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stand there mashing your rotation like little noobs.”

Morag: “Keep it together, we’re not wiping this yet.”

[Raid][Heurodis]: you look at your boss mods you see who has the debuffs you go where you are meant to go its not difficult.

“You can rant after the fight, Bjorn.”

“I’m just going to sit here and weep.”

Things didn’t go too badly in the second phase. People stayed out of the blades and handled the curses more or less okay. There was still a lot of raid damage and Caius went down just on the transition to phase three.

[Raid][Caius]: Bugger

[Raid][Heurodis]: weeping

Phase three was a DPS race. These indestructible ghosts kept spawning, and the trick was to kill the boss before there were too many to handle. Glory Through Pain gave a really big damage buff but at the cost of a really nasty DoT, and with a healer and two DPS down, there was no way the balance was going to work.

“Okay,” said Morag. “Hail Mary strat. All DPS get Glory. We’ll see if we can keep you alive.”

They couldn’t keep them alive.

Ialdir—pet-based noob that he was—was first to go, followed by Ignatius, then Solace, then Jargogle. Which left Morag and Ella and Dave desperately flailing at Vilicus while a rising tide of anguished spectres came forth to devour them.

“Aaaand that’s a wipe,” said Morag as the spirits overwhelmed her.

Next thing Drew knew, Ella was a pile of crumpled limbs and armour of the floor. He released and respawned outside the entrance to Crown of Thorns, next to Dave and Morag, whose ghosts were flying back to the instance. He swooped after them and gave four hundred gold to the nice man with the anvil who was waiting just inside to beat his armour back into shape.

Then he hit num lock and steered Ella through the winding empty halls of CoT, past Kelebos’s gate and Thornheart’s grove, up Arachnia’s web and down Vilicus’s tower. The guild was eating fish outside the torture chamber.

Mumble was kind of quiet, and Drew wondered how this would go. Wiping was part of raiding, but people tended to take it badly, especially the first wipe of the night.

Morag: “Well, not the worst effort.”

A spluttering noise down Mumble.

“I know you’ve got stuff to say, Bjorn, and you can say it, as long as you use your inside voice.”

“Sorry, I’m just in an angry space because we should not be making these mistakes. I’m not blaming anybody, but people should not be dying from Flesh Curse. Especially not if they’re me. Prospero got cursed, only the ranged stacked.”

[Raid][Solace]: Sorry, I was slow. There was a lot of damage coming in so I couldn’t stop healing.

“If people were where they were meant to be, they wouldn’t need healing.”

[Raid][Jargogle]: Once again, Bjorn, this is harder when you are in melee. You have to run around the tainted blood.

[Raid][Jargogle]: And that means you get everywhere more slowly.

[Raid][Jargogle]: And before you say anything, my sprint was on cooldown.

“Okay.” Morag. “Let’s have the ranged in a bit closer to make it easier for melee to cover the distance.”

Drew wasn’t sure if he should say anything. The part of him that had spent three years with Anni was frustrated, just out of habit really. The deal had always been that when something like this happened, there was a rousing chorus of “we shouldn’t be wiping on this” before everybody’s performance got put under a microscope. The system worked well enough to get server firsts, and while he was pretty sure it wasn’t right here, he wasn’t sure the softly-softly approach was going to work either. The truth was, the melee should have been sharper and that was that. But everyone was acting like it was the whole raid’s responsibility.

Then Drew heard himself say, “I’ll try to position him better as well. I’m a bit rusty.”

Where had that come from?

He braced himself to be called a noob or told to stop making excuses.

“Cool,” said Morag. “Right. We’re going again. Ranged stay closer, and everybody stay alert. We’re taking too much avoidable damage.”

The raid finished their fish and their buffing and got into position.

A readycheck popped up.

Drew was still a bit dazed, but he clicked Okay.

“Three, two, one, pull.”

And Ella once again hefted her maces and threw herself into battle against the vile torturer Vilicus.

[Yell][Vilicus]: Immortality is found through pain. Come, friends, and I will make you immortal.

Things seemed to go more smoothly this time. People’s health bars were a lot, well, healthier, and everybody made it to phase three alive.

“To