Getting a hold of the Globins was the easy part. Kaldalis’ Jump cooldown let him launch himself over the Infernal Horde, sweep his glaive down into one of the Globin, and then kick off of the camp’s wall to avoid getting trapped in the fray. Dealing one hundred and thirty-seven damage to each Globin - and only the Globin - peeled them away from the Xorn, stopping them from surging into the killbox and destroying their defense.

Without the Globins in the killbox, their goal would be met. The damage the assembled adventurers would do wouldn’t be undone before Cerh triggered the final battle.

A significant gain, and all he had to do was sprint back and forth on the fringes of the battle with a handful of shimmering red monsters following him.

“So what’s going on?” Courbois asked conversationally as she jogged up alongside him to peel a Globin off to return to the group.

“Just kill stuff. We’re gonna trigger the town upgrade fight in a minute here,” Kaldalis said, ducking aside from the fluid attacks of the nearest foe. “That’s when things get tricky.”

“Seems an overcomplicated plan, but you’re the mastermind,” Courbois said, giving him a playful salute as she whirled away with a monster in tow. She drew it back to the treeline where the mob awaited it.

With all the extra damage output, Globins got chewed up and sent running at a surprising pace. Kaldalis didn’t even mind running back and forth with the remaining enemies while the other groups gave chase into the jungle, pulling the runners back shortly and finishing them off. While Kaldalis suspected that the damage would be help enough, actually thinning their numbers was the larger benefit.

And as they worked, Kaldalis saw more than a few Xorn sent running out of the killbox, breaking through their own lines and fleeing into the jungle.

They were doing it.

This wasn’t the first time one of Kaldalis’ plans had worked, but considering the stakes at hand here in comparison to his past plans, the satisfaction just hit differently.

It was obvious when Cerh decided the time for the plan was up. There was a monstrous roar from the sky, and the quest texts on the right side of Kaldalis’s vision did a strange little dance. The text for the second raid flickered rapidly, vanishing and reappearing.

Beneath it, another familiar quest text message appeared.

Bad Medicine: Final Raid

Save the town from the third Infernal Horde attack.

The flickering text for the second raid caused the final raid’s quest to bob up and down.

It felt like it took ten or twenty seconds for the second raid quest text to just finally fuck off, disappearing and not returning.

“Here it comes,” yelled someone from the treeline.

Shortly after, all hell broke loose.

Kaldalis had always arrived at the wall after the Infernal Horde army had arrayed itself outside.

It was a different experience to see them arriving now.

The adventurers by the treeline scattered ahead of them, and a mixture of Xorn and Globin poured from the jungle like a red-studded silver landslide. With a few dozen Xorn already here, there were empty patches in the oncoming army, and they were definitely thinner on Globin.

At the rear of the group were the Xorn Captains, using their four arms to part the forest canopy as they crashed out onto the battlefield. They made for the walls immediately, fists raised to smash against the camp’s defenses as soon as they were within reach.

Kaldalis had a charge of Jump ready to launch himself clear of the oncoming tide of monsters, hurtling towards safety like a panicked cricket. There were still two Globin chasing him, and so he looked to reconvene with one of the parties out here. He made his way towards one that seemed to be primarily the reinforcements he’d brought from inside the camp. They didn’t have a Globin with them right now, but the tank was heading towards the jungle, presumably to catch up to the foe they’d just sent running.

“Forget about killing them now!” he yelled to the group as he jumped into the middle of them. “This is the endgame now. We’ve done all the thinning we’re gonna do. Just get them outta here!”

A storm of staves and spears descended upon his quarries.

He worried that the two Globins together would just spam heals on each other and stall the damage out, but there was a degree of brutal efficiency now that only let them get one heal off, and Kaldalis guessed that several people had Seal weapons to mitigate the actual healing effect.

What really helped was the other groups joining up as they finished with their own Globins. By the time the second one was sent running, Kaldalis had an army at his side, including his friends, all back together again.

“We’ve only just begun,” Kaldalis said, gesturing at the army crashing against the walls of Panbu.

“Right. So, what’s the plan?” Myrin asked, bouncing eagerly from foot to foot, greatsword at the ready.

SeventyEight pointed at the treeline. “Uh, if I can make a suggestion?”

On cue, something came out of the treeline that Kaldalis hadn’t expected to see.

It could only be a Globin Captain.

The creature was about twelve feet tall, towering over the normal Xorn. While it was still loosely humanoid, the size change was not proportional throughout. Its limbs weren’t that much longer than a normal Globin’s, while its torso - especially the bulbous abdomen - was huge.

