Phantasmal Party

by Trey Myr

  The clockwork automaton's 'skin' was made from burnished copper sheets, covering its torso, arms and legs and leaving its joints open to the air. Bronze cogs ranging from as large as Ed's hand to smaller than the nail on his little fingers spun inside the summon's body, slow enough to take a full minute to complete a turn, or fast enough that their teeth blurred from sight. Endless pistons pushed and pulled, connecting the cogs to each other and to the copper skin. The automaton's face, if it could be called that, was nothing more than a plate of copper, with two clear crystals where the eyes should have been.

  A good archer would fire twice as fast as the automaton, and a good elven archer might even reach three or four arrows in the same length of time. But each and every arrow fired by the clockwork contraption hit with deadly accuracy, more than making up for its slow rate of fire.

  It took less than a minute for the party to eliminate the large group of four lizardmen warriors and four hunters, and they quickly moved forward, careful to avoid a pitcher plant's snare, and moved slowly towards the plant's main trunk.

  This pitcher plant was as large as the one the party fought on their first attempt to pass through the swamp, and the party took a minute to prepare before assaulting it. Ed carefully placed his crossbow on the ground and pulled his quarterstaff from behind his back. It would be Ingrid and Lucy's job to attack the main trunk, with the fox-kin and clockwork automaton adding their ranged damage. The rest of the party would be of better use fending off the expected flurry of vines that was sure to start as soon as the first attack landed on the tree.

  Ingrid made her shield vanish into thin air, and had to concentrate for a few seconds to transform her spear into a heavy pole-axe before she approached the trunk and nodded that she was ready. Lucy's Chromatic Storm covered the other half of the trunk a second later, and the fight was joined, with Ingrid chopping the pitcher plant methodically.

  Acid bolts hit the pitcher plant, leaving behind steaming streams of liquid. Arrow after arrow hit the trunk, doing little damage by themselves but delivering a payload of lightning damage nonetheless. Ed and the cat-kin easily fended off the vines that got near the party, but the hammer wielding dwarf was of little use against the agile plant, and Ed quickly sent him to attack the trunk directly, hoping that he and the cat-kin would be enough to defend the party for the time it took to bring the tree down.

  In the end, they were able to keep the vines from reaching Lucy and the rest of the ranged contingent, but the dwarf got taken by one of the vines and thrown into a pitcher. Another vine managed to wrap itself around Ingrid, but wasn't strong enough to lift her by itself, and she easily managed to slice it off before any others could come it its assistance, and the plant fell before the combined onslaught soon after.

  ◆◆◆

  The three meter tall monitor shaman towered over his lizardmen brethren. Orange and brown scales covered the huge ranked-up lizardmen, and rows of keeled scales ran down his massive body. Despite being a spellcaster, the monitor was heavily muscled, and long, sharp claws graced the tips of his fingers and toes. A long, thick tail curled around the brute, and drops of venom fell from his fangs as he screeched at the party of delvers, and as he waved his gator-skull tipped staff in the air, a wall of dirty swamp water surrounded him in a protective circle.

  The angry screeches of the giant lizardmen settled down into a rhythmic chanting, and his bodyguards, four crocodile lizardmen armed with heavy maces, charged towards the party.

  The ranked up lizardmen were larger and stronger than the ones the party has been fighting so far. While not quite as large as the monitor, they were still between two and two and a half meters tall, and were covered in scales banded red and white.

  Ingrid shouted at the charging lizardmen, taunting them into attacking her, and set herself to stopping the charge. A shield bash stunned the first of the lizardmen, and she recovered in time to block one more, but the last two bodyguards manage to land hits on her right arm and shoulder, denting the phantasmal plate armor she wore and bruising the muscles beneath it. At the same time, a glob of green liquid launched from behind the wall of water through a gap that vanished as soon as the attack passed it, hitting the phantasmal dwarf's head and blinding him.

