Phantasm

“An entire army?” I repeated.

“More than I could count in a minute,” Cloridan said. “I dunno what they’re waiting for, but they’re formed up and ready to go.”

“Military tactics often involve a lot of ‘hurry up and wait’,” Borys said as he came over waving a piece of paper. “I found it by the way, it was placed pretty obviously.”

“Great,” I replied. “Now we just have to finish our objectives and—damn!”

“What is it?” Cloridan asked, but I was already hurrying over to Sarge.

“Stop working!” I whispered urgently.

“What? But we’re almost done, sah.”

“Just stop for now,” I said. I glared at him until he tapped Bucky on the shoulder. Then I turned back to the others.

[Privacy]

I dragged the kobolds into the bubble and beckoned the others to come closer.

“It’s a triggered attack,” I said. Blank looks all around, even from Borys.

“It’s like it was back at the first objective,” I said. “As soon as I picked up those papers, the troops started moving. Those troops outside aren’t there to stop us from completing the two objectives from this building, they’re there to stop us from getting to the next.”

“Is there a reason we have to listen to this foreign jabber?” Sarge asked. “Cause we’d rather get back to work.”

“Quiet, you. We need to time the placement of the explosives very carefully and I’m still working out what the timing is.”

“You mean, time the detonation, sah,” Sarge said sullenly.

“Shush.” Although, he did have a good point. The objective wasn’t completed when we planted the explosives, was it? It would be when they detonated… surely?

Confused, I repeated my thoughts to the group. Borys, at least, was able to follow me.

“No, it has to be when they’re primed,” he said thoughtfully. “We need to leave before they blow… for all we know the explosives don’t work at all, we just get credited with it.”

“Or they could charge in when we complete the third objective,” I speculated, “Making us fight through it while we try to place charges.”

“I don’t really get it,” Kyle said. “But if the goblins are just going to stand there until—something—happens, shouldn’t we shoot them now?”

“That will probably trigger an attack,” I mused. “They’re not actually computer game sprites. If the control script is broken they’ll just revert to being ordinary monsters.”

Then a thought struck me. “But what would the script do,” I wondered, “If they were under attack but couldn’t identify a target?”

It only took a few moments to cast a bunch of [Phantasmal Objects] for hearing protection. This was going to get loud. We’d been in firefights a bunch of times now, but this was going to be three fighters pouring as much lead down range as possible.

Do magical guns overheat? I wondered. I hadn’t fired the guns of this level enough to know. Well, we’d been collecting enough guns and ammo to have a few spares.

I cast [Greater Invisibility] three times and watched Kyle, Cloridan and Borys stumble their way to the hole in the door like they were in some sort of slapstick comedy. They couldn’t see each other, or the hole in the door, but they knew it was there and found their way with a minimum of amusing antics.

Once they were all in position, I ordered Sarge to get back to priming his explosives and flashed a light to signal the start of the operation. As an afterthought, I raised a short, thick, stone wall to help protect the backline against stray shots

It was… odd. I needn’t have bothered with hearing protection for Felicia and myself. Each of the boys should have been able to hear (and see) their own weapon, but for those outside the spell, all the flash and thunder were supressed.

“Is it working?” Felicia asked,

“They’re firing,” I said uncertainly. Neither of us could see what was happening on the other side of the door.

Then the notifications started coming in.

Your party has killed a German Private - your experience share is 305 XP

Lots of those. A few Sergeants, even a Lieutenant. But most of them were Privates.

“It is working!” Felicia exclaimed.

Then another notification came.

Palace of the Endless Dream, Floor Seven: Objective 3/5 completed!

“Is he done?” Felicia asked, looking over at Sarge. He was still furiously twisting wires and swearing.

“No, that must be the Kobolds in the archives. They must have started the fire.”

I looked over to where the boys were firing. They still were, but all of them were taking breaks between bursts to wave at me.

“Oh, shit,” I said. “I think—”

I didn’t wait to finish the sentence. I barely had time to put up a Phantasmal wall, covering part of the garage door, before the whole thing blew up.

My wall didn’t last a second, of course, but it did stop fragments of the roller door from scouring the room. Part of the room. As the smoke cleared, I could now see outside.

There were a lot of goblins out there. The boys had killed a bunch, but there were still plenty, all of them running toward us.

This seemed like a time for a grenade. We didn’t have many left from Floor Four, but this seemed like the time.

Just before it exploded, I heard Sarge call out, “Finally done!”

Palace of the Endless Dream, Floor Seven: Objective 4/5 completed!

Well, that’s something, I thought. I looked over to where the boys had stopped raining death on the incoming goblins and cursed. They’d been knocked over by the blast. Not seriously hurt, at least I didn’t think so, but they were at a loss. They weren’t lined up side by side, firing through a hole anymore so they didn’t know if one of the others was in the line of fire.