It looked like a swollen tick’s body with humanoid limbs sprouting from it.

Like the others, it appeared to be made of shimmering, flowing red fluid, but this was a much deeper hue of red, and instead of just shimmering, it was pulsing with a visible corona of energy in the same color.

As Kaldalis watched, one of its disproportionately small hands reached out. A spatter of red fluid flew from its hand and spattered onto the ground near Panbu’s wall. It swirled in place, and a reddish glow filled the air above the pool of red. The Xorn within had been peppered with arrows by the defenders, but as the glow suffused the area, the studding of arrows were pushed out of the Xorns' bodies, leaving no wounds behind.

The Globin Captain was dropping healing pools, and the rate of its healing far outstripped what the normal Globins had contributed. If it got one into the killbox this fight was going to be over before it began.

“I’m getting that captain and bringing it back here,” Kaldalis barked, readying his spear. “Mobile tanks, pick up the other Globin if you can. Other tanks, pick up any Xorn that come for us. Make a screen and let us work. As far as I’m concerned, all of us out here have one job. Reduce the healing that reaches the wall!”

“I guess that makes us,” Myrin observed, reaching over and tapping SeventyEight’s weapon, “the Seal team?” She looked around and counted the number of assembled parties. “Who gets to be team number six?”

Kaldalis tried not to be amused by the joke.

He didn’t have time to engage with it.

But he still shot Myrin a look and groaned, as was appropriate for a joke that bad. It was rude to not show appreciation.

However, Kaldalis brought his focus back quickly. There was so much work to do, and not enough time to do it. Kaldalis could already see the bracing on the outside of Panbu’s walls cracking and falling away.

The clock had started ticking nearly an hour ago, and only just now were they allowed to fight against it.

He tried very hard not to think about what failure would mean. After their previous failure, he had considered it a pretty key victory that the Panbu council didn’t have five or six of his skulls planted on stakes along the wall.

Cerh was pretty convincing that this was his last chance for survival.

Despite trying not to think about it, in his mind’s eye he could already see the gate breaking down and the Xorn rushing into the camp. The cracked walls giving way as they cracked farther. Opening. Allowing the forces of destruction inside the reinforced walls, giving free access to the vulnerable inner workings of Panbu. Destruction and death all over again.

Only this time he hadn’t evacuated the NPCs.

The only way to push that thought aside was to fling himself bodily into danger.

Once he was in the air with an army of Xorn beneath him, any thoughts he could spare for imminent failure involved a lot more incoming harm to his person than incoming harm to Panbu.

Kaldalis danced a careful line as he worked his way through the army towards the Globin Captain. Landing near the Xorn who had been peppered with arrows meant that they wouldn’t pay him any mind unless he did damage to them to gain aggro. But if he only stayed within bowshot of the camp’s archery towers, the Globin Captain was going to need to be allowed to approach the walls, and possibly spawn more healing pools. He got as close as he could without putting himself in danger, and then ventured into more dangerous territory at the last moment.

The Globin Captain spawned another pool near the wall as Kaldalis landed amongst the untouched Xorn for the first time, and he cursed his prudence.

And then one of the Xorn turned and socked him in the kidney for two hundred and three physical damage, and thirty-six dark damage.

He felt much more strongly that he’d made the right decision then. His hit points weren’t an infinite resource, after all, and he got the feeling he was going to need as many of them as he could keep.

His next hop let him sail over the Globin’s head, and his glaive lashed out, landing a solid hit across its shoulder. The strike did a pitiful amount of damage, only seventy-five physical and five earth, but he was getting used to feeling a bit useless in the damage department.

What mattered was that it turned away from its advance on the walls.

Instead, its disproportionately small hand whipped out, catching Kaldalis before he landed. The movement was almost too fast for him to follow, slapping him for two hundred and twenty-six damage.

But damage didn’t correspond to pain.

The pain that accompanied the blow felt like one of his hips was dislocated, and the impact sent him into a spiral. He crashed bodily into a Xorn, and grunted at the impact with the vaselike head of the monster. The Jump cooldown that was still running cushioned his fall, sparing him from taking damage from the clumsy landing. It also allowed him to kick off of the Xorn’s shoulder before any of its four giant fists could smash into him.

The Globin Captain was surging towards him now.

He had to get it back to the group.

And alongside it, a knot of Xorn were advancing as well, aggroed by his landings among - and atop - them on his way to and from the Captain.

As usual, things were going to get worse before they got better.