The boss was a zombie, kind of. It was a bit tall, and bulkly, almost like it was some kind of undead body builder, but ten feet tall. Oh, and it had a tail. A really big, thick tail, that looked like it would hurt if it hit you. It reminded me of a T-rex tail, but without scales. Probably like what a zombie T-rex tail would look like.

When it stepped out of the pincone cylinder, I thought 'well that isn't so bad' then it was followed by two more zombie things. One of them was really short, like shorter than Lily, and the other was a bit more normal sized. They both looked vaguely human, in a zombie sort of way, but the short one had little blades instead of hands. They looked like they were it bones, but sharpened and extended longer than they should have been. The tips of the blades touched the ground when it stood up straight, which it almost never did. It walked with a hunched posture in quick jerky movements. It was wierd to watch.

The last zombie thing was, well it might not have been a zombie, because we couldn't actually seen any of it's body. It was covered completely in black plate armor, complete with evil spikes and skull designs. The armor zombie also had a massive great sword. It kind of reminded me of a some anime I'd seen. Normal sized human carrying a sword that's twice as big as him, or her, or it. Though you can usually see the anime characters. Anyway, it was a huge sword, and it was also black with evil spikes. The spikes weren't on the blade, just the handle, which made me wonder if he ever stabbed himself with those spikes.

The three of them stepped out of the pinecone cylinder, and looked around. The little one was hyperactive and jittery, so I'm not sure it was really looking anywere, it just looked everwhere, and the armored one, well I couldn't see where it was looking, but the armor faced straight ahead. So really it was just the boss that looked around (I knew it was the boss because the game told me when I focused on him), and when he saw us on the wall he let out a roar. It was a little intimidating, and I even noticed some of the volunteers started shaking.

Brogan looked a little concerned, "Those are the same undead that have plagued us. How did they get here?"

Before anyone could answer Bjorn shouted "FIRE" and everyone on the walls seemed to remember that they were holding weapons, or controlling giant cannons, and they all started to attack. The javelins didn't even make it to where the zombies had landed, but a couple of arrows did make it. Sadly the arrows didn't do much. Most of them missed horribly, and the few that hit bounced off the armor of the armored zombie, and barely stuck in the boss. The arrow heads didn't even completely pierce his skin, and he just brushed them off like they were nothing, then he laughed.

Then the artilery hit. One explosion followed another, until the entire area was obliterated. When the dust settled, the armored zombie was still standing, exactly where he was before, perfectly fine. The boss was looking a little battered, but mostly fine, and the little zombie was gone. I don't know it it was vaporized, or died and then did the normal monster thing of disappearing, but it was gone without a trace. I'm pretty sure I would have seen it run away, but they didn't have a chance to react when the artillery hit.

Over the chat feature Bjorn spoke, "I figured it wouldn't be that easy, let's get this boss fight over with. Lily, Marcus light up the field."

Marcus made some kind of disco ball over the boss's head, and Lily filled the field with small, but bright lights (not fae this time). We all got off the wall in our own way, and then moved towards the boss. He didn't move the entire time. He just watched us. Bjorn went in front of us with his new shield, and the rest of us were all scattered behind him.

"Marcus, test them." Bjorn spoke quietly, but we all heard him clearly.

After he spoke Marcus muttered something and I watched as our party rushed forward and started attacking the boss. I realized almost immediately that it was an illusion. Mostly because I saw a somewhat familiar figure with a very familiar looking tail going with everyone and shooting off fireballs. It was actually a little wierd to see my back. I mean, I don't normally look at my back, and even though I am comfortable with my tail, it was just another thing that made me realize I wasn't human anymore. I pushed those thoughts aside and started watching the boss and armored zombie fight our illusions.

We were doing horrible. The fire didn't seem to bother them at all, and the armored zombie could swing his sword really fast. It was crazy how fast he swung it. Illusion me was barely able to shadow step out of the way, and had to focus on only teleporting. Illusion Bjorn was able to block the boss's attacks, but he couldn't do much else. The boss was like a boxer, fists moving so fast they looked like blurs. As we watched the boss finally punched straight through illusion Bjorn and he disappeared. When the boss saw that, he roared again, and all the illusions disapeared. Then he charged us.

