Chapter 75
They finished the last skeleton in the first group of three that had attacked them and Jay took a moment to look around the 'room.' The ceiling was at least ten stories up, and Jay could barely make it out. They were in a giant half dome walking along a wide stone boulevard that wound along the outer edge. In the middle of the dome was a giant bubble, only half of which was visible, the top half.
The bubble was tinted blue but was also transparent and inside Jay could make out a giant skeleton. Really giant. The skeleton was visible from the waist up, the rest of its body underneath ground level. Were it to stretch its arms out it would easily be able to reach the outer edges of the domed room itself.
The skeleton was still and its head hung down on its chest, motionless, as if asleep. Its arms were folded across its chest and its upper body was hunched over slightly.
The boulevard itself was dotted with a number of groups of enemies, most of them skeletons of various kinds. Some of the groups stood in place as if guarding their spot whereas other groups patrolled from one specific spot to another and then back again.
If Jay's group were careful they should be able to pull one group at a time away from the rest. That way they could control how many enemies they'd fight at once.
M'redith looked back at the group, “Everybody good? Ready?”
Jay was rummaging around in the pile of fallen skeletons making sure there was no loot. There was none.
Everyone nodded. M'redith grinned in reply and stalked towards the closest group.
They found a rhythm where M'redith would pull a group of three skeletons over, Norri would keep one busy while M'redith and Jay fought the other two.
M'redith did most of the fighting but the skeletons were not difficult. Even Jay was able to easily handle one.
“These aren't as tough as I thought they would be.” Jay said.
Angelica laughed, “They're all level 1. You're level 4 Jay. They should be a little easier for you than the other things you've fought. What was the last thing you fought before this dungeon?”
Norri chuckled as she beat the hell out of her skeleton, “We all fought off a Glimmerhide.”
Angelica grinned, “Sounds like a great story but my point stands. Of course a level 1 skeleton would seem easy to you.”
Although Jay was level 4 those levels were only a guide. It was dangerous to make assumptions just off of a level number. Still, the skeletons were ridiculously easy.
“I can't believe I was nervous about this.” Aiden remarked as he got a staff hit in on one of the skeletons.
They rested a moment after that group and M'redith had a question. “Do you think we have to kill everything here? Or just the ones with keys?”
Aiden shrugged, “Might as well kill them all right?”
Norri nodded, “It's the entire reason we're in here isn't it?”
Jay laughed, “Good point.”
They pulled another group and then another, each time finishing off the group of three skeletons before the next arrived. None of them dropped keys. After another twenty minutes of fighting they stopped again. They had cleared out approximately one quarter of the stone boulevard of monsters. There were still a few monsters on that cleared portion but they were all oddities, none of them were the standard group of three basic skeletons.
“What next?” Angelica asked, her smile coming through in her tone.
They all peered at the remaining monsters on the quarter section they had mostly cleared. There was a taller skeleton that moved about by itself between three points. It carried a mace and its bones were bright red.
Another group was made up of what looked like dog skeletons, or wolf skeletons perhaps judging by their immense size. They traveled in pairs and there were two pairs worth walking about.
“Pull the skeleton first?” M'redith asked.
Norri shrugged, “Why not pull one of the dog groups first, they're closer.”
M'redith looked again at the monsters and their distances from her as well as each other. “Good point. Ok everyone, stand here and I'll be right back.”
Everyone got ready to fight and got in to position. M'redith ran away from her group until she was close to two wolf skeletons. She stopped running and instead approached a step at a time until one of the wolfs turned its head towards her and stopped walking. The wolf next to it stopped as well.
M'redith took another step and both wolf skeletons turned their bodies and faced her. She went to take a third step and got halfway through it before the two wolf skeletons suddenly rushed towards her making growling noises interspersed with the sounds of bones rattling. Their jaws snapped at the air as they raced closer.
M'redith didn't wait, she turned on her heel and ran back to her group. Arriving near them she turned and braced to take on the wolves' charge.
The first slammed in to her and bounced off with a sickening crunch. It got back up with a limp and Norri pounced on it viciously, aiming for the legs and head. As she finally crushed it to death with her staff the second wolf struck M'redith, speeding towards her in a streak as it used some native ability.
This wolf had aimed low and hit one of M'redith's legs full on. The force of the blow drove M'redith back but was insufficient to bring her down. She struck down at the creature with her sword and sent it stumbling to the ground with repeated blows.
