Into the Light (Axe Druid Book 1)

by Christopher Johns

  “There’s no telling what comes next,” I said. “It could be anything. So let’s try to be fluid in here, and don’t get separated.”

  Everyone nodded, and after we finished resting, I did a final check of my stat screen to check how close I was to leveling.

  Pretty damn close actually. I think a few more mobs and I’ll hit level 9.

  It took Jaken and I both to be able to open the door far enough for us to get in. There were holes in the ceiling here and there letting the midday sun shine through. The entryway was grand, or at least it would have been if the place wasn’t in a state of decay. The place was clean-ish. There was no dust, no dirt on the carpets. The room was barren of any kind of loving touch. A burnt and charred painting hung from a pillar in the center of the grand stair. It looked like a family but was too destroyed to really give much more than that impression. To the right and left of the staircase, tables lined the walls with trinkets and candelabras still polished and neat. Two doors, one on each side of the stairs, led to other rooms. A quick hand count showed that the right hallway was where we would begin our search of the place.

  We crept around the staircase and through the door. The hallway was a little dark, but thanks to a light spell that Balmur had decided to pick up as a distraction, the others could see well enough. We walked slowly down the hall to the next room. It looked like it was the kennel area, likely where the Kennel Master would have been found when he was alive. After searching for a few minutes and turning up nothing for our efforts, we made our way back to the previous room, then down the left doorway.

  This door led to a kitchen area with staff still inside—and undead. The Head Chef, who ironically had no head, worked in the back of the room over a cauldron. His head watched over his stirring from a shelf behind him looking over the kitchens. The place actually smelled like they were preparing some kind of disgusting food. I gagged, fighting the bile rising in my stomach for a moment. Racks of moldy bread were scattered between tables, and the oven in the corner was still hot, as if even in their in death they had to cook.

  I was so fixated on the creep in the back that I failed to see three of the Chef’s Help that came at us with butcher knives. One held a rolling pin, which would have been funny had he not tried to bash my skull in with it.

  The level 7 chef and his posse of level 6s didn’t pose too much of a threat. Although, one did manage to damage Balmur with the rolling pin as he dodged a knife to the throat. We killed one of the help and it granted me thirty EXP.

  We took care of the room and deemed that there was nothing worth collecting in here either. The chef gave me thirty-five EXP after he died though, so that was nice. We searched for secret doors, cellar entrances, and whatnot to no avail.

  I healed Balmur with Regrowth, and we moved back to the central room. Once we came to the top of the stairs, we decided to go left this time. There was a set of glass doors, broken and weathered from the years and animals, that led to a set of stairs and a larger courtyard with a throne in the center of the overgrown grass and vegetation. The place looked abandoned, but we would check it out when we got to it.

  To our left, we found a series of halls and rooms. The hallways looked like they were once well lit and lavish in decorations but had fallen to disrepair. The floors and small side tables decorating the sides of the hall still appeared to be clean and well managed. There were four doors along this hallway and one set of double doors at the end. The first door to our left opened as we approached and out stepped an Undead Butler level 8. He was dressed smartly in what looked like tattered black slacks and a black doublet.

  It looked up, saw us, then lifted its hand, and a blast of cold shot our direction.

  “Caster!” someone shouted redundantly.

  Jaken took the blast to his shield, but even without a direct hit, it sucked fifteen percent of his life away. He glowed red briefly like he had before, and the door on the other side opened and out poured two Zombie Maids level 7.

  He set his feet, and they were on him instantly. I cast Regrowth on Jaken and brought my great dagger to bear on the Butler Mage from behind. Balmur shoved past me and set to work, getting the more obvious flanking damage so I let him do his job. The thing’s health dropped quickly between my one stab and Balmur’s dozen accompanied by arrows courtesy of Bokaj.

