by N H Paxton
Enhanced Dark Vision Potion: Dark Vision improves upon the racial traits of the ability Night Eye and provides an improved distance as well as improved contrast.
Effect: 38% vision improvement at night or in poor lighting. Duration, 30 minutes.
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Oh, that explained it. I did not know one could make a potion with the power to improve upon Night Eye.
“Will have to dissect chemical formula later.” I blinked my eyes repeatedly, expecting the azure hue of everything to fade away.
“It takes a minute to get used to, for sure. But it’s helpful, especially in situations like this. We don’t know what’s down here. Stealth will be crucial for tactical advantage.” Eberand strode forward, following closely after Ken, who stayed crouched low to the floor.
“Your voices aren’t helping the situation,” Ken whispered harshly from the front of the group.
I could barely see the outline of his body as he moved in Stealth. According to him, moving in Stealth increased his chance of detecting traps. I didn’t know anything about that, but I thought he just liked being nearly invisible.
“What should we expect down here?” Garret’s grating voice echoed off the stone walls of the hallway we had entered.
It was much longer than I’d anticipated. The walls were large stone bricks layered on one another in a staggered fashion. The hallway itself was wide enough for two, maybe three, people abreast. The floor was lacquered wood of some kind. It seemed as though it had not aged at all. There was a hollowness to our footsteps as we walked, suggesting that perhaps we were not on an actual floor, but a ceiling.
“Undead, redead, whatever the hell those are.” Eberand threw his hands up and shrugged.
He staggered and tripped, his armor clanking against the wooden planks.
“Damnit, dude, watch out,” Ken hissed, his and Eberand’s body tangled together in a human knot.
“Shhhh!” Garret crouched down, pulling his axe from his back. “Something’s coming.”
There were creaking steps coming from farther down the hallway. The darkness stretched on well beyond my enhanced vision, obscuring whatever kind of monstrosity was headed our way.
There was a groan, or perhaps a moan, that echoed to our small group. It reminded me of every zombie movie I had ever seen. I did not consider myself to be a science fiction believer, seeing as how I made concrete science work for me every single day, but I liked zombie movies.
“Damn,” Ken whispered, almost inaudibly, as he untangled himself from Eberand.
There was another groan, more angry than the last. And closer. I still couldn’t see anything.
“What is it, dude?” Garret’s face was right next to Ken’s ear. Did the man know nothing of personal boundaries?
“Zombie. Well, kind of. It’s a [Mottled Shambler].” Ken’s daggers were in his hands before he was finished speaking, then he vanished into Stealth.
“I hate zombies. Any kind. Doesn’t matter the name.” Eberand was back on his feet. He smacked his gauntlets together. It sounded horribly loud in the emptiness of the hallway.
A half dozen moans and groans of various kinds retorted when the banging had finished. That was a mistake.
“Whoops,” Eberand said as he rubbed the back of his head. He followed that motion with a quick unsheathing of his greatsword. The metallic sound of it rasping against the back of his armor tortured my ears.
Then they were on us. Six hulking, shambling mounds of rotting flesh and bones somehow sprinted down the hallway with unnatural speed. They appeared in my vision one after another, reaching the beginning of my enhanced vision buff. I jumped slightly when I saw the first one.
“Ah damn, you had to be tough.” Garret sidestepped me and slammed a foot down, roaring at the same time.
His body glowed a visible orange, even against the blue of my vision buff. He unsheathed his axe and was immediately shoved backwards, past me, by a barreling shambler.
There was an intense crash, followed by a sudden and severe shifting in the floor we were standing on.
“Is not good.” I barely had the words out before the entire floor gave out, taking everything in the hallway with it.
The ground beneath, which I had a shockingly good view of, was covered in large tapestry-like carpets. It came rushing toward me at a deadly rate. My body smacked into a wooden pew, which slightly broke my fall. It exploded in a shower of wooden fragments.
