The Nettle Tea Chronicles

Zoe

"So…are we ready?" Bisky asked, as she gravitated closer to [Áine] to hit the go button.

"Think so." Mellody said, picking up the crafting stations. "Everyone's got the food buffs and stuff?"

A chorus of affirmatives sounded as Zoe moused over her line of buffs, just to double check everything was in order. It all looked good to her.

"Right then. Here we go."

[Áine] turned to face Bisky when she interacted with her. "You are all prepared then?"

Zoe didn't get to see the response that Bisky chose, but it hardly mattered when the scene was quickly transitioning into the next stage of the raid. [Áine] took up her staff and pulled together several disparate threads of magic to cast a spell with a large rune beneath her feet.

"Stand near me."

The group shuffled closer, arraying themselves naturally in their normal clock positions around [Áine] in the circle, and then Zoe's screen flashed black with a loading screen.

As with all the other raids, the actual fight was separated into an instanced area to avoid weird things going wrong by using the complex allowances of open area fields. Keeping things locked to an instance that was designed for things to play out in specific ways was one of the easiest solutions to avoiding bugs, and while Zoe was always prepared for the loading screens to transition into fights, she appreciated the use of the teleport as the reason for it.

As the group loaded in, they appeared on the top of the ruined tower that [Áine] had pointed out to them earlier, which was still solidly behind the enemy lines. Zoe could easily see over the edges of the tower's tiny battlements.

It seemed like for the moment, the enemies hadn't noticed their arrival, although Zoe was also sure that wouldn't last.

"Well. This looks like fun." Caoimhe chuckled, as she ran around the edges of the tower, keeping just away from the edges in case getting seen started the fight.

"Obviously our job is to defend Áine, but like…what's that going to look like up here? The tower isn't exactly a large arena space." Aleister muttered.

"I guess we'll just have to see, right?" Firo shrugged. "Nothing to it but to do it."

"Yeah, let's just see how it goes." Fiona said.

"Bisky, do the thing." Cass shouted, the excitement clear in her voice.

"Aye-aye, Cap'n." Bisky said, then clearly approached [Áine] to start the whole process.

Zoe assumed she had interacted with the Queen, because [Áine] suddenly started moving. She flourished with her staff and began pulling magical effects from the air.

"Once I start this, I'll be somewhat defenseless. I won't have the concentration to hold a large barrier around us all like I did on the ground, but I should be able to spare enough to cover myself against any stray magicks. I'll need you all to keep the enemies off of us as much as possible, but I'll try to back you up the best I can."

"Okay, so we defend her and the tower, not a bubble shield. That's…something?"

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"Is it?"

"It all feels the same to me."

"Be prepared. I don't know what they'll use against us." [Áine] said, and then a silvery-white barrier that had an almost pearlescent sheen sprung up around her in the middle of the tower's roof. And then, as she directed her magic down into the tower itself, the entire thing began to glow with a soft, silvery light that began to grow in intensity.

And the enemy army's attention clearly shifted to us.

"Welp. Heads up, guys." Bisky said as virtually the entire tower was highlighted in red AoE danger zones.

"What the hell?" Aleister shouted, as everyone scrambled to find a safe spot, but there weren't any obvious gaps in the red danger zones.

"Over here, over here!" Mellody called, the Cait-Sidhe jumping over a small gap in the red that seemed barely large enough to fit everyone in. Regardless, everyone made a break for the small safe spot, with movement skills and abilities being triggered all at once.

The fit was tight, but it seemed like almost everyone was able to squeeze into the little spot of safety, except for Fiona who valiantly stood just outside the spot with a defensive cooldown triggered. She lived, and had only taken around 15% of her total HP.

"What cooldown was that?" Cass asked quickly.

"Just Withstand." Fiona replied.

"So, 15% mit. Evie?" Mellody said.

"Yeah. That feels survivable for everyone, even without the general tank reduction."

"Agreed." Mellody said. "I'm not sure I like the implication of that, though."

"Hey, Firo," Cass said, sounding like she was telling a bad joke, "the stuff you saw online about this fight - did it mention being hard on healers?"

"I saw nothing beyond general difficulty, sorry." Firo said, as most of the tower lit up in AoEs again.

"Great."

"Over there." Bisky said, making a beeline across the tower toward a similarly small safe zone. The party followed right behind her, much slower than the previous time with many of the collective movement skills on cooldown.

"Hey, Nyx, sweetie, can you do me a favor and stand in the red death please?"

Zoe blinked at Cass' request. "Huh?"

"You heard me. Just don't get Venn diagramed." Cass said, as everyone else hooted over Cass calling her sweetie.

Zoe rolled her eyes, but did as requested. She stood just outside the safe spot - which she had reached well before half the party - and positioned to be sure she was only standing in one of the red AoEs.

Rather than focus on the group trying to squeeze into safety, Zoe's attention this time was on everything else. She watched as the AoE markers exploded in a colorful display of all different kinds of magic. Fireballs went off, lightning struck the tower, large boulders pelted some spots, icicles grew and shattered violently - the entire thing was visually stunning.

She also watched as the magic seemed to bounce off of [Áine's] barrier, barely an inconvenience for her. Zoe took that as a good sign, given she didn't seem to have an associated HP bar or anything, so maybe they didn't actually need to defend her in the technical sense.

