by Oliver Mayes
Damien had his own set of dilemmas, but there was one he could deal with quickly. He looked at Noigel and the succubus, who’d been hanging back, waiting for the onslaught to finish.
You’re dismissed.
They leapt into their respective rifts and were gone. At least now they couldn’t be used against him. The very last thing he needed was for Archimonde to take control of either of them, as it had with the two hounds. The situation was precarious enough already without offering a decisive advantage on a plate.
The other dilemmas were not so easily reconciled. If he canceled his Possession and tried to climb out the bag to make a run for it, Archimonde’s strength would easily be greater than that of his incubus. If he stayed here, doing nothing, Archimonde’s mana and cooldowns would continue to replenish. But then, so would those of Damien’s party. The situation was actually advantageous for him if it was drawn out. The stalemate would end if the party came back after they’d realized the tables had turned.
Damien was still fighting to free his hand from Archimonde’s grasp when the creature looked up into the air behind him and grinned. Damien followed its gaze and saw an imp. It was a Noigel, though it had nothing in common with Damien’s own. Archimonde had clearly gone with the mainstream occultist-touted strategy of suppressing his imp rather than trying to appease it. The Noigel flew back toward Magnitude’s wall, away from the spent players who’d already evacuated and might have killed it.
“Let’s end this with a bang and a whimper, Daemien-chan.”
Archimonde let go with one hand and pointed. Not at Damien, but up into the night sky. The spell-cast was over in two words.
“Dark Omen.”
Damien’s fist descended into Archimonde’s face immediately afterward, which was as marginally satisfying as ever but inflicted minimal damage. He only got the one hit in before Archimonde’s hands returned to Damien’s and renewed their grip. Archimonde had only pointed into the sky for a second. There’d been no channel. There was nothing to indicate a spell had been cast. Was it a bluff?
There was not much light to begin with, but there is a distinct difference between meager light and no light at all. Through Damien’s night vision, he saw a perfectly round shadow visibly form on the ground around him as it started to grow. The absolute pitch black was so dark he had to blink for his vision to recalibrate. He sincerely doubted that was a coincidence. Archimonde lay back, sniggering to itself.
Two seconds later, Hammertime came back on the comms.
“Daemien, is the black sphere growing above you an ability of yours? If not, you might want to...disengage!”
Damien turned his head and looked up. The moon was being eclipsed. There was a black mass hanging high overhead, just above the top of the valley, and it was getting bigger. It had covered the center of the moon and was working its way outward to cover the entire surface. Dark Omen was a fitting name.
“We need to get clear! You need to come now!”
Right. So much for waiting this out. Damien needed to Enrage. If Archimonde wasn’t going to oblige, he’d just have to do it himself. Damien braced his bitten arm and violently twisted it within Archimonde’s stomach. The teeth shredded his limb and Damien’s vision blurred a little, but he’d accomplished his objective. He had less than 50% health. Enrage was activated. Right. What’s next?
He used his newfound strength to wrench his punching arm out of Archimonde’s hands and grabbed the other before pulling as hard as he could. It was both painful and ineffective. The teeth were lodged in deep, and even with quadrupled incubus strength he couldn’t lift Archimonde’s bulk. Archimonde was not eating it, opting instead to keep a strong grip.
Right. Okay. What are we doing here? Oh, of course! That’s why Archimonde had been so happy to find its Noigel, and why it had sent it somewhere safe. Archimonde had an imp to Demon Gate out of its own spell’s area of effect. How could Damien do the same without any imps?
Time had passed, and Archimonde’s most reliable and heavily trait-invested ability was off cooldown. It twisted its head to the floor and pointed directly in front of its own snout.
“Circle of Hell.”
Oh good. Damien’s health was dropping, and Archimonde’s was regenerating. Great. He’d probably die from the fire before he had to concern himself with the Dark Omen looming above. Although the low hum emanating from above implied it would be a close-run thing. The incubus might die from the flames, but then his real body in the bag would die from whatever was coming. And the Circle of Hell positioned directly over them was preventing him from canceling his Possession and leaving without being rooted.
