by Drew Cordell
Purple energy swirled toward the alien insect’s scepter, seemingly drawn from the air itself. The ethereal power glowed to life, condensing in an arcane ball that seemed to emit and consume light simultaneously. The alien chanted again, and small, random missiles began spraying from the penumbra of the mana ball hovering in front of its scepter, jolting toward us in an expanding, rapid-fire cone pattern.
The missiles were cutting across the arena, and dropping to the floor was the only immediate way to dodge the arcane silos that were spaced only a couple meters apart. There was no way I could shield all four of us with Mana Shield, and even with two targets, the missiles would do heavy damage to whoever I didn’t shield, Brandon excluded.
We fired our weapons while Fen crawled closer to the boss, weaving on the floor and staying low to avoid the missile barrages. The Purveyor’s shields had dropped by 15% while it channeled its spell, but the barrage suddenly stopped. The alien raised its scepter for a brief moment with blurring speed, pulling it down with crushing force. The mana ball collided with the floor of the arena, erupting into a tidal wave of purple energy that rocketed toward us.
I barely had time to react, throwing up a rank four Mana Shield on Fen and Gwen before the volatile spell wave could crash over us.
I recoiled in pain as the magic damage soaked through, numbing me like electricity and ignoring the armored plating of my EVA suit as I was swept off my feet. The impact brought my health down by 5 points, leaving me at 30 HP. Fortunately, Fen and Gwen were unaffected, protected from the damage by my shield which I dropped right away to conserve mana. Brandon somehow caught the worst of it, dropping 8 points of HP. His heavy armor hadn’t made a difference for this attack that seemed impossible to avoid. In all likelihood, I would need to alternate who I shielded for this particular spell, managing the damage and risk rather than preventing all of it.
Fen was up on her feet again, rushing forward. The edge of her blade glowed, and her body blurred as she used one of her abilities, dashing the five-meter distance between her and the boss and connecting with its shields as she lashed out with her katana. She struck again, easily sidestepping a lethargic swing from the Purveyor as it struggled to repel her, raising its lower set of arms and chanting. The sets of beads it held glowed to life, pulsating with purple light as the boss boosted its shields to protect itself while it tried swiping at her with its scepter, empowering the attacks with more of its spell power to little success.
“Close the distance! It’s weak up close!” Gwen shouted to Brandon, staying back with me as we pummeled the boss’s shields with our blasters.
The rush strategy was working, and Brandon forced his way forward with the opening, landing shot after shot with his cannon and chipping away at the boss’s shields. Gwen and I circled along the outer perimeter of the arena, hitting our shots from a distance while the Purveyor struggled against our consolidated strategy. It can’t be this easy, I thought, knowing I was right.
The Purveyor cried out in distress—a series of harsh, frantic chittering sounds it made with its two sets of jaws. The insect-like alien raised its angular head, gurgling and retching as caustic sludge welled up from an unseen poison sac. I barely had time to hit Fen with a Mana Shield before she was covered with the spray of viscous poison, screaming out in surprise from the brutal effectiveness of the Purveyor’s attack. My shield wasn’t going to hold for much longer, not at the rate the acid was eating away at it.
I shuddered to think about how much damage the poison attack would have done if I hadn’t shielded the yōkai woman before it came into contact with her. Fen was forced back just as the boss’s shield bar dropped below 50%. Fen’s shield held through as the last of the caustic acid from the Purveyor dripped and evaporated off, but I wouldn't be able to protect her indefinitely. The Purveyor had its focus on her, lashing out with spectral whips of mana, keeping her at bay while she sought to attack from another angle and to keep the boss’s attention off the rest of us.
Skittering feet on a hard surface sounded above us, distributed along the ceiling in every direction. Large, pod-like insects emerged from unseen tunnels, dropping down from the ceiling with sickening, wet impacts as they hit the arena floor and bounced. The dust-covered insects somehow started rising from the ground and staggered toward us on three pairs of shaking, chitin-covered legs. The bulbous creatures were about a meter in diameter and looked heavy and slow.
