by Ryan Rimmel
The room still reminded me of a badly damaged football arena. When we’d started the fight, there had been multiple hefty chunks of ceiling that had fallen onto the ‘field.’ Now, debris was scattered everywhere, and large pieces of the outer wall were missing. I found my shield buried under some of that debris. When adventurers fought, they made sure everyone knew it.
“Fuck you,” screamed N’evzuu. I sighed. It was almost like having Shart back. I glanced over at the demon. He looked bored.
I found Badgelor and Hardragon tearing at each other on the edge of the arena, the shattered wall behind them letting in a cold chill from the mountains. It looked like, with Julia’s help, Badgelor had finally gotten the upper hand. He had bowled Hardragon over and was busily gnawing on Hardragon’s wrist.
That was a mistake. Hardragon struck Badgelor at the place where his jaw connected to his skull. Badgelor’s mouth became wedged open. Julia barely got a barrier there in time to prevent Hardragon from shattering Badgelor’s jawbone. Hardragon struck a second time, and Julia stepped closer to Badgelor. The princess increased the power of her barrier, while the badger tried to get his jaw working again. It was his fervent desire to devour his hated foe. With Julia defending and Badgelor attacking, they were mere moments from victory.
I had a front-row seat when the whole plan collapsed.
Julia had gotten too close. Hardragon whipped his sword away from Badgelor and struck her across the temple with the flat of his blade. Julia collapsed bonelessly to the ground, just as Badgelor got his jaw to snap shut again. He turned, growling at the dragon protector. Hardragon sneered at Badgelor before kicking Julia in her midsection. She was sent careening off the side of the temple.
Badgelor didn’t hesitate. He dove after her.
“It seems that we are alone,” stated Hardragon, as he watched the place Julia had vanished. Content that Badgelor was gone, too, he started walking toward me. His helmet was gone, and he took a moment to adjust the straps on his armor. “I was wondering why my boss would be so interested in you.”
“Well, I generally piss people off,” I said, walking closer, “But I don’t know. Who’s your boss?”
“If you don’t know, I’m not worried about it,” stated Hardragon, clutching his sword, “If it matters, the boss will tell me.”
“The Dark Overlord?” I asked, as we squared off. The wind was fresh and carried small bits of snow with it. It would have been chilling, had I not exerted myself so much.
Hardragon chuckled darkly. “The Dark Overlord? Trust me, there is evil enough in this world without having to bring up myths and legends.”
Except I heard the catch in his voice. He wasn’t as confident in that as he claimed.
“Maybe I’m just here to get people to mind their manners,” I said.
“You said no one fucks with the mayor of Noobtown. Am I to understand that means you are the mayor of Windfall?” questioned Hardragon, moving further toward me. The heavy clang of his boots on the hard stone filled our ears. “It would explain why you are so interested in the Dark Overlord, wouldn’t it, Mayor?”
The way he said ‘Mayor’ gave me pause. That was a title. It wasn’t just any mayor, but the Mayor. “Why is that?”
“The Mayor of Windfall returns with no Dark Overlord to battle. Are you trying to find him?” asked Hardragon. “What is your angle?”
“The Dark Overlord has returned, and he killed someone special to me. I’m going to finish what I started,” I responded.
Hardragon’s face became a mask as he processed that information. For the barest, tiniest of moments, I saw the grip on his sword waver. Recovering quickly, he faced me with piercing blue eyes. “Then, I must kill you!”
Charging with his sword held high, Hardragon advanced toward me with a speed I had not yet seen from him causing a nearby chunk of the ceiling to fall as his heavy boots tore into the ground. Not to be outdone, I charged right back at him. As we closed, I executed Thrust, surging forward even faster. Hardragon parried the blow, but I had too much inertia built up. I slipped past him before he could follow up.
Not that it mattered much. Hardragon was still hot on my heels, and we again traded blows. I abruptly became aware of the differences in our fighting styles. I used my special moves as the driving force between my attacks, often going so far as to pull out of melee range to let my abilities cool down.
