by G. D. Penman
Martin was just about to start in after him when the notification pinged.
[Jericho suffers 51 bludgeoning damage]
The furred mass of Jericho exploded out of the waterfall, shrouded for an instant in spray before he landed with a colossal splash in the central pool.
That could have been worse.
A tentacle lashed out of the waterfall after him. Massive, purple and ridged with lines of tiny spines, it was as thick around as Jericho. The first tentacle was soon joined by another, then another.
Celaphox, Harbinger of Catastrophe, The Year of Sorrow
When Martin tried to draw up more details it just flashed up, like a warning:
[Epic-level enemy]
Twenty-Two
The Falling Star
In a hushed whisper, Julia said a word so rude that Martin was surprised she knew it. The central tentacle reared up, ready to plunge into the pool and snuff Jericho out permanently.
There was no real danger here. The real Jericho would wake up in the real world unharmed if that blow fell.
Logically, Martin knew it, but nobody had informed his gut. He was already moving. His hand was already up.
He cast Rebuke as the blow fell, and while there was no way he could have pushed the whole beast back, it was powerful enough to turn the killing blow aside.
The tentacle mashed into the edge of the pool, shattering the stone and revealing a rim of silver beneath.
Jericho popped up out of the pool, gravel raining all around him. He gasped for air. “Big monster. Is a very big monster.”
A glow spread from the end of Julia’s staff and enveloped him, and the massive caved-in section of his bare chest pushed back out. A wash of blood tinted the pool pink in the process.
[Jericho recovers 36 health]
Martin started barking orders.
“Get out of range! Everyone back.”
It wasn’t immediately clear what the beast’s range actually was; Martin couldn’t even see where the tentacles were rooted behind the waterfall. But he would bet the little cash he had to his name that Celaphox’ weak spot was on that central mass. Otherwise it wouldn’t bother to hide it.
Pulling back and forcing it to expose itself was a sound strategy, and it gave Martin the time he needed to think.
Even the Night Ravager hadn’t come with a flashing warning sign, so there had to be more to this big squid thing than just raw damage potential. It would be the full package, dealing a ton of damage and soaking it up too.
He lit his sword up with Celestial Strike and backed away slowly. Julia didn’t have the health pool to survive a hit from this thing, so he didn’t dare leave her closer to Celaphox than he was. It still felt like he was playing chicken with a truck.
The huge tentacles lashed around the room, thick as tree trunks and nimble as hair in the wind. Martin wasn’t even sure how you fought something like this. Whether you tried to treat each tentacle as a separate foe or… His train of thought was derailed as the nearest tentacle seemed to notice him, coiling up and then lashing out, straight for him.
There was no hope of dodging – no point in blocking – the blow was going to fall. Martin thrust out his glowing sword and bent his knees, pretending his hands weren’t shaking.
[Celaphox suffers 8 light damage]
[Celaphox suffers 8 piercing damage]
The blade bit deeply into the monster, driven deeper by the force of its own attack. The soft jelly flesh of the tentacle peeled away to the sides of the sword, leaving him standing in a hollow, surrounded by its wound. Martin let out a little bark of victory.
A shadow rushed back along his sword as the glow of Celestial Strike faded, leaping out to hit him square in the chest.
[VENGEANCE]
[Skaife suffers 8 piercing damage]
The tentacle withdrew, but it wasn’t the pained jerk of an injured animal. It was languid. Like Celaphox was amused, buoyed in confidence by its Vengeance ability.
Martin needed time to think. He needed a moment when he wasn’t under attack to work through this new development.
He wasn’t going to get it.
Another massive tentacle slammed through the columns beside him, throwing a cloud of detritus into the air and pummeling him with shrapnel.
[Skaife suffers 1 bludgeoning damage]
[Skaife suffers 1 bludgeoning damage]
[Skaife suffers 1 bludgeoning damage]
Through the clouds of marble dust, the others became nothing but shadows. Julia was briefly visible as the impact of a tentacle slamming down into the ground sent out a gust of air, but it was only for a moment. Just long enough for Martin to see the panic on her face.
Martin tried to shout, but the dust set him to coughing instead. He pressed his sword hand to his guild crest and covered his mouth with the other.
“Don’t try to fight it. Get clear.”
Lindsay’s voice whispered in his ear, “What the hell are you doing down there?”
Jericho was baying for blood somewhere beyond the clouds of dust and Martin could sense movement all around him, the disturbance of huge things moving just out of sight.
There was no way of knowing what the others were doing, not without charging out of the cloud that blinded him and protected him in equal measure. He had to trust them to do what he’d asked. He had to trust that they’d listen to sense instead of their instincts.
Martin cast Healing Touch on himself and then did what he did best. He worked it out.
[Skaife recovers 15 health]
The Vengeance mechanic returned whatever damage was dealt to Celaphox back on its attackers. That much was clear. Martin’s head spun as he tried to work out a way to make it injure itself, but no bright ideas immediately presented themselves. If a group had enough healing, they could probably still whittle Celaphox down, but Martin knew without any doubt that the three of them weren’t going to be up to the task.
