by Charles Dean
“You . . . You son of a--” she managed to shout before succumbing to the illness and vomiting everywhere herself. She braced herself on her knees and joined the Blood Guards in throwing up everywhere. “What the-- BLERGG!!”
Lucas began channeling his second spell while she was busy vomiting uncontrollably, not wanting to take the fact his initial trap had been successful for granted. He had basically decided that she was flagged as a boss, which meant that she would have mechanics in place to stop her from being rendered completely useless in such a fashion.
“In the name of the Blood Goddess!” the Blood Mage cried out as he completed a spell. Some of the blood that had been spilled from the golems was suddenly pulled up into the air and began coalescing in the shape of two swords. The two bloody weapons hung suspended for a brief instant as the spell finished and then stabbed down toward the headmistress, leaving long horizontal slashes across her back.
The pain seemed to break her from her nausea, and after retching up one last massive load of vomit, she straightened back up. Lucas got a good look at her face then, and she looked miserable. Her face was even paler than his, tears were running from the corner of her sunken eyes, and she looked absolutely livid. A long twirling snake that spun from her ring wound itself around her body once and then plunged headfirst into the closest guard’s chest. It seared straight through the guard and then dove into the second and third in the same fashion, scorching its way through flesh and bone and armor alike with ease. There was a slight pause after it exited the third man, and then all three exploded as if a bomb had gone off inside of them. Blood and guts and gore rained down around her as the flaming snake made its way to the Blood Mage and finished off the last of Lucas’s assistants.
“Is that the best you can do?” she asked, wiping the bloody vomit away from her mouth.
“Not even close,” Lucas said as he finished Red Ice Prison.
She hadn’t noticed, likely due to the fact she was busy emptying the contents of her stomach onto the ground and then retaliating in a fit of rage, but the fluids spilled around her had begun glowing green. Whether it was the remains of the summons she had detonated, their vomit or her own, the trap took shape and wrapped around her, covering her from the neck down in hard red ice. The remainder of the bloody bits shot up high into the air, where they took the form of ten giant bloody icicles.
“Let me go!” she shouted, struggling inside her prison. “You think it’s over?!” I’m not dead yet!”
Lucas began channeling Reap the Unworthy in earnest. While experimenting with his spells, one of the things he had learned was that he could control where the chains were shot if he tried really hard. One of the other things he had learned was that he could use Red Ice Prison to support other objects, much the way he did with Force Shield. The deadly icicles weren’t really floating but were being supported by thin pillars of ice--and those are exactly what he targeted. Chains shot out from his chest, and the skeletal claws attached to their ends smashed through the frozen supports, freeing the icy knives and dropping them toward his encased enemy.
Although he had frozen her in a thick block, the ice was melting at a rapid rate, giving her a small bit of room to move. Lucas would have loved to have cast something else, possibly even recasting Red Ice Prison to make sure that she was held in place, but he was stuck channeling the scythe attack.
In the short period of time it took for the icicles to reach their target, the headmistress finally freed herself enough so that she could rock forward while still confined within the Red Ice Prison. She managed to avoid what might have been a fatal blow by getting her head out of the way, but four of the frozen daggers stabbed into her back and pierced through her.
“Freaking delinquent!” she screamed. As if fueled by her anger, the flames surrounding her body began growing, and the blood imprisoning her actually began to boil as it melted away.
The final part of the spell went off, but it was too late, and the giant scythe only cut a horizontal line through the air.
“You honestly think you’ve got what it takes to kill me?!” the headmistress shouted at him.
No, at the moment, I don’t. He furtively looked around, quickly taking in his surroundings. Time to run again, I guess, Lucas thought, planning out his next attack. But before I go . . . He turned his focus to the remainder of blood that she was currently evaporating by expelling large blue flames from her body and channeled Endless Thirst, pulling it toward him. She had already cauterized her own wounds with her flames, so there wouldn’t be any more blood coming from her, and he had to make sure he could take advantage of what had already been spilled. His health surged back to over 80% of his bar, and then he took off sprinting toward a copse of trees situated along the edge of the building.
