"Ooh, boss door." Polly expressed what the entire party was feeling.

The far wall of the chamber they were in sloped inward until it almost became a hallway, at the end of that passage was a door. Twenty feet tall and fifteen feet wide, it was flat black with inlaid glowing golden runes. The runes pulsed to some unheard music as the party approached.

"Anyone fought an actual boss yet?" Grog asked.

Everyone shook their head.

"I haven't played this sort of game before. Does anyone know the normal pattern for a boss?" Caisin asked.

"Normally, the boss will be in the room when we enter, and usually, we will have a chance to check them out before starting the fight." Sparky began. "Sometimes they are able to call in other creatures during the fight; we call those adds."

Sparky thought for a moment, "Most boss fights have phases that the fight will pass through, especially at the end of a fight. Phases may mean adds, extra damage, area of effect attacks, healing, and stuff like that. There are, of course, many variations, but unless anyone else can think of anything, those are the basics."

Lance nodded as he thought of anything else he might say. "Most people don't finish a boss fight on the first try. They are tough, but they have patterns that can often be exploited. If anyone notices a pattern, they need to shout it out, even if they are unsure. Better to try to avoid an attack that is not coming than to get party wiped and have to do this entire dungeon again."

As they approached, the door seemed to vibrate with the beat of the light, and as they got closer, it became audible, not loud but strong, the kind of sound you feel more in your bones than in your ears. They stood before the door, their bodies pulsing with the invisible waves of sound, and then Caisin reached out and pushed the doors, which swung inwards smoothly, releasing the sound the room had previously contained.

Inside the chamber, there was more light, light of every color pulsing and spinning across the floor with the beat. At the back of the room stood two figures, each of them maybe ten feet tall, a man and a woman. The man wore a tight-fitting white jumpsuit covered in what looked like rhinestones, and the woman was dressed in a black knee-length dress with a diamond necklace around her neck.

Above their heads, their nameplates read "Tony - Level 8 Boss - Order" and "Stephanie - Level 8 Boss - Order"

As the party walked forward, Tony looked them up and down and said, "Are you guys ready to dance? You look like you are ready to dance. I love to dance."

Stephanie reached out to Tony with a thin but well-muscled arm, "I'm ready to dance, babe."

He looked back at her, "You are always ready to dance, but we gotta pay attention to our guests."

Grog ignored the boss's banter, "Two bosses can be difficult. I will do my best to pull them both, but if not, then you are going to have to tank the other one, Caisin. How is your damage reduction?"

"The Axe Shield ability helps, and I have some other abilities that I can pop if I need to," Caisin replied.

"Level seven is a little low for something like this, Polly. You are going to need to help Caisin as much as you can if he needs to tank, focus on him first. Everyone else focus on the boss I pull first if I can't grab both of them. Once we have one down, then we can focus on the other. Our highest priority will be keeping Polly safe. Everyone got that?"

Everyone nodded.

"Just a second," Lance mumbled as he crouched down in front of the location the spell casters had chosen for the fight. After a moment, he stood up, "Ready."

"Okay, pulling." Grog leaped forward, struck Tony, and then shouted, "Fight me!"

Tony immediately focused on the big fighter with the big mace.

Stephanie did so at first, then seemed to shake herself, "Fine, you dance with him!" She spun on her heel and then spun lower, her hand stretched out. As she did, a beam of light erupted from her outstretched hand and lanced across the room at about knee height and rotated with her spin. Polly was far enough back that she was able to see the attack coming and leaped over it. Lance was closer in, but he and Lucinda both had reflexes like a cat and were able to hurdle the beam. Grog and Caisin were not so lucky, both being struck by the attack. Caisin lost a third of his health and Grog a quarter. A small green rain cloud appeared over Grog, and as the drops fell, he healed. Polly turned her attention to Caisin, and his health suddenly jumped to 100%.

Caisin charged at Stephanie, and as he did, he said. "Sorry about this ma'am!"

Her head spun to him, and she peered with her eyes at the Fighter, "Ma'am, you called me ma'am! I am going to spin you down, little man!" Rage filled her eyes as she focused on Caisin.

"Oh, Stephanie, you know he means well," Tony said while under a steady barrage of blows from Grog's Mace. He began to return fire, but he had no weapon. Instead, he pointed his index fingers and pushed them forward, as he did his extended digits turned into knives and pierced Grog's defense, but the rain kept falling, and his health kept dropping and rising.

