Sam whirled, grabbing up a fallen spear even though it was a pitiful weapon for what was coming. “Sally, grab Giichi. We’ve got to run, now!”

The huge red woman snatched the halfling up with one enormous hand. They all turned and started to run towards the stairs, and the freedom they offered.

Too late.

There was a rush of air behind them. Sam spun, and all he could focus on the the virulent red eyeflames of Lich King Araxesendenak as the lich floated down and alighted on the stone floor.

Silence stretched out as the two sides considered each other. Araxesendenak’s’ eyeflames went from red to violet and back again as they flicked over from Sam to the sisters to Giichi and back to Sam.

“I suppose,” the lich said in a nasally growl, “I should have expected something like this. Tolliver, you have presented a truly infuriating propensity for nuisance. Although,” he added, glancing again at the others behind Sam, “I confess I did not foresee your strumpet somehow managing to breach my teleportation shielding–Good heavens who are you?”. That last came out in surprise az the lich king’s ga,e fell on Sally.

“Your worst fucking nightmare, you boney shithead," Sally snarled, reaching behind her and yanking the fallen door into her grasp with her lower set of hands.”

Araxesendenak blinked twice, one forefinger coming up to tap thoughtfully against his jaw. He opened his mouth, considered, shut it again, considered some more, then opened it sgain.”

“Sally, I'm guessing?” he said.

“hole in one,” the huge woman growled.

“Fascinating. You I did not expect either, certainly not in this...” he flappeda hand a her general hereness. “Form.

“Nor,” and here his voice lost its nasal quality and dropped into a menacing octave, “did I expect to find a trusted servant assisting in your little escape attempt.”

“What about me?” Pearl asked, Staplecutter glowing an angry red in her grasp. “Did you expect me?”

“Oddly enough, yes” Araxesendenak sighed.

“Oh.” she sounded disappointed.

The lich never moved, but suddenly he was in their midst, his presence a dark mass pressing down on them. His red eyeflames bored into Giichi as he towered over the halfling, and his skeletal hands began to glow with a green necromantic light.

“Can you give me even one reason, Giichi, why I shouldn’t end your miserable existence in as painful a manner possible?”

“Yeah,” Sally said, and swung her recovered door at the lich’s head.

Araxesendenak’s arm came up and slapped the door aside, the force of the blow snapping the iron-bound oak right in half and spinning Sally halfway around. Sam stepped in and, with the Harness’s strength and mass settings maxed out, powered a fist into the side of the lich king’s head. The skull snapped sideways and the undead monarch leaned to the side, then slowly straightened up and turned to glare at Sam.

“Your hammer is broken and your family is far away, Tolliver,” the lich hissed. “And you have no mountain to drop onto my head this time. If you surrender now, I promise I will only torture you to death. Your friends I will kill quickly. You have five sec-ACK!”

Araxesnednak’s words were cut off from two directions at once. Cora stepped up behind him and cast what must have been her strongest healing spell straight into the lich. And when she did Sam felt something tug at his own mana pool hard enough that he let out a gasp at the strange sensation. Then, capitalizing on Cora’s attack, Pearl darted in and jammed Staple Cutter right up the lich king’s nasal cavity.

“Snort it, sucker!” the little fae shrilled as soothing magics surged up the lich’s spine and blew chunks of raw necromantic energy away from his frame. The lich twisted and convulsed, jerking away from Cora’s touch and then howling as Pearl’s sword ripped a vertical gash out of his nasal ridge.

Pure energy exploded out from Araxesendenak, sending Cora flying into the opposite wall even as he caught Pearl with a heavy back-hand blow that sent her crashing into Sam’s chest. The little fae squealed, and Sam was certain he heard a bone snap.

“Cora!” Sam heard the panic in his own voice, and he caught Pearl before she fell to the ground.

“I’m okay,” the silvery woman gasped, struggling back to her feet. “Get him!”

“On it.” Sally came in from the side with her stolen swords, wielding them more like hammers, and ramming them as hard as she could into the lich’s side. The undead monarch howled as he was blasted to the side, chunks of his spine flipping into the air.

This isn’t going to work, that rational piece of Sam’s mind told him even as he bent down and scooped up one of the sickle-swords the skeletons had dropped and cast his nightengale’s touch spell into Pearl, healing the worst of the damage she’d suffered. He’s too strong. He’s too high level. He almost killed Ma and Pop and even with Sally and Cora here you’re nowhere near that level yet… Wait, how did I cast any spells? I thought my mana was–now is not the time, Sam!. True the lich was off balance, but that would last maybe another few second–

Less.

Araxesendenak grabbed the next of Sally’s swords to come at him by the blade and ground out a single word of power. There was a flash of light, and Sally was sent flying backwards to slam into the wall hard enough to crack the masonry, smoke rising from her limbs. Skeletal hands wove in a complex spell, and black energy lashed out to wrap around Sally and Cora and Giichi, restraining them in place and–judging from the way they started to scream–causing great pain.

