About a dozen rats; several plants; and a few long, meandering conversations later, we came across a fairly big hole in the ground. It was at the top of a small mound, almost hill-sized. The hillock was notable in part because the Mountain Meadow Rats were encountered much more frequently around it.
I had passed the point where killing rats was more than a bit boring, since it was never more than a slight variation on the routine I had developed, so a furlong or two before we reached the bottom of the slope, I had already stopped killing them. The rats weren’t hostile, not even when I passed fairly close to them, so it made skipping the fights fairly easy. A small part of me wanted to kill them all, to level my skills further, but the larger and more tired part won out.
The hole in the ground was clearly not natural. For starters, it was rectangular with smooth edges rather than irregular. But more prominently, there were steep stairs leading down. As I eyed the stairs dubiously, a large rat came bounding up them, almost as if being chased, and scurried down the side of the hill without so much as a glance in my direction.
“This…. This would appear to be the source of the rats, don’t you think?”
“Hey! You’re getting close. The source must be somewhere inside.”
Approaching the hole hadn’t triggered the completion of the quest, or switched it to be the next in the chain, so it seemed that she was correct. Of course, since she had already guided many other players through the tutorial, she knew what the answer was.
“Well, before we go down, I’m going to check these notifications that popped up while we were talking and travelling. Do you want another of these berries while you wait?” One of the plants I had found while Gathering was a small tangle of blackberry brambles across a half-rotted fallen log. Most of the berries were still a week or more from being ripe—again, a bit odd when the amount of plants in bloom suggested springtime—but I had managed to find about ten that were ripe. They were hardly worth the effort to gather since ten blackberries by themselves wouldn’t make much of anything, but it seemed that the faerie was a fan. The speed she could devour a berry was surprising, especially since each was around the size of her head. She even managed to not get any berry stains on her silvery outfit. Impressive!
While Sunrise Sparkle was happily eating the largest of the remaining wild blackberries, I went through the notifications. Two of them were nothing surprising; both my Archery and Spellcasting skills had leveled up again. That gave me another point in Agility, one in Reflexes, and two in Brilliance. It appeared that skills gave a point per level for their first attribute and a point every two for their second. Sadly, none of my other skills were close to leveling, though Gathering was about halfway to the next point and Meditation just a bit below that.
The next message was a bit less routine, but nothing terribly out of the ordinary:
System Message: You have earned the title “Ratcatcher” for completing Tier 1 of the Achievement “Slay Rats.”
Ratcatcher had been automatically equipped as the active title, though that seemed like something even less desirable to be known as than Heroine. On the other hand, having Ratcatcher equipped provided “+1 damage and +1% critical hit chance against rats, ratkin, and related encounters.” Probably not especially useful, but it was listed as “Tier 1,” suggesting that maybe killing more rats and clearing a higher achievement would upgrade the title.
The next notification, however, was completely unexpected:
System Message: You have earned the Special Perk “Empathy” for your actions in counselling and forging a relationship with a heartbroken individual. As the first player to unlock this Perk, you gain the Primus version of the Perk.
Empathy (Special Perk): +5 Charisma; +5% chance of success when reading, detecting, or manipulating emotions. Primus: +1 Charisma; +1% chance of success when reading, detecting, or manipulating emotions. “Empathy leads to understanding. Understanding leads to tolerance. Tolerance leads to acceptance. There is no more critical flaw for a soldier or citizen of the Empire than empathy.”—General Danvald Trampet, Commander, Yanari Imperial Anti-Sedition Militia
I … didn’t know what to say, so I ended up not saying anything. I couldn’t agree less with the sentiment expressed in the flavor text about empathy being a flaw, and I hoped that the Yanari Empire was a historical place rather than a currently existing one within the gameworld. It certainly didn’t sound like a place I’d want to visit. While the flavor text was fairly negative, the values listed were positive ones: empathy, understanding, tolerance, and acceptance. So despite the overall negative message, it appeared that the developers shared my more positive view of empathy.
On the other hand, I was fairly conflicted. I was being rewarded for fixing the mess I had caused by being rude to Sunrise Sparkle. Well, in all fairness, I hadn’t caused the entire situation but had just been the figurative straw upon the camel’s back. But it made me wonder if the whole situation had been set up and manipulated for the purpose of awarding someone with the Empathy perk. Or, perhaps, being sleepy I’m overthinking and under-comprehending; surely there could have been, and will be, other means to unlock the perk….