  "Lucy, as soon as the wall drops, get a storm on the shaman!" Ed shouted as he ordered his clockwork bowman to stand ready and shoot at the shaman as soon as another gap appeared, and fired his own crossbow at one of the bodyguards. The crossbow bolt barely punched through the lizardman's tough scales, but it was enough to trigger Lightning Field and shock the monster. Unfortunately, seconds after the bolt hit, the wound glowed green, and the steel projectile was pushed out of the lizardman's body by the healing flesh. The rest of the party wasn't idle, of course, and Lucy managed to catch two lizardman hunters, who erupted from the swamp water ready to fire their blowguns with a Chromatic Storm, while the phantasmal fox-kin launched Acid Bolts at the same lizardman Ed had attacked, and the cat-kin rapidly attacked it from behind with its pair of daggers. Neither of them did much damage, but the distraction was enough to let Ingrid, who had been healed by the nymph, stab her spear through its kidney and up into its heart.

  Another glob of poison came from the shaman, but Ingrid was able to block it with her shield, at the cost of taking two more hits from the mace wielding monsters. The cost was much higher for the shaman, who found out he wasn't quite as safe as he expected to be behind his wall when a precisely aimed arrow passed through the minute gap in the wall to hit him in his open mouth. The shaman, unable to continue his chanting, was forced to drop his protective wall, and Lucy quickly blasted him with another Chromatic Storm.

  Moving the Chromatic Storm released the two lizardman hunters, who were shocked and battered but still alive, and they quickly raised their blowguns and fired at her, hitting the unarmored kobold and poisoning her. Lucy retaliated by firing a triad of Icebolts at one of the lizardmen, finishing it off, and the second followed quickly after its brother when it was hit by a combination of crossbow bolt and Acid Bolt.

  Ed paused for a second to resummons his dwarf, who fell prey to one of the lizardman warriors, and the newly summoned phantasm joined Ingrid and the cat-kin in attacking the mace wielders, quickly killing a second lizardman just in time for the stunned monsters to return to the fight.

  Angry chants came from within the Chromatic Storm, and the dirty water of the swamp rose up, taking a vaguely humanoid form as the shaman brought out its trump card, a mud elemental. The elemental started flowing towards the party, clearly aiming to get rid of Lucy and release the shaman from the storm.

  The phantasmal dwarf and cat-kin charged towards the elemental and started harrying it, their attacks doing no damage to the massive being, but the constant lightning slowing it down, and Ed focused his own and the cat-kin's attacks on one of the lizardmen warriors.

  The slow-moving elemental smashed one of its huge fists into the phantasmal dwarf, killing it instantly, and Ed had to stop attacking in order to take out a mana potion and drink it before he was able to summon it again and send it back into the battle, giving the elemental time to advance towards Lucy. Meanwhile, Ingrid's spear pierced through another of the lizardman warriors, leaving just one more.

  Lucy began to circle away from the elemental, keeping the shaman within range of her storm, and Ed returned his attention to the last remaining warrior, who fell before their combined assault a few seconds later. Ingrid quickly ran towards the Chromatic Storm, and Lucy dropped the spell a second before she crossed into it, leaving the confused shaman open to a stunning Shield Bash, followed by a barrage of arrows, bolts, Icebolts and Acid Bolts. Ingrid dispelled her shield and grabbed her spear in both hands, changing it into a halberd in mid-swing, and cut off the shaman's head. With its summoner dead, the elemental flowed back into the swamp water, a mere meter away from Lucy.

  Ed approached the dead monitor, delighted to see the telltale sparkle of a Shard on the shaman's left hand, but Ingrid stopped him b
efore he could retrieve it. "Wait. This one's a shaman, and has healing abilities. If you let the nymph get the Shard instead of one of us, it might increase the chance of us getting a Cleanse type Shard."

  "Worth a shot," Ed shrugged, and ordered his phantasmal nymph to get the Shard, and drank another mana potion in order to resummons his cat-kin, whom the elemental managed to kill just before it was dispelled. The nymph grabbed at the Shard and extracted it from the dead lizardman, handing it to Ingrid who frowned when she saw its stats.

  Toxin

  Tier 0

  Level 1

  0/100 essence

  Passive

  All weapon attacks apply a poison to the target.

  Poison does 1HP/minute for ten minutes.