Jay lurched forward and used his staff to interfere with the wolf as it tried to get back up. A ringing blow to the head made the wolf pause for a moment and Jay followed it up with cracking strikes at each leg it attempted to use to stand back up.
By that time M'redith had time to line up an attack and struck at the wolf with her sword, cleaving one leg off completely. The now limping skeleton wolf was finally put down as the entire group pitched in and rained blows down upon the mess of bones.
Everyone stood around leaning on their staffs or crouched on the ground panting for air as they each quickly recovered. M'redith had suffered a gouging wound on her side that had slid past her armor. The party paused for five minutes as Aiden placed his hand on her side and healed her, a bandage like patch immediately forming over the wound as it healed.
Jay helped M'redith retie her armor, loosening some parts while tightening others. Finally M'redith was satisfied with her armor and everyone gathered up once again.
“Ok,” M'redith said with a grin, “That was fun!”
Everyone nodded happily, “Much easier than I expected.” Aiden remarked.
Jay groaned and Angelica made a quiet shocked sound. “Aiden. Never say that in a dungeon. Bad luck.” Angelica said seriously.
“Isn't that just superstition?” Norri asked.
Jay laughed, “Yes, it is. Still, I feel like the moment someone says 'this is easy' is when things tend to get difficult. So thanks a lot Aiden.” Jay finished playfully.
“Fine! I won't say stuff like that in the dungeon anymore.” Aiden said with a guilty grin. “Just seems silly.”
M'redith smiled. “Ok, next one up is the red skeleton. He's alone, he's taller than the others, and he's red. You know what that means?”
“He's harder than the others?” asked Norri, unsure if she was correct or not.
M'redith nodded, “That's what I'm thinking too. So everyone be ready for a tougher fight. Especially after Aiden's comment.” she said with a playful glare at Aiden.
“I'll be back with Big Red. Be ready.” she said as she stalked off towards the tall red skeleton.
She crept towards the skeleton with her back hunched over. It was oblivious to her and she made it all the way up until she stood directly behind it. She hadn't expected to get that close and was momentarily confused before she shrugged her shoulders and decided to deliver a bone rattling strike.
The strike was off slightly and instead of hitting the skull her sword instead struck at the skeleton's left arm, lopping it right off. The skeleton whipped around faster than it should have been able to and struck out at M'redith with its mace. The mace delivered a glancing blow to M'redith's shoulder and she rolled backwards out of reach. She popped back up off the ground and ran to her group, making sure Big Red followed her.
The skeleton turned and chased after her, quickly gaining. Before M'redith could even reach the group the skeleton struck out with its mace and sent her falling to the ground with a thud. It stood over her and raised its only remaining arm in an attempt to rain blows down upon her prone form.
The group ran towards her as M'redith rolled out of the way as the skeleton chased her, smashing its mace in to the stone ground sending stone chips flying everywhere. It continued to strike at the ground as M'redith finally rolled out of reach and stood up.
She was covered in cuts and welts from the stone shrapnel and Aiden arrived and began to heal the worst of them before stepping back out of reach as Big Red swung its mace out in front of it, driving M'redith and her group back.
“Can you freeze it Norri?” asked Jay desperately.
Norri focused for a moment but then shook her head. “It's a humanoid skeleton, it doesn't count as a creature apparently.”
M'redith took a solid blow on her side with a grunt but responded with a headbutt. She leaned forward and whipped her head at the skeleton with all her might. Although the skeleton was taller than M'redith it was crouched over after delivering an overhand swing that had missed her. Its head was at the perfect height and M'redith slammed in to it with her forehead with a crunch.
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The skeleton quickly backed away from M'redith and dropped its mace, using its only remaining hand to help hold its skull together. It suddenly stood stock still and whistled.
Immediately two howls were heard as the remaining group of wolf skeletons heard Big Red's call and ran towards the group to help the skeleton out.
“Crap! Adds!” yelled Jay.
“What the hell does that mean??” yelled Aiden.
The wolf skeletons were getting closer.
“It means more monsters have joined the fight damnit! ADDitional monsters, ADDS!”
The hulking wolf skeletons arrived and positioned themselves with gaping jaws between the group and Big Red, giving the larger skeleton time to recover.
“Good thing we killed that other pair of wolves first or this would have been even worse,” Jay muttered as he cracked a wolf in the head with his staff when it got too close.