And an additional six to my Charisma attribute was absolutely massive at this point though it would be far less significant if I keep developing the attribute as I reach higher character levels. That perk now represented an entire third of my new, modified base Charisma of 18. Ten to start with, two from that earlier level up, and now six more from the perk. Add in the point from the Heroine title and the point that the headband gave me, and my modified Charisma was 20, above even my earliest highest value of a modified 17 for Defense.
Playing to my strengths, indeed. Little did I know….
It took me less time to review and dwell on my notifications than it did for her to eat the berry. To be fair, it would take me a lot of time to eat a berry the relative size of a halloween pumpkin, too. While she was still eating, I took a closer look at the hole the rat had bounded out of.
The stairs inside it were steep, almost more of a ladder than a stairway, and descended to a stone floor about ten feet down. Even though the stairs were a pretty big indicator that the hole wasn’t a natural occurrence, the room they led to would have shouted man-made regardless.
Well, maybe not man-made. Even disregarding the potential exclusion of women in the room’s construction, ECHO was a game with more than just humans. Could something crafted by dwarves or elves or even one of the monstrous races truly be considered as man-made? Perhaps someone with an architectural lore skill—if such a skill existed—could determine if humans or elves or dwarves or whatever had built the place. However, that wasn’t a skill I had either in or out of the game. So a better descriptor would have been artificial rather than man-made.
Regardless… From my vantage point, I could see that the room was essentially empty except for a stone balustrade a few feet from the far wall. It apparently shielded another descending staircase, though the shadows were too thick to tell. The room itself was a square about ten to twelve feet on a side with a stone floor and stone walls. They weren’t, however, carved into the earth as a delving, but rather constructed of large blocks of stone mortared together.
While I was considering the room, soft footsteps landed on my shoulder and Sunrise Sparkle offered some commentary. “Hey! Once you’re out of the tutorial, you’ll need a way to see in dark places to explore places like this. That might be a spell, that might be a potion, that might be a torch, or that might be something like the lightstones that can be harvested from a certain type of very big beetle. But for now…” she trailed off and I was peripherally aware that she had started glowing. Then, a wispy ball of pale blue light floated off my shoulder and few down the stairs to hover in the center of the room. “For now, you have me!”
“Thank you. That will help a lot. Shall we go down, then?”
She nodded, and with her still on my shoulder, I started down the first, steep staircase. Since it had no handrail, I treated it as if it was a ladder, descending backward. This, of course, required that I put away my longbow. Reaching the floor was a relief. I didn’t think I would slip and fall, but the possibility was still a little scary. I had no idea how the rats had managed to scamper up the stairs, but they obviously were able to.
The room had apparently been used once upon a time. For what purpose, I couldn’t tell, but there were places on the walls where the stone was lighter, suggesting it had been covered by something, tapestries maybe, or blocked by furnishings, but no other evidence of occupation remained.
The balustrade I had seen earlier revealed itself to indeed be shielding another staircase. This one was much less steep, but it was built up against the wall, and descended into a room identical to the first: square, stone, and empty. This continued for ten such rooms, with the staircases forming a square spiral around the outside of the rooms, a ninety-degree turn at every floor, and with my left hand against the wall as I descended. At the top of each turning except the last, Sunrise Sparkle would send another wispy ball of light down to the room below. At the last turning, however, we stopped because the room below wasn’t bare and wasn’t unoccupied.
Skri’ki’kikikt
Level 3 Ratkin (Lesser Beastkin Archetype)
Class: Ratmancer / Profession: Scholar
Neutral
In the center of the room, with his back toward the stairs, but facing an open archway into a tunnel, was a humanoid rat. I judged it to be only a little shorter than my virtual avatar, but whereas I, as a Tauros, looked pretty much like a young human girl with only the tail and ears to give away my Beastkin nature, this Ratkin resembled a human only in that it stood upright and had hands instead of paws—or whatever they were called on rats. The creature was covered in matted brownish-grey fur, the brown could have been dirt for all I knew, and it wore a dirty, tattered robe of no particular color held shut with a length of braided pink ribbon functioning as a belt. The creature could have been male or female; I couldn’t tell. Granted, there were no prominent breasts, but that didn’t mean anything. The pink ribbon could have been a clue or it could have been just whatever the creature scavenged to use as a belt.
