Party List

Nyx Alaion (Zoe Fox)

[Shroud] : [Knife]

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

Evie Lucian (Cassandra Bailey)

[Soul] : [Radiance]

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

Hibiscus Jade (Marissa Harper)

[Arrow] : [Seeker]

11,000 / 11,000

11,000 / 11,000

Zoe

There were few moments in Zoe's MMO career that truly evoked "battle" to her. Generally speaking, MMO fights, especially bosses, were designed with clear win conditions and mechanics that a player needed to interact with to win the fight. That could be as simple as beat up the boss until it dies with nothing more interesting involved, or as complex as basically solving a puzzle; rarely did a fight in an MMO ever feel like a chaotic mess by design.

The absolute melee that transpired during the final portion of the [Uris] boss fight was nothing so structured. Even when they were beared down on by waves of adds earlier on in the fight, it felt like they could still control the shuffle with game mechanics; [Enmity] still ruled, as did the holy trinity roles of tank, DPS, and healer.

The final scrum tossed all of that out the window.

Immediately, both Aleister and Fiona were shouting about how they couldn't get aggro on anything. Every single enemy was single-mindedly going after [Áine], only attacking the party when they got in the way. However, once an add attacked a player, they were basically stuck there, as if they had been taunted over and over again.

The fight quickly turned into a struggle for survival. [Áine] was able to help, with her tower-wide magic providing some healing and buffs passively, but her actions were focused on damaging [Uris] directly. Every time she launched a spell at the enemy Fae, she shaved off another 4% from his HP, which essentially put the party on a timer, assuming [Uris] dying was the goal here.

"It's, like, a minute. We need to buy her a minute." Mellody growled, already struggling to keep the party alive. Zoe immediately noted that he didn't sound confident in their ability to last that single minute they needed.

"We've got this." Cass said firmly. "Mello, focus on defensive buffs and shields. I'll keep everyone's HP up. If it's just a minute, I can burn everything I have."

"Hell yeah." Caoimhe said.

"Alright. Let's do it." Mellody agreed, and the party went to work.

Zoe immediately tunnel-visioned on her own role, just picking off every enemy she could, trying to keep them off [Áine], and avoiding damage herself. Of course, with the mobs retaliating against whoever got in their way, avoiding damage entirely didn't seem to be possible. Instead, Zoe focused on minimizing the damage she would take while maximizing the number of enemies she could remove from the board.

It didn't take her long to find her rhythm. The [Knife's] long combos intrinsically worked against her in this situation if she wasn't careful. The mass of enemies was still large and chaotic, but both Firo and Bisky had been firing away AoE attacks at them basically since they landed. Because the mobs were at least designed to be dealt with as a huge group, the individuals in it didn't have a lot of individual HP - and because of her friends, the mobs all had pretty varied HP by the time they reached Nyx's position.

She focused on basically playing a match game. As she rotated through her combos, the lower HP enemies got hit by the lower damage skills, while she would rotate enough to land the higher damage skills against the targets with more HP. Zoe had to admit it left Nyx functioning poorly as a wall to stop enemies getting near [Áine], but she was acting as a pretty strong blender, with many of the enemies getting cut down in a single skill or two whenever they neared her.

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It left Bisky, who was behind her, to wipe up the stragglers that got passed, but [Arrows] excelled at making attacks quickly and changing targets rapidly. The two of them naturally made for a strong pair in this case, so long as Bisky acquired targets quickly and aimed well.

Thankfully, Bisky's player may not have been crackshot when it came to her aiming ability, but she was more than competent enough to land her skills reliably.

Zoe swung her camera around briefly to look at [Uris'] remaining HP. Seeing the bar hovering around 20% gave her hope that they would make it through the rest of the fight. But it seemed in the last stretch, everyone was reaching the end of their respective tethers.

Mellody and Evie both seemed to be running dry on healing. They both were low on MP, and their cooldowns had clearly all been used. Fiona and Aleister were relying on their emergency skills to live, even using near-useless skills like [Repartee], which gave any enemy that hit them an [Intelligence] reducing debuff, which would almost certainly do nothing against physical attackers. But they were clearly throwing everything at the wall in case it might stick.

Zoe and her DPS compatriots were similarly running low on skills. Firo was scraping the bottom of the barrel of his MP to squeeze out whatever little spells he could, while Bisky had clearly run out of cooldown-based skills and had transitioned into just using simple but quick attacks as much as possible to try to reduce the number of enemies.

Caoimhe, like Zoe, was relying mostly on basic attacks at this point, only able to slip in an occasional follow-up skill when they got lucky. Zoe was only able to rotate through her basic combo, with literally all her skills on cooldowns of at least fifteen seconds left or more.

With clearly not long left to go, things began to fall apart. Firo was the first to 'fall', with no MP left to use the more costly AoEs in the last bit of the fight. But Fiona and Aleister were right behind him, running completely dry on mitigation skills of any kind except their [Block] and [Ebony Guard], which would only do so much.

"We're so close!" Bisky whined as she launched a [Master's Shot] only to immediately return to nothing but basic attacks.

"Shit, I'm going down. I've got nothing left." Caoimhe said, which pulled everyone's intention that way. Sure enough, Caoimhe had been using an occasional skill with built-in movement to avoid getting dogpiled by the enemies that were drawn in by her sword's wide sweeping attacks. Without any sort of escape available, though, the little Fae was buried under the enemy.

"Getting you back up." Mello said out of reflex, but Caoimhe laughed.

"No you're not. You don't have the MP for it."

