by DB King
Kairn let out a howl of satisfaction as he brought his axe crashing down into the metallic head of his enemy.
“Go on Kairn!” Anja shouted, laughing. She twirled her sword in her hand and took two steps forward and swung at one of the axehand minions. The creature blocked smoothly with its shield and swung in reply with its axe. Anja leaped backward to avoid the blow. She plunged in, raining down blows from her sword onto the shield and the axe of the monster.
Kairn, meanwhile, hauled the head of his axe out of the wreckage of the felled monster. A spurt of red blood squirted up from the creature’s cloven head. The dwarf looked at it in surprise, then shrugged and stepped over the corpse of his enemy to move toward the next axehand.
Marcus glanced from left to right. Two enemies had come from either side. On the left, Kairn had dealt with one of them and was moving toward the second. On the right, Anja was trading blows with one, while Dirk was sneaking up on Anja’s foe from behind, his dagger in his hand and a cunning light in his eyes.
The last axehand was moving uncertainly toward Anja. Marcus considered stepping in to take it down, but changed his mind. Still feeling Ella’s augmentation coursing through him, he felt like he could do more good by using magic to lift up his friends’ abilities. Anyway, he wanted to practice this. Now that Ella was able to augment his abilities, he felt more confident about using a lot of magic. Previously, he had been wary of draining himself, but now it seemed that this was the role he could play best.
He glanced at Ella, and she nodded, seeming to understand his thoughts. She swept down from her spot near the steps to hover near him, and reached up a hand and placed it on his shoulder.
The physical contact gave Marcus a boost too, and he grabbed his Fleetfoot spell and applied it to Anja, and the Ultimate Stealth spell to apply to Dirk. A glance at Kairn showed Marcus that there was no need to apply the strength spell there again. To Marcus’s eyes, Kairn seemed to glow with red light, showing that the Hero’s Might enchantment had not yet worn off.
Marcus felt like he and Ella were working together to apply the boosts to their friends. This time, they didn’t hang about in the time-slowed augmentation view. They dropped into it, applied the spells, and let it pass away immediately.
The spells took effect at once. On the left, Kairn met his enemy and swung his huge axe from his right in a side-on blow that would have felled a tree. The axe head crumpled through the monster’s golden shield, smashing its arm and cutting deep into its body beneath the iron plates. The monster let out a mechanical hissing noise that might have been a scream as Kairn shouldered aside its ineffectual blow with its war axe.
Putting a foot on the monster to brace himself, he wrenched the axe free and reached a massive hand down to the monster’s head. With a sharp twist, he yanked the monster’s head clean off, held it up for a moment, and dropped it.
Dwarves are terrifying foes in battle, Marcus thought, as his friend turned to look at the rest of the fight.
On Marcus’s right, Anja was a blur of motion. The speed buff had pushed her to new heights of agility and swiftness, and she danced with her opponent, catching its hits and turning them, and leaping in to whack it with the flat of her sword on the side of the head. Marcus wondered why she didn’t finish the creature—she was clearly capable of it—but then it hit him, and he smiled. She was just having too much fun.
The second axehand was closing in on her now, trying to get up to her on her off side, but neither of them saw Dirk. Marcus could hardly see him, even though it was his spell that had caused the stealth. When he looked very carefully at Dirk, Marcus could see his wavering shape, gray as cloud shadows as he approached Anja’s opponent from behind.
Despite the magic, Anja seemed aware of Dirk. That made sense to Marcus, because the magic would work best if allies were not stopped from seeing each other, but it was an interesting feature of the spells. He resolved to ask Anja later on what her perception of Dirk had been when the Ultimate Stealth spell had been in effect.
At just the right moment, Anja leaped backward, away from a swipe from her enemy. The monster was tipped off-balance by the force of his own blow, and staggered two steps forward. Before it could regain its equilibrium, Dirk had risen up behind the monster and driven his dagger through its neck.