  "Not at all what I was hoping to get," She said, "and I don't think any of our party will have much use for it in the near future."

  "Might be worth saving for the cat," Ed answered, "but yeah, won't be any time soon."

  The party members searched the other dead lizardmen for loot, picking up the maces used by the warriors and the shaman's staff, and Ed set his cat-kin to using the Skillshard he picked for it the day before on the dead monitor, hoping to extract its poison glands intact for the quartermaster.

  Butcher

  Tier 0

  Level 1

  40/100 essence

  Grants the knowledge and muscle memory needed to butcher corpses and extract valuable organs and meat.

  Chapter 11:

  The Drab

  Ed's party spent the next couple of days farming the sixth floor of the Labyrinth, without running into any particular problem. In fact, the only reason they stayed in the sixth floor was to give the fox-kin a chance to max out its Raceshard and Slice Sorcerer and Manaflow Shards, finally giving it enough mana to use its Chromatic Storm skill.

  The seventh floor, however, was proving significantly harder to manage.

  "We should have left the floor as soon as we saw the first of these bastards!" A frustrated Ingrid yelled as she once again had to dispel her armor so that her companions could help her out of the pit she fell into. "Kitty over there has less than an even chance to discover the traps here and there're more traps than enemies."

  'These bastards', seeing that Ingrid was unarmored and that the other tank was helping her out of their pit, chose that precise moment to attack.

  A huge log suspended from the trees by vine ropes swung towards the dwarf, knocking him and Ingrid right back into the pit, just as dozens of sharpened wooden spears launched all at once at the party, forcing them to take cover behind the trees, which naturally had loops of vines ready and waiting to snare an unsuspecting foot and swing its owner high up into the top of the tree. The cat-kin managed to notice one such trap before stepping in it, and managed to guide Ed and Lucy safely around and into shelter, and the nymph merged into the tree, keeping itself safely out of harm. The remaining two members of the party, however, were a little less lucky.

  With Ingrid and the dwarf in a pit, and the automaton and fox-kin hanging upside down from two different trees, the party's current group of enemies finally chose to show themselves. Shorter than even goblins, the charging monsters had large eyes, sail-like ears, and spiny backs, and their green bodies blended into the forest well enough to render them nearly invisible.

  The cat-kin went to fight the six charging monsters, and Ed prepared to fire at them, but couldn't see them well enough to aim. A Chromatic Storm from Lucy managed to catch two of the enemies, and the cat-kin was blocking two more from getting nearer, but the last two flanked it and screeched gleefully as they approached Lucy.

  A scream of rage sounded from the pit, and a re-armored Ingrid erupted from the trap, riding a huge wolflike beast. Ed wasn't sure why Ingrid's newest skill conjured a vargr instead of a commoner steed.

  Charge

  Tier 1

  Level 1

  0/1000

  Passive

  Increase damage by 20% when charging from the back of a mount.

  His best guess was that the mount conjured by the phantasmal arms ability was just as mutable as the weapons and armor, and lacking in any conscious direction, were affected by Ingrid's hobgoblin race to form her mount. Not that he was complaining, as the huge wolf tore down two of their tiny tormentors while Ingrid's lance speared another.

  The fight was quickly over after that, and Ingrid went to fish the dwarf out of the pit, while the cat-kin cut down the fox-kin and automaton.

  "The only good gremlin is a dead gremlin," Ingrid said grimly as the party gathered what little loot the fallen enemies had. "And that includes my Cousin Ann."

  "Your cousin is a gremlin?" Lucy asked her wonderingly. "I wasn't even aware they could drop Raceshards!"

  "As far as I know, Uncle Olav is the only one who ever found one. The gods alone know what possessed him to give it to his daughter though."

  "Was it really that bad," Ed asked, "I know Raceshards affect how people act, but we've got everything from goblins and up to dark elves running around the bazaar, and they mostly seem to be able to keep themselves in check."

  "There is absolutely nothing in the whole world that is as bad as a teenage gremlin." Ingrid stated firmly. "Nothing."

  The party continued on their way into the forest after Ingrid dismissed her vargr mount, the cat-kin leading the way with its trapper skill trying to detect the gremlins' ubiquitous traps.

