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their prey with digestive fluids, which reduce their victim’s innards to the consistency of soup. Then they suck out the soup, leaving only a desiccated husk.”

They AoE-ed the spiderlings in a maelstrom of fire, shadow, holy light, flashing blades, and raining arrows.

“The first time we did this,” said Ialdir, “Jargogle was scouting and the event triggered right on her head. I’ve never seen a kobold die so fast.”

[Raid][Jargogle]: Thank you for bringing that up

[Raid][Jargogle]: Perhaps we should talk instead about the time you pushed the big red button in the Mechanarium

[Raid][Jargogle]: The big red button that says Do Not Push

“I wanted to know what it did.”

[Raid][Jargogle]: What it did was cause you to die horribly in a gigantic explosion

[Raid][Jargogle]: Good times

When the last wave of spiders was vanquished, Arachnia herself began to descend slowly from the ceiling. She was a bloated red-and-black spider-demon thing, all dripping mandibles and pulsing eyes. Drew had spent a good amount of time this expansion with his face in her underbelly and it wasn’t pleasant down there.

“Everybody back,” called out Morag. “No pulling the boss until we’re ready.”

The valiant adventurers sprinted back and formed up again in the archway.

“You know the drill,” Morag went on. “DPS the adds, don’t stand on webs, if you get Royal Venom run away from the raid. When she goes up to the ceiling, we have to get the Sentinels down before she comes back or it’ll be an almighty clusterfuck. Drew, I’ll mark them up, and we’ll take one each. You get star, I’ll have the weird purple one that looks like a dildo.”

Drew nodded, even though nobody could see him. “Got it.”

“Prio star, then dildo. Ranged, you can attack the boss while she’s in the air, but if I see a single potshot before the Sentinels go down, I’m sending you into the naughty corner.”

[Raid][Ignatius]: Anything but the naughty corner!

This was where Drew would find out if he’d signed up with a bunch of noobs or not. They’d done okay up to now, but Arachnia could be tricky if the raid didn’t pull together. When everyone was ready, Ella ran forward, maces whirling, and Arachnia plopped down on top of her.

[Yell][Arachnia the Spider Queen]: Come in to my parlour, little flies.

[Yell][Morag]: That is a rubbish taunt!!!

Drew settled into the rhythm of the fight. There was much less cross talk than the last two bosses, because with flying webs and adds coming in and poison chaining through the raid, there was a lot going on and lot to keep track of. Drew focused on the job in front of him, letting instinct and muscle memory take over. He sort of liked this bit of the game. It was that sense you got when you were doing something you were good at and doing it well and not even having to think about it. And sharing that feeling with a group of people who were in the same zone. Mumble was busy with voices, but Drew had stopped worrying about who was who. Right now, it was all about information processing. His eyes and ears were full of data, and long experience had taught him how to filter it.

It was touch and go a couple of times, and Prospero got swarmed by spiderlings when the boss was at about five percent health, leading to a mad DPS race against Ella’s dwindling health and Solace’s dwindling mana pool. Drew’s heart was racing as he blew as many cooldowns as he could and pounded his rotation like he was actually hammering a giant spider goddess. When she dropped, there was stunned silence and then an eardrum-exploding roar across Mumble. He thought he heard Bjorn actually singing.

“Fucking well done team.” Morag.

“We are awe-some.” Bjorn, still in singsong mode.

Ialdir seemed to be breathing for the first time in ten minutes. “Oh man, when Prosp went down, I was like new pants for table five.”

“Um,” said Prospero, “I’m still kind of dead over here.”

Morag hustled over the many spider corpses and shattered egg bits to Prospero’s body and began to channel the divine energies that would bring him back from the dead. On the other side of the room, Ignatius was doing the same for Caius.

[Raid][Prospero]: Quality healing, Sol

[Raid][Solace]: *blushes* Thanks. Ella’s easy to heal

[Raid][Jargogle]: Well he is the best geared tank on the server

[Raid][Orcarella]: :P

“Can’t believe we didn’t wipe.” Someone? Caius or Prospero?

“Yeah,” agreed Morag. “It’s gone smoother, but the important thing is we kept it together.”

“And we had some really terrible luck.” Drew