Archimonde had chucked an imp off its back at Damien’s imps earlier. That idea had merit. But he needed to prevent Archimonde from casting spells at his vacant body, not to mention whatever the effects of the spell looming over them would be. Damien could only effectively restrain Archimonde if the incubus’s stats were quadrupled by Possession AND Enrage together. If he chucked his vacant body out of the way but couldn’t cancel the Possession, his corpse could die on the cold ground instead. He assumed something with as long a charge time as this would do considerable damage. Still, he’d thought his way to a measurable improvement of dying a few meters away! But what if...well then. Now he had a different problem. Trying to convince Hammertime to run toward the danger zone as expediently as possible.
He brought up his menu with his free hand and mashed in a nostalgic message to Hammertime with his inferior three-fingered-incubus typing skills, making up for it with his superior inflammatory verbiage. There was no time to think about what he was sending, and certainly no time to spell-check. Either Hammertime would get it or he wouldn’t.
Daemien: cm gt sum if u thnk ur hrd enuf pls.
“Saying goodbye to your loved ones, Daemien-chan?”
Not exactly. The root was over. Damien delicately and deliberately placed a foot on the side of Archimonde’s face, then less delicately and even more deliberately pressed it over so it faced away from his allies. Corruption required a directed glance in addition to a flick of the wrist. No Corruption for you. In the distance, he could see Hammertime running toward him with Aetherius’s Mana Wisp hovering in front to see by.
What an incredibly fast response from both parties. Still got some residual anger from when I lured you to your death with a variation on that message?
Gooood. Use your aggressive nature, boy.
It was either that, or Hammertime had a much better sense of humor than Damien gave him credit for. Or he was just plain legendary. Maybe a mishmash of all three. Damien churned a second, shorter message into the chat box.
Daemien: go long
He reached into the bag with his hand, being careful to keep his weight on the foot pressed into Archimonde’s face. How to throw his own body: by the leg? Nah, the bloody thing will just fall off. No time to overthink it. If the first option is terrible, the second will have to do. He squashed his vacant body into a ball, then chucked it as hard as he could at Hammertime’s approaching figure outside the new Circle of Hell’s area of effect.
Considering the impending danger, Hammertime was running very resolutely. Damien would have to thank him, if either of them survived. Damien’s body unfolded a quarter of the way into its arc and spiraled in the air. His limp corpse had lousy aerodynamic properties. It was only as Damien released himself into the air that he realized the one variable he hadn’t accounted for. Hammertime couldn’t see in the dark. He roared, the only way to warn him in time, but the hum of the Dark Omen above drowned it out and Hammertime didn’t stop. At least it had been a good throw.
Damien’s lifeless vessel rag-dolled out of the air and into the light of Aetherius’s Mana Wisp, giving Hammertime exactly 0.12 seconds of warning before wrapping itself around his head. Hammertime leapt back to his feet, looked at the body, understood instantly, picked it up and started running back to the party as fast as he could.
Nice. Twenty-four seconds and an insane
ally had cracked the puzzle. It was a bit hectic for a moment there. Damien removed his foot from Archimonde’s face and smirked at his foe as efficiently as his own disgusting face would allow. Archimonde smirked sidelong back at him without turning its head. The hum of their impending death was consuming everything, and it was growing nearer. Dark Omen had begun its descent and would surely be upon them in seconds.
Archimonde’s eyes turned back to its Noigel, which was standing a fair distance away. Hammertime was just about to pass that point on the opposite side. A good omen. The incubus’s health was already low and Archimonde’s was now comfortably high. Why would it not be smirking? As far as Archimonde was concerned, everything was well in hand. And hand was well in stomach.
