The Devil In White: An AA Online Novel

"We'll talk about this later." If it had been possible for Gilduirn to be red in the face, Amelia thought he might have gone the extra mile and turned purple. Gilduirn turned and started forming his guild into a second ring behind the defenders, giving orders that healers should start healing the first line. There were so many visage though, Amelia wondered if it was going to do any good. She stared out into the dark and could only discern rapid and scaly movement as far as the eye could see. She shivered.

"Amelia!" Raven cried over the party channel. Amelia had never heard Raven panicked before. "I need you. Where are you? My aura ran out and there's this guy named Castor that showed up and he's kicking the snot out of me."

"I'm coming." Amelia didn't run often, but now she ran as if wolves chased her toward the center. Somehow some of the visage must have found dark places to teleport in, and Raven and her crew of lantern carrying craftsmen had run afoul of one.

"You are heading to Elisha?" Forsythe asked.

"Yeah, Raven is there as well." Amelia panted. "Are you coming?"

"No, I have my own named that dropped in. Hunter and I will manage without your Aura." Forsythe said after a pause. Utterly calm, she noticed.

"But you were going to ask for it?" Amelia persisted.

"When Raven has killed her enemy if convenient please see yourself toward us." Was all he said. At least until Hunter chimed in with a breathless yell, "please come even if not convenient!"

Do we have Elisha?" Elias wanted to know. They had asked if they could use Hunter's daughter as supplementary footage but he didn't know if that had ever panned out.

"Bringing her up live now. Switching… done." Philip, one of his producers brought up Elisha's feed. The room as a whole froze. Everyone stopped their flurry of editing and started watching. Elias wished they would go back to their jobs but couldn't blame them. Raven was a recurring star of the Amelia stream, and to see her being kicked into a building gave everyone pause.

"We're taking this until Amelia gets there!" Elias decided. "Full stream, no edit, no music, one minute delay."

The main program monitor which displayed what they were sending out to their video links suddenly switched to Elisha's point of view. The curly blond healer was frantically casting as fast as she could on Raven. "[Greater Health], [Rapid Regeneration], [Overshield]."

Raven stood, using her two-handed sword to levy herself upright. Her opponent dwarfed her height by at least two heads. He was a humanoid clad in some sort of dark and sinisterly sharp armor, wielding a sword that looked to be several hundred times heavier than Raven's already prodigiously large weapon. Transients lay scattered about him, dead or incapacitated. Some of those who were down were just lying there doing their best not to get noticed by the preternaturally still being. Raven's health bar showed that she was at 30% and rising. Her level? It was an astonishing 249.

Moving with unreal alacrity, the giant swordsman almost shimmered like a mirage as he stepped forward, raising his huge sword one-handed above his head. Raven crossed her sword over her head, planting her feet with such force that her boots sank into the frozen ground and unflinchingly and with a total lack of fear met the blow coming down with her one-handed grip. He struck downward, the force of the blow causing the audio to cut out when it couldn't handle the decibel level. Falling snow and ash scattered as his sword made contact with Raven's block, and it still drove her to her knees.

"I don't think I've ever seen her block. She always just dodges." Abhy said softly.

Raven had something of a cult following in MKC Online. Employees had decided that she was the most powerful of Amelia's friends if you asked them in a public survey. Everyone had their secret fantasy favorite after all. She acted out, did whatever she wanted, and never seemed to break a sweat doing it. Despite her level, and no matter the situation, she always won with ease. Now that she was being soundly smacked around a disturbing sense of discontent and anger was creeping into the control room.

"What a bunch of overtuned garbage…" Elias heard someone whisper behind him, defending the one-armed girl.

"Keep to your jobs!" Elias finally snapped. "We're a media group and suddenly war correspondents, act like professionals!"

He was almost immediately silenced when Elisha's voice rang out in the control room filled with panic. "Raven, I'm sorry. I'm almost out of mana. When I heal you just run! We're just tradesman and one lousy healer."

Shouts to that effect started from behind Elisha. Tradesman suddenly pleading with her to leave them. It wasn't like they were watching a game anymore, but a moment in one of their favorite cinemas where the hero was about to be killed and no one was ready for that hero to leave the story. Despite his shout, Elias couldn't fault people for once again losing focus and turning toward the main program stream drama that was unfolding.

Before she could respond Castor struck at her with a wide sweeping stroke, and she barely managed to block it after failing to move her body fast enough to evade. Raven skidded, amazingly staying on her feet as the force knocked her several meters until she was met by a wall. The wall crumbled around her, and amazingly, she once more stood upright moments later. She turned to Elisha, a strange look of horror and madness dancing in her eyes and reflecting the darkness and torchlight surrounding them.

All she said in reply to those pleas, "Rule 5."

MKC Online and the rest of those viewing the stream would never know that she had said it over the party channel as well as aloud. Aidan and Forsythe immediately answered her. "Don't let them die."

