In the end, a strategy was devised that was agreed upon by all stakeholders. Ben was the one who came up with the heart of the plan.
“What we’re needing, is a distraction.” The halberd bearing warrior ventured.
“We need the fort to see us coming, dismiss us as a threat, and watch us go. They’ll drop their guard when they see what they expect to see.” Predicted Ben’s graveled voice.
“And how certain are we that the Guild hasn’t ordered us all killed on sight?” Brig checked.
They’d gone over this before, but she was making certain to dot the i’s and cross the t’s, before they were in too deep. She was fulfilling the role of the tenth man.
Granny answered, her eyes staring as she recounted the events and timing of the previous day, and this one, “Not enough time for word to travel.”
A single dainty finger rose as the strangely acute harvester addressed the situation, “We left yesterday morning. Two hours later we cleared North Searsport, three hours after that, Waldo, and two hours after that, Munroe. We stopped to treat the wounded instead of making it to Frankfort, which was the only hitch in the plan. Today, we’re at the objective before mid-morning. The Guilds clear around noon, which means nobody has even arrived at the site of the dungeons, let alone gotten word back. We’ve got another twelve hours before shit hits the fan.”
“Her voice is course, and her hands dirty, but the serf speaks rightly.” Dame Sanchez chimed in agreeably, although the substance of her words was a little off.
Sometimes, Alexander wished the woman was mute.
“Just so, Dame, just so.” Mark agreed, eyeballing the assembled adventurers and pilgrims to make certain nobody offered dissent that might stir up the Dame’s class warfare spiel.
The last thing they needed was to lose time assuring the powerful water mage that she wasn’t in danger of being hauled before the guillotine in a peasant’s revolt. Such had happened in the past, with results that had required the Phoenix sun to make good. It was one of the reasons that Dame Sanchez was disinvited to Guild membership.
“Okay, so we’ve got the time to work. How do we use the wagon train heading up north to Bangor by Orland to hide our wanna be dragon slayers?” Hilde asked, projecting an image of the dragon boss that spun in the air for emphasis.
Ben almost smiled when he said, without emphasis, “We won’t take the bridge, we’ll be swimming.”
Well, ask a silly question, get a silly answer.
Dame Sanchez objected immediately, crying, “I shall not be seen floundering like a crippled swan in front of the rabble!”
At that point, Benjamin Grisham let the Dame know that she was on thin ice by calmly walking over to loom over her, over six feet of hard muscle wrapped in plate armor with zero fucks to give.
“Lady, you signed on with this team. You agreed to follow orders. We have been accepting of your quirks and accommodating in the extreme. But if you think you will be allowed to put this team or its mission in jeopardy, I will bury you. Your crazy is not bigger than my crazy, just louder.” The Steel Heavy Knight warned.
The Dame considered briefly whether the brute standing nearby was serious and adjudged him so. She demurred, offering only, “Forgiveness, Knight. It would be gauche to obstruct an army in the field. I will endeavor to see the Dutchy represented faithfully.”
Alexander didn’t know if that was a yes sir or not, but Ben nodded and seemed to accept it, so he released the breath he held.
Ben didn’t bluff.
Whatever his background had been, the thirty-two-year-old black man made of corded ropes of muscle told people exactly when he was about to take them apart, and followed through.
Alexander had witnessed a moment of unwisdom from a low ranking Guildie, not even one of the top ten, who tried to lay some good old-fashioned racism on the mysterious warrior, after too many drinks in the tavern they were enjoying. After standing from his seat, he declared that the man had three seconds to leave before he regretted “stirring the shit”. Three seconds later, the Guildie began regretting stirring the shit. It took less than a minute for the Guildie to have both of his arms broken and his face pulped against a table. Ben’s expression hadn’t changed the entire time he savaged the offender, he might as well have been drying dishes. People like that, you didn’t play games with. They didn’t have the same attitude about when the game was over that most folk did.
“I cannot swim.” Dame Sanchez admitted, somewhat sheepishly, which explained her dismay at their intended infiltration route.
Now there was some irony, Alexander thought. A Hydromancer who couldn’t swim.
“I can. You won’t even get your spiffy hair wet, and anybody that thinks about insulting the Lady’s dignity will get reasons not to.” Ben promised, relaxing now that he didn’t have to fix a problem that risked the team’s safety.
It was times like this Alexander was glad he wasn’t in charge of the Adventurer parties. He’d never been much on team sports. This was why delegation was important: hire the people to do things at which you suck. He was a little surprised that the probably former soldier was so considerate of the outlandish woman. Maybe there was a gentle heart hidden beneath all the steel.
With that byplay over, they got down to the nuts and bolts of the operation. Impervious would lead the group through the Narrows by the road, making it patently obvious that they were headed north with no intention of stopping. The bridge took travelers into the dungeon itself, given that the Narrows zigged east to Verona Island, then zagged north to Bucksport, all completely under escort of the Guilds manpower. Hilde would be throwing an illusion of Getsome and Alexander, to make the numbers add up, since his expedition was no secret. He had passed a variation of his route along to the Guilds before they left, to avoid undue attention. Everybody left Safe Harbor with an itinerary. It helped to determine if body snatchers had taken them when they returned.
Now, they knew that this condition for leaving also let the apparently armed sentries know not to shoot. Or the opposite.
While the wagon train headed north, the team consisting of Alexander, Brig, Granny, Mark, the Dame, and Ben would be headed south, through the forest paralleling highway one, where they’d swim the river a mile down from the bridge, with the Dame in a canoe stolen from one of the tourist trap joints that lined the salty water that opened up to the bay area.
That was where the trick lay, Alexander mused, wincing at the most obvious failure point of the whole endeavor.
Field dungeons had limits on the number of Matriculated people inside them. It was how they were categorized. Minor dungeons only let six people inside at a time, which was why a party was set to six. Major dungeons permitted two parties, twelve Matriculated within their domains, and were exponentially more dangerous, with higher tier monsters and evolved versions of those in the minor dungeons. Colossal dungeons allowed twenty-four, four full parties to enter their domain. Only once had that been attempted, in a naïve attempt on the Greater New England dungeon, which had consumed Boston, Providence, Hartfort, and New York City, consuming most of the Atlantic coast of the United States, and none had returned to share word of what they’d found. It was a massive loss to humanity in those early days.
Belfast was a hybrid major dungeon, scary enough to be only farmed by the elite of the Guildies.
“How in the hell are we going to get those Guildies out of the dungeon so they don’t lock it?” Alexander asked.
The trick, the problem, the reason for Matriculated guards, was too many classed people inside the dungeon and it shut itself, the crystal phased, becoming intangible, hiding just beyond the mortal realm of Gaia. No one could touch it then, which meant no one could have their classes unlocked, or strike the heart dead, which, of course, the Guild did not want. Worst case scenario, all the Guildies had to do was enter the dungeon to close it to intruders for three days. That was how they monopolized the access to Normals becoming Matriculated.
Hilde and Cervantes came to the rescue.
“When they vacate to let the wagons through, because they’re good lads who follow orders and won’t jeopardize a fresh round of Normals accepting the carry to Matriculation,” The cavalier swordsman said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world, “Me and Hilde bop them on the noggin and pack them in the wagon, making it look like the guards are still guarding. Then we walk the caravan right on through, making sure not to go over limit inside the dungeon.”
Cervantes, for all his casual attitude about it, might be onto something. Simplicity made execution far easier.
“Can you do it?” Alexander asked Hilde, their illusionist.
She frowned, and chewed her lip, and her lack of immediate reply made him question the endeavor, but, after a minute she nodded.
“I can do it.” Hilde confirmed, with confidence now, “An image of the guards, overlaid where they are on loop, to block the fort’s view of what’s actually happening, like a screen. As long as no one views it from the side, I can keep it up. If they come from multiple angles, they’ll spot the ruse immediately, I can’t do 3-D shots yet.” She explained.