“Lemme at him,” Pearl slurred, struggling feebly in Sam’s grip. “I c’n still get ‘im. Dumb boney book-hater… Lemme at ‘im.”

We’re going to die here. Sam knew it. But even as he knew it, a piece of his brain that never turned off kept churning, working the problem, seeking a solution. What did he have? What could he do? No weapons, no powers, no mana–except he’d cast a spell on Pearl. How…

He yanked his way through his menus in his glasses, searching desperately for something. Anything. But there was nothing.

Sally howled in pure fury and flexed all four arms, ripping her way out of the lich kings dark energy at the cost of opening up wounds on her steel-hard torso. She charged at the lich in a berserker rage… And Araxesendenak met her charge head on, his bony limbs coming up and latching on to her lower arms and stopping her cold. Sam heard a scream of pain from the huge woman as her momentum turned into kinetic energy taking a toll on her body.

What do I have? Sam scrabbled frantically, pulling up one last screen. But there was nothing in his inventory except some useless etching tools, a canteen he’d never even used, and a broken-down dungeon core that had practically started this whole mess–

Stopped. Stared. Time dilated.

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Pieces clicked in his brain. It couldn't be called a plan, plans werent this foolish. Plans werent this potentially deadly. It was something that could just as easily get them all killed as it might succeed. It was stupid. It was suicidal.

The snap of bone in one of Sally’s lower arms sounded like the report of a gnomish blunderbuss. Araxesendenak’s cackle mixed with Sally’s cry of pain

It was their only chance.

Swiftly he went through the menus. His harness had maybe 10% power left in the battery before it became a useless collection of metal and leather. He hoped it would be enough.

“Pearl, I need to set you down",” he whispered to his tiny friend. “Stay low and get as close to Cora as you can, okay? And no matter what, don't come and try and help me.”

“Sam? Wha’ yer doin’?” The little far demanded groggily.

“Just do what I say,” Sam hissed, giving her a quick nudge with his palm to get her moving. Then he took a deep breath and straightened up.

This was either going to work, or he was going to die in sound and fire.

“Hey, bonehead!” Sam had hoped his voice would sound strong and defiant, but it came out high-pitched and just a little bit manic. Still, it got Araxesendenak’s attention. The lich’s eyeflames shot over to him and pinned him in place.

“Let them go, you sun-bleached bastard!” is what he tried to say. But he only got so far as the second syllable before Araxesendenak was suddenly right there, one bony hand wrapped around Sam’s throat and squeezing.

“I am a patient lich,” Araxesendenak said in a viscious whisper. “But you are trodding upon my very last nerve. No more games. No more tricks. No more childish insults. You are all coming with me down to my play rooms, and I am going to remove your eyelids and force you to watch as I do all manner of unpleasant things to your friends and their eventual corpses. Cuthbert!” The lich turned his head to yell over his shoulder, and the command seemed to reverberate through the very castle itself. “Get the torture rooms ready!”

“Wait…” Sam managed to croak out.

“For what,” the lich growled right into his face.

“This.”

Sam activated the Attractive Force power on his harness and grabbed the lich by the arms. His hands latched on, and the magic of the harness made them stick fast as he hauled himself forward with all his strength. And even as he did so, he shoved against Araxesendenak with the full power of the harness’s telekinesis. The result was a crushing force roughly the size of a watermelon pressing against the lich’s ribcage like a steel golem trying to squash him with it's finger. The lich grunted from the force, and Sam growled . The result nearly tore his arms from their sockets, but he held on.

The lich raised one bleached brow. “Tolliver. Are you trying to hug me to death?”

Yes,” Sam ground out as he brought up his menu in his glasses and accessed his inventory.

“Intruiging. And more than a little unsettling. Do stop it, would you? It really is rather pathetic.”

Sam looked up into those ruby-red eyeflamces and grinned. Then, from his inventory, he pulled out the old dungeon core gem and brought it out right in the center of his telekinetic shove.

And then he brought out the orichalcum shell.

It was still unknown, in the majority, how dungeon cores actually functioned. How they draw in the essence and convert it into treasure and creatures for adventurers to kill, how they choose what to manifest, even how they connect to the essence itself. It had been a major field of study for years now, and before all this had happened Sam had actually been just on the verge of a breakthrough in the field.

What was known was that, while inside the main housing, the core gem that powered everything was extremely stable. It was also extremely stable upon being removed from the housing. It was highly unstable during the removal process, but that was because active leads had to be severed one by one, and the gem kept from touching any of the orichalcum body that allowed it to channel its energy. If even a single facet of the gem were to touch the metal, it would result in the catastrophic release of every joule of stored energy in the gem.

Once the gem was out, however, the likelihood of an explosion went down dramatically as there was no longer any possibility of touching the orichalcum shell, and the massive energies still within the gem would be safely inert.

Which was not to say that the energy potential did not remain.

