by Konrad Ryan
“Over here!” Dolly, the douser, had found the switch. Everyone made their way to the corner of the walls where the button hid.
“Anyone want to pack up and go home? No? Then we group up around the button, we fight here.” Ironfang had lost the previous bite in his voice and was back to business as usual. “There will be two bosses, Tristan, you’re with me, Blaze, I’ll need you to back us up. New kid, do what you want. Back up the support team, or go off and do your own thing. Your call.”
The support team shifted nervously at that announcement.
“I’ll protect them.”
The support team only looked slightly less nervous at Tad’s declaration.
“Fine. Let’s get to work then.” Ironfang’s skin shone once more throughout his transformation into the fanged deer, then he pushed the button.
Five glass spheres shone across the battle room. The ceiling shifted above, then flew upward, much faster than the previous times. The walls sank into the floor, then a second set of walls, much further sank, then a third. Within the closest section, dozens of man-sized golems squished on uneven legs. Eight, twenty foot-tall golems stood behind those, two near each wall, and finally, in the last section, two gigantic golems, eight-stories tall each, stood on opposite sides of the now enormous stone room. Above each of their heads were fiery words meant only for Tad’s eyes.
*Peat-Tongued Demon Amaragoth*
Slurps and squishes filled the chamber as monsters sprang forward to attack. Tad had never fought a boss with this many monsters still present.
Good.
He was looking for a challenge.
“Follow me!” Tad turned and ran, cutting through the man-sized golems. In the middle of the room they were sitting ducks, ‘fighting around the button’ was suicide. They had to get to one of the four walls, one not guarded by the bosses.
A fleet of six foot tall golems charged in their wake, but Tad was a storm of death. When they came too close, his fang bit out and tore moss and flesh alike. The small party raced toward the twenty foot tall golems, the douser lagged behind. Tad dispatched two man-sized golems, then backtracked to scoop Dolly in his arms and tossed her onto the back of Squeak, the makeshift shield. The golems raced across the ground, faster than their predecessors in squishy, wet footsteps. Tad’s brow furrowed in worry. The monsters would reach them at the same time as the twenty foot tall golems ahead. He could fight, but what about the slayers behind him? They had held their own up to this point, but this would overwhelm them. Dread filled his stomach. He was going to lose them. Like Becca. Like Gruff.
No.
He wouldn’t allow that.
Tad pooled his mana into his hand and did the same trick, make a firewall to cover their retreat. Somehow, the group would make it past the two, twenty foot tall golems and to the safety of the wall behind them. There they could fight without worrying about their backs. His party would make it out alive, even if he had to drag them around like Gruff had him.
“Watch out!” Blaze’s mindvoice screamed the warning.
Tad looked for the danger. The twin Amaragoth’s each held a ball of pure writhing moss tongues in their hand. It took Tad only a split second to realize, in horror, that they had picked up the twenty-foot-tall golems in front of them and squished them like snowballs in their massive palms. In a swift motion, faster than Tad had seen the golems move previously, they launched their projectiles directly at Tad’s party.
From opposite sides, two tongueballs would devour them.
How could he save his little group?
Tad dashed into the middle of the lagging slayers, Sara, the blonde healer, had been quick enough to see the danger and leapt forward to safety. But Squeak was slow, doubly so with the douser on his back. Tad grabbed each of their clothes and hurled them across the room, toward Sara, out of the way of the enormous tongue-golems. The two golems crashed into each other where his party had been just a moment before, A flood of tongues like a tidal wave spilled across the moss, each writhed, searching for blood.
In a rush, Tad sped ahead to clear the way for the three slower slayers. He leapt and stabbed Raekast’s Fang into the twenty-foot tall golem’s head. It exploded in a gush of blood and bits of flesh, but it didn’t topple, like the smaller ones had. He flew over the golem and landed just in time to see tongues migrate up its neck to form a new head. It was almost two feet shorter now. A glance showed Ironfang and Tristan fighting like mad across the room, pressing for the first boss. Ironfang dispatched golem after golem with a raging intensity that the man had lacked before. Tristan struggled to keep up, and currently had a knife in his hand, slicing a tongue out from a wound in his arm to prevent it from burrowing deeper.
“Firewall!”
