In an instant, the fight turned dire. Farad [thrust] at the sly beastkin while Keith seized, falling to the ground after being struck by the stinger. The momentary distraction providing exigent opportunity. But his foe’s muscles suddenly bulged and they batted the strike aside. Seeing the malicious grin on his opponent’s face, Farad wasn’t sure how he would get out of this one. He took a blow on his shield, unable to retreat lest his opponent finish off Keith. Even with [block] the blow nearly threw him from his feet. Despair coiled around his gut. This was it. Then a golden aura poured from behind him.
The bulging muscles of the rat beastkin began to twitch and spasm, giving Farad just enough opportunity to steady his stance once more and use his superior reach to harry the foe back. Gabrielle wasted no time, skidding down to beside the spunky fox beastkin and rendering aid. Golden flames purging the toxins from his wound even as her aura did the same. Farad even felt himself breathing a little easier, his skin free of an itch he’d been trying not to let distract him.
Unfortunately, while whatever strange interaction Gabrielle’s aura had with their opponent’s skill threw him off for a moment, his experience showed. Recovering quickly, he pressured them with unprecedented finesse and ferocity. Trying to keep the other two protected was pushing Farad to his limits, injuries slowly accumulating but unable to land a blow in return. Gabrielle’s aura dropped and the rat beastkin slipped inside his guard. He barely managed to reposition his shield, but the force of the blow was staggering. Driving the tip of the blade through the wood and crashing into his side with a sickening crack. He gasped half a warning, but it was just enough for Gabrielle to reactivate her aura. Still, spasming muscles weren’t enough to stop the other knife descending towards her. But it did slow it. Enough for a small pillar of earth to spring from the ground and intercept the blow. Stunted fingers spasming as the blade clattered free.
Waves of pain poured from Farad's punctured side, probably a few broken ribs if he had to guess. Discarding the remains of his shield, he put both hands to his spear to press the assault. His body was telling him to lie down and stop moving, but his training had taught him he could push through, and that was what he had to do now. Gabrielle’s aura was the only thing keeping them in this fight, and he knew she couldn’t keep it up for long. Taking more and more injuries with each extension, he bought just enough time for the others to find their feet. From the corner of his eye he glimpsed a light high in the sky. He didn’t know how long it had been there, but at least Vidan had found the exit.
He saw an opening. Desperately thrusting forward, the tip of his spear instead scraped off some sort of hard bar concealed within the rat’s robes, the gleam of gold and something darker beneath briefly visible as the enemy’s blade scored a deep gash across his chest. Keith jumped in and bought him some space just before the tail could lance his thigh. But while the poison may have been healed, the boy was still perforated and under-levelled. Perhaps seeing the desperation, Gabrielle drew her dagger and entered the fray, but their opponent was too agile to allow himself to be surrounded. With their lack of coordination it was of dubious benefit, though her aura still appeared to be effective area denial. The rat threw out taunts but no-one would be riled at this point. They were surviving on a knife’s edge, racking up injuries. Farad felt his movements getting slower even as his opponent’s grin became more smug. Worse, it was getting hard to breathe.
Wheezing he asked, “Keith, what do you know about his muscle skill?”
“He gets twitchy and sick after he uses it, the longer he uses it for the worse it gets. I think it’s part of his poison affinity.”
“You ungrateful brat! I’m gonna – “
Farad took the moment of distraction to leap at the rat. All his skills and weight in a single thrust of the spear, aimed at his foe’s heart. The rat twisted. Whether from fatigue, injury or whatever he was carrying, he wasn’t quite fast enough to fully dodge, and the spear sank into his shoulder. A dagger slammed into Farad’s chest in retaliation. But the blow, while mortal, lacked the strength to throw him clear, his spear sinking deeper and deeper under his dead weight. The rat’s strength had faded as Gabrielle drew closer, golden flames pouring from her outstretched hand. Realising without him saying anything, that her contact purification would be more effective than her dagger. Though she still buried that in him for good measure. The scorpion-like tail stuck out at her only to be skewered to a stop by Keith’s rapier.
Farad’s body went fully limp, no longer obeying his commands as his hands slipped from the spear embedded in his foe. His pain was fading and grey was at the edge of his vision. He slammed into the ground with a sense of odd detachment. He had to help, he had to finish things. And yet, as he saw the rat spasm and retch only for Keith to pierce his heart Farad realised, he didn’t. He’d done enough. As his sight blurred and faded, he hoped Jenny and Balrem were okay.