So if one were to, say, reunite the gem with the remains of its orichalcum shell in as violent a manner as possible, the result would be decidedly energetic in nature.

Sam had once described it as ‘a big-ass explosion.’

The opal gem roughly the size of Sam’s closed fist dropped into the center of the telekinetic energy and was immediately driven hard against the lich’s sternum. Araxesendenak had time for a grunt of a surprise and for his eyeflames to shift downward to see just what in the world had happened… When Sam dropped the orichalcum right on top of it.

Heat and light and sound roared out of the breached gem. The blast wave slammed into the telekinetic energy holding it against the lich and rebounded, the invisible force acting like a channel. Both Sam and the lich were hurled backwards away from each other, the lich screaming and burning as the blast front washed over him and set his entire body aflame.

Sam felt pain wash over him, even though he’d deliberately tried to angle the blast away from him. Bits of his clothing ignited, he felt the air rush from his lungs, felt his eyebrows singe off and new wounds open on his arms. He hit the dungeon floor on his back and skidded, shredding his shirt and tearing the skin underneath. His health meter flashed wildly in the corner of his vision and started to drop like a rock. He tried to move, tried to stand up, but his muscles weren’t reacting.

Around them, the roar of the blast faded to be replaced by a roar of a different kind. The walls buckled from the force of the explosion and slumped inwards. The ceiling cracked and groaned and threatened to collapse inwards. Dimly, Sam heard voices yelling. Huge hands closed over his arms and hoisted him up like a toddler, the movement opening the wounds on his back and drawing a scream of pain from him.

Then soothing light washed over him. Cool numbness replaced burning pain, and his wounds started to close. He opened his eyes to see Cora beside him, her hand on his cheek and her eyes glowing blue as she cast spell after spell into his ravaged body. Then she swore as the light winked out, mana clearly exhausted.

“I need help here,” she called, then blinked as a tiny hand slapped down into Sam’s chest and more healing light flowed into him. Pearl was there, sitting on his chest, both hands pressed against his broken form and her healing magic coursing through him.

“I got him,” the little fae said, voice full of grim determination. “Sally, can you pick him up? We gotta get outta here.” She glared at Sam. “You big dummy! Stop trying to drop mountains on people everytime they bop me in the noodle!”

“Stop getting noodle-bopped under mountains,” Sam slurred in what he thought was a brilliant defense.

Sally hoisted him up over her shoulder and yelled something. Giichi yelled back, and then there was more movement as they all started running. Sam dimly recalled that they were supposed to be escaping… Good. Good, they could run now. Hopefully he’d bought them enough time.

He felt a strange pressure against his palms, and looked down to see that Araxesendenak's arms were still gripped in his hands, and the boney appendages were writhing and vibrating as they tried to shake themselves free.

One of them swiped a finger across his bicep, slicing into the flesh and drawing blood. The new pain was enough to sharpen his focus slightly, and he brought up the harness's menu to release the attractive force power–

The menu would not manifest. He looked down again and saw blackened mana circuits, charred leather, and dull mana batteries. Either the harness was too damaged to continue functioning, or redirecting that blast had drained the last of its power reserves. Which was odd, because if that were the case, the attractive force power should have stopped working, and the lich's arms shouldn't be attached to his…

Oh. He saw the problem.

He opened his hands, and the skeletal limbs fell to the marble floor with a muted thunk.

Right. Letting go of things was important. He’d have to remember that.

“Tolliver!” The lich king’s voice roared down like a tidal wave of sound and fury, seeming to come from everywhere all at once, as if the very walls themselves were hollering his name in rage. Sally staggered as though from a blow, but managed to keep her feet and keep running.

“The exit is just ahead!” Giichi called from somewhere out in front. Sam started to struggle, some part of his addled brain insisting he should be moving under his own power.

“Knock it off, Butter-boy,” Sally grunted, shifting him higher up onto her shoulder.

He opened his mouth to reply, then blinked as the two lich arms he’d tossed behind them stood up on their elbows and started weaving their fingers in a complicated casting motion.

“Sally,” he groaned, then louder, “Sally! Duck!”

The world around Sam lurched and spun as the huge woman ducked down low, and something green and glowing sputtered through the space where her head had just been. It struck the ceiling above them, and the sickly energy tore an enormous hole into the calcification. The rumbling around them increased, and Sam found himself flashing back to the last time he and Araxesendenak had done battle face to face, and the mountain that had killed them both.

“Go faster,” he slurred, fighting against the darkness that was creeping in on the edges of his vision.

“We should have been there by now!” Cora’s voice sounded panicked.

“Pro’lly using a spell,” Sam muttered. “Make th’hallway longer or something.”

Then there came a burst of light and sound, and what felt like a giant hand slapped into Sam, lifting him up off of Sally’s shoulders and propelling him forward. The world spun, his head spun, and then he hit something hard and unyielding, and that was all he knew as the darkness dropped down on him like an axe.