Skylair Online

Episode 11

Ben was crouched behind a rock, peeking over the top and waiting for the assassin to show.

“Gambit, is he here yet?” Ben asked.

No response.

“Gambit?” Ben asked again.

“Did he disconnect?” Death asked.

Ben shrugged and readied his rifle, “Has anyone else got an ability to reveal invisible characters?”

They all shook their heads.

“There!” Tortura said, pointing towards a rock a few metres in front of them.

They all looked to see a shadow moving in and out of vision, making its way towards them.

“I’ll get behind him,” Bandit said, “If you can get a good shot off on him, take it.”

Then he went invisible.

Ben set the rifle sight to his eye and trained it on where he had last seen the assassin, panning his gaze about, looking for any sign of motion.

A head appeared in his sight and he fired. A small ‘HIT’ icon appeared on the right of his sight but the assassin kept moving, disappearing back into cover.

“Did you get him?” Tortura asked.

“Yeah, but he didn’t go down, he must be using a shielding ability.”

There was a flicker of motion and a figure appeared behind Death. Death contorted away in shock but the figure slashed down at him with a pair of daggers.

An energy field crackled as the knives impacted Death, stopping them mid-air.

Tortura finished casting the protection spell and then charged the assassin, locking his shields together to form a type of human battering ram.

Before he could impact, however, the assassin disappeared back into invisibility.

Ben recovered from the shock and fired at the empty space, but the assassin was gone.

“Gambit, hit the reveal!” Ben shouted, “Gambit! Leo, damn it, cast the ability!”

But no reveal came, and suddenly the assassin was behind Ben. He just managed to turn and block one of the daggers with the side of his rifle but the other stabbed into him, turning his vision red but not killing him.

Tortura steamed back towards Ben, picking him up with one arm and slamming the assassin away with the other. The shield took the assassin across the face and sent him spinning away, buying just enough time for Death to cast a spell, sending a swarm of balls of fire towards the assassin.

The attack hit and the assassin rolled away. However, he was still alive and went invisible yet again.

There was a flickering, and then the assassin came back into view. He took one last look between Death and Ben and then they both opened fire at him, shattering him into tiny pieces.

“Thanks Gambit,” Ben said.

“Better late than never,” Death said and laughed, relieved.

“OH! COME ON!” said Bandit’s voice over the coms and then the text ‘an ally has been slain’ appeared at the bottom of their screens, “That’s not fair. Careful, their artillery is using the new pack, the Angel of Destruction one. That invulnerability is so unfair. It is down now though.”

Then another ‘an ally has been slain’ appeared, displacing the first.

“Sorry,” said Leo, “I got his with something that disabled the coms, I couldn’t hear you. I just activated the reveal ability as soon as I could. Did it work?”

“Yeah,” Ben replied, “We got him. If they have a melee character as their artillery we should attack now, they were just on Sky, so if we go there now we should still catch them. If he just used the invulnerability we have at least five minutes before he can use it again, so we need to press the advantage.”

The others nodded and they headed off towards the Sky shrine.

However, before they got all the way there they spotted four of the enemy team climbing the central mountain, straight towards the Titan.

“What are they doing? They can’t kill the Titan with only two shrines?” Death said.

“Maybe they think we are doing it?” Ben suggested.

“Either way, let’s follow them and if they start attacking it, we swoop in and finish them off.”

Carefully, they began making their way up the mountain as well, towards the classical, temple like structure at the summit.

They watched as the enemy team approached the giant and the person wielding two swords began swinging at it.

The giant roared and stood up off its throne, held its hands out and began blasting the enemy with lightning bolts.

Then the person dual wielding swords began glowing, a halo appearing over his head and wings sprouting from his back.

“He is using his invulnerability on the titan?” Ben exclaimed.

“I thought he just used it, what on earth is the cooldown on that thing?”

Ben grimaced, “Wait until it ends, and we go, the other three are still taking damage. We can’t take the risk of losing if he actually can solo kill the Titan.”

They waited patiently for the glowing to stop and the halo to disappear before charging over the ledge into the Skylair.

Tortura’s metal boots clanking on the paving stones gave their position away and the enemy turned to see them coming, however, they had taken too much damage from the Titan and Ben managed to kill the vulnerable three with a few well-placed shots.

However, when they all turned on the remaining, winged swordsman, he turned to them and laughed.

“Radiant Avenger!” he said, and he started to glow again, his armour being replaced with a set of gold plate mail and his two swords fusing into one.

“WHAT!” Ben exclaimed, as his shots bounced harmlessly off the armour.

Death unleashed a wave of fireballs at the angel but they too dissipated harmlessly.

The angel brought his sword down with a c***k on Tortura’s shield and Ben winced at the force of the impact.

“Keep backing up, he can’t have it up all the time, wait for the openings!” Death shouted.

The three of them edged backwards, Tortura making sure that the angel couldn’t reach Ben or Death, but they still weren’t dealing any damage.

Then, with a flourish, the angel managed to get a hit in past Totura’s defence, sending him flying backwards. He then jumped on death, his wings carrying him the distance almost instantly and reduced Death to a sparkly cloud of shards with a single overhead swing.

Ben rolled away, he had been counting the seconds since the invulnerability had been active and he trained his sight on the angel.

“3… 2… 1…” Ben counted.

The invulnerability faded and Ben fired his rifle, the shot taking the surprised angel in the chest, but it didn’t disappear, its defences were still too high. Ben fired again and again, but the angel leaped away and the shots went wide.

Ben ran to where he had disappeared to, rounding the corner to see the angel waiting for him, well within sword’s reach.

The angel slashed and Ben’s vision turned red, then black.

He found himself looking at the death timer, back in the starting location, just in time to see ‘DEFEAT’ written across his display.

“What happened?” exclaimed Bandit.

“His invulnerability didn’t go on cooldown. It has to be a bug, right?” Death said and they were all teleported to the circular room that functioned as their loading area.

“Whatever it is, I’m sending a complaint on the forums, later,” Tortura said and disappeared.

Death by Fire and Bandit nodded and followed suit, disappearing into beams of blue light.

“Well, that sucked,” Ben said and walked over to his screen, “Hopefully this time we won’t get someone abusing that stupid ability.”

Ben walked up and looked for the Play button but when he pressed it an error message popped up.

It said, ‘Due to a game breaking bug with the new Radiant Avenger ability, the server is down for maintenance. We apologise for any inconvenience caused. Once our investigation of the bug has been completed, any players who have lost ranking due to the bug will have their ranking restored.’

“Well,” laughed Ben, “I guess that’s all we are playing for today, I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Okay,” Leo replied and waved as Ben disappeared in a flash of blue light.

Leo pulled off his headset and lay back on his bed, staring at the ceiling.

‘Losing really sucks,’ he thought and set about his homework.