“And the guards? Shiv?” the young Gerifalte checked, recalling the last time their physician had attempted his little carotid pinch.
Vehement head shaking denied the surgeon’s role in this play.
“No way. I got lucky those first couple of times.” Olevskiy admitted, his heavy brow drawn down from the memory of a near thing to homicide earlier, “Getting more comfortable with my abilities worked against me, I’m too sharp applying power now, making changes is too easy, and I lost wiggle room for mistakes.”
“I need to practice on some living things to get the method down before I try on humans again.” Their doctor told the crew without hesitation.
Fair enough, plan bop them on the head it was.
“Melinda, your inspect skill is pretty solid, can you figure out how much Soak they’ve got, or do I need to pull a quick scout?” the young Venator asked.
High soak meant it would take a much harder hit to reliably down the men before they raised alarm, or started fighting back. Too hard a hit, and you might kill somebody on accident. The movies made it out like just bashing somebody in the back of the head was safe. It was not, a brain bleed killed swiftly. Hence the need to know exactly how much Soak they had to deal with to get the job done. If a struggle started, Cervantes could muffle things while Hilde obscured the takedowns, but taking risks unnecessarily due to sloppy planning was a rookie move.
A thumbs up greeted him from the tiny scout of Getsome, who said without concern, “I’ve got this, you guys get started for the Narrows cemetery.”
Alexander felt a little better knowing that the woman was there looking out for the caravan. He trusted the other scouts, but he’d traveled with Melinda before, and knew her to be more than competent.
Mark looked around, judging that there were no lingering misapprehensions about their plan of attack.
“Then let’s get it done.” Getsome’s Anchor tank declared.
Which was how, about fifteen minutes later, he found himself in a tree overlooking the salty river, still cloaked in mist from the morning’s chill.
Maine was a beautiful thing, this time of year. Coastal Maine had that additional spice, missing from his hometown, of sea salt air, and the cries of gulls. He could see why so many people liked it enough to make their homes here, he decided from his squat on a high limb. The oak tree was old, old, one of those monsters that predated industry. Enhanced sight showed nothing but the usual run of squirrels, flit of birds, and stealthy pad of a lone panther. The usual, except for the volcano.
Muspelheim dominated land was all harsh, rocky terrain, magma tubes, geysers, bubbling mud pots, lava fields, open pits of bubbling molten rock, and steaming pools of crystalline water clear all the way to the bottom and, oftentimes, iridescent with thermophilic algae. It was beautiful, in a way. Not anyway Alexander wanted to be closer to, that much was for certain.
Even through the veil of the dungeon, the volcano could be seen, like a mirage across the desert. It was a hostile place, and that was without the dragon.
Alexander dropped down from the branch, fell twenty feet to the forest floor, rolled gracefully to shed the impulse of the landing, and returned to give the team the word for which they were waiting. Ten eyes set in stoic, focused faces greeted him.
“Cervantes and Hilde need a raise, they pulled it off without a hitch.” He reported, and tension visibly left the party.
Getting the wagon train on the road north, in the clear from the strong point of the fort, and dealing with the Guildies was considered to be the “hard” part of the operation. The dungeon itself was a relatively known quantity, done to death. That was by Guild parties with relatively seasoned members who ran the dungeon every three days like clockwork. Information got around because the raiders and harvesters liked to brag in the taverns, and everybody was thrilled to let them. Humanity pushing back against the terrors of the invading realms was heap big dick energy, and a sign of hope.
Of this party however, only Alexander had ever been on a run of the Muspelheim volcano, and that, only twice. He’d gotten himself kicked out not a week later, thanks to an ill-fated patrol south of Belfast, doing what he’d thought was a good deed killing the dungeon that was attacking some merchants from Rockland. As a result, they had limited first hand experience, and a whole lot of hearsay. Despite Alexander’s misgivings, Getsome was ready. They had been training hard to break into the big leagues, before the truth of the Guilds’ strategy of farming the dungeons had become clear. Afterward, they lost interest in becoming a cog in that machine.
“It’s go time then.” Ben said, eagerness in his expression and voice.
The Steel Heavy Knight helped the Dame into her little canoe, which was loaded with the armor of the party. They were all of them fit. The party members were conditioned by fighting monsters and patrolling the wilds, and full of the vigor of youth and Gaian magical infusion. Even so, swimming in full kit wasn’t something that should ever be attempted. Especially not across a thousand feet of bitter cold October salt water, with a strong tide currently running out to the Atlantic. They’d be dragged close to the southern end of the dungeon shrouded island in the best of circumstances.
Dame Sanchez laid herself down, to avoid rocking the canoe and lower visibility. The canoe had branches, shrubs, and leaves tied off to it, to appear to be a drifting tree limb, which happened frequently. It was why the entire party wasn’t in a boat, they would be far less visible in the water a mile or so distant to the Narrows observation post.
Five forms in the buff entered the frigid river current and pushed the canoe along as they swam.
Nobody concerned themselves with nudity. You didn’t leave camp to do your business or bathe, that was asking for a panther or bear, or some Gaian spawned monster variant to come snatch you with your britches around your ankles. Brig for certain knew what everybody looked like naked anyhow, the ginger lancer having tried to corral most of them at least once. She succeeded more than she failed.
After the initial shock of cold, Alexander’s body warmed with the effort of the swim. They were pushing hard, making the crossing as swiftly as possible. Nobody really knew what things Gaia might have added to spice up the deeper waters, and this wasn’t the day to find out. Just before he could really start getting paranoid, his feet touched the mud and sand mix of the bottom and he was pushing the canoe with all speed, Mark in front of him, Granny behind, with Brig, and Ben on the other side, because they were both specimens.
As a team they dragged the boat up the sandy beach, nevertheless strewn with rocks, because this was Maine, which was almost entirely either rock, tree, or water. The Dame hopped out of the canoe and shivered slightly at the distance they had been pushed south in their short crossing. She’d have been swept out to sea, if she didn’t drown first.
They had crossed into the boundary of the dungeon while beaching the canoe and the contrasting heat compared to the cold water was startling.
“Hooo, damn,” Observed Ben, “It always this hot?”
Alexander pulled his clothes on and thought back to his time on this island. He’d remembered it being warm, but it was summer then, and the contrast wasn’t so large.
“I think so, yeah. Definitely pushing nineties.” He recalled.
He took a second to admire Brig’s figure, noting that she was giving the party a hearty ogling, and turned around, so as not to encourage her antics. She enjoyed teasing him as much as anything else. That brought him face to face with Granny who he caught leering openly. At him. A reddening accompanied his about face toward the other men.
“Too easy, Gerifalte, you make it too easy.” Granny Nguyen complained behind him.
He almost laughed aloud. It was strangely comforting that, even here on a volcanic island piece of an alien realm, Granny was taking the time to give him shit.
“Concentrate people.” Mark gently redirected, “We’re on the clock. I want game faces until we’re back with the caravan.”
And, because they were all professionals, they stopped being companions, friends, lovers, or occasional nemesis, and became Adventurers. Soldiers against the menace that threatened to consume the surface of Gaia. In many ways, they were like Gaia’s immune system, fighting the infection that riddled the newly awakened planet.
“Let’s do it by the book,” Ben advised, “Me, Mark, Brig on the delta, Alexander wide ahead running scout, Dame holding flank and busting trouble, Annita keep overwatch and cull the downed mobs, do not engage otherwise.”
They all knew the plan, but it was standard practice to reinforce the roles at the outset.
Mark settled his helmet with a hard tap of the pommel of his sword and told the mule pack bearing harvester class, “Do your thing, Granny, whenever you can. But use your head, and stay vigilant.”
“Go teach me to suck eggs.” Granny rebutted, with a serene expression of alert concentration.
With that, they set off.
Immediately, Alexander peeled off from the main body of the party to begin doing what he did best: used his eyes.