Bjorn hefted his shield and said, "Marcus make illusions of me to help with tanking, Lily you're on support, Bwyd try fire once, if it doesn't work figure out what does."

We started to spread out a bit while Bjorn and his clones walked towards the enemies, I started things off by using burn on the boss, but instead of lighting on fire, he just didn't. Like my fire couldn't touch him. The boss smiled at me, and then I was staring at a hulking mass of black metal. I barely had time to shadow step before a black great sword swept through the space I had been standing. Marcus swore, and then turned invisible, and Lily started summoning lots of little fairies. I briefly glance towards Bjorn, but he was definitely busy with the boss who just kept punching Bjorn's shield. With just that brief moment of looking away from the armored zombie, he disapeared. I felt the hair on the back of my neck rise, and shadow stepped immediately, as the great sword once again sliced through the space I was in.

Thankfully I had enough shadows to step to since Marcus's disco ball was a disco ball, and not a light bulb. What was even better is they moved, and there were tons of shadows, so even if they figured out what I was doing, the zombies wouldn't be able to predict where I would teleport to. The only problem was the armored zombie could also teleport, and it seemed like it was just as easy to use as mine. The moment I appeared someplace else he would appear right next to me. It was really annoying. Against my illusion, he just swung his sword fast. Now he was teleporting to me and swinging his sword really fast. After we did that a few times I realized I was going to run out of mana pretty quickly, but he wasn't giving me anytime to do anything else. I was hoping for some kind of help from someone else, but Marcus' illusions couldn't keep up with our teleportation, and Bjorn was keeping the attention of the boss. Lily was helping a little, but her buffs didn't speed me up.

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I really didn't want to get hit by that sword, and since I saw how fast he could swing it, I didn't want to try teleporting behind him to confuse him. Then I realized something. I could fly. Kind of. So instead of teleporting somewhere on the ground, I shadow stepped up into the air. I went as high as I possible could, and almost a second later, the armored zombie was up there with me. It went to attack me, but lost it's footing, while I just oppened my wings. The sword was still very close to me, but the zombie started spinning, and falling so it couldn't aim very well. I started to laugh, then it disappeared again. I immediately shadow stepped even higher. Followed shortly by the armored zombie.

This time, I did my best to dodge the zombie's attack without teleporting and as it started to fall I used curse of molasses. The zombie then teleported above me, but this time the sword was swung at a much more managable speed. I dodged it, and used hexbolt which worked much better than my fire. It actually hit, and the zombie made a grunt like noise, then teleported above me again. This time I shadow stepped as high as possible, and waited for it to follow. It was still slow, so I easily dodged it's attack and this time I used curse of stupidity. 

It didn't teleport this time, it just kept falling, so I started launching hexbolts at it, while I slowly glided down behind it. When it hit the ground there was a loud crunch, and it didn't move. The boss paused in his attack for a moment. Looked up at me, then at the crushed armor, then at me again. Then he smiled. Oh, by the way, when the boss smiled, it was horrible. He had a couple of teeth, and lots of rotting gums, and the teeth kind of waggled when he smiled. As he was still smiling, the armor and sword started dissolving into a black smoke, and the smoke covered the boss. Then it hardened back into armor, and that massive sword. 

Then the boss tilted his head back and let out the loudest roar yet. I could almost see the power in the sound as all the little fairies Lily has summoned were extinguised when the wave of sound hit them. Marcus' disco ball started cracking, but it held on, and I felt all my muscles tighten up. I couldn't move. Which of course meant that I couldn't glide. I was ok for a couple of seconds, but without being able to make all the tiny adjustments required to glide, I started to spiral out of control. All I could think was 'this is going to hurt' before I hit the ground, and it did hurt. I landed on my right arm, and it snapped. I was briefly impressed that my arm didn't shatter, it only bent weird, and thankfully the bone was still inside, but then I felt the pain. That was the first bone I had ever broken, and it was horrible feeling. It was almost worse that I watched it break, because I knew it wasn't supposed to bend like that.