In addition, Nyx survived the blast that she had stood in. It was some kind of light-aspected spell that had expanded as a ring of yellow light from the center of the AoE, and had only shaved off around 35% of her HP. That was practically nothing. And it didn't give her any debuffs either, which honestly felt a little strange for taking avoidable damage in a raid setting.

Unless it wasn't meant to just be avoidable damage. And then what the two healers had been concerned about clicked in her head. Zoe groaned. "Oh."

Cass snickered and Mellody laughed. "Yup." Mellody said, drawing out the word.

"What?" Aleister asked, confused.

"The AoEs are avoidable, sure, but they probably aren't meant for us to all dodge everytime." Mellody said. "It's like partially avoidable raid-wide damage."

Zoe considered that. Having most of the party take around 4,000 damage for each of these huge magical volleys, with a couple party members slipping into safe zones if they were close felt roughly in line with raid wide attacks. If anything, it was even on the less scary side, because the damage wasn't as bad as many traditional raid-wide attacks, which often dealt closer to 8,000 damage to each party member.

Of course, that was with the understanding that raid wides weren't the most common source of damage in a fight, while these volleys seemed like they would be fairly regular.

But more than anything else, the normal downsides to failing mechanics being absent was the real clue. Generally, if a player did something strictly wrong - like standing in an avoidable AoE - they were usually punished with some kind of debuff. Whether it made them take more damage, gave them a damage over time effect, reduced their damage, or something else entirely, there was usually something to show that the player messed up and they shouldn't do that.

In this case, Zoe had stood in the AoE and not been punished, given HP was a readily replenishable resource thanks to their healers.

It did mean, however, that like Cass had said, this would be a rough fight to heal if the outgoing damage remained fairly high and fairly constant.

"Alright, spread out y'all, let's test this out." Mellody said as the third round of AoEs showed up. The group reacted accordingly, with most of them spreading out, while two people - Firo and Mellody - gravitated to the safe spot which showed up by them.

As expected, the group took fully survivable damage, and there were still no debuffs in sight.

"I don't know if I like this or not." Cass said, as she and Mellody quickly threw healing spells at the party.

"Depends what gets layered on top, I think." Mellody said.

"Eyes up. We're about to see how this works." Bisky said.

"Edges," was all Caoimhe said, but it still pulled Zoe's attention to the broken and battered battlements of the tower. Enemies were clearly pulling themselves over the pathetic defenses, while others were alighting on the tower, having either jumped or flown over to it.

"Oh, right, we can fly." Bisky laughed.

"How'd you forget that already?"

"Force of habit?" She answered. "Spend a year without it, then have it for a few days before a long break and, yeah…I forgot."

"Whatever. Incoming enemies." Caoimhe said, prompting everyone to prepare for actual combat. Zoe ran toward the nearest edge of the platform, expecting the enemies to essentially be trash-pull level, given their numbers. Everyone's attention was split around the makeshift arena, trying to cover as much ground as possible.

Caoimhe ran off in a different direction, laying into the enemies as soon as she was in range. Aleister and Fiona split up as well, naturally picking the larger, more brute-like enemies that they assumed were a tank's responsibility in this sort of situation. Mellody and Evie had taken up spots inside toward the middle, trying to cover as much as they could with ranged attacks while preparing to heal. Firo was near them, launching AoE attacks of his own at various parts of the enemy crowd.

Bisky, true to herself if nothing else, had immediately triggered her [Take Wing] skill and rose into the air, peppering targets with her [Seeker] skills.

As Zoe went through one of her middle-level damage combos on her target, she took note of the damage she was doing. It was good, confirming her suspicion that these weren't particularly dangerous enemies on their own. She had four of them dead and was continuing to ramp up with her combo as she weaved through them when the next round of AoE markers arrived.

A few of the party members had yelped, trying to continue dealing with their enemies while looking for any potential safe spots nearby. But Bisky straight-up screeched, completely drowning out everyone else. If it had gone on any longer than it had, Zoe would have had to remove her headphones, but thankfully the scream had gotten cut off comically by the chat program's noise suppression.

"Whatthefuckwhatthefuckwhatthefuck?" was the only audible sound in chat as the AoEs went off. Zoe had positioned herself to safely take only one Aoe, as had most of the party.

Bisky, however, was vaporized. Her body hung in the air for a moment before plummeting to the ground with a sickening, deadened thump.

Zoe couldn't help but laugh at that point, joined by at least a few others. "Bisky? You alright?"

"Don't fly!" She said, sounding about to laugh at herself now, "Whatever you do, don't fly!"

Of course, Zoe immediately hit her [Take Flight] skill. It seemed she wasn't the only one with that reaction, as basically the entire party except for Firo and Mellody rose into the air. Things progressed normally for another few seconds as they asked Bisky what happened, but she just laughed at their collective stupidity and said, "You'll see."

And Zoe did see as soon as the next magical volley arrived. They had seen the avoidable aerial versions of AoEs in the fight against [Firdraig]; they were red areas of 3d space, rather than flat shapes on the ground, and occupied the shape of the spell.

Now in the air, Zoe's entire screen was red with approaching death. The magical onslaught had covered literally every space on her screen that she could see, and it was entirely too difficult to tell where different zones overlapped and where they didn't because in the 3d space, there was just too many danger spots.

Everyone in the air had let out some form of exclamation, whether it was cursing or something completely unintelligible, before the party was wiped out.