I had a good angle on the undead creature, so I stepped forward on Mirea’s left side and made an overhead chop with my magical broadsword. I was a good half a foot taller than the woman, so it wasn’t that big of a stretch for me. My strike was clean, and I finished off the injured skeleton with a blow that split its skull in half.
“Thanks, Leo!” Wicum shouted as he heaved another strike over his sister. This one was aimed better than his earlier hit, and it shattered a chain mail wearing skeleton like wrecking ball through a thatch hut.
“Step back! I’m okay,” Mirea shouted at me, and I followed her instructions. The woman was doing a great job of blocking everything that the skeletons were throwing at her, and she seemed to have a sixth sense of how they would attack. She often had her shield up before the monsters even swung, and it didn’t appear like she was a tiny bit tired. This was a game, and I didn’t see any sort of physical fatigue bar anywhere on my UI. It could be that NPC’s and players could melee attack as much as they wanted without feeling tired. Then again, that sounded very unlike Zarra, so I guessed that there was some sort of physical fatigue system in the game, but it would probably be something that players would feel instead of just see. Just like the Mana fatigue.
“Another one!” Wicum shouted as he smashed a skeleton.
I’d kept track up to ten, but that had been a few seconds ago, so I guessed that we’d killed twelve or thirteen of them. A pile of bones was forming at Mirea’s feet, and I worried that it might cause her to slip. That would be all sorts of bad, and would probably end up with us all getting killed by an avalanche of pissed off skeletons.
“I am going to use grrrr- Gust to buy you some room!” Bylem must have had the same concern because the fenia moved closer behind Mirea when he shouted.
“One, two, three!” Wicum counted off.
I didn’t know exactly what was going to happen, but I guessed as soon as Mirea pivoted to the side of the door. The movement left Bylem exposed to the skeletons for half a moment and I reactively used Guardian of Fortune on him. I almost didn’t think that the ability would work, but the tiger striped fenia began to glow with teal shields, and he shuffled the last step forward to stand at the pile of bones in the door gap.
“Haaaaaaiiii!” he shouted as he flung open his arms.
There was a sound of a thunderclap, followed by a shriek of angry wind. The bones at his feet were suddenly gone, and I heard Cornalic grunt against the door he held in place. The fenia jumped back, but an instant later a spear flew through the opening. The javelin looked to be made of bone, and it stuck Beylem square in the chest.
“No!” Wicum and I screamed as the cat-man staggered backward.
“I’m fine!” the fenia shouted a half second later, and I noticed that his life bar on my party UI hadn’t actually moved any. “Leo’s enchantment protected me. Thank the Light!” As if on cue, the glow of my enchantment faded from his body.
“Who threw the spear?” Cornalic asked from his safe spot behind the door.
“One of them is on a pedestal to the right. I’ll try and hit him with my magic before he can throw another,” the fenia replied, and I saw him run his hand over his chest half a dozen times. “That is such a weird feeling,” he said as he gave me a cat-grin. “It hit me, and I thought I was dead. Grrr. Didn’t hurt but I feel as if it should have.”
“It’s a one in four chance that it will actually do damage. So we still got lucky,” I explained.
“Ha! I’ve always been lucky.”
“They return!” Mirea warned as she braced herself again. “Get that javelin thrower Bylem. I don’t want to have to worry about him throwing things at me.”
“Working on it. Leo, switch places with me,” the mage commanded, and I moved back behind Mirea so that the fenia could stand on her left side.
“I see him. Watch your eyes again!” he shouted as he extended his right paw. A spark of energy shot out of his finger like a mini bolt of blue lightning. He paused for half a second after the magic had left his finger and then he made a joyful screech. “Got him! Ha!”
The rest of us didn’t have time to congratulate him because of the horde of skeletons that flooded into the gap. The first wave had kind of trickled in, and there hadn’t been any real pressure on the door, but this time they crashed into the iron wrapped piece of wood en masse, and Cornalic let out a yelp of alarm.