Greater Analyze was a potent ability, coupled with Raptor Gaze. Few and far between were those who could canvas the terrain as thoroughly, and safely, as he could from a distance. Already, he had three packs of imps in his sights, throwing fireballs playfully at each other, a salamander sunning itself, and a suspiciously hominid boulder sitting in a lava pool that was definitely an elemental.
It was the imps that first drew his attention, and he concentrated on their being, laser focused to acquire whatever fey knowledge Gaia could impart to him.
Ashling Imp
Status:
Impulsive, playful
Soak: 18%
LifeForce/Armor
Head
Mana: 82%
Might
5
Length
3’3”
LifeForce/Armor
Left Arms
13/5
LifeForce/Armor
Right Arms
Grace
11
Weight
27lbs
7/0
Ash Demon Horn
7/0
Impetus
9
Age
1.5 years
LifeForce/Armor
Left Wings
LifeForce/Armor
Thorax
LifeForce/Armor
Right Wings
Cogitation
8
Core
Smoke quartz, heart
5/0
8/5
5/0
Wisdom
3
Origin
Muspelheim
LifeForce/Armor
Left Legs
LifeForce/Armor
Right Legs
Ingenuity
8
Monster Race:
Ash Demon-1st Tier
8/0
LifeForce/Armor
Abdomen
8/0
Durability
7
9/0
Valor
2
Barbed Tail
Traits
Cruel, Capricious, Greater Fire resistance, Lesser acidic blood
Skills
Lesser Tail whip, Minor ember throw, Minor ashen dislocation, Minor goring thrust
Arcana
Lesser ash manipulation, Ash form
Tier one imps were no big deal. They were relatively squishy, not so strong, and only about as fast as a Normal. Other weaknesses of the creatures were their being too compulsive to strategize beyond what immediately was happening around them, and the fact that they tended to try to gang up on a single target to inflict as much viciousness as they could. A good party would let their Anchor tank move forward, draw their attention, and then pick them off when they rushed him, resulting in almost no damage ever being dealt. Their ability to sort of teleport in a puff of ash was only three or four feet, and they could only do it once every two or three minutes. The horns were sharp, but not any stronger than bull horns. The tail had a painfully recurved stinger, but no venom. Of all the characteristics of the Ashling imps, their most dangerous abilities were to stir up big clouds of ash as a group and to throw tiny fireballs at those inside. The ash cloud had a synergistic ability to trap the heat of the embers tossed into them, reaching broiling temperatures after a dozen or so. The creatures couldn’t fly very quickly though, and the ash manipulation took focus, so they were easy to distract from this task, or to hit with a crossbow or longbow or anything else from range. All in all, nothing to worry about.
Alexander figured this was a good warm up for the party, so he raised his hand and signaled the closest little mob of four to the party behind him. He received the go ahead from Mark and stalked ahead to invite the little monsters to play.
Feet planted wide, with proper form, Alexander raised his bow. He drew the heavy pulling bow back, stave humming, pulleys silently magnifying the tension that would launch his broadhead arrow. Grey fletches indicated that this arrowhead was a simple trifold set of six-inch-long razors, not one of his special treats to feed monsters.
Breathe. Hold. Release.
One arrow streaked to the gang of imps, and transfixed the imp through its ribcage, beneath one armpit. That was a kill, the young Venator knew, and he was already drawing the bow again. As one, the Ashling imps screeched before taking a stumbling, chimpanzee run that ended with them launching themselves into clumsy flight toward him. They actually got easier to hit when they were in the air, flying too weakly to change their vertical position, or so Alexander thought. He didn’t watch the second arrow kill its target. Instead, he fled back toward the delta formation, ash lifting up from under his boots in small clouds, and the light crunch of rock staccato as he ran.
Two imps of the original four didn’t even look aside when he sailed past Mark, locked onto their fleeing target as they were. Brig and Ben swatted them out of the air unceremoniously. Granny caved in both heads with a heavy chop of her kukri, like splitting kindling.
“More?” Alexander asked, and he received the affirmative gesture “okay” from the party leader.
Rinse and repeat, except that the next two mobs of three and four imps, Alexander didn’t use an arrow, instead closing in a rapid run to stab into an imp with his frost cored spear, which had a devastating effect on the imps, ripping the heat that gave them life away. After a single, fatal thrust, employing his ability to increase lethality called Baleful strike, he retreated and let his team finish the pursuing imps.
Ten minutes and seventeen imp cores later, and Alexander felt like they were ready to handle a salamander. Time to leave the bunny slopes and start hitting the real thing.
He angled toward the volcano, following a small ridge that led to a low plateau. When they crested the rise, a plain dotted with several hydrothermal pools, their clarity and brilliant color belying the hazard they represented. Not only was the water in each easily scalding, but it was also chemically active, heavily concentrated with sulfuric acid. Central to the flat land was a slowly flowing river of lava, which meandered along a crusty path of cooled igneous rock. This field changed monthly, as a result of slow shifts in the lava flows. There was no defined way through the maze of old lava tubes, some which still held molten material, the main flow, and the numerous hydrothermal pools, themselves dangerous in that their banks could form a thin crust that deceived as to where the real shoreline might be.
Of all the dungeon, this mile and a half long plateau leading to the cone was considered the most fraught. The salamanders had little to do with that, although they didn’t make the route to the caldera any easier.
“Keep to my trail!” Alexander called to those who followed behind.
“If you have to split off, pay attention to your footing, there are hidden pitfalls scattered around.” He warned.
A thousand careful feet of travel took them to a place where the river of lava, rolling with black crusts steadily floating atop boiling rock, passed close to a blue, yellow, and green pool that reeked of sulfur. On the banks of the lava flow lay a salamander, all four feet or so of it. A small one, they could be as long as ten feet and outweigh two full grown men. Their path went through this gap, which meant they had to take out the lizard thing blocking the way.
It was time for the Dame to show her stuff. Salamanders had a scathing fire breath. Otherwise they weren’t dangerous, unless you let one bite you, but then you deserved what you got. The Hydromancer’s water beam was their kryptonite, however. Pressurized water would bore through the supple hide, punch into the flaming blood inside them, and flash to steam, virtually detonating the monsters from inside.
Prim, proper, and dressed in what could only be described as an armored dress, the Dame took center stage in the party’s familiar formation. The fine mega linen of the high necked, full armed, ball gown, was woven with titanium rings that interlocked. It was, arguably, a work of art. The dress was the brainchild of Kim Summers, Falcon’s Rest’s new artificer, and it was what caught Alexander’s attention in Safe Harbor when he went looking for a metal worker to partner with. For all she was mad as a hatter, she did the battle princess look well with her Catalan features, proud nose, and a haughty demeanor.
It was the main body of the party that led the way now, Alexander had done his part.
“Ready!” Whispered Mark from the van.
“Seven to ten, all clear.” Ben noted.
Not even a second later, Brig echoed, “Five to two, all clear.”
The flanks were secured by Alexander, with Granny batting cleanup, and he gave a hushed, “Five to Seven, all clear,” signaling that their rear was free from danger.
“On me!” Mark called, the Burning Legionnaire springing into a double time jog with his shield up.
Salamanders, for those who need to know, are quick on the draw and trigger happy.
A narrow stream of red-orange flame leapt from the small lizard’s jaws, like a garden hose spitting napalm. Mark tanked the streaming fire, and Alexander saw the ground smoke beneath his armored feet. Simultaneously, the stream of fire flickered and guttered, as if in high wind. Getsome’s Anchor tank was siphoning the heat from the flames into the ground, not completely neutralizing them, but diminishing the collateral to his teammates.
The Dame raised a hand and water from a hydrothermal pool rose like a python of scalding acidic water rearing back to strike. With a gesture, she compelled her magic to streak forward, compressed liquid hitting like a battering ram. The salamander flew backward under the assault until it caught up against the lava flow’s craggy banks and was pinched between frozen lava and a beam of pressurized water. Flesh gave way after only brief resistance, and a reptilian shriek was accompanied by a flash of steam, where water met molten blood.
Scratch one salamander.