  Trapper

  Tier 1

  Level 2

  0/2000 Essence

  Allows the building of tier 1 traps.

  Chance to discover tier 1 traps

  Chance to disarm tier 1 traps

  Automatically discovers tier 0 traps

  Always disarms tier 0 traps

  They had no way to judge what time it was outside, but they entered the floor in the morning and Ed was sure it was nearing noon. Most days, they'd be out of the floor by this point and going to lunch before coming back for another delve. But the insidious traps used by the gremlins meant that progress through this particular zone was excruciatingly slow.

  The cat-kin led the party around another pit trap, this one full of sharp stakes at the bottom, but failed to notice a tripwire running right next to it, and another swinging log rammed into it and through it onto the stakes, killing it instantly. A loud screech heralded another gremlin charge, and Ed barely had time to resummons the cat before the now expected spear bombardment forced them to scatter. Miraculously, nobody was caught in any of the other snares this time, and the gremlins were weak in actual combat and didn't take much effort to dispatch.

  It took them four more hours to get past the last ambush and approach the end of the floor, and the three found themselves in the entrance to what could only be described as a gauntlet.

  A straight pathway ran between two rows of trees, with enough thick underbrush between them to make futile any attempt to move off the path. The giggle of countless gremlins could be heard from the far end of the path, and it was a sure bet that every centimeter of the pathway was full of deadly traps.

  The cat-kin led the way into the gauntlet, walking slowly and checking every centimeter for traps. As soon as it stepped on the path, however, the gremlins hiding in the trees started pelting it with rocks, occasionally adding a thrown crude spear, and the onslaught quickly forced the phantasm to step on a trapdoor that dropped it into a spiked pit. Ingrid carefully walked in the cat-kin's footprints towards the pit and shielded the cat-kin as it climbed out, and the two continued to walk together, the phantasm checking for traps and Ingrid shielding it.

  The rest of the party tried to follow the trapper and Shieldmaiden, but were quickly subjected to another rain of stones and spears, forcing them to back off or risk setting off another trap.

  "We're going to have to do this one by one," Lucy said after they were safely away from the path. "Tell the cat to mark every trap it finds and Ingrid will have to go back and escort the two of us to the other side."

 
; "I really don't like this plan," Ed answered. "It leaves us too strung out and vulnerable."

  "Ing can't shield more than one of us at a time, and we definitely can't pass this without her. Although I could always set fire to the whole forest with a Chromatic, and we'll pass once the gremlins are burned."

  "I'm not sure we'll survive that kind of fire, Luce."

  "You've got a better idea?"

  "Go back to the entrance and find a Barrier Shard. If I Slice it, I'll be able to extend it to you and we'll all be able to shrug off the stones easily. Probably the spears too, they aren't much more than sharpened branches."

  "I think Ingrid will go berserk if we ask her to go back to the entrance now."

  Ingrid was about a tenth of the way into the gauntlet by then, and had just triggered a spear barrage trap that the cat-kin overlooked. The spears weren't able to do much to the armored Shieldmaiden, but Ed could easily hear her snarling.

  "You're probably right. If we do this, I'm not letting you wait at the end on your own for us to cross. I'll go first, leaving you with the phantasms. Then I'll summon them back to me after you and Ing are on the way over.

  "That way only leaves you unguarded instead of me," Lucy argued.

  "True, but it'll be for less time since I can summon the phantasms to me once Ing gets to you. And I'm a lot more resilient than you, Miss Glass Cannon."

  "I don't like this plan."

  "It's your plan, Lucy."

  Lucy grumbled, and opened her status screen. "New plan. You cross with Ing after the cat, and I rank up to a firedrake and fly above you."

  "Won’t you be in Breach?"

  "Yeah, and I know Ing doesn't have the credits to buy enough essence to get me out of it. But none of us would be left alone."

  The cat-kin was approaching the middle of the gauntlet, a dozen spent traps behind it, and dozens more still armed and marked. Unfortunately, Ed and Lucy were too busy arguing about how to get everyone across, and they failed to notice a group of gremlins creeping towards them.