The squishy six-foot pursuers skidded to a stop, Tad turned to protect his group from ones from the front. He sped past the now-eighteen-foot tall golem, just in time to deflect a savage punch from Dolly’s back. She held dual swords at the ready, but she just moved so slowly that she couldn’t harm anything. Had Tad really been this useless? No, he had been even more useless. No wonder Scar had disliked him so much.
Squeak bled profusely from his neck where tongues wriggled beneath his skin. Rage built in Tad’s chest. He wouldn’t lose them. His dagger flashed and punched huge holes into a group of four tongue golems, dispatching each of the man-sized monstrosities. A giant shadow appeared overhead. The eighteen and twenty foot tall golems had surrounded them. Tad kicked Sara through the opening between the golems legs, and grabbed both Dolly and Squeak by their armor, banishing Raekast’s Fang back into his void equipment slot. Tad quickly cast ‘heal other’ and slammed the health into the rat-faced man. Two tongues splashed from the wound, and Tad carried them through the legs of the other Golem, just as their fists smashed into the ground behind them. The undamaged fist-tongues splashed across the floor in a wave, then flopped back toward their golems climbing up their legs.
Tad tossed the two slayers forward, then turned and leapt in an arc toward the huge golems once more. Raekast’s Fang appeared in a puff of black mist, he drove it through the first one’s head, then the second’s shoulder, both exploded in blood and guts, the second’s arm fell slack to the ground, but already, the tongues climbed up its legs to reform any damage.
Curse this dagger! Daggers weren’t ideal for killing so many tiny creatures. He needed something big and blunt to squish them beyond repair. Beyond reforming.
Golems surrounded Sara, who did her best to dodge, but bled from several wriggling wounds. Tad stabbed the six golems rapid fire, Sara cast heal, expelling the tongues from her wounds.
A scream came from behind the two huge golems.
Tad watched in utter horror as a second volley of thrown golem smashed into the ground, tongues flowed like water around the douser and the rat-faced man. The sea of piranha’s had caught their prey. The tongues shredded flesh and blood alike until there was nothing but bone left.
No! Shock flooded Tad’s body as he leapt into the air away from the expanding splash, pulling Sara with him. He hadn’t seen the attack coming. His vision turned red as Raekast’s Fang sunk into his thigh flesh. They would pay. Tad was supposed to protect them! The blade drank hungrily and a notification of his charging attack appeared before his eyes.
*Raekast’s Bite: Absorbs the user’s health to deliver a massive blow for twice the damage absorbed.*
Tad scooped Sara up in his remaining arm, swiping the notification away. Raekast’s Fang already started its metamorphosis. Healing energy poured into him from where Sara hung, but Tad ignored her, running and leaping over golem after golem to get to his target. The eighty-foot tall boss that had just killed his two charges.
Tad pivoted to land near Ironfang and unceremoniously dropped Sara on the deer’s back.
Ironfang’s deer-lips curled back in a sneer, revealing more jagged teeth beneath. “I’m not a horse!” The growled words sounded strange and elongated.
“Today you are!” Tad le
apt toward the tongue-demon boss, eating up the ground between them.
Shadows climbed Tad’s arms, thick black tendrils twisted past his shoulders and down the length of his torso. His back paws formed as he leapt through golem after golem. A shadow mouth bit at each, destroying them in a gory mess. His health continued to drain, but his rage fueled his attack. His vision darkened around the edge. Finally he pulled the blade from his thigh, his health below twenty-five percent, circling to the back of the boss, he leapt. His voice tore through his throat in an inhuman growl of hate and need.
“Raekast’s Bite!”
Tad activated stealth, embracing the darkness of the boss’s shadow with white-hot need.
*Backstab!*
Another notification swam before Tad’s eyes.
*Backstab: Attacks to the back of creatures deal double damage when using stealth.*
The entire torso of the boss disintegrated from the blow in an instant. Tad, now a giant black panther, flew through the hole. Tongues fell from above and tried to burrow into his skin, but the mist acted like a shield. The wave of power from Tad’s attack traveled down the golem’s lower half into a splash of blood and flesh. The shock wave blasted the tongues across the enormous cavern. Tad flew out the other side of the boss, it’s head falling to the floor with a wet squish behind him, but his eyes were focused on its health bar. But what he saw was impossible. The health bar above the golem’s head still sat at one hundred percent, even after its entire body had disappeared. Impossible! Was the health bar broken? Tad eyed his own health.
