Runeguard 047

Unsurprisingly, the Wardens proved adept climbers, and it turned out to be easier than I expected for their scouts to scale the back of the amphitheater walls and lay down ropes for the rest of us to climb.

Still, I had to remove my plate armor to manage the ascent. There was no way I was going to haul up both my own body and all that weight too.

That was easy, I thought as I dropped down lightly onto the amphitheater floor. I turned around, eager to see who else had made it to safety, but I managed no more than a single glimpse before a small shape hurtled into me.

Ooof, I exclaimed, staggering backwards while my arms instinctively wrapped around my assailant. My nose was buried in a sea of red. 

It was Beth.

“Dace, you’re alive!” she gasped. 

I opened my mouth to reply, but before I could, she wrenched herself out of my grasp. Standing with arms on hips, she eyed me from top to bottom. “I was so worried,” Beth went on. Then she glared at me. As if that was my fault. “Idiot. Don’t you dare do that to me again.”

My mouth was still hanging open. I closed it with a snap. As much as I wanted to protest my innocence—I hadn’t done anything to her, after all—I prudently remained silent.

“Well,” she asked, her foot tapping dangerously, “aren’t you going to say anything?”

I chewed on the inside of my lip, knowing I was in a tenuous position, but not knowing why. “How are you, Beth?” I asked finally.

The red-haired woman scowled at me for a second longer before throwing up her hands and storming off.

My stomach dropped. I had said the wrong thing.

A hand clamped down on my shoulder. “Dace, my friend,” Everett said with a chuckle, “you may be a mean fighter, but you’ve got a thing or two to learn about women.”

I stared at him blankly. “What did I do?”

My perplexed expression proved too much for the Warden. Guffawing in laughter, he just shook his head and walked off.

I followed after, my own steps dragging.

✵ ✵ ✵

The amphitheater was packed to the brim with distraught and grief-stricken players, and everyone seemed to already know of Everett and my arrival. 

Crowds of people pressed down on either side of us, demanding answers, wanting to know what was going on, and how they were going to get out of the Creche.

I let Everett do all the talking and kept my own head adamantly down. I did not deal well with crowds or people in general. But for all the authority the Wardens guildmaster exuded, he failed to calm the anxious mob, or give them the answers they sought. 

Eventually, he gave up trying and fell silent as the scouts led us to the amphitheater’s center. There, in a small cordoned off space, we found the towns’ guildmasters waiting.

The matron was the first to step forward. “Dace, I’m glad you made it,” she said, clasping my arms briefly before going on to welcome Everett.

I returned her greeting and turned to study the rest of the guildmasters arrayed before me. There were six of them, one of whom was Bayan. 

The Paragon guildmaster and I exchanged quick nods before my gaze moved on to the next recognizable face: Juyorah. He too bobbed his head in greeting. The last one I knew was Alexis. 

I frowned. She seemed too young to be one of the guildmasters though. 

“Alexis has replaced her father as guildmaster of the alchemists,” Evelyn whispered, noticing my gaze resting on the young alchemist. “He was killed by the ratkin.”

I nodded, and the Weavers guildmaster tugged on my arm. “Come, let me introduce you to the others.”

✵ ✵ ✵

The war council, such as it was, ran far longer into the night than I expected.

To my relief, the vast majority of players who had been in the town had made it safely to the amphitheater, including all the Paragons, the Weavers, and Juyorah’s smiths. 

Although, after just ten minutes into the so-called ‘war council’s’ deliberations, I was given cause to wish for a few less players to have managed the feat. 

It was a heartless thought, but at that point, I was fast losing patience, and my temper was rising.

It seemed that every guildmaster, and not a few of the players eavesdropping from nearby, had an opinion of how things should be done. And convincing every one of the wisdom of our plan proved to be astonishingly difficult.

All told, there were some two hundred fighters and five hundred non-combatants in the amphitheater, which with the mixed force of three hundred Wardens and other dungeon-divers outside, gave us an effective fighting force of just over five hundred.

We would still be outnumbered six-to-one against the ratkin, but with better fighters, superior tactics, and some especially nice toys on our side, I fancied our chances. 

But only if we followed the plan Everett and I had concocted.

It took us hours to hash out the details of our assault. On more than one occasion, I had been tempted to bow my head and cry into my hands as I was reminded again why exactly I preferred avoiding people, especially large groups of them.

Humans, self-important ones in particular, could be dishearteningly stupid—even in the direst of circumstances. 

In the end it was Evelyn and Everett who came to the rescue, and I was grateful for the pair’s strong leadership. If not for them, things would have fallen apart entirely. Between the two, they managed to convince, nudge, encourage, or otherwise bully the rest of the guildmasters into following the plan.

But even after that minor miracle was accomplished, it took yet more hours to put everything into place. 

Nonetheless we managed to get everything done in time, and at long last, an hour before dawn, while darkness still filled the sky and the ratkin remained asleep, the last of our troops moved into position.

It was time to begin our attack.

✵ ✵ ✵

Encased in my plate armor once more, I strode through the open portcullis gates of the amphitheater. 

They had been well-oiled hours earlier, but for all the attention the ratkin at the bottom of the hill were paying, we needn’t have bothered. According to Night, nine out of ten creatures were still asleep, and even those awake showed no inclination to maintain a watch. 

It turned out that the ratkin had attempted only a single assault on the amphitheater; this when the town’s players had first retreated behind its walls. After that failed attempt, the creatures had retreated to the bottom of the hill, seemingly content to wait for the human players to come out. 

The ratkin’s attitude had played nicely into our hands and left us with time to finish our preparations unhindered. 

Our attack, I expected, would catch them completely off-guard.

“They don’t seem to fear us at all,” Juyorah murmured from behind me. 

I glanced around. The Hammers guildmaster was studying the darkened ratkin camp too. Like me, he was also in full plate armor. 

The blacksmiths had used the ore they had mined from Wolf valley to craft themselves their own suits of armor. A shrewd move on their part. They had put said armor to good use, too, when they had gone through the Swampy Place dungeon earlier in the day.

And while it would be a stretch to call the smiths heavy fighters, the nineteen of them arrayed behind me would provide me with much-needed support.

The smiths and I were the tip of the spear. 

It would be our job, as the only heavy armored troops we had, to throw the first punch in the coming battle.

“How’s your sight?” I asked. Each of the armored smiths behind me had downed a cat’s eye potion. It would only last an hour, but that was more than enough time to do what needed doing.

“Amazing,” he replied. “I can see clear as day.”

I nodded. I was using the cat’s eye potion too, and while it granted me nowhere near the clarity of sight that Night had gifted me with, I was betting that my vision was still many times better than the ratkin’s.

I turned to Everett. He and eighty of his Wardens were braced in a line along the amphitheater’s walls. “Are your people ready?” I asked.

He nodded. “We got your backs,” he assured me.

The eighty archers had also drunk a dose of cat’s eye. It turned out that while Alexis and the alchemist accompanying her hadn’t had their own stash of the night vision potions, they had had the necessary ingredients, portable kits, and recipes to make more.

In the end, it had been less than an hour’s worth of work for the alchemists to create enough potions to supply a significant number of our forces with cat’s eyes.

“Alright, let’s be about it,” I said and took off jogging down the hill.