Damien tried to lever the thing’s head off the ground to face it away from its only hope of salvation, but both his archnemesis’s hands immediately arrived to fight Damien away and Archimonde even began biting his hand with his regular, facially based mouth. Damien couldn’t simultaneously fight three extremities with one. As he fought it, he realized something unsettling. There was no sound. The scuffle of them clawing and fighting each other was making no noise. The hum wasn’t loud enough to drown it out. The sound just wasn’t there.
The damage of the Circle of Hell was stacking too quickly anyway. The incubus would be dead in a couple of seconds. Might as well show Archimonde its efforts had been for naught. Too late for it to remedy the situation, now. He wanted it to suffer as much as possible, and while he’d been unable to inflict that physically he’d proven more than equipped to do it intellectually.
Damien bent over forward a little and opened the flap in the top of the bag, pointing it directly into Archimonde’s face. He stood up straight and returned Archimonde’s appalled sidelong expression, the massive googly eyes that once inspired terror now reduced to the epitome of indignant comical fury, with the most insincere thumbs-up Damien had ever had the pleasure of delivering. It would be the last action he took during this extremely successful Possession. The long-suffering incubus finally burned out the last of its hit points and died in flames. Had Archimonde tried a little harder, Damien would be dead. Its complacency, its failure to predict the variables Damien had painstakingly sought out, had invited Damien’s success.
Damien was back in his own body, just in time to appreciate what he’d escaped. The Dark Omen had dropped halfway into the valley. Damien was hung over Hammertime’s shoulder like a piece of meat as the guild leader fled in a justifiably undignified fashion, his arms and legs pumping furiously as he Charged toward the exit. It should’ve been loud, but it was utterly silent. There was no sound of any kind left, other than the hum.
The black mass Archimonde had conjured was no easier to conceptualize from Damien’s new vantage point. It looked two-dimensional from every angle, as if part of a painting the artist had decided could only be improved by slapping a black circle in the middle. The only way of discerning its 3D dimensions was to assume that it extended as far forward and back as it did horizontally. By which standard, it was much closer than it appeared. A perfect sphere of black energy, boasting a circumference of about thirty meters. There was nothing about it that suggested coming into physical contact would be survivable.
As relief washed over him, he looked down to where he’d spent the last odd minute of his life. His nemesis’s bulky body had already been replaced with the most unfortunate Noigel of all time. It moved to flee but was instead pulled upward, sucked into what Damien now recognized as a miniature rendition of a black hole. Archimonde’s Noigel had been relocated to the very epicenter of the spell with only a second to impact. It had no chance. While the Dark Omen had taken a long time to completely manifest, it was not lollygagging now. It took on a visible third dimension as it sank into the ground to commence ‘integrating’ with it.
There was no explosion. There was no collision to propagate an explosion. It just buried itself in the landscape with no resistance, like a scalding-hot ball bearing dropped into a stick of butter. It was half immersed in the blink of an eye, persisted for another three seconds, over which duration there was a tangible pull toward it that Hammertime had avoided with his expedient movement, then shrank and winked out. It had formed a perfectly smooth bowl in the center of the valley.
Hammertime ran Damien the rest of the way to the opening, then unceremoniously put him down on his own two feet. Damien turned to examine the party that had navigated two far more extraordinary feats in a row. They were battered and drained, but alive. His elation was tempered when he saw Aetherius supporting Lillian. Her health was full, but she wasn’t even motivated enough to carry herself. Her eyes were cast down, locked in a thousand-yard stare, not really seeing anything. Damien looked away, unwilling to inflict her pain on himself any longer. They’d escaped the carnage. But his victory over Archimonde, satisfying though it had been, was insufficient.
Despite their accomplishment, murder was back on his mind.
After twenty minutes of running through rough terrain (following Hammertime’s quest directive in the absence of Lillian’s leadership), they found the lights of a town. Damien realized this was where they would part ways. He was pretty sure his Enemy of the Realm ‘perk’ would ensure he was unwelcome in any civilized establishment. They’d be logging off at an inn for safety, but that option was not available to him. He was exhausted. All of them were. It was 4:56am. He’d sleep well that day. Then he looked at Lillian, who had one hand slung over Aetherius’s shoulder as she dragged her feet, and realized he wouldn’t. There was something important he needed to do first.
