by R J Triveri
“Stop me if you’ve heard this one before but…” She took in a deep breath and let her taunt fly. With high notes that wandered into the lower ranges near the end, the playful tune was as quick as it was pleasant. It lingered on each word as she let her finger continue to press down onto the field as she guided the building to her target. “Fuck your boss!”
Reflection sighed as the smile left her face and curiously watched what was about to go into action.
“Yes, I have heard those words before.”
***
Two things happened to the party in the next moment that they couldn’t explain. First, every imperfection in the field vanished, becoming a perfectly flat area with the end wall suddenly much, much closer at just over a hundred yards away. Only falling a few feet, it didn’t take the group long to collect themselves. At least, not until the second thing occurred a moment later. As if the heavens had opened after a tornado, a barn of red stone and wood came crashing down into empty air about fifty yards ahead of them and collided with the empty air with an ear-shattering crash of stone, wood, and livestock. Pixels erupted from the impact and sprinkled across the area in a haze of hay, havoc, and fragmenting animals.
“What is that!?” Dante half asked, half yelled as the falling pixels outlined a hulking beast of a creature.
Jagged edges peaked across every edge of the beast’s defined body. Like its bubble had been popped, the creature was slowly frosted over, coming back into their plane of sight as stone chickens and a rather large stone cow ran off towards the back of the floor. Unfortunately for them, hulking didn’t begin to describe its appearance. Easily filling the empty space in front of the group, in the space that it didn’t occupy with its bulk, hundreds of spiked, reaching hands waited to pull the group onto the creature’s sharp peaks.
“Trouble!” Mac quipped as he looked around. Every line on his face showed his growing alarm. “Where’d Nyx go?”
Dante growled as the beast raised one of its massive hands to strike. “She was right here, wasn’t she?”
“Saving her own hide, probably,” Allen grumbled darkly. “I can’t believe she’d abandon us!”
Out of the chaos, the voice of the missing woman rang out from the party’s chat.
(Party) Nyx Inerro: Seriously? You think so little of me?
Dante quickly responded.
(Party) Dante Rior: Nyx! Where are you?
(Party) Nyx Inerro: Doing my job. You’re all too slow and too easy to see. Just keep it busy for me. Okay?
Looking back at the creature, Dante shook his head. “Seriously? How long can we do that for?” His familiar barked in agreement as a massive hand came crashing down near the group.
“Rush!” With an agility unnatural to living things, Mac forced himself forward and collided with the two to push them back out of range of the attack. Dante and Allen hit the ground hard with the damage to their integrity, but no worse for wear than they would have been from that strike.
Damage Received: Dante Rior - 92% Integrity Remaining
Damage Received: Allen Lee - 94% Integrity Remaining
The hand rose again, slower than it had struck as glowing blue eyes took them in. The creature lifted a foot, and while the stony soil was still falling back onto the ground, it slammed forward, crashed into the ground, and sent the group flying with a shockwave that ran across the ground like a wave of stone. Mac couldn’t help them this time from their prone position as the creature roared out louder than before and fell to a knee.
Damage Received: Dante Rior - 86% Integrity Remaining
Damage Received: Allen Lee - 88% Integrity Remaining
Damage Received: Mac Null - 94% Integrity Remaining
“This is shit!” Allen yelled as he got back to his feet and readied himself to heal.
“Your words never cease to amaze me,” Mac joked as he flipped his claws into an attack position around his hands.
“We just need to hold it off and keep its attention,” Dante reminded them. “Nyx just has to make it!”
As a rush of healing invigorated their code, Dante was starting to doubt their odds as he looked at his new focus and aimed at the hulking chunk of glass. “Pyros!”