The party advanced cautiously, but nothing jumped out to surprise them. Granny used her kukri to dissect the core of the Muspelheim beast. She then let Alexander, who had a practiced hand, skin the creature out while she scraped some sort of flamboyant red and orange moss, with a little blue pilot flame floating above its miniscule moss leaflets, into one of her sample bags, the soft green glow of her ability locking the virility of the alien plant in place so that it might be grown later, or remain fresh for use. One minute later, they had a salamander skin to go with the core and were continuing toward their destination.
Not far did they make it, a hundred feet, perhaps, before another bend in the main lava flow splitting the plateau revealed three salamanders laying in wait. For what? No one knew for certain. It was almost unheard of for monsters from one of the contested zones to prey on one another. They exclusively hunted for Gaian prey, perhaps driven to it by the crystal heart of the dungeon that brought them through to this world. A mystery, and one Alexander did not care to solve. He had no interest in dungeon to monster communication, only in killing the crystal cores that spread their influence.
“Brig, stone spear the two o’clock salamander and vault it if you have to, I’ll tie up the eleven and ten o’clock monsters so Ben and Alexander can go round and flank them. Dame, if you think you can take one out without spending too much of your strength then do it, otherwise, save yourself for the boss.” Mark ordered, cool and collected, broad sword pointing to the enemies, features blond and handsome like a story book hero.
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Getsome followed the Anchor tank’s charge.
This time, there was not one stream of flame, but three, and even the sturdy kite shield, backed by the Burning Legionnaire’s heat manipulation, wasn’t enough to completely deflect the assault. Grunting from the rapid drain on his mana to dim the fire, Mark, somewhat breathless, “Audible, shut those flames down or Granny and Dame are in trouble!”
Alexander skated to the side, moving away from his team at a ground blurring clip and he grimaced away the broiler heat from the salamander breath proximity for a moment. A moment was all it took to summon the Entropic Field of his class, a sphere of chaos magic that twisted mana constructs, breaking them apart. Concentrated streams of fire sputtered and died, and Alexander put himself in harm’s way to get close to the monsters, shutting off their ability to redouble their magical attack.
Two fire born monitors nine feet long turned to attack him, mouths smoking and teeth like obsidian ready to rend his flesh while they dragged him into the lava flow. He readied Winter’s Breath, his frost enchanted spear to repel them. It proved unnecessary, Ben had not been idle, and neither had Brig. Ben, poleaxe wound up, charged in from behind him and swung like a tightened spring. His full metal axe blade buried itself between slitted eyes, the force smashing the salamander’s head to the ashen rock below. Flailing limbs spasmed without control and the Steel Heavy Knight transitioned his weapon smoothly and neatly caught a lunging form on the spear point, lifting the three-hundred-pound creature high as if it weighed nothing. A stone javelin buried itself into the monster’s stomach, followed by three more that landed within a hand of the first.
Ben’s face, nearly hidden by the helmet he wore, never changed a whit, not even when stone spears whistled by his ear.
The third salamander died like the first small one a heartbeat later, rent by compressed water that popped its abdomen open in a cloud of steam and mutant reptilian gore.
Alexander released a held breath at the sudden change in circumstance. The salamanders had concentrated their fire, ahem, more effectively than he had ever seen, and it was more than Mark’s ability to move thermal energy could handle, by far. His shield showed signs of warping and the center of it had taken on the appearance of blackened wax. The wood beneath the metal was charred, by the smell and wisps of smoke along its rim.
“Woah.” Granny commented, slightly aghast at how quickly things got squirrely.
“Good call on the audible, Mark.” Alexander praised.
Their leader grinned and patted his helmet nervously, while Granny got to work cutting open their prey.
“Thanks, but you get the credit for the save on that one. Your antimagic field took the starch out of them pretty hard.” Getsome’s leader returned, before addressing his team’s attackers, “What do you think? How much Soak did they have from inside Alexander’s area of effect?”
Brig squinted at the salamander her rock spears had transfixed and waved her hand in a so-so gesture. It was hard to tell since she couldn’t feel the pressure of the creatures when she threw the javelins.
“Probably half or less,” She decided, turning to their most experienced hand, “How about it, Ben? You got up close with them.”
A hearty armored clap on Alexander’s splint mail from the big man rocked him, and their main attacker chuckled, “Went through’em like a hot knife through butter. Twenty percent of their Soak left, tops. And he was only on them for a second. God almighty, I love this cheating little shit.”
Alexander had to readjust his helmet from the warrior’s seal of approval, but he was glad his instincts to turn off the salamander’s breath and defenses were good. Granny stashed the last core and announced, “Ready for skinning! Now, get over here and show me how to dehide these little beauties, Granny needs a new pair of shoes!”
He glanced down at her feet and, indeed, the Verdant Forager was going to need new footwear. Hers were starting to char from the heat of the dungeon’s stony ground.
“Damn, Annita, you should have said something sooner!” He exclaimed, hurrying over to start working on the monster corpses.
Her feet would be burning soon.
“Eh, you young folk had bigger problems than my tootsies. I’ll wrap them up in the little guy real quick, if you don’t mind.” She said and started doing just that.
Five minutes focused work, as fast as he could cut away the suede smooth hides, had the three salamanders, much larger than their first catch, packed away. Granny’s soft leather boots were now reinforced against the heat by crudely folded salamander skin, with her boney quill hair pins, Alexander’s gift from yesterday, there to hold the improvised moccasins in place.
When he was done, Alexander rose, and wiped sweat from his brow. Suddenly, he realized that it was very, very hot around here. Even for Muspelheim.
“I think we might be on the clock guys.” He said, frowning, unable to hide his concern.
It was definitely hotter than before. He’d been twice to the caldera to help fight the field boss baby dragon and the atmosphere had never been so oppressively sweltering.
“Figures.” Brig snarked, her lopsided smile undaunted by the news.
Okay, okay, okay, time to do your thing, Little Falcon, he whispered to himself, trying to rally some confidence. This next part was going to require him to not fuck anything up. The field dungeon was growing hotter, they needed the straightest path to the caldera as possible. He was the only one who could see well enough to chart a path through the maze of boiling pools, lava, and monsters, especially with all the thermal distortions in the air.
For a methodical couple of minutes, Alexander exercised his Raptor’s Gaze and Spatial Adept abilities to their fullest. He normally used Spatial Adept for its help getting a 3-D understanding of machine schematics, mechanical tasks, and the like, but it was useful in fights to precisely judge the positions of his enemies, their weapons, and his attack vectors. Now, it helped him determine the most likely position of lava tubes that might collapse, by the subtle roll of the terrain, hints almost hidden by ash and steam.
At last, he was confident he had a new line to their objective. He was bypassing some of the monsters they’d planned to hunt, but needs must when devil drives.
“Alright, I got it.” Alexander declared to the team, “We can skip two packs of imps, and all of the salamanders, and I think I have us a route that lets us move faster. That’s fewer resources, but safety and mission success take priority. There’s two elementals in the way. I’m going to Chaos strike them, and, if she is amenable, Dame Sanchez should put them down with all haste. Granny can haul the glass for Jules, and we make straight for the dragon after that. Solid plan?”
“Solid plan.” Chorused the party.
“Okay,” Mark breathed, anticipating a faster pace, “On me, same formation, Alexander, hold the flank and keep watch for any bullshit. Let’s fucking go, double time.”
Getsome took off at a steady jog this time, making rapid egress along the route Alexander had determined.
“Elemental, get ready!” the Entropic Venator called, noticing the small telltale flakes of crusted igneous rock that cracked when a lava elemental started to move from its concealment.
In the same breath as his warning, the creature lifted itself out from the pool of molten rock in which it had lay in ambush.
