Gulnur stood behind Malador, closely inspecting his work, more by curiosity than duty. All the sigils he was carving formed a beautiful band that stretched across the base of the outer wall.
Since he was stuck inside the base, Malador offered to beef up its defences. Might as well make it safe while he was here, he thought.
The runes he was engraving into the wall were something he had been working on as a side project. The master he had learned under, in the Dwarven city of Krag'mine, had taught him many things about runes.
Malador was a carpenter outside of the game, and he already had great attention to detail. He also loved to carve when he had free time.
His house was filled with sculpted figurines, or handmade furniture with odd shapes and patterns. When he saw online that New Eden had playable crafters, he bought a helmet, as well as a copy of the game, so he could explore new possibilities.
Exploring his options on character creation, Malador was able to extract some info from the NPC guiding him, a snotty elf man, and finally rested his choice on Dwarves.
All his choices had led him here today, carving out runes on a stone surface, hoping his calculations were correct. But the child staring at him, working, was grating on his nerves.
Malador finished another rune before spinning around abruptly.
"Listen, kid. I accepted your invitation to this 'guild' in exchange for a safe place to master my craft and some peace and quiet. You have yet to respect either of those conditions. If I wasn't stuck here, I would leave right this moment!"
His sudden aggressivity startled Gulnur. He had noticed the man was grumpy, but he hadn't expected an outburst.
"I'm sorry, sir. I was just fascinated by the runes you are carving. I saw some runes similar, in a pit trap a while back, and was trying to figure out what these do… I'm sorry if I'm bothering you."
Malador looked at him with annoyance, but couldn't shoo him away. It was the most gratification a crafter could get when someone was interested in their craft.
He was no exception.
"Whatever. Just stand further back. You are making it hard to concentrate!"
Gulnur smiled widely, taking a few steps back, and going back to observing the sigils on the stone surface. He had been following him for a few hours, and they were almost back to their starting point, the gate.
While the older Dwarf kept carving away, a message that came in the guild chat distracted Gulnur. A guild had just arrived, that they had been waiting on.
Aces High.
Gulnur grinned. Their arrival meant that the battle would soon begin, and he could feel excitement crawl under his skin.
Phoenix had stationed him outside the walls, since he was a tank, and the prospect of fighting off hundreds of players at once made him giddy. With Astaroth around, it was always difficult to act as a tank, since the man kept stealing aggro and taking hits.
This battle would allow him to prove to his friends he was growing as a player, too. I'die had already prepared his zone for him, creating a large funnel of stone, shrinking the closer to the wall it got.
Gulnur took a last look at Malador's work and knew the man could finish faster if he wasn't breathing down his neck. So he left Malador alone to work.
There were just a few hundred meters left for him to reach the other side of the gate, anyway. Gulnur only wondered what closing this enormous band of runes would do.
Somewhere far above the young Dwarf player, another player was looking toward the newly arrived guild.
Khalor was standing on the same branch Astaroth had been on the night before. His drake was summoned, perched on a slightly larger branch behind him.
Hatred was present in Khalor's eyes, as he was scanning the crowd, searching for something or someone. He couldn't yet find his query, and he clicked his tongue.
'Figures. I knew you wouldn't show yourself until the battle was raging on. Still as cowardly as ever.'
The undead drake behind him reacted to the feelings emanating from Khalor and roared to the sky. The ghastly roar sent shivers down the spine of almost everyone that heard it, allies included.
It was like the wail of a banshee has echoed inside the drake's roar. It was almost pulled out straight out of a horror movie.
A familiar death knight walked out of Khalor's shadow.
"Master. What are my orders?"
Khalor kept his face forward while answering.
"For now, stay hidden. When the battle is at its highest point, Azamus will show his stupid face. When he does, I want you to go after him and tell me where he is. To succeed here, he will need to die as fast as possible."
"As you wish, Master."
The death knight melted back into Khalor's shadow, becoming unseen again. Khalor was boiling with impatience.
He couldn't wait for the guilds below to move. There was no point in him going out now.
He wanted to have the biggest impact on them as possible, and for that, he would need to be right in the middle of them. That was where his apparition and his army would have the most impact, both in battle and in their minds.
Inside the palace, Astaroth was currently resting from his marking ceremony. His mana had been almost entirely drained, and he was meditating to reabsorb some.
He also tried advancing his mana breathing to the next level, but it didn't seem like that would happen for a while. He had been stuck at the cusp of reaching level three on that passive, but something seemed to elude him.
He thought he might have to go visit Aberon to get some pointers. But that would have to wait until after the guild war, and most likely the update, too.
Whether they won, or lost, someone in this mass of players would reach level fifty before it ended, or right after. There was no escaping it.
He only wondered how much time they would have from that point to the update time. Khalor had been vague about it, only saying there would be some time.
And Astaroth was tired of asking him without receiving more info.
'I'll know when it happens. No use in bothering Khalor about this anymore.'
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