Bo didn't like the looks of the minotaur lizard heroes. The monsters had charged about half the distance to the archery lines, then stopped to give the pitmaster a good, long look at the threat they posed.
The heroes were taller than he was, a good deal wider, and covered in heavy scales that looked like they’d provide serious protection. Their impressive mauls spoke to a serious offense, as well. Getting in close with those bruisers would be an unpleasant experience but Bo wasn't sure he had any other choices. His strongest attacks relied on getting up his enemies’s faces.
He couldn’t count on his archers to deal with this threat, either. While Slick’s bows were amazing for dealing with regular minotaur lizards, jackalopes, and probably even some grunge elves, the pitmaster doubted they were of any use against heavily armored foes. It wasn’t hard to imagine those massive humanoid lizards just wading through a rain of arrows to reach their enemies.
"What's the plan?" Martin asked, his voice tense. The man held his spear in one white-knuckled fist, clearly worried Bo would order him to attack the lizardman heroes.
"You’re in charge while I’m gone," Bo said. "Any of those grunts even look like they’re heading your way, shoot them full of holes. And if those big bastards glance in your direction, run.”
“What are you gonna do?” Martin asked.
“Kill all three big boys,” Bo said.
"You sure that's a good idea?" Martin asked. "You're tough, but those things are on a whole different level."
"Shit," Bo said, leaning back to look down his nose at Martin. "You worried about me?"
"Maybe," Martin said. "Or maybe I'm just worried that if those lizards pop your head like a zit, the rest of us’ll be on the menu right after."
"That's so sweet," Bo said. "But don't worry, your pretty little Salt Life head on my account. I'll be back before you know it."
“Bo,” Martin said, catching the pitmaster’s shoulder as he turned away. “Listen. I was wrong. I know it. I’ve seen you cutting loose on these monsters, and I know the truth. You could have killed me when I spoke up against you. But you chose a different way. I’ll take that to my grave. Watch yourself out there. We need you.”
The pitmaster choked back the surge of emotion that welled up inside him. He’d never wanted to lead, but now that he was committed, it felt good to have someone acknowledge his help. Bo shook Martin’s hand and looked the man in the eye.
“I need all of you, too,” he said. “You’ve been a huge help, Martin. We’ll find some beers when this is over. Celebrate our glorious victory.”
“Hell yeah,” Martin agreed. “First one’s on me.”
Bo chuckled and headed toward the champions. He felt stronger knowing people depended on him. He was no longer fighting for himself, but for everyone in his hex. His cleaver was a comforting weight in his hand as Bo crossed the battlefield. The sodden clay clung to his hooves when he passed clusters of lizard corpses that had been torn apart by his archers. He'd cheered those victories, and still felt no remorse about doing what had to be done, but it was harder to stomach the violence when you saw the results up close.
They would've done the same to you. Or worse. This is the new reality you live in, Bo. Do not mistake strength for cruelty or let yourself fall into the trap of embracing weakness in the name of compassion. These monsters will kill you if you give them half a chance. What was it you told me?
"Nobody asked you to come here," Bo said, remembering his argument with Barbie. "You're right. I won't forget."
The champions saw Bo coming but were in no rush to meet him. They hefted their clubs, smacking the spiked ends into their scaly palms, as they watched them approach. Their long, purple-black tongues flickered at the air, like wisps of smoke from a dragon's mouth. They seemed utterly confident of their impending victory.
And Bo wasn’t sure that confidence was misplaced. This would be a fight like none he’d ever experienced.
"So, you boys want to do this one at a time?" Bo asked. "You know, like a Bruce Lee movie. It’ll be cooler that way. Discuss amongst yourselves. I’m ready for whoever wants to go first.”
The minotaur lizard heroes responded by throwing back their heads, roaring, and then charging at Bo with their weapons cocked over their shoulders. Their clawed feet churned the earth, and their bestial cries tugged at the primitive survival instincts at the back of the pitmaster's brain. The ancient caveman inside Bo wanted to find a cave, crawl into it, and pull a big rock over the opening.
