Dartrays plunged into all the melee boys one by one, repairing copious Health damage and starting on the Soak Healing that was a bit more difficult to restore. Injuries steamed and glowed as they Healed up, vanishing before the Soak they were all down at least a hundred points on started to return.
Having a reusable Healing effect with the Dartrays was powerful, even if the raw amount at one time was restricted by the limits of a Cantrip. The attached Kickers of Holy power were actually doing most of the Healing, so it was actually most effective when hitting three people at a time, instead of focusing on one of them.
The Mick was actually down the least when the fighting was done, mostly because I’d been Healing him right along during the fight with these obscenely overpowered flightless birds. I’d been able to feel the impacts on his Shield Clan from over here, their beaks slamming into it like pickaxes. I think the fact that they hadn’t even been able to mar the metal had completely infuriated the creatures, who had shrieked and kept cursing and threatening him as they fought, and he in turn had cursed them right back.
Even if they were Summons, he still didn’t like the creatures.
But now they were Burning, one kicked over on top of its Summon point, the other left as a possible combatant for people to fight in the future under controlled circumstances.
A key had somehow dropped off one of them. Everyone shook their heads at the implications, which were further reinforced when I reshaped the doorway the thick and ley-linked quasi-indestructible door there was set into, and the Mick shoulder-checked it out of his way as he dashed inside.
He was up the far wall, pushing off to the near wall, bouncing up to the corner, and suddenly the three Snowman Sentries setting up on a lip around the room had an angry master swordsman with a nasty flaming Sword trailing Lost Light that they’d been targeting with Debuffs for the past few minutes up among them.
He got off his first swing just as the first set of fire arrows punched up from the women below as the archers came in, spun about, aimed up, and released in practiced series.
A few breaths later, misting lumps collapsing to slush were all that were left of the things as the Mick rampaged through them.
“So, how many more of these penguins?” I asked him as he hopped down from fifteen feet up with effortless aplomb, skating down the air for just enough to make his last few inches weightless to his feet and knees.
He held up three fingers and pointed beyond the door out. “Same configuration, room after the next one, repeated twice more.”
Everyone rolled their eyes in exasperation, and hurriedly reshuffled the men out in front again.
“Vivisize all the points this time,” the Mick ordered, taking the lead calmly again. “If they want to find out how to fight more than one of these bastards, let ‘em go to the Hlaetians an’ find out fer themselves.”
“Or not go to the somehow frozen wasteland in a temperate zone?” Selena piped up smartly.
“Tsk! And not get yer full environmental and terrain training in fer yer total Ranger-hood badarseness?” he chucked back at her with a grin, making her blush at the mention of her ultimate goals. “Alright, ready to kill some smartarse supper candidates again!”
“Yes, sir!” they all chimed out, and he pushed over the first door to a ‘safe room’ as I reshaped its frame around it. The room bore yet another door to a room with more Uber Penguins on the other side, still unaware of us due to the Sound Bubble in effect...
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Two more sets of dead super-penguins and sneaky snowmen later…
“Looks like the puzzle room we had to solve at the beginning?” Solving which had taken the Mick only seconds, even after all those years. The puzzle had been to open presents that matched, but you were only given three tries. So, open the near corner, and memorize the various configurations so you knew where the matching present was, and la, done in seconds.
“Aye.” He walked over, tore off the lid of the present there, and a Santa doll popped up. He sniffed once, strolled over to the opposite side of the puzzle, cut off the lid to the box he picked there, and opened it up to reveal another Santa.
There was a click as the doorway out unlocked itself.
We all ignored the Moarself in the holiday hat standing off to the side in a crude kitchen, watching us while going through the empty motions of making meals with nothing in front of her. Summons made of ectoplasm didn’t really have to eat, although if they did, they could become more and more ‘real’ over time. Most didn’t last long enough for that to happen, and in the Dungeons, food didn’t pop in because the creatures didn’t need it.
“Now, big boss fight. Were nothing much previous, but we’ve a problem now. Six Gumdrops at one time, two fake Moarselfs, and the fake Santa Sclavus itself. Thoughts on how to progress?”
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“Lure at least the Gumdrops out. We can handle the Moarselves while the rest of you handle Santa,” Rogar said instantly.
“What, no desire to be pummeled by dozens of magical attacks while we be killing their bosses?” The Mick’s fake surprise was heartwarming. “Such fine tanks ye’ll never be in the future, I’m proud of ye!” he congratulated them, earning smiles all around. “As for luring…”
Everyone turned to look at me.
“So, in the wild, do knaths eat rats?” I asked the Mick pointedly.
“In the wild, they eat basically anything moving that doesn’t get away fast enough,” he confirmed with a broad grin.
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The door to the chamber we’d originally met the fake Santa in and been teleported away from (no, I hadn’t Interdicted, on the Mick’s instructions) opened up for the second time in nearly twenty years.
