It had been so long since Lorelei had been able to access her whole skillset that it took her a moment to remember what it had felt like. Despite knowing that she was going to be needed back in the fray up front, she couldn’t help but take a couple of seconds just to enjoy the experience of a) no longer being crushingly heavy, b) being able to speak normally, and c) actually having abilities to bring to the party. Or the life or death struggle.

  She knew what she meant.

  Lorelei ran, checking out her newly undebuffed stats as she did so.

  As she closed in on a fight that was looking like the very definition of ‘doomed final stand’, she reached out with and stole the ability from a Level 30 Warrior who was buying himself an ice-cream. The flat 20% boost to all her attributes put a little lead in her pencil as she quickly closed the last of the distance on the Golem kicking hell out of the rest of her team.

  Skidding to a halt just before the monster, noting – quelle surprise – the complete absence of any Charm Leach mopping up the damage, she liberally threw out a bunch of instances of on some extremely beat-up teammates.

  All but the one that landed on Pete also triggered something randomly positive at the same time, which brought both Zorrobar (who gained twenty seconds of complete invulnerability via ) and Michael (who improbably grew twenty feet tall and changed colour via ) back into the land of the living pretty damn fast.

  Lorelei paused and tossed another couple of casts of on Pete until she was happy he wasn’t going to expire while she was occupied elsewhere and then turned her attention to the Golem itself.

  “Yeah, no shit.” Lorelei had already come to that realisation herself.

  Even with all the advantages of her ‘stolen’ Skill and having pretty much everything off cooldown, she had nothing that could one-shot this thing. There was a moment when she considered running the roulette again, but the memory of the crushing debuffs was far too fresh in her mind.

  No, she wasn’t going to be rushing into that particular nightmare again.

  The Golem raised both its fists in the air and then crashed them back down, almost like a Silverback Gorilla. If it was made of clay. And was bigger than Godzilla.

  Lorelei threw a out and was gratified to see it take a decent wodge of health out of the monster’s health bar. And even more so that it made the Golem take a little step back. “Everyone group up on me!” she yelled, landing the on it for good measure. Let it eat the bad rolls for a while.

  Actually, that was a point . . .

  As Lorelei searched in her inventory, the rest of the team ran towards her - Pete and Hel pivoted to take their normal positions on the point, with the Zombie Cheerleaders (oh, so they are back, Lorelei thought) dropping in front of them. Chrissy and Ent flanked either side of the tanks – strange little and large bookends to that front row, whilst Zorrobar, Steffan and CCMD slotted in next Lorelei. Neither Michael nor Michelle were anywhere to be seen, but that was actually pretty normal as they were getting ready to attack.

  “Two seconds, guys,” she said, and then lobbed her seven remaining poisoned charred steaks at the thing. The Golem caught most of them in its mouth, with those it missed adding a couple of nasty debuffs to it via .

  A flashing, purple skull and crossbones appeared above the creature’s head, and its health began ticking down all on its own. Albeit slowly.

  “Right, here’s the plan . . .”

  ***

  Sylvie sneered as the ragtag bunch of low-levelled misfits butchered their way past the Golem that guarded the end of that silly little obstacle course.

  She and Rupert had blitzed through the whole thing in less than ten minutes. Not exactly a record time, but certainly better than the shambles unfolding out there now. Moira had warned them about making too much of a splash in the first event, so they’d taken it reasonably easy.

  “It’s these she’s worried about?” Syvie said to Rupert, who was paying far more attention to a Elvish Archer than she thought was really appropriate.

  “Not worries, per se,” the Temporal Bersker replied. “She just wants them gone.”

  “Hardly seems worth the effort,” she said, eyes scanning the crowd for the real reason they’d stepped into the main press.

  The crowd opened for them – if asked, no one who scurried away could really have said what it was about these two hooded figures that so disturbed them, but disturb them it did – and they saw their quarry.

  The Charm Leech with the interestingly dark aura was watching, white-faced, as the Golem was finally brought to the ground. So he didn’t see the two of them slip in beside him. It wasn’t until Sylvie lowered her hood and leaned forward to whisper in his ear that he responded at all.

  “Hello, Leech,” she said, “I think this could be the start of a beautiful friendship.”

  Fate’s Despair a whirl!

  Spotify playlist here.

  A fight for love and glory, A case of do or die.