Since it was clearly, so far, not hostile, I left my weapons in my inventory—probably I should have had drawn at least one of them on my trek down the stairs—and switched my active and hidden titles. I didn’t know if NPCs could normally see titles, but it would be far preferable to have it see me as a Heroine than as someone who got bonus damage if I attacked it. But … there was no reason to not have that very small ace up my sleeve if push came to shove.
Inspect hadn’t shown the the Ratkin to be hostile, yet. But moreover, it didn’t look or, well, feel hostile. Perhaps it was the Empathy perk or perhaps it was just observation, but the Ratkin seemed more fearful than hostile, but that fear wasn’t directed my way, that is—upward or toward the stairway I was looking down. That fear seemed to be directed toward the archway and tunnel out of the room.
As we quietly watched, three Mountain Meadow Rats materialized in front of the Ratkin, and it gestured with its staff, seeming to direct them into the tunnel. The three ree rats bounded into the tunnel, but half a minute later, one came scurrying back and raced up the stairs, passed by me without even apparently registering that I was there, and continued onward and upward, following the path that apparently so many other rats had blazed. The Ratkin hissed with apparent displeasure, and started chanting and gesturing with its staff.
I glanced at Sunrise Sparkle, but she gave no indication that the quest was complete, so apparently the “investigate” was a little more detailed than just seeing the rats be summoned. She was, also, uncharacteristically silent, but the look she gave me in returned seemed to say, “You’re the Traveller; you make the decision on how to progress.”
Shrugging, and with my hands raised to show that I was—currently—unarmed, I walked down the stairs, taking no care to be silent or stealthy. I didn’t actually stomp or stamp my way down, but I let my footfalls sound and echo down to the Ratkin.
Nevertheless, the creature was still startled, and turned to face me as I stepped off the last step and entered the room on the far left corner from the archway it had been facing. Three rats materialized at its feet and took what, to my unpracticed eye, appeared to be a defensive stance.
“Skreee! Not good, not good. No come closer to Skri’ki’kikikt! Skri’ki’kikikt fight big bone mans, keep big bone mans from room. Skri’ki’kikit fight little moo girl and keep little moo girl from room! Stop! Stop! No come closer!”
I stopped, keeping my hands raised and palms outward, and took a step backward back onto the last step of the staircase. Keeping my voice soft, and hopefully soothing, I spoke to the Ratkin. “Peace! I don’t come to fight. I came to see why so many rats were in the meadow above. There are too many for the environment to handle.”
“Skree! Rats, yes, rats. Little cousins come when Skri’ki’kikikt calls. Little cousins fight for Skri’ki’kikikt. Little cousins stop big bone mans. Many die. Dead, dead, dead, all gone. Some run away. But little cousins stop big bone mans. Little cousins stop little moo girl, too! Stay back, stay back!”
Still maintaining the placating stance, though my arms were starting to hurt from holding them up so long, I responded. “I’m staying back. Please don’t attack. You said something about ‘bone mans’? What’s going on? Why are you here? What are the ‘bone mans’ doing?”
If it came to a fight, I wasn’t confident of victory. The Ratkin was higher level than I was, and four against one was pretty bad odds. Additionally, I was at a significant disadvantage. The longbow, which had been the cornerstone of my fighting style, was next to worthless here. The range was so minimal that I likely wouldn’t even be able to aim before one or more of the rats would be upon me. The ten-second cooldown on Mistshard meant that I could maybe only hurt one of the rats, and since I wasn’t going to be able to attack from long range, the pattern I had developed with two spells and one or two arrows would never be able to come into play. Perhaps I could have successfully taken out the Ratkin when it wasn’t aware of me, but the time for that was passed. I had chosen a non-violent route, and now I just needed to hope that my non-violent skills were adequate.
There was another blinking notification that arrived, but now was definitely NOT the time to be seeing what the system was saying.