Unfortunately for the pitmaster, that wasn't in the cards.
What was in the cards was a good hand: Hog's Hop, Danger Spice, Hackstorm, Severance, and Juice Boxer. The pitmaster activated the cards in that order, except Severance, which he put after Juice Boxer. It was a powerful combo he hoped would obliterate the heroes before they could hurt him.
Bo threw his cleaver with confidence, aiming for a spot just ahead of the charging lizards. The card's power activated, and Bo exploded into action. His hooves slammed into the ground ahead of the lizards and kicked up a spray of bloody clay that caused his enemy to draw back in surprise. Bo expected to unload a barrage of damage on the heroes, then lead his people to victory.
Unfortunately, the flurry of messages that scrolled up Bo's vision told him he was in deep, deep trouble.
CARD RESULTS!
Hog's Hop
Attacker Core Level 2 + Card Power 2 = Attack 4
Defender Core Level 1 + Constitution Resistance 5 = Defense 6
Result: Attack -1.
Minotaur Lizard Heroes are unaffected!
Danger Spice
Attacker Core Level 2 + Card Power 1 = Attack 3
Defender Core Level 1 + Constitution Resistance 5 = Defense 6
Result: Attack -3.
Minotaur Lizard Hero is unaffected!
Severance
Attacker Core Level 2 + Card Power 2 = Attack 4
Defender Core Level 1 + Constitution Resistance 5 = Defense 6
Result: Attack -2.
Minotaur Lizard Hero is unaffected!
Hackstorm
Attacker Core Level 2 + Card Power 3 = Attack 5
Defender Core Level 1 + Constitution Resistance 5 = Defense 6
Result: Attack -1.
Minotaur Lizard Heroes are unaffected!
Juice Boxer
No wounded targets this round. Power failure!
END CARD RESULTS. TURN COOLDOWN 5 SECONDS
Bo cursed. He simply wasn't strong enough to penetrate the minotaur lizard heroes' defenses. His area-of-effect attacks were brutally effective against average monsters. But when pitted against creatures with much higher defenses, the only attacks with any chance of success were single-target, heavy attacks.
Bo’s mind raced to remember which cards he hadn't drawn, and of those which would be effective against the powerful defenses of the enemy champions. He realized that only Carnivore's Cleaver fit that bill, but he'd need Severance and Hungry Hungry Devil to boost his strength enough to make it work. And even then, it would take time to build up enough Meat to make the plan work.
Then the counterattacks came in, and all Bo had time to think about was how much they hurt.
His Constitution was high enough to resist most of the damage, but the pitmaster still took a wound level from each of heroes. Though he was far from out of the fight, Bo knew he couldn't handle another round like this one. It was time to get some distance from those mauls and figure out a new plan.
Fortunately, his next hand held Webspinner, Hungry Hungry Devil, and Carnivore's Cleaver. The last card wouldn't do much good, yet, because Bo didn't have any Meat stowed away. He'd have to remedy that situation, but first he needed some space. To give himself that, he activated the Webspinner card to pin down two of the champions. Then he activated Carnivore's Cleaver to give the remaining devil something to think about. While the blow didn't break the creature's defenses, it made the hero hesitate when Bo broke off the engagement.
The pitmaster didn’t retreat to his allies, though. His only goal was to add as much Meat to his personal storage space as possible while not getting pulped by the heroes. He decided his best option to meet those objectives was to dive into the perimeter of minotaur lizard grunts.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
On some of Bo’s turns he exploded into a flurry of action using Hackstorm, Hog's Hop, or Juice Boxer to deliver as much pain as possible to the lizards. When he had Severance in his hand, though, Bo focused on hacking off chunks of meat. The lizards were incredibly stupid, which worked to his advantage as their mad rush to get at Bo blocked the progress of the heroes who were trying to reach him. Whenever those big, ugly monsters got within maul range, Bo would use Hog's Hop to leap away or Webspinner to slow them.
