Fantasy Justice: Incarceration

Friday, May 28th, 2060

Felorius, Unholy Alliance Territory

Sara awoke to the alarm on her HUD and switched it off. She felt Clare stirring beside her as she rose to turn on the room’s light. Once it was on, she found a letter that had presumably been pushed under the door. She picked it up and saw that it was addressed to her.

“Mail?” Clare asked in surprise after sitting up. “Does someone want to schedule a try-out?” That was the only reason the Magical Girls had ever received physical messages.

“It’s from my family!” Sara said excitedly when she saw the contents.

“I thought messages outside the texting system weren’t allowed?”

“It’s against the hunter account licensing agreement—someone’s decided to risk a ban.”

Sara went on to read the contents of the letter aloud. It was several pages of family news written by her parents, mostly minor things that had not been practical to fit into the limited space of a text message. There was one part expressing concern over her new relationship that she decided to skip over—there was no need to trouble Clare about that yet. But the healer was confused when she came to the end of the letter. “‘Your sister is doing well and wishes you the best. We all miss you so much. Love, Mom and Dad.’ Wait, that’s it about Lane? She didn’t write anything?” Sara turned the last page over, but the other side was blank.

“Maybe they had to compose the letter on short notice, and she wasn’t available?” Clare asked.

Sara glanced away sadly. “Or maybe she didn’t write because she’s moving on with her life. It would be a lot less painful for her to give up on me.”

Clare stood and touched her arm comfortingly. “I don’t believe she’d do that. Not from what you’ve told me about her.”

Sara looked to her once more and nodded. “You’re probably right...” she said, trying to convince herself. “Hopefully, I’ll get some news about her when I get another text.

“...Anyway, let’s get going. We’ve got a long ride ahead of us.” She disappeared the letter into her inventory.

They materialized their adventuring clothes and left the room. In the hall they found May. “I got a letter,” she explained. She seemed slightly choked up.

“Who is yours from?” Sara asked.

“My mom. ...I wanna read it to everyone, so let’s meet up with Pari first.”

The three women left the building and summoned their horses. As they rode through the city, the first light of dawn approached. They found Pari waiting for them outside the cathedral. She waved as they approached. The rest of the party rode up to her and dismounted.

“Hey. Are we ready to go?” the mage asked.

“I have some news first,” May explained. She read the contents of her own letter, essentially an apology from her mother for not being a better parent, and being unable to afford to send a text. There were also general well-wishes for the party.

By the end, May had shed a few tears. Pari hugged her, then Sara did as well.

“I’m happy for you,” Clare said.

“Thanks everyone.” May looked to Sara. “You implied you got a letter earlier.”

“From my parents. I’ll tell you about it some other time—we should leave right away if we want to get back before sunset.”

The Magical Girls then rode for the quest entrance. The journey was uneventful at first—they encountered monsters here and there, but dispatched them quickly without dismounting. Eventually they came upon a world boss—these were massive wandering creatures that required a raid of max XP players to defeat. This one was a cyclops, armed with a club. It was even taller than the Giant Matriarch from their first dungeon, and the ground shook as it passed. Needless to say, the adventurers gave the behemoth very wide berth to avoid drawing aggro.

They eventually passed by an inmate-built fortress—this was a place for those mid XP adventurers who quested, gathered resources, or ran dungeons in this area. The party had no reason to stop at this outpost now—but Sara supposed that if their quest proved especially time consuming, they would be able to stay the night there.

An hour beyond the fortress they arrived at their destination. They were at the edge of a cliff, with another higher ledge some distance beyond it. The gate to the quest was in the face of the higher ledge, and was reachable by a wooden bridge with railings. In the ravine between the cliffs was a river. It started far above their position before tumbling into a waterfall just before the bridge. The remainder of the river was hundreds of meters below. The mist of the waterfall was aglow in sunlight.

“Pretty,” Pari said admiringly.

“The bridge doesn’t look destructible, but the railings might be,” Sara advised. “I wouldn’t lean on them.”

The bridge was wide enough that two could walk side-by-side. It was slightly wet from the waterfall, but not too slippery. The party reached the gate without incident. Sara touched it, and her HUD asked her if she wanted to enter the quest. She affirmed this, and the group teleported into the instance.