“Skree! Big bone mans stop study. Skri’ki’kikikt come study sunken tower, Zulathan ruins. Skri’ki’kikikt learn many many things. No treasure. No sparkly, no shiny, but much learning. Much much learning. But big bone mans come and fight with rusty sword and shield and spear and weapons. Skri’ki’kikikt fight! Call little cousins fight! Stop big bone mans, but too many. Big bone mans stop study and Skri’ki’kikikt forced back to this room. You want help Skri’ki’kikikt, yes? You fight big bone mans, stop big bone mans, and Skri’ki’kikikt start study and much much learning again, yes?”
If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
I nodded. “Yes.”
“Skreeeeee! Good, good! Much very good. You go that way. You fight, stop, big bone mans. Skri’ki’kikikt wait here, guard room. Guard exit. You go. Go, go go!”
As the Ratkin was speaking, a large white shape came through the archway. A skeleton. Big bone man, indeed. It raised up a rusty sword and made to strike, but my cry of “Watch out!” alerted the Ratkin who span, dodged backward, and sent the three rats in to fight.
A skeleton. Of course. Not only was my longbow at a disadvantage due to the reduced range of indoor combat, but it would take a very lucky shot for an arrow to do much. Maybe into an eye socket, but it would be all to easy to miss what would have been a hit on a fleshy body, such as sailing through the ribcage. Even my fallback weapon of a dagger wasn’t going to be of much use: slicing and stabbing weren’t much use against bones. Perhaps it was a good thing that I took a staff as well. That would give me a bit of range in melee combat—more than a dagger, anyway—and bludgeoning and crushing were the historically preferred ways to fight skeletons in many games.
For now, though, it was still a good ten feet away, so even while I equipped the staff from my inventory, I sent a Mistshard flying at the skeleton’s head, skull, whatever. Between the Ratkin’s three rats, a good solid thwack or two from its staff, and my spell, the skeleton was quickly dispatched. It collapsed into a pile of bones that the three Mountain Meadow Rats started gnawing upon. From the way they cracked the bones with ease, it made me very glad than none of the ones I had previously fought had managed to hit me.
“Hey! You completed the quest! Let me give you your reward before you take the next quest, okay?” Sunrise Sparkle flew from my shoulder and started circling my head, waving her arms for attention.
The Ratkin looked over for a moment, “You fight good. Good, good. Fight big bone mans and stop big bone mans from stopping Skri’ki’kikikt studying.” Then, apparently disinterested in the little blue faerie orbiting my head, the Ratkin turned to face the archway.
I nodded to the faerie. “Thank you. What do you have for me?”
“Hey! Skeletons are creatures of darkness and earth. I’ll teach you a spell to make the fights easier! Watch and learn. You do this … and this … and this…. Then you do this and this…. Finally, you chant like this, and….” A faint, shield-shaped glow appeared next to her, and both of her hands sparkled as if surrounded by starlight. “Now, you try.”
I copied her gestures as best as I was able, but when I started to chant, words seemed to come forth on their own: “The Light’s embrace is a shield and a spear. To Darkness and Stone neither yield nor fear—Elionne Embrace!” I, too, gained the shield-shaped glow, albeit on my right side, and my hands sparkled for a moment before the spell effects faded. In the upper left of my user interface, below the bars that measured health, mana, and stamina, a little shield icon appeared. A buff bar would make it easier to keep track of what effects were active, so that was helpful. The spell cost 10 mana, however, which was nearly a third of what I had available. Not something I could cast a lot of. However, an examination of the spell in my character sheet revealed it to have a one-hour duration, so it really was quite a bit more mana-efficient than Mistshard was.
Elionne Embrace: [Special / Evolvable] [Lv 0: 0/100 (Max: 50)] [Cost: 10 mana] [Cast Time: 10 seconds] [Cooldown: 60 seconds] [Range: 30 meters] [Target: self or one ally] [Duration: 1 hour] Grants a boon to target ally that reduces damage taken from elemental earth or elemental dark sources by 10% (+1% per spell level) AND has a 8% (+0.5% per spell level) chance to reflect 10% of elemental earth or elemental dark damage received as light elemental piercing magic damage. Evolution available at spell level 25. Primus: 2.5% chance that spell duration is doubled.
“Are you sure this is okay?” I asked her. “This really does seem a lot more valuable than what the quest reward had been. I’m not ungrateful,” I hastily amended. “It just seems like a lot more than I should get in the tutorial….”