A grey black bolt of distorted magic slapped across the elemental’s chest, and it made a grating screech, like grinding rock mixed with a broken brass horn. Its keening was short lived. The Dame unloaded on the elemental with water from a nearby pool that blasted the infernal life from the creature. It died smoking and steaming, its vital heat bled away from the torrent of water that bathed it. Together, the team smashed the bipedal thing to small bits, secured the monster’s core, and loaded Granny’s pack with two hundred pounds of choicest obsidian. She took the additional weight stoically, having emptied the huge bag before embarking on this maiden voyage inside a dungeon.
Off at a run, they slaughtered another gang of imps, not even bothering with the cores as they noticed a perceptible increase in temperature. Something was going wrong in Muspelheim.
The last barrier to their path was another elemental. They barely even slowed, Alexander splashed its head with chaos magic and the Dame let it have the same lethal bath its brethren had faced.
While they harvested the creature, the Dame gave them the warning however, breathless from the effort of using herself up so rapidly, “My strength is taxed fully. It pains me to rely on the rabble, but so it must be.”
Damn. He was really hoping that she would have had enough juice to squeeze to throw in on the dragon. Couldn’t be helped, they couldn’t afford the small breaks to rest and permit their stamina or magical reserves to recover. The good news was, Brig and Ben were still mostly fresh, not having expended much of their strength so far. Alexander was feeling the use of his powers, but he had plenty of gas in the tank for the miniature dragon, and Winter’s Breath was well suited to deal with this boss, even without his antimagic.
The cone loomed above them as they ran toward the heart of the contested zone. Clouds of smoke, ash, and the occasional flickers of lighting roiled high above. A rumble gave barely a warning before the mountain of fire trembled. It shook the ground wildly, and the party staggered and stumbled, trying to remain upright. Alexander felt dread climb his spine, watching a few streamers of cinders and lava bombs get hurled from the cone to the surroundings. The rate of ash belching from the volcano increased.
“Oh fuck. It’s the volcano. Something’s wrong with the fucking volcano, it’s not supposed to do that.” He reported, not bothering to hide his apprehension.
Brig laughed gaily and gave them encouragement, “Then we’d best hike up our knickers and kick the shit out of it then, shouldn’t we?”
What do you say to that? He wondered. Not much, just do it.
So it was that the adventurers rounded the final bend in a dormant lava tube, the main channel that led into the heart of the dungeon, a wide high chamber inside the volcano that housed, in addition to the crystal heart of this slice of Muspelheim, its guardian: a juvenile red dragon, that wasn’t so juvenile any longer.
The juvenile red dragon had put on weight. Where it should have been around the size of a large horse, it was now elephantine. Wings with a fifteen-foot spread now splayed in threat and shadowed forty feet to either side of its powerful draconic body. Horns like pikes rose up from its spine and its tail carried a wicked set of them at angles from its spine, a flail of unthinkable power, twenty feet long to add to the twenty-foot-long body and head.
“That’s a big ass baby, Alexander. You didn’t say anything ‘bout it being that fucking big!” Accused Ben.
Alexander’s mouth had fallen open at the sight of the impossible. The dragon was massive. He immediately concentrated on the fearful creature, trying to ignore baleful golden eyes that bored into the interlopers that had intruded onto its domain. He failed for the easy grace with which the field boss rose from its repose to stand, imperious, before the heart of the Muspelheim dungeon.
“We gotta go.” He whispered, shaken.
“What?! But we’re already this far!” Hissed Brig, not understanding.
Ben was shaking his head, even the indomitable man cared little for the idea of challenging the red scaled guardian of the volcano.
“It’s too big. It’s way bigger than before.” Alexander said, backing away slowly toward the tunnel that led out of the dungeon heart’s chamber.
When was the last time the Guildies had slayed the dragon? Had they abandoned the culling when they couldn’t discern a use for a dragon’s core? That was…madness! And without slaying the dragon, there had been no Matriculation from this dungeon, no siphoning off its powers.
“Those fucking Guildies just let it be.” Mark intoned, disbelief painting the pronouncement.
“We gotta go.” Alexander repeated.
If they followed the route in, they should be able to get off the island before the volcano, seemingly about to burst, erupted. When that happened, who knows how the field dungeon would change. Maybe this was what it looked like when a dungeon tiered up, expanded its foothold on Gaia.
A gentle hand on his arm pulled him away from his feeble attempts to control fear, and Granny, in her ageless faked, but not always, wisdom, laid bare the truth of things.
“It won’t let us, Alexander.” She said, solemnly, a little scared.
And she was right. The dragon was unfurling from its slumber, wings reflexively opening and closing, limbering up for flight. Claws raked the stone, leaving deep gouges and throwing sparks.
Brig, at least, was up for the fight, and she exclaimed, “Then if it wants some it can come get some.”
Which finally solved for Alexander how this Adventurer party had acquired their name. No matter how he tried he couldn’t convince anyone to tell him. He’d thought it was Gatsam this whole time, which he’d assumed was some kind of inside joke.
It was. Just not the funny hah hah kind. They must have nearly died that day.
“Gonna have to stick to the plan now, soldiers. Our asses are in it.” Ben determined aloud.
“I have the strength for a single blow to lay upon the fell creature,” Dame Sanchez announced, haughty and proud, “Let us slay the beast.”
A resigned sigh escaped him, and he watched as the dragon bared sword length fangs, its maw long as Alexander was tall, and its horn crowned head dipping low as it gathered itself.
“Right. Same plan?” He checked, getting less rocky now that there were no options left.
“Same plan.” Mark confirmed, and that was a ballsy statement from the party’s leader, because he was going to be drawing the monster’s attention first and foremost.
“Fuck. Okay. Say when.” Alexander said.
The dragon bellowed, a resonant roar of challenge and hostility. Good enough, he thought, and the last Gerifalte summoned chaos.
Three Chaos strikes leapt from his raised hand, and he was pulling his bow off his back before they landed. While he did so, the Entropic Venator focused on the being of the draconic figure and pulled Gaia’s impression on of it from the void.
Muspelheim Red Wyrmling
Status:
Wrathful, Defensive, Impatient
Soak: 55%
LifeForce/Armor
Head
Mana: 100%
Might
34
Length
45’7”
LifeForce/Armor
Left Arms
32/50
LifeForce/Armor
Right Arms
Grace
16
Weight
6.54tons
26/34 Claws
Dragon Horn
26/34 Claws
Impetus
21
Age
Six months
LifeForce/Armor
Left Wings
LifeForce/Armor
Thorax
LifeForce/Armor
Right Wings
Cogitation
13
Core
Dragon heart, ovoid
20/10
45/45
20/10
Wisdom
12
Origin
Muspelheim
LifeForce/Armor
Left Legs
LifeForce/Armor
Right Legs
Ingenuity
8
Monster Race:
Dragon-3rd Tier (Red)
28/34 Claws
LifeForce/Armor
Abdomen-Tail
28/34 Claws
Durability
82
34/20
Valor
∞
Spiked Tail
Traits
Draconic pride, Greater fire resistance, Greater slash resistance, Greater pierce resistance
Skills
Tail whip, Lesser dragon fire, Fearful roar, Dragon dive, Raking claws
Arcana
“Tier three.” Alexander reported grimly, informing the party what they faced.
The guardian of the volcano had no arcana.
That was the good news, he thought, pulling back his bow, one of the red feathered arrows nocked. Red fletched arrows carried a small, shaped charge, which detonated thanks to a vial of nitroglycerin that broke on impact.
He released the arrow, taking some gratification that the boss had leaned away from the streaking entropic mana bolts, but was too large to avoid them. Black, grey, warping magic dulled and cracked scales across the neck, stomach, and a blocking wing. His arrow flew toward the dragon’s neck, but a dip of horn covered head caused the bolt to shatter on unblemished ruby red scales. The explosive consequence snapped the draconic face to the side. Slowly, it leveled a hateful glare his way.
The bad news was that the dragon did not need arcana to be tyrannical.
Mark launched himself at the field boss, Ben and Brig at his side. Granny kept to Mark’s shadow, as she had been instructed, and the Dame was angling slightly to one side, to find an angle for a decisive blow with her remaining magic. The acidic hydrothermal vent water in the small keg hanging at her hip would have to be used when the right moment came, or it would do nothing against the dragon’s defenses.