The party materialized in a valley filled with all manner of plant life—grass, trees, flowers, and vines. The vegetation was not thick enough to impede movement. In the center of the valley waited the massive Life Dragon, its scales gleaming white. Behind the group was the exit gate. And in the sky far above were a couple hundred much smaller dragons, flying in a great circle. Sara focused on one, and the nameplate read Baby Life Dragon. It was immune to critical strikes.

“Someone get this dragon on birth control,” May muttered.

“Her and my adoptive mother,” Clare added. This drew a slight laugh from the rest of the group.

“That is a lot of adds,” Sara noted. “On the plus side, there don’t seem to be any other routes into the valley. It’s possible even more dragons could fly in, but I think what we see is it. They’ll probably attack in waves. And there’s bound to be some other tricks.

“Given that it’s a ‘life dragon,’ it might have some attack that specifically targets undead players—but that’s my problem. This is a wide combat area, so be careful not to go out of range of my healing spells for long.”

“Is everyone ready?” Clare asked. Everyone summoned their weapons. But Pari did not bother with her morning star so that she could use mana potions freely during the battle. She and May both then indicated that they were prepared.

“You can pull as soon as we’re in range.” Sara told her. The healer readied her bow. The party walked through the valley until they were close enough to the Life Dragon. Clare then attacked it with her burst spell.

The fight started routinely. Clare fought the creature at its head while it repeatedly tried to bite and breathe fire on her. The bite was slow enough for her to easily avoid, but she took moderate damage from the flames. Sara did not find the injuries difficult to counter with her heals, and she attacked the monster with her bow as well. May attacked rapidly along the dragon’s body, while Pari stayed near the healer and cast her usual attack spells. Both May and Pari used mana potions to increase their offense, with the demon player occasionally disappearing one of her swords to do so. Clare was too focused on her evasions to be able to afford such a distraction.

Sara quickly noticed something was amiss—the party was doing far too little damage. They would never defeat the boss before setting off the rage timer at this rate. She checked the damage stats on her HUD. “Something’s wrong,” she shouted to the others. “Clare is pulling the most damage right now!”

“It’s these scales!” May answered in frustration. “My sword keeps bouncing off them!”

“I’ve been avoiding the scales by going for the eyes and mouth!” Clare reported.

“That doesn’t help me,” the demon player complained. “...Wait, I’ve got an idea!”

May used her swords as levers to pry off one of the dragon’s scales. She was successful, but the creature cried out in pain and tried to stomp on her. The swords-woman narrowly avoided the terrible claws. Soon the boss monster settled into its usual attacks on Clare, and May was able to attack at the site of missing scale.

“That did it!” Sara cried after she saw May’s damage per second rise to normal levels.

“May, can you clear out another scale for me?” Pari shouted. “I need a target I can fire at without hitting you.”

“No problem!” May removed a second scale some distance from the first. This time she was ready for the violent response from the boss, and evaded it with less trouble. Once this was over, Pari also had a vulnerable target and the party’s damage was in the normal range. Sara attacked at the same point with her bow.

Soon the first wave of thirty smaller dragons dropped from the sky until they were low off the ground. They hovered in an extremely wide circle with Clare at the middle and launched balls of fire at her. She began dodging more to try to avoid some of them, but this lowered her damage rate on the boss. The adds were hovering outside the range of the tank’s burst—and when she tried to move closer to some of them, they all shifted to keep her in the middle of the circle.

“Clare, forget the adds!” Sara shouted. “May, Pari, take them down!”

“Right!” The rest of the party shouted simultaneously. Clare went back to more aggressively striking the Life Dragon. The two damage players left their initial positions to gradually clear out the adds. Each time they injured a Baby Dragon, it closed to melee range and tried to bite them. The women switched attack types as necessary. Sara healed them through the damage. After the adds were defeated the party returned to their assault on the main dragon.

“That took too long,” Sara said to Pari, who was nearby once more. The women continued casting their spells as they spoke. “It really slowed our damage on the boss.”

“Maybe I could handle them all if I pulled the entire wave, and then burned them all down during my frenzy,” Pari offered.

“I’m not sure if I could heal you through that much damage.”

“If I kept my back to a tree and used my shield, that would limit how many sides they could attack me from. I could use a healing potion too.”

