by Sean Oswald
Gunidar now seemed to be truly intrigued. “I have heard rumors of this ability. It is one of the reasons that Mind Chainers are not welcome in polite society. You really think it can work on an elite creature like this?”
“I’m certain it can. I’ve used it on elites before. Admittedly, this dungeon is an unknown, and the first one we fought was pretty intimidating for a Tier 3 creature. Still though, if it worked …” Tode held his hands up to the side while shrugging his shoulders and adopting an over eager grin again. “If it works right, I should be able to solo most of the stuff that we have fought so far.”
After that, they all discussed the options they might have. They tried to calculate how much damage they could inflict with crossbows and magic from a distance as well as how long any of them could hope to survive against the creature if it wasn’t slowed. Both Dave and Mira both berated themselves for not finding the time to learn some of the debuffing spells from the magical tomes that might have been useful in this situation. Web and other spells they had wouldn’t work. Gunidar did have a couple of debuffing spells, but they couldn’t really cast harmful spells until they found out if Tode’s skill would work. With that in mind, they finalized a plan to make use of some of the resources they hadn’t used in the first fight.
Once everyone had cast their protective magic, War Monster walked into the room with Tode. Everyone prepared attacks from crossbows, wands, or prepared spells. Behind them, Dave’s summoned Dire Rhinoceros was waiting. Tode strode forward to within thirty feet of the monster, which triggered it to come after him crying, “Niiii …” Tode gathered his energy and a bright star formed above him. The blue robed mage raised his hands overhead and then flung the cluster of gathered mana forward. The star had a pink hue to it and flashed brightly as fused into the Grand Elite Wind Knight Thrall’s chest.
The descending axe slowed as the minimal intellect controlling the knight’s mighty frame fought against Tode’s Total Domination Skill. Then the blade came to a complete stop as the battle was lost and the link between Tode and his new minion was forged.
The mage raised his hand up as he turned toward everyone. “Hold! It worked, it’s under my control.” He shook his head before adding, “That was more of a strain than ever before, but this monstrosity is pretty impressive. I can see all of its stats now.”
“Nice work,” Dave said. It was the appropriate thing to do, but somehow, he still couldn’t help feeling agitated that someone else was the center of attention.
“Now that I’ve got this pet, let’s see just what it can do,” Tode said as he closed his eyes and focused on giving instructions to the dominated elite monster. Then, the creature moved out of the room it had been in and turned into the hallway deeper into the dungeon. The others followed in formation, having to trot slowly just to keep up with its long strides.
Progress was much faster now. Ro’Billo continued looking for traps, but as long as everyone was following the trail left by the monster, they felt safe. They had to fight through two waves of knight thralls, but the monster made short work of them all on its own. By agreement, the casters allowed their mana to regenerate and only cast if they were at full mana. Any of the melee who had ranged weapons would attack any knight that got past the wide swings of the elite’s massive axe.
Dave kept watching Mira as she used her mana to cast Minor Scan: Secret Doors, but every time she made eye contact with him, she just shook her head in the negative. Finally, after another few hundred feet, they reached what appeared to be the end of the hallway. The most exciting thing on their trip to the final room was looting the coins from the fallen thralls.
“Hold your pet. We need to get a look at that room,” Dave said.
“Bah, you’re no fun,” Tode replied. “We can probably just take the room in a storm, but I guess you’re right.”
Without being instructed, Daichi ran up and scouted the next room before reporting. “Appears just like the other two rooms we cleared, but it is larger, and there are probably twice as many of the regular knight thralls doing patrols. What’s more, there are six of the knight thralls in a circle around the mini-boss on his platform.”
“Hmm, so, suggestions? Do we just start pulling out the patrols again and then sort out what is left inside the room?” Dave said.
The general consensus was that pulling out groups of thralls had worked well before and that they shouldn’t invite more trouble than necessary. Once again, the first couple of pulls went well, although each time they got six thralls instead of three. The fights really were very easy with the monster. Even if one or two of the thralls got past Tode’s minion, they were easily cut down by the tanks, with War Monster and Rak’kar competing to see who could get to them first.
