The Silver Brittlemail and Fastcast Blade Bane I landed on the Shade of Bael’Zharon at point-blank range were not something he would be able to ignore once everyone started lighting into him.
The Mick danced sideways in a circle, spinning his awkward leg-missing grievver target around, and the archers ripped out five volleys together, filling its abdomen with bristling shafts of Brilliance before Bunita lashed out, took out its elusive Casting tendril, and then plunged into its braincase, stopping it cold.
Kris, Rogar, and Kopf hit the Shade of BZ from behind.
The Shade was utterly focused on me, trying to figure out what to do, temporarily ignoring the bite of the Weapons biting into him from behind. Fire exploded in my face, lashes of fire cut me up and down, and I just ignored them all.
Obviously he didn’t have much experience with Children of Fire, and then he realized he had an empty hand that wasn’t doing fire damage.
That one I had to duck, popping a Cursed Armor Infusion of -5 AC to his shadowy robe as I did so. I watched the robe shimmer as it went negative in Armor Value… a negative doubled against Slashing by my generous previous gift of Blade Bane.
Positive protective magic against slashing weapons reversed course, and suddenly the Shade of BZ was taking another +175% multiplier from the attacks coming in at him.
Bane to Shades punched through whatever his Damage Reduction was, and the Mick charged in from the side, landing a brutal blow that sank deep into inky not-flesh. A pounding salvo of Brilliant broadheads was now coming from the four archers firing high over us into the Shade’s chest and face.
Lost Light swirled, and a ripping hell of slashing damage poured into the backside of the Shade, making him stiffen in sudden pain as Seven Ripping Dragons went off with Haste-boosted speed, each attack piling on the one before that had landed, and Kris wasn’t going to miss.
He finally began to spin around, so I reached up, poked Crown into his face, and let off a Touch Bladed Shards attack to the forehead, a single attack bigger than anything Kris was ladling out, although she was building for something I didn’t want him to interrupt.
The Shade snarled and turned back on me as black skin was stripped from his forehead in a spray of bloody darkness, whipping out a claw to take my head off my shoulders. He was a bit surprised when I stepped inside it instead of ducking low or retreating. I did kick back off of him directly when his blow passed, this time sliding out of reach, and the outraged Shade shifted to catch his balance, unmindful of the first cut slashing across his back, black ichor caught by ki and Lost Light now forming the first petal.
Kris was making a Blood Rose.
There was just the slightest pause in attacks on the Shade as everyone marshaled their reserves, centered themselves, and the Shade lurched after me as I stepped aside this time, Shards and Fastcast Shards coming up, releasing, and drawing howls of pain as they detonated across his chest with anathemic energies. All of our eyes locked on those petals forming with swirling speed, black blood on shining Lost Light rising behind BZ here in a swirling dance of bladework…
Culmination, as the Blood Rose formed from seven successive attacks, and the unbroken Seven Ripping Dragons powering through it even increased the size and depth of it by another fifty percent!
For the next six seconds, every weapon attack on the Shade of Bael’zhaon would be a crit… a crit, to a crew of people with x4 Crushing Blow Runes on all their Weapons.
I hopped back, and all the Shards I could muster circled back into being, drawing a grimace of both anticipated disdain and pain from the Shade…
And then the Echoes of my Shards came back, too, doubling all the pain on display and keeping his attention on me.
There were only a few Kickers, the Holy Metas mostly on the main spell to increase the damage, magnified by his inverted Armor, while the Archers Rapid Fire’d to beat the band and the fighters were chopping in with Flurries of Blows, ravaging him with the magnified damage from their own attacks. Sneak Attack damage from flanking was on the stack, everything doubling and redoubling, and the Shade screamed and twisted as gouts of dark ichor erupted out of him at the punishment he was taking.
Ki swirled about him in Brilliant flames edged in black, Fire Dragon Forms feeding into one another. Expert Tactician made the Attacks of Opportunity hit even harder and more surely. Kris’ Marshal’s Command gave everyone attacking the same target as her an extra Attack of Opportunity in melee. Wasp Touches triggered everyone.
He tried a powerful Ring spell to blast everyone away, and I Dispelled it as a matter of course, sending it sparking into motes of Silver magic as the Blood Rose faded.
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He glowered at me in hate and pain, then lunged.
He was probably a little surprised at my Sun Steps lightfoot and how fast I moved, and even flailed at me with his burning Sword as he tried to stop me from evading his reaching arm. I made sure to pull up another Dispel for his attention in a crystalline ball of Silver mana, letting him know that if he tried any spells I was going to stop him, and he paused a moment, before turning to address the warriors doing battle with him instead.
Rogar immediately slipped behind the Mick, using his longer reach to hack over his boss’s head with Accent, and the towering Shade had to deal with three ready Shields in the hands of those still hacking at him.
“Be Damned for what you’ve done!” I promptly shouted, calling on the Judgment power of Silver magic against Evil, wrapping the Curse in an aspect of Justice that would punish the Shade for inherited sins… while assailing him with the power of the Hope that ‘the Hopeslayer’ had long since abandoned, and now was forced to face the Truth that he could never kill it, for Hope sprang eternal!