Only a moment after I felt the pain of my arm breaking, I felt another pain as the boss impaled me with his new great sword. He stabbed right through my lower back, and I'm pretty sure he cut right through my spine. Then Bjorn was there smashing into the boss with his shield. The boss took a step back letting go of his sword and getting back into his boxer stance. As he faced off with Bjorn, I tried to ignore the pain and do something, but I was stuck, and everytime I tried to move pain shot through my body as the sword seemed to cut me no matter how little I moved.

As Bjorn faced off with the boss, I could see what was left of Lily's fairies trying to help him, but the most they could do was lead the fight away from me. The boss was untouchable. Not that attacks would work as well not that he had armor, but now he was big, fast, and armored. Not to mention he was incredable tough.

While I was laying there trying not to move too much, I heard Marcus' voice, "Hey Bwyd, I'm going to see I can pull that sword out."

I just nodded, not really wanting to try talking. I felt the sword start moving a little bit, but it was stabbed through me and into the ground, and Marcus didn't have the strength to even make the sword budge.

"Sorry Bwyd, let me try one more thing." He muttered something, and nothing happened. "Weird, the sword is immune to magic. Uh, I hate to do this, but I'm going to try to help Bjorn. He might be strong enough to move the sword."

I nodded again, frustrated that I couldn't do anything, but as I heard Marcus' footsteps move away I noticed Lily had sent some healing fae to me. They were already straightening out my arm, which didn't hurt anymore, and I could feel them on my back around the sword, but it didn't feel like they were doing much. Just enough to make the pain a strong ache instead of a sharp pain.

I tried to watch the boss fight, but they moved around enough that I wasn't able to without twisting too much and causing pain to shoot up my back, but what I did see was impressive. Bjorn was holding his shield with both hands and blocking most of the boss's attacks. Even when he did get hit he wasn't too badly hurt, and Lily was able to heal him almost immediately. Marcus dropped his invisiblity and stood up in the air, as if there was a platform up there, and launched spears of ice at the boss. Most of them shattered on his armor and did nothing, but as more hit I noticed there was a layer of ice building on the armor. And Lily was focused on directing her little fae. She looked kind of like a conductor, pointing and swinging her arms around, but the boss kept trying to get close to her, so she had to keep moving around.

At first I thought that Bjorn was just defending against the boss, but after while I noticed that they were getting farther away from me, until Bjorn used his ability to jump to me. He went to grab the sword, but the boss apparently gained the armored zombie's teleport. He appeared behind Bjorn and went for a punch. Bjorn didn't have time to block, so the punch hit him in the back of the head, and he went down, right on top of me. I might have sqeaked as his weight hit me, but for some reason he hurt less then the sword in my back.

Bjorn wasn't knocked out, and he kind of did a somersault coming back to his feet on the other side of me. The boss decided to follow Bjorn over my not dead body, but he was a lot more painful. He stepped on my back, grabbed the sword and twisted it. I screamed in pain, but he ignored me and left the sword pinning me to the ground. The fight kept going how it was before, but the boss seemed to be putting in more effort. He hit Bjorn alot more than he had been, and he started picking up rocks and throwing them at Marcus and Lily. He also started laughing. A hideous, deep, evil laugh. He laughed after every punch, and every stone throw, but if he actually hit he laughed harder. It seemed like he was having fun.

The rest of us were struggling for our lives. Well they were, I was just stuck with some minor pain. And that's when I realized, I could teleport. So I tried, and failed. For some reason, I wasn't able to teleport. It was almost like the sword wasn't going to let me go. I started to cry. I wasn't bawling my eyes out, but there were tears coming out of my eyes as I felt more helpless than I ever had before. All I could do was watch as my friends got destroyed by a heavily armored, buff, zombie boxer who wouldn't stop laughing. The boss wasn't even breaking a sweat, and we didn't have the firepower to destroy him. Though I have a feeling that zombies don't sweat anyway.

It was in that moment of hopelessness that I felt something unexpected. The sword that was pinning me to the ground moved up, and out of me.

"Yo, fightin a boss without me? Not cool guys."

With that Scria charged into the fight with her new great sword in two hands, and an axe and hammer in two others.