The general feeling started almost becoming light-hearted. Teamwork was starting to click, and every part of the team seemed to be getting a feel for the role that they played. With the last group, even Jackson and Tabor were allowed to get in and execute a couple of melee attacks under Emily’s watchful eye. Dave felt that same rush that he would whenever his guild mastered a new dungeon or raid. It was a rush of endorphins caused by the combination of a sense of camaraderie and success. Yet, Dave had to catch himself. He had fallen prey to excitement too many times in Eloria. He had to remember that this wasn’t a game. The pain and anguish they had suffered here should have been enough. Yet, a few easy fights and he was already letting lose track.
The worst part was that even as he was riding this roller coaster of emotion, he delivered the finishing blow to another one of the thralls. The ease of it was putting him in a bad spot. He wanted to celebrate, to feel the rush of victory, but he knew that was a siren call to disaster. Dave saw Emily looking over at him, and once he made sure that all of the current batch of creatures were down, he walked over to her.
The sweet smile she directed at him made his heart leap even amidst the chaos of battle. As he reached her side, he called out, “Hold the pulls, loot the bodies, and everyone take five.”
“Five what?” Steffen asked.
Dave shook his head in chagrin even as Daichi said, “It’s likely another one of those sayings from his homeland. Even for a human, his expressions often make little sense.”
Choosing to ignore the banter, Dave reached out to put his hand on Emily’s arm. He said, “Are you doing okay with all of this?” He held his head close to hers so that they could speak to one another in a hushed whisper.
She looked at him almost in shock as he tried to make out the emotions which played across her face. “Really, um … it’s easier than I expected. But, uh … are you sure that we have time to talk about this.”
Dave suddenly felt a sense of shame stab him through the heart. “I know I’m not always able to talk about your feelings.”
“It’s not that. I didn’t mean that, honey. I know you love me. I just know that it can be hard for you to talk about that sort of thing, and my timing isn’t always great. But, thanks for coming over here. It means a lot. I know that you are pretty caught up in this, and I know it’s important.” Emily looked down at the ground. “I’m sorry, so sorry for being weak.”
Dave was caught off guard. “Wow, that isn’t it at all. I feel so oblivious to what you must be going through.”
“Thanks for talking to me, though. I appreciate it.”
“No, I’m serious. Tell me. If not for you, then for me. I need to get out of my own head now. It’s been an ugly place lately.”
Dave saw sympathy play across Emily’s face. She started then stopped a couple of times before saying, “I guess more than anything, I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to handle coming back here. I kept telling myself I needed to do it for Jackson. Or that it was just part of my new reality.”
The two of them stared at each other for a moment before Emily laughed and Dave joined in until she said, “Remember how I used to talk about my new normal after dad died?”
Dave nodded grimly, going from laughter to solemnnes
s in that instant as he pulled her into his arms listening to her. “How stupid I was. I thought I knew what big changes were. I thought I knew what loss and hardship were. Pffhh … if only I had known what real hardship was, I would have shrugged that off. And new normal … being sent to a new world in a new body with entirely different natural laws has sorta taken the cake for new normal.”
The proverbial spirit of wisdom came over Dave in the way that it sometimes turns otherwise clueless men into fonts of insight. “Losing your dad was life altering. He was a great man, and more than that, he was your dad. You shouldn’t ever look back on those feelings with regret. Mourning was appropriate. More than that, it was necessary. You needed that time to become the wife, mother, and woman that you are now.”
Dave put his hand on her chin and tilted her head up until he could look into her tear-filled eyes. “Could we possibly have handled this, if it weren’t for all the journey of life we have been on to get to this point? Remember, I’m here. We are doing this together. If you need to turn around, we can. XP and rewards be damned. I will pull the plug on all of this and take you home.”
A shudder ran through her and up his arms. “No, I agreed to this because it’s important. No, it’s necessary. This is our new normal, and we can’t let our son return to that supposed school without every tool we can give him. Oh, that reminds me, I have another idea, but it can wait for after we are back home.”