Meanwhile, Martin directed the archers to harass the heroes when they were in rage, and to obliterate rank-and-file minotaur lizards whenever the opportunity presented itself. The combination of Bo's attacks and the brutal archery lines took an ugly toll on the lizards. Bodies piled up around the spawning pit, their blood pouring down into the crater. There seemed to be a nearly infinite supply of the monsters, though, and any casualties were replaced in short order. This worked in Bo’s favor, but he really hoped the spawning pit would die with the champion. He couldn’t fight these bastards forever.
Bo had just annihilated a group of lizards when he saw Jenny emerge from her scout's cloak of shadows. She cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted, "The tree’s roots are all around the champion in the pit. I don’t think it can move!"
Bo shouted his thanks for the information, killed five more lizards with Hackstorm, and activated Hog’s Hop. As the card’s power carried him through the air, Bo looked down into the spawning pit. Sure enough, a grotesquely fat minotaur lizard lay at the bottom of the crater, its eyes rolled back into their sockets, fanged mouth open, tongue lolling out. Thick, fleshy red roots had snared the creature, pinning its arms to its sides and its enormous torso to the ground. Despite how apparently helpless the thing was, though, Bo sensed the flicker of cards in the thing’s thoughts.
The spawning core is inside the champion. Destroy it, and you end this fight.
“How do you know that?” Bo asked, as he landed and hacked through another snarling crowd of lizards.
It was part of our basic Grail System training. Champions hold spawning, dungeon, and hex cores.
“Wait, hex cores?” Bo asked.
Do not worry about it. You need to end this fight before the lizards get smart and crush your archers like stick bugs.
As much as Bo wanted to hurl himself into the pit and do what Barbie wanted, he held his ground. The champion was not alone in that pit. A mob of angry minotaur lizards surrounded it, snapping their jaws and lashing the air with their tails. If Bo went down into that hole, he knew the champion would call the heroes down. That would trap the pitmaster and force him to retreat. Or, worse, the heroes might go after the archers while Bo was hacking a path to their champion. If the bruisers reached his people, a lot of them would die.
The pitmaster's jaw clenched as he weighed his options and killed off more lizards.
He could take down the champions one powerful blow at a time. He’d take some hits in return, sure, but the pitmaster was confident he’d heal those wounds thanks to his cards and the Meat he’d stockpiled using Severance. But that would take time, and Bo wasn’t sure how much of that he had left. The lizard in the pit hadn’t thrown out any new cards in a while, but the pitmaster could feel energy gathering and the sound of shuffling was getting much louder.
The last strategic gambit message said it would remain active until all heroes are defeated. Best to kill their champion before it can do something else.
Bo saw a way he could, he hoped, kill the champion in one fell swoop. He needed a very specific combination of cards to pull off his plan, and even with his ability to discard and draw a new card on his turn, he struggled to put together the pieces of his deadly puzzle.
A minute passed, then two. Bo’s world narrowed to the cards he drew in each hand. Five cards, then three, then five again after the shuffle. Twice he came close to the perfect hand, only to fall short by two cards. And all the while, the Meat piled up in his storage as he carved chunks from his foes with Severance.
Frustrated by their foe’s nimble antics, the hero minotaur lizards stopped chasing after Bo. As the pitmaster had feared, they shifted their attention to the archers. That maneuver forced Bo to split his attention between his fight and the danger to his allies. Maybe he should abandon his plan and go after the champions…
You worry too much about your allies. This is a war. Kill the champion and end it. Everyone is expendable if their lives destroy more of your enemies.
“Not cool,” Bo said to Barbie. “My people aren’t pawns to throw into suicide missions.”
Do you think this champion has such qualms?
As if to punctuate Barbie’s question, a horde of minotaur lizards threw themselves at Bo. They didn’t bite him, gore him with horns, or rake him with their claws. Instead, they piled up around him to coil their tails through Bo’s legs. In a few short moments, the minotaur lizards had mired the pitmaster in a waist-high pile of thrashing bodies.