Skill cost extracted - Familiar skill: Rebuff triggered! Dante Rior: 83% Integrity Remaining
***
Thankfully, Nyx was nowhere on their damage count as she crept to the side of the arena. Holding the traits of Child of Shadows and Windwalker, her stealth wouldn’t break until she decided it should, or she did something stupid. Then factoring in Surefooted and her natural rogue’s lightfootedness, not even an earthquake could make her budge. Having gamed the system for traits for so long, Nyx was finally glad to be putting her skills to some good and not just min-maxing or spying. Not that there weren’t the natural benefits to doing such activities. Though her speed was slowed, she was still making good time as a wreath of fire crashed against the surface of the golem, and she watched Dante’s integrity take a hit.
(Party) Nyx Inerro: Don’t die on me, Dante. I saw that.
(Party) Dante Rior: Someone’s gotta draw it out. The others can handle it once I’ve got its attention.
(Party) Nyx Inerro: Don’t be a hero.
(Party) Allen Lee: He can be a hero if he wants to be! Someone’s gotta be DPS!
She sighed and stopped paying attention as a flash of light collided with the beast’s head. She couldn’t be distracted now. She was one with the shadows, hidden, deadly, sneaky as all hell, and she wasn’t going to let her reputation be purged of that now.
Another step, another moment, and she was sprinting like a shadow from a flashlight.
***
“Why isn’t it moving?” Dante asked as another fist came to call just outside of the range it could strike them from. A little worse for wear, Dante had wasted quite a bit of power trying to coax it from its spot.
“It hasn’t moved that other leg since it started the fight,” Mac pointed out its position. “I think that barn did some serious damage.”
“Providence, my lucky bastards,” Allen grinned as a thought of teasing the creature came to mind and passed swiftly as it tried to strike again. Without moving though, the group was still out of range of its hands. “To be fair, if you had a house dropped on you, I’m sure you’d be worse off.”
Their mirth was short lived as a fresh cracking noise echoed through the air. The sound of breaking glass shattered the silence completely, and the fingers on the large hand that had just crashed against the floor broke off into five projectiles that flung themselves forward, piercing arms, legs, and torsos alike.
Damage Received: Dante Rior - 63% Integrity Remaining
Damage Received: Allen Lee - 68% Integrity Remaining
Damage Received: Mac Null - 67% Integrity Remaining
A resounding chorus of curses spewed forth as the glass vanished and returned piece by piece to rebuild the golem’s shattered hand.
***
Barely avoiding chunks of flying crystal and stone from the impact points, Nyx was determined to make this a successful run. Whether or not it worked, she wasn’t going to lose people.
Not again. It won’t happen again, she assured herself. They aren’t just another test group. They need to make it.
Her confidence was rewarded as she stepped onto the platform on the farthest edge of the floor and looked around. Would it work simply by detecting her? Was there something she had to hit? She could see the back of the lumbering creature and fought back her urge to strike. Instead, she opted for her rogue-ly duty.
“Detect.”
And finally broke her shell of stealth as a ring of broad detection spread out in all directions, attempting to find that which was not obvious. As the colors shifted to show what was and wasn’t hidden, Nyx’s stomach lurched. She had made it to the other side, but the button was still far, far out of reach sitting squarely between two glass spikes on the golem’s back.
“Shit,” she mumbled to h
erself as she went back into stealth. I knew I should have worked on my acrobatics more.
(Party) Nyx Inerro: Found what we need, boys. Keep him busy and stay alive!
(Party) Dante Rior: Easier said than done, but we’ll make it work.
***
Dante sighed as he felt a rush of healing mend the wounds across his body and clothing. He grunted slightly at Nyx’s words and turned to the other two. “You heard the woman. Job’s still the same.”
Mac nodded but pulled off his gauntlets. “My distance attacks won’t cut it, and all that rough glass will murder my hands before I can do any real damage.”
Allen agreed in his own way. “Job’s all yours, Dante.”
“Gee, thanks,” he said with a mockingly large amount of gratitude. “More training for me.” This is going to suck, he said to himself and turned to Sedai. “Ready, girl?” His familiar yipped proudly and sat at his side as he prepped the big guns. A soft, brown glow grew inside of the sapphire focus as his attentions narrowed into a singular sliver to summon forth one of his most taxing spells. “Terra Maxima!”