“Ahhh!” the half-orc shouted. “I require a bit of assistance!”
“Leo, help him!” Mirea ordered over the sound of her shield blocking a flurry of sword strikes. The door was starting to slide away from her, and Wicum darted around her back so that he could keep the flow of skeletons away.
I ran past Bylem and pushed on the door beside Cornalic. The man’s big boot was kind of wedged in the bottom of the door, but I could see that it had rolled over a good chunk of the leather and the muscular man was trying to heave it back away before it swallowed his whole foot. My swords were still out, so I leaned my back against the wood next to him and pushed against the door with the combined strength of my legs and posterior chain of muscles.
“Great job, Leo! We are pushing these villains back!” Cornalic grunted next to me. The door was moving, and the man managed to free his boot and then place it again after we’d gained a foot of distance.
“Watch your eyes!” Bylem shouted, and I peeked my head around the edge of the door so that I could check on Mirea. The woman moved her face behind her shield again, and the flash of light didn’t distract her from her next series of blocks.
It did look as if she was starting to slow down.
“Dearest friends, how many more do you see?” Cornalic asked from beside me.
“Too many,” Wicum grunted as he chopped into the group of skeletons on the other side of his sister.
“Probably forty, maybe fifty,” Bylem growled. “I’m keeping my magic toward the tail end so we don’t accidentally burn the door.
“We can close the door,” I said half a second after I felt another slam against the wood barrier. It was taking an effort to keep the thing in its position, but I felt as if I was only using about a fifth of my strength. I could probably push it closed if they wanted me to.
“Then we’d just have to do this later,” Mirea grunted as she blocked a club from another armored skeleton. “I’m a little tired, but I’ll be okay.”
Then we heard a roar echo from the next room.
“What was that?” Cornalic and I said at the same time.
“Uhhh…” Bylem stood on the toes of his wide boots, and peered over the flurry of Mirea’s and Wicum’s melee. His cat eyes suddenly opened to half the size of his face, and he made a screeching sound. “Close the door! Close the door! Close the door!” he screamed.
I heaved with my legs and pushed hard with my back. Cornalic grunted next to me, and the door began to close. A few seconds after we’d started moving, the weight got easier, and we managed to get the door pushed all the way closed without much real fuss.
“Bar the door! It is over here!” Bylem shouted as he ran to the ten-foot tall piece of flat iron leaning up against the far wall behind Cornalic and me.
“What did you see?” Wicum asked as he chased after the fenia. There was still pressure on the door from the horde of skeletons on the other side, but they had very little leverage to push the thing open now.
There was another roar from the next room, and it sounded close.
“Hurry!” the fenia had lifted up one side of the metal bar, but it was obviously too heavy for him. Wicum grabbed the other end and lifted it easily, and then they both ran over to us.
There was a smash against the other side of the wood, and the impact bounced Cornalic and me away a good five feet as the door swung almost all the way open. A handful of skeletons ran into the room, and Mirea jumped to keep them away from us as we tried to push the door closed again.
“Argh!” I screamed as I pushed against the wood next to Cornalic. Whatever was on the other
side of this thing was incredibly strong, and it felt as if I was trying to wrestle a door closed with a grizzly bear pushing on the other side.
Maybe it was a bear since it made horrific growling noises as it struggled to push against us. Or maybe it was way larger than a bear since it hadn’t been able to squeeze itself through the gap in the door it made when it first knocked into us.
“It’s closed!” I shouted as soon as Cornalic and I had pushed the seams of the doors together. I hadn’t been able to look over my shoulder at Mirea dealing with the loose skeletons, and I just hoped that the woman had managed to defeat them all. k`1`2
“Here!” Bylem shouted as he and Wicum lowered the ponderous bar into place. Cornalic and I let out a gasp of relief and then we backed away. I spun around to see Mirea in a melee with the last two skeletons, but before I could run to her side, the woman cut the legs out from under one with an expert sweep of her sword. She then cleaved the head off of the last one with a cool looking jump swing she did while rising from her previous attack. The woman was a really skilled warrior, and the brief display of her talent made me realize that she was much more adept than her sibling. Or at least, she possessed much more finesse.
