A Rune Trap spell was about four by four feet, and the sigil emblazoned in its center, along with the color of the rune, was different depending on the spell. Testing revealed the covering the rune with dirt or snow would destroy it, but a little bit of coverage didn’t hurt.
I cleared some snow from the cut stone road, then unequipped my weapons and disabled my Elemental Affinity: Lighting skill so that I’d be dealing magic and psychic damage with implosive missile. Then Cuby and I started clearing a little slanted crevice: four feet long and deep and about a foot wide. I would cast an Intuitive Implosive Missile, hand on the ground below me, and it would turn some of the rock into glassy dust—which Cuby would clear with her hands, and the shield, as I cast more.
Most of the work was in moving the glass out—a sandbox worth of dust that we scattered onto the snow around us. The snow glittered a little more than usual but was otherwise innocuous.
I set the man-made crevice at a shallow angle instead of digging straight down, one made so that the expanding cone of the Destructive Wave would stay close enough to the ground that it wouldn’t go over our enemies’ heads, but also so that someone stepping in the crevice wouldn’t instantly break their leg, and could conceivably believe that they’d just found a rut in the stone. I learned Destructive Wave over False Identity, which I was sad to see go—but for this dungeon, it would make little difference.
Then, after we’d both spent more than ten minutes excavating 16 cubic feet of glass dust, I set a rune into each interior face of the crevice—a Supercharged Destructive Wave set to remote detonation. The road was cut stone, but the landings on either end of the steps were level surfaces set with paving stones, and we pried two of these up, covered the entrance to my rune trap, and then tossed snow over the whole thing.
Afterward, we sat on the ridge above the runes and admired our handiwork.
It looked… all right. We’d done our best to cover our footprints with scoops of snow that we grabbed with the shield, but the whole ground before us had clearly lost the soft curves of a fresh snowfall. It looked more like someone had been wresting in it, an effect which was clearly visible even in the almost total darkness of the cloud-covered night.
But the snow was still falling. With any luck it would do a little more to cover our handiwork by the time the enemy arrived, and with more luck they’d be too distracted to notice it with a mage’s sense or by seeing the lumpy snow.
We were leaving a lot of things to luck. Unfortunately.
“Time to fall back,” I said. “This’ll have to do.”
We glided down the mountain to take up our pre-chosen perch above the chest trap. Chest test? Chest test.
And then we waited for the enemy group to appear, hoping that they’d start the day the way we expected them to—by assaulting the mountain.
Say, Cuby said once we’d settled in. I’ve been thinking about the boss. What if bosses just have a different set of rules for Precision and Defense Rating?
What do you mean?
You said you didn’t think he crit you, she said. But he also barely missed. What if instead of needing double a boss’s Defense Rating to always crit, you need triple?
And so our Defense Rating stops him from critical hitting, but we’d need something like 60 or 70 to get him to miss like his demons do.
He’s level 15. His Precision will be over 20.
It makes sense, I said. Then I added: I hate that it makes sense, though. Our Defense Rating stacking should be making Axxonni totally impotent. Even if his Precision was 25, he’d be missing me half the time—and if you were tanking, your dodges plus my Moment of Mastery and Moment of Solace would keep you safe. Which reminds me of something.
What?
If things go well, I think you should leave, I said. I’ll take my Moment of Solace and handle the ambush alone.
Cuby was silent.
I’m not investing you with spells, remember? We need investiture for the plan. And my defenses are absurd. If I get caught, my Reactive Armor triggers and makes me almost unhittable to anyone but Nerien and Haroshi, even if they have a Precision blessing—and if they’re smart, all their grace will be spent on Blessings of Protection. They’ll have to use powers like Moment of Mastery, or that attack miracle, just to land an ability on me that reduces my defenses—and I have more health, more—
Okay, Cuby said, her voice pained. You’re right, of course. Except… I’ll try and take a higher position on the mountain and throw grenades. Flurry can let me toss out several at once.
What about the spirefiends?
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They stay above the cloud line and come down when other demons signal them to, she said. They won’t be able to see me in the fog. It’s getting so thick that I might even have to target using your mind link.
All right, I said. Good plan.
Just remember to fly upward if you get caught, said Cuby. Then she added: I wish I knew something I could use with our mind link. If I could cast a Moment of Mastery, I could sit up there and just cast it over and over while you use it.
Once you’ve got your card, I’ll be the one casting it over and over, I said, trying to reassure her.