"Crap…"

"Someone cover Caoimhe's spot!" Fiona said.

"I'll do it, but I'm gonna die." Firo said.

"Just get in there - we've got 12% left!" Mellody said. "I'll cover you the best I can."

"And here's a regen from me." Cass said, giving Firo her weakest heal-over-time spell, but also the only one she could really afford.

Firo stepped into Caoimhe's spot, and let a low-cost, close range AoE spell sear through the enemies in front of him. It was enough to get their attention, but he was also right that he'd die in no time at all.

There wasn't really anything useful Zoe could do other than continuing to body block enemies from getting to [Áine] and deal damage, so that's what she did. Bisky had turned to try to help thin the crowd around Firo, hoping to help the [Invoker] last even just a little bit longer, which left Zoe alone to try to survive the best she could.

Thankfully, as long as she kept Nyx somewhat nimble and and didn't dedicate herself to standing still to pump out more damage, she could probably survive for a bit yet. Even while she was taking a few basic attacks here and there, she had two heal-over-time spell effects on her from Cass, who kept trying to reapply whatever she could to the team, not to mention the buffs from [Áine].

Fiona was barely holding on against [Uris] as [Áine] continued her attempt to down the boss. He was at 8%, with the Fae queen halfway through her next spell attack, which would bring him to 4%.

Zoe could feel the tension in her entire body. They were so close, but were on a knife's edge. No one was in a good position, and if anything else crumbled, they'd almost certainly lose.

And then Firo went down, as expected. Even the combination of Mellody's shields, Evie's healing, and the buffs from [Áine] weren't enough to hold out as a squishy [Mage] against the number of adds remaining - which Zoe had to admit were finally dwindling. There were probably under twenty of them left now, but that number was still threatening with so much of their resources drained.

"I'll cover the spot, but I won't last long either." Bisky said, moving over to hold the area that Firo had been in.

"Sorry…" Firo said, sounding defeated.

"Bro, you're a squishy. It's all good." Fiona said, hoping to keep everyone's spirits up.

"We've not lost this yet, but it's going to be down to the wire." Mellody said.

"Keep it together for, like, 20 more seconds!" Cass said, trying to avoid sounding too defeated. The urgency in her voice was enough to keep everyone engaged, it seemed, but Zoe was locked in regardless. She knew that they had a chance here so long as they fought it out.

"I'm out of everything." Fiona said.

"Swap with me, Fiona!" Aleister shouted, and suddenly appeared in front of [Uris] with [Shadow Step]. In the same instant, Aleister used [Dark Lash], the [Ebon's] [Provoke] skill, hoping to drag [Uris] off Fiona.

Whether it was [Dark Lash] that did it, or Aleister simply stepping in front of Fiona, [Uris] took the bait. Fiona used [Quick Step] to gap close over to the hole that Aleister left behind, taking up the spot to defend [Áine]. Fiona's position ended up losing ground, but still kept the adds away from [Áine].

Aleister, now left dealing with [Uris], used [Dark Deliverance], the [Ebon's] only skill with invulnerability, lasting six seconds. Apparently, somehow, Aleister had managed to keep it in reserve until then, and buying the party even just six seconds was huge. That was six seconds of not needing to heal the tank, in addition to six seconds worth of extra regen on Aleister for a little extra HP.

"I'm down."

Unfortunately, despite Aleister's clutch play, there was really nothing left that could help Bisky, who was overrun as [Áine] blasted [Uris] down to his last 4% of HP.

"Damn it, we're right there!" Fiona said. "Cover me?"

The request didn't sound like he had any confidence that anyone could, but he still positioned Fiona to split the difference between the spot he guarded and the one Bisky had taken. He quickly launched two basic AoE attacks that did very little damage, but would still hopefully pick up any adds it hit.

And while Fiona certainly succeeded in picking up more adds, trying to cover two zones let a few sneak around on the sides. There was nothing Zoe could do but watch as at least six of the remaining enemies slipped around their failing blockade to move against [Áine].

When the first mob hit [Áine] but it didn't interrupt her casting, Zoe felt a slight bit of hope.

"She doesn't get interrupted! We just need to keep her alive." Zoe said quickly. At that point, she noticed that [Deep Trance] had come off cooldown, and she had [Shadow Blossom] available. Without thinking, she hit both, using [Trance] to skip her combo to use the AoE combo finisher [Shadow Blossom]. The high damage AoE wiped out the 4 enemies she was still blocking from [Áine], which also freed her up to move around.

"Nyx."

"Already on it." Zoe said, slipping behind three of the adds that made it to [Áine]. She laid into their backs, hoping to kill them as quickly as she could. They were entirely focused on [Áine], which left their backs exposed, which was good for her damage. But there were still three others on the Queen's other side that she couldn't reach with her melee range.

"I'm out. Good luck, y'all." Mellody said suddenly.

"What?"

"Unlucky crit." He sighed. "It's all you, Evie."

"Fuck." Cass said, drawing the word out in a half-growl.

Zoe glanced at [Áine's] cast bar; she was half way through the cast that should kill [Uris], and hopefully end the fight, but her HP was going down pretty quickly, too. It would be close.

"Fuck me, I'm dead."

Zoe didn't even look away from her targets when Fiona died. She just kept trying to focus on the adds. Even killing two or three might be enough to reduce the damage [Áine] was taking enough to make her live through the assault.

Zoe killed two more of the adds when she saw [Áine's] spell go off. The silvery spear of raw magic slammed into [Uris], and sent the boss tumbling backwards, finally put down.

But the fight didn't end.

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