His pulling attack drew the boss’s ire, and six tons of dragon lifted, far too gracefully, with an almost casual three beats of great wings.
The downburst from those batlike membranes slung a wave of ash and smoke from the lava near the dungeon heart, which hung just a few hundred feet away, on a narrow bridge extending into the lake of lava inside the caldera. That lake had been a hundred yards farther down the throat of the volcano the last time he was here.
Shield raised, Mark dashed into the blast of wing driven particulates, leading the charge toward the monster.
From its disturbingly weightless hover, the wyrmling drew back its sinuous neck and the warriors heard the hissing intake of breath, accompanied by a dull glow in the dragon’s chest.
“Don’t tank it!” Alexander shouted, drawing a new arrow to send at the wing he’d hit earlier with his magical attack, where its Soak and armor were compromised.
An airborne dragon was an exponentially greater threat than one that was grounded.
The jet of flame that poured from a wide, fanged maw was a fire hose compared to the salamander’s. Fire concentrated into a nearly solid beam rocketed at Mark and the Burning Legionnaire didn’t even attempt to put his shield in the way. Getsome scattered, diving aside. As unmercifully powerful as the dragon’s breath was, it was not sustained, a burst of flame that left rock seared to molten glow, and then done.
Alexander released the second arrow, trying to hold his focus instead of watching while his comrades made their evasion. Another arrow in the air, and, this time, pay dirt!
Weakened scales at the “elbow” of the wing joint shattered, becoming glistening crimson shrapnel, and the pained shriek of the boss, its graceful hover broken by the limply flapping left wing, barely preceded its return to the cavern floor. Sound from the roar caused every human to flinch, frozen for a deadly moment.
Barely did the red wyrmling land, then did the claws gouge stone for traction and it hurled itself toward Alexander Gerifalte with fury in reptilian eyes.
He fled as soon as his body unfroze from its instinctive paralysis, immediately and as fast as his legs could take him, with no thought of any attempt to fight the charging drake. Heart racing in his throat he sprinted desperately around the circumference of the chamber and prayed to all the gods above, below, and in between, that someone managed to hurt the monster before it caught him.
Aid came in the form of Brig, who used a pillar of stone as a propulsive springboard and launched herself with amazing grace into the air. Earthen magic pulsed and her spear took on extra weight, became more solid, as she descended onto the boss’s back. A war cry joined the stabbing lance that bit into the dragon’s neck, where Alexander’s Chaos strike had weakened its armor. Brilliant blood pulsed from the wound and the dragon stopped its pursuit with a stumbling roar, biting viciously over its shoulder at the Lithic Lancer that had stung it. Fearless, Brig ignored the snapping teeth half as long as she was tall, drew back, and burned her mana to stab again, harder, into the monster on whose shoulder she stood.
Alexander turned and consumed the rest of his magic on impulse, knowing that no better chance to break the down the creature’s defenses would come. A salvo of five bolts of entropic magic seared the dragon’s chest and head, and its convulsive shriek filled the chamber, rattling the warriors again.
One of the bolts had hit the monster in the eye, and the orb had gone milky white, with tears of draconic blood running from that socket.
A wave of exhaustion hammered into the young hunter’s mind, the price of tapping one’s magic completely and he almost fell to the floor from vertigo.
Brig took the chance to tear her spear free, one last time she stabbed again with a two-handed impaling blow charged by inhuman power. Full Thrust magnified the lance, and, committed as she was to the attack, the warrior almost got impaled by a back spike when the dragon rolled to crush her.
She vaulted her from the beast’s back, her class’s enhanced jump carrying her away from the death roll. Too fast for a monster of its size, the field boss gained its feet and tried to bite the Lancer from the air like a lizard snatching a fly.
Their veteran monster killer had not been idle, fearlessly closing on the single-minded monster. Using all the momentum he could muster, Benjamin didn’t break stride before he uppercutted the dragon’s chin with a spinning golf swing empowered by the Heavy Knight’s abilities. A crack of scales and teeth echoed across the caldera chamber, the surging, fanged mouth slammed shut by his blow. Brig got hit by a darting scaled wall driven by a ton of muscle and sailed, landing in a crunching pile of armor and limbs, that skidded twenty feet across the dungeon chamber’s stone floor.
A shimmer across claws was the only warning Ben got before the dragon’s retaliatory attack hooked across to eviscerate him. Mark pushed past, shield up, and both the men were sent flying by the sweeping rake of talons. The pair rolled and gained their feet, remarkably adroit for the hit they’d taken and the armor they wore. There was damage, however,
Mark’s shield had been carved nearly in half. The arm holding the shield was deeply gouged, bone showing, even through his Soak, the shield, and armor below. His chest plate showed a similar gouge, blood flowing freely. The Burning Legionnaire grimaced in pain but stood his ground, determined to hold the line. Ben put a hand on his friend’s shoulder in thanks for saving his life, and they faced down their enemy together.
Predatory instincts sent the dragon, not toward the pair, but toward Brigitte, who was slowly rising from her rough landing. Granny Nguyen, who had been hanging back with the Dame searching for an opportunity to make the difference, rushed to the fallen woman when the dragon turned, lifted her up bodily with ox strength and fled. The boss’s pounce took it to the space where its prey had been, but Annita Nguyen was running with her comrade slung over her slight shoulders, the harvester was fifty feet away before the field boss could gather itself to follow. It tried anyway, pouncing, leaping, and, once, with a slash of its twenty-foot tail, and failed to catch the darting woman with her, for once, light burden.
Growling snarls from the frustrated monster sounded like all the alligators in Florida.
For its distraction, the Dame made it pay with its sight, a concentrated beam of water digging deep through the softest tissue on the monster’s head. Another bellow of wrath and pain resounded, and the monster swung its crown toward the woman, breathing deep to punish the creature that had pulverized its eye.
Dame Sanchez faced her death with dignity, having fallen to her knees when she expended the last of her energies. Her noble sacrifice was averted by three hundred pounds of steel-clad knight that, for a second time, shut the dragon’s mouth with a brutal sweep of poleaxe, this time so hard that the metal axe head shattered.
Dragon fire spilled from the close mouth and rebounded, swelling cheeks and throat almost comically. Not so comically, the wound Brigitte made on its neck poured molten fire in a spurt that rapidly widened, bursting open from the pressure and power of its own furious breath. The creature gagged, and floundered on its side, knocking the knight that had smacked it to the rocks in its tortured flailing.
Alexander was out of gas, Brigitte was on one leg, the other bent in a decidedly wrong direction, Granny didn’t have any way to hurt a monster like the field boss, Mark’s offensive powers were useless against the fire resistance of the Muspelheim native, even if he wasn’t badly slashed, and the Dame could barely climb to her feet.
There was only one hope left, and that man had just broken his weapon on the dragon’s face. Alexander grabbed the frost enchanted naginata from his harness and yelled, “Ben! Catch!” and he threw the spear, butt first, toward the champion of man.
Benjamin Grisham caught the flying spear as if it were handed to him and pivoted, roaring a roar of his own to match the dragon when he pierced the chaos weakened scales of its breast and shoved Winter’s breath its entire length through the dragon’s chest. Frozen power ate hungrily at the Muspelheim born monster’s life, stealing its heat, stilling the furnace inside it.
A massive shudder, a kick of clawed feet, a futile flap of one wing, and the dragon died.
Getsome’s vanguard attacker pulled the steaming frost brand from the behemoth’s body and gave it a considering smile, abnormal for the usual stoic features he maintained. That there, was a damned fine spear.
Another quake sent the party staggering, most now too injured or tired to resist being upended. From his sprawl, Alexander saw that the boiling lava was up another two feet, perilously close to swallowing the bridge that led to the dungeon heart.
“Mark! You’re going to have to do it! You’re the only one who can survive long enough!” the young hunter shouted, certain anyone else would succumb to the shimmering heat enveloping the bridge.