<<<>>>
Debuffs Added
Fractured Shoulder: You cannot use your left arm and cannot cast mage spells requiring hand gestures. Duration, 2 minutes.
Concussed: You have sustained a severe head injury! Confusion and disorientation. Duration, 1 minute.
Fractured Leg: You cannot use your left leg! Movement Rate reduced by 65%. Duration, 2 minutes.
<<<>>>
I struggled to breathe, as all of the air had been forcefully expelled from my lungs. In my blurred vision, I saw Ken land gracefully: crouched down, one leg extended behind him, a hand touching the ground, daggers still clutched.
Eberand was in a pile nearby, groaning loudly.
Garret’s agonized shouting drowned everything out; he lay a meter or two away, a large piece of metal sticking through the plate mail that covered one of his legs. It was spattered with blood.
Large planks of wood still cracking and falling from the ceiling pelted me. I tried to roll out of the way of an especially large piece and felt the pressure from where it landed immediately to my right.
“Who’s still alive!?” Ken’s voice was panicked as he sprang into action, blades spinning in his hands as he dashed around the room, cutting at shamblers as they brokenly struggled to their feet.
“Hurting, broken, alive.” I managed to get a few words out through the pulsing pain in my head, shoulder, and leg.
“Impaled!” Garret’s voice was more of an angry complaint than a notification of his well-being.
He grasped the piece of metal and tried to pull it free but couldn’t. He snapped a Health regen potion from his belt, uncorked it with a practiced maneuver, and chugged the entire vial.
“Eberand!?” Ken’s figure flitted in and out of my vision. He was either using an impressive ability, or my Concussed status was really messing with my vision.
“Present.” Eberand rolled onto his front and did a solid pushup, bringing himself to his knees.
He was immediately struck by a shambler that had made it past Ken’s onslaught. He struck the floor again with an oof!
“Fuuuuuuck!” Garret screamed at the top of his lungs.
A shambler had crawled out from under some of the floor wreckage and was biting into his shoulder. He slammed a gauntleted fist into its face, caving its head in.
“Am coming.” I fought hard to gain my feet, but my fractured leg still had a solid minute and a half left until it was healed.
My Health was also only at half. There was little I could do aside from try to stand up and get my Health back to a reasonable level. I snagged a potion from my belt and ripped the cork out of it.
The terrible fruity flavor of the Health regen potions in this world would do me in, I had no doubt. I managed to swallow it without incident, wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, then hurled the empty vial at a nearby incoming shambler. It shattered on its head, embedding small pieces of glass into the rotting flesh. I looked over to Garret, who was still trying to free his leg.
“Hey Vlad, got any pain relievers in that belt of yours?” Garret smirked, then steeled himself as he jerked his leg up hard, ripping it free of the metal candle stand he had apparently landed on.
His features changed to anguish in an instant. He let loose with an intense roar that drew the attention of all the shamblers in the room.
“Probably not best plan,” I muttered.
Garret had managed to turn the entire mob on us. I was in no condition to fight to my fullest capacity—there was no way I could wield Gamma with a fractured shoulder.
The kickback alone would probably tear my arm off, but I still had my EverDark Autobow. I pulled it from my belt and released the safety.
“If it keeps everyone else alive,” Garret said as he stood, dragging himself to his feet, “then it was worthwhile.”
He pulled a short dagger from a hidden place in his belt and brandished it like a sword.
Around the room, the shamblers all turned toward us, their dead and empty eye sockets staring us down. As a single unit, they all groaned loudly, then took to running. I managed to fire off a pair of crossbow bolts before they got too close, both landing center mass on a shambler. It stumbled and rolled on the floor.
“Got one!” Ken shouted.
He tackled a shambler, his daggers sinking deep into its spine as it collapsed to the ground. He rose quickly and flicked a handful of nasty steel blades at another one that was running by him, straight at Garret and me.
Garret had backed up to me, our backs pressed against one another. The long dagger was held out, ready to defend him. I fired off the remaining bolts from the magazine of the crossbow, the slick mechanisms inside the device partially releasing the magazine with a quick pop.
