] clan house, they would get a secret quest. The explosion rocked the town. Falling Knives got +5 kills on the alliance board with one bomb. A series of light chimes ring. We get a small little one each time it records a kill, and the sound is a reminder that there is a contest happening. The forums and public chats like local, region, and trade are all nothing but complaints and whining about our alliance.

The Falling Knives end the day on a good note, nineteen kills total, but we are not close to the top of the leaderboard. Sauce and his party took out a huge group on the road and racked up forty-eight

Top five:

#kills partyname (leader):

48 Deeps (Sauce)

32 AoWsucks (BenHur)

30 EatThis (JelloB)

23 Snowbirds (Fatty)

19 Falling Knives (NightFlower)

Our party decide to log off in a safe spot, a rooftop in the poor section of the Port Yarrow. I verify using Morrigan that no one has spotted where we will log out and we all do a countdown and snap out of existence to sleep.

***

4 days remain of contest A, Thursday

The last several days went by quickly, and they were spent constantly following and killing every player we could find. We have halted the economy in our entire region and the NPCs won’t come out of their houses. The only NPCs seen are the shopkeepers, the ones who don’t have homes.

The campaign against [Art of War] is having a debilitating effect on them: people are quitting the clan and still getting killed everywhere they go. The only safe place is to log off. They have their little wins here and there, though, and as our members get killed, they are reappearing with haunted expressions and tombstones from Toldos.

I check the leaderboard, the last few days have been busy.

#kills partyname (leader):

108 Snowbirds (Fatty)

92 Deeps (Sauce)

84 AoWsucks (BenHur)

81 Falling Knives (NightFlower)

79 Zipheads (Chucklenoggin)

Fatty is a berserker, in a party of shape changers and berserkers that has been wrecking player groups. They are basically a roaming Zerg-force, and they frequently post videos in the public chats of their violence. I see Kian’s character name Sil3nt among the names of those we killed. It seems that he is no longer a member of [Art of War]. Sauce killed him in a large group attempting to leave the Leviathan fortress, and then some of our new [Nightfallers] players cornered him and took him again down near the market. They offered me a video, but I declined, and I didn’t say anything to Briar about it.

While waiting on a rooftop, deep in shadow, scanning for new victims in Port Yarrow, I get an in-game message from Kian. It dings and pops up.

We need to talk please, meet me by the well under the tree.

I consider that I could go and just get another kill, but I should hear him out and see what he has to say. I ask Briar to come with me and we head out, leaving the Falling Knives to keep our area clear of players.

I have Briar hang back for a minute, but remain in sight. I decide that I want to scout out the area first, just in case this is one of Josie’s tricks. With Morrigan’s eyes I can see the entire area, and the only one present is Kian, who is up in a tree.

Approaching, I don’t try to use hide-in-shadows, and I don’t try to even be silent. I just walk up, my cloak dragging scratching shadows behind me, my hood down, and my hair blowing slightly with the air aspect.

“Speak your peace,” I say when I am close. I look up into the tree as Morrigan flies down and lands on the tombstone on my back and wipes her beak.

Kian drops from the tree, he is in his rogue gear and looks skittish. I notice that he is wearing the cloak I got for him.

“Hi,” he says meekly. “I want to apologize. I don’t know what I was thinking, and I don’t know why I did that.” He looks up. “I was jealous of you. I thought you were making all the decisions by yourself and that you didn’t know what you were doing—”

“But I did.”

“Yes, I know. I was wrong. I was very wrong—”

“You really were,” I snap, trying not to cry. “What do you want from me here?” I ask. Morrigan from my shoulder makes a gurgling croak sound and shifts, visibly disturbed.

“I want to help you, and I want to earn my way back into Nightfallers,” he says.

“How can you help?”

“I can give you the layout of the Leviathan fortress and tell you everything about the guardian there. I can tell you all about their plans, at least as of a couple days ago, and I can provide alchemical services. Listen, I know I hurt you. ?”

I know I need a break or I am going to show my heartbreak. I turn and wave Briar over.

“What’s up loser,” Briar nods to Kian.

“Kian repeat for Briar what you just proposed to me please?” I say as I turn and sit down.

Listening to Kian repeat everything again to Briar, I almost get that feeling of when we first started playing. Briar interrupts him every few seconds with an expletive about how his brain is excrement. It’s almost like when it was fun, and we all got along. I know I am mad, but in many ways I set this all in motion, and this is my fault. Kian and Briar have been best friends most of their lives. It would tear Briar apart to lose Kian as a friend. I can’t let that happen.

“Ahem. I think I know what to do,” I interrupt Briar, who is explaining to Kian how many nails he has for a brain. “I am going to set your reputation with the alliance to friendly, so you won’t get killed everywhere. You can go to the Fortress and work in the alchemy house. We need more bombs; you can help the war effort by making us those. I would stay out of sight though, as there are a lot of people who may still kill you. Oh, and before you go, let Briar know all the info on the fortress.”

I pause and then continue, “I apologize to you, Kian, for my part in all this, and for not talking with you. It’s going to be awhile before I can trust you again. Just know that I forgive you and I am going to try to get everyone else to forgive you as well,” I say.

I see Briar visibly relax, and for once he has nothing to say.

“T-thank y-you,” Kian says, choking up.