The creatures glared at Bo with black, merciless eyes set into clay-and-blood-smeared scales. There was no mercy there, no thought, and no emotion but to destroy the champion. The minotaur lizards were driven to obliterate Bo and claim this hex for their own.
And behind it all, the pitmaster sensed the looming darkness of the Crimson Forest.
“Not today,” Bo roared. His hand of cards was far from perfect, but he could dump one card and replace it with another.
Fate gave him what he needed.
Hackstorm went off with a sound like a fistful of stew bones thrown into an industrial blender. Would it blend?
Hell. Yes.
Blood, scraps of scaled flesh, and shards of splintered bone whirled into the air thanks to Hackstorm. There were so many lizards in range of that attack that Bo could hardly see through the rain of viscera. When Juice Boxer activated, the battle got even wilder. Crimson rays exploded out of Bo’s body in every direction, painting red marks across the bodies of every lizard he’d struck with the previous card.
That was a lot of lizards.
The number of Blood Marked foes included dozens of lizards that Bo had only clipped with his Hackstorm. Every claw tip and tail scale he’d knocked loose, every nose he’d bloodied, every horn he’d chipped. If his blade had touched a lizard during the blizzard of metal and meat from his pervious card, Juice Boxer transformed them into a geyser of blood.
*** MASSIVE LIFE OVERLOAD. CORE LIMITS EXCEEDED. DAMAGE RESISTANCE AT MAXIMUM. INFERNAL VISAGE ACTIVATED.***
Bo stood at the center of a circle of devastation. The detonated remains of minotaur lizards covered the ground for yards in every direction. For a moment, the pitmaster stood alone on the field of battle.
Prepare yourselves for some serious pain, Bo Houston.
The pitmaster took a breath that felt like jet fuel thrown onto a fire burning in his belly. Strength beyond anything he’d ever known flowed into every muscle fiber in his body. His life force surged within him, bucking like a stallion trapped in a stall several sizes too small.
This is bad.
“What am I supposed to do?” Bo shouted.
Or, at least, he tried to shout.
Spears of pain blasted out of Bo’s core, obliterating his thoughts and leaving him too stunned to even move.
MASSIVE LIFE OVERLOAD. +5S AUGMENTATION. +5C AUGMENTATION. YOU WILL SUFFER ONE WOUND LEVEL OF DAMAGE PER ROUND UNTIL ALL AUGMENTATION LEVELS ARE EXPENDED.
Get in the pit and kill that thing. Use the excess mana in your core, or you will die. GO!
Bo hurt in ways he’d never imagined possible. His body screamed in pain, and every movement felt like someone had slipped countless razor blades between his muscle fibers. The pitmaster wanted to kill the minotaur lizard champion more than anything.
He just couldn’t force his body to move.
Fine. I will do this the hard way. Your pain is mine.
Just like that, Bo’s agony evaporated.
And Barbie’s screaming began.
GO!
Bo drew a new hand of cards, and a broad, brutal smile flashed across his features. He had everything he needed.
The pitmaster stormed toward the edge of the spawning pit. His wound levels climbed up with every passing second, but that was all right. This fight was already over.
Bo activated the Hog’s Hop card, and vaulted down into the crater, burning two Strength mana to generate three and raising his total Strength to +9. That attack caused no damage to the champion, but that was all right.
For his next trick, as lizards poured down into the pit with murderous intent in their eyes, Bo used all nine of his current CON mana to activate Hungry Hungry Devil and gobble down a bunch of Meat. That healed every wound he’d had, and then some, and converted all that mana into Strength.
Bo practically vibrated with inhuman power. Dark flashes crossed the edges of his vision. He didn’t know what those were and didn’t care. If he didn’t burn all this mana, right now, his body would burn to ash from the inside out.
“This one’s for you, Barbie,” Bo said.