“Hey! It did get approved. Otherwise he,” she pointed to the Ratkin, “would have given you a ring. Or you could have looted it from his corpse if you had killed him. I asked, and paid for it, and it was approved.”
“You paid for it?”
“Y-yesss.” She drew it out, as if realizing she had maybe said too much. Then she immediately launched into the next quest:
System Message: You have been offered a quest by Sunrise Sparkle, your fairy assistant in the tutorial. [Accept] [Cannot Decline]
* Bone of Contention: This ancient Zulathan ruin has skeletons that are plaguing the Ratkin Scholar, Skri’ki’kikikt. Stop the incursion by dispatching the Skeletal Mage animating them. Reward: varies.
I didn’t press her for more information. Gift horses, and all. Instead, with a quick wave to the Ratkin, I headed through the archway and into the tunnel. Strangely, it was lit with flickering torches mounted in brass sconces on the wall. Perhaps the Ratkin had left them to light the way when he was researching, or perhaps they were just a quirk of the tutorial to make it easier. Regardless, the torches meant that Sunrise Sparkle didn’t need to send globes of light down the hallways and into the rooms.
The skeletal fights proved to be fairly anticlimactic. Even though the monsters were a level or two higher than I was, I managed to develop a strategy—quite by accident, mind—that let me fight without any significant risk.
It helped that the skeletons were hostile. That meant that I could start a fight with Mistshard and not have to worry about trying to hit them with an arrow.
It also helped that the skeletons were dumb. Perhaps that’s why the rats had been able to hold them off. Once hit with a spell, which typically did about a quarter of its health in damage, a skeleton would blindly charge straight at me.
The first one I had engaged from much closer than I would have liked to have. I had turned a corner in the tunnel, which was really more of a hallway, and nearly ran into the monster’s back. As it was turning to stab me, I hastily backed up and sent a Mistshard crashing into it. With only my right hand hold the staff, since I needed my left hand to direct the spell, I wasn’t holding onto the staff very well.
The staff had been at such an angle that it was nearly parallel to the tunnel’s floor, and the skeleton had run right into it, smashing its pelvic bone against the gnarled head of the staff, wrenching my arm and almost knocking the staff from my grip. But, the skeleton then dropped its blade, doubling up in apparent agony while I winced in subconscious sympathy. But that hadn’t stopped me from taking a step backward, taking a solid two-handed hold low on the staff, and swinging it with all my diminutive and insignificant might.
My twin was the sporty one, not I, but I had had to suffer through enough physical education classes in school to know the basics of swinging a baseball bat. Even though the staff was a good deal longer than a bat, the mechanics were much the same. And a skull was a bigger target than a baseball or softball. Staff met bone with a resounding crack, and the skeleton’s skull separated from its (his, probably, given the way it reacted to a crotch strike) body and smashed into shards when it hit the stone wall.
Down in one!
Well, three. Spell, staff to the skeletal groin, then staff to the skull.
It didn’t seem quite fair that the skeletons were vulnerable in such a manner. After all, being all bone meant no, ah, well, vulnerable dangly parts. But they were. Every single staff hit to the groin—and all but the first were deliberate—was a critical hit. My manly pride wasn’t happy with this exploitation as it felt a bit like an abrogation of the unwritten rules of manhood, but given that I was occupying the body of a young Tauros girl, it was, perhaps, permissible.
Permissible or not, abrogation or not, exploitation or not, I made use of it. Not a single skeleton landed a physical hit on me. Consequently, I was feeling a little cocky by the time I made it to a set of double doors at the end of the hallway. There had been other doors along the way, side rooms, perhaps, but almost all of them had been locked and I wasn’t able to find a way to open them. These doors, however, had the look of being well-used. Moreover, a strange flickering light escaped through the gap between the doors and the floor, and I could hear a guttural, otherworldly chanting.
It was time to stop, stretch, rest, check my notifications, and prepare for a boss fight. I gave Sunrise Sparkle another blackberry while I checked my now nearly-full inventory. The skeletons had dropped assorted loot, mostly “skeletal bone chips” (27 of them) but also Basic Healing Potions (three), Basic Mana Draughts (five), Basic Energy Drinks (two), and something only labeled as Rusty Weapon (three). The potions, draughts, and drinks weren’t tagged with the “(Tutorial)” modifier, so unfortunately they occupied separate places in the inventory from the existing ones. With my quiver of arrows and staff equipped, rather than residing in the inventory, I had only seven unoccupied inventory spots out of the twenty-eight total. Without those two four-slot bags, I would have had to leave some loot behind. Even so, I was eyeing the rusty weapons as they added a fair bit of weight and started bringing me close to my carrying capacity.
