Chapter Thirty-four: Coenbert’s Return
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“You doing okay?” Sieg asked.
Coenbert looked away from where Verrin was torching the blightwasps and at his cousin. “Why? Is my little nursemaid going to make it all better?” he said in a sing-song voice.
Sieg punched him in the shoulder. Hard. “Shows what I get for caring.”
Coenbert laughed and pulled his cousin in for a side hug. “Look! If there is an issue, I’ll let you know.”
He was joking, but his eyes flickered back at the burning hive, and for a split second, he forgot how to work his mouth. His throat closed in on him, and his skin was suddenly awash with the sensation of phantom flames.
“You sure everything is alright?”
The defender blustered through it. “Yeah! It’s just nerves”, he told the ranger. “It’s been too long since we’ve done this”, he added, unsure who he was trying to convince.
“Sure! Sure!” Sieg affirmed with a knowing nod.
The two of them stood there a while, the others giving them space as the last of the wasps were felled, and the party closed in to check the loot. Turned out all they had gotten for their trouble was a small pile of blightwasp body parts. The market was absolutely saturated with those. Sieg knew that some people kept them, even tried to distil their own poison from it or work it into equipment, but such practices were hardly cost-effective with the dungeon constantly handing over vials of one hundred per cent effective contact hex venom.
Honesty, it was doubtful whether they were even worth bringing back to town in such small quantities.
“Hey Sieg!” said, suddenly speaking out.
The ranger craned his head a little to look at him. The defender had his eyes on the smouldering flames, the ones left over. He seemed fixated, unable or unwilling to look away.
“Yeah, cousin?”
“Thanks for looking out!”
Sieg smiled and clapped him on the back. “Anytime!”
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The bear, however, didn’t go down as easily.
Coenbert raised his shield to meet the beast’s meaty paw with a resounding thwack! This gave Sirai time to dash for a quick stab, only to be stymied by its barrier. The beast roared, its barrier flaring brighter. It made to turn, a backhand already flying at the party rogue, but Coenbert was there, pushing in. His shield pressed against its right, and his sword jabbed into the opening on its left like a viper.
Sadly, this blow too was turned away, skidding against the same barrier. He growled deep in his chest, wondering how it was that this single bear was taxing them so severely.
“I’ve got it!” yelled a heavily forked tongue, and the defender practically flew backwards. He leapt out of the way of a ball of black magic that descended onto the bear’s head.
The armoured bear roared again, nearly deafening him. It swung wildly, unable to see. Reacting just quick enough, Coenbert met the swing with a shield angled to make the claws skid off in a harsh, shudder-inducing sound reminiscent of the scratching of nails on stone. Only then did Lily Pad’s plans register in his mind. The bone-armoured bear was already resistant to non-magical attacks, with its magical shielding preserving it further against magical attacks.
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This skill was not invincible. It offered a lot of protection but it did not actually disrupt magic. So long as the darkness held, it was blind, leaving it vulnerable, something which no doubt occured to his other teammates.
“MOVE!” commanded a thunderous voice.
Coenbert did as it asked. The giant brushed past the defender, his two-storey tall body leaning fully into his lunge. Breaths were held as the tip of the spear slammed against the magical barrier that overlaid the huge bear’s body. The supernatural shield held for half a second before the spear punctured through and skewered the bear.
“ARGHHHH!” screamed the giant, his charge carrying both him and the bear forward until they met the cavern wall. The glowing spearhead stabbed into the wall with ease. The bear though, it slammed into the stone wall with a sickening crack.
It roared again, this time in clear pain, blood pouring out of its mouth as it struggled, pinned there like one of those bugs displayed under glass. Coenbert laughed. He knew bringing in the giant was a good call.
“EVERYONE!” he screamed at the party. “DON’T LET IT GET FREE!”
He need not have said anything. They weren’t the ones to miss such a golden opportunity. Spells and arrows slammed into the squirming ursine until it gave up the ghost. To its credit, it put up a good fight, swinging blindly at every sound until it was too battered, burnt and shocked to even move.
Then, it slowly dissolved away to reveal a fur-lined, bony breastplate.
The boss chamber resounded with joyful noise that threatened to do the eardrums in. It took the defender a moment to realise that they were the ones roaring.
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The strategy for the third floor was simple. Buy the druid time. Jared swore he had a way to prevent the wisps from phasing away. Their party only had three proper magic casters; Verrin, Lily Pad and Jared. It was not enough to face off against three amped-up ghost monsters. Or maybe it was? Coenbert did not know.
In his opinion, they had a pretty well-balanced party composition. He was a trained guardian and defender. The giant, Aivo, was a six-metre-tall armoured spearman who could help hold the front line. They also had two archers: Dinane, a crossbow woman who was also Bifund’s niece, and Sieg, who was actually a ranger, meaning he could also drop the bow and dart in close with Sirai, the party rogue.
Theirs was a versatile team that could do anything, he felt. The defender had been in cross-country caravans that would have killed for their composition and class ratios. Okay, not really. Cheap merchants never went for mages on account of hiring prices. Still, he stood by his point. They could handle this floor without much issue. Other, weaker parties, had managed it. However, he wasn’t going to argue with the expert.
“The reason wisps can go intangible is because they can flit between the world of the living, our plane, and the world of the spirits, the nether realm”, he informed them, drawing a diagram on the table. “It’s honestly rather common for fall and winter court fae.”
“There are many ways to prevent this. A surefire way is to reinforce the barrier between this world and the nether realm”, he added, drawing extra outlines around his illustration of the planar spheres.
“I could do it if you bought me enough time”, he announced with a grin. “The harder the barrier is to cross, the harder it is to go intangible. If they cannot become spirits, they become very vulnerable. Wisps don’t have a lot of vitality to start with. One good hit should take them out.”
That was why he continued to stand with his shield facing outwards, ready to intercept another blast of magic while Jared chanted and danced behind him, aided by their mages in his ritual.
A second wave of cold fire blasted toward them, and Coenbert nearly yelped. Perhaps sensing weakness, the fire wisp had switched places with the lightning wisp that used to be in front of him. Luckily, his training held true, and he stood his ground, shield angled slightly downwards so no magic flowed over the shield’s lip and into his face. Frozen in the act of defending, it took him several moments before he realised the creature had moved on again. Blinking away dark spots in his blurry vision, he tried to recall his mantra and ignore the phantom smells of his flesh burning.
A steady hand to brace a shield
A sure hand to wield a blade …
His thoughts were interrupted by the close of the ritual and the sudden, uncomfortable feeling of his flesh being suffocatingly tight. Coenbert bit back a groan. Sieg wasn’t as quiet about it.
“WHAT IN THE HELLS?” he shrieked in shock before dropping to a worried soft tone. “Jared, that felt like you were rattling my soul!”
The others voiced their assent, and while they struggled through the experience, Coenbert forced himself to move, dashing forward so he could slash his sword at the closest wisp. The creatures appeared to be undergoing a seizure, unable to quite grasp what was happening. His blade cut into it almost without resistance, like he was pushing it through a trough of water.
The wisp let loose a ghastly wail as it expired and faded away.
Coenbert turned, having expected his party to be attacking with him and found them standing around listlessly while Jared apologised.
“Sorry! I have never tried it with others around me before. I had no idea it would do that!”
As he marched towards the second spasming wisp, the young guardian wondered why he wasn’t so strongly affected by the ritual.
‘I have already died once’, he realised. ‘I have no intention of doing so again.’