Skill cost extracted - Familiar skill: Rebuff triggered! Dante Rior: 54% Integrity Remaining
Channel?
Why the hell not? he thought to himself and confirmed the channel.
Channel confirmed.
A rush of pain flowed through him and into the world as the focus and his familiar brought the spell to life with a roar of grinding, sparking, ripping stone.
All around him, the earth pulled itself free and converged in front of him like a spear. It gathered more and more mass until it became a reversed cone with its apexing edge pointed straight at his target. Slow on the draw and obvious as the broad side of a barn, he didn’t normally use the earth magics, but it was hard to match its raw strength.
Skill cost extracted: Dante Rior -52% Integrity Remaining
Drawing more and more energy into it, he felt additional ticks of integrity join from the channeling. Tick by tick, he was torn between relief and pain as strength built into the tiny mountain of a missile until he couldn’t hold it back anymore and launched it with such a force that it made even the air scream. In a rush of blues and browns, the pillar of rock found its target in the golem’s gaunt leg.
“Good,” Dante confirmed. Pain wracked his body as he looked forward and watched as the leg cracked and fractured before the weight-bearing knee shattered in a storm of shards and crystal. An inhuman cry echoed through the crystal maw of the beast, and the golem wobbled unsteadily. “Oh, shit!”
In the wrong direction.
(Party) Dante Rior: Nyx! Get out of the way if you’re back there. It’s coming down!
***
Perched on the creature’s back and using the spires to climb, Nyx was trapped.
(Party) Nyx Inerro: Shit!
The glass golem was falling too fast. Looking for any way out, she only had moments before ten tons of falling glass went from being a golem to being hundreds of thousands of glass shards. This wasn’t going to be good.
Shit, shit, shit! There was only one card left, one option. Opening her screens, Nyx did the only thing she knew would let her survive this as the creature came crashing down.
At least, she hoped it would.
A moment later, Nyx Inerro ceased to exist in the world of Incipere.
Nyx Inerro has left the party.
***
At first, no words came to Dante as he watched his first ally vanish from the world. Had something attacked her? His mind raced as Nyx’s integrity vanished from the party screen. Her death was quick, quicker than he thought it would be when someone died. A moment later, his voice found itself as the golem finished its seemingly slow fall into the back wall.
“Nyx!” Dante screamed as the sound of shattering glass echoed through the now-shrinking chamber. Glass and noise screamed as it cascaded from the collision. Like a wave of destruction, the golem shattered layer by layer, sending a tsunami of shards in a sharp wave of death towards anything within the nearby area behind it.
Then, it was over. The noise of shifting glass shards was no more. No one spoke. No one moved. No one believed what they had just seen, Dante most of all. His eyes betrayed him as his emotions spilled over and down his cheeks before vanishing into the dry air of the dungeon. For a moment, he couldn’t rip his eyes from the sea of glass the remains caused. He waited for some shifting, some movement, something to show it hadn’t happened.
Allen’s hand found his shoulder a moment later on his left, while Mac did the same on his right. The silence only broken by a soft whimper of a cry growing into a frustrated, primal scream of anger that echoed across the significantly smaller dungeon floor.
***
“They cheated! You cheated!” Reflection screeched, losing all semblance of humanity with her words as her form lost the smoothness that kept her looking like River. Instead, Reflection became a scattered creature similar to the glass golem the group had already fought on a smaller scale. “They had to press the button to disable the golem! Not use the wall to do their work! That shouldn’t have worked!”
River grinned, knowing full well combat was disabled in their area. Showboating was something she enjoyed enough to know when someone else was trying to posture. “You said make a move, and your thing was in the way. I can’t be held responsible for what happened.” Her eyes grew almost playful as she leaned back in the chair. River did her best not to look at the missing avatar for the fifth member of their party. She had to stay cool. There would be time for grieving when they were out of here.