The pitmaster poured all 18 Strength mana into activating Carnivore’s Cleaver.
CARD RESULTS!
Carnivore’s Cleaver
Attacker Core Level 2 + Card Power 18 = Attack 20
Defender Core Level 5 + Constitution Resistance 5 = Defense 10
Result: Attack 10
Critical Hit!
Minotaur Lizard Champion is mortally wounded.
END CARD RESULTS. TURN COOLDOWN 5 SECONDS
Bo trembled from the effort of unleashing all that mana. His muscles felt stronger than ever, and yet somehow so weak he worried he’d fall to the pit’s bottom. He looked down at his cleaver, the entire blade buried in the top of the enemy champion’s skull. Barbie’s screaming had stopped, and the light in the savage creature’s eyes had dimmed until only the faintest sparks of life remained.
The lizards who’d come into the pit to kill Bo were now strangely docile as if their lives, too, were fading away. There was no sign of the heroes, which made the pitmaster very grateful. He didn’t want to fight anything in his condition.
“This is not over,” the champion rasped. The red coils of fleshy roots that had trapped the creature’s body were retracting into the spawning pit’s clay floor. The Crimson Forest was abandoning their pawn.
“It is for you,” Bo replied, and ripped the cleaver out of the champion’s head in a welter of blood.
“Wheels turn within wheels, fool,” the lizard champion gasped, then shuddered as a seizure rolled its eyes up into their scaly sockets. “My masters have foreseen your defeat.”
ENEMY CHAMPION HAS ACTIVATED A STRATEGIC GAMBIT CARD
Pyrrhic Ambush
Type: Power
Activate: All remaining wound levels
Generate: --
Power: 5
Allies appear to attack your enemies. During the first round after they appear, all ambushing forces have +3S, +3D and may activate cards or attack before opponents can react.
Rarity: Legendary
THIS GAMBIT REMAINS ACTIVE UNTIL THE AMBUSH ENDS
The minotaur lizard champion died, and the other lizards died along with him. At the same time, a horrible cry echoed across the blood-stained battlefield. The sound was high, shrill, and utterly unnerving.
Bo scrambled up out of the crater to see what the hell had happened.
At least fifty humanoid figures bounded across the plains. Great racks jutted from their heads like the antlers of massive bucks. The strange creatures fired arrows at the height of each jump’s arc, and the deadly missiles flashed through the sky before plunging down among Bo’s archers.
My, my, my. Barbie thought, every word laced with threads of exhaustion. How they have grown.
Twin bolt of anger and worry flashed through Bo’s mind like lightning chewing through the sky ahead of a storm. He recognized the monsters for what they were.
Jackalopes.
“RUN!” Bo shouted to his people.
Martin echoed the pitmaster’s order and zigzagged in a serpentine pattern as he obeyed the command. The spearmen scattered into a loose formation, weapons at the ready, but the archers scattered like frightened deer.
Bo couldn’t blame them. None of them had signed up to be attacked by a pack of bunny men. They’d trusted that he’d keep them safe.
And that’s what he’d do.
The Hog’s Hop card flickered in Bo’s thoughts and activated it to close the gap with the rabbit-men. His cleaver tumbled end over end before slamming into the ground near the biggest jackalope of the bunch.
“Ready or not,” Bo’s voice boomed as he sailed through the air, “here I come.”
Two things happened so fast, Bo was never sure which one came first.
The largest of the jackalopes turned mid-leap and unleashed a barbed arrow that ripped through the air to find a home in Bo’s chest.
And the other jackalopes all fired in unison at the pitmaster’s fleeing allies. Most of those arrows missed their marks.
But one flew true.
Bo slammed to the ground, his heart galloping arythmically.
Martin collapsed, blood gushing from his mouth. He tried to rise despite the shaft that had plunged out of the sky to pierce his throat and vanish into his torso, one hand reaching toward Bo.
The spearman died, and there was nothing Bo could do about it.