A large black rat was revealed standing there, as the creatures within there tensed.
It sniffed at the air, and then promptly pounced on the nearest Gumdrop, biting and squeaking and breathing flame.
There was some startled hopping, and then the air lit up with discharges from the other five things, all of which ruptured on the back side of their own compatriot and miraculously missed the mountain rat biting so energetically at it. It still squeaked in absolute alarm and hightailed it out of the room, with the Gumdrops gliding stoically after it.
They could track it over the land with tactile senses of smell as they rolled over the stone, so if they were persistent, they’d eventually catch it. Jostling one another, they headed out down the hall after the rat, which screeched again in alarm, ducking around a corner before another volley of exploding magic erupted all over the walls and floor.
If there was a burst of light as a Mass Slash Vuln settled all over them, followed by the gray flash of Mass Imperil IV’s, the three creatures back in the room weren’t motivated enough to look out and see what had happened, it wasn’t their problem.
The fact that as they turned the corner the passageway was suddenly only wide enough for one of them, and suddenly divided into yard-long steps up and down that forced them to bounce up and down instead of glide forward didn’t occur to the simple-minded creatures as some form of trap, either.
Neither was the invisible Webbing they ran into that stopped their forward progress, just as the first arrows and bolts slammed into them.
I watched and waited as the Gumdrop Knaths struggled to get through the sticky adhesives. I’d upcast the Web to a V, and it was capable of holding Jotuns for a time now, so even the impossibly strong little guys didn’t have the mass or leverage to get through or tear free of the incredibly strong and sticky strands before volley after volley of broadheads slammed into and through them, cutting them open and tumbling them over one after another. In turn, they struggled simply to advance and return fire at creatures behind an Illusionary Wall that they couldn’t see through.
One by one, the archers marched their shots down the line of Gumdrops, filling them full of a dozen or more arrows each, only the compounding effect of the Imperil and Slash Vuln enabling them to kill the things so quickly.
At last they were all tumbled free and dead, Burning vivic, and I dispelled the Wall, Web, and returned the passageway to normal dimensions.
“Nicely done,” the Mick grinned, eyeing oversized candy-monstrosities strewn across the passageway. Bunita led the way in flaming fashion, and the men hurriedly stowed Bows and Crossbows to draw their own Swords and Glaive to hurry after him.
Arrows and bolts poised, the women hurried after them, while I brought up the rear.
Sound Bubble meant they didn’t hear the attack coming, so the Mick charged into the room, going right for the Fake Santa Sclavus with the silly holiday cap, shield-slamming it back into the wall and driving Bunita in deep. The other men teamed up on the two smaller Moarselves and kept them too busy to help their boss, the women all shifting to gain a bead on the Sclavus.
I dropped the Imperils and Vulns on all three enemy combatants, then started Healing the Mick as the sclavus started slamming point-blank Incantor magic into him.
The Moarselves still went down first, not that tough and severely vulnerable to the men once the debuffs were on. The fake Santa Sclavus was much tougher, but between the Mick laying into him with swirls of Lost Light all on fire and the girls punching burning shots into him, he couldn’t do much more than curse and try to stay alive desperately while the Mick stayed all up in his face.
It was also a Summons and didn’t have the option to flee, so when the Mick grabbed its lashing arm, pivoted, and suddenly exchanged spots with it into the middle of the room, its reaction was just a wee bit late to preserve its arse. Suddenly the wolfpack was on full Flurry of Blows action, AoO’s were triggering back and forth, and the last 3k of its Health dropped like a rock as the Weapons and arrows tore through it in coordinated savagery and accelerated killing tempos.
It dropped in a hissing, twitching corpse, which the Mick chopped the head off of on a whim… and was perhaps unsurprised when it didn’t dissolve away with the rest of its body.
“Interesting that it managed to stay intact after being around for so long, aye?” he asked me, before handing it over for a Baneskull. Sclavi were frequent helpers of the Dericost undead, so we’d be seeing more of them, and I could use it to double up Banes if needed.
“An’ now the reward for the quest, if it still exists…”
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We were all anticipating the sight of another sclavus in a Santa hat, with another Moarself helper with it.
We were not expecting two withered corpses stretched out on the floor of the cell, shrunken and withered with time and age, complete with their still-colorful hats.
The Mick looked down at the pair of them with a solemn expression. “They were actually alive…” he whispered under his breath. “That, that were explaining why none o’ the Gift Boxes sprang up after the Fall. They’d come every Midwinter, right as rain, be opened an' grant ye something when ye touched them.
“The damn bastards actually killed off one o’ the only critters on this damned island that ever did something fer free an’ fun fer us an' the kids.”
“Vivisize them, Lord Mick,” I said softly.
We all watched as, his face unreadable, the Mick applied Bunita to each of the dried corpses. They lit up quickly and serenely, Burning like old, dried wood, the mists licking at the stains left behind after they died.
There was more than one way to be set free…