The thrall-like insects kept falling, and their count was climbing into the double digits. They were stunned from the fall but were slowly speeding up as they reoriented themselves. The insects shrugged off the harsh impact with a loud buzz and vibration of plated wings that sent dust clouds erupting from their bodies.
“Kill the bugs,” Gwen commanded, shooting a burst of her carbine through the head of a nearby insect, piercing through its shell-like skull and turning off the lights. Black ichor sprayed from the remains of the insect's head, splashing its comrades and sticking to the floor in thick clumps laced with fragments of chitin.
“Keep damage on the boss or its shield will recharge!” I responded, shooting down one of the crawling insects to my right, suppressing a shiver as it rolled over onto its back and its legs folded inward with staggered motion.
This was going to be a balancing act—and a difficult one at that. Too much focus on the insects the boss had spawned and we would lose progress on the damage we had done to the Purveyor’s shield. Too little and we would be overrun by the sheer number of enemies. I recognized this for what it was, a distraction, but even seemingly weak enemies like these insects could turn the tide of battle against us if we weren’t careful.
Fen drew her tantō, dropping into a crouch and slicing out with the short blade in a quick two-part arc that cleaved through the side of one of the creatures, spilling out ancient, festering innards. She was keeping her distance from the boss, watching it carefully while she focused on taking out the minions so we wouldn't be overrun.
Brandon yelled something out, but his words were lost to me as something tumbled into the back of my legs. I screamed in surprise, struggling against the sudden force.
One of the insects managed to sneak up on me while my attention was drawn elsewhere. It scuttled over me, moving a lot faster now that prey was in its reach. I called out for help, hitting the ground hard and feeling the air explode from my lungs as black spots swam through my vision, blanketing my world. I felt my blaster slip from my grasp, sliding across the floor of the arena, out of my reach.
I tried to get up, unable to twist around and get a good angle on the clambering insect as it solidified its grasp on me with surprising strength. Its mandibles were crunching along the armored planes of my armor, searching for a way in. I materialized my EVA helmet, protecting the back of my head in case the insect decided to test its luck elsewhere. So far, my armor was holding, but more of the insects had noticed their friend’s success, and they redirected their paths, skittering across the arena toward me.
Clenching my fist, I snapped it back as hard as I could, feeling a wet crunch as I fragmented the outer layer of the insect’s carapace and bruised the soft flesh beneath. The impact sprayed the floor with a spattering stream of black ichor that leaked from the insect’s wound. I hit it again with similar results, but the insect was adapting and fighting back, climbing on me and further restricting my movement to the point where I couldn't move my arm. Screaming in frustration, I tried to find leverage against the heavy creature, but it was a losing battle, and my efforts were only slowing it down at best.
Blaster bolts from Gwen’s carbine sliced through the air, punching through the carapace of the insect on top of me. The creature went limp, and a massive, still weight settled over me, pinning me to the ground as viscous black liquid from somewhere inside the insect spilled out over me, blotting out my vision as it washed over the visor of my helmet. I tried to smear away the black gore, but my efforts only made it worse, and my hands were growing sticky with the stuff. Gwen was
too preoccupied with the scuttling insects creeping toward her in drone-like swarms to help me get up. But it was the right call, and if she ignored the incoming swarms, we might both die.
I set my hands on the ground and tried to press up with all my strength, but the wretched creature wouldn’t budge, and I couldn’t slide out from under its mass. “Come on, dammit!” I yelled in frustration.
I was trapped, and the Purveyor had its attention on me now, seeming to accelerate in excitement as it conjured up a wicked bolt of frayed purple energy, drawing power from an unseen force as it wrote out the precursor of my doom. I desperately pressed off the ground again, but it was no use, and the viscous black sludge was starting to mask most of my vision, reducing it to a small patch of clarity in a sea of black.