I snagged it from the crossbow with my offhand and hooked the EverDark Autobow onto my belt. I fished a grenade from my inventory, not caring what style it was, and hurled it into the crowd of oncoming zombies.
The grenade ruptured, engulfing a large portion of the zombies in a sticky web. That was serendipitous.
“For the Alliance!” Eberand had regained his feet in the confusion and was swinging his greatsword like a baseball bat.
It slammed into the skull of a half-dead shambler that was caught up in the webbing, ripping it from the creature’s rotting neck. It sailed away, smacking into a wall on the far side of the chapel. The shambler collapsed on the spot, its head shorn from its shoulders.
Eberand found Garret’s axe and gave it a mighty kick. It spun across the floor, mercifully skipping several large piles of debris, and stopped nearby.
“Thanks.” Garret reached down and collected his axe, a smile crossing his face. “Let’s kill shit.”
“Enough.” A harshly whispered voice came from the distance, and along with it came a floating creature attired in rotting and torn robes.
The shamblers stopped in their places, frozen with a single word.
“Now what?” Eberand hefted his greatsword over his shoulder and watched the floating creature arrive at the near end of the chapel.
There was a short platform, raised a small distance, with a podium and several rows of choral chairs. I hadn’t noticed earlier, but the entire area was well lighted from sconces and braziers scattered about the room.
“Ashes to ashes,” the creature said. The shamblers all about the room collapsed in heaps, their skin and bodies disintegrating.
“This isn’t good.” Garret had hefted his axe in the air to strike down a zombie, and the weapon hung in space of its own accord.
“Dust to dust,” the robed figure continued. It raised its arms, revealing scrawny limbs.
Each had a gnarled, clawed hand attached. As its hands reached their peak, the dust that the shamblers had become began to spiral into the air in long pathways. They were carried on a wind I couldn’t feel, but it looked like some kind of necromantic magic.
The dust made its way to the creature on the dais, the trails wrapping themselves around its arms and filling its robes.
“Why aren’t we doing anything?” Ken’s voice held a bit of panic, with a hint of concern.
“Because cannot move.” I tried to raise my arm, to pull Gamma from his sling on my back, anything. But my body was frozen in place.
“Darkness to darkness.” As the creature finished its words, a dark flame engulfed it.
An intense shriek emanated from beneath its hood as it writhed in the fire.
“Maybe it committed suicide.” There was hope in Eberand’s voice as the fire began to fade.
What remained was terrifying.
Instead of the rotting corpse that I assumed was beneath the robes, before us stood a fully armored battle mage. The robes were gone, replaced with plated garments that looked to be from a nobleman’s closet. It held a bladed staff in one hand. The creature tapped the end of the staff on the floor of the raised platform and the blade flicked out, the entire weapon turning into a scythe.
I watched in no small mix of terror and awe as a tag appeared above its head. [Reaper Knight Aran’Del – Warden of the Forsaken]. Well, shit.
A Million Bones
“GOT A PLAN?” KEN WAS the first to move toward the undead knight, who stood there menacingly over us all.
It was now easily twice the height of Eberand. It was truly a monster.
“Yeah! Don’t die horribly!” Garret was next into the fray, his battle-axe singing through the air with a heady whistle.
The Health bar in the corner of my vision steadily filled, thanks to video game sorcery. It was something I had come to appreciate, despite the awful taste of the potions that prompted that same magic. I moved to find cover, somewhere I could provide effective support from a distance. I ended up kneeling behind a pew for a moment, working out a plan of my own.
“You guys, a real plan?” Eberand had finally managed to fight to his feet and was walking toward the eldritch horror, his sword dragging along the ground kicking up sparks from the stone floor.
Everything I knew about stone and steel made that entire premise virtually impossible, but this was Eldgard, where impossible was the name of the day.