Meanwhile, Anja had skipped neatly to the side, toward the final advancing enemy. Marcus saw her glance around and assess the situation. Seeing that all the other monsters had been successfully defeated, she chose to end the final enemy quickly.
The axehanded monster did not stand a chance. Anja pushed off from the ground, her sword pointed forward, and let her momentum through the air carry the sword’s point smack through the eye slot in the axehand’s facemask.
Marcus was impressed, and so were the others. As the axehand dropped its shield and crumpled to the ground with a rattling clang, Dirk, Kairn, Ella, and Marcus all gave her a round of applause. She laughed and made an elaborate show of bowing to them.
The augmentations were wearing off. Marcus could see that the red light that showed Kairn’s Hero’s Might boost was flickering. The gray cloud effect that showed the influence of the stealth buff on Dirk was fading away. The Fleetfoot buff, when applied to Anja, had given her a blue light that wavered around her, but that was fading now too.
For Marcus’s part, he felt Ella’s augmentation to his own spellcasting ability wearing off. He felt good, energized, and crucially none the worse for having just cast a bunch of spells in a row.
“Well,” he said as his friends approached, grinning at him, “it looks like we’re none the worse for having taken some time off from fighting! But now we need to find out how to get across this fire-filled trench. I have the feeling this dungeon has a lot more to throw at us before it’s done.”
Chapter 6
The adventurers took a moment to catch their breath. The fire-filled trench still hissed with steady blue flame, and there was no obvious way to cross.
“There must be a way through,” Marcus said. “Let’s split up and explore this half of the chamber. There may be some device here that we can use to get ourselves across.”
Everyone agreed, and they explored the ground. It was Anja who first had the idea of looking in the alcoves where the axehand minions had come from.
“Hey,” Anja called to the others. “Come and look at this. I’ve found something.”
Everyone went over to look. Marcus, who got to her first, found her examining a set of three levers which were hidden in the back of the alcove. They were small, just little straight wooden levers poking out of slits in the wall. All three were in the up position.
“This has got to be it,” he said. “But why are there three?” He reached up and pulled the leftmost lever. It dropped easily, but nothing happened.
“Hm,” Marcus said, reaching up to pull the second one. Again, nothing happened. He frowned and dropped the third. Nothing.
“Perhaps there’s a specific combination?” Anja suggested. “Perhaps all three need to be in the right positions relative to each other to trigger whatever the mechanism is?”
“That sounds about right,” Marcus said thoughtfully. He tried combinations.
Left up, the other two down. Nothing. Right up, the others down. Again, nothing. He pulled the left and right levers down, and then brought up the middle one.
“Something’s happening!” shouted Ella, who was standing with Kairn and Dirk at the edge of the trench. Sure enough, with a grinding of gears and a creak of stone, a long slab of thick stone came out from the far edge of the trench. It moved slowly but steadily out across the gap. When it reached the near side, it slipped into a gap which had opened in the nearside wall of the trench. It slipped into place, and there was a loud, metallic click. The bridge was in place.
“You did it!” Kairn called excitedly. “The bridge is in place!”
Marcus hurried over to the new bridge, followed by Anja. Examining it, he saw that the flames had gone out bel
ow the stone. They still hissed up on either side, but the new crossing itself was clear.
“Now, we can get across!” Marcus said triumphantly. “Let’s go.”
He led the way across. The bridge was only wide enough for one, so they crossed in single file, the others coming up close behind Marcus.
As soon as Marcus stepped onto the far side of the chamber, there was a thundering noise from the high stone dais under the tall windows. Marcus looked up as his friends took their places at his side. On the dais, a cloud of gray stone dust rose.
A huge stone covering had been thrown open, like a hatchway, and from below an enormous figure emerged. It rose up as if carried up on a rising platform, and thick clouds of smoke and dust wrapped around it as it came up into the light.
It was the bladehand—but it was a whole new version of the monster that Marcus remembered.