Reflection grumbled and groaned as it scratched at its perfectly reflective, if not jagged, surface digging deep, jarring marks across its crystalline flesh. It took a few minutes of scratching and screeching, but the beast calmed itself and looked at River. “Leave.”
“I’d love to but someone is keeping me…”
Rudely and with a wave of Reflection’s glassy hand, River vanished in a shower of pixels.
Chapter Thirty-Four: Blink
We’re sorry for your wait. Your call is very important to us. Due to the massive load on our system, you are customer 10,746,114 in line for a representative.
From a screen inside of its temple, Unum watched and listened to all things within his sphere of influence. His champion had gathered a team with potential, a curious, dangerous potential, but they had been too slow.
The glitch known as Athos Aramis had been growing in power; his allies had gathered in Siris and were under the protection of a traitor. Soon, they’d be outside of his influence entirely. He would have lost.
It had sworn to not interfere directly in the world anymore, but there was no time anymore. Their quest could wait no longer now that their proof of power had been confirmed.
Loot Table modified! Quest Breadcrumb added as a 100% drop to Glass Guardian.
With its work completed, Unum returned to its vigil and waited for its outside connection to be established.
***
The Dungeon of Glass - Complete!
SIFS chat will be enabled in five minutes.
Party will be ejected unless the portal arch is used in the next hour.
5,000 experience points awarded.
Title gained: Glass Crasher
“Here…” River held her head as she groaned loudly. Anger grew at the cheap transport trick again, and her voice showed it in spades. “Damn it, Reflection! Warn a girl!”
Her abrupt arrival and the louder-than-necessary curse broke the funk of the group, and Dante did his best to pull himself together. She quickly noted his red eyes, but he hid it well as he smiled widely. “You’re alive!”
Allen smiled just a bit, and Mac moved besides the pair before putting a hand on each shoulder. His face was still as solemn as Dante’s had been. “Well, I guess that we did it.”
“No.” Dante shook his head and looked over to the pile of glass that began glowing softly. “We almost did.”
As Ri
ver moved to hug her friend, the golem’s remains shifted and became a glowing glass portal arch. In its wake, a few orbs of treasure remained glowing a soft blue. The pair embraced and comforted each other as the others shifted a bit.
“I’m getting the loot,” Mac said as he turned to leave the pair be.
“I’ll join you,” Allen added.
As the two moved out of earshot, Dante let a whimper escape, and turned to cry into his friend’s shoulder. Her defenses fell with his weeping, and she listened as her arms wrapped around her friend. “I screwed up, River. I really screwed up. I should have stopped her. We should have stuck together as a team. She’d still be here if we just stuck together.”
Hugging him a bit tighter, she leaned him closer to her shoulder. She wasn’t good with this, but it was Dante. She had to try. Making a soft, cooing sound, she tried to hush his tears, his sobs, away and soothe her friend as she spoke. “It wasn’t your fault. I was the one that dropped the house on it. It’s my fault if it’s anyone’s. This was my idea after all.”
He raised his head to look to River again. His face was red and wet, nothing like River had ever seen on him before. “I’ve never lost anyone before.”
“Neither have I,” River admitted quietly, but to her, it was bearable. Who was there for her to lose anymore but him? She could have dealt with any one of them dying to keep him safe, given time, but not him. “I’ve never seen one of our own die.” She hesitated for a moment before she continued her thought. “It wasn’t what I expected.”
He pulled back a bit and looked her in the eyes. His face was wet enough that he had to use his sleeve to clean it off. Careful of his gauntlets, he was glad that clothing didn’t stay wet more than a moment. His eyes swam with confusion, almost a surprised hurt, but it passed quickly as reality continued to set in. “We couldn’t beat a regular boss without losing someone, River. What chance do we have against something like him?”