Both wolves finally launched themselves at M'redith, one towards each leg. One was taken out of the fight when Norri delivered an overhand blow that actually shattered the backbone of the first wolf. It lay on the ground, dying but unable to fight.
The second wolf latched on to M'redith's leg and stuck. It refused to open its jaws or let go and M'redith was momentarily thrown off balance.
Big Red took that opportunity to rush forward and send a mace head whistling past her as he narrowly missed M'redith's body. Even the bad guys missed sometimes.
The skeleton extended its arm and swung its mace in front of it back and forth. M'redith tried to adjust her stance to turn the skeleton so its back was to the group but she was unable to do so with the wolf skeleton latched on to her leg.
Norri finally got the attention of Big Red through the simple action of hitting it repeatedly in the side.
Not like once or twice either, more along the lines of a couple of times a second. There was a stuttering sound like what you would hear from a machine gun as her staff struck too fast for the eye to follow.
She wasn't doing a lot of damage but she was really angering the skeleton. Finally it had enough and whipped its head towards Norri and re-positioned its body so it could focus on her.
M'redith backed up and stood still as Aiden struck at the wolf skeleton stuck to her leg. Jay ran up and helped and after a number of blows to the skull the wolf finally let go and collapsed to the ground. Thankfully neither of them had hit M'redith instead of the wolf skeleton.
M'redith was free, and she ran towards the big red skeleton that had turned to Norri and body checked it, hard.
The skeleton made a crunching sound as M'redith hit it and numerous bones were broken and fell to the ground. The skeleton was wobbly on its feet and M'redith took that opportunity to line up a strike.
With a whistling sound her sword cut through the air, and then through the skeleton, and then through the air again. She stepped back a pace and the skeleton finally collapsed, the top half first, then the bottom half.
Everyone just stood for a moment gathering their breath.
“Great jobs everyone!” Angelica said right as Aiden screamed.
The second wolf skeleton hadn't been dead when it had fallen. It had been resting until it was strong enough to stand once again.
It had rested enough.
The wolf struggled on to its front two legs and bit Aiden in the ankle, chewing as it did so.
Norri calmly crushed the wolf's skull with a staff strike before grimacing at Aiden's wound. It looked bad.
Up until that point Angelica hadn't done anything but had instead allowed the group to experience running the dungeon without help. “I can heal you if you'd like, completely. Or you can continue on without my help but I doubt you can heal all the damage. That ankle looks bad.”
Aiden smiled and gave her a shrug, “I'm no martyr, I'll take the healing. I know we're mostly level 1 still, we don't have a lot of abilities to choose from. No sense in refusing help when it's available.”
Angelica calmly walked over to Aiden and had him sit down. Using one hand she carefully straightened out the ankle as Aiden grunted. She used her hand to carefully reposition some of the bone shards and Aiden's face had turned white from the pain.
Angelica muttered something under her breath as her hand glowed just as the rod in her other hand did as well. Moments later Aiden gasped as the pain disappeared and his ankle was healed entirely. “You're going to be hungry in a bit from the healing.”
Jay laughed, “He's always hungry.” M'redith nodded with a grin.
As Angelica checked over Aiden's ankle to be sure it healed correctly Jay went over to the big red skeleton as the skeletons' corpses all disappeared in to motes of light. Left behind was a single red key. Jay held it up for the group to see.
“Well we have one key! Looks like Big Red dropped it.” Jay remarked.
M'redith tilted her head in thought, “This next time lets do what we just did but kill all the wolves before we pull the big skeleton. That way he won't be able to call them to help him fight us.”
Everyone agreed. Aiden looked apologetic.
“What's wrong?” Angelica asked, thinking it had something to do with his ankle that she had just healed.
“Why'd I have to say things were too easy??” Aiden moaned.
Everyone laughed. “Chalk it up to a learning experience,” Jay said with a smile.
“Ok, eyes up everyone. Lets clear the next quarter of this dome.” M'redith said as she led the group further along.
If the dungeon were laid out like a clock the group had entered at the 12 o'clock position. They had killed everything between there and the 3 o'clock position as they traveled in a clockwise direction. Now they were going to fight everything between 3 o'clock and 6 o'clock.
“Have you seen anything for a quest yet Jay?” Angelica asked as they waited for M'redith to return with the first group of skeletons.
Jay looked about the dungeon dome they were in. It was featureless except for the giant floating skeleton in the middle and the pedestal at the end of the boulevard at the 11 o'clock position. “There's just nothing here. The room we came from had some slabs like the ones I got quests from but none of them glowed for me. I don't see anywhere a slab could even be hiding.”
