This story was originally written for the Geek Pride event in May 2025.
Thanks to
PennyThompson
for some initial suggestions and feedback.
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An enormous, dreadful mass of swirling and gnashing bones stood before her, snarling and scoffing, as it flailed its huge claws. The dragon's corpse, reanimated by the kind of necromancy only the vile lord of this frigid domain could wield, lashed out at the armored warrior before it.
The brave hero, though himself but a dwarf, raised his reinforced bulwark of a shield for protection against the beast's icy breath. It chilled him to the very marrow of his bones, so much that even the hot braziers in his home under the mountain wouldn't have soothed his shivers -- but thankfully, he wasn't alone in this hellish fortress where the dragon dwelled.
Beside the unliving abomination, scurrying between its hind legs and careful not to draw its ire, the warrior's band of allies assisted him in any way they could. Arrows flew into the monster's withers, assailing the heartless void that kept it animated in defiance of the laws of nature; as did the great balls of fire, or the focused rays of cleansing moonlight. Even some of the dragon's former allies turned against it, striking it with mighty blows of their runeblades and afflicting it with pestilence that could wear down its bony constitution.
And at the center of this heroic party, Nusla, an adept of shamanistic rites, chanted her serene, restorative songs. The elements always heeded her call, manifesting as a beam of pure sunlight that reached their allies and healed their wounds as it bounced and chained between them. Whoever the beam touched would be encased in a protective bubble and shielded from further injury -- a gift from the Titans, bestowed upon the ornamental scepter that Nusla wielded.
But then the beast bellowed, momentarily disrupting her concentration. It cried in a shrill voice that chilled the bones of her and her allies even more than the biting, frigid air.
"Suffer, mortals, as your pathetic magic BETRAAAAAYS you!"
Yet Nusla stood undeterred, weaving her spells ceaselessly while others around her dispersed. Few yet remained, just as fearless as she was, hacking at the dragon with their axes and stabbing it with their daggers, or even invoking the very same power of the elements to lash it with whips of molten lava, or calling down storms that --
"Wait! Why am I dead?"
It happened in a flash; Nusla didn't even notice. Her lifeless corpse lay on the ground now, surrounded by several of her steadfast allies who had just met the same fate.
"Shit!" a voice came from outside of this world. "Someone didn't run away with the mana debuff again... Alright, whatever! Just wipe it..."
Shifting nervously in the chair, Nusla bit her lip and sighed at the screen before her. She couldn't do anything at this point, only stare at the irritating, all-too-often-seen message hovering over the dead body of her character. She could simply click it off, which would resurrect her outside of that sprawling fortress and force a long, boring trek back inside -- and then into the dragon's lair yet again.
Rather than do this, she looked over to the chat window on her other screen. It was almost empty, save for a single message. It suggested that the blame for her party's failure should be laid squarely at the hooves of her character. That worried her a little; she didn't know whether she herself had done anything wrong.
But the next messages said otherwise, or were simply encouraging Nusla and her team to try again. That reassured her, and she couldn't help but smile. There were only a few hundred people watching her stream right now, but even so, she could count on her chatters to keep the spirits high.
"Alright, guys, I'll go get something to drink!" she said in a chirpy, youthful voice that quickly faded into a lower and sultrier timbre. "Hopefully they'll pick me off the floor before I'm back, eh?"
She rose from her chair, allowing the camera to move down from her perky, plentiful boobs to her flat, half-bared midriff. The top she was wearing only showed a little cleavage, but the swell of those firm globes was prominent and enticing. Then, once she turned around, the viewers were treated to the sight of her large and shapely butt, tightly encased in pink short shorts that, intentionally or not, emphasized its luscious curve.
She skipped away, moving out of the frame. All that the camera was showing now was the blurred background of her room and a swiveling chair that was slowly coming to rest.
"At this rate, it's
me
who's going to need a drink," said a different voice, possibly a thousand miles away. "Something stronger than coffee, that is..."
Spoken inside a dimly lit room, illuminated mostly by the soft glow of two computer screens, was the voice of Nusla's superior. The sharp-faced, bespectacled brunette named Taylor was the leader of the entire regiment of healers in her guild. She'd been tasked with guiding the ragtag bunch of virtual miracle workers whose job was to keep their guildmates alive.
Her duties were manifold. They included assigning the healers their primary targets; splitting them up however the current encounter required; occasionally making calls for the entire raid to follow; and taking care of the massive amount of other, related minutiae that was required to keep the health bars green and happy. She may not have been perfectly knowledgeable about every single aspect of all healing classes -- priests, shamans, druids, and paladins -- but she had enough experience with the game to provide them with competent leadership and useful insight.