Raven charged Castor, changing her grip on her sword so the point mercilessly cut toward the monster's midsection in a lunging stab. It was so fast for a moment it seemed like the air was actually being sliced. Castor straightened at first seeming to respect the force behind the blow, and then, still batted the blow aside easily and contemptuously. Before the movement was done, with his open hand off-hand, he smacked Raven with full force across the face in a wet sounding slap that was intended to be more ridiculing than damaging. She flew like a lifeless doll, laying on the frozen ground. She put a hand under herself moments later and pushed herself once more to her feet as if she were the only real human being in a game full of numbers.

Vertigo from low health camera angling must have been intense. She swayed on her feet, trying to get her sense of balance even as it became clear to everyone watching that with 6% of her remaining health she could probably barely see at all. Elisha started making strange noises even as she started healing Raven, a cross between sobbing and whimpering. The monster had some sort of healing cancellation because her spells barely did anything, explaining why Raven was in this dire strait, to begin with.

"Amelia!" Elisha suddenly cried. The blue-robed wizard slid into view from a building behind Castor, hair fluttering messily behind her head. Amelia had actually slipped and skidded gracelessly onto the sceen on her backside having been running fast and hitting a patch of ice on the final stretch.

"Switch to Amelia!" Elias demanded instantly. The main program switched to Amelia, having just come on scene. She surveyed the group of half-dead craftsmen and Elisha first and then turned to Raven. Her viewpoint froze as if she were witnessing something unexpected.

"Now," Raven whispered. "Do it now. I'm a Marauder. I'll never be more powerful. I'm tired of sandbagging."

"[Aura]." The light reached out and touched her and slowly Raven steadied.

"[My Wrath is Legend.]" Raven didn't lift her sword as she straightened to her full, albeit short, height. Some brief darkness visual effect triggered around her feet pushing the dirt and snow around her boots away from her. A sound ached across the channels. It was the sound of leather straining. While there was no indication that her muscles were changing it was like her equipment couldn't quite take what was inside of it anymore. No one had seen this ability before but it was obviously some form of release.

She walked toward her enemy, and it would have been comical how she swayed and almost fell, like a drunk trying to play it cool. Her sword making a horrible scraping noise as the tip sliced the dirt, rock, and snow as if it were too heavy now for her to even lift. It dragged alongside her as she walked toward Castor, making an uneven and deep furrow in the soil. She slightly turned her body, presenting the side without the arm and started dragging the sword slightly behind her as she closed like it was getting even heavier. Castor waited, its head tilting in a semblance of curiosity.

Hate and fury in her eyes and the anger of her voice seemed to still the monster further.

"[Rule One.]" Raven raised her sword over her head, still several meters away from him. The blade lit up slightly, pulsing almost as if it were alive. A dark aura spread out from it and actually seemed to be l.i.c.k.i.n.g toward Castor eagerly as a flame might toward an open window. This at least was a recognizable ability. Marauders could boost an attack based on missing health percentage, level, and several other factors that included skill level, etc using a class ability called [Pain]. With her level, Raven might be the only one on scene that could truly tell anyone what statistics were used to generate the effect of the skill. The Rule One part though, she had obviously just renamed the ability to her liking, Amelia guessed.

She no longer approached, standing well out of range from where she could hit him or be hit. Range in a game of speed like this was useless anyway. Raven had already determined that he could just practically appear next to her whenever he wanted.

Castor didn't look impressed. It had waited patiently as if watching a show, and now that there didn't seem to be anymore it once again stilled unnaturally, back to being the bored efficient killing machine. The named monster took an impossibly large step without any ceremony and swung its sword at her two-handed in a movement full intended to separate her torso from her legs. Raven made no attempt to dodge, and instead placed her sword between herself and the oncoming blow, using the ground as an anchor point.

Thunder rang from that blow, the air seemed to move away as if being displaced instead by sheer force. Snow that had been falling leaped back into the air. Raven did not move an inch, merely stared at him with that strange expression of emptiness on her face. Incredibly, she lifted her hand from the hilt and, leaving the sword plunged into the ground, pointed it skyward. She made her index finger point up and her thumb point out, and she cried. "Elisha! Are you watching me?"

What happened next couldn't be explained to the viewership for the most part but was, as Elisha would exclaim later, 'pretty metal.' Elisha had also been pink-tinged in the face and had looked as if though she might drop dead from embarrassment when thinking about the scene.

Amelia had once asked Raven what the difference between a Marauder and a normal non-prestige warrior was, or any derivation from the warrior tree really. Her response was simple. She had said that if she were ever about to die it would be like fighting two of her at the same time. She had said that, and then thought about it, and shrugged as if not satisfied by her own answer. She then said it defied explanation because the ability was multiplied by her own inner amazing stat, which, as everyone knew, couldn't be quantified without the use of powerful supercomputers that had yet to be invented.