“Isn't that kind of odd?” asked Angelica as the rest of the group listened in to their conversation.
“Maybe? In Eden it can be hard for me to tell sometimes.” Jay said thoughtfully just as M'redith returned with three normal sized and colored skeletons.
The group fought them off easily. After fighting Big Red the smaller skeletons were easy opponents and any member of Jay's group could have handled them one on one. Since it was 5 on 3 the skeletons didn't have a chance.
“I like fighting those guys, they're easy.” Norri said with a grin as she put down the final skeleton.
M'redith pulled a few more groups of skeletons, each group with three skeletons a piece. All were handily defeated by Jay's group.
“How about I pull two groups this time?” M'redith asked.
“It might go faster I guess?” Aiden said.
“What do you think Angelica?” Norri asked.
Angelica shrugged, “They're fairly easy. Your group can absolutely handle that fight. The real question is can you handle that fight and another if something were to go wrong. Adds are a real danger in a dungeon. You have to always be ready for them.”
M'redith thought about that. “I think we can do it. Let's give it a try?”
Everyone hesitantly agreed. They held their weapons a bit more nervously before M'redith returned with a group of three. Norri, Jay, and Aiden all took one and fought it as M'redith left to grab another group.
Norri defeated her skeleton almost immediately, taking the head clean off at the start of the fight. Her skeleton collapsed in to a pile of bones and she moved over to help Jay.
Aiden was trading blows with his skeleton but appeared to be making progress as one of its arms came off entirely and fell to the ground. “I totally got this!” Aiden said with a grin.
M'redith arrived with the second group of three skeletons. Norri left Jay to handle his skeleton alone as she picked up one of M'rediths new skeletons and M'redith fought the remaining two.
Angelica watched as Aiden fought his skeleton, Jay dodged his skeleton, Norri fought a skeleton, quickly taking it apart, and M'redith fought two skeletons, slashing and pushing them in to each other as they fought.
Norri's was first to drop. Her skill with a staff was impressive as she rained blows down on to the skeleton before it finally shattered in to pieces and fell to the floor. She instantly turned and went to help Jay.
Although Aiden had taken off one of his skeleton's arms completely he was now having trouble doing any further damage as the skeleton's remaining arm had sped up considerably, allowing it to deliver blows and blocks at great speed.
Norri adjusted her positioning so that Aiden's fight would be on her right side while Jay's fight was to her left. Once the skeletons were in the right spot she began attacking them both, sometimes hitting them both with the same strike. The skeletons were suddenly confused by the unexpected attacks and tried to turn to face her.
Neither Aiden nor Jay however would allow that to happen and kept the skeletons focused on themselves. This left Norri to fight unimpeded and she quickly took the skeletons apart, one bone at a time. With a crash they finally fell to the ground in a heap of bones.
They all turned and raced towards M'redith who had a number of wounds at this point but had managed to keep both enemies focused on her. Norri did a little dance move that looked like a spin, her staff lashing out like a whip and striking at one skeleton's backbone completely shattering it.
Magic still needed something to work with and as the skeleton lost more and more bones from Norri's strikes the magic powering the monster finally gave out and the skeleton shattered in to pieces.
The one remaining skeleton was neatly beheaded by M'redith and the group stopped for a moment to catch their breaths, the only sounds being their heavy breathing and the sound of bones rattling as skeletons moved about the dungeon.
M'redith took a deep breath. “Next up we've got two groups of wolf skeletons, each with two wolves. Then the big red guy. Everyone ready?” M'redith asked.
“No!” Aiden half yelled. “Look at you, don't you want healing first?”
M'redith was covered in wounds, some more serious looking than others. M'redith hadn't even noticed she was so keyed up from the fight. Seeing the wounds pointed out however fixed that and she was suddenly aware that she was in need of healing.
She smiled at Aiden and looked a little embarrassed. “Thanks Aiden, don't know what I was thinking.”
As Aiden healed her wounds and left little patches covering each spot as he finished Angelica spoke up. “It's a good idea to always check each other over for wounds in between fights. Getting injured without realizing it happens a lot more often than you think.”
Once M'redith was patched up to Aiden's satisfaction she grinned at the group. “NOW are we ready?” she asked with a smile. Everyone replied in the affirmative and she walked carefully over to the first group of wolves and pulled them back to her group.
Two more keys to go.