Where the bladehand had been a messy and chaotic arrangement of rough iron plates over a body of gears and levers, it had now become a streamlined being. It was no longer black iron, either. Instead, it was white, gleaming as if freshly painted. The outer exoskeleton of the monster was made of smoothly linked plates of white metal, with gold trim on the edges. Gold inlays on the white metal ran like vines across the plating.
The swords, which had before been rough, enormous pieces of metal, were now sleek, curved blades. There were still four of them, one on the end of each of the monster’s four arms, and they still had the arrangement of two gold blades and two iron blades, but they now looked like the finest work of a master smith.
“It’s huge!” said Ella. It was true. The monster was nearly twice the size of the original bladehand, and it would tower over even a tall man. The gold faceplate was still there, with its expressionless, blank gaze. A menacing light flashed from the eye slit, and a menacing growl came from within the face.
“Come on!” Marcus called. “Let’s get away from the edge of the trench. We’ve got a lot of room to move here, let’s make the most of it.”
They fanned out, moving into the main part of the chamber and approaching the broad steps leading up to the dais. As they did, the monster’s platform clanged into place and the bladehand stepped out onto the dais, its head swinging from side to side as it surveyed its enemies.
A sudden pulling caught at Marcus’s attention, and he let it come up into his awareness.
Spell available: Fire Resist
Fire Resist? he thought. No doubt that will be useful, but it seems a little ominous that we’re being offered it now.
The bladehand leaped out onto the dais and rushed down the steps. Its blades whirled, and its muffled roar echoed in the lofty stone chamber. Marcus was about to give orders when Kairn roared out a battle cry and charged the monster.
“He doesn’t hang about!” Marcus said. He would have preferred it if Kairn would have waited for instructions, but there was no going back now.
Anja was charging in behind Kairn, and Dirk was moving up from the monster’s left, obviously hoping to catch it unawares. Marcus admired his friends’ courage, but was concerned for their safety. His Dungeon Master’s Instinct, which had been stubbornly silent up to now, screamed a warning at him.
Kairn was closing with the bladehand, his axe raised, but the bladehand stopped, and reared its head up and back like a striking snake.
Danger, Marcus’s instinct warned him. He moved quickly, reaching for the new spell which he had just been granted. He was about to apply the Fire Resist spell to Kairn as an augmentation, but to his chagrin he found that it didn’t work.
The spell seemed to be speaking to him, and he felt like there was a way to use this new spell which he was just not quite seeing. It was like having a forgotten name on the tip of his tongue—a frustrating feeling, and it could be deadly in this situation.
Marcus took a breath and slipped into the augmentation view to buy him a little time. He breathed slowly, closing his eyes and taking advantage of the emotional detachment that came with the augmentation view.
It hit him. Fire Resist was not a spell to be placed in an Augmentation Slot like the others, nor was it a spell to be cast over himself. It was different. It was special. It was new.
“Fire Resist!” Marcus said out loud, snapping out of the augmentation view. He held up his right hand, and in the palm there appeared a globe of crackling white energy. Marcus aimed his hand toward his friends, who were charging the bladehand, and released the energy.
It arced across the room and exploded outward, creating an area of effect blast of energy that caused Anja, Kairn, and Dirk to all take on a shimmering white aura effect. So that was how the Fire Resist spell was cast! That was new, but very welcome.
And at that moment, Marcus realized why the spell had come to him when it did, and why it had felt so completely essential. This was what his instinct had been warning him about.
The bladehand pushed its head forward and a searing blast of yellow fire came from its mouth. The blast extended several yards out from the bladehand’s face, and there was a low roar as the burning flames scorched the ground.
Kairn and Anja yelled out in surprise and fear, but the Fire Resist spell did its work—they were protected from harm! The flames hit them, but immediately curved around them like water around a stone in a fast flowing river. Marcus applied the Hero’s Might buff to both Anja and Kairn, and placed Fleetfoot on Dirk.