“What did you see?” I asked Bylem, but before he could answer, there was another roar behind us.
We all spun to face the doors and then flinched as something incredibly large smashed into it. It sounded as if the wood on the left door actually cracked, and the two doors popped open for half a foot before they swung closed.
The thick metal bar holding them together was now bent a bit.
“A giant skeleton. It must be standing fifteen feet tall,” the fenia said with a frightened gasp.
“By the Shadow,” Mirea sighed. “Looks as if we are done here. Maybe we can try another path?” As soon as the words left her mouth, there was another roar beyond the closed doors. A half second later they made a massive cracking sound, and the bar holding the doors in place cried out like a screeching train brake, and then it sprung loose of its holding arms like a spring. The thing flipped in the air, bounced off of the dark stone ceiling of the room, and the buried itself deep into the stone at our feet. The thing trembled where it stuck, and it rang like it was a tuning fork for a handful of seconds.
“Dear friends, I’m afraid we are in trouble,” Cornalic said as the doors burst open and a giant angry skeleton screamed at us.
Chapter 14
The massive skeleton looked as if it might have come from a giant’s bones. Of course, I didn’t know exactly how tall giants in Ohlavar Quest actually stood, and it was a bit tough to tell its maximum height because it had kind of an ape-like hunch to its posture, but this monster stood at least fifteen feet high. Its left skeletal fist pressed into the stone of the ground while its right hand clutched a double sided battle axe with blades that were probably as wide in diameter as truck tires. The thing had to bend down a little to squeeze through the doorway, and it let out another savage screech as soon as it had cleared its head and fully entered the room with the two statues.
New Quest: Defeat or escape from the giant angry skeleton.
I had to chuckle a bit at the game’s use of the word angry since it was rather obvious that this monster had woken up on the wrong side of whatever bed it slept in. It had a really long health bar, and I guessed that the escape part of my quest was probably going to be the avenue my party and I would decide to take.
The good news was that that the massive beast’s efforts to break down the door had resulted in the destruction of the other skeletons we had been fighting, and only two of the standard sized monsters entered our room beside the giant one. The bad news was that the giant one lifted up its impressive axe without any perceived effort, and it tossed the massive thing toward Cornalic and me as if it was a plastic Frisbee.
“Whoops!” Cornalic shouted as we both threw ourselves on the ground beside each other. The spinning Frisbee-axe-of-annihilation passed above us and smashed into the stone wall with the sound of a big rig truck driving into a pottery shop. The air around us filled with a layer of dust, and I had to cough a measuring cup’s worth of it out of my lungs when I sprung to my feet.
Then the giant skeleton charged us.
The beast moved just like an ape would, but its lumbering like crawl was much quicker than I would have thought. The half-orc and I darted toward our right side, and I saw Bylem’s tail as he ran away from the skeleton. I didn’t see Wicum or Mirea, but I figured that they were already at the base of the distant stairs.
I risked a glance behind me as I ran, and saw that a good twenty-foot section of the stone wall where the axe had hit was now destroyed. It looked as if there was another cavern beyond it, but I wasn’t absolutely sure from my quick glance. I was more worried about the axe the skeleton had retrieved, and the hurling motion he looked ready to make.
“He’s throwing it again!” I warned my friends a half second before the creature launched the giant weapon. It seemed as if the skeleton wasn’t aiming at Cornalic and me with this throw. The axe passed high over our heads and the crowns of the two statues. The weapon flew into the darkness ahead, and there was another horrific smashing sound. I couldn’t see exactly where the axe landed, but the life bars of Wicum and Mirea hadn’t gone down any, so I breathed a gasp of relief.
“Uhhhh. This isn’t good!” Bylem had skidded to a halt a few dozen feet in front of Cornalic and me. Mirea and Wicum were another fifteen feet in front of the fenia, and I was close enough to the stairs and their emberbrand to see the skeleton’s axe.