Raven's hand returned to the hilt before Castor could move. Castor was actually pushing madly at the sword plunged into the ground, making noises of exertion. Nobody watching could believe that the sword just stayed there as if it had no business being anywhere else. It was a miracle, is what many thought. Amelia knew that Raven's sword had a special property where it could only be moved from a resting position by its owner.

Raven pushed the enemy sword away, almost gently, but the force jerked Castor clear around. He didn't step back but he almost lost his grip on his own sword as it flew to the side. In the same continued movement, she raised her sword one-handed in much the same fashion Castor had when he brought her to her knees. High above her head, almost stretched out on her tip-toes to lift it as high as she possibly could. Her head was tilted up and had she been taller than him she would have surely been looking down at him over her nose with utter disdain from on top of the world.

"[Overwhelm]."

Her sword blurred, the graphics engine not keeping up for someone like Amelia with low perception and agility. Amazingly, Castor raised his sword to truly block, the first time he had done so without a contemptuous snort or sneer. He met her blade with his and immediately fell to his knees under the force of the blow. The soundwave once again was too much for the people in MKC, a couple of them wearing headsets yelped and scowled.

Castor started to rise immediately, and Raven simply raised her sword a few inches and struck down again. Apparently, she had not needed to lift the sword that high to initiate the ability in the first place.

"[Overwhelm]."

Castor went to his knees again, lifting one knee off the ground as she raised her sword a third time. He snarled at her, something unintelligible in a language Amelia didn't understand. Raven made no facial expression or body movement that acknowledged that she had even heard him as she used the skill for a third time.

"[Overwhelm]."

The monster was being pressed but didn't look like he was even injured. Instead, he stood and used his whole body to block the anticipated blow as she raised her sword threateningly again. There was no hint of retaliation in its movements, merely defense. It was obviously saying it would receive the next blow and then kill her.

"[Rule One - Overwhelm]." Raven's next strike, the second release to the overwhelm skill tree(and obviously renamed slightly), was completely lost to vision. Castor was on his back, rebounding backward into the air from the collision and force of the blow like a bouncing ball thrown hard against the ground. Not ending there he flew backward further and started skipping across the snow like a flat rock across a lake before finally coming to an abrupt stop against a piece of crushed wall. His sword fell away to the side. He started to scramble onto his side to go reach for it but Raven at some point had already impaled him straight into the ground.

In Amelia's vision, it had looked like Raven had teleported. It was an extremely mesmerizing and, at the same time, frustrating fight to watch. Amelia didn't know what she should do. No one knew how to help because there was no one on scene that could move fast enough to do anything.

He glared upward and screamed defiance at Raven, Clawed hands pulling at the blade that was pierced through his body.

"Feisty," Raven admitted breathlessly. She looked down at him, swaying slightly. Her sword might as well have been planted into the ground for all eternity though. Another weird moment where being planted into the earth seemed to make it immovable. Castor scrambled and complained and pulled but he wasn't Arthur and it was Excalibur in stone. Raven looked around a little, almost like she couldn't remember where she was. Then she looked down once more and a soft voice came out. "I don't like you. I'll see you off politely anyway."

"[Final Release - Cloudkill]." Raven placed her hand on the pommel of the sword and pushed down. From the sky, a translucent hand, gigantic and clearly feminine, reached down with her and with a giant finger, helped her push down onto the top of the sword assisting with a powerful thrust. Impossible, was what those who were watching would say when asked to describe it to those who hadn't seen the stream. Go watch it, would be the universal answer.

The sword pushed down through Castor who gave an unearthly scream. Beneath him, the snow and frozen earth compacted in a circle and a shockwave drove those too near to their knees. When it was over and the snow eddies faded, there was simply a crater with the broken body of a monster. Standing vigil over the impromptu grave was Raven, her face the depiction of a sneer even as her life bar hovered at less than 5%. She planted her sword into the dirt and knelt down on one knee, picking up a small patch of dirty snow and sprinkling it like grave dirt over the edge of the crater. "How dare you challenge the Pirate Queen Raven and her loyal followers."

Elisha ran to Raven then, hugging her tightly even as the black-haired warrior stared down at her enemy without remorse. As if debating on whether she should give him another blow. Moments later the level up system caught up and a brief light refilled her bar completely to 100%. Light and vigor returned to her eyes and she stopped swaying. The tired in her posture was still present but she straightened looking better nonetheless.

At last, she looked up and met Amelia's gaze, raising an eyebrow. "Cutting it a little close there Amelia."

"Using me to steal a line from a cartoon?" Amelia rejoined. "The hero always arrives late!" Amelia was laughing, and it was that same sound that flooded the conference room of MKC Online as cheers and shouts erupted.

"Hunter has something!" Someone broke through.

"Show me!" Elias demanded, silencing the room. It was going to be a long night and the war wasn't won with just one small warrior's victory.