Sara considered this. It was risky, but with some modification it would be a solid tactic. “I don’t think you’ll be able to use a healing potion while they’re all jostling you with attacks. But try your plan next time. Just be absolutely sure that you’re in range of my spells when you stop to attack. I’ll have to spam heals on you.” The healer then raised her voice. “May, Pari’s going to pull all the adds into one group! Once she does that you can help her burst them down, but let her keep threat!”

“Got it!”

When the second wave came, Pari implemented her tactic. Fortunately the small dragons flew slowly, so she was able to keep them from closing to melee range by staying on the move. She fired bursts until she had the attention of all thirty dragons. Finally she ran over to a tree near Sara and waited for the dragons to crowd around her.

After they did, the goblin player frenzied and cast her area burst at the maximum rate. May soon joined in, attacking from a distance with her own burst. Sara cast barrier and her lasting heal on Pari, then had to cast her party heal several times as well to help cover the damage. Fortunately, Clare managed to keep threat on the boss throughout this. Soon all the baby dragons were deceased, without Pari dropping below two thirds on health. Sara drank a mana potion to recover.

Another form of attack was hinted at when a mysterious shadow suddenly appeared where Sara was standing. She did not wait to find out what the shadow meant, and quickly ran out of it. A few seconds later, all the smaller dragons shot a fireball at her former location. The area exploded into flames that slowly began to spread.

The next complication came when the boss dragon suddenly stopped attacking Clare and reared up on its hind legs. Everyone tensed in anticipation. The creature suddenly blew a thick white fog out of its mouth. The heavy cloud immediately sunk to the ground. It was two meters high and started spreading throughout the valley. Every plant it touched grew slightly bigger before disappearing from sight.

The cloud enveloped Clare and May first...and healed them slightly. This one must be meant for me, Sara realized. She tossed aside her bow.“Keep attacking as best you can!” she ordered the others. As she said this, she ran for the nearest tall tree and started to climb it. She also cast barrier on herself as the fog closed. The others were no doubt blinded as the cloud continued to cover them, but they fired bursts in the general direction of the dragon.

The fog only touched Sara’s leg briefly before she got above it, doing a small amount of damage—not enough to end her barrier. But had she stayed on the ground, she might have been killed.

After spreading throughout the entire valley, the fog finally vanished into the ground. The fire from the baby dragons’ attack was out, and the vegetation at that location had been restored. Sara decided to come down from the tree—she did not want it to be destroyed by the next combined attack so that she could retreat up it again if needed.

“The scales grew back!” May shouted in frustration. Sara also noted that the Life Dragon had healed a small amount of damage during the fog—that potentially brought the rage timer back into play.

May was forced to pull off two new scales on the dragon’s body so that everyone besides Clare could once more attack effectively. Twice more she had to dodge an angry response from the dragon.

As it turned out, the boss monster had no additional types of tricks to use against the party. It used its cloud attack twice more, and several more waves of baby dragons attacked. The group simply repeated their established tactics. The pile of the little dead dragons near Pari’s tree grew absurdly large. The combined attack also repeated, targeting someone different each time. Everyone knew without prompting to get out of the way.

With only two minutes to go before the rage timer kicked in, the Life Dragon was slain. A cheer went up from all the magical girls. Sara’s HUD informed her of the gold and loot rewards from the fight. Everyone’s XP increased to forty-six percent. “We did it!” Pari shouted excitedly.

The group dropped their weapons and ran together, with everyone hugging each other. Except May and Clare...but May did slap the other woman on the back in congratulations. That’s progress, Sara figured. Clare looked surprised, but not bothered.

“Very nicely done,” Sara told the others. “Footage of that fight should get the attention of raid leaders. And grow our fan base.

“Pari, you dealt with those adds flawlessly. May, amazing damage and evasions. And Clare...well, you’re always so damn perfect that you leave me with nothing new to say. Not that I’m complaining.” She walked up to her girlfriend and embraced her. They shared a long kiss.

“Now there’s a shot those bastards in the company can end the episode on,” May joked after Sara and Clare finally parted.

Sara laughed slightly before speaking again. “Okay, back to mundane considerations. We need to equip our new gems and then adapt to them before we go home.” She considered the time listed on her HUD. “If we leave within an hour, we won’t end up spending the night outside Felorius.”

The group had already bought a new set of rare speed gems for advancement to their new tier, which they each equipped. The combined increase in their speed stat meant that their bodies could be pushed faster. That required some adjustment. After some combat practice to get used to the change, they exited the instance.