"That was fast. I mean, really fast. Ridiculously fast. Ludicrously fast. When did you all do--" We're back safely in the vardo and I'm staring at mountains of stuff. Dawn pushes me past the piles of equipment and into the designated storage area. As she grabs a Rucksack of Holding she also hands me a fresh one, mine still has Taymin and Elijah in it. She closes her eyes, throws her head back, and sighs deeply. She takes a moment's pause, and sighs again.

"You alright, boss?" I drop to a knee next to her and she sits on my leg. She's not heavy, especially in her civvies and with my Strength up from the bonuses. It is a little funny seeing her plop down like some exhausted demon child.

"Yeah, I'll be fine. I'm just a bit tired, you know? We've been working non-stop since we got here." She tilts her head over to mine, clunking like two coconuts and we both laugh. "No rest for the weary, I'm afraid. There's no time left to waste. I've already sent riders to let everyone know to turn over their territories and to gather at five H, the place with that mesa thing."

She uses my shoulder to prop herself back on her feet and gives me hand so I can get back on mine. As we gather the gear, I notice that we aren't using any of the new loot from the Porcelegion soldiers. Dawn explains how, if we had discovered them in the beginning, we could've studied the Lucidium ingots that they dropped and found a way to use them. Even their weapons and shields reverted back to ingots as a sort of defense mechanism so they wouldn't accidentally arm possible invaders. So, the best thing course of action was to fortify the people in our care with the items and materials we have and already know how to use.

Regular, physical attacks still have no affect on Kilmosoth, even in its reduced form, and any other type of attack besides Magical weapons will still have a reduction in damage. We have several dozen of the Glyphed weapon charms that'll help enchant a lot of the weapons we recently crafted, simple iklwas made with iron and Tailwind Crossbows, made with the Harpy Feathers. This helped to overcome the hurdle of the heavy damage reduction, but we knew that the amount of damage we could deal would be only a part of the equation. So, we turned our attention away from weapons and our citizens were busy, little, crafting bees working on other things.

Our Alchemists have been working around the clock to turn barrels of herbs into piles of potions. Mika skipped the poisons since I Kilmosoth was unaffected by any of Shadow Toxin's Debuffs, knowledge that nearly got me caught by the swarm of wraiths but we had deemed highly relevant. Richter, our only Scribe, found volunteers to help him craft as many Spell Scrolls as he could to teach minor Spells and, having sufficiently leveled up the Artisan job, was inspired into creating one-use Spell Cards that work along the same line as the one Mister Gearos gave me for Miss Delvina. None of us are able to create items of holding, but our Tailors and Leatherworkers can craft regular pouches and bags and they've been churning them out for the new members of our rag-tag army, who, by now, should be on their way to the rendezvous point as soon as they got the word.

Upon the earthen platform, we wait like sacrificial lambs. With fear and anger in our hearts, we wait. At the edge of hell's gate, we wait.

The mesa that Dawn was referring to is in the form of a loosely shapeded trapezoid with one side half as long as its opposing side and just under thirty feet tall. It's as long as half a football field at it's widest and north facing side.

We were able to make several bows, crossbows and a forest of arrows and bolts to be used before the iklwas, giving as many as we can to those with the highest Dexterity and setting them on top with the casters.

Dawn's idea is to use the tried and true tactic of "creating a train" since we have a slight numerical advantage, lots of ranged attacks, a bit of time, and acres of space. A "train" consists of a squad of high Agility, high level people leading as many aggro-ed monters as possible away from the main attacking force while everyone takes pot shots until we kill them.

From what we've learned over the short moments of research and from what everyone else learned through first hand experience, is that Kilmosoth targets the strongest, or highest level people, before everyone else. It also prefers to give chase and rend with tentacles over anything else. This makes the wraith conducive to a train. Well, in theory anyway.

The guard sergeant, Hawthorne Redcoal, and I, Levels 29 and 24 respectively, will be leading the training War Party of ten. Although they're physically half horse, the centaurs aren't capable of carrying normal sized beings at a full gallop nor are they high enough in level to train by themselves.

The speed at which Kil floats dropped proportionally with its size. That being said, it would still take a fairly fast paced run to stay ahead of them. Although it moves by levitating, it couldn't fly from what everyone has seen during their tenure. And with its high MP and low SP, we figured it was some sort of caster, even though no one has ever seen it cast anything. Kil probably preferred the chase and rending prey in hand-to-tentacle combat. Still, we don't want to take any chances and prepare for what we can as best as we can.

The vardo and anyone unable to participate in combat will be sent to the nearest territory, 6H, where a small pond and the ruins of a single, large building are all that remain on a flat, barren landscape. At least there, they'll have water and a chance to survive until it's all over or until we return from the Vanishing.