I swore some more and cancelled the invisibility spells. It made them vulnerable, but it let them attack, which was the main thing.

Felicia was firing over the stone wall we were using as a mini-fort. She wasn’t causing notifications, but she was slowing them down. I decided the boys could use a fort of their own and started raising one.

But now we were taking fire. The goblins had stopped charging forward and had taken whatever cover they could find. Whether hunkered behind some debris or just lying flat on the ground, they were sending a hail of bullets our way. One of them happened to find me.

You have taken 416 damage!

I screamed with the pain of it and dropped to the floor.

“I’ve got you!” Felicia said. Dropping behind the wall with me, she used her [Heal] skill. The pain ebbed away and I could return to the fight.

The boys were hunkered down as well, now, and the notifications started coming in. There were still a lot of goblins, though, and it was only a matter of time before they found another grenade, or anti-tank rocket or whatever that first explosion had been.

Borys must have been waiting for the same thing, because as soon as a small object flew through the entrance, a stiff, cold wind blew up, flinging it back out to explode outside. No notifications, but they didn’t throw anything else through. Borys kept the icy wind up anyway. I wondered if he intended to coat the ground with ice, making it harder for them to rush us.

“Can you link up our forts?” Felicia asked. “Some of the boys are wounded as well.”

I looked over and winced. “Yeah, give me a second.” Another wall started rising from the ground.

Then the sound of gunfire started coming from a new direction. Above us. They were firing on the goblins outside and the notifications started flowing. The goblins tried to return fire, but their cover was ineffective against the higher elevation our new allies enjoyed. None of them surrendered or ran, so they were picked off one by one.

When the last one was done, silence fell over the battlefield. We stared out of the now ice-lined entrance. Borys cancelled his spell, and we could hear cheers from upstairs.

“That’ll be the rest of the team,” Sarge said, sauntering up proudly. “Now there’s not much time on these timers, so let’s get going.”

There was a bit of time. Enough to pick up some replacement ammo from the fallen soldiers outside. None of us were keen on sticking around, though, it seemed certain that we were going to see some tanks before too long.

Sarge took a look at the address Borys had found, and we were off, falling into the same pattern that had worked before.

“Doubt we’ll find anything,” Sarge said. “That place is a railway station. Only reason to send something there is to get it out of town.”

I grunted in acknowledgement but kept my thoughts to myself. What the hell did that mean? Did this floor have another city within its bounds? Or did it just have a railway station that went nowhere? That seemed more likely. Especially since we expected to find the final objective here.

There were encounters on the way, but we were well-practised in avoiding tanks. They just weren’t worth fighting. We took out a few patrols, mainly when avoiding them would put us in the path of a tank. There was another air raid. All in all, it took us the rest of the day to get to the railway station on foot. The light was fading when we finally sighted the long buildings.

“Should we push on, or make camp and come back in the morning?” Borys asked. As he spoke, the lights turned on.

Not all of the lights that a city should have. This city was supposed to be war-torn, after all. No, just the lights of the railway station. The whole thing lit up like a beacon. Lights blazed out of windows and spotlights illuminated the outside.

“Are they… crazy?” Borys asked. “This city is getting bombed! Lighting it up like that at night is the worst thing they could do?”

“Looks like we’re expected,” I said. “I think making Axel wait for us overnight could prove costly.”

“It… is a trap, though, right?” Kyle asked, looking at the building warily. As the general light level dropped, the whitewashed walls seemed to glow under the artificial illumination.

“Of course. This whole floor—this whole dungeon—is a trap,” I said sourly. “I’d like to think it’s a trap for demons, but it works pretty good on us humans.”

Cloridan didn’t say anything as he was still an invisible scout. He looked at me, the only one that could see him.

“Go on,” I said, “Take a look inside.”

He nodded and strode off. We followed at a more cautious pace. There didn’t seem to be any troops guarding the building, but the wide open space meant plenty of room for some to arrive.

None did. We made it to the front entrance unmolested. The huge gates stood open. As we walked through them, we all jumped at the high-pitched squeal of a PA system starting up.

“What’s that?” Felicia asked.

“Someone is going to talk to us, probably Axel,” I explained. “It’s a mechanical version of [Sourceless Sound].”

Sure enough, a voice started to speak. It wasn’t Axel, though.

“My loyal citizens of the Reich,

In this hour of great struggle, our enemies close in from all sides, their armies fueled by the greed and deception of those who seek to destroy everything we have built, everything we hold dear. But they underestimate the will and the power of the German spirit! They believe they can break us, that they can reduce our great nation to ashes with their overwhelming numbers and their mindless machines of war. But today, we shall show them that even in the face of overwhelming odds, the Reich stands indomitable!”

Borys looked at me. “Is that… Hitler?”