  Yohsuke decided to go after one of the Maids to Jaken’s right flank, so I went for the other. By the time I got there, they had managed a few swipes at him with knives I hadn’t seen them carrying. I came in quickly, and rather than risk doing so from a distance, I put my hand up to my opponent’s head and cast Lightning Bolt. Her health dropped by fifty percent, and I got a notification saying it was a critical hit. I swiped it away quickly and pressed my advantage. She was stunned now, and between my stabs and Jaken’s slashes, she fell to the floor dead… again. I turned to see the Butler and the other Maid had been dispatched already. Not too much loot-wise, but I wouldn’t complain about the thirty EXP from each of them.

  The rooms didn’t have much. A few silvers here and there—and the two rooms after that had fuck all—so we decided to go into the next available area.

  We finally reached the double doors at the end of the hall. Thinking it would be a shit show inside, we piled up on each side with Jaken in the middle to grab whatever could be waiting. Yohsuke stood opposite me at the door on the right with Balmur behind him, and I had Bokaj behind me with an arrow nocked and waiting. On a three count, we opened the door.

  The doors opened to a grand ballroom with tables lined up like a banquet would be held at any moment. Pearly pillars of stone climbed to the ceiling with its starry blackness. The grand windows in this room seemed to be well-preserved glass murals that depicted scenes of knights fighting great Dragons with glowing swords and hunters felling bucks with impossibly huge horns.

  We began to shuffle into the room in awe of the tremendous amount of attention to detail each window held.

  They were so beautiful, and I couldn’t stop staring. I couldn’t bear the thought of having to look away, or I might miss something interesting—which was probably why I took a sudden twenty-five percent hit to my HP.

  “Archer!” Yohsuke called, turning to fire an Astral Bolt, his version of my Frozen Dagger. The projectile hit the skeletal archer on the head and knocked it from its perch behind us about sixty feet up. Between the spell and the fall damage, the thing was dead… Well, dead-er, at least. I didn’t get to see its level, so I guessed it must have been on the lower end. I’d have to check the EXP notifications later to see.

  More archers were posted along the walls, again about sixty feet up, and they began to fire at us. Those of us who were close by hid behind Jaken with his shield. Yohsuke and Bokaj hid behind a pillar to our left and began to return fire. It seemed like easy pickings for these damned Skeletons at the moment while we were pinned down.

  Balmur disappeared under a table behind us. I wasn’t sure if he was hiding or trying to stealth to a better vantage point, but he could handle himself.

  “Hey, can you walk us to the table over here to our right?” I pointed to the desired location. “It might provide better cover.”

  Jaken had been taking minor damage from shots going under his shield or over top. He wasn’t looking too good; though the shots weren’t critical, they were numerous.

  “On three.” A fresh wave of arrows rushed our way, and he snarled, “THREE!”

  Keeping his shield up, we moved to the table, and I lifted it over us and in front of his shield. It wasn’t perfect, and it was unwieldy as hell, but it was a quick fix until we got our problem solved. I handed it to Jaken, who took it by the only post in it at the center and watched as he sat it down carefully. I cast Regrowth on him, and he nodded in appreciation. Tmont grumbled behind me, probably pissed she couldn’t be more help.

  I heard a clatter of bone and looked out to see Balmur on the platform to my right where a skeletal archer had been. He whipped out a small throwing hatche
t and sent it spinning across the way into the head of another archer about to take a potshot at our friends behind the pillar. Then the the cloaked figure stepped back and dissolved into shadow—emerging behind the Skeleton to his right on the next platform.

  Oh, I would be asking about that shit. That must have been the ability he was talking about! But while he was up there, he was a sitting duck if the other archers realized what was going on.

  “Hey, Yoh!” I shouted to grab my friend’s attention. “Care to raise some hell?!”

  “I thought you’d never ask, puto!” He grinned savagely. “What’s the plan?”

  “Back to back old west style, baby.” I laughed and saw the idea take hold. “Sling some spells with me. Bokaj, care to provide some cover?”

  “Oh. You know it, broham.” He just laughed and started to fire faster as my brother came to join me.

  “Count of three, you come over here, Yoh,” I looked up at the current stock of fuckers firing at us. “One,” I looked back to my friend, “twooo… three!”

  Yohsuke booked it from his position of cover with Bokaj providing cover for him, and I caught him as he slid behind the table.