“Should set stupid shadow monster thing on fire.” I spoke more to myself than to anyone else, not that anyone would have been able to hear me.
I took the empty magazine from my inventory, swiftly replaced the five bolts it would load with, and slapped it into the base of the EverDark Autobow. The internal mechanism clicked and a bolt slid into place in front of the tension string. I pulled back the guide and slid the safety into position. The Autobow went back onto my belt, and I stood up, my mind functioning like a battlefield tactician. I needed to get an overview of the situation.
The rest of the party was already locked in the mess of combat. Ken was flitting in and out of view, his daggers flashing for the briefest of moments before he would vanish again.
Garret had made an incredible running charge that ended in a leap, his axe carrying him through the air. It struck the scythe of the undead knight with a resounding clang, before he was violently thrown aside.
Eberand had arrived at the knight, his greatsword carving huge arcs in the air as though he were playing at swords with a stick.
I dug through my bag for the familiar sensation of glass, my fingers lighting on a web grenade. I ripped it from my inventory and hurled it at the knight. It shattered against his skin, wrapping him in thick sticky webbing.
I took a quick look at Garret, who was working his way back to his feet quickly.
The undead beast struggled against the webbing for a moment before it howled and shuddered. A quick flash of flame engulfed the creature, burning away the webbing. So, immobilization wasn’t going to be effective.
It didn’t look like we were getting anywhere quickly. For every attack that my comrades landed, the knight had a counter. He spun quickly, his armor sparking here and there along his arms, where he blocked attacks with bracers that looked like they were welded into his skin.
Now and again, the Ebenguard’s attacks would land, but the impacts were less than stellar.
“We need to focus and all attack at once!” Eberand shouted as his greatsword crashed against the haft of the knight’s scythe.
He was pushed back with a sudden burst of black wind from the open hand of the knight.
Garret stopped his attacks for half a second, as did Ken. They all took positions around the knight, turning in a circle around it. Almost in unison, each of them removed a Health regen potion from a pouch or a belt slot or a hidden pocket and chugged them. A wise decision, giv
en the battle we were fighting.
“Lord Vlad, get ready with some support.” Ken gave me a half smile as he quickly nodded in my direction.
I pulled Gamma’s sling around and braced him on my shoulder, my Fractured Shoulder debuff finally clear.
I had one chance to get this right without accidentally injuring any of them. The blast radius for my attack was large, but if I used Impaling Chaos, it would implode rather than explode. That would give us an advantage.
There was a sudden flicker of light, followed by a rush of movement. All three of the members of the Ebenguard rushed the knight at once, moving so quickly they were a blur. I was constantly impressed at their combat abilities.
Noise exploded from where the plated undead stood, suddenly surrounded by three weapons all striking at once.
Garret’s greataxe bit into the creature’s leg while Eberand’s greatsword drove itself deep into its shoulder.
Ken’s blades dug deep arcs into its chest. I fired off three quick rounds of Impaling Chaos.
The bolts shot across the room, shifting in various directions before slamming in a tight little cluster directly in the center of the horror’s mass. Black blood exploded outwards from the wounds all over the beast as the bolts burrowed into its flesh. The attack brought the monster’s Health bar down about ten percent, which was considerable.
Then, with the intensity of a hurricane, we were all pushed away from the knight. Eberand and Garret were thrown ass over teakettle across the room.
I rolled along the ground like a log, spinning out of control until I hit the remains of a shattered wooden pew.
The monstrosity howled, throwing its head back, surrounded by blades of cutting black wind that encircled and whipped around it like a tornado.
Half a second later, my bolts imploded. There was the sound of distorted ripping and tearing, followed by an immense pressure change in the chamber.
The knight doubled over, its HP dropped by a solid twenty percent. It was considerable progress, seeing as how we had so far only done about thirty percent worth of total damage to it.
“Damn, dude.” Ken, who had been knocked over from the dark wind blast, stood up and dusted himself off. He collected his daggers, which weren’t far from him.