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“And you think that sufficient? I have no wish to see you injured, but I will kill you if I must.”
Death energy swirled around the head of her opponent’s warflail, Jenny needed him on the defensive. Bursting to her feet she slashed at the side of her former captain. He blocked with the haft of his weapon of course, her axe biting into the wood. But that left his other side open to an assault from Sarge. Unfortunately, their opponent knew their tactics, a clanging kick to Sarge’s shield stopping his building momentum flowed into circling around Jenny, trying to minimise their numbers advantage. Moreover, Sarge seemed distracted.
“Why are you doing this Luke? Why betray Timberhollow? All we built. Everything our comrades sacrificed for.”
“This is for Timberhollow Tim. Those comrades we lost were killed by the damn necromancer at the heart of this place. The one shielded by Krieger because he lacked the stomach to do what must be done. Well, I didn’t. I killed her. And now I’ll destroy the damn hole she created before it has the chance to ruin us.”
Sarge hesitated beside her. It was just for an instant, but an instant is an eternity in a battle like this. Jenny threw herself in the way of the warflail, interposing her shield but the cooldown on [block] wasn’t up. The top of the pole crashed down on her shield slamming it towards her, but the whirling head careened over the top, crashing into her temple.
“JENNY NO!”
Sarge smashed shield first into the captain with ferocity that caught him flat-footed, though he still managed a stumbling retreat before the follow up axe strike could leave more than another gash. Jenny’s wound felt so cold as she thumped to the ground, a slow trickle of liquid running down her face. The world was spinning and ringing from the blow, but as it began to steady she felt [staunch bleeding] trying to minimise the damage. She saw Sarge pressing the attack, his usual defensive posture abandoned for raw offensive fury, and she realised until that moment she’d never truly seen Sarge try to kill someone. Yet it was not without cost. The captain though fatigued and bearing injuries was still higher levelled. His warflail leaving dent after dent in Sarge’s platemail. She had to help him, if a blow got past his armour that deathly aura would kill him. She was likely dead already, it was just matter of time, but she wouldn’t let him die. Pushing herself up, she felt a wave of nausea as her head protested, until suddenly it didn’t. Nausea washed away and warmth returned to the slowly bleeding head injury along with stinging pain.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
A well-placed blow from the captain knocked Sarge’s leg out from under him. An ominous pop punctuating the bang of twisting metal. Both battered from their brutal exchange of blows, but the captain was about to finish things.
“You shouldn’t have tried to stop me Tim, but then when push came to shove you always were a weakhearted fool.”
The warflail was poised to descend. She’d dropped her axe when she fell, but still had her shield strapped to an arm so threw her whole body at him shield first, activating [bash] in a desperate attempt to divert the strike. They crashed bodily to the ground together. She pulled her knife even as her shield arm was trapped beneath her body weight, the captain squirming underneath her to get free.
“How did you...? Damn undeath affinity!”
Uncaring of his frustration she just stabbed again and again. No finesse, just pure brutality. But she no longer had the strength to stop him rolling free. Barely had the strength to come to a knee as he, bleeding heavily, surged to his feet. His warflail lost, he drew his own knife, a black shroud surrounding it. Staggering the few steps towards her, he plunged the knife down, and she barely managed a [block] with her own. The edge of her dagger biting into his fingers as the blades locked, warm blood flowing from them down her hand, but his strength and position was pressing the shrouded blade ever closer towards her, unconcerned for his own increasing injury.
“You just couldn’t make this easy, could you?”
“No, but I’ll take a hard win over an easy loss.”
She wasn’t quite sure where the quip came from. Maybe it was because unlike the captain, she didn’t count Sarge out of the fight just because he was immobilised. A metal tower shield crunched edge first into the side of her bleeding opponent. It would, perhaps, be more accurate to say, it flew through the space in front of her with little care that the former captain had been existing within that space. It was something of a rite of passage for every new recruit to doubt that Sarge’s tower shield was a block of solid steel, particularly after toting around their own wooden ones for a day and realising how the weight seemed to build. That he had a skill to reduce the weight of metal equipment he bore became an open secret, but even then many doubted it was solid. As Jenny watched the effects of that much mass pulp the captain’s leaky chest, any lingering doubts she may have had were ended.
She felt strength leaving her as [Undying Resolve] reached its limit. On hands and knees, she crawled towards Sarge even as he dragged himself towards her. Reaching him she tumbled onto his chest joking weakly,
“You couldn’t have done that from the beginning?”