And the completely ruined staircase that was supposed to be our exit.
The axe had removed a good twenty steps from the climb with its impact. Well, maybe “removed” wasn’t a good description. “Smashed into rubble” was probably a better one. It did look like we’d be able to climb up the slope and exit, but we would have to pick our way up through the slope strewn with rubble, and I wouldn’t be surprised if one of us made a mistake and tumbled back to the statue room.
It wasn’t the kind of escape we could make with a giant skeleton trying to kill us.
“I think his first hit opened up the side of the wall. There might be another passage back there,” I said to my companions as the five of us spun back to look at the skeleton. The thing had reached the two statues, and I watched it gingerly step between the king and queen. It almost looked as if the thing was showing the statues reverence, and didn’t want to damage them.
“Or we fight it here before it can get its axe,” Mirea growled as she wiggled her broadsword in her right hand.
“That’s the worst idea I think I’ve ever heard,” Bylem whined.
“Got a better one?” she grunted.
“Yes. How about we—”
“Try to fight him around the statues!” I shouted. “Look at him. He doesn’t want to damage them.” My companions were already looking in the skeleton’s direction, but I guessed that they hadn’t noticed what I saw until I pointed it out. The monster still hadn’t managed to get past the statues, because it was standing on its legs fully erect so that it could kind of side strafe between.
“Wicum and I will keep him in between the statutes. Bylem and Cornalic put the hurt on him!” Mirea ordered as she and her brother dashed the thirty feet toward the bottleneck.
“What do I do?” I asked as I followed behind the woman.
“You are the healer, don’t let us die!” she shouted over her shoulder a second before she reached the skeleton’s forward foot.
The foot of the thing was the size of a motorcycle, and the armored woman unleashed a triumphant shout as she brought her sword down on top of the mass of bones. Her blade dug into the top part of the foot, and the creature let out a yelp of annoyance. Its health bar moved down a tiny trickle, and I estimated that the attack had taken 1% of the creature’s health.
Then it flicked out its left hand at Mirea as if it was swatting one of those little yappy dogs. I guessed that the warrior woma
n would be able to block the attack with her shield, but I didn’t know if the impact of the giant creature’s attack would break her shield arm. It was a split second decision, but I used Guardian of Fortune, and the woman glowed with the teal outline about the same time that the giant skeleton flicked her shield.
The chamber rang with the impact of bone against metal, and Mirea’s arm kind of bounced up to deflect the attack. She didn’t cry out in pain, and her health bar didn’t go down, so I figured that my enchantment had protected her, or she didn’t even need it. The warrior woman made another attack with her sword at the same spot on the foot, and the creature let out another annoyed yelp.
Wicum swung his longsword over his head with the chopping motion I’d seen before. The man seemed more like a lumberjack than a skilled warrior, but his attack was aimed true, and his larger blade smashed into the spot on the skeleton’s foot where his sister had struck twice before. I saw about a 3% sliver of the skeleton’s health bar fall from the attack.
“Watch the heat!” Bylem shouted from the other side of the statues. The fenia was standing near Cornalic, and I noticed that the other two human-sized skeletons were nowhere to be seen. The two men must have taken care of them while I focused on Mirea. The thought made me frown for half a second, and I realized that I’d made the rookie healer mistake of focusing too much on one party member. I needed to be paying attention to everyone’s health, and their position during a battle.
A pool of orange light appeared in-between the statues at the skeleton’s feet. The circle started to glow brighter, and it quickly morphed into a pool of hot lava. I could feel the intensity of the heat from my place some twenty-five feet behind the sibling warriors, and I noticed Mirea actually step back a bit so that she wasn’t so close to the edge.
“Keep him locked down there and don’t let him—” the fenia began to scream out a command, but the skeleton was not happy about the lava pool under it, and its own screech drowned out Bylem’s easily.
Lion's Quest: Dual Wield: A LitRPG Saga Page 18
