Two Percent

Two percent. The boss is at two percent and I can hear it in everyone's voice on the call, that tightness, like the whole raid is holding a tray of glasses across a wet floor. "Adds in ten," says Marnie, who runs the raid and has the voice of a woman who has done this six hundred times and is not going to get excited now. "Tanks, pick them up, everyone else stay on boss." I'm a healer. I've been a healer in this game for nine years. My job at two percent is to keep everyone standing for the next forty seconds and it is the most important I will feel all week. Six hours. We've been at this six hours. The first three were learning the fight, the mechanics, the bit in phase two where the floor falls away and you have to be on the right platform or you're gone. Wipes, wipes, wipes, someone always on the wrong platform, and it was Gareth, mostly, who is lovely and works nights and plays with his cat on his lap and cannot for the life of him tell left from right when there's fire on the screen. Then around hour four it clicked. We got to phase three for the first time and the call went dead silent, the good kind of silent, twenty-five adults not breathing. One percent. The adds are up. I'm spam healing the tank and watching the raid frames like a pilot watching instruments and everyone's green, everyone's green, everyone's green. "Nobody touch the levers," Marnie says. Very calm. "We don't need the levers. Just burn." There are levers. In phase three, on the edge of the platform, four levers that do things. We worked out earlier that you only need them if the adds get out of hand, and they're not out of hand, and pulling one at the wrong time makes the boss heal. "Gareth," Marnie says, still calm. "Gareth, what are you doing." "I'm going to the lever." "Don't go to the lever." "The adds are on me." "They're on the tank, Gareth, you're fine, come back."

I can see him on the frames. I can see his little dot moving to the edge of the platform. I'm healing him. I'm healing him with everything I've got, and he is fine, he is at full health, there is no reason on earth for him to be going to the lever. "Gareth." The boss is at less than one percent. Someone in the call, I think it's Tamsin, says "oh no" very quietly. He pulls the lever. The boss heals to fifteen. There's a sound that twenty-five people make when a six-hour night goes in the bin at the same instant, and it isn't a shout. It's more of a sigh. A big group sigh, like a stadium when the ball hits the post. We wipe. Of course we wipe. Fifteen percent with the adds up and everyone's cooldowns gone, there's nothing to do but die in a heap. The call is silent for a good five seconds. "Sorry," says Gareth. "It's fine," says Marnie, and the amazing thing is she means it. "Same time Thursday. We've got it now. We know we've got it. Gareth, next time you go near a lever I'm going to come to your house." Somebody laughs. Then somebody else. Then the whole call, twenty-five grown adults giggling like it's a sleepover, and Gareth's cat meows into his mic and that sets everyone off again. Thursday, then. I'm going to bed. Two percent. We had it. We absolutely had it.