He chuckled, wincing as the movement aggravated something, “Well, if it doesn’t work I’ve thrown away my shield, and then I’m a bit screwed.” Glancing to the side she saw the corpse and Sarge’s shield already dissolving. “But don’t worry about that now, drink.” He brought the potion to her lips that they’d gotten from the saferoom after Twrch.
“But your leg! It might not heal – “
“Drink.”
She obeyed the order, Sarge pouring the liquid down her throat as her head rested in a dent on his breastplate.
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The fight felt like it had lasted forever even though logically Evelyn knew it was only a matter of minutes. Albeit, perhaps the most intense minutes of her life. She wanted to put space between herself and the towering giant, but didn’t dare reduce the pressure she was applying for even a moment, lest the giant target the core once more. [Undeath parade] was stitching together and regrowing bone in the pit as fast as its languid pace allowed, just to prevent a stray shot from inflicting irreparable harm.
Evelyn hopped backwards to avoid a left hook that would have flung her across the room, making a quick jab of her own to send a blast of air which dispersed a forming fireball. Trafin appeared behind the giant adding another minor gash to her collection, giving Evelyn an opening to conjure another skeleton. Unfortunately, the retaliatory half-blind swing of the giant was on target towards the retreating [ranger], an unsteady mid-air jump just enough to throw him clear. Though from his panting it seemed like he had little energy to continue. Pushing the attack to get the giant’s focus back on her, Evelyn grimaced as she realised it had been some time since she saw him throw a knife, opting for risky melee assaults instead. Similarly, after an impressive opening barrage of water whips, Lydia seemed to be keeping her remaining mana for defence, conjuring bubbles of water when her companions couldn’t reach safety quickly enough. Vidan was doing better, however with the foe already mostly blind and lacking a movement skill like Trafin, he couldn’t engage often without unacceptable risk. As the giant crushed Evelyn’s recently summoned skeleton who barely had time to hurl a bone, Vidan darted in to slice at their calf. He dodged the retaliatory blast of flame only for a bruised and charred Balrem to pull him clear of a flailing strike. How the [guard] was still on his feet Evelyn didn’t know. His shield and and mace had long since broken, yet he was still limping and supporting where he could in an impressive feat of half-orcish toughness.
The giant was accumulating injuries. Her cloak a tattered, blood-soaked, shadow of its former self, but none were serious enough to stop her. Meanwhile the assaults from Timberhollow’s forces were becoming both scarcer and more precarious as time wore on. She had to take a risk before it was too late. Even as Balrem was pulling Vidan clear, she focused on crystallising air into a single large javelin. Without the offense from the tiny crystals she’d been using up till now, there was a sudden increase in the pressure of attacks from the giant, flaming hair flaring as if sensing weakness. A huge torrent of flames barrelled towards her, blasts of air failing to buffet them back. In a moment of desperation she flung herself to the ground, activating [flame mane] for what little fire resistance it could offer as the skeleton she’d been holding in reserve jumped on top of her. Ivy screamed.
Evelyn couldn’t feel pain in the lich, but she was aware as the bones popped and sizzled, loosing animation almost immediately. The desiccated flesh of the corpse she inhabited burned like paper even as [regeneration] struggled to reform it. Strings of undeath magic animating each limb snapping like the broken instrument it was. A bubble of water crashed into her extinguishing the flames, but the damage was done. For all her efforts, she couldn’t move.
Then Ivy was beside her, “Evelyn! Evelyn! Are you OK? What can I do? Uh, recovery position…”
Everything Evelyn knew about dungeons told her Ivy couldn’t interact with the lich. The most logical explanation of what happened next was that [regeneration] managed to recover her just enough to roll onto her side, or that [muscle stimulant] triggered briefly to give her that last push. But logical or not, she was sure she felt Ivy help her roll giving her a bead on the giant.
Her physical form was close to dissolution, but she had plenty of mana. The crystallised javelin had survived the fire (Ivy would later explain it had something to do with removing the nearby air) and now she could see her target. Activating a new skill, she saw the javelin become shrouded in death and launched it. The giant’s last attack, or perhaps all the attacks up till now finally caught up with her as she was too fatigued to move in time. The crystal javelin pierced deep into the giant’s chest, turning the surrounding flesh a sickly grey.
Staggering drunkenly as the raging inferno of her hair became simmering black embers, the giant roared weakly in defiance, a final ball of black flame forming above the pit. Then the [fiery echo] of the crystallised air javelin hit, shattering the original with a resounding boom.