He drew to a halt at the back of the party as they dragged onward. Steeled himself. And called out.
“Aetherius. I need to talk to you. Alone. Please.”
They all stopped. Aetherius looked between him and the rest of them, considered, then gently lowered Lillian. She didn’t even lower herself. She collapsed, allowing Aetherius to guide her down, and curled up on the ground. The only proof she was alive was her chest expanding in short bursts. Seeing her like this broke Damien’s heart. She was supposed to go to work in a few hours. She’d put this team together and had ended up suffering more than any of them. Because she’d decided to bring Damien, knowing it all but guaranteed a confrontation with the horror she’d seen in his petulantly shared footage. Then she had confronted his trauma herself, to try and spare him it.
Aetherius looked between the two of them, his gaze lingering on Lillian. Then he motioned for Damien to come to him instead. He was unwilling to leave her side. The rest of the party uneasily shambled onward, allowing them the space to have the private conversation Damien had requested.
Damien stepped up to his former nemesis and they briefly eyed each other up. Aetherius had his arms folded. Aside from holding them above his head, there was no more he could do to show lack of hostility. Or defensiveness. Damien followed suit. He looked back at the ground between Aetherius’s feet. Andrew’s feet. He reached into his Bag of Holding and withdrew the rat-skin bag Bartholomew had crafted for him, long ago. It was prepacked, in advance of the unlikely event their combined efforts tonight would succeed. He took a deep breath. Then removed the Bag of Holding from his belt.
“This is yours. Thank you for your help today. We couldn’t have done it without you.”
His eyes were still fixed on the floor, but he felt Andrew gently grasp the bag. He let go. Then, still looking at the floor in a desperate attempt not to show his face, he started walking away. He’d made it less than ten steps when Andrew replied.
“Goddammit...wait.”
Damien kept his eyes on the floor. Took another shaky breath. And turned around. Still looking at the floor.
“You...you haven’t disconnected this item from your inventory. I can access everything you have.”
Oh. Damien paused. He walked very slowly back, thinking about it. Then slowly raised a hand before cramming it back against his body.
“It’s fine. Take whatever you nee
d. For you, and everybody else. I’m sorry there isn’t more in there.”
“Thank you. That will be useful.”
Damien’s eyes strayed past Andrew’s feet, back to Lillian. It was awful, watching her embrace helplessness like that. The wrong kind of nostalgic. Aetherius still had to carry her into town and get her into a state where it would be okay for her to log off. The moment she did, she’d be alone. A difficult burden, to put it lightly, given the state of their relationship. But of all the people there, Andrew was still the one who knew her best. That much had been made clear. Damien struggled but managed to raise his head, only to find Andrew staring at the ground as well.
“Andrew?”
Andrew’s head jerked upward at his name, and Damien saw someone who felt exactly the same way he did. They’d succeeded, and yet he looked completely defeated. More hopeless than when Damien had cornered him, by stealing the bag he’d now returned with all its new contents attached. It was hard, looking into the eyes of someone unhappier than he was. His own pain was worth less, knowing that Andrew had suffered more and would suffer further still before sleep took him. But Damien didn’t look away. He owed him that much, after what he’d done. If Andrew hadn’t been there to end this when he had, Lillian’s condition would be worse. She’d have been left alone, immediately after having been killed by the ability that had put her in this state.
Andrew was staring back. Also refusing to look away. Damien’s face contorted, staving off embarrassment and tears, as he made his last request of the man who surely needed no more burdens.
“Please look after Lillian. She needs you.”
Andrew still stared. He was much better at hiding how he felt than Damien. He was still not good enough to completely conceal his misery. Damien had seen him work, and knew this: Andrew possessed an unnerving intellect. Damien was glad of it. He was glad that this man, who he’d once hated, was the one who would protect Lillian now. And in the journey to come, where Damien would not follow.