*Health:143/700
Mana:22/42*
His fury pushed him onward. It didn’t matter if the health bar was broken, he had enough health to finish this monster.
“Brilliant Burst!”
The skill information appeared before his eyes.
*Brilliant Burst. Charges 1/1. The golden essence of your cloak absorbs the surrounding light, fueled by the power of the light you gain 50% speed for 60 seconds.*
The room darkened as Tad’s cape sucked in the chamber’s torchlight. His body moved like the wind, no, quicksilver. His dagger flashed in his hand before the black panther transformation had completely dissipated. The world slowed down, the tongues of the golems wriggled absurdly slow, but they squirmed to reach the head, to rebuild it. Tad sped, hot with need. The need to end the life of this monster. This monster who had made him a failure, this monster who had killed two people he had promised himself that he would protect.
Tad stabbed his daggers into the featureless face of the golem. His arms sunk in deep to the destruction of a hundred tongues. Motion caught the edge of his vision, a clawed hand, fingernails pressed together like a knife, attacked from the inside of the head, right toward Tad’s throat. Cold realization washed Tad’s rage away.
The bosses were inside the golems.
Only the incredible speed of ‘brilliant burst’ saved him from the speed of the attack. Tad twisted midair, away from the bladed claw, but still it grazed his neck. The second one aimed to stab deep into his stomach, but Tad flipped and grabbed its slender wrist.
“Ice vortex!”
Tad then kicked against the claws, with every ounce of his seventy strength, to shoot himself away from the monster
He flew away from the figure and skidded across the mossy ground beneath. Tad turned just in time to see another clump of tongues thrown his way by the other boss golem. Tad leapt straight in the air over the tidal wave of tongues, which began to reform.
The boss wasn’t the golems at all. It was the creature inside the golem. That’s why the boss still had full health. Tad had completely wasted his attack. His rage had gotten the better of him once again. Hadn’t he learned this lesson already? Why was he making the same mistakes?
“Blaze! I need you to blast every shred of tongue off this golem’s head!” Tad found the man still drop-teleporting above Ironfang, who retreated from several swarming golems. Sara still rode his back. He couldn’t find Tristan anywhere. They had lost another one.
Blaze appeared above the golem and rained down unholy hellfire. Huge jets and swathes of flame torched the tongues. Finally, the health bar over the golem dipped below one hundred percent as the figure within was revealed.
A full-breasted harpy flew upward toward Blaze, more mossy tongues barely covered her bare chest. Ice trailed behind her, slowing her movements, evidence that Tad’s spell had landed. Where feather’s should be, green mossy tongues sprawled along her wings and down a portion of her legs, these tongues were larger than the ones that had made up the golems. This was the smallest boss monster he had ever seen. She was roughly his size, if not smaller. Her taloned feet dripped with a sickly green fluid that dripped over ivory white bone. It was clearly poison. He placed a hand at his neck, where the claw had scratched him, poison came away, but no blood. Her attack hadn’t broken the skin.
Tad had been wrong. It hadn’t been a wrist or a hand that had stabbed at him. It was her taloned feet.
Blaze teleported away from the pursuing harpy. Tad wanted to help, but how could he? The ceiling was hundreds of feet high, all he would have was one attack per jump. His speed would be wasted waiting to fall.
But what if he brought the ground with him?
Tad concentrated all of his strength into his fist. The air visibly trembled. Black wispy tendrils surrounded his skin. He wasn’t sure what they were, but he didn’t have the time to think of that now. With all his might, Tad punched downward into the moss-covered stone floor of the dungeon. Enormous cracks spidered in all directions. Tad grabbed the biggest chunk of stone and pulled with all his might. He groaned with effort until finally the building sized piece of stone dislodged from the rest. In a giant puff of black mist the stone disappeared, sent to one of his equipment slots. Tad gave a relieved sigh and summoned Raekast’s Fang to dispatch two six-foot golems before he holstered the weapon at his side. He needed all four of his equipment slots if this was going to work.
Tad punched the ground a second time, and a third time, and even a fourth. Giant boulders of stone filled his black misted inventory, each big enough that he could barely lift it.
