Having the upper hand, however, had made Archie overconfident. Just as Corporal Emerick was backed up against the locked doors, a potion bottle came flying out of nowhere as the black tunic disappeared into a newly created plume of black smoke. The potion slammed into Archie’s red-haired skeleton head and exploded into a cloud of blue-grey smoke. He keeled over to the ground, clutching his head in agony. DZ rushed in to help Archie, but Stan was staring in horror at a lever that he had never noticed before on the wall. This lever was in the On position.
Fear coursed through Stan. He had fought far too many players who utilized explosive traps in their surroundings to not know one when he saw one. He and his friends needed to evacuate the courthouse immediately. His shout of “RUN!” was deadened by the explosion in the centre of the rotunda seats behind him.
Stan didn’t even have time to look towards his two friends when the wave of fire slammed into his back. He was launched forward at breakneck speed through the two doorframes that had held iron doors seconds before. Stan felt himself tumbling wildly through space, only stopping when he was thrown down into a viscous substance. As he opened his eyes, he realized that he had landed in the bottommost pool of the Apothecary Memorial Fountain. Although it sat a distance from the doors of the courthouse, it still had one of its sides blasted away by the explosion. Stan let the current of the gushing fountain carry him down to the road. Everything ached at once from the sheer force of being caught in that blast. However, as Stan turned his head to the side, he saw something that rendered all his pain irrelevant.
He could see two shadowy figures sitting not far away from him in the darkness. One appeared to be shaking the other, who was limp and unresponsive. Stan’s forehead immediately broke out in sweat, as did his palms. The horribly familiar feeling of dread bubbled up inside him, threatening to boil over as he ran to the two figures. He saw DZ, uncharacteristically shell-shocked, holding Archie’s body in shaking hands, a ring of items lying around them haphazardly.
Four months ago, when Stan had stood in the tower of Element Castle alongside the Apothecary, King Kev had chosen to kill himself rather than die at the hands of Stan. The magnitude of the alarm that had struck Stan at that point could only be described in two words: shock and awe. Now, seeing DZ sobbing as he shook Archie’s dead body, demanding that he wake up, another round of shock and awe whipped Stan across the face like a white-hot iron. Six hours ago, Stan had believed the Noctem Alliance no longer existed. Now, their leader had just killed one of his friends.
As Stan realized this, he became aware of a presence watching him. As the shock gave way to fury – pure, unfiltered hatred – Stan whipped his head upwards to look into the smirking face of Corporal Emerick.
Stan’s body acted on its own. His axe flew from his side and into his hand as he charged the Noctem corporal. He brought his axe down onto that hatefully smug face, hoping to put as much pain as possible into the strike, only to have Emerick sidestep the attack. His axe collided with the stone ground with enough force to snap the diamond blade from the handle.
As Stan spat in fury, Corporal Emerick calmly pulled a blood-red Potion of Harming from his inventory and raised it to his lips. Realizing what he was about to do, Stan shot his fist at the corporal’s mouth, shattering the potion bottle and splattering the ground crimson. Stan was so absolutely insane with rage that the force of the punch sent him stumbling forwards. He spun around on his heel to find that the corporal had already drawn another red potion and raised it to his mouth.
Stan’s shout had barely left his mouth when the bottle tilted back and the potion entered the Noctem officer’s mouth, just as a flurry of green bottles flew from the corporal’s free hand. The effect was immediate. A ring of items burst from his navel, and Corporal Emerick fell forwards onto his knees, and then onto his face. Stan bellowed in fury, distressed beyond comprehension, and in a rush he felt himself fall to the ground, vaguely aware of a cloud of green gas swirling around him before he saw black.
“Honestly, sir, you’re being unreasonable!”
“Please, just go back, lie down! You’ve been through a lot these past few hours, and you’re not thinking straight!”
Stan didn’t hear them. He was completely deaf to the objections of his two aides as he marched down the corridor and away from the castle infirmary. It killed him to think that while he had been lying in a bed, being detoxed of the effects of Corporal Emerick’s final poison attack, his friends had been sitting in a council room discussing what to do about the atrocities committed by the Noctem Alliance. In his desperation to get into the council room, he finally spun around to face the aides.
“Enough!” Stan bellowed, harsher than he had anticipated. The aides staggered backwards with fear in their eyes as Stan’s hand had instinctively glided to the axe handle by his side. He was too infuriated to give them the luxury of an apology. The Noctem Alliance had killed Archie, and the only thing he cared about at that moment was destroying the organization once and for all. The aides now did nothing to stop Stan as he jammed his fist into the button on the wall, opening the double doors and granting him access to the council room.
The depression hanging in the room was plain, and this was reflected on the faces of the seven players sitting around the table. DZ, Gobbleguy, the Mechanist and Charlie sat next to one another in a row. Their expressions were forlorn, and seemed more weary than sad. To their left, however, was a totally different story. Jayden and G were Archie’s best friends, and they did nothing to hide the fact that they had been crying over his death. Their eyes still red and puffy, they exuded an aura of grief and anger. Stan felt the terrible sensation of likening their emotions to his own when he had learned of Sally’s death.
Only when Stan’s eyes lingered on Kat, however, did he stop for a moment. She seemed filled with the same depressed exhaustion that Charlie and DZ were giving off, but there was a distinct note of discomfort on her face as well. As Stan pondered what it could be that was causing this, he noticed that she was shooting a stream of uneasy glances in the direction of G, who was sitting next to her. All of Stan’s curiosity vanished in an instant, to be replaced with irritation. Kat merely had a problem with G. Worrying about such things at a time like this was unthinkable.
“Hey, Stan,” said DZ, his voice devoid of its usual cheery, upbeat quality. “They let you out of the hospital early?”
“I checked myself out,” Stan mumbled in reply. “They say I should still be there, but I feel fine.” Nobody was foolish enough to disagree with him.
As Stan walked over and took his seat between Charlie and Kat, he looked up and a sob erupted from his throat without warning. Sitting directly across from his seat at the table was the chair normally occupied by Archie – empty. It was at that moment that it hit Stan like a wrecking ball: Archie was gone, and he could never again return to Elementia. Grief welled up within Stan yet again, only to be immediately replaced with more rage at the Noctem Alliance. The reason he was there flooded into Stan, and he turned to Charlie, a gleam of fire in his eye.
“Is the city secure?” he asked.
“Yes,” replied Charlie. He sounded beat. “Bill, Ben and Bob have the city on lockdown. There are patrols on all the walls, and nobody’s allowed in or out of the gates until we say so. They also have officers searching the entire city, making arrests and interrogating anybody who may be linked to the attack. So far” – Charlie let out a sigh – “they haven’t found anybody. Eleven fighters were part of the attack, including Corporal Emerick. All of them died rather than be captured.”
Stan’s heart sank. He hadn’t really been expecting anything else, but it still infuriated him that he had no way of capturing these players and interrogating them. Stan was just about to make a remark to that effect when