Lucinda rushed in, her daggers at the ready, and then suddenly slipped out of sight. She reappeared a moment later behind the dancer in white. She had climbed the wall behind Tony and leaped off. Her weapons swept down at an angle into the back of Tony's neck, a critical attack that chunked a good 5% off the boss's health and began the process of adding poison dots.

Tony erupted in anger. "Would ya just watch the hair? Ya know, I work on my hair a long time, and you are messing with it."

At the same time, Lance appeared behind the boss, plunging his weapons into the big man's thigh. The boss yelled and spun at him as another chunk of his health melted away.

Grog yelled. "Fight me" again, and the rhinestone-studded dancer spun back to him.

As this was happening, mystical symbols were appearing and then swirling around Sparky as he wound up something significant.

The assistants all appeared in the middle of the room. Edie walked over to Duke and grabbed his hand. The dwarven assistant's blush returned, but he let the elf maiden drag him out to the middle of the dance floor, and when they began, he ended up being a good dancer, leading her in some sort of a highland jig. Cletus and Otis leaned up against an imaginary wall and tapped their feet to the beat of the music.

Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

Caisin leveled his gun at Stephanie and fired off a shot, but her dance suddenly shifted, and she avoided the blast. Undaunted, he charged in with a dash and began pummeling her with his axe. She was spinning back and forth to the beat of the music, the edge of her dress looking like a sharpened chain. As was pushed out by centrifugal force, it wrapped around the edge of Caisin's defenses, cutting him with each spin and twirl. He soon learned to move his axe back and forth with the beat of the music and her twirls, which kept his axe between him and most of the damage.

The music was becoming louder, just a little bit with each beat, but as it began to mount, Lance shouted. "The music is a timer; if it gets too loud, it will kill us all."

"And the bosses have linked health pools!" Polly yelled over the increasingly loud music.

Suddenly, Caisin shouted, "She is doing her AOE again, be ready."

Everyone backed off what they were doing, but Sparky was deep into his own attack. As Stephanie dropped into her spin, Sparky lit up, every hair standing out on his body. His arms extended, one pointed at each boss, and then light erupted from him, the beams aimed unfailingly at the two bosses. As it struck Stephanie, she was pushed off balance by the force of the blow, which caused her to stumble, and her attack was disrupted.

Tony screamed with rage as the beam of electricity struck him in in the chest, causing some of the rhinestones to fall off. "That is my favorite outfit! First the hair, now this; you guys are not good dancers!"

The pair were at 40% health, and as the party closed with them again, that number began to fall faster. The two thieves winked out of and into partial visibility as they took chunks off the health bars and added up their poison effects.

Every time Lorinda attacked with her blades, she added poison counters to Tony. She struck again, and a tenth sickly green dot appeared next to his name. "Two more!" she said as she spun away from the boss after her most recent attack.

Caisin's health bar looked like it was keeping beat with the music as it pinged up and down with Stephanie's attacks and Poly's heals. The healer's face showed the grip of intense focus as she generated small pulses of bright green light that sailed to Caisin and spread over his armor before sinking in.

Suddenly, the green cloud that had been keeping Grog healed under the intense attacks from Tony's hands popped and dissipated with a loud sigh. "Heal" He shouted as his health began to plummet.

Poly's head snapped around her focus broken.

"Popping a defensive cool down!" Caisin yelled over the music as his axe began to blur, his motions suddenly fluid as he twisted and spun out of the way of or blocked Stephanie's attacks, not one of them touching him.

Another cloud appeared over Grog's head and his health began rising again.

At the same time, Lucinda shouted in triumph as the twelfth dot appeared by Tony's nameplate. A sickly fluid suddenly coated the large dancer as his and his partner's health suddenly plummeted to 15%.

"Dance with me!" Tony shouted as his hand stretched out toward Stephanie.

Her eyes snapped up, and all of her attention focused on him as they danced toward each other. When their hands touched, he twirled her into a spin, and at the same time, both of their health bars started rising. They danced for a moment, and when they broke apart again, their health stood at a solid 50%.

Grog reset his stance, glaring at Tony and Stephanie, "We have got to move faster, guys! That music is starting to hurt my ears."

The group again returned to their positions, but Stephanie did not stream toward Caisin but instead began moving toward the casters. Caisin shouted, "Hey, you are a bad dancer!"

She slowly turned, glaring at him, and then turned again toward the casters. Caisin dashed forward, but he knew it would be too late as Polly and Sparky began backing away. Suddenly, the ground under Stephanie's slippered feet erupted with a twisting and chaotic force of shadow and light punctuated by odd shapes. The force seemed to be entirely discordant with the music and beat that throbbed around them, and Stephanie wailed as the chaotic tendrils wound around her legs, tripping and stumbling her. The trap soon subsided, and she began looking for Lance, but as much as she searched for him, he had used stealth, and she could not find him.