  “Jaken, move your bacon,” I commanded. “We have a Rogue to cover, bro.”

  “Y’all are crazy. I like that about you guys.” The man picked up the table easily and started to walk forward slowly.

  “Sling ‘em if you got ‘em!” I cast one icy blade after another into the archers coming into view as Bokaj provided cover fire from behind. I spent five MP per casting, but there was no cool down for it, so I could fling them accurately until I ran out of mana.

  As we moved further in, we had to stop and rest to recover some mana We only worked until we got down to the fifty percent mark on MP. Tmont laid down and harrumphed loudly, still kind of pissy she hadn’t killed anything. Yohsuke recovered his a lot quicker than I did thanks to his high wisdom stat. Good man, he knew his way around his caster limitations well. Balmur disappeared from his hunt up above and reappeared under a table beside us to rest. After about ten minutes of rest, we were ready to go again.

  While we fought through the hail of arrows, my mind wandered a bit. The hall was huge, at least the size of two football fields, making me think that whoever owned the place must have partied hard—the rich greedy bastard. Then again, I could be wrong. Being in a fight with boney assholes raining pointy death on you and your friends seemed to have that effect. Kind of like the fog of war, but—you know—sharp and somehow shittier.

  After another rest, we made it to the end. There was a throne with one final Skeleton there. It hadn’t seemed to notice us yet, or maybe it just didn’t care, who knows. I was at about half mana, and Yoh was well on his way to being fully recovered. We had collected Balmur and Bokaj on our scamper to the throne. The Rogue had gone back after the hellish rain stopped to collect his throwing hatchet.

  “I only have this one so far,” he grumbled as we all chuckled.

  “What do you guys think?” Bokaj asked after a moment. “Boss fight?”

  “Seems like it, although he should have aggro’d us already since we defeated all his goons,” Jaken observed.

  “How are you on arrows bud?” I wondered. “You laid down a lot of hate.”

  “I am so good on arrows, man,” Bokaj said. “I bought out the fletcher and the armory. It only cost me around ten gold. Not bad, I’d say.”

  “Damn, bro,” I said in awe. That had to be a hell of a lot of arrows.

  “What say you fire one of those arrows into mister important up there on his throne?” Jaken pointed.

  “Happy to oblige, kind sir!” Bokaj went to pull an arrow out of his quiver at his hip, but I stopped him. I wasn’t topped off on mana, and I didn’t want to go in half cocked to fight this guy. After a few minutes, I nodded to him, and he grinned again.

  Bokaj nocked an arrow and took aim. He released, and the arrow sailed off to connect to the chin of the lone Skeleton on the throne.

  I don’t know why, but the knot that had been forming in my stomach the entire time we had been fighting our way through a hail of arrows tightened. A sense of unease that I hadn’t felt when we entered the ruins clung to my mind, and I couldn’t shake it.

  The ground shook slightly, and the rattle of bone seemed to sound hundreds of times louder than the fall of the Skeleton in front of us. I looked around, and the bones of the fallen skeletal archers that we had destroyed were rolling and careening toward us.

  “Incoming!” I shouted. Jaken flipped the table, and the party grouped behind it swiftly. The bones flew so fast that the ones hitting the top of the table shattered and chipped away at the wood on contact.

  “Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu,” we all yelled, in unison.

  Since coming here, this was one of the craziest things I had seen, and I could turn into animals and throw lightning at will. AND I HAD A TAIL! SHIT.

  The bones piled into a group, then began to swirl around like a tornado of death.

  Bones collected and melded together, fused into great limbs and the body of a beast. As the head finished, we all came to the realization that this was probably going to be hard.

  Really hard.

  There before us, in all its twenty-five-foot glory, stood a Bone Dragon level 18. Even with half its health gone, this was going to be stupidly hard. I could only assume that it was only at half health because we had gone through and killed all the enemies used to finish it.

  “Spread out!” shouted Bokaj. He unleashed hell on the beast’s head and moved to the pillar to his left. The Dragon’s health bar barely budged, and it swung its massive head toward the assault. It roared and shot its head forward trying to snap at the Ranger. It missed; no surprise there with his high dexterity, but still, this was about to suck.