“So, now you run? Don’t you think it’s too late for that? Do you think I’m going to let you live now?! When a student misbehaves, he gets expelled. When a man misbehaves, he gets executed. You should know that better than anyone, Mr. Public Executioner!”
She cast yet another spell, and this time a massive serpent roiled after him. Unlike the smaller pythons she had used before, this one was shaped like an Eastern dragon, something that he might have seen at a Chinese New Year’s celebration, and it was coming straight for him.
“You messed with my people! You should have known your death was imminent!” Lucas taunted, acting like he wasn’t currently the one running and looking for options. He had the health to kill her with direct spell damage since she was already injured, but as her magic attacks built up without any end to them in sight, he didn’t want to risk trying to go toe to toe with the Arcanum juggernaut. He taunted her because he now knew for certain he couldn’t risk her stopping his people. They would be like lambs to the slaughter under the might of her spells. She was, without a doubt, an endgame-level boss. She had already taken more damage than would ever be needed to kill a Level 100 player.
“You cocky little hoodlum,” the headmistress snarled.
Lucas began channeling another Reap the Unworthy as he ran and activated it the moment that he passed between the first set of trees, only allowing himself to be rooted into place once he was out of her direct line of sight. He repeated the spell two more times as he moved deeper and deeper into the grove and then ducked behind the trunk of a massive tree. His racial speed had given him the time needed to reach the spot and hide, but he didn’t think it was going to be enough. If she was a dungeon master like he suspected she was--based on how easily she appeared to track him when he entered her building with Viola--then she already knew exactly where he was hidden. Truthfully, he was only relying on the tree blocking whatever new scorching doom she would send at him.
“So, this is where you want to die? In the middle of some trees next to the political science and social studies building?” She scoffed as she rounded the corner and flung another dragon made of orange flames at him. “I couldn’t think of a more appropriate impromptu grave for you.”
Lucas pushed away from the tree just before the flaming reptile transformed the tree that he had hidden behind into a large chunk of standing firewood. “Yeah, no. This is where you die.” He smiled at her as he finished channeling yet another Reap the Unworthy.
“Try me,” she snidely remarked. “Let me show you why not a single one of the nobles in the Imperium has ever taken what is mine.” Two more flaming dragons shot out of her hand and began circling around her in anticipation of his next attack. He could tell she knew that he had something up his sleeve; he was just hoping she didn’t know what.
Thirty boney-clawed chains suddenly erupted from his chest and shot out in all directions.
“That attack? Are you seriously using the same trick?” she said with a derisive laugh as she dodged the claw headed straight for her.
“It’s not about the spell; it’s about how you use it,” Lucas replied as he patiently waited for the spell to progress. Over twenty of the claws had buried themselves in the stonework
of the academy building and the surrounding trees, and once they reach their full length, they began pulling. The sudden force violently yanked Lucas straight toward the headmistress and then toppled over seven large trees chained behind him. As he had run into the copse earlier, he had used the giant horizontal slash to partially cut through various trees, leaving them just on the edge of collapse, but still upright. Now, when the ethereal chains activated, it provided the last bit of force needed to completely fell the already-teetering trees.
The headmistress threw out her Fire Dragons toward the large trees, desperately turning them to embers and ashes, but even the near-volcanic flames weren't enough to stop them completely. Burnt husks of charred wood and fiery brands rained down upon her until even she couldn’t keep up and several massive logs slipped through her defenses and crashed into her. The headmistress went flying through the air past Lucas toward the building and then tumbled to the ground several feet away from him. Finally allowing himself to be rooted in place by the unfinished spell, Lucas watch as the ghost of a massive female Blood Guard appeared. Her haunting laughter filled his ears as she lifted the scythe and swung it around.