He couldn’t fly. But this idea might be the next best thing. Tad eyed the flying harpy who chased Blaze through the air. She was even gaining on him. He blinked away, but the harpy seemed to grasp his patterns, his limitations. Maybe the man couldn’t have teleported Tad all the way to the dungeon. At this speed Tad could watch the man’s teleports clearly. Blaze could only teleport maybe thirty feet away from his last position, and there was a small delay before he could cast it again. Sweat poured down his stone-still face, his eyebrows furrowed in effort.
More golems tried to attack Tad, but they were too slow. They were slugs racing a laser beam. All his prep had consumed too much time. He had to get this attack set up before ‘brilliant burst’ wore off. Tad crouched, concentrating his power in his thighs, then leapt through the air, faster and higher than Scar ever had. Tad pulled his daggers from the holsters at his hip and sliced across the ribs of the harpy. Raekast’s Fang left a huge gash and broken bones in its wake. Tad flipped in the air and summoned the first of his boulders directly behind his feet. At this speed the enormous stone almost stopped mid-air due to air resistance, Tad leapt from the rock and slammed his entire leg onto her shoulder. She shot towards the ground, smashing into the dungeon floor below. Tad flipped, landed, then charged her once more. The harpy looked disoriented, but quickly found her bearings, kicking a taloned leg at Tad’s face. He spun past it and drove his dagger into her torso. Ironfang galloped into the fray, biting deep into the harpy’s shoulder. Panic showed on her face, and she leapt off the ground once more, beating powerful wings to retreat to the sky. But Tad was too fast and wouldn’t let her escape. He coiled his powerful quads and leapt after her in a powerful burst, summoning his second stone in her path.
Tad spun, landed, and leapt from the airborne rock once more, and kicked the harpy to the ground, this time square
ly landing on the top of her skull. She careened downward and smashed into the stone floor below. Tad chased and drove his dagger through her chest, pinning her to the floor. Ironfang stomped his hooves across her, shallow pools of blood formed wherever the sharp kicks landed. The harpy’s health bar dropped rapidly under the concentrated attack.
The first of the two boulders landed ten feet away, followed by the second a moment later with a crash, but both boulders stayed intact. The harpy twisted and kicked a taloned foot, dripping with venom. Tad dodged the attack by a hair, but it snagged his leather armor, knocking him away next to his boulders. He touched each and banished them to the void.
The harpy tried to flee once more, but Tad sprang past her, summoning a new boulder in her path, kicking her to the earth beneath once more.
Ironfang grasped the strategy quickly, his back hooves caught the harpy in the head, just before she smashed to the earth once more. His fangs tore flesh and bone alike. The deer-man had ramped up his speed whether from a buff or from effort, Tad didn’t know. But the deer got in two attacks for each of one of Tad’s. Transformation seemed able to transcend the natural limits of soldier class. Blaze’s fireballs wove deftly between attacks. The deadly assault of the three made quick work of the boss.
Blaze and Ironfang were on their own level. They made both Scar and Gruff look like amateurs.
And even with such overwhelming talent, they couldn’t save everyone.
A warning blared in Tad’s mind. The boss’s health bar had dropped below ten percent.
*Warning! The boss has cast ‘Blade Tongue Explosion!’*
The harpy retreated to the sky once more but Tad had been expecting this, waiting for it even. He leapt once more, but this time didn’t overshoot her. He drove Raekast’s Fang deep into her chest, a white notification appeared with the strike. *-54 health.* Instead of flying past her, like he had before, he crashed into her, sending them both reeling, but she could not escape his strength. He wrapped his legs around her torso and she bit at him with fanged teeth, but he swayed back just out of range, slamming his dagger into the side of her face. *-61 Health* She tumbled in the air, but Tad fell with her, driving his dagger into her chest over and over. Damage notifications sprang with each attack. He would not let her get this spell off! Her wings bristled, the silvery tongues wriggled and writhed, blades popping from each silvery tastebud. They were going to launch! Tad jammed his free palm into the underside of the harpy’s jaw, forcing her fangs away from him. He hugged her close and the bladed tongues launched from her wings impossibly fast, dripping with poison. They flew from the harpy in a hurricane of knives.