  An inhuman bellow resonated from Jaken, who had stepped in front of me, arms wide and crouched slightly. Spittle flying from his mouth and a red aura encompassing his body, he roared at the beast before him in challenge.

  “Come and get me, you boney bastard!” The Dragon began to stomp his way, and Jaken began the delicate dance of a tank to position the asshole’s face away from the party. Naturally, a good tank would keep his healer in line of sight; that way they could heal, buff, and assist the tank in staying alive. He did not do this. As soon as the damned thing went to take a bite, he dove out of the way and away from the assistant healer—me.

  Yousuke and I both brought our hands up and cast a spell apiece. He sent an Astral Bolt sailing into the Dragon’s back, and I sent Lightning Bolt careening into its chin. Neither of our spells seemed to do much; they brought the creature’s health down about as much as four arrows from Bokaj. Must be some resistance to piercing damage and magic. Which meant it would have some resistance to slashing damage as well, I groaned in my head.

  “This is going to take too much,” I shouted. “Anyone have any ideas?”

  “Yeah,” came Balmur’s voice from behind me. He was almost too sneaky. I flinched and tried to glance in his direction.

  His eyes were on the surrounding walls and ceiling.

  “What’s up, man?”

  “We’re thinking too small,” he explained. “Look at the way the room is set up. The columns, the ceiling—think Nintendo. Let me and Jaken run distraction. You get Yoh and Bokaj to start damaging columns to drop on him. Go.”

  He nodded at me, then sprinted to Jaken’s side to slap at the Dragon’s chin with his twin axes. The Dragon roared again and tried to bite the Dwarf but only ended up tossing Jaken with its head.

  “Yohsuke, Bokaj!” I shouted to get their attention. “Go for the closest column to him and try to drop it on him!”

  Both immediately started firing what they could at the column in front of the beast. It didn’t look like we were making any progress, but our tank unknowingly helped by tossing Balmur out of the way when the Dragon speared its head forward. Boney fangs sank into the column, and the monster pulled mightily. I used several Ice Knives on th
e ceiling above it as he pulled, and the bricks gave way.

  The portion of the ceiling held up by the column crashed down loudly onto the Bone Dragon’s back, and I heard splintering. The beast’s health dropped significantly; it looked to be a little below forty percent, and the ceiling in the area was a little unstable.

  Maybe we could continue dropping the ceiling on him?

  I didn’t get to try it out right away as a bone tail came rocketing my way. I sailed a good bit before hitting the ground and rolling to a stop twenty-five feet later. I was at about a quarter of my health. I groaned and cast Regrowth on myself. My health started to go back up slowly. I sat up and surveyed what was going on.

  Jaken was panting and looked a little tired. I could see he had lost health and was healing himself as he went. The others were trying to run distraction duty. Bokaj was steadily releasing arrows at the damaged ceiling, trying to drop more bricks onto the boss. It was working, albeit slowly.

  Much too slowly for us to survive this, so I decided to try something. “Run from him!”

  I took my Beginner’s Axe and equipped it, then sprinted up the main aisle at the Dragon and swung at the damaged column by its left forepaw with all my might. Yohsuke had been trying to get it to crumple with his magic, but the damn Dragon kept buffeting him with ghostly gusts of wind. The base of the column was cracked and about half strength I guessed—I hoped.

  The axe shattered on impact, splintering the column, and the crushing weight of the ceiling finished my job for me. The ceiling above the Dragon began to cave in as I continued my mad dash across the aisle under the Dragon’s gaping maw.

  The falling debris fell onto the beast, almost all at once, and the weight of the stones caved the floor under the pile of bones. The floor kept going, quaking and trembling, threatening to give way for another few seconds. One portion of the floor had begun to give up the ghost as I passed over, and I almost fell—to what could have easily been—my death. The Bone Dragon’s health was almost completely gone now, and we decided to do the safe thing and try to rain down hellfire from above. Yohsuke and myself fired Astral Bolt after Frozen Dagger until it no longer moved. The notification screen that erupted into my face was one I wasn’t expecting to see.