‘Alright,’ said Horatio in a brief gap between monster groups. ‘Primus, what do you need us to do for you to use this one last spell?’

‘Just get me in front of the Leader,’ said Primus. ‘As close as possible, so that as much of the spell as possible hits him. If we can kill him and get back the Sword maybe you can stop Brax with it.’

‘Got it,’ said Horatio. He looked around at his comrades. ‘Who’s with me?’

They all roared their commitment. He had never been in any doubt.

‘Here we go, then,’ Horatio said. ‘Clear a path through the monsters to get to the Leader. One last charge. One last try. All or nothing. Do or die.’

He pointed his sword blade at the ball of dark energy in the centre of the chamber as the others formed up around him.

‘Raaaaaaarrrrgggghhhh!’ Horatio shouted at the top of his lungs.

He ran forwards, and the others ran with him.

They were amidst the monsters at once, and Horatio struck left, right, left again, hewing off a zombie’s head, beating back a werewolf, driving his blade into the heart of a succubus and then yanking it out as he ran on. At his right, Ceres cast reflective shields to repel the spells of the magical creatures that attacked them, and healed him and the others as they had need. Egea shot arrows from her bow, and used a vanish spell she had come up with recently to hide herself in between shots. Primus threw out flames and blizzards and sparks, despite apparently preparing himself for a final cataclysmic spell. Wyvera danced as she ran, thrusting out her daggers between steps, moving magically quick among the monsters. Ouzo seemed to chuck every last item he possessed, emptying his coat and pockets and bags of firebombs, breakable bottles of poison and other concoctions. Silvia had a found a sword from somewhere (she had probably stolen it) and joined Horatio at the front of the party, valiantly slicing through limbs and torsos with surprising skill for a young orphan—or maybe it wasn’t surprising at all. Helen was in a mad hunter’s fury, now laying about the monsters with her axe, now discarding her axe and taking up her bow to launch an array of arrows into the creatures with breath-taking speed, now taking up her axe again and resuming her rampage. Olivia unleashed massive bursts of star magic from her hands, her eyes glowing white. Ross’s swordblade shone red, blue, yellow, green, bright, dark, red again in between strokes as he changed its elemental alignment on the fly in order to match it to the weaknesses of the monsters he was felling. All manner of magical energy sprang from Ursula’s hands. Walter, at her side, had resorted to simply throwing his seemingly endless supply of weapons at the beasts when they broke, or ran out, or cracked, managing to hit them so that the blades stuck into them and the blunt weapons hit them in their heads. Tyler set about the monsters with dizzying speed, magically bending time around himself so that no sooner had he impaled one with his sword he reappeared ready to decapitate another somewhere else. And last, but certainly not least, Horatio was aware of Alexander with them too, moving so that somehow he was always able to sidestep or avoid an attack from a monster before it landed, and counterattacking so that somehow he was always

Eventually, they reached the Leader.

‘Stop!’ commanded the Leader of the Cult of Brax, holding up a hand.

He wasn’t talking to the party. He was talking to the hundreds of remaining monsters, who did now all stop in place and refrain from attacking further, and backed down.

The party had fought a path through the monsters all the way the way to the leader, who was just a little way in front of them now. It had been a truly heroic charge, worthy of being immortalised in song.

[This next bit could be converted to being in a battle, but I have written it out here. Also, I chose to use the sprite for the Leader, rather than for Brax incarnate, because this way there is more of a progression: Human leader à Mutated leader à Demon King Brax.]

‘So it has come to this,’ said the Leader. Behind him the fires of the occultic circle burned and the dark ball of energy suspended in the air continued to pulse and grow. ‘You have shown some spirit, I will grant you that, and you have felled many of my monsters. But you must know that your plight is hopeless. You are doomed.’ He held out the Clarent Sword, and pointed its tip towards them. ‘I have the Sword. The ritual is complete. The process of summoning Brax is begun. You cannot win. Your pointless deaths are inevitable, and will come soon. While you have fought valiantly, nonetheless you are still no worthy to gaze upon the embodied form of Brax. Therefore, I will end you myself.’

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

‘Primus, now!’ Horatio called.

The old Mage ran forwards in front of the group, holding up his hands, and shouted ‘METEOR!’ in his deep voice, full of conviction.

The whole chamber flared with white light, and when it subsided massive rocks were falling from thin air. They rained down on the chamber, on the monsters, on the Leader.

Horatio ducked down and covered his head with his hands on instinct. The thundering noise of the crashing meteors was terrible; his whole body vibrated and his teeth chattered.

Just when he thought he could bear it no longer, the noise and tremors ceased.

Horatio came out from under his hands and looked around cautiously.

Neither Ceres, or any of the other party members had been hit by the falling meteors. Many of the monsters in the chamber had been crushed and mangled by them. Where the Leader had been standing a pile of the magically-summoned rocks now stood, burying him in death. Behind it, the ball of dark energy continued to crackle and pulse, undisturbed, still growing larger.

Primus still had his hands up, but he was trembling all over.

‘I did it…’ he said quietly. ‘Please…get the sword from him…let my sacrifice…have been worth something…’

The old man collapsed face down on the ground. He didn’t even put out his hands to break his fall.

PRIMUS LEFT THE PARTY. (Or his status could change to ‘Dead’ and he could be un-revivable.)

‘Grandfather!’ cried Olivia, running to kneel at his side, already weeping.

Horatio looked away. The girl’s grief was too painful for him to watch, though he couldn’t close his ears to her fitful sobs.

He started to run towards the meteor-rubble the Leader was buried under to retrieved the Sword, then realised that was Alexander’s job.

‘Come on, Horatio!’ Alex said when Horatio stopped. ‘Help me clear this rubble to get to the Sword!’

Oh yeah, right, I can still help…

Horatio resumed his run over to the pile of rocks and begun lifting the smaller ones and dumping them behind him, pulling them off the stack to try to uncover what had been buried beneath.

‘FOOLS!’ yelled the Leader, and the pile of rubble exploded.

Horatio was thrown backwards by the exploding rocks and landed some way away on his back. His neck twinged as he sat up and rubbed rock-dust out of his eyes.

Before them, where the pile of rocks had been, was a horrible demon-creature.

It had the face of the Leader and the same turban that he had been wearing. [May need to edit description of leader earlier.] But that was where the resemblance to his previous form ended.

Instead of a human body, the Leader now had a red, many-legged, tentacled body, a hideous mess of flesh that looked like a cross between a giant scorpion and an octopus. Except that it also had wings—three pairs of wings, one red and bat-like, one white and feathery like a bird’s, and one darker, smaller pair–like some horrific perversion of an angel. And there were eyes set into the wings, two extra pairs of horrible, staring eyes.

‘Fools!’ said the Leader again in three simultaneously speaking voices. ‘You cannot defeat me with one use of a simple spell like Meteor! Now you get to witness my true form, the demonic body granted to me as a reward by Brax himself! I will end you with the weapon that you so eagerly desire!’

Horatio’s heart sank.

In one of its tentacles the Leader-demon still grasped the Clarent Sword [Poss edit battle sprite to show this? It fits the ‘Dark Lord’s battle attacks, which is good].

And now it rushed towards them on its many legs, raising the Sword high to wield it.

‘Great ready, everyone!’ Horatio called, hurrying to his feet. ‘Primus’s spell might have weakened him, but we’re going to need to do this together!’

Boss Battle: Dark Lord (the Leader)

Music: Battle with Dark Lord