The Shade shuddered to his bones as the Curse wrapped hold of him, ensuring he would fail his next saving throw.
All that effort, and the Shade wasn’t even at half-Health, just too goddamn much Health Qi… which, incidentally, also worked just fine against Death Attacks.
When Health is too high, go for cheese!
Three Emerald Shards flashed up around my hand, and I let the wedges of solid Force go.
They drove into his chest, and paralytic emerald light washed across the Shade.
One Strikes held back for the slightest pause now punched forwards, before he could overcome the paralysis. Kris was the only one with Graceful Coup, granting an AoO once a round when a melee target in reach was vulnerable to a coup de grace.
It meant she was up in the air, a bar and arc of Lost Light swirling up and around as she reached her apex perfectly, and sent Quaver right through the neck of the Hopeslayer’s Shade.
Four Brilliant arrows and bolts promptly kicked that head right off his shoulders, even as the Mick thrust up into his heart and Kopf and Rogar hacked in from the sides between BZ’s ribs.
Kris somehow twisted in midair on misting Sandals and bisected him down into his ribcage, ghosting right past Bunita’s impaling point.
It was a lot of very, very high damage Fortitude saves to make, because coup de grace blows were automatic crits!
A lot of Health Qi blew out as basically nine non-magical death attacks came down and did their job. The towering corpse twitched and jerked, as if unable to believe it had died so quickly. It tottered as the emerald light about it faded away, and slowly tilted sideways and fell over, more toppling than crashing down heavily.
“Claw!” the Mick blurted out, as everyone stared and started to process what we’d done.
Kris chopped off the hand of the corpse promptly, the only thing that would remain when it disintegrated, kicked it up to her hand, and the melees and I rushed over to the waiting Disks.
Kris zipped by, took control of the Disks, and we began to ascend rapidly back the way we’d come by dint of her turning sideways on misting feet, and running straight up the side of the pit.
Up top, they would have noted the fluctuations and abrupt cessation of the lower life signs in the Dungeon. Their thoughts were probably that we’d done a Clear and were hustling back up to the surface to strike the timer… and instead we’d gone down and somehow killed the horror at the bottom of the Dungeon faster than a normal Clear of the place!
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We reached the top of the pit, Kris stepped onto the edge, the Disks followed, and the Melees dismounted in front of me.
It only took a few seconds for the first of the respawning Bile Grievvers to become aware of us and press up against the outside of the force screen there.
-Bane to Vermin,- Kris /ordered coolly, the Claw of the Hopeslayer sitting in the Disk between Milee’s feet. Three Shields came up to face the first Bile, knowing that fighting it was going to attract a horde of others… but we didn’t have to do a Clear going out, just get the Hell out of here. -Throw it, Ry.-
The Unseen Servant of mine she’d dragged over to the distant lever and left there, ignored by the Bile Grievvers, reached up and threw the lever. If the Bile standing right there reached out, poked it, and destroyed it a second later, all fine.
The screen cycled open. My first simple Vuln went off, saving the Chain for reinforcements, and Kopf bulled his way forwards, his mass driving the first Bile Grievver back so that we could all exit the ledge room hastily, and the second clearing of Bile Grievvers began.
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The waiting crowd was silent as we trotted up out of the ramp, and the Mick slammed the Claw of the Hopeslayer down on the timing button, locking in our time.
10:22.
A Total Clear that rivaled the fastest of Clears… and included a fight through the Grievvers on our way back out.
The paramounts present gaped along with everyone else at the time displayed, and the Claw there. The trophy would disintegrate over the next hour, so there was no way such a thing could be hidden and trotted out at a later time, nor was there any way to duplicate the way it squirmed to the touch of the eye, nor the black blood dripping off the stump of it that didn’t really seem to stop.
Yeah, we’d done a Total Clear that put every other Fellowship since the Fall to utter shame, and we’d done it without a crew of all paramounts!
“The Total Clear of the Quiddity Seed dungeon is confirmed!” the judge, a portly fellow called Honest Earnest, announced after taking one more reading. “Record the time on the Total Clear board!”
The next closest time was 1:04:17, with an asterisk, representing the second Fellowship that had to go in, pull the lever to the force screen, and help extract the other team so they could make it back to the surface.
“How?” Vagrix, leader of the former Total Clear best time team, asked, his face rather ashen. Not only had his accomplishment been beaten, but the time for the Mick’s team was only a minute off the absolute best Clear time, held by the team led by his longtime rival, Willard the Killer!
“Good tactics an’ good teamwork,” the Mick said dismissively, looking at the time. “Bah,” he muttered so everyone else could hear. “At least two minutes shy of before the Fall. Roaches, we got a lot o’ work ahead of us.”
“Yes, sir!” the five Royal Scouts shouted out, trying to keep the proud smiles off their faces, and only partially succeeding.
-Hur hur hur!- Kopf /chortled freely, despite his face being glacially impassive. He moved on out, and whether they wanted to or not, everyone got out of the big lugian’s path, and we headed on out of there.