We wait out the remainder of the four hour timer in loose formation. All of the squads comingle for now. The remainder of our soldiers and reserve units are here with us, including Mika with her repeating crossbow.

There are the kobolds and centaurs, of course.

There is the Dwarven mining group of thirteen that got trapped in here when they searched for a rumored Mithril mine and a team of seven, mixed race lumberjacks that got lost in the forest to the East of the Denagrin Plains. Apparently, the latter group ran from a haunted tower which we figured to be the old Lich's lair.

There's the flock of six, avian Faunus explorers that were searching for a ghost airship, said to be the thing flying around the storm over our heads, its crew either missing or dead after trying to defeat Kilmosoth and possibly containing all kinds of rare items.

The squad of guards whose merchant caravan tried to find a shortcut back to Kes Solomas half a year ago, but will never see the end of that journey. Hawthorn, the half Amphomordial sergeant training with me, is the leader of these guards.

Hawthorne's element, fire, is evident in his brilliantly red and orange hair and eyebrows. Aside from patches of ember that would flicker across his body during battle, the man has a stoney expression. Its something I wouldn't expect on anyone with literal fire erupting from his skin.

When the timer runs out, we'll spring into out proper formations and focus our attentions. Until then, everyone is going over their stock of potions, Spell Cards, new weapons, simple shields, armor, and plans for the upcoming battle. Those with enough Faith or Arcane were given Scrolls to learn ranged and healing magic if they didn't know any already. The more healers, the better. Those with exceptionally high Faith also get a Glorious Dawn Elixir to be at their descretion, since it allowed them to heal and cast a powerful beam of energy that dealt twice their Faith in radiant damage.

Our core group stands by Sonny as she regails us with the information she learned about Angus and the fate of the owner of the Eldritch Soldier's uniform. It's unfortunate, but there was no sign of his outer armor or any other equipment in the area or what they might have been. Sonny, Kona, and Serenity were able to piece together clues into a one sided story according to the types of Ritual Spells bookmarked and some of the items left around the statis chamber. To the best of their deductive reasoning, Angus was trying to either conjure one of the gods or, more likely, create a portal to the Pantheon and he left a piece of himself behind after killing a whole bunch of people, including the guy on the floor.

He didn't look like it, lying on the floor in his underwear, but the guy, a General Cassius, was in the process of trying to stop Angus from destroying the city with calamitous magic he was in the process of invoking. The General even went so far as to take a whole company, or about one hundred fifty soliders, to kill the intruder after reports described the situation as "an extremely powerful person breaking into the library's lowest floor where forbidden materials may or may not lay."

When they failed to stop him, and everyone else died, the General's last acts were to leave behind the Journeyman Evocation Stone, a type of crystal that one can record about fifteen seconds of sound, containing his final report, and to pray to Pravdera for justice for him and his men. I made a mental note to see if we can someday find more of these Evocation Stones, thinking of the many ways they could be useful.

Unfortunately for the city, General Cassius and his men were the elite units, the heavy hitters. Even though they were not enough to finish off Angus, they were quite good at defending the city from the Lich Lord and his undead army that presided in a forest nearby. From another book, Sonny said the Porcelegion was the city's experimental trump card and their awakening seemed to signal the beginning of the end for Denagrin. There wasn't much detail of what happened next and the only thing she found was a bloody scrap of parchment shoved into one of the books.

"We created them to defend the city, we should have specified from who…"

The fall of Denagrin started a chain reaction of war and death throughout the plains that culminated in the creation of Kilmosoth, Wraith of Fury. From his description, I would guess that the Lich Lord tried to take over the area and, upon meeting too much resistance and failing, summoned the wraith as a final middle finger to the living. The blood that soaked the ground for many years gathered into the being we are waiting for now. All of this happened ages ago, before Victoria's grandmother's grandfather established the city of Regalus from Vic's estimates.

There are only a few minutes to go before Kilmosoth sweeps in and a few hours until all of the players are swept out. Like Dawn said, we'll be cutting it close this time. At the end of Sonny's story, Dawn signals us all to get in formation. Soon we will see the abominable thunderhead clouds in the distance and know that it is not rain coming to meet us, but death.

In another game, this is the part where the single, low blast of a brass instrument would signal the arrival of the terrible, evil threat. The sound would punctuate the severity and depth of power the incoming horde possesses. As they approach, the sound would intesify and be accompanied by other instruments in a building cacophony.

