Yelena

WAVE TRIAL IN PROGRESS

The Red-Woman stamped once on the scorpion insignia and a shockwave spread out from the center of the circle. Yelena felt it chill her bones. It was like her skeleton itself was shaken to its core by a sound that called to something deep in the marrow – something primeval. Beyond her self.

Then the wave of dust hit the sarcophagi and their lids – once impenetrable – swung open, revealing partially mummified corpses. For a split second nothing happened at all, and then each pair of eyes in the dark began to glow a lambent, sickening green.

Then their withered arms shot forward, and they began their shambling creep towards the invaders.

And Yelena’s mind was filled with the scratching, mechanized wailing of the repeating crossbows as they began tearing into the putrefied flesh of the aptly named Shamblers. The notifications that pierced her mind as her eyes flitted between each flailing corpse were too much to keep up with.

Ash Shambler (LVL 3) DMG: 16

Ash Shambler (LVL 3) DMG: 18

Ash Shambler (LVL 3) DMG 23

Ash Shambler (LVL 3)…

She ignored the continuous damage output and instead focused on the actions of her allies. The great beetle had begun speaking into three of the Shamblers who had made it to her wall, and the Red-Woman was finishing off each zombie as they thrashed on the floor with a swift downward thrust of her silvered shivs.

“Be going in peace, Ty’Kalla,” she whispered after her kills.

Marius she couldn’t see. But she felt his prescence in every arrow that sang through the musky air during the lull when his traps were reloading, finding their mark in the creatures’ eyeless sockets.

SHARED PARTY KILLS:

EXP: +30

EXP: +25

EXP: +15

“Wouldn’t ya know it!” Marius yelled from the dark. “Every kill the trap makes nets us some cheeky EXP! The Everloft might have just given us the best training sesh in the whole of the First Layer!”

She watched the zombies keep falling beneath their bolts, strikes, arrows and mercy-killing blows, and for an instant she was transported back in the world of her memory to battles with her Brothers and Sisters above. Dimedrious, Cynthia, Agathae…

What would they have made of this…of her fighting with a giant Glance-powered beetle on her side.

She didn’t yet employ her skills, knowing after her experiences that conserving her energy was the best way to counteract the Everloft’s tricks.

<8 minutes>

She waited, hand on her sword hilt, watching the flailing zombies crumple and fall to nothing but dust as they died.

<7 minutes>

She watched. She waited.

“Almost too easy, eh?” Marius called from the shadowed corners he rolled between to maximize his sneak attacks.

You read my mind, she thought. And, as another sheath of sand and dust fell from above and coated her shoulders, she only felt more and more the tightening dread beneath her heart. The experience, by this point, had stopped coming. The mechanized bolt throwers sang in both her ears. To her left and right there were no sights but that of the dead, their putrefaction overcoming her senses in an olfactory onslaught.

Eventually, there came the distinctive click! of the bolt-throwers running out of ammunition. She looked towards them both, and noticed that the turrets had powered down.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

<6 minutes>

And yet still, the Shamblers kept coming.

She braced and unsheathed her broadsword, letting the light of her Searing Strike leap from her blade.

She pushed back two of them. The rest: totally unaffected. She looked around at the rest still surging forwards and realized that, ultimately, her offensive measures were mostly single-target focused. She had little by way of crowd control.

She’d always had a team to rely on. She never was the mass combat type.

And yet, the Everloft had given her a new team now, hadn’t it?

Was this trial a test, just for her?

“Marius!” she yelled, eradicating such thoughts from her preoccupied mind. “How many arrows do you have left?”

His reply was shouted through another well-placed shot in the chest of a Shambler that had grabbed him. He backed up towards her.

“Twenty!”

Not enough.

The corpses crashed past the broken bolt-throwers and reached for the flesh of the living, moaning and sending blackened spittle flying at the team’s retreating forms.

Edna was becoming weary – she shook five of the Shamblers from her hulking form and backed up with the Red-Woman, who only just managed to shove the vanguard of the advancing horde away from her.

Yelena watched it all happen – the horde of blackened, hollowed-out bodies closing in.

<5 minutes>

And this time, she resisted the urge to hit out with another Searing Strike.