He should have pushed back more when they wanted to leave Lindsay behind. He should have stood his ground. He never had any trouble fighting the endless hordes of enemies that games presented him with, so why did standing up to his friends seem so insurmountable?
As much as he tried to justify it to himself as managing relationships and emotional bolstering, the truth was that he was a lonely man and the fear of alienating his only friends made him weak.
A shadow fell over him. The tentacle came down like a tree falling in the forest, and everyone heard it. Martin flung himself beside one of the shattered stumps of marble in the hope that it might deflect some of the impact and maybe jab the thing back, but the stone crumbled to dust under the blow.
[Skaife suffers 24 bludgeoning damage]
He couldn’t breathe. All the light was blocked out by the mass of spongy flesh, grinding him down into the tiles. Was it just going to lie there like an oversized lapdog until it had crushed all the life out of him?
The tentacle lifted, but the barbed hooks running the length of it had caught in Martin’s fur and armor, sticky with blood. He rose out of the fog of war and looked out across the battlefield in utter dismay.
Jericho was surrounded by a nimbus of light, fending off four of the huge tentacles as they lashed at him, taking turns to spin him around and around. The only one to actually take Martin’s advice and get to safety had been Julia, who was now cowering in the entrance to the tunnels.
As he rose higher and higher, the whole chamber came into sight. The central bulbous mass of Celaphox was now protruding out of the waterfall. Phosphorous green eyes seemed to cover that bloated body, staring out with the same blind malevolence as the Night Ravager’s had.
Exactly the same malevolence. Like it was the same evil mind driving them both. That same whisper. “Come to me.”
Martin shook off that thought, and his own shock. He wasn’t here to see the sights; he was here to kill it.
The tentacle’s tip was beneath his feet, and as it rose up, he was slowly being turned upside down. Lu
cky for him, it did not seem to notice he was there — or it could have smashed him to pulp.
A quick cut would free him, and he’d survive the Vengeance damage, but the fall would kill him just as surely as another whip of the tentacles. Martin had to bide his time for more reasons than one. He tore an arm free and pressed it against his sigil.
“You’re doing great, guys,” he said. “Just hold out a little bit longer. Help is coming.”
Lindsay whispered directly into his brain a moment later. “Dude. What am I supposed to do?”
He concentrated hard on her name. Tesra. Slowly, the names of the others grayed out.
“Well, that depends,” he said, trying to keep his voice calm and jovial. “How do you feel about glorious death in battle?”
He didn’t feel good about asking her to die again. Not after the obvious trauma that she’d gone through last time. If it had been Julia or Jericho, he probably wouldn’t have even made the suggestion, just accepted the inevitability of death and an two hour-long lockout.
He knew they had limitations; that if he pushed them too hard, they would just stop playing along. He’d never found that limit with Lindsay. They would find each other’s limits and just keep on pushing until that invisible barrier moved.
That was how she had learned his name to start with. That was how they had gone from strangers who played a game together to being friends.
Martin held his breath.
“Again?” she groaned, reverberating in his skull. “I just got back in here!”
He couldn’t keep the grin off his face. She was still Lindsay. “Hold that thought.”
Martin’s sword lit up with another Celestial Strike and he hacked haphazardly into the meat above him. Ichor sprayed out onto his face, bitter and salty as the sea, but it worked.
[Celaphox suffers 8 light damage]
[Celaphox suffers 8 slashing damage]
[VENGEANCE]
[Skaife suffers 8 slashing damage]
Shadows darted over him, opening long bloody scratches across his chest to match the wounds he’d inflicted on the tentacle. Martin didn’t have time to care. With the tentacle tip severed, he was tumbling down, end over end, still hooked to the dead flesh.
It didn’t matter; he had judged the momentum right. He hit the pool instead of the stone, and it absorbed the impact perfectly. A few frantic chops got him clear of the dead tissue and back up to his feet. No more drowning today.
At the side of the pool, he stopped just long enough to notice the thick silver rim that the damage had uncovered: unmistakably the outer edge of a Deep Gate, but covered in strange runes beneath the dust. A circle in the exact size of a gate, right there in plain sight all this time.
He’d have time to beat himself up over his mistakes later. He had bigger calamari to fry right now. He dragged his sword over his bracers and grit his teeth against the shriek it made.
Celaphox stared down at him with what could easily have been mistaken for curiosity. Martin must have seemed like an insect to something this huge, and about as threatening.
Jericho held a pair of tentacles at bay on the far side of the room. Julia was weaving in and out of the decimated pillars, keeping out of range but drawing the monster’s attention.
“Lindsay, where are you?” he asked.
She sounded breathless. “Just about to hit the Crab Step. Hold on to your hats. I’ll be down as fast as I can.”
He froze. “No! Stop. You aren’t taking the stairs. You’re coming down the express.”
“Oh. Hell, no.”
A tentacle swept around, not even aimed for him, but Martin had to fling himself down to roll under it.