Hardragon did not fight in that style. He used special moves, of course. However, most of the time, he just tried to cut you in half with his sword. Fighting in that method accomplished two things. First, it kept the pressure on me and prevented me from using my special attacks. Second, it put him in a position where, when he could use his special moves, he was in the best place to do so.
Hardragon executed his double Felling Strike again, rushing toward me in a mighty blow. I sidestepped it, the entire arena ringing with the sound of the strike. Then, I parried his follow-up Badger Felling Strike using Powerful Parry. I Riposted and used Felling Strike back at him as a piece of the ceiling shattered as it hit the floor.
His sword smashed into my blade, as he attempted to Parry the strike. However, Felling Strike carried too much power for a conventional parry. He diverted my attack slightly, just enough to prevent me from cutting his arm off at the shoulder. Instead, my blade punctured through the metal on his upper arm, leaving a wound that fountained blood.
Hardragon growled and jerked back oddly. That’s how I discovered my sword had wedged into his armor. I couldn’t pull it free, and Hardragon used that moment to execute a type of sword slash on me that I’d never seen before.
● Instant Cut: Successful, You have suffered 82 points of Damage
I felt odd. Everything was still attached, I thought, but I was suddenly bleeding quite terribly. Mitigate activated, but I couldn’t stop that much of a bleed effect. Casting Regenerate, I launched myself into an attack. It was a mistake, as Hardragon had planned for it.
The damage to my arm was subtle and mostly impacted my grip. When I went in for an attack, Hardragon didn’t exactly try to block the strike. Instead, he attacked my sword. With my weakened grip, the sword went flying from my hand, clattering to the ground behind me.
“Nice try,” he hissed and slammed his blade into my shield over and over again. I had the Block skill and a good deal of room to work. Additionally, the ability to see through the shield let me keep it better positioned. Despite all this, he forced me to give ground. Eventually, Hardragon was close enough to grab the shield with his free hand and pull it from my grasp.
I spun away, gaining some distance. I managed to arm myself with what was left of my whip. Hardragon scoffed. He twisted my shield around and placed it on his injured arm.
“I see how you were so good at blocking,” he growled out, bringing the shield tighter to his body. With the shield in that position, he assumed my broken whip would be next to useless; the only targets available were either too sharp or too heavily armored for me to Damage.
Instead of backing off, I stepped toward him. He gestured to me with his sword. I began twirling my short whip, only to send it flashing out for a piece of stone. I twisted and brought the rock down hard on the shield. That surprised him. Now that my Sword Master perk applied to all weapons, I could use the remains of the whip almost as well as a fully intact one. Despite this, Hardragon blocked the stone effortlessly. However, doing so distracted him, allowing me to get right in front of him. I shoved the lich’s head directly into the shield.
It was transparent from Hardragon’s side, so the lich’s controlling eyes were on full display. The lich couldn’t see Hardragon, however, so he couldn’t direct him to do anything. Hardragon was left frozen in place. I tied the headdress around the shield, leaving the lich pointing at Hardragon’s head. Then, I cast Regeneration on myself and walked over to where Badgelor had dived off the side.
“Took ya long enough,” stated Badgelor, reaching toward me. I glanced over to Julia, who was still quite unconsci
ous and dangling precariously from Badgelor’s back paws. I could see his claws leaving bloody welts in her skin. I opted to lift the princess up first. Badgelor didn’t comment, but, without her occupying his paws, he was able to climb up quickly.
“Shart, I’m never going to give you up, so let's bond,” I stated, waiting for whatever strange magic was required for a Demonic Bonding. After a moment of nothing happening, I looked up at the demon. Shart was becoming less and less tangible.
“I told you to hurry up,” grumbled the demon.
“It's not like I wasn’t trying to,” I grumbled back. “What’s going on?”