The notifications were mostly routine: prompts to take skills such as Negotiation (C/W), Stick Fighting (E/D), or Dirty Fighting (R/L). I frowned a little at the last, but took none of them just yet. Negotiation almost certainly was from the discussion with the Ratkin, and while it could become a very useful skill, I wasn’t quite ready to decide on my fourth, and final for now, primary skill. Regardless, it was rather unlikely to be useful in the fight behind these doors.
I did earn a new title and a new achievement, however. The title was “Executioner” and was awarded for beheading ten enemies. It was one of those so-called “cool” titles that seem good when min-maxing behind a screen, granting extra damage on any attack that hits an opponent’s head, but lost a lot of its luster when I stopped to consider how I’d react to actually being called an executioner. It just wasn’t cu— uh, appealing. I equipped it instead of Ratcatcher, as it might be useful for the fight, but I wasn’t prepared to keep it after the tutorial. The only way I could keep it equipped and hidden would be to have Heroine visible to all who inspected me, and … I didn’t want that, either.
The achievement was titled “Low Blow” and was awarded for “Disabling 15 opponents with below-the-belt hits.” Why was the game even tracking that!?
I took a moment to refresh the protection spell, then sat and meditated right outside the double doors. I wasn’t going to go into the fight with anything less that full-strength, especially since I was unlikely to catch the skeleton (or skeletons—hopefully only one though) unaware. In the time it took for my mana to recover, the Meditation skill finally increased by a point, but since it was a secondary skill, it didn’t raise any attributes.
While I was resting, and since Sunrise Sparkle was still working her way through the blackberry, I sent off a quick feedback message so I wouldn’t forget later. It was probably a bit less than fully coherent, since I was still stifling yawns and not taking the time to make sure my grammar was correct, but I summarized my experience with the faerie and her experiences, suggesting that they alter the protocol and add more protections for the tutorial assistants. I also mentioned the spell I had been awarded for the quest. Sunrise Sparkle had said it was approved, but I wanted to cover all my bases since it still seemed quite a bit more than the tutorial should award—especially since I had received the Primus version for being the first player to learn that spell.
A quick glance at the little faerie showed that she was just about done with the berry; in fact, she was licking the juice from her fingers. It still surprised me that she could manage to eat all that, so quickly, and not get any berry juice on her clingy silver leotard, but her clothing was still pristine.
I slowly rose to my feet and stretched, stifling another yawn—really, as soon as I finally complete the tutorial, I’m going to log out, crawl into bed, and not open my eyes for five hundred years, or until dinner time, whichever comes first. “Well,” I remarked, “this seems like it will be the hardest fight so far. I won’t be able to catch the skeleton in there by surprise. Hopefully, there’s just the one. Do you want to stay out here where it will be safer?”
She nodded, and responded with a serious look. “Hey! Good luck and be careful in there! You’re almost done with the tutorial. You don’t want to have to start it all over again, do you?”
My expression of displeased surprise must have been very readable because, before I could say a word in protest, she giggled. “Haha! You should have seen your face! No, no, there’s no starting over. At worst, you’d respawn outside at the top of the hill. Now go! Break a leg—or two. Of the skeleton, that is!”
Shaking my head at her antics, I steeled myself for the fight to come. I thrust open the doors, cast a Mistshard at the first skeleton-like shape I saw, and dodged to the left to hopefully clear myself out of the way of any attack aimed through the doorway.
A bolt of malevolent darkness flew through the space I had occupied a moment earlier, but before I could congratulate myself on the wisdom of not charging straight in, another came sailing from the skeleton toward where I had just dodged to.
I tried to turn my dodge into a roll, like as used in so many video games, but was a lot easier to do on a screen where the character model was animated than it was to do in virtual reality. My left shoulder slammed into the floor, probably bruising it pretty badly, and I ended up flat on my back, staring up at a skeleton that was so much larger than the ones I had fought before. The others had been vaguely human-sized, so taller than my childlike avatar, but this skeleton would have towered over them, being very nearly double my height, or half again as tall as the ones in the hallway had been.