There was a loud, shrill scream as the ghastly blade connected, but the blow still wasn’t enough to finish the headmistress.
“Stop!” she pleaded desperately, reaching up toward him as if begging him for mercy. “Please . . . Please spare me!”
Lucas brought his staff around and used it like a club, slapping her hand away from him. There was no way he was going to be fooled into letting her attack him again. He stepped forward, brought his staff around and slammed it down onto the Fire ring she had been using to channel her spells, shattering both it and her fingers and ending her ability to cast. Lucas then summoned a Blood Guard.
“I can’t,” he replied with an indifferent shrug.
She finally seemed to realize that the fight was over, and her body deflated just slightly. “Why not? We could . . . We could work together! You’ve seen how powerful I am. I’ll sign contracts. I’ll expose Edmund. I’ll work for you, so please, please don’t!”
“Wait . . . the academy. Where is its deed?” Lucas asked, realizing that with her help he could save himself a lot of time.
“It’s in a safe right under the floor where I usually sit for tea. My stuff, my spells, everything--it’s all down there.”
Lucas nodding approvingly. “Good. That makes this easier.” He looked over at the Blood Guard he had just summoned and said, “Chop off her head.”
“WHAT?!” she yelled. “NO!! You--!”
“I didn’t say I’d spare you,” Lucas said, shaking his head at the pitiful woman. He began channeling Red Ice Prison as he crouched down next to her while the Blood Guard pulled out his sword and lined up the swing. “And besides, you might not know this . . . but I can’t be the nice guy. I’m the villain of this story.” He gave a nod to the Blood Guard, and a prison of her own blood formed around the headmistress and held her in place as the summoned swordsman swung his heavy blade down, chopping into her neck. Unfortunately for her, while the first cut was enough to stop her from screaming, it took him five or six more swings to end her life and fully remove her head from her body.
Once the decapitated head rolled free, Lucas grabbed it by her long blonde braid and used it to carry her severed head back toward the front of the academy and his people. He imagined that the group there might be struggling if they had been counting on help from healers as he had, but that didn’t turn out to be the case at all. He arrived to a scene straight out of a grotesque horror flick, but one which brought a large smile to his face, and he suddenly understood why most people in this fantasy world would have rejected the Blood Goddess’s blessing. Nick and dozens of beautiful women were drinking the blood of their enemies while it dripped out of lopped-off limbs and directly into their mouths, and others still were funneling it into containers for later.
“That is just messed up,” he thought aloud.
Epilogue
Even though a few people logged off after the fight with the headmistress and her guards, most of the players joined the NPCs for the generally naked post-victory hot tub party that Lucas’s original crew, Nick, Viola, Bonnie, Liu, and Katie, had grown accustomed to.
Thankfully, it took Eri’s brood of mini Ant-Dragons less than ten minutes to clear out a large area on a flat spot of land right next to the building they had just fought around and to fill it with water by rapidly carrying little buckets with their mouths.
“It’s so pristine,” the peasant girl Lucas had come to recognize gasped as she eyed the large pool of chest-high water. “You would never think it was made by those, uh . . . things . . .” She was referring to Eri’s brood of minion workers, clearly unsure of what to call them. “They even managed to build a seat just underneath the edge of the water for us to use.”
“You wouldn’t even think it was dirt just by looking at it,” a Dokkalfar commented.
Lucas wasn’t sure how, but the brood had somehow used saliva or fire breath or some other means to make the surface of the dirt pool very smooth and glass-like, but it retained just enough traction that walking across it wouldn’t result in a slippery, skull-cracking escapade.
“But I, uhh . . . don’t have a swimsuit,” a Were-Rabbit said as she looked at the pool. Turning to Lucas, she asked, “Lord Lucas, do you have any extra outfits?”
Bonnie just laughed loudly enough that Lucas didn’t even feel like talking over it. “Swimsuits? Didn’t God give you one?” She stripped down where she stood and walked toward one of the four stairwells that had been built into the corners of the pool. “Come on, we’re all girls here.” She glanced at Nick, who had been ignoring her all night to talk to the girl he met in the dungeon, and then glanced at Lucas. “Well, except for one person.”