“What does it look like? I’ve been here too long without bonding with anyone! I’m about to go back to Limbo for a century,” stated Shart.
“Is there anything I can do to get you back faster?” I asked, casting Hammerspace and scanning for anything I could find. Now, Shart’s guts were oozing everywhere, and they weren’t the almost gas-like substances they had been before.
“You waited too long, Dum Dum. If you have a brilliant plan, now would be the time,” stated the demon. “Otherwise, I’m going back to Limbo, and you are screwed.”
I recast the spell and waved at myself.
“So, anything I could try would be better than what’s about to happen?” I asked.
“I didn’t say that,” replied Shart cautiously.
“But I could tell you meant it, best buddy,” I said, grabbing Badgelor by the neck. For whatever reason, grabbing Badgelor by his neck caused him to shrink down to his travel size. “Badgelor, remember that special place in Shart’s heart you talked about?”
“Yes,” answered the badger suspiciously.
“Get it for me,” I replied.
“WAIT, that’s a terrible idea,” said Shart.
“NO, it’s a horrible idea,” said Badgelor. He began to struggle in a vain attempt to pull away.
“Shush, it's amazing,” I replied, grabbing Badgelor by his feet. The desperate badger was unceremoniously shoved, head-first, into my dimensional storage. Shart continued to fade for a few seconds, his return to Limbo drawing nigh. I felt Badgelor tug on my arm, so I started to pull him free.
“YOU FUCKER! THE
The first two paces were the hardest. I felt like I was hauling a mountain through a keyhole, but, after we got the heart out into the real world, the job became much more manageable. Each step pulled more mass from Shart, who, while in the summoning circle, was technically both in Limbo and on Ordinal. Badgelor and I worked steadily to birth the demon into actuality on Ordinal.
Inside the summoning circle, Shart looked like he was getting sucked into a vacuum cleaner. By the time my faithful badger and I reached ten logs out, the summoned demon popped out of existence. The material we had pulled through my storage folded in around Shart’s heart, startling Badgelor into dropping it.
“See, this was a great idea,” I said, as the space around me began to rumble. Badgelor stepped over to help the awakening Julia, as the
Shart plopped back to his feet. If anything, he was uglier than before. His body stank, and he looked like he’d been underwater for weeks.
“You don’t look so good,” I said.
“YOU NIMROD!” screamed Shart, looking at his hands. They were covered in tiny, pulsing veins, causing them to look much more disturbing than usual. “I’M FUCKING INSIDE OUT!”
“Oh,” I stated, momentarily dumbfounded. “Well, you are still here, and that’s the important thing. Want to bond now?”
“Feck you,” grumbled the demon. “I could have bonded with Julia, but I didn’t. Now, I’m like this. My insides are on the outside.”
“Couldn’t we just put you into storage and pull you out again?” I asked, attempting to open my dimensional storage.
“I’m inside out! I don’t have any internal space for storage,” said Shart. The first object I’d ever put into storage, a boulder the size of a wheelbarrow, went flying into the air. It smashed through the ceiling with a mighty thunk, raining down bits of stone.
“This might be a problem,” I said.
“Gee, ya think,” replied Shart sardonically. A wave of debris began materializing around me, flying in every direction. The rubbish going up smashed the ceiling apart in moments. The crap going to the sides was equally problematic; it took out the supporting walls of the room. Had the ceiling not already been obliterated, I would have surely been killed.
The biggest problem was that garbage also began shooting downward. Each boulder fired off rather aggressively, like I’d launched it from a powerful catapult. Dozens of rocks and shiny Shart collectibles shot down at various angles. Of course, the summoning circle didn’t survive. Then again, neither did the floor below it. I was pretty sure I could see several stories beneath us, as boulders kept appearing a few logs away from me and propelling themselves outward.
Hardragon stood still, as a coat rack struck him square in the face. I barely managed to grab my shield before everything vanished into space. When I returned my gaze to my opponent, I found Hardragon and the lich were gone. I used Flash Steps and made it over to Julia. Objects continued to appear at a little over three logs away from me, before they rocketed off.