“I’m glad you are okay or as okay as can be expected with all of this, but you can be honest with me, I know coming into the dungeon again must have brought up bad memories for you.”
“It has actually been easier than I thought. Maybe it’s because of the way the dungeon was reshaped. It doesn’t look anything at all like what we faced before. I still feel guilty about what happened to Tradon, and I can’t get the image of his children’s tear streaked faces out of my head, but … I have to push that aside. Jackson needs whatever help we can get him, and that has to be the immediate priority.”
Leaning in, Dave kissed her forehead. “Okay, just remember, I’m here.”
Then with a last squeeze, he let her go. “Is everyone ready to keep going?”
Everyone said yes, so Dave nodded to Daichi to do the next pull. Just like before, after the initial rounds all of the patrols near the door were gone, the rest came this time. A group of 32 thralls poured forth from the room in a frightening array punctuated by their repeated battle cry.
Dave’s hand tightened around his sword, and he readied a lightning bolt. Now was not the time to hold back, but he was beaten to the punch as a wall of ice rapidly grew from the floor to the ceiling and blocked them. The icy barrier rapidly chilled the air around in the tunnel so that first everyone was shocked to see it expand. They began to shiver. It was too opaque to see through clearly or even to determine the thickness of the ice.
“I’ve bought us some time,” Gunidar announced in his usual flat voice.
“What you’ve done is destroyed my pet,” Tode snapped back almost in anguish.
“It is still there fighting. Surely you can still feel it. This lets us control the flood of creatures. I’m going to melt a hole in the middle of the wall so that we can see to target and add fire support to your pet, but right now, it’s doing what it’s supposed to do–namely take damage so none of us have to.” The royal mage held out his hand, and a small flame was birthed in his palm as he spoke.
Before the mage could make it to the ice wall to start melting a portion of it, Dave stepped forward. He pulled out the small velvet pouch which held one of the magical gifts from the moon elves. Pulling his hand back out of the pouch, he held an inky black object that looked like a felt board pierce. He unfolded it with care, for he could feel the magic shimmering within it, chaotic and uncertain. Dave knew without a doubt that this item, like many of the ones gifted to his family as quest rewards, was dangerous and potentially unstable, but he would take it. He had an intuitive feel for how it worked. It was a form of spatial magic which altered the fabric of reality around it, in much the way that his binding spell could temporarily make two objects become one.
Once unfolded, it was a perfect circle nine inches in diameter. Dave could feel the magic wanting to activate but knew that it would be a surefire way to lose fingers if he activated it while it was in his hands. So he laid it about mid-chest level against the wall and then released his hold on the magic. Suddenly, the wall of ice was not complete. There was a hole of the same diameter as the patch he had set up against it running all the way through the five-foot thick wall. On the other side of the wall, Dave could see that the charmed elite still was holding its own but equally was being slowly whittled away. Without hesitation, he began casting lightning bolt and was able to master three forks to either destroy or incapacitate four of the lesser thralls.
The next two minutes consisted of each of the casters taking a turn casting a spell through the hole to whittle away at the number of remaining thralls. In the end, the elite was the last one surviving, but after the magical hole was replaced into its rune lined containment bag and the magical ice was dispelled, the damage it had taken was obvious. Portions of its body were chipped away, and there were cracks running through its arms, legs, and even a spider web crack in the center of its chest. Tode seemed almost distraught as he inspected the charmed monster.
He finally pronounced, “It has taken over 6000 damage. Must be only held together by threads, so to speak, since it has less than four hundred health left.”
“Is it regenerating health?” Ro’Billo asked.
“Nah, or maybe if it is, it’s like 1 health per minute or something like that. So can my boy get some love?” Tode asked while looking from Emily to Mira.
“Some what?” sputtered out the mother and daughter in near harmony.
“Some love, you know, some of that sweet, sweet healing.”
Jackson started laughing boisterously at his sister and chanting in a singsong voice. “Mira’s got a boyfriend. Mira’s got a boyfriend.”
