181 Last (3)

***

Larry, on the other side of South Hour, was running for his life. Or at least, his bunnies and Jonah were running. Larry himself was seated on one of his largest Comrades.

"Why are we running?" Jonah asked, looking very harried and very likely wishing he dared to ride Damnaith.

"Dunno." Larry admitted, both arms around a furry warbunny as it sped north-west. Riding that bunny kinda felt like he was riding a big bouncing ball of fur. It was hard to talk without biting your tongue.

There were three other knights running roughly in the same direction, two of them entirely alone, one mounted on a green wildcat of sorts. But there, in the distance, Larry saw two figures in the air sweeping about and head directly toward them.

"What are they doing?" Jonah asked, wheezing for breath.

"An attack run?" Larry spotted armor, spotted horses, and figured those two to be knights, not Gaians. If they were heading toward the besieged dungeon, then they had to be still trying to fight the cultists off.

"They're nuts!" Jonah concluded, before tripping over a tuft of grass and sprawling face-first onto the ground.

"No..." Larry saw their faces now and recognized them. "They're trying to do what they can. That's Lord Geoffrey and Lady Val."

Larry was proven right by the Guild Leaders' actions. Even as they charged toward battle, the flying pair warped in more and more of their Comrades, issuing commands in mid-air.

From the side, Abby dashed in on a car-sized narrow winged bird. "Frey! They're tracking us using admin rights! They can see the locations of every guild member! We need to warn the others! We need a comms tower!

"What?" Larry stared as the three of them above zoomed on out of earshot.

"They can track us...?" Jonah growled. "Then what are we running for? There's nowhere we can run or hide that they can't find us!"

"Well... if they're tracking Guild Members..." Larry paused.

"We have to quit the Guild. {Now}." Jonah said, and tapped his watch. "And {then} we can run."

"Wait! We have to warn the others first!" Larry protested. "We can help Lord Geoffrey and..."

Jonah shook his head. "You want to {help}? In a situation like this?! But we've barely even joined this Guild..."

"Come on! What do we have to lose?"

"Everything!" Jonah shot back. "If we keep losing all our stuff like this, I'm going to quit Nakama World entirely!"

Larry grew quiet for a bit. Then, he said, "Okay."

"What? What do you mean, 'okay'?" Jonah snapped.

"Let's quit Nakama World." Larry told him. "Alicia isn't even with us any more and this place is now under the control of the Cult. I don't want to spend my nights Dreaming in a hostile world without my sister."

Jonah frowned. "Well... you have a point. And if we're going out anyway, we may as well go out with a bang."

"Right?" Larry nodded. "Let's do it! It'll be fun!"

"...{Right}..." Jonah said, but he didn't sound convinced. "Let's go."

***

The plan was desperate, but simple.

"Everybody, charge! Whoever gets to the comms tower, send a Guild Broadcast! Warn everybody!" Geoffrey roared, and led a completely mismatched band of stragglers against the nearest jammed and Cult-held Communications Tower.

There were some fifteen or sixteen of them, Red badges, Purples, Blues and even a handful of Greens. Jonah and Larry found themselves in that last group, barely able to figure out which way to go when the Reds and Purples spread out like a wave and swept down on the comms tower.

Geoffrey and Val tried to keep them alive. They ran scathing raids on the Cultist flanks, made surgical strikes on their deadliest turrets, even flat out carpet-bombed a formation of Gaian Ripclaws led by a Gaian Traveler. But the Cultists had been prepared for such an attack, and more than ready for such a rag-tag band. The Red Knights were bombarded from afar, strafed as they began their attack runs, downright stonewalled before their charge could make any momentum, and then gunned down systematically.

The Purple Knights made it to the battlefront meanwhile. They avenged the Reds, outflanking and then surrounding the Gaians who took down their allies. But Gaian artillery hammered on them, blasting friend and foe alike. The Purples shifted tactics and went for the artillery. They almost made it, but the stonewall formations of defensive Comrades blocked them from reaching the artillery positions.

The Blues succeeded where the Purples failed. They took the reprieve the Purples granted in order to set up their own artillery positions, and then whacked at the Gaian defense lines trying to open a path for the Purples. At first there was a contest of firepower against defense as each side's artillery rained fire on the other's front lines, but from the beginning it was obvious that the fortified Gaian positions held the advantage. Two of the Purple Knights made it through brief breaches afforded by the Blue artillery, but the rest, already having fought all the way there, crumbled under the hammer-and-anvil combination of Cultist defenders and artillery.

Seeing their inevitable failure, the Blues shifted tactics before the last of the Purple knights fell; they shifted targets to strike at the Cultist artillery directly. Geoffrey and Val joined in the assault as the Blue counter-artillery wrought havoc among the Cult guns. Where the Blue firepower were insufficient to disable their targets, the two Guild Leaders finished the job. Caught between heavy bombardment on one front and air strikes from the other, the Gaian artillery collapsed.