“What the hell?” she asked, finally becoming fully conscious and cognizant. We watched a boulder the size of a car smash into Phillip’s body. The results were unpleasant.
“I pulled the Elder Demon into this realm. I don’t think the
Julia looked at me, bug-eyed, for a moment. “WHAT?”
“Shart, say hi,” I said to the groggy demon.
“Feck you,” hissed Shart.
“That’s the Elder Demon,” stated Julia. She could actually see the sickly-looking demon that I was carrying like a volleyball.
“Yes, or what’s left of him. His material body cannot form on Ordinal, so he turns into this chibi form,” I explained.
“How are we supposed to fight the Dark Overlord with that?” asked Julia.
“Hey, last time I fought the Dark Overlord, I only had Badgelor! We did alright,” I countered.
“Badgelor?” she asked, turning to look at my fun-sized companion.
“Hey, how you doin?” replied Badgelor. He cutely plopped down on his haunches by Julia’s knee.
“You already knew that the Dark Overlord was back, but you let me summon the Elder Demon anyway?” she yelled.
“I needed to get Shart back. He’s annoying but reasonably useful, some of the time,” I said.
“Feck you both,” stated Shart.
Julia blinked at me several times. “What?”
I think I broke her.
“Oh, yeah, he bonded with me when I first landed on Ordinal,” I said, slamming Shart onto my shoulder. Hopefully, he would stick, just like in the good old days. I was certain that Shart was oozing enough demonic funk to bind him. This time I thought it was drying demonic pus, but I’d take what I could get.
“I hate you so much,” hissed Shart. By this point, Julia was twitching.
“We need to get out of here,” I said, looking around.
“The teleportarium,” stated Julia, returning to balance. “I can Teleport us somewhere nearby.”
“Any idea where we will end up?” I asked.
“No,” she replied, “I don’t have a key. We need something unique from somewhere nearby.”
I shrugged, as the entire ruined temple sagged slightly. Boulders were constantly violating the structure's innards. “You’d think a dungeon would be more structurally sound than this.”
“Phillip sent most of the monsters off to destroy the local towns,” explained Julia. “He crippled the dungeon to make it easier for me to do the ritual.”
; “Well, that’s unfortunate,” I said. Suddenly, there was another spray of boulders, followed by a prompt:
● You have slain the dungeon boss. You can now claim the Dungeon Core.
“Hey, neat,” I exclaimed. “The dungeon boss just died. All we have to do is go to the Dungeon Core over there, and we can claim the dungeon!”
As I spoke, three large boulders flew out of my body. They promptly smashed into the hall where the Dungeon Core resided, as if they had sensed my intentions. The entire room collapsed in one giant heap.
“Focus, Jim,” Julia said, looking at my name tag and groaning. “Do you have anything we can use as a teleport key from Union? They took everything I had that would have worked.”
I checked. I didn’t have anything from Union, but I did have something. I activated my dimensional storage and reached for my last Thingamabob. It promptly shot itself straight into the heavens.
“I had something,” I said, watching it grow smaller and smaller in the sky.
“What the hell is going on?” screamed Julia, as massive chunks of debris continued to fly in all directions.
“My dimensional storage collapsed. It appears that I have to expel all these objects,” I responded, checking my storage. It showed nothing but error messages. I figured that was a bad thing.
“I think I saw a small creek to the south of here. We might be able to jump into it,” Julia suggested. As absurd of a suggestion as that might have been on Earth, a skydiver falling into enough water to submerge themselves would take no Falling Damage on Ordinal. I didn’t know exactly where this creek was, though. If I missed my landing, the results were going to leave me flat.
“Or we could just wait a moment,” I said, still watching the sky.
“Why is that a better idea?” Julia cried out.
“Because I can still see my Thingamabob. I’ll catch it. Then, we can use it to teleport away,” I said.