“Dweeb,” Mira snapped back, “At least he’s got more brains than some people.”
“What, in that stone head of his?” Jackson asked as he nudged Tabor trying to get him in on the joke.
“Well, at least he doesn’t eat cat food.”
Having exercised that most vital of parenting skills, the ability to tune out inane noise, Emily had tried casting Lesser Heal on the creature. Not just once but three times she tried casting various healing spells, but the expression on her face just kept getting more and more confused.
“Something wrong, honey?” Dave asked.
“Uh, well, I keep getting this notification, and the spell won’t form properly,” Emily replied an absent gaze as she looked at the message.
“So what’s it say? Maybe we can figure it out together.”
Error. Illegitimate Target. Construct types cannot be healed by essence magic.
Tode jumped in. “Duh, I should have thought of that. Sorry for making you waste your time, Lady Murkwood, but I guess it never hurts to try.”
Then the blue robed mage looked around and frowned at his two friends who both appeared to be on the cusp of laughing. “Don’t, don’t even go there.”
The dwarf burst into a deep belly laughter as he tried to say something, but the words came out all garbled.
Glowering, Tode repeated, “Seriously, don’t go there.”
“What? Sensitive about it or something?” asked the normally stoic War Monster. A grin danced across his face and laughter was in his dark eyes.
“We don’t have time for this now.”
“Fine, fine, bit i’m gonnae hae tae tell th' story over that first cask o' ale,” Ro’Billo finally got out between belly laughs.
“Pardon the intrusion, but what is a construct type?” Emily asked.
“It means that this is an artificial life form animated by magic. Which should have been pretty obvious, at least to us adventurers, once we saw that there was no bloo
d,” Tode answered. “That is why you can’t heal it. It doesn’t need medical treatment. It needs to be repaired as a broken item, but my friends were pointing out that I have not been able to learn that type of magic.”
“I can try, but I only have a Tier 1 mending spell,” Dave said as he started to walk towards Tode’s pet before stopping and asking, “Is it safe to touch him?”
The mage nodded, and Dave placed his hand against the elite’s chest. A magical aura suffused Dave’s hand and then started to slowly spread out over the creature. He tried to do as Mira described and channel more and more mana into the spell. After a couple of minutes of quiet concentration, a few of the smaller cracks had closed up, but the large rifts in its chest remained.
“I’m afraid that is the best I can do. The notification says that the spell can only repair minor damage. Even with channeling more mana into it, I could only do so much.”
“No thanks, you repaired exactly 500 health, although now that I think about it, I wonder why it is classified as health. Either way, it can probably take a couple of hits before being blown apart now.” Todd was much more upbeat now that his minion wasn’t on its last leg.
Dave then called everyone around. “So the plan is for Tode’s pet to attack first. It will try to take a hit to maximize its absorbed damage before unleashing its Wind Shear. Then it will just be hacking and slashing at the elite in there. Hopefully, its AoE attack takes out at least two or three of the regular knights which are around it. Tode will be very busy, so we will need to keep the others occupied. He will first cast his slowing spell on the mini-boss then will attempt to help with crowd control, but we have to keep the others off of him until then. Mira and Gunidar will stand on the far left side, hopefully out of range of the wind shear attack, and she will try to mesmerize the one farthest on the left and then charm the next closest one to aid in our attack. Gunidar will launch spells at the boss while Steffen, Jackson, and Tabor are there to provide support.”
Making sure that everyone was following, Dave looked ‘round at each face before continuing, “On the other side, Rak’kar and I will handle the other three knights. I can hit them with lightning bolt but will want to make sure that at least one fork hits the boss too.” Once the smaller ones are destroyed either by the wind shear or other means, we will focus on ranged attacks on the boss with the hope of lowering his health by as much as possible before Tode’s minion falls. If all goes well, then War Monster will be ready to step up and Taunt it. If things go really well, then it will have used its Wind shear attack against the minion, and so the rest of us will be able to charge it. Whatever you do though, try not to approach within range until it has already discharged its special attack.”
