The Nettle Tea Chronicles

Cassandra

The entire party began to migrate toward [Áine], hoping she would do more than just call for them to gather around her.

"They're getting buffed by the flag." Mellody said. "It…doesn't seem too bad, though? Basically just regen and haste."

"Could be worse." Caoimhe agreed.

"Then what about our side?" Zoe asked, and Cass turned her view to look at [Áine], and her stomach dropped.

"Áine has HP." She sighed. "It's a defensive fight from here."

"Well, to be fair, we expected that earlier." Fiona said, moving toward the front to stare down the approaching horde. "We just need to hope that the HP means she'll also be taking part."

"Welp, we don't have time to worry about it now. Godspeed, everyone. See you on the other side." Firo chuckled, and then the fight began.

Even with Fiona and Aleister doing everything they could to gather and hold large groups of the enemy, they had started so badly outnumbered that it was almost pointless. They were gathering more than half of the enemy adds between the two of them, but others still slipped through, running straight toward [Áine].

That left Caoimhe and Nyx trying to block the holes where the enemies slipped through while Firo and Bisky tried to focus down the adds that had been grouped up. There was no shortage of healing to be done either, which left both Melody and Cass tied up and busy, only able to throw a few AoE damage spells at Bisky's side occasionally to help.

Cass let out a sigh of relief when, around 15 seconds into the mess, [Áine] spoke again.

"Let's turn this around!" She shouted as she began to cast another spell. The central area of the tower, where the party was concentrated, began to glow. The silvery light that Cass had begun to associate with [Áine's] Fae magic took over the space, granting the party several buffs.

"Oh, damn." Bisky said.

"Oh, damn is right." Cass said, as she quickly tried to read through the buffs they had all received. There was a [Haste] component which would make their cooldowns shorter and a heal-over-time effect, much like what the enemy was getting from their banner. But that wasn't all; they also had both damage and defensive buffs, 10% each, as well as an [Acceleration] buff which boosted both movement speed and action speed by 15%. It was something Cass couldn't recall seeing before.

Everyone got excited by the effects, doubling down against the adds, which was going surprisingly well. But four seconds into the buff, and Zoe was cackling like a witch. The [Acceleration] buff in particular did wonders for her, making her long, stationary skills happen much faster.

"Now, force them back and I will complete this last spell!" [Áine] shouted, then refocused on her casting on the tower. Finally there was a visual representation of her casting, as the tower began to glow with a teal light that ran around the whole thing like circuits. The pattern was eye-catching, but Cass had to keep her focus elsewhere.

For as useful as [Áine's] buff was, it wasn't the cure all they had cheered for. It felt like it evened out the playing field, but that was all. There were still simply too many adds coming at them, and that was ignoring [Uris] for the moment, who was still holding up the enemy's standard in the back.

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"I need some help over here!" Fiona called, which prompted Caoimhe to [Wild Swing] over to the tank, pushing back a group of adds before Fiona was overwhelmed. But that also just left a hole where Caoimhe had been, letting adds get through to attack [Áine].

They didn't do a lot of damage to her, but it was still noticeable enough that they couldn't afford to leave her undefended. It meant the party needed to tightly coordinate this entire phase, soaking up the damage and healing wherever possible while maintaining the horde size to make sure they weren't simply overrun. It would be a balancing act.

And that was assuming [Uris] didn't get involved again.

"When did the game change to a horde shooter?" Bisky said, half laughing in spite of the situation. "Y'all, we've got elites."

"What? Where?"

"True north."

Cass shifted her camera, and sure enough there was a couple of enemies that stood out among the crowd of adds. They didn't look boss-like, but probably had a single mechanic or something to make them more than a damage-dealing HP sponge.

"Bisky, take them down! I can only assume bad happens if they get close." Mellody shouted.

"On it! Someone cover Aleister's side."

"Uh…" Aleister faltered almost immediately when the adds near her stopped dying. Cass did her best to fill in for Bisky, but even with the damage buffs and Mellody helping at every opportunity, they simply couldn't do enough damage.

"One's down. Nyx, behind you."

"I see it." Zoe said, and [Shadow Slipped] behind it. She quickly began one of her combos, but the 'elite' enemy turned around and swung the butt of its spear in an upward arc, clipping Nyx's chin.

"Fuck, I'm stunned. And I'm dead." Zoe sighed, and Cass heard the creak of her chair over the chat as she flopped backward. "The enemies all jumped on me as soon as I was stunned."

"So there's some kind of kill order included in the stun, then." Cass said.

"So they need to be kited around and killed from a distance?" Caoimhe said.

"Guess so? But, guys, pretty sure we're dead here."

"Yup."

It only took a few seconds, but with Nyx down, the enemy found the hole she left in their formation and rushed at [Áine]. There was a slim chance they could have recovered if that was all that happened, but several enemies broke off to surround Fiona and Aleister as well, leaving the tanks getting attacked from all sides by too many enemies to out heal.

Cass took a deep breath when she saw the loading screen that would put them back at the beginning of the whole fight. Even expecting it, when she saw the opening scene before her again, she sighed.

