Mikachu flew up, hovering in the air above our group with her wings spread out. I still thought it strange that she had bird-like wings, but could hover in place without flapping them. My little wings were beating a mile a minute to keep me aloft. “Alright, you big rodent,” she said. “Your mother was a womp rat and your father smelled of elderberries!”

Almost in unison, we blinked. As did the big rat.

“You call that a taunt?” Noa asked Mikachu.

“Well, ah, not really. But it seemed appropriate.” She placed one hand behind her head and laughed, winking back at Noa. Then she turned serious again. “Anyway, I do call this a taunt: ⸢Bellicosity Induction⸥!” She pointed at the big rat and several dozen sparks streamed from her crystal ball toward the rat.

The beast just watched passively until the first spark hit its face. Then it reared up and roared, almost like a grizzly bear. Besides being rather intimidating -- since the rat was close on to a bear in size -- the sonic barrage of the roar staggered us all, even Ette.

But even worse, it did physical damage to us all as well. The battle hadn’t even truly started, and we were already down about ten percent health. Time to get to work.

“Hold your healing a moment, Rie!” Mikachu yelled. “Let me make sure we have its aggro where we want it. Um … Guardian of the White Flame, Arise: ⸢Rage Lure Totem⸥!”

A pillar of white-hot flame shot up between us and the rat, much closer to us, and when the blinding brilliance faded, a stone statue of Mikachu stood in its place. A thin, almost imperceptible thread of red light connected the statue to the rat.

“Alright, you dirty rat, let’s see you take a bite out of this rock,” Mikachu taunted.

Ette feigned offense, “Hey!”

“Not you. Here it comes, get ready!”

Noa twirled her white fan and pointed it at Jazmyn. “An opportunity arises! ⸢False Flag: Redirect Hate⸥!” Her crimson fan snapped shut and she pointed it at Mikachu’s statue. “Go for it, Jazzy!”

While our tactician worked her magic, it was time for me to do something. Focusing in on the statue, which would hopefully hold the rat’s aggro, I cast first the healing spell I had thought would be niche and situational. But, we had a situation on our hands. “The Wyld Harvest awaits, ⸢Wyld Berry Aura⸥! Let’s have that rat’s attacks heal us.”

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

This time, the spell effect was quite a bit flashier than the first two prayers I had cast. Green, glowing hands, check, but rather than a ripple of light or a spreading green glow, the ground beneath the statue sparkled red and green as if it were Christmas time. Then, the sparkles shot upward and formed a berry-laden wreath of vines that floated above the statue, slowly rotating.

“My turn! Let’s see how magic works!” my sister exclaimed while my spell effect was still playing out. “Um, intent and voice, right?” She narrowed her eyes and pointed her free hand at the charging rat. “⸢Silver Shot⸥! Oh? I don’t need to do a chant as well? ⸢Silver Shot⸥! ⸢Silver Shot⸥!”

Her spell effects were … minimal. Just a dart-shaped burst of silver light springing from her hand toward the monster, almost like an old TV show’s sci-fi ray gun’s effect. First one dart and then two more. On the other hand, they seemed to be instant-cast and low or no cooldown, a definite advantage a basic caster archetype had over us more specialized classes.

“Careful, Jazmyn, don’t nuke it so quickly that you get its attention,” Ette warned, but the damage was already done.

And by damage, those three spells had done a little over ten percent of the rat’s health. The first had been affected by Noa’s tactical buff, redirecting the aggro the spell had generated onto the statue that was intended to take the hits, but the other two outweighed the first and Mikachu’s taunt. The rat veered in its charge, angling toward my sister.

“Eep! Hey, you’re not supposed to attack me!”

“Oh no you don’t! ⸢Bellicosity Induction⸥!”

“I guess it’s clobbering time!”

“Daybreak Gleaming, help her!”

“Come on, come on, stupid cooldown …! There! ⸢Brace for Impact⸥!”

Everything happened at once. Jazmyn raised her staff in front of her, instinctively trying to ward off the attack; Mikachu re-taunted the rat, attempting to pull its attention back; Ette cracked her knuckles and strode in front of Jazmyn; my wooden unicorn leapt forward on an intercept course with the giant rat, and Noa signalled with her fans, dropping the sustained damage buff for a damage reduction buff instead. We were able to reconstruct what happened after the fact with the aid of the combat log, but in the heat of the moment, it was pretty much total confusion.

Fortunately, none of our actions really interfered with each other all that much. Ette was far enough forward that the rat bowled her over when it veered back toward the statue, and Daybreak Gleaming shouldered into the rat just as it crashed into Mikachu’s stone likeness. Neither Ette nor Daybreak Gleaming dealt appreciable damage, though the same could not be said for our opponent. Ette’s health dropped another ten percent from the glancing blow and the statue’s health pool dropped precipitously, with more than a third -- and the entire bonus HP from Wyld Berry Aura -- gone in the blink of an eye.

Let’s hope the rat’s claw-claw-bite (or whatever) and whiplash tail isn’t nearly as potent as its gap-closer was.