Our Heightened Hearing signaled the approach of the enemy. There were no demons on the road, now—either they didn’t respawn at all, or the ones we’d killed wouldn’t respawn until morning. Their group came into view with Haroshi and Nerien at its head just as they had been before, walking at a leisurely pace.
And they failed the chest test.
Yes, I said to Cuby.
This is good, said Cuby. This is very good.
We’d been hoping to pinpoint whoever had the true sight and then kill them with the traps and a missile, but that had been a plan that relied on a lot of luck—first, that neither of the chosen had been the one to drink the true sight potion, and second that we could kill the one who did both before they saw us and without being noticed.
But Haroshi knew I had Elemental Aegis—the spell that mages selected instead of Immobile Illusion. He hadn’t seen any illusions from me but the auditory one, and so he’d likely either not thought of it or assumed he didn’t need it. That, or Veleth’s Rest hadn’t had any players selling True Sight potions.
Whatever the reason, they’d failed the chest test.
We turned and snuck along the ledge, then glided down to the road ahead of them and ran for our ambush point, climbing up onto the rocky slopes once we reached the snow so as to avoid leaving visible footprints. We reached the ambush site with little trouble: still no demons, and the falling snow had even done a fine job covering our mess.
Potions, said Cuby. Give me the true sight, just in case.
I obliged her, then drank a focus potion—a little cast speed, a little psychic resistance. The immunity to my own bad emotions meant little to me, now. Then we waited a little while until we were sure that the enemy has passed Cuby’s illusion and was past seeing it disappear as she cast a second illusion, a small rock that I could stand in, one that overlooked the ambush site at the base of the steps and gave me enough range to target anyone on the road.
Then she leapt to the other side of the road and scrambled up the mountainside while I cast an Auditory Illusion spell.
The spell was quite simple: it was sounds of fighting, based on the battles that Cuby and I had fought earlier that day. The howling of the corrupted, the furious screams of the morthoth, the clash of metal, cries of pain, beats of wings and then the screech of a spirefiend. Cuby’s voice joined the fray, shouting in triumph as my own voice chanted and commanded as I did for my spells.
The cacophony began quiet, then rose in volume to give the approaching army of enemies the impression that they were simply coming within earshot of the sound—doubtless those members of their group with Heightened Hearing would pick it up no matter how far away they were.
But Haroshi and Nerien’s group was only half the equation.
“Axxonni!” my voice cried out, louder than I could actually shout, echoing off the stones around us. “Come and face us! Come, and tell me what you sold your people for, you treacherous coward—your petty servants no longer slake my thirst!”
It was fairly generic, I admit—but I hadn’t really kept up with the story for this place, and his title said he was a traitor.
So much of our plan relied on luck. Would Haroshi sense it was a trap? Maybe, but he also might relish the chance to take us from behind and earn the card. Would Axxonni sense it was a trap? Probably not, but I was worried that bosses had true sight.
I readied a Supercharged Fragmented Telekinetic Hammer, then waited.
The spirefiends came first—two of them descending from the sky, one with a morthoth on its back and the other a patriarch. I could hear more overhead. I didn’t know whether Axxonni had heard me and sent them, or if they’d come because they heard the cries of their kin in my illusion spell, but it didn’t matter: I cast an Intuitive Invert Hostility, removing the vocal components, and then launched it at the morthoth as it swooped by on its mount.
The morthoth began to attack the spirefiend beneath it, dealing negligible damage, but this was enough: the second spirefiend spat some fire at the demon on the back of the first, and then they landed, fighting one another.
Just stay here, I thought. Just keep fighting here. Need more, more…
And my prayers were answered as I heard more wyverns above me. I invested the morthoth with an Intuitive Supercharged Invert Hostility, and the demon immediately threw the spell at the spirefiend below him, turning it to our side before the initial buff wore off.
But more importantly, there had been no projectile emerging from my illusory rock. There was, as far as I knew, no way for an observer to tell that the second spell had come from me.
Two more spirefiends descended and I spread some more Invert Hostilities around, trying to make sure that one of them wasn’t just being ganged up on. I tried investing them with other spells—I got a spirefiend to cast an Unnatural Terror on the morthoth, but when I gave it a Hardlight Tether it cast it on another spirefiend’s leg, but didn’t attach the other end to anything, wasting the spell.
Three more spirefiends descended—but then I saw what I’d been waiting for. Haroshi’s group, running into view from further down the road. They’d come for me.
And from high on the mountain, High Priest Axxoni’s familiar voice called out:
“You dare to call me a coward?”
It was showtime.