What we get instead, is a darkening of the sky to a gloomy grey. Thunder booms and heralds the evil army as rain threatens to fall. As if anticipating our intentions, the weather acts as if consorting with the enemy. It will be much harder to run in rain and mud, but we'll have to worry about that if and when it happens. Until then, the horizon darkens until black. It grows with each passing second, as does the ominous rumbling sound.

Hawthorne clears his throat to get my attention, "We want to thank you, Winters."

"We didn't kill anything yet, Sergeant." My reply is light, but his face is grim and steely as always.

"You and your friends have given us something we haven't had in ages," he says placing a hand on my shoulder.

I raise a flaming eyebrow at him, "A shower?"

His expression breaks, breathing a short laugh through his nose and turning a corner of his mouth up slightly in what must be his version of a smile, "That. And hope. A hope that there might be a way to get out of this hell hole alive."

Staring out at our distant enemy, I ready two sets of Arcane Bolts, one in each hand, and prepare to shout for Hellbent Roar. I'm not sure how far the enemy is, and before I can ask Hawthorne if he had any guesses, a thunderous sound goes off over our heads causing us all to flinch hard. It turns out to be Elsbeth's weapon going off and we watch in wide-eyed wonder at the spear shooting into the distance like a comet, splitting many times over and landing in the approaching darkness with fiery explosions. The army of wraiths shows no signs of stopping or even slowing down as their HP drains with each hit.

Overhead, Kona and Serenity on the Flying Broom and Sonny on Meteora ready themselves to escort us. Although their main focus for the raid will be to add a constant flow of ranged damage, Kona will have to participate in healing using her bolt Spells if the situation calls for it. Sonny, too, will focus on rescues should the need arises. Any avian Faunus, including Rachel, has a time limit to their flight and we don't want to risk them dropping out of the sky until the final hour when we'll all be pouring damage as fast as we can.

Each wraith now has a Max HP of 2780 and, although a long drop from one hundred thousand, the natural resistances are still goint to be quite troublesome. Moments before their arrival, Elsbeth manages one more Double Shot and I fire off four of the six bolts and keep two to create Arcane Rapiers.

Dodging, diving, and parrying tentacles, we make sure we have most of their attentions and I scream out the Skill, bolstering everyone in my party and Debuffing all of the wraiths in range. My Skill is the signal to everyone that the game is on and we will be in motion.

One of the guards becomes our first casualties after carelessly tripping over himself and having a black claw grip his ankle before we could stop to help him back up. He didn't scream. He only grit his teeth and charged a Skill into his iklwa, readying to get one last hit in.

We keep running.

We can't let it deter us from moving forward with the plan or have his death become meaningless in our failure to do more. Faster than a jog, we continue our marathon run and the "degradation of wraiths" (having learned the plural form of wraiths from one of the Dwarves) follows us like a school of sharks after a bleeding sailfish. The screaming from the tentacle mouths and the random rumbling sounds from the dragging claws as they chase after us is motivation enough for us to keep moving, running around the mesa as an assembly line of casters and long range attackers fire down, trying to target the same wraith. Dawn said that the most efficient way to end this will be large AoE Spells if people knew them while also concentrating single target Abilities on the same exact wraith, which we unanimously decided would usually be the closest one to us runners.

The first hiccup we encounter is, oddly enough, Elsbeth and her ballista. When she was firing at them at a distance it wasn't a problem. Unfortunately, the moment she hit the train while we circled the mesa she pulled a lot of the aggro off of us and we had to circle back and do what we could to garner their attention once more while still tugging the remaining train behind us.

The accident cost us several more lives, but we learned one of Kilmosoth's the Spells hard way. When they couldn't reach El, one of the wraiths hissed in a choir of tortured voices, glowing blue, and castin a high level Shadow Storm Spell that created a large magic circle high above with her under the center. It rained black, shadowy orbs of magic down sporadically and on random targets. Three people received most of the attacks and died before any aid could be rushed over to them. The others were ready to terminate the ghouls, but nothing happened and for that we were warily grateful. Ranged attacks from us don't work to pull them and neither do any taunt Skills we know. But when we slash, stab, pummel, and bash at them we are finally annoying enough to chase again.

After getting them back on track, the first Kilmosoth hits the dirt, never to raise again. As badly as we want to celebrate, we know the road ahead is still long and there are thirty nine more to go. Still, the first little victory boosts our moral. My heartbeat goes ballistic as I watch the body evaporate, but my elation drops hard when I don't see the loot sack I was hoping for. Damn. I guess we have to wait until the last one dies.