Caisin took the moment to holler, "You can't dance at all, look at you stumble. Your dress is ugly, too."

Her head again turned to face Caisin as she howled her rage and charged him, her health bar dropping as the other party members worked on Tony.

Lance appeared behind Tony and began cutting and slashing at the dancer, the effects of his poison becoming evident as the dancer's movements slowed. Lucinda continued the work of building her poison dots on him as he poked away at Grog.

Tony shouted, "Clear the dance floor." And all of the players were suddenly pushed back to where the spell casters were working. He began a more complex dance, his fingers crossing his body, his right hand pointing at his left foot, and then his left hand pointing at his right foot.

"Interrupt him!" Lance shouted.

But the barrier that had pushed them back stopped even Sparky's spells from reaching him or his partner.

Lance bent down to reset his trap again, choosing chaos for the damage type.

Tony's left hand pointed to the sky over his right shoulder, and then his right hand followed suit, completing the movement. Suddenly, the floor erupted in expanding squares of light. Red, blue, yellow, and green expanded outward at a rapid pace. Lance and Lucinda were able to leap over each other as they flowed through, but the other players all took significant damage. Then, the pair of dancers charged in again.

Caisin and Grog pushed forward to their respective charges, both picking them up quickly. Sparky, true to his name, began sparking out small lances of lightning at Tony, his health bar slipping down again below 15%.

Lucinda again cried out as she landed another blow on her opponent; his health suddenly dropped to 5%. But at the same time, Caisin fell under the constant barrage of blows from Stephanie's dress, his health dropping to zero.

Again, Stephanie rushed for the healers, and again, she ran right into Lance's trap.

Sparky looked exhausted, as did Polly, but they were faithful to the end. Sparky moved his barrage of attacks over to Stephanie as she writhed in the chaos that was the trap. Polly kept Grog topped off for health.

All too soon, Stephanie broke free of the trap, and the pair of spell slingers knew that this was the end. The dancer's eyes were deadly as she stalked forward, weathering the constant blows from the mage. The predator pressed the two up against the wall, and then, in a burst of speed, she spun her dress, making vicious blows that quickly dropped the two.

Lucinda was a blur as she pummeled her opponent. Tony and Stephanie were at 1% health, but the music was starting to cause her health bar to dip, and Grog's health bar was plummeting with the constant heals from Polly not being active anymore. Suddenly, the crits began and did not stop; Lucinda was doing huge damage. Red critical hit numbers rose off the dancer's shoulders in a bloody flood.

Tony suddenly stood up straight. Lucinda feared he and Stephanie would do their healing dance again, but he spoke. "I see this is our last dance together." He reached his hand out, and she took it trembling. They stood side by side, and as they fell backward gracefully, the music ended.

A chest appeared at their feet, glowing with the same colored lights as the room. Caisin, Polly, and Sparky appeared next to it. The entire party looked tired but also excited.

"Wow, guys," Lance said, "That was a close thing, but we cleared it on our first try."

Caisin reached down and opened the glowing box.

There were six platinum pieces in the box, and Caisin handed one to each person there. Next to these were six vials, each with a different color.

He handed them to Sparky, who took them and was able to identify each of them and handed them back to Caisin.

Red - 5 permanent constitution points

Green - 5 permanent strength points

Orange - 5 permanent dexterity points

Blue - 5 permanent Intelligence Points

Purple - 5 permanent Wisdom Points

Yellow - 5 permanent Willpower Points

Blue and purple were easy to distribute, but then Caisin stopped. Turning to Grog "Constitution?" He asked.

Grog nodded.

Caisin took the red potion and handed it to the other fighter.

"Who gets dexterity?" Caisin asked.

Lance spoke up quickly. "Give me the willpower potion, I want that one." Caisin nodded and handed the Yellow to Lance and the orange to Lucinda.

Edie spoke up. "These are permanent boosts, almost like gaining a level but in only one stat. No reason to not take them right now."

Everyone nodded. As Lance gulped down the small vial of liquid, he felt himself get tougher; he liked that!

Otis flipped open a book and paged through it for a moment. When he looked up, he had a smile on his face. He looked directly at Lance, "Anyone have a toughness above 30 now?"

"I do", Lance said.

Otis intoned, "'For every full 30 points of toughness, you will have five reserve hit points.'" He continued, "This means that you don't die at 0% health. You still have five left after that. At 60, you will have 10, etc."

Lance smiled; this game was getting better and better.