It was a disaster. I didn’t have a calculator to hand to work out the numbers, but roughly speaking: Sleeping Invulnerability absorbed forty percent of incoming damage. The rest got split among the group, was intercepted again by Sacrifice and returned to me. Then the absorption from Invulnerability kicked in again, and so on until all the damage was fully absorbed. All the features of Resilience factored into those calculations somewhere, but a panicked shout from Crawler interrupted my mathematical exercises. His voice crackled from the comm amulet across the temple: “Scyth! This is useless! We’re retreating. We can’t hurt them!”
“Why not?”
“Hold back your explosions, boss,” Nega’s voice came through. “There’s something not right here!”
I started to get similar messages from everyone, but Crawler was the first to figure it out.
“They have NergaVs Inspiration] Thirty-six seconds of full invulnerability left!”
“Annageddonsl” Infect shouted. “Scyth, get out of there, you can’t withstand that even with full…”
“Everyone back to the temple!” Crawler commanded, interrupting the bard. “The temple will survive. That’s why nobody uses Armageddon to take castles—the damage penalties against structures are severe.”
I ordered the healers not to move, then ran outside and took off into the air. I needed to figure out wiiat was going on.
Nine meteorites were descending toward the temple at once from the north and south sides of the slope, leaving trails of smoke behind them. Around thirty more seconds left until they landed.
The attackers were frozen in place. A multitude of players hovered in the air on flying mounts; some were casting destructive scrolls and waiting for the consequences.
Our mercenaries and gladiators, with Maglubiyefs Umbrellas deployed above them, rushed down to clash with the attackers before the meteorites landed.
Roaring, the two-thousand-strong army of troggs also ran straight at the enemy, brandishing fearsome hammers and clubs. Morena s cultists finished their summoning ritual; a shimmering silhouette of a gigantic ghost appeared above them, bleeding out streams of mist. The mirage enveloped the attackers, and when it retreated, nothing remained of them but their bones—it seemed even NergaVs Inspiration couldn’t protect against the deadly mist.
The ores of the Broken Axe clan were cut down in an unfair fight. Nergal and Marduk had gifted their followers with a short period of invulnerability, which decided the outcome in advance. Even the bonuses from Unity couldn’t save the defenders of Tiamat’s temple against such an overwhelming force. They w^ere simply crushed by the masses. The apparent futility of our cause so early on in the fight made me grind my teeth.
The boys, Irita, Gvula, Patrick and the guards ran to the temple. Yoruba retreated too, but I could already see that not all of them would make it. The legionnaires of the Commonwealth and players who could smell blood descended on Yemi’s clan and slowed them down with battle and slowing spells.
Gyula hesitated outside, looking at me, and Bomber pulled him into the temple.
I focused my gaze on one of the attackers, concentrated on the timer and counted down the seconds until Nergal’s buff ended. 3… 2… 1…
Sleeping Vindication!
The invisible wave dealt no damage to my allies, but cut through the legionnaires like a merciless invisible scythe. Experience and Serendipity flooded in and something clanked into my backpack; Magnetism at work.
Serendipity collected: 1,000,000 /1,000,000.
Quest of Fortune, Goddess of Luck, completed: Serendipity for Fortune.
You have collected enough Spheres of Serendipity from the corpses of fallen sentients. Give them to Fortune to clairji your rewards (Elixir of Luck; +1,000,000,000 experience; +5000 reputation) and the next quest in the Wheel of Fortune divine quest chain.
I waved away the notification, ran out of the temple, set off another explosion— Aid of the Sleepers refilled my vindication right away—and then ascended as high as I could, feeling the heat of the approaching meteorites on my skin.
They flew past me. Nine apocalyptic strikes crashed down on and around the temple. The roof fell in, the shockwave tore up columns, the altar cracked, but technically, the temple was still whole; the building still showed twenty-four percent durability.
The troggs, the ores of the Broken Axe and Morena’s cultists fell to Armageddon. In an instant, the Sleeping Gods lost eight thousand followers, although it didn’t affect the Unity bonus. I would mourn the dead later, I told myself, but tears began to well up in my eyes all the same.
Roaring laughter boomed out across the desert, shaking the earth. It was Nergal and Marduk, their chuckles drowning out the triumphant screams of the allies’ army. Tiamat’s avatar dimmed.
Everyone within the temple was forced to the floor and covered with wreckage, but they all survived thanks to Sacrifice. My health, on the other hand, was down in the red zone—someone in my raid group hadn’t made it into the temple.
“Protect the temple!” I shouted into my comm amulet. “I’ll take care of the preventers!”
My health recovered fully after I fired off another Sleeping Vindication. After that, I kept using it constantly, reaping the fruits of Aid of the Sleepers.
In the distance, I could see sunning mercenaries from the Goblin League still fighting, but their groups were sparse islands in the path of a torrential river of sentients striving to reach the temple. They paid no attention to the couple of dozen suniving defenders, just shooting them with spells, arrows and crossbow bolts in passing. A couple of Sleeping Vindications later and that river dried out, leaving only thousands of corpses. Unfortunately, my allies died too.
Only my raid group and my sequestered pets remained. The vice tightened around the temple. In the distance, beneath mobile defensive domes, I saw enemy engineers sweating to erect gnomish cannons and to switch their tanks into siege mode. Catapults whined, throwing balls of fire at the temple walls…
“Two move Armageddons, Scyth!” Bomber shouted.
A crazy thought came to me. Roaring, I headed straight toward the meteorites. It was a desperate