Because it was
a game,
obviously. It was the kind of game where you created your fantasy character, went on an adventure in a fictional world, and eventually you'd team up with others to try and defeat some truly dangerous enemies. In the endgame, the bosses would test not only your character's power, but also the tactical sense and coordination of all players in your group.
None of those encounters were trivial. That stupid dragon, however, was easily one of the worst. Taylor's guild had gone through dozen of attempts to take it down, making only scant progress and often failing solely because of individual mistakes. As a result, Taylor had already heard the screeching, grating voice of the icy wyrm so many times that whenever it yelled about "the cold hand of death upon her heart!" she could only roll her eyes in exasperation.
In a similar vein, she'd roll her eyes at Nusla and her absolutely abysmal performance.
"Yes, yes, I'm rezzing you," Taylor mumbled under her breath, as she pressed the button that made her paladin resurrect the fallen shaman. "What's the point, though, you're gonna be dead again soon..."
Like all healers in the guild, Nusla, was one of Taylor's charges. When it came to keeping people alive, however, she was lately doing pretty much the exact opposite. Their latest
wipe
-- the kind of failure where you have to start the encounter from the beginning -- was entirely the fault of the absentminded shaman. She hadn't run away when she was supposed to, which led to multiple other characters dying from the explosion of her vast reservoir of magical power.
It was a simple task. A mark above your head? Then get the hell out! Anyone should be able to do it. All it required was a modicum of focus, and enough sense to take the whole thing seriously.
But at this point, Taylor wasn't sure Nusla possessed either of those qualities.
"Heeeeey! I'm back!" she fluttered, in the same coquettish voice. "Miss me? Look what I've got!"--she brandished a tiny salad bowl--"Ceasar with low-fat dressing but extra chicken! Gotta get those gains in, am I right?"
Okay, perhaps it wasn't
just
her performance that made Taylor's eyes roll in their sockets.
Returning her gaze to the other screen, the sighing brunette saw that massacre of her teammates had mostly been undone at this point. Everyone was up and alive once again, busy with preparations for their next attempt. They were casting protective spells, drinking conjured water to restore their mana, or eating from a cartoonishly large plate of fish for that extra oomph it would add to their attacks and magic.
"So, once again," a familiar voice sounded in Taylor's headphones, putting a trace of a smile on her lips. "No one in front of the boss other than the tank. Everyone else on one side at the start, then move to the other side when the ice block happens. Rinse and repeat. During the air phase, spread around, pay attention who gets frozen, and then hide behind the blocks to avoid the frost bomb. Any questions?... Alright, ready-check and go."
Short, clear, and to the point. Authoritative. Commanding.
Attractive.
If the harsh, raucous cry of that damnable dragon was like sandpaper to Taylor's eardrums, then this voice was the most soothing and pleasant of balms.
"Everyone ready," it said, in its velvety tone. "Dorfin, you can pull."
The rime-covered, undead dragon descended from the cloudy skies once again, touching down on the rampart wrought from a cursed turquoise metal. It turned its malevolent gaze to the dwarven warrior, who taunted it with one of the thousand insults known to his rambunctious kind.
Taylor was just going through the motions now; they had slogged through this phase of the fight countless times. Yet she'd always perk up whenever the raid leader made a call, speaking in the same decisive baritone. Its vibrating resonance would warm her up even if they really were in this frozen, desolate place.
His name -- his
real
name -- was Jordan. He was a student at the same college that she went to, just a year older, studying finance rather than computer science like her. Though she had surely seen him in passing, as one among the crowd of thousands of students, they weren't at all acquainted until she joined the guild shortly after the game was released.
She learned more about him during her first meeting of guild officers, after she became one herself. The fact that they lived so close to each other, their dormitories separated only by a small park in the middle of the campus, was truly a remarkable coincidence. They met a couple of times for a bubble tea or coffee, which they drank mostly in awkward silence. It felt weird to just talk about the game like they would online, but it'd feel even more weird to try and forcibly steer the conversation in some other, unknown direction.
In hindsight, though, perhaps it was just
Taylor
who had felt awkward. Jordan certainly didn't seem to, now that she recalled those few hangouts yet again. He was friendly, funny, very much at ease; he had this look in his eyes that the dark-haired girl found captivating.
Oh, and that wavy mane of his strawberry blond hair, as it dropped over his forehead when he tried to suck in his tea through a straw that he didn't know was clogged with a piece of tapioca. She giggled at the memory. It was just so adorable, and --
"Your incursion ends HERE! None shall survive!"