With a sudden rush, he felt Ella apply the Augment Ally buff to him, and he rode the rush of power that came with it to charge in, running up the steps to help his friends.
The bladehand charged in through the receding wall of flame and Kairn and Anja met it head-on. Both had their increased strength to draw on, and Kairn caught and turned the bladehand’s first attack with such force that the blade of his axe sheared through the bladehand’s wrist.
One of the golden swords, cut free of the bladehand by Kairn’s mighty blow, crashed to the ground and rolled down the steps. The bladehand roared in anger and drew back its head for a second fiery blast, but the Fire Resist spell was still active and Marcus was not concerned for his friends’ safety anymore.
He was closing on the bladehand from the right and Dirk was closing from the left. Anja and Kairn were keeping the monster busy from the front, and Ella hovered nearby to lend her augmentation ability to Marcus if he ran low on magical strength.
The force of the monster’s second fire blast caused both Kairn and Anja to stagger back a few steps, and the bladehand laughed menacingly and leaped forward in pursuit. Marcus renewed the strength buffs on his allies and darted around behind the monster, where he found Dirk.
“What do we do, boss?” Dirk asked. He was looking up at the towering back of the bladehand, obviously unsure about the prospect of leaping onto the creature’s back.
“With me!” Marcus said. He booted Dirk’s strength, and his own, then dove and grabbed the monster’s right leg. Dirk, quivering with new strength, saw what Marcus’s plan was and leaped into action, grabbing the bladehand’s left leg.
“Look out in front!” Marcus yelled, and Kairn and Anja leaped out of the way.
“Heave!” Marcus yelled to Dirk, and the small man, chuckling, put every ounce of his augmented strength into yanking the bladehand’s leg out from under it.
They succeeded. The bladehand, not expecting such a trick, toppled forward out of control. Kairn and Anja both let out loud shouts of victory as the monstrous being fell like a felled tree. It pinwheeled its swords to try and get its balance back, but there was no way it was going to be able to regain its feet.
With a noise like a whole kitchen’s worth of pots and pans crashing to the floor, the massive form of the white and gold monster thundered to the steps. On its front, it slid down the steps and hit the flat floor of the chamber, scooting away toward the fire-trench while it flapped its arms and legs and tried to regain its feet.
“Now!” Marcus yelled. “While it’s down!”
All four of them leaped onto the
monster’s back. Kairn rammed the blade of his axe between two plates, and Marcus buffed him to give him the extra strength he needed to pry the plate up. Anja shoved the tip of her sword between the links of the bladehand’s neckplates, pushing with the weight of her body to jam the tip of the blade in. Dirk attempted to get his dagger into the bladehand’s eye slit, but the monster yanked its head away and Dirk couldn’t get a grip.
A white metal plate sprang off, revealing gears inside. Kairn laughed and smashed his axe into them. A sudden gout of fire exploded from the hole. The Fire Resist buff was not active, and the flames caught the dwarf off-guard. He leaped away, slapping at his face and chest.
“The beard!” he yelled. “My beard’s on fire!”
Marcus had to resist the urge to laugh as the dwarf capered around, waving his axe with one hand and slapping at his burning beard with the other. He aimed a hand at the dwarf and spoke a spell. “Elemental Water,” he said.
Marcus’s elemental water ability triggered a blast of water that arced across the chamber like a jet from a geyser. It hit the dwarf and soaked him, and he turned to face it. Rank smoke and the stench of burning hair choked the nostrils of the adventurers.
“Argh!” Kairn yelled, shaking his head. Water flew in every direction like a dog coming out of a river. Marcus noted with interest that while his elemental water spell had the ability to heal people of their injuries, it seemed to have no ability to grow hair back. Kairn’s mighty acre of beard was disfigured by a blackened burn mark stretching right up one side of it.
“You all right?” Marcus called to him.
Kairn growled wordlessly, looking down at his beard. “Aye,” he said darkly. “I’m unhurt. But that metallic monstrosity is going to pay for the damage to the beard!”