We find the other two Elsbeth hit last and drain the rest of their HP. Three down and about two hours to go. The way we have everyone spaced out is like an assembly line of pain. Archers and casters are constantly firing down at the passing wraiths as melee fighters chance swipes at the tentacles in fast passes, trying very hard not to get too close. Sometimes there are miscalculations, but with the amount of healers moving about they only suffer briefly before getting attented to. They can't save everyone, and every death is that much less damage we can deal. A cold sentiment, but many were already on the verge of giving up by the time we found them. Like Hawthorne said, we came and gave them a chance. If the price of that chance is blood, then lady luck is going to get paid.

One by one, the wraiths succumb to the damage and keel over on the way side as if culling a herd of dangerous and deadly animals. My squad and I are feeling pretty good still, but whenever anyone is in need of a break they have to literally be thrown up onto the mesa. One or two wraiths will break off to chase after them, their disembodied claws and tentacles shredding the rock walls. This gives the melee fighters somewhere to focus their mounting frustration as they would normally sit on the sidelines, waiting for us to pass so they can throw in a couple hits.

Oddly enough, it's also one of the fastest ways for us to put one of them down even though it's still risky. It pins one or two of them to the spot while their attacks and attention are focused somewhere else. Glowing yellow weapons and elemental magic explosions tear black chunks off of each wraiths figure. Dark, viscous ooze would pool to the floor like runny molasses, killing the grass it lands on. It would charr and smoke without a fire and I'm curious as to what could cause it to do that.

Our heaviest hitter by far, the Trusco Mobile Ballista, is still shelved since it attracts far too much of Kilmosoth's attention. Limited by our inability to use Elsbeth's ballista and the accumulating losses, our DPS, or damage per second, drops significantly from our initial calculations. Honestly, it doesn't look like we'll be able to finish in time, even if by thirty minutes or so.

After feeding, bathing, and resting everyone their energy and morale went through the roof. Then we equipped them with gear that wasn't improvised, many having never even seen items of this caliber in their lives. We taught them magic and loaded them with potions. Then, we took an indomitable foe, discovered a flaw, took advantage of it, and broke him down to a more manageable level. We did all that we could to give everyone a fighting chance, but now, after everything we've done, it might not be enough. The players will disappear due to the Vanishing and take with us the main, active leadership and the power hitters of this raid. What else could go--

[Territory Dispute

[Area in Effect: 5H, 6H

[Current factions:

[*unnamed

[Order of War}

"Shit. I didn't say anything out loud, did I?" I grumble to the game, although it looks like I'm talking to myself. Dawn Whispers that the faction, one we may have missed or one that may be new to the plains, is chasing down the vardo and they're heading straight for us.

"Ardacen. We need your squad to break away from the mesa and give us some time to protect the vardo." Dawn's breathless command is understandable when I see her running her own squad away from the mesa and towards 6H in full combat gear.

After relaying the order to the others, we focus on outrunning the stampede of wraiths and making sure they all follow us on our detour. I'm not sure if the icey ball in my gut is supposed to be relief, but a small part of me is glad to see they're all still on our tail. This break from the raid was definately not in any of our plans, since we figured we had everyone we could find either join our side or perish. The amount of damage we would need to deal versus the amount of time left is looking bleaker every second.

"How many left, guys?" I ask the others without looking back.

"About- about fifteen or sixteen," a voice from the pack answers me. Either number is actually pretty good and I'm suprised we have been doing that well so far.

"Alright. If I can just do a quick number crunch here.."

"Reeeen! Fukinotooo!"

I turn my head on a swivel searching everywhere for the source of the outburst. "Did some idiot just Leeroy Jenkins us?" I exclaim loudly this time, not expecting an answer from the Arceans.

From out of nowhere, probably still trapped in the Fog of War and unable to see more than the vardo they're chasing is the Half Giant, tiger Faunus and his new found crew. Oddly enough, I'm kind of happy that someone like him could make some friends and…

"Shit! They just took our train!" Once more, my complaint is meant for no one in particular, but I repeat it into my ear cuff so Dawn can readjust accordingly. Hawthorne and I watch as the seventeen remaining wraiths turn away from us, tentacles jerking and swarming the area around them. Ren's team of about a dozen burst in screams of terror as each wraith gets close enough for them to see. They must think that there are hundreds as their attacks become more frantic. Angry squabbling erupts from the frenzy and I'm about to jump in when Dawn calls out to me through the Whisper Ear Cuff.

"We're going in to support them. Don't get within visibility range and we'll see what they're scheming. The vardo will have to hide behind the mesa and play keep away just in case. Contingency plan three."

I groan and Hawthorne looks over at me with a raised eyebrow. Before I can answer, an unearthly, bellowing howl shakes the air around us. As everyone converges on our location, a grim shadow grows large and looms over the territory.

"Scratch that. Contingency plan four. I don't know how, but Humpty Dumpty just put himself back together."