Serion logged in long before the morning muster of the army. He checked over his potions and gear. Everything was ready but he enjoyed making sure.

Peace of mind and all that. The others had all started longing in doing similar preparations.It was with some surprise a knock came from the door and they were greeted by a Reckett herald.

The man had an arrogant air about him and he strode in as if he owned the place. Looking down his nose at them he started to read the kings many titles and why the army marched and blah blah something honor and love of peace. The noble lost much of his color when he got to the guild name and started stuttering and gulping. Glancing up between sentences he was sweating quite a lot.

Even the NPCs knew their guild by reputation. It wasn’t always players that they slaughtered with wanton abandon.

Bounty hunters and mercenaries had often been dispatched to take them in for various crimes and bounties placed on their heads by players. Afterwards they would often have the heads delivered to the Adventurer’s Guild where the quests were issued and taken.

Fellow players would often receive their heads in a box. The package fee was a small price to pay when the fools that had set out to be the hunter had become the hunted. A handful of times they were even there when the players received the package, the looks on their face making it well worth the effort.

Revenance also like to critically backstab them right after and resend them his regards. Few hunted them anymore and the successful few that had gotten them grinned down at them from the trophy racks that covered the walls.

Finishing his little speech it was the massive obsidian dragon skull that drew the herald’s eyes. Hanging over the skull table it dwarfed every other trophy they had.

It was darkest legend and had created their guilds legacy and had made them a common curse in the game. For a week they had followed a large PVE (player versus environment) guild into some mountains in the far north of the clan lands.

An informant had given them access to the guilds online forums for a price of course. The group had been secretly looking and recruiting high level players to help in a long unique questline leading them to an old dragon’s lair.

The Thirteen had been interested for entirely different reasons. Even in the fantasy set game dragons were extremely rare, a handful were known to players and the nature of the unique questlines involving them made it that once the questline was completed or failed they were done permanently, no more quests for it. This dragon had long been turned to dust by time due to some ancient relic. The would be dragon hunters had collected the pieces of this artifact and the dragon was resurrected by the players. Even time couldn’t stop it from its beloved possession.

They fought for nearly an hour losing most of their number but getting the dragon’s overall health to 3% and that was when the Thirteen had struck.

Thirteen fresh PvPers ripped through the 20 or so who had little mana and health left. To add insult to injury when they had killed the whole group they then turned on the dragon. Their victims had tried to defeat the dragon even while being slaughtered. They had hope up to the end.

Luckily the nearest temple was about two days away. Even at only 2% it had taken them 10 minutes of fighting to kill it. They were geared and skilled towards killing players instead of monsters but they had also taken plenty of potions and rare objects to disrupt and kill the dragon hunters. They nearly exhausted everything they took with them.

In the end they felled the great beast and with its death the capital cities of the land received notifications of its defeat and the heroes that had vanquished it. Their reputations went from hated in most kingdoms to beloved.

They even got a guild statue at the creature’s grave site. It was very cool, sucking in the light from around it and made of dragon bone. The original questers called foul on the public forums and it even caused a few to quit the game all together. The loot and the skull trophy were just icing on the cake. Don’t hate the player, hate the game.

“We understand our ‘Heroic’ part to play in the frontlines on the morrow. Tell your King that.”

When no reply came he tore his gaze from the skull and glancing about for the herald he spotted his fresh corpse on the ground.

“Who killed the herald?” he asked in mock anger. A few shrugs were his reply before the group burst into laughs and chuckles.

The morning air was still. Army scouts from both sides watched for movement. No eyes looked at the sacked city nearby.

The smoldering ruins had few living souls within. Deep under the city in what was once part of the sewer system a century before, large groups of cowled figures stood around thousands of overlapping circles. The massive room was covered in runes some written overlapping others, to an outsider it would look like a chaotic kaleidoscope of color glowing and dimming as if it was part of a far greater creature slowly breathing.

At the center of it all a group stood before a chest pierced with metallic spikes of varying alloys.

“How go the preparations? Is everything set? I don’t need to remind you all we have one shot to save our world.”

“Everything is done master. The circles are complete and the runes are written. The sacrifices from the city above have fueled the spell. The battle is about to start. We are ready.”

“Let us begin and may the gods watch over us.” The figure grabbed a spike and pulled.