It’s today. Standing in the sunlight in the floating castle’s main courtyard, Stheno hugged Yui close. In the center of the open ground, mithril and platinum chains glittered in the sun, binding dragonshards, vials of uncanny blood, a bone from every youkai race, and all the myriad artifacts the lords of Aincrad had gathered to link to the smoke-gray box of Beniryuu’s unearthly creation; what she now knew was called a desktop computer. If they’re coming, they’re coming soon.
If. Her visions – her hopes – said yes. Common sense, though….
The embodiment of common sense huffed a breath behind her; Queen Euryale, regal and glittering in her snake-laced crown and fighting armor. “We should be on the battlefield.”
“Which one?” Stheno said dryly. “The air war near Swiftwater Pass? Much as I might wish to deal a lesson to Breland and Thrane at once, airship sailors are hard to target with gaze weapons, and too far above for my magic to easily strike at the elemental bindings that keep them aloft. The shifter raiders out of the Eldeen Reaches? We should capture some of them alive, if we can; their assaults are coordinated too well with the airship attacks to split our forces. They must be communicating with at least the Brelish airships, somehow. If we could block that we might give our forces breathing room. Or did you wish me to haunt the purified lands in Aincrad? Where Karrnath swears their priests would never venture… yet somehow, we see more and more undead arising, despite all our efforts to cleanse earth of all taint.”
Her sister indulged in a rare roll of eyes; Euryale knew as well as she did petrification couldn’t touch the undead. “Our spies have at least uncovered that Aundair’s promised the shifters trade benefits. And more importantly, less border raids.”
For some stupidity, only a player’s facepalm sufficed. Stheno dragged a breath past her splayed fingers, then deliberately lifted her hand away. “And the shifters fell for it.”
Crossover Queen's Creative Chaos 
Stupid is as stupid does and if stupid weren’t such good friends with Evil then Evil would never get anything done because Evil would never be able to get minions and would spend all its time fighting itself.
LikeLiked by 4 people
“Sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice.”
LikeLiked by 2 people
Anticpation Rising…
LikeLiked by 3 people
I need to get back in to Log Horizon! Thank you for the reminder!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Welp,, no shortage of hotspots to deal with when our intrepid Heroes arrive. Though I wonder how well they’ll make the transition to actual blood and guts combat. Some at least were quite prepared to kill another intelligent being, but things are full fdelity reality now, not pixel blood….
LikeLiked by 2 people
Brave new world here we come…
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yui and Asuna and Kirito. Yes.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Thank you.
Bouncing in my seat. Happy to read this.
LikeLiked by 1 person
*For some stupidity, only a player’s facepalm sufficed*
This is my favorite part of this scene!
The cultural fusion already began! the people of that world are doomed!
LikeLiked by 5 people
Maybe, maybe not. I feel like the fact that they’re pulling from an almost exclusively Japenese pool of people means that it’ll be less likely to have “Hold my beer” moments involving hacked Draconic and magical experiments.
…on the other hand if Undead are Evil by their very nature you might see the development and deployment of a magical nuke to deal with them. One with fallout that purifies the land of evil taint and curses instead of deadly radiation.
LikeLiked by 3 people
/it’ll be less likely to have “Hold my beer” moments involving hacked Draconic and magical experiments./
Outside of Argo and the collective Kirigaya clan anyway.
LikeLiked by 3 people
I, er, wouldn’t count on that given the stack-of-players stunt in ALO canon.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Oh there will certainly be lots of hacked draconic and magical experiments and not just from them.
But I think you misunderstand what I mean by “Hold my beer” moments. I’m not talking about stuff like they did with the psi-wasp hive. No, that’s desperation and do or die where you actually need something crazy and out of the box that maybe hasn’t been tested as much as it should.
“Hold my beer” is a drunk 300 pound dude deciding to do an Olympic gymnastics routine on roller skates because he’s drunk and it seems like a good idea at the time. There’s no actual need to do something so risky and unsafe, but you’re gonna do it anyway because you’re drunk and feel like it.
LikeLiked by 4 people
Um… Japanese society is traditionally much more permissive of stupid drunk people than US society is. Stupid drunk people in groups, even. As long as you do it under socially permitted conditions…..
LikeLiked by 4 people
This. I suspect far MORE “Hold my ale” than Eberron has ever seen before.
LikeLiked by 4 people
The undead are evil but sometimes reasonable to deal with. They just need to apply some edged logic to the king of Karrnath.
LikeLike
It’s a fluffy doom? Full of tropes?
LikeLike
Another epic fantasy musical theme piece… Kiseki no Umi https://g.co/kgs/83T8Tz
LikeLiked by 1 person
/I, er, wouldn’t count on that given the stack-of-players stunt in ALO canon./
Crazy stunts like that tend to happen a little more often when you know you aren’t going to die from it.
However all the ISOTers heading for Aincrad at least presumably understand (or very shortly will understand) that this is a real place and death is a thing.
LikeLiked by 2 people
That may actually amp up the crazy for some.
LikeLike
/That may actually amp up the crazy for some. /
True, one is never able to filter out all the crazy from a society, even a semi-selective expedition/exodus like this event is.
It’ll be just one of the reoccurring headaches that Sakuya will have to deal with (while experiancing an imagine spot of perforating the idiots repeatedly with her hair-tendrils).
LikeLiked by 2 people