Flaming Bolide!
The blob of True Fire hit its target and exploded, taking out the ship’s dome for good. The second one followed — in truth, I wasn’t sure that one Bolide was enough to destroy the shield — and blew up around the aft superstructure, smashing it and all but tearing it away from the deck. The explosion broke the mizzen mast and ignited the sails. Dying crew members fell out of the ship, screaming. Two of our groups instantly fell upon the defenseless Enterprise, drowning the deck in a blanket of Grand Fire and polishing it off with a few Great Lightnings. My group swooped down as well, fearlessly diving right into the fiery wave. Warriors of Enemy jumped off their birdies, immediately engaging their dazed opponents. The next few minutes were completely insane. Players and NPCs, many of them on fire, slaughtered each other using all possible means. Three groups sent by Mook to attack the galleon lost forty members out of seventy but achieved their goal: the Enterprise was cleared and sent to the bottom — literally, as its blazing carcass collapsed into the sea, leaving a thick trail of smoke in its wake.
Evil Mook: Come on, respawn! Remains of groups seven and thirteen, join group three. The rest pull up, quick!
Evil Mook: Our next target is Alpha, mark up! Don’t miss it!
Alpha, a large red and blue ship, was quickly gaining speed, clearly trying to disengage. I couldn’t figure out what was going on, unable to see the big picture, as we were in the middle of a ferocious battle. Pandorum’s dragon riders clashed against our air cavalry. Lot’s Blood Hawks kept furiously attacking while dozens of ships fired their weapons, the air vibrating with frantic screams and booming spells.
By trial and error, we learned that a galleon’s dome survived one hit by a Flaming Bolide, losing almost three-quarters of durability. The second would finish the shield for good, but I had only six Bolides, meaning that I could destroy only three ships in one battle. Considering the size of Pandorum’s fleet, it was a drop in the ocean.
Alpha burned but kept flying, actively firing back, and we sustained losses. A cloud of dragon riders surrounded the galleon, protecting it from being boarded. The Northerners’ squadrons circled them, maneuvering and attacking from all sides, trying to take down the Pandas via assist. I received the impression that we had pulverized so many enemy troops that our numbers were finally equal. The attackers were clearly choking on their own blood, and our alliance regained the initiative.
Apparently, I wasn’t the only one to realize that. Out of the blue, the Courier exploded in a chorus of voices, this time far from joyous, and the sky bloomed with iridescent Astral Portals. The Pandorum strategists decided to beat our trump cards with a quartet of aces.
Evil Mook: Juggernauts!
Komtur: Erebus, Darwin, Stormbringer, Shockdown... All of them are here.
Evil Mook: ATTENTION, EVERYONE! Abandon your targets and scatter. Where are you going, idiots? In DIFFERENT directions. Wait for primary target...
The massive frames of juggernauts slowly crawled out of the flashing portals. I recognized the demonic horned skull on the stempost of Stormbringer, the vicious black curves of Darwin, the monstrous-looking Erebus, red as a fire truck. The fourth, a brand-new vessel called the Shockdown, took the place of the lost Leviathan and Ragnarok and was crewed by Phantom’s own clan. Dragon riders swarmed around the colossal vessels like wasps around their nest.
“Cat! Can you hear me?” Evil Mook again talked on another channel.
“We’re going to take you to the juggernauts. Let’s repeat the trick you told us about. Use your True Fire shtick to remove the shield, got it?”
I understood his plan — he wanted to recreate the trick that had allowed me to capture and steal the Ragnarok: use Blazing Warrior to annihilate the impenetrable dome of a juggernaut. After that...I had no idea what would happen, as Warrior had a day-long cooldown, and I could only use it once. Well then. Do or do not — there is no try.
And then, all of a sudden, I felt a pang of sharp pain, as if a thousand needles pierced my body. Gasping for air, I woke up in darkness and found myself in a wrought stone circle amid a crowd of players emerging from thin air and immediately running somewhere.
Do you wish to respawn?
I recognized the respawn circle of Castle Dark. Glancing at the log, I learned that I had been focused on by more than fifty players at once, one-shotting me. Someone had marked Cat as a priority target for Pandorum’s raid.
Evil Mook: Cat! Say something! Can you hear me?
Immoral: He was focused. They finished us off with an AOE later. Almost everybody’s at the resp point.
Evil Mook: I see. You have two minutes to regroup.
The floor shook beneath my feet, and a thunderous explosion boomed outside, followed by another and another, each of them shaking the citadel to its foundation. Buffing along the way, we flew up on the castle walls, hiding behind the huge merlons. The scene in front of us wasn’t comforting: ignoring the battle raging around them, all four juggernauts fired their superweapons at the castle keep.
It was the Colossus, the giant hull gun that was the most powerful player-made weapon in Sphere. It was built around the Eye of the Colossus, an Ancient artifact rarely found at high-level sites in Helt Akor. Blinding scarlet pillars of energy shot by the juggernauts remarkably resembled the eye beams of the Colossus I had once controlled. Four rays drilled into the fortress spire, and before our eyes, deep cracks ran down the impregnable black