Using his half of a kite shield to prop himself up, Mark Ross, Burning Legionnaire and leader of the Adventurer party Getsome, Dragon Slayer, stumbled on legs made rubbery from blood loss across fifty feet of choking fumes and scalding heat. His clothes were smoking, and he was suffering burns from the reddening armor on his body when he drove his broadsword into the core of the Cinder cone dungeon of Muspelheim. Ripples of energy burst from the dying crystal, like gilded solar flares. Vibrant golden ribbons leashed the core to each of the men and women that had championed the world against the contested zone.
The world fell away to darkness.
Alexander’s mind filled again.
WORTHY! WORTHY! CATASTROPHE AVERTED! INCURSION DENIED!
WORTHY! WHAT IS THY DESIRE?
This again.
His hypothesis was, at the least partially confirmed. Gaia rewarded her champions proportionally to their achievement. By rules that remained cryptic and beyond knowing, but, nevertheless, could be extrapolated as such: the more likely the dungeon would kill you, the greater Gaia’s gift when it didn’t.
His desire?
Alexander held carefully onto this one, he had considered it since the last time. He had wanted to know the rules and got Greater Analyze. He had wanted power to break the rules and got Entropic magic, which unraveled most magical shenanigans. He had wanted to bring his parents back, specifically, the second time and had been told he was already doing that. The gift then was a flat increase to his abilities, making him…more substantial. It was hard to notice when your entire being changed, but Alexander was far more capable than he had been before that, around the board.
What did he desire this time? More than anything else, what he wanted, and needed, was sheer strength. There would be other dragons, maybe. There would be worse, eventually. They stood between him, and his goals and he would fall short if he couldn’t overcome them.
“I am a hunter. Of monsters. Of knowledge. Of anything I need to be. Give me strength to pursue my quarry.” He asked of the planet’s consciousness.
BECOMING! A HUNTER SEEKS STRENGTH AFTER SLAYING GREATER FOES!
A flare of heat inside his chest rolled outward through limbs in that strange timeless expanse within his mind. He was there, what felt like in body, but cutoff from the outside. When the heat faded, his exhaustion was taken with it.
Surroundings faded back in, his senses shedding the overwhelming presence of Gaia’s contact.
“Whoo boy! What a rush.” Alexander commented, slightly overwhelmed.
Things had gone so very not according to plan. But they had worked out, somehow. He thanked all the gods above, below, and in between that he had had Getsome here to aid him. A tier three dragon. Holy fuck, what a disaster.
He glanced around at slack faces and distant eyes. So, he gathered, everybody was still in neverland with the planet’s mind.
A quick scan of the surroundings revealed that the volcano was going dormant. Lava already a hundred feet lower than moments ago was cooling to form a black, igneous crust across the caldera. Already, the temperature was dropping.
“No time to savor it, Little Falcon.” Alexander told himself, and he approached the fallen dragon, slightly giddy at what fruits this fucked up day had born.
Ben had whacked the absolute piss out of it, was his first observation.
Scales on the lower jaw were impacted, shattered like a sledgehammer on thin concrete. A few of the teeth had broken off against one another in the boss’s mouth. The Steel Heavy Knight had an ability called “Lesser Reinforce” that borrowed the strength of the metal he wore, adding it to his natural strength and toughness. For five seconds, Ben Grisham was a man made of steel, and he’d shattered an axe head against the armored skull. That wasn’t even one of the areas hit by Alexander’s Chaos strikes, it was raw damage, all the way through the boss’s impressive Soak.
“What a fucking man, Ben.” He applauded, awestruck by the warrior’s might.
He drew his belt knife and got to work prying away the scales around the fatal thrust, pulling still cool to the touch armor up so that his blade could cut them free. A pile of crimson plates, surprisingly light for all their toughness and metallic sheen. Dragon scales were next level cheating bullshit, armor stronger than they had any right to be, courtesy of the magic that infused them from the dragon’s heart. Alexander dug through three feet of muscle, then cut around a four-inch-thick sternum to find the mysterious core of the beast, whose use remained a mystery to all but the top three Guilds. No one else but the brass from those had ever even been allowed to touch one.
He felt the hard, spherical shape against his hand and wrapped his fingers around it from inside, grimacing against the near scalding temperature within the dead creature’s flesh, even after Winter’s Breath had robbed its vital heat from it.
Alexander withdrew his arm, covered in draconic blood up to the shoulder and beheld the prize: a spherical, perfectly smooth jewel that was lit by inner fires of red, gold, and hints of blue at the center. A dragon heart. It reeked of magical potency. He absolutely had to know its secrets.
“You ever look at me like that, I’m going to run for the hills.” Granny Nguyen whispered into his ear.
“Ghaaah!” He yelled, and the precious heart flew from his hand, tossed by a reflexive full body flinch.
The crystalline sphere hit the rocks with a glassy *clink* and rolled a few feet, while Alexander Gerifalte scowled as his tormenter sauntered over to pick the treasure up. The petite young woman in the hide armor and breastplate stared with dark eyes into the depths of the heart, with a look that was decidedly longing. Now he understood what she meant. Something about the core drew you in.
“Damn you, Granny Nguyen! Don’t do that!” He yowled, high-pitched voice from the adrenaline rush of being scared shitless.
Asian features, serene, broke to reveal a wide grin. She loved sneaking up on him. Absolutely loved it. Almost as much as she loved finding and cultivating strange herbs, the weirdest mushrooms anybody had ever seen, or every type of moss that ever existed.
“I will do that, Alexander, and you cannot stop me.” Retorted his nemesis, voice pitched low in her super villain persona.
“Granny Nguyen, wins again!” She crowed.
Quick hands delivered the core of the Muspelheim field boss into a pouch on her belt, and it bulged comically with the coconut sized sphere straining against the leather when she tied closed the pouch and buckled the flap for extra security.
Alexander shook his head against the harvester’s nonsense and resumed cutting away scales, this time the ones off the monster’s back, but only the ones his magic had not touched. Those were mostly worthless now, their innate magic dismantled, scrambled by entropic force. It was why he hadn’t been brought along on more runs. Yes, his Soak penetrating and armor weakening abilities made slaying the monsters of the dungeons far easier. But at the cost of ruining whatever his mana touched. For the Guilds, this was a tradeoff they were not willing to make.
Could Ben have thrust through the dragon’s chest without his Chaos strikes repeated weakening of the flesh, bone, and scale? Maybe. Winter’s Breath was a masterpiece, ridiculously strong, scalpel sharp, made of some of the most exotic and metallurgically sound material known, as nobody else had killed a Silver Ore Golem and refined its corpse into smelted metal ingots. But a tier three dragon was a tier three dragon. Nothing like it had ever been seen, so far as he knew.
He made certain to note, while ripping away the long plates that covered the beast’s spine, the damage caused by Brig’s diving attack and follow up stroke. He’d weakened the area, but her Full Thrust had turned a stab from a spear into something that looked like a cannonball hitting. No wonder the dragon flame caught within its throat had burst free, she’d gone deep with that attack.
“Getsome might be the only party I’ve ever seen that could have killed this monster.” Alexander told Granny, who had decided to stop heckling and join him dismantling the dragon.
They were hard at work, he scaling the drake, her filling ceramic bottles with blood. A single drunken conversation with a Guildie who was censured harshly even for talking about it had revealed once, that dragon blood, even that of the infant wyrm, was powerfully catalytic, fire aspected, life aspected, time aspected, whatever the hell that implied, and would never spoil. He couldn’t wait to use the analytic power of his Warforger trait to decipher properties of substance he ingested. That trait, an offering as a result of matriculating by soloing a closed dungeon, was an anomaly amongst the denizens of Safe Harbor. Most traits were not so extensive in their offerings. None, in fact, that he had seen when he analyzed people.
Most Matriculated said his Warforger was a patently bullshit thing to happen, born of luck, a unique background, and black magic involving human sacrifice. He recommended they try to replicate it by killing a dungeon full of murderous goblins, alone.