"I don't want to be the bearer of bad news, y'all, but we've got about 40 minutes left." Firo said.

"That's like four more solid attempts." Bisky said. "I think we can do it, unless there's another surprise in there for us."

"There's no way Uris just chills in the back the whole time." Fiona said.

"When he gets involved, Fiona, you'll need to go pick him up and probably kite him around." Mellody said.

"That's just going to get Áine killed." Fiona responded. "You sure?"

"Not like we have any other options." Mellody shrugged. "We'll have to figure it out."

"I can save Stoke the Flame for Áine. It's a small get-out-of-jail-free card, but it functionally should give her two HP bars." Cass said. "But that's not going to save us if we get completely overrun."

"So the whole fight is about managing the add numbers and positions." Caoimhe said.

"Yeah."

"If Fiona needs to pick up Uris, I can try to kite in a circle around Áine and pick up everything." Aleister offered. "It's probably not going to work, but if I can taunt most of the enemies, it'll at least put the heat on me. I'll just need extra healing and some DPS to back me up and keep everything contained."

"I don't have a better idea." Mellody said. "Anyone else?"

When there was no immediate response with any other ideas, Cass resettled in her chair, preparing for their next attempt.

"We've only got a few shots left at this tonight. But we got this." Bisky said. "Ready?"

"One sec, quick potty break." Caoimhe said, derailing everyone's readiness.

From there, everything devolved into a short break pretty quickly.

After their quick bathroom break, the party quickly readjusted and got back to it.

The second time they reached what could only be the final phase, things went better than the first time, but they still didn't quite make noticeable progress. Instead, things fell apart to an unlucky crit downing Aleister. It had been nothing more than a mistimed heal and a crit dealing extra damage at the same moment, leaving them scrambling to recover.

In the end, they couldn't. Even with Cass getting Aleister back up almost instantly, by the time Aliester had moved back into position and tried to use the [War's] AoE taunt, [Dread Pull], the enemies had already surged into the middle of the area, and laid waste to Bisky and Mellody.

Their third attempt ended even quicker. No one had made any noticeable mistakes, but things had gone wrong almost immediately. The adds weren't getting picked up by Aleister's taunts for some reason, and ran past the party to attack [Áine]. While they didn't do enough damage to take her HP to zero, the party's formation crumbled when Caoimhe and Nyx split off to deal with the sudden enemies in their midst, and they were swarmed from both sides, cut off from one another.

Their fourth attempt seemed promising. The party held fast, even when the enemies that Bisky had called 'elites' showed up. Sticking to their initial plan, Bisky peppered them with arrows as they approached the party more slowly than the other adds. She even used extra skills like [Pin] and [Leg Piercer] to stop their advancing as much as she could.

It worked well enough. Both elites were dead before they reached the party, who remained steady in their spots. Somehow, things were going well, and Cass didn't want to jinx it by saying anything. Instead, she just focused on her spells and keeping the party alive.

"More elites, south." Firo said, his words short with concentration. No one was saying anything, focused on doing their best and keeping the communication clear.

Bisky immediately turned her attention toward the new arrivals, easy to pick out among the crowd as they were robed this time, rather than the light armor the regular adds wore.

"They're mages. Keep your eyes out." Bisky said, but she was clearly bursting them down with her higher-damage skills, utilizing her [Dazing Shot] and [Silencer] to buy herself time to put them down before anything dangerous was cast.

One of them did die before casting any spells, but the second had enough HP to get one cast off. "Any other ranged silence?" Bisky asked, sounding frantic.

"Oh, please hit." Aleister muttered, launching a skill of her own. [Spine Chiller] was a ground AoE that Aleister could place that stopped casting within it. It had a long cooldown, and was limited to placing it on the ground, so it had limited uses, but was perfect in this case.

The inky shadows appeared on the ground by the mage, and Aleister's aim had clearly been a little off while preoccupied with the army of enemies already attacking. However, while it was off center, the AoE still landed close enough to stop the mage from casting the spell, just in time for a [Master's Shot] to slam into its face.

"Stay alert." Bisky said, returning to focus on the enemies the tanks had gathered for her and Firo. "If you see any other elites coming, speak up."

"Does [Uris] count as an elite?" Caoimhe asked.

"Well, crap." Fiona said, as most of the party's attention became split so they could watch [Uris] slam the banner he held into the stone tower, draw a two-handed longsword, and begin to wade through his allies.

"Fiona? You're up." Mellody said.

"Right."

"I'm going to start kiting around the whole circle and pick up what I can. Healers, keep me pocketed." Aleister said, referencing their awful plan.

"I'll do my best." Mellody responded.

"Same."

Cass could hear several deep breaths happening as the party transitioned into what they hoped was the final moves of the fight.

"Don't rush. We've got this." Zoe said, sounding like she was talking to herself.

Cass didn't want to say it out loud, but if they didn't win here, they had one more shot tonight, at most. So she reaffirmed her resolve and decided that she'd give this pull her all. After all, they had no guarantees they'd get this far again even if they did have one more shot.