“If any of you had a reason to feel ashamed, Lucas wouldn’t have picked you,” Viola said nobly as she disrobed and walked in behind Bonnie.
The peasant girl stripped next. She was slightly curvier than the rest of the women and had more defined muscles as well. “Welp, plow my garden, those ladies are right. Sometimes, you just gotta let go and have a fun time.” Completely naked, she bent down, picked up her pitchfork, and walked into the pool too.
“Wait, why are you bringing a pitchfork?” the Were-Rabbit asked.
“A girl shouldn’t let go of her favorite weapon,” the peasant girl replied, “and this wooden shaft is used to getting wet. It’s been with me in the wet fields more times than I can count.”
“Whatever,” another woman said as she and her friend both started taking off their clothes.
Seeing the momentum, Lucas decided that he’d come off as shy if he didn’t do something himself, so he took off his armor and clothes too, leaving Hanna to put everything in his backpack while he climbed into the pool and took a seat in the middle of one of the shorter sides as if he were sitting at the head of a table. When he looked up, he saw that most of the girls had already started taking off their garments and joining the rest, a sight that made it certain Lucas wouldn’t be standing up for a minute without feeling like a kid in eighth grade.
“Sir, I’ve brought the hor d’oeuvres you usually request,” Hanna said as she came up behind Lucas. He looked up to see that the petite Alfar was still in the same maid outfit as always, but on her tray were some delicious smoked salmon canapes with handmade cream cheese, extra-fat Greek yogurt, and a touch of avocado over the smoked salmon, making him think the cook was an NPC based on someone from California.
He also noticed that more women in maid outfits were filing out of the tunnels and heading toward them--far more than he ever remembered hiring.
“What’s with them?” Lucas asked. When did Hanna manage to find the time to train and equip a whole crew of maids?
“Ah. They’re the women I trained and brought from Hesse. I had suspected for a while that such a great and magnificent lord such as yourself would be in need of additional help af
ter you trounced around and allowed your naturally superior lascivious eyes to acquire new targets. It was a project that Linnaeus himself assisted with, as he also knew this day would come.”
“But why are they all women?” Bonnie asked as she looked over at the new maids disappointedly. “Hanna, why are you always on Lucas’s side? You need to hire some beefy-looking guys for us girls to look at too! The eye candy can’t always be one way!”
“I’m dreadfully sorry, Ms. Fox-tailed Pretty in Chains,” Hanna began, “but I must always put the master’s needs first. I’m sure that, as a fellow employee, you understand this rule. Also”--she paused, glaring at Nick, who was now the only person still in his underwear as he continued to chat with the same girl--“it sickens me to know that some of the master’s valued ladies are being eyed by the help. I can’t imagine furthering my nausea by potentially recruiting another fiendishly incompetent layabout to ogle the master’s harem.”
“Hey!” Lucas said, stopping her. “Nick’s done a good job, but . . . Well, thanks, Hanna. You’ve done a great job as well.” He meant it too. He knew that she was cunning and that she was always working an angle, but her cunning had benefited him ever since he first hired her. He couldn’t help thinking that he would have to give her a raise if she stayed on point in the future. After all, thanks to her and the ten women now handing out hors d’oeuvres, this first large-scale party would be much more successful.
“Your pleasure is my pleasure, my lord,” Hanna said, performing a nearly 90-degree bow and then turning around to go. Before she could take two steps, however, Liu stopped her.
“Hey! Don’t even think of leaving!” Liu shouted. “Get that prim and proper butt in here! You’re one of us too!”
Hanna paused, staring at Liu. Then her eyes darted between Liu and Lucas as she stood frozen in shock, uncertain of what to do.
“She doesn’t need to--” Lucas began, but he also was cut off, this time by Katie.