Offence won’t help you here, she told herself. And succumbing to fury won’t do a thing, either. Use your team, Yelena! You aren’t in this alone. You never have been!

She allowed herself a smile. That was the voice of Di she was imagining, right there. That’s exactly what he’d be saying if he was here, right now, cheering her on till the very end.

She didn’t have to be a killer driven by rage. She could be something more.

After all, killing monsters wasn’t all she was good at.

“Spread yourselves out!” She called to her companions as she felt them close ranks around her. “Don’t group up!”

Marius launched another projectile that cut through a Shambler’s grasping arm. The limb spasmed on the ground, then starting crawling its way towards him with renewed fervor.

“Dunno if you’ve looked around, but there ain’t exactly room here!”

She closed her eyes, concentrated, and then threw her head to the roof.

“I’ll make room.”

Battlecry: Activated

The roar that escaped her lungs pierced even the ears of the shamble crowd that pressed in on them, and, as expected, she felt them rush forward in a single, unified flood towards her, clawing, gnashing, scraping her face – so that even when she tried to brake free of the horde, she found her limbs were caught in their relentless attacks.

“Yelena!” Marius cried out from outside the surging crowd, unsheathing his dagger and starting on the back of their heads – dashing their skulls against the far walls. ”Every hit is a Sneak Attack!”

“WONDERFUL FOR YOU!” she screamed over the putrid claws still slashing away at her armor, finding her face, scratching at her eyes and dislodging her hair. Still, she kept up her raging call, even when the creatures’ empty mouths began belching their dust caked innards on her.

HP: -3

HP: -9

HP: -5

HP:…

She began to ignore the readouts. She could sense the others still struggling to kill the Shamblers that were spawning from every sarcophagus. Edna had charged at the east wall in an attempt to close some but was instantly repelled. The magic of this infernal trial was as unbreakable as its hosts’ tenacity.

<4 minutes>

HP: 13

She wasn’t going to last like this – unable to even draw her sword. So, she did the only other thing she could do. She drew deep on the Glance reserves flowing through her body, breathed in the stench of the corrupted air, and channeled her Guardian’s Ward.

And then, something happened.

The horde halted, their desiccated, dripping fangs suspended inches from her neck as they made to take another chunk out of her skin. She looked at her glowing hands. Felt her hair stand on end, and watched the sphere of shimmering gold that was slowly forming around her.

SYNERGY UNLOCKED [Battlecry + Guardian’s Ward] Sentinel’s Aura (LVL I) Effect 1: HP Restoration: 5pts/10 secs in Area (30ft) Effect 2: {Taunt} Enemies of equal to or lower LVL in Area (30ft)

She breathed in the new air that was surrounding her, feeling her lungs fill with strength, looking at the surge of darkness all around her and meeting every gaze. Unwavering. Undaunted.

That’s what I am, she heard herself say. That’s what I’ve always been. I take all their hate. All their anger. I endure.

She gripped her sword and plunged it into the ground, embedding it in the dry etching of the scorpion’s tail.

That’s what I am.

As soon as her sword hit the ground the horde surged forward again, and as her battlecry continued to howl through the chamber she weathered all their attacks – feeling little more than tiny scratches. Mere nicks and bumps. The impact of pebbles.

She gazed long into the dark, seeing Marius, Edna, and the Red-Woman tear through the crowd from behind, meeting no resistance. It was her they wanted.

And she allowed herself a smile at this moment as the final minute ticked by:

WAVE TRIAL: BHASHERA GATEHOUSE STATUS: COMPLETE

Rewards

Ashen Buckler x1

Tears of Yevua: x2

At the final notification, they zombies simply dropped their arms like dejected children disappointed in their playthings. But their gazes did not drop once. They lingered on Yelena, and her scarred face looked into all their defeated forms as the blood on her cheeks from their wounds simply melted away.

Then, in one hideous display of pure despair, they took their heads in their hands and snapped their necks, falling to the ground limp, dried up.

Dead again.

She rose just as the golden threads of her power seeped away into the walls, and her companions beheld her standing tall amidst the sea of corpses.

“Yep,” Marius smiled as the door to the exit at last fell open. “That’s the Yelena I know.”