The Clan

As if it could stop the Patriarch. Raising his flimsy fists to the skies, he shook them, begging ecstatically, "Oh our Lord of Light, hear my plea! Give us strength!"

His God did hear him. The skies shattered, sending scared clouds flying in all directions. The God's irate face showed amid the blinding light.

Divine Blessing alert!

The Sun God has turned his benevolent gaze to the terrestrial quarrels, granting new strength to his followers.

Effect: +20% to ALL characteristics for all worshippers of Light.

Thousands of shafts of light reached down from the sky, highlighting the selected figures and granting them the aforementioned blessing. The fu

The irate little man kept raging. His sharp eyes singled me out in the crowd. "You!" he shook with anger. "You filthy spawn of the Dark! Here's a stamp to mark your blackened brow!"

The Curse of the Sun God's Patriarch!

Daylight causes mana regeneration to drop 90%!

Duration: as long as the High God or the Patriarch are still alive.

You scumbag! Now that hurt. Really. Or rather, it would have—had I not switched the Altar mana flow onto myself just in time. That gave me any amount of virtually non-stop mana bath.

The patriarch just couldn't leave it alone, could he? His glare burning a hole in me, he began whispering something dangerously long and definitely just as unhealthy. Time to wrap up the show. I turned to Widowmaker and nodded at the priest.

"Try to neutralize him. Ideally, kill him."

More order-rattling. The epicenter of the magic tempest shifted once more, covering the Patriarch and his bodyguards. He managed to take cover under his own magic shield. Then his eyes widened in surprise: apparently, the pressure on the shield was much higher than expected. Shouting encouragements to his men, he activated a portal and disappeared in a flash.

We'd managed to neutralize one of the threats, at least temporarily. Still, the change in the focus of the attack had cost us dearly, giving time for the stu

The situation had turned on its head. The human flood surged in the opposite direction trying to get to our vulnerable bodies and trample them into the dirt. In doing so, the enemy had produced a couple of clear thinkers who introduced some semblance of discipline and control. The small fry stepped back, showering us with arrows, magic and crossbow bolts. It might be weak, but imagine a thousand-strong crowd of immortal first-graders, their self-preservation instincts disco

Our second problem were the hundreds of pets, ghosts, familiars and the like who'd attacked us from all quarters. There were quite a few pet controllers in the crowd, so now they unleashed their beasties while keeping a safe distance, thus dramatically increasing the numbers of our opponents.

But the main danger came from the high-level players who had finally found their bearings and were now rolling in on us, pushing the bravest of us aside, threatening to drown the mercs by their sheer numbers. The sound of opening portals a

Bang! The human flood hit the wall of steel shields and rolled back, leaving dozens of bodies hanging from the spikes. Bang! Rows of our more impatient enemies lunged at us again, reinforced by the pressure from those behind them. Again the human sea ebbed, losing more of the squashed, charred and pierced human shapes that turned into granite tombstones even as they were dropping to the ground. Bang! The third wave pressed into the line of shields so now we were backing up, our ranks serried, the patch of free space in the center collapsing.

Our loss counter quivered and started spi

Still, thirty to one was thirty to one. It wasn't as if we were sending a tank against a savage natives' army—we were on a battlefield opposing a matching force. The outcome was easy to predict. We weren't the three hundred Spartans and this wasn't Hollywood.

There were barely half of us left when the dome imprisoning the Dragon split open.

"Change of targets!" Widowmaker shouted without waiting for a command.

Right he was, too. The bonebag wasn't part of our group. We could easily smoke him or at least do him some serious damage with our friendly fire.

Now I could finally see why you needed a raid to capture a dragon. Spreading her wings and breathing venom, this spawn of the Dark began her deadly dance, striking her enemies down with direct emotional hits. Green peaks of poisonous gas spread around us turning the air into a viscous tide of swelling emerald. Not counting on her own accuracy, the blind dragon showered the area with acid rain and fragments of bone, guided by her hearing and glimpses of emotional echo alone. Still, somehow she managed to single out our group in the crowd, restraining her murderous surges whenever one of our mercs happened to cross her path. Thank God for that!

"Go away! Fly to the castle!" I yelled, realizing there were barely a hundred warriors left.

But the dragon was on a killing spree—alternatively, she could be dancing a sacral dance of death for all I knew and couldn't stop it halfway—I'm not big enough on Dragonology to know. The bone lizard kept swirling around like the harvester from hell, grinding thousands of sentients in her wake. I even got the impression that the battle had done her some good. Her eyes blinked once, then again, and lit up—the two pale-green search beams as I remembered them.

"I can see," a thunderous whisper swept over the battlefield.

"Go, now!" I yelled. "Your chicks are hungry! Go home! Shoo! Shoo!"

"Just a moment... A few more life sparks—then the primal seed will rebirth in my chest, the seed of a new heart!"

Pop, pop, pop, portals opened one by one, disgorging the white-clad sea of servants of Light. The unhappy Patriarch had sent in reinforcements although where he'd managed to find so many was a different question entirely. There must have been at least two hundred priests; most likely, the temples all over the cluster—if not of all AlterWorld—stood empty now. Had I known that, I would have asked Cryl to check out their treasury. Then again, they wouldn't leave their assets unattended even on Judgment Day.