“Lindsay,” he said, a pleading edge to his voice.
“No. Nope. No thanks.”
“Lindsay, listen.” Martin scrambled back to his feet, counting down the seconds until his Trinity Strike activated. “Back in the Murovan village, you did extra damage because you dropped down on the enemies.”
“Dude, I know. That’s what Raptor Strike does. It converts your fall damage into—” He could hear her muffling her beak with her own hands. “Oh, damn. Nope. No. Still not doing it.”
One of the attacks made it through and Jericho was slapped off his feet. He smashed through a row of columns while Julia frantically poured more healing into him, crouched beside his fallen body.
[Jericho suffers 34 bludgeoning damage]
Martin couldn’t stop to help, only stare at the pulsating mass of flesh up ahead. His voice dropped to an awed whisper.
“You are absolutely going to do it. Because I’m going to set you up to critically hit with your new knife.”
““What?” Lindsay scoffed as she blinked through the menus and noticed her new item. “What new… ooh, shiny.”
“Listen to me. Really listen. This is going to work. There is nowhere else in the whole dungeon where it might work, but in this one place, with this one vertical drop, we can still win this.”
He didn’t know where he found the confidence to speak like that, not when he was standing beneath a glowing green eye that was the same size as he was.
“I don’t want to die again.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “It is… it is really not fun.”
This close, Celaphox was too large to understand. It was an abstract image, just impossible shapes, unnatural colors, movement.
Martin still pressed in closer, so close that the few flailing tentacles heading his way couldn’t quite bend far enough.
“You won’t feel a thing. I promise. Just aim for the center; I’ll be right underneath it.”
She huffed. “Dude. You are asking me to jump off the top of a skyscraper. I’m going to feel something.”
“Lindsay, there has never been a giant hole that you haven’t wanted to jump into.” Even Martin could hear the wheedling edge in his voice, and he hated it. “I am finally giving you permission.”
“I am not jumping!”
Jericho coughed up a mouthful of blood and pushed himself unsteadily to his feet, just in time to catch Celaphox’ next sweeping attack in his own massive brawny arms.
[BLOCKED]
He skidded along a few feet, but it had the intended effect: Julia was protected. Jericho’s growl felt justified for once. “You will jump, or we will all die. Game will be over for night. We will have wasted whole time because you rushed off and got crabbed. You want this?”
Lindsay seemed genuinely surprised. “Dude, what the hell? Are you trying to guilt me into jumping to my death?”
“Did it work?” Jericho replied with a savage grin.
There was a long pause during which Jericho was dragged from his feet by the tentacle that he was still, inexplicably, wrestling. Finally, Lindsay sighed. “Kinda?”
Martin hoped she couldn’t hear his grin. “Tell me when you’re ready.” Celaphox flicked Jericho into a wall, and this time he did not bounce back so readily.
[Jericho suffers 18 bludgeoning damage]
Julia took a halting step forwards, then another tentacle swept her away.
[Adriel suffers 21 bludgeoning damage]
It was safe to say that neither of them was going to be helping much from this point on. Martin scraped his sword over his bracers for one last tiny buff and then waited.
Then Lindsay bellowed at the top of her lungs, “Daddy’s coming!”
Martin started to count it down. Forty-four, forty-three, forty-two, forty-one. When he got to twenty, he activated Rite of Retribution. When he got to ten, his sword lit up with his Trinity Strike.
It was a more vibrant light, less warm and more electrical. A purer, brighter white than anything he’d seen in the whole game.
He drowned that light in the flesh of Celaphox.
[Celaphox suffers 16 light damage]
There was no Vengeance from purely light damage. Jericho probably could have pounded this thing to bits eventually, if it could have been convinced to stay still the whole time.
One shot. Tha
t was all they had. If the random number generators of Strata went against them, if all that Martin had done didn’t widen the critical range enough for Lindsay to slip through, then it was all for nothing. They were all dead.
He could hear her fall in those last few seconds, a scream of pure delight torn from her throat as she plowed right through terminal velocity.
When she hit, the immovable object of Celaphox rocked with the impact.
[CRITICAL HIT]
[Celaphox suffers 268 piercing damage]
[VENGEANCE]
[Tesra suffers 268 piercing damage]
Tesra has died.
There was a moment of silence, then the monstrous squid let out a jarring roar, so loud that Martin thought he’d gone deaf. He fell to his knees, gnashing his teeth in frustration.
How can it still be alive?
They’d dealt three hundred and sixty-four damage to it so far. More than anyone who’d made it as far as this deep could have ever hoped to do. It wasn’t fair.
Celaphox’ tentacles lifted up into the air, enough crushing blows to put an end to every one of them. Martin stared up at them hanging there and every moment stretched out like it was a year.
A year.
Celaphox was called the Year of Sorrow.
They were a day short. One more damage would make three hundred and sixty-five. A year.
He snatched up his sword from where it had fallen beside his limp hand and swiped it at Celaphox one last time.
[Celaphox suffers 10 slashing damage]