Fen took the opportunity to take another strike, still visibly shaken from the Purveyor’s acid attack that had given us all a good scare. As she darted in, her tantō pierced through one of the Purveyor’s arms, breaking through and ignoring its remaining shield. The insect-like alien screeched in pain, and it sent the death bolt that was meant to end me off in her perceived direction, missing by nearly a meter. The explosive spell veered off into the side of the arena with a flat crack that ignited the air with the electrical energy of dispersing mana.
Brandon was next to me the next moment, heaving off the dead insect with one arm, and blasting away at another with his shotgun with the other, liquifying his target. “It’s gonna take more than that to put you out of the fight, especially when I’m still around.”
Free from the crushing weight, I scrambled to my feet, grabbing my blaster and dematerializing the helmet on my head to free up my vision. I was about to thank Brandon, but my words caught in my throat. I retched as the stench hit me, sweet and pungent decay, heavy and overpowering as it mixed with the smell of scorched gunpowder and spent blaster bolts. My eyes watered and stung as the odor did its damage, blurring my vision and making me see double.
Struggling against the pain, I aimed my blaster at the small rounded shapes crawling across the ground toward me, oblivious to whatever the Purveyor was doing. One insect had pulled my focus out of the main fight—and now I had a lot of catching up to do if I was going to be useful to my group again.
“My eyes. It burns! Ahh—” I cried out as I blasted an insect, missing the first two shots before the third managed to connect with one of the blurred shapes in my vision, triggering a shrill shriek followed by silence as the shape fell still.
A debuff flashed in my AIVO with a timer that had just dropped below 30 seconds, but I didn’t have time to read it in depth—if one more insect got the jump on me, it could be my doom. My friends had saved my life once, but it felt like we were losing ground on this fight, and the burning pain in my eyes wasn’t making it any better.
“Circle in!” Gwen shouted. I complied, shooting another insect to my left through the burning tears. I reoriented myself with my surroundings, moving away from the insect carcasses and back toward my friends as they alternated their focus between the last of the insects and the boss, trying to keep our damage up.
A Mana Shield now wasn't going to protect me from the blinding debuff; I would have to wait for the timer to expire before I could be useful.
The debuff finally faded, and I was able to see again without the pain. My blaster clicked dry just as I took out the last moving insect behind us. The black ichor covering my blaster and most of my armor was hardening, and it took a lot of effort to eject the spent charge pack and load in another. I was lucky the insect gore hadn't disabled my weapon completely.
Brandon and Fen were pushing forward in a pincer-like movement, splitting the Purveyor’s attention from both sides while Gwen fired her carbine at it from a distance. My friends had more luck dealing with the insects than me, leaving a trail of gooey corpses in their wake. As I ran to Gwen’s position, I shot at the Purveyor, chipping away at its shield, which was dropping below 20%.
The Purveyor screeched again, drawing all four of its arms close to its chest and pulled a wreath of mana from the air, twisting it into elegant spirals before sending the nova of energy exploding outward in an unstable wave.
Reacting, I hit Brandon and Fen with max-rank Mana Shields protecting them from the worst of the area-of-effect attack as its energy dissipated before it could hit me and Gwen.
I checked the door timer on the final side of the arena—we were out of time.
42
It wasn’t clear if the expired timer would cause us to fail the trials outright or just make our lives exponentially more difficult. I took it as a good sign that we were still alive, but the Purveyor wasn’t going down easily as we chipped away at the last of its shields. For all we knew, its health bar beneath was just as beefy as its formidable shielding.
As the final door of the arena opened, the Purveyor raised all four of its arms into the air, drawing mana and sending it out in pulsating waves. The mana was soaking into the corpses of the insects, filling through whatever fatal wounds had taken their ancient lives. If we didn't end this or interrupt the ritual, we could be in a lot of trouble.
Brandon addressed the problem and barreled into the Purveyor, hitting the boss with a low-centered shoulder charge and sending the alien reeling. The impact interrupted whatever spell it had been casting on the dead insects. Brandon followed up his charge, blasting away with a quick three-shot burst of his shotgun, driving the Purveyor farther back.
