Will grimaced, sucking air through his teeth. “Swarm type Bosses suck. We either need to overwhelm its creature production or destroy the Boss before it gets to be too much of a problem. Given the relic,” he said, gesturing at the oversized shield currently acting as a casual gateway for a small horde of prim goblins in suits, “I’m assuming this Boss has good defense. Gerald and Annette, I’m gonna need you two to hang back, thin out the herd where you can, but look for something we can use to get an advantage. In the meantime, Nina and I are gonna go hold their attention.” He turned to nod at the girl, and found that she had already dashed off. Sighing, he followed, “Or, she’ll kill them all and I’ll keep her alive…”
As the two reached the edges of the growing herd, they cut the beasts down with impunity. As the primary damage dealers of the party, they had little issue cutting down a significant number of the newly spawned mobs in the first few seconds of the encounter. Annette and Gerald walked in the direction of the melee, maintaining range. Annette shook more bees from her staff, and glanced at Gerald, spectral hands casually throwing daggers into the herd before yanking on air, and she watched in surprise as a recently loosed dagger made its way back into his hand.
“I didn’t know you could do that,” she said.
He grunted. “Didn’t feel the need to waste the magic before. No need to hold anything in reserve after this though, is there?” He narrowed his eyes, set himself, and threw another dagger, more carefully placed than the others. It found itself lodged in an unfortunate goblin attempting to sneak through the press of bodies to flank Will, who nodded at Gerald. Idly, he held his hand out, gesturing for the dagger to return itself to him. As it hurried to do so, he scanned the room, once again noting the opaque glass cases and the abundance of mobs on the walls, silently witnessing the fight. “Hmm. Annette, how much do you need to focus on what your bees are doing?”
She turned to him, bees still climbing out to replace their fallen comrades. “I pretty much just give them a command and send them out. I’ve got them trying to distract the mobs closest to the fighting for now.” She pointed as a liveried goblin, winding up to sock Nina suddenly spasmed, crying out and clutching its back before being dispatched by its erstwhile target.
“Good. That’ll help them stay in the fight a bit longer.”
“A little longer? They’ve been crushing them!”
Gerald just shook his head. “Won’t last. Not in this fight. Boss fights are never simple. Push them far enough into the corner and they start pulling out secret moves or gimmicks that push things to a new level of difficulty. We need to keep our eyes peeled for what that’ll be. As ranged support in this fight, you and I especially need to keep our eyes peeled.” He chucked another dagger, earning a yelp from the crowd. “That being said, I think it’s fairly obvious where the gimmick is gonna come in,” he said, eyeing the glass cases.
Annette nodded, clutching her staff tighter. “I think so too. Do you think– should we go check one of them out?”
A dagger swished back through the air, back into Geralds hand. “Yup. I’ll keep my eyes on the group and its strays,” the dagger swished out again, thunking into the skull of a goblin that had begun to wander from the group, “and you focus on getting a good look at one of those cases.”
She nodded stoically, and started leading the way off to the right, toward the nearest display case. As the rear line of the party started migrating, the front line was in the thick of melee, the speed at which they dealt death slowed under sheer numbers. Will grunted, ramming a goblin with his shoulder, sending it sprawling into a mass of its comrades. He frowned, rubbing his shoulder. “I miss my shield.”
Nina snorted nearby, her shortsword neatly decapitating a butler while her dagger found its way quite violently into another's arteries. “Aww, does wittle Will’s shoulder hurt?”
He took on a pained expression, and whined, “Yeahhh, it does!” Deftly, he stepped out of the way of a charging mob, tripping it and sending it diving for the marble floor. He stepped into its wake, taking a two-handed grip on his sword and swinging for the now staggered group, scoring some lethal blows. As he moved to retreat back to the area the two had cleared, one of the goblins he’d missed with the swing lunged forward, getting a hold on his arm and biting. He bashed it over the head and backed away, grimacing. “I feel naked without it.”
His dual-wielding companion easily maneuvered through the crowd, dodging strikes and doling out wounds. “You’re naked without a shield? Does that make me naked too? I don’t feel like it.” She asked, a grin in her voice.
Will huffed. “Well, you just do naked well!”
Nina stumbled, narrowing missing a goblin fist to the face. She looked at Will, confusion on her face. “Say that again?”
“Say what again? Did you hear something? Must have been a goblin, I think I heard one of them say something earlier, just the craziest things.” He lay about himself with his sword with gusto, as if he intended to force the goblins to speak, his face flaming red all the while.
-=-<^>-=-
Annette gingerly stepped up to the glass case, wary to be so near it. She walked around the case, careful not to touch it. “Hmm, I really can’t tell what’s under this. Given the Domain, it’s probably some kind of equipment, right?”
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Gerald nodded, taking a moment to look over the case himself. “It’s likely. I don’t know how it might intend to use whatever it is itself, but we might also be able to get our hands on it.” He got closer, putting his hands on the case and peering in. “I just wish we could see what it is.”