He was interrupted from saying more by a staccato rap against his helmet from an armored hand.
“You bet that sweet ass we are!” Brig cheered, having snapped out of her Gaia funk to see what the pair of incurable scroungers were getting into.
Brig was being supported by Mark on one side. The endorphins must have been pulling double shifts because she was grinning goofily with her knee bent wrong. Mark was bandaged across his middle, his rent body armor hanging from his belt awkwardly, and one arm tied to his chest to keep it stable. The bone had been cloven, there was just meat holding it in one piece. Mark was out of combat until the Phoenix sun, and so too was Brig. That was both their tanks, effectively. Ben could take punishment, his Reinforce worked defensively too, but the short duration of the skill meant it was better used as he had used it against the dungeon’s guardian: to blast some monstrosity out of existence with a hulk smash.
“You two okay?” He asked, not looking up from his work.
They were on the clock here. It wouldn’t be long at all before the Guildies keeping watch noticed that the barrier that separated the contested zone from the outside was dispersed.
Field dungeons could blend almost seamlessly with the surroundings, being almost impossible to distinguish, which was what he’d experienced from his trip through the realm of the undead, a Tech Duinn field dungeon. Or, they could be radically different inside, and veiled from the outside, which was how many of them appeared. There were theories that those types of field dungeons were beginning to become closed dungeons, biting off a piece of Gaia entirely. It was only a theory, no one could provide data. Humanity was working off wild assed guesses and breadcrumbs of hard data sprinkled by what could be gained from analysis type abilities, he mused to himself. In any case, the volcano was visible from outside, but as if through a veil of heat shimmered air, clouds of steam, or drifting ash.
Alexander knew that the sudden absence of obstruction would be noted sooner rather than later.
“Not really.” Mark answered, “But we’re alive, which is better than I thought we’d be doing about two minutes ago, so I’ll take it.”
“Did you guys get three ‘Worthy’s from the planet this time?” Alexander checked, and hucked another slab of stacked scales into Granny’s bag, determined to load the woman down like the dumb animal she was.
“Ayuh!” Brig replied immediately, “And now I get why you’re such a bullshit cheater!” She exclaimed.
One of her common accusations regarding why he was still alive, and a running gag between them.
“My class evolved!” She shouted, definitely high on endorphins.
There was going to be a lot of pain later, especially when they crossed the river again. Alexander’s face fell when he recalled that they were going to have to either swim the river or cross the still volcanic island to go across the Narrows bridge to rejoin the caravan. Later, Alexander, he compartmentalized the problem away, save future problems for the future.
Still, he started working even faster, knife flying to gain as much as he could from this first, last opportunity to harvest a dragon’s corpse. Hopefully the last, he amended, praying to not have jinxed himself.
“Mine too, and it was a big deal.” The party leader revealed, much more solemn than his compatriot.
His wounds already hurt, and the amazon woman’s jubilatory motions made his ruined arm throb even worse, although he refrained from saying anything. A healthy dose of shock was setting in.
Class evolutions. That truly was a big deal. It didn’t happen often, normally only when several keystone improvements to skills and abilities had occurred. Alexander’s trait Artisan of War had evolved when he’d built Sterling, that steam engine having represented a fundamental shift in his place on Gaia, apparently. It was fantastic news! Getsome would be leaps and bounds stronger with the two of them advancing and Alexander tried not to get too excited when he considered that maybe everyone had undergone a sea change in their abilities.
“Hate to piss on the parade, but we gotta swim the river and bug out, without getting caught by the Guildy Normals.” Alexander reminded his teammates.
“I still can’t believe they’ve hired snipers to kill people!” Granny exhorted from a few feet away.
Her titanium kukri was rising and falling as she chopped away at the meat and sinew holding an enormous spike to the draconic spine. She’d already carved away one of the large horn crown spines and several of the biggest fangs. That was a lot of weight, Alexander noted, beginning to be concerned that their obsessive-compulsive hoarder of a harvester was digging too greedily, and too deep.
Mark, a little more world weary than a guy who looked like he should be enjoying his undergrad years pledging for a fraternity and living the life of a handsome man in his prime should be, just shook his head. He’d schmoozed with the Guilds while making inroads to secure Getsome a place in them. His natural feel for people had given him insight into the sorts of people that had managed to rally the survivors and ascend to power in such short time. Over spirits, the Burning Legionnaire of Getsome and the eccentric Entropic Venator had traded notes on the men guiding what was left of civilization.
They were competent. Driven. And utterly ruthless, so long as their methods did not create a wedge in their members or standing in the community of Safe Harbor.
Cliff, a top man with High Spirits, the Guild Alexander had ended up joining, was a strangely charming and charismatic man, the only nonmember of Getsome to be with the group that “rescued” him. He had also executed a thief in the streets without batting an eye.
Dangerous folk.
High Spirits had been number six in terms of accumulated manpower and resources, mostly focusing on artisanal work, producing high grade reagents, replacements for pharmaceuticals, armor, weapons, and civilization comforts from its craftsmen when he’d been astronomically bribed to bring their smithies and artisanal capabilities up to the industrial age. They were number three now and looking to out manufacture their way to number two.
Ambition and smarts drove that kind of competitive success, especially in these wild times.
Mark had wanted Alexander to be their in, and he would have done that gladly, given that, if anybody asked him, he probably owed the adventurers his sanity. It was hard to tell when you’re all on your own, but he had been slowly going feral, Upta by himself for that long, with only the statues of his neighbors for company. It took a few weeks for him to stop being almost completely dissocialized.
Alas, things didn’t work out that way. Ben ruffled too many feathers, Brig was a wildcard for everyone but Mark and Melinda to handle, and they seemed too independently minded to be proper Guildies.
It worked out, in the end. The Guilds had lost their way. In their greed, their fixation on Matriculating people, filtering through them for the most immediately useful, and consolidation of the fantastical things that could be found in the dungeons, they’d forgotten that the contested zones were just that: contested.
You can’t have a contest without an adversary, something they’d forgotten. Muspelheim volcano being on the edge of eruption was proof positive of this fact. If not for Alexander’s interference, the near abandonment of the dungeon appeared to have grave consequences. What would the next team of Guildies done, when faced with a red wyrmling twenty feet longer, four tons heavier, and an entire tier higher than they were expecting?
The young man was confident that the answer was that they would have died. There was only one Ben. His own gifts had been discounted as “too destructive” for profit. Speaking of the devil, the large man, hero of the day without a doubt, came back from a short canvas of the immediate surroundings.
“We’re done here.” The Steel Heavy Knight declared, as he marched to rejoin the huddle of adventurers, the Dame in tow.
Alexander nodded, hands aching from the effort of carving as many scales as he could manage and removing the material of the wings from between the long boney fingers that spread them. The material had to be incredibly strong to generate so much lift. He had his own bit of greed, just the reasonable amount though.
“Ayuh. Granny! You can’t take it all, let’s get gone!” He sassed the tiny woman.
“Fine! I’m going to slip a disc packing all this anyhow. Think the canoe will hold my bag?” the Verdant Forager asked, almost as an afterthought as she shrugged into the hulking bag and visibly strained to lift it.
Mark smiled at the harvester’s relentlessness.
With that, the party left the caldera behind, back through the tunnel at the base of the now dormant cinder cone and retraced their steps to the canoe they’d beached. The island was vastly changed. Verona island, after its months under the influence of Muspelheim, was now, and apparently always, volcanic. The hot springs and mud pots still bubbled. Steaming geysers still burst forth. Lava channels, reduced greatly in size, yet held molten rock that flowed and shifted, searing the air above them. The invading monsters were still there too, the ones that hadn’t been killed.
They would stay on the island, for the most part. While monsters did leave the dungeon, particularly if they were of the sentient variety, they didn’t stray far unless easy food made itself available. Nobody liked to leave home too far behind, not even monsters.