Meanwhile, the remnants of the counter-charge Gaians had the Blue artillery surrounded. The Blue knights did their best to hold them off their big guns, but when the defense Gaians moved to reinforce them, everyone knew holding the line was a lost cause. The Blue knights abandoned defense and artillery alike, using the last volleys of their heavy firepower to open a path for the rest as they made an all-out assault to reach the tower.

Behind them, the few remaining counter-charge Gaians turned to catch them from behind, intending to stab them in the back while they were caught in front by the defenders, but by then the Green Knights had reached the scene.

Jonah and Larry found themselves facing a desperately tired but determined Traveler who still had three Ripclaw Lizards at his command. The man-sized dinosaur Comrades spread out as if to outflank both boys.

"Not good." Jonah said. "All I got are three left."

"Six here." Larry answered. "This might be trouble."

Jonah glanced about for help, but saw the other three Greens facing two similar opponents. They looked like they were in even bigger trouble.

"We're not going to make it." Jonah said grimly. "There are those heavy armor Comrades farther ahead. We'll never make it through them. The only chance our side has is..."

"The Guild Leaders have to make a run for it." Larry nodded. "All we can do is draw some attention off them. Every little bit helps."

Geoffrey and Val seemed to get the idea. They were down to just two or three Comrades each, and had ceased their air strikes against the Gaian defense formations. The last of the Blues were pulling back while the two Guild Leaders bypassed the remaining defenders and went straight for the tower itself. A furious fight began at the tower entrance, but meanwhile, the guy with three Ripclaws began shouting orders to his Comrades.

"Everybody, attack that Traveler!" Larry pointed to the guy barking orders. Two Smithares, a Cavalrabbit and two Axebunnies turned and charged. Larry himself warped in his broadsword and charged after them.

"Us too...?" Jonah protested, but there was no time to argue. "Damnaith, Bloodlust, Noxious, with me!"

Two bats came to his side, but the Night Mare never came. Jonah glanced about, only to see the Ripclaw on his left snickering at him. {Damnaith's done for. She was already exhausted...}

The look on that Ripclaw's face said, {'Run while you can, loser! You're next!'}

As if! Jonah snorted at it, and kept going.

"Air strikes on each Ripclaw behind us. Keep them off our backs." Jonah told his bats, then drew his sword and ran after Larry.

It was crazy, they knew. They had little to no chance of surviving such an attack themselves. Already the Ripclaw in the middle was tearing through Larry's furry rabbits one by one as they reached it. The Cavalrabbit went down first, barely able to graze the big lizard with its lance before the thing's right claw swiped the rabbit's head off. Larry's Cavalrabbit vanished to respawn back at base while the Axebunnies closed in on either side. The Ripclaw lashed out with both arms, catching the axes as they came, forcing the Axebunnies into a short contest of strength that the tired duo quickly lost. Twin downward rakes later, and they both went poof also.

One glance toward the other Greens saw no help there. Two of them were already gone and the last one was running for his life with Gaian wyverns catching up to him.

Jonah caught up to Larry as the Smithares tackled the Ripclaw. Their hammers whacked at it, but didn't seem to do anywhere near as much damage as its huge claws did to them.

{Hurry up, Larry!} Jonah didn't spare the breath to say it as he dashed on ahead of the heavier boy with his sword raised. He leapt to the attack, slamming it down on his reptilian foe's head as Larry's last two rabbits died their way back to their respawn point.

The blade bit into the head, but didn't get very far. The Ripclaw glanced at him and snorted as if to say, did you really think that was going to work?

"Oh great." Jonah groaned as the Ripclaw countered. He had a bare moment to register Larry's broadsword adding its own attack to the lizard's head before everything went white and he found himself back at his respawn point.

He waited for a bit, as he began to feel sick, but Larry didn't appear beside him as quickly as he expected. Jonah sat down, made himself as comfortable as he could while the respawning sickness caught up to him, but a minute went by, and then another, and Larry didn't appear.

"Huh." Jonah wondered about that. {Not bad, Larry. Maybe we did enough damage to the Ripclaw that Larry actually managed to get through. He might even have nabbed the guy commanding them. Or maybe he backed away and is now running for his life being chased by two Ripclaws. Maybe he got chased up a tree and is stuck there while the Ripclaws swipe at his feet.}

But then his watch began to beep very rapidly. Jonah glanced at it. The display showed, 'Emergency Broadcast Notification'.

"What's this?" Jonah tapped it.

It was audio only. What came out was Geoffrey's voice. "Everyone! We're under attack!"

{They made it!} Jonah realized. {They actually made it!}

Geoffrey sounded very hurried as he shouted. "The Cult of Gaia used their admin rights to locate us! Our Headquarters is..."

There was a sharp, loud explosion, and then silence. The notification ended.

"Well..." Jonah paused. "We did it."

And then Larry appeared in front of him, and Jonah knew for sure that all of them who made the attack run were now officially dead.