Oderian had already bolted for the platform, and as I ran after him my vision suddenly flared with yellow light and a boiling heat encompassed me, burning me with an agonizing flash for just a moment before the pain receded into a manageable heat, my body covered in sparse, yellow flames that gave off a sickening acrid scent. A debuff had appeared in my field of view, and my hit points had dropped by almost a quarter, but I didn’t have mind for reading either the debuff description or the damage value, not then.

I spun in place quickly enough to see the spirefiend as it passed over me, its talons almost striking me in the back of the head. I hadn’t been the target for its claws as well as its fire, then—a thought that briefly worried me, as it suggested the thing both knew I’d thrown the damage spell and had determined that tossing me off the cliff might be useless.

And if it had acted on those suppositions, did it mean that it was being commanded by a higher-ranked demon, as the demonology skill suggested?

I pushed the thought from my mind and started casting a Fragmented Hex of Chains as it bore down on the group again, momentarily wrestling our level 5 with its talons to pull him off the ground, its wings beating heavily at the air. The fire kept burning over my body, ticking away at my health but not so much that I was worried I’d drop dead.

I watched the spirefiend pull the second dwarf off the ground just as my Hex of Chains finished its cast time. I loosed the spell right away, as if it hadn’t even been fragmented—I’d only wanted to save it in case it wouldn’t hit before it had our man off the ground.

I watched the small tangle of magical chains fly through the air, hopeful. My grappling gun had one shot left before I’d have to load another power cell into it, but it was obvious that my Mighty Leap would be seconds away from cooling down when the spirefiend dropped its next victim.

The chains struck the monster, expanding on impact to tighten around its body, wings, and legs. It beat its wings furiously, thrashing midair but keeping itself aloft and, in what felt like less than a second after the spell struck it, shattering the chains and freeing itself of the spell, our dwarf still dangling from its grip.

Still: one talon was no longer fixed to the struggling dwarf’s arms, and he hung, legs kicking, from just the other. I panicked as the spirefiend turned in midair, faster than I’d have thought it could, and used the air it had gained while struggling in place to swoop down toward the edge of the cliff.

Then an idea struck me, and I launched my grapple gun into a tree that lay on the opposite side of the spirefiend’s path to myself, neglecting for a moment to activate the mechanism that would reel in the cable to stretch a cord through the air that was on the perfect level for our dwarf to grab.

He saw the cable, grabbing it with his free arm, the spirefiend crying out and pulling hard against the sudden resistance. I had wrapped my staff-arm around the trunk of the pine I’d first grappled, and for a tense moment my arm bore the weight of the monster’s power as it fought for its quarry—but my strength pulled through again, and I held tight even as I watched the tree opposite me bend toward us as the force on the grapnel dragged it forwards.

Then our dwarf fell to the ground and the demon flew on, having given him up. A part of me felt elated: I’d saved the second man. But I also knew that we’d dealt no damage to it beyond my first missile, and it had its fire and poison attack—the flames had subsided on me naturally—even if its dropping tactic had failed twice.

For another Implosive Missile empowered with a Moment of Mastery, I’d need around 13 seconds. I reeled in the cable on the grapple gun as the dwarf and I rushed back to our team. “There’s more coming up the cliff,” I said as I reached them, hating to bear bad news. “Weblings, or bigger.”

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

“Put this on,” the healer said brusquely, nodding to show she’d heard me.

It was only then that I noticed they’d been at work while I was near the cliffside, and realized that I hadn’t gotten a heal because the healer had been doing more important things. The two melee fighters who hadn’t been grabbed this time around both had a heavy derunium cable, likely produced from someone’s inventory, wrapped around their waist. So did the healer. One end of the cable was tied tight around the base of the huge stone pillar that held the beacon of safety.

They’d come up with a plan to deal with the grab attack that threatened to instantly kill us.

As the healer cast a spell, the gnome fighter helped to secure the rope around my waist. “How much did you damage it for?” she asked, her hands moving quick to tie a knot.

“About 430,” I said. “It should’ve had 1300 HP at the start.”

“Can you hit it like that again?” she asked, the air around us ringing out with another shriek.

“Two more will take me almost 30 seconds. But yes.”

I felt a sudden soothing, a feeling not unlike stepping into a hot sauna after a hard workout—I’d been healed. I felt good, and not just from the spell: the priest’s health had gone up to almost full, and mine was up to 85%. With the cable to keep us from being ripped off the ground and dropped, the fight didn’t feel nearly as bleak.

It took six seconds to cast a Supercharged Moment of Mastery, and I finished just as the spirefiend had come round for another attack. As before, it aimed its sickly fire at me—which I supposed I should have been glad about, since I almost certainly had more hit points and resistance than the rest of the group. The bolt of fire traveled through the air, too fast to dodge, and engulfed me in the same wave of fast-subsiding agony as before. This time I managed to read the debuff:

Vilefire Blast

Any healing you receive is 50% less effective. You are burning for moderate damage over time.

Not appealing, considering that with no Mana Shield to absorb any of the flames this time around, I was at 55% and dropping. I started casting a Supercharged, Fragmented Implosive Missile as the spirefiend swooped in and grabbed at our gnome, who despite her best efforts to dive between its talons was scooped up just like the others had been.

Only now the cable around her waist—around all our waists—went taut as the gnome was pulled into the air, then Oderion the dwarf went after her, his feet leaving the ground. I was dragged forward across the stone platform by the sudden force, the spirefiend turning outward to arc away from us and over the cliff’s edge, but as it rose and moved away, the cable reached its full length.

The spirefiend howled, and I dropped my grapple gun so that I could grab at the cable, steadying myself so that I could keep casting with my staff. Seven seconds left… six… the gnome was taking damage in its talons, her body crushed by the tension in the cable wound round her waist.

Then the enemy let out another tremendous howl, and its eye flared as the force pulling me forward seemed to double for a moment. I felt a shudder through the cable, thought for a moment that it was sure to break… but it was only a moment, and the cable held as the burst of strength subsided. The spirefiend dropped our gnome, rising suddenly into the air as it moved for the cliffside.

My missile finished, ready to be loosed, just as slack re-entered the cable. I tried, desperate, to loosen the knot so that I could chase the thing, leap into the air to get in range, and blow away another third of its health. But I just couldn’t do it in time. The spirefiend flew out over the edge of the mountain and arced around for another pass.

“I’m ready,” I announced. “Another shot as soon as it gets in range.”

“Well that’s good news, at least,” said our healer, her voice filled with frustration even as another heal put me up to 70%. At first I didn’t understand her tone—but then I saw it. Dark shapes coming up over the side of the mountain.

I had forgotten about the next wave.

They weren’t weblings, as I’d hopefully guessed when I saw them at a distance.

They were dinosaurs.