Something big moved from behind the third door, dashing forward and surfacing in the arena. This monster was the same species as the Purveyor and was covered in ancient, leather-like armor, stained red and brown that was curled into arc-like planes, surprisingly well-kept despite the apparent age. It held a large, two-handed mechanical crossbow in its bottom set of arms, and two sinister daggers crafted from obsidian in its upper ones.
The rogue-like boss raised its head into the air, disintegrating into an orb of black smoke that billowed across the arena with blinding speed, passing through each of us harmlessly before returning to its original position. The entire movement was over in less than a second, and there hadn’t been time to evade it. It was only when I checked my quick-access slots that I realized how much trouble we were in. The smoke skill the boss had used had robbed us of all of our consumables. All my resources stimpacks were gone, and by the looks on my friends’ faces, I could tell theirs were gone too. We wouldn’t be able to heal through this fight now, and I wouldn’t be able to replenish my mana outside of my normal regeneration, which was lackluster at best.
The new boss, announced by the Architect as the Shadow of Ortonan, chittered, rushing into the arena and coming to the aid of the Purveyor, pressing forward on Brandon who was separated from the rest of our group.
“No rest for the weary, huh?” Brandon asked in a crazed, adrenaline-fueled tone as he hefted his shotgun again, too confident for what was now a terrible position in the fight.
“Brandon, fall back!” Gwen yelled over the Shadow’s heavy footfall across the arena floor. If this boss was as tough as the others, we’d be in a lot of trouble if we didn’t finish off its predecessor quickly to tip the odds in our favor.
The Shadow of Ortonan was fast—and aimed down the sights of its heavy crossbow, firing a deadly bolt in a split second. I tried to react to the twang of the crossbow string, but the boss’s shot was just too quick. The bolt slammed into Brandon’s torso, cracking his armor in an exploding impact that sent shrapnel flying. Brandon flipped in the air, rotating before striking the ground hard. He tried to say something, but his voice was constricted and weak, and the brutal shot had erased nearly half his health bar. Blood welled from his fragmented armor, dripping onto the floor of the arena, but the damage seemed to be contained—at least for now.
Fen dashed back into the Purveyor, slashing with her katana to make up for the lost damage as Brandon reeled from the crossbow shot. The Shadow was too fast though, and was on her nearly a second later, deciding to turn its
attention away from Brandon to protect its friend. I could only hope Brandon would get up and rejoin the fight, but without our stimpacks, he would have no way of healing. Until that happened, there would be little we could do to help him as we struggled to reposition ourselves to improve our odds in the fight.
I hit Fen with a third-rank Mana Shield, grimacing as my mana pool dropped below 20 points. I wouldn't be able to protect Fen much longer. The Shadow rushed her, lashing out with its long blades, forcing her to draw her tantō and deflect the blows, disengaging her attack on the Purveyor.
The Shadow slipped past Fen’s parry with a twist of its blades, sliding one of its jagged daggers across the length of her torso. My shield that had been protecting her broke almost immediately, and she screamed out in surprise and pain as the blade ripped through her ceremonial robes and ate into her skin below. Colorful green blood blossomed under her robes, soaking into the fabric and radiating outward. Her health dropped by 30%, but I was too far away to do anything to draw the attention of the powerful bosses. Only, I realized that wasn't true.
The cooldown on my Unstable Power spell had refreshed, and if Fen could move out of the way, I had a chance to hit both bosses and inflict massive damage. Even if Fen can’t get out of the way, this might be the only way we win this, I thought with grim clarity. I would have to be ready to pay that cost—especially if it would keep Gwen alive. I told myself that it wouldn’t come to that—that we could still control this situation—but I didn’t know if I believed it.
One thing was certain: Fen was going to die and Brandon was going to be next if we didn’t do something to save them. A quick glance with Gwen told me she was thinking the same thing, and we charged in, the roots of a bold plan forming in my mind. We needed to rotate damage priorities and stabilize our group or the situation was quickly going to slip out of what little control we had left.