“Hmm…” Annette hummed to herself, looking over the case and the pedestal it sat on. Slowly, she started feeling around the base, tracing the design with her fingers, probing the lines and light swirls set into the stone, the same red veins seen in the floor now almost tamed into a cohesive pattern. Just as she reached the end of a particularly ornate swirl, the glass suddenly shifted, transitioning from frosted and opaque to a beautiful, clear crystal. Inside was a slingshot, beautifully detailed and constructed out of a shimmery blue-green, somewhat see-through material.
She and Gerald both started, shocked at the suddenness. “I think I did it! I was feeling around looking for a button and it suddenly– Look out!” she gasped, pointing behind Gerald. The goblin sneaking up behind him, knowing it had been spotted, gave up on the pretense of stealth, screeching and making a mad dash for them. Gerald turned just in time to brace against the charge, forearms up defensively. He nearly fell under the force of the creature, stumbling back a few steps before managing to throw its momentum to the side, ethereal silver hands poking and pulling at its face to distract.
“Shit,” he said, grimacing at a jagged scratch on his arm, “got distracted.” A hand appeared at his waist, unsheathing a dagger and zipping over ahead of where the now unstable goblin was tumbling toward. Another hand completed the tumble, pulling at the mirror-borne beast and sending it headlong to the ground, where the first hand waited, dagger up. With a short shriek of surprise, the goblin ceased to be. Simultaneously, the glass case frosted back over.
Gerald spared it a withering glance before turning back to trimming errant goblins. “Annette, see if you can get that slingshot to come back.”
She nodded, hustling back over to the case. “Sure! I think I just need to trace this one part of the design!”
He threw another dagger into the crowd, and glanced over at the now recently deceased goblin that had charged him. “I sure hope that’s all you need to do,” he muttered to himself.
-=-<^>-=-
Annette was panicking. This was her first real Boss fight, and she didn’t have a lot of ways she could contribute. Sure, her bees were good for a distraction, but they didn’t do much lasting damage, and she didn’t have the power set for quick, powerful heals in combat. She fit a support role best, and she knew it. And that meant that, when a fight had some quirk to it that could tip the balance in either direction, she was in a position to look into it. She was the one who could be spared to find how to take advantage of it.
She traced the swirl a third time, hands clammy and shaking. Why isn’t this working?! She glanced up at her party, Will cutting down goblins left and right, but staying in a defensive position without his shield; Nina almost dancing around him, deftly pruning the herd; Gerald, stolidly juggling daggers in and out of creatures with his silver hands. They were holding strong, but she could see how tired they were. They’d already had to fight for hours through rooms of Domain conjured beasts to get here, not to mention their protracted fighting retreat against their own clones, and now they had to face an unending horde of these mobs.
Her hands shook as she absently left one hand tracing the swirl, the other hand now probing for something, anything, that might open up the case. If she couldn’t do this, the odds would slowly tip away from them.
“Annette. Found anything yet?”
She started, taking a sharp breath in. The sounds of the room rushed back to her, her vision un-tunneling. “Not yet! I’ll keep looking!” she called out in a lightly quavering voice.
Gerald grunted. “Not sure there’s much point.”
Her heart sank. “I can do it! I just need some time!”
He glanced back at her, eyebrow raised curiously. “Not what I mean. Look.” He raised his arm, pointing toward the other half of the room, where the goblins that had strayed from the pack hadn’t been cut down. A few wandered around, eyeing their friends and trying to get a good position to get back into the fight, but one of the beasts didn’t have eyes for the fight at all. This lone goblin made straight for the nearest glass case on that half of the room. As it got close, the case suddenly went from opaque to clear.
Gerald swore. “I was worried that might be the case.”
As they watched, the goblin stepped up and punched the glass. The case shattered, glass scattering out into the air… but not falling. The fragments blasted out, slowed, and then reversed course, swirling around each other in a small vortex of refracted light. Swirling together, they condensed down until, suddenly, there was an opaque, glass sword hovering above the pedestal. A cloudy, milky white handle abutted a small circular guard, which gave way to a clear, red stained glass blade. Set into the pommel was a similarly colored hunk of glass.
As soon as the blade appeared, the energy in the room shifted. Every mirror-spawned goblin in the room stepped away from the party, suddenly more alert, no longer throwing themselves headlong into a losing fight.
“That can’t be good.”
After a brief, pregnant pause, the goblin by the sword shrieked victoriously, grabbed the blade, and started making a mad dash back to the shield. Gerald’s eyes widened. “Stop that goblin!” he yelled out, downing a few of the beasts with his thrown daggers.
“Got it!” Nina jumped into action, sprinting to cut the sword-bearer off, pulling away from the defensive formation she and Will had settled into. She ducked under the first few hastily thrown punches, shouldering her way into the tightening mass of goblins. No, she realized. Formation of goblins. They were starting to form up, filling in spaces to block her out. She grunted, slashing wildly at grasping arms as she dashed. She eyed the runner, holding his prize like a torch to light the way. At her current pace, she’d make it.
From behind, a clawed hand grabbed her foot.
“Shit!” It was just enough to break her momentum, and she stumbled just as the formation tightened in on her. As she went down under a heap of grasping goblins she saw the sword reach the shield. As it got within a few paces, the thin, ghastly hands holding it shook in anticipation. Another step and a bony hand shot out, violently grabbing the beast it spawned before throwing it and the sword through the shield.
Slowly, a new hand brought it back out.