As the robed skeleton brought down the butt of its staff to squash me, I hastily rolled over and over again to get out of the way. Bumping up against the side of the room, I scrambled to my feet, and cast another Mistshard in its direction. Fortunately, my spell tracked the target’s movements and would hit regardless of hasty or well-considered aim. Just as fortunately, the skeleton’s spell didn’t. As it made a gesture like throwing a ball, I sank to my knees, and let the two bolts of darkness impact the wall behind where my head had been not half a second prior.
Thinking to catch the skeletal mage with the same exploit I had used on the regular skeletons, I came up in a combination thrust and lunge, aiming the head of the staff for its pelvic bone. Unfortunately, the skeleton was able to deflect my attack, catching my staff on its, and sending the force of the thrust harmlessly to the side. I tried to turn the force of the thrust into a swing, by bringing the rear of the staff forward while bringing the front of the staff backward, but the skeleton just swept its staff back and deflected that attack, too.
Then it was my turn to defend myself as the skeleton brought its staff down in a fierce strike that very well could have crushed my skull if this hadn’t been a game and I hadn’t been able to get my staff raised up to block it’s strike.
This continued for a few more strikes, my attacks being harmlessly deflected and its strikes being blocked—just barely—but I was clearly at a disadvantage. The skeleton seemed tireless whereas my stamina bar was taking a battering with each attack I blocked. I had received no damage, but I was sore all over and getting worn out, breathing heavily as I attempted to deflect heavy attack after heavy attack. Further, I was tired and that was starting to make my movements a bit sluggish. Moreover, it was taller, stronger, and had a longer reach. I sent a third, and then a fourth Mistshard at it in between deflections and blocks, my staffwork now wholly focused on defense.
I staggered under another heavy strike, knees buckling as I fought to keep upright, not even risking turning the deflection into another attempt to bring the staff up between the skeleton’s legs. And that’s when my brain caught up to the rest of the fight. While we were fighting, I was able to get a spell cast in the small openings between its attacks. The skeleton’s health bar was halfway depleted from the four spells I had landed. But the skeleton hadn’t cast its darkness spell since we had gone into close combat.
All I had to do was survive a minute or so of its attacks, casting a Mistshard every time it came off cooldown, or as close to that as its attacks would allow. Four more spells should finish it off.
I got two more spells cast that way, but the problem with focusing so much on defense and looking for openings was that I wasn’t able to control the flow of the battle. Well, I hadn’t been from the very start, but the skeleton’s attacks were herding me, driving me in the direction it wanted, and just as that second Mistshard impacted its skull, I tripped over an uneven stone slab, and fell backward into a pedestal of some sort.
I maybe could have recovered from that misfortune, but I banged my head against the corner of the pedestal and saw stars. Literally. A new icon appeared on my UI, next to the shield of the Elionne Embrace spell, showing a swirling line with stars. I was stunned.
And, unfortunately, when the Mistshard had hit the skeletal mage, the skeleton started pulsing with an evil reddish glow. Enraged. Or Berserk. Or something. Regardless, its attacks increased in speed and power and I was unable to respond to them.
First one massive strike knocked the staff from my hands, sending it skittering across the floor, and leaving me defenseless even if I had been able to move. Then another came down across my shins. I could have sworn they had both been broken, they hurt so much, and my health bar took a precipitous drop of nearly 20%. Its next strike in the flurry caught my left arm, nearly wrenching my shoulder from its socket, and I had no idea how I didn't end up with multiple compound fractures from that strike. And another nearly 20% of my health bar was gone. Finally, a third strike caught me across the side, and actually lifted me up and sent me flying a few feet.
On two of those attacks, a spark of light had leapt from my body where the weapon had hit it. The spark then flew unerringly at the skeleton, striking it and causing a brief pause in the flurry of attacks. More than just a brief pause, though, the spark of light—the retribution effect of the spell Sunrise Sparkle had taught me, no doubt—inflicted noticeable damage to the flickering red health bar of my foe.
Finally…. Finally the stun effect wore off and I was able to cast one more Mistshard right before the arc of my flight crashed me into the wall and blackness settled over my vision.