My Mana Shield shattered as I started casting an Intuitive Purging Radiance, thinking back to when Haroshi had deflected the beam attack—the beam had only hit Eradicia for a little more than a second before she fell, maybe 2000 damage….
Teeth bore into my body from all sides, painful and uncomfortable, damaging me for more than 200 every second. My health plummeted as the boss tried to crush me in her jaws—and I had a moment to reflect that perhaps it hadn’t been a good idea to ask Cuby, who had been perfectly safe, to burn her Supercharged Purging Radiance so that I could heal her, not when I’d been standing on the summit with the boss herself.
The boss kept gnawing me down, bringing me to 55%—40%—25% before my cast finished and I launched both that Purging Radiance and the stronger one that I had fragmented, striking her for almost 1500 total.
For a split-second I thought it wouldn’t be enough, but then Cuby fell onto the Eradicia’s snout with a drop strike and dealt almost 400 damage with some other kind of strike, activating her flurry and laying into the boss with the full force of her character as she changed her Saint’s Purity for Saint’s Wrath—and the matriarch opened her jaws for a moment to howl in pain, then shook her head as I fell from her mouth.
As before, she threw Cuby into the air, but Cuby simply cast Charm of Gliding and moved to fly away. I was casting a basic Moment of Mastery, sure that if I took a hit from the wrong attack I’d be done for—and then the sky darkened as Eradicia began to cast her killing beam.
Oh, I thought, and Cuby sent me the same thought that I sent her—a frantic realization that the mountain couldn’t block the beam for us if she was this close to the edge, not when she could just take a step forward and aim downward.
I finished my Moment of Mastery and started to cast an ordinary Haste on myself, sure that I’d have just enough time to finish it before Eradicia finished her spell and brought the death. Cuby landed beside me and drank a stamina potion—and then we both used Mighty Leap to jump to either side of the matriarch’s head as her cast finished and the beam shot forth once more, cutting the night sky with an all-consuming light.
For a few seconds, it seemed like our tactic had worked—Eradicia scrabbled backward across the the plateau, trying to get us in front of her beam, but couldn’t move fast enough to outpace us as we ran beside her. But then she gave a powerful beat of her wings and launched herself backward off the ground, staggering us with wind forces and bringing the beam to bear in a sweep that ran from Cuby to me.
Cuby used her acrobatics to lunge out of the way, and threw her last Gift of Mercy at me right before I was engulfed in the red light. I used my Moment of Mastery, throwing myself forward—but the beam struck me anyway, burning me with two ticks just as My Mana Shield regained half its absorption—and each tick did just over 500 damage. The beam ended and I was left standing in a smoking patch of dust that had once been paving stones, my Hit Points at 112 / 1340 and my Mana Shield 10 seconds away from protecting me.
Two spirefiends remained, and both of them were diving toward me—one, a patriarch, that Cuby had put to 83% by loosing my spell at it, and the other a normal spirefiend at 30%. And then there was Eradicia—Cuby was charging straight for her, but a single stunning shout from the boss would spell my death.
If there was ever a time for some lucky dodges, it was now.
But I couldn’t rely on luck—and as I watched the spirefiends approach, I realized I didn’t need to. I leapt inward, toward where Cuby had just dodged Eradicia’s jaws, then cast an Intuitive Moment of Mastery while I ran toward one side of the boss, the side furthest from the oncoming spirefiends.
When it finished, I started casting a Fragmented Purging Radiance, turning to face the lowest health spirefiend in time to see it launch a bolt of fire at me—but I paused my casting, dodged with Moment of Mastery, and resumed with my Evasive Insights triggered. I hit the spirefiend as it dove for me, dodged its claws—which likely wouldn’t have killed me anyway—and then struck it from the sky a moment later with an admittedly needless critical hit, healing 450 from my steadfast crusader’s candle-flame.
The patriarch was coming for me, and so I took its fire head-on and leapt onto its back—and Cuby took a look at my situation and told me to tether myself there, so I did, wrapping the tether around one of its front talons.
I began to cast a Purging Radiance, but Eradicia stunned me with her roar a moment later, and I fell, helpless, from the back of the wyvern to dangle in the wind. Even though this was the first time I might’ve actually benefited from Rousing Command, I still didn’t use it—not when it wouldn’t save my life.
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I looked over to see Cuby at 80%: her dodges, Withstand, and the resistance bonus from the Saint’s Purity she’d reactivated all helping her to tank the boss without the other spirefiends present. Then I came out of my stun and cast a quick fear on the patriarch above me, which had been wheeling in place as it tried to bite the tether off its wing, before burning it away with my Purging Radiance.
Cuby was reserving her dodges for the stunning shout and the bite attack, which meant that when Eradicia abruptly dug in her talons and spun in place, lashing out with her tail, she took the attack rather than spend what was her last evade—and the hit sent her sprawling toward the edge of the plateau and brought her down to almost 35%. Eradicia reared up to use her wing buffet….
Take it, I told Cuby. Glide until you’re under me.
And Cuby leapt just as the blast of air threw her from the platform, gaining some altitude before being tossed like a doll and casting a Charm of Gliding, diving to gain some momentum as she sped around the plateau to come and meet me.
Eradicia threw herself into the air with a roar, her mouth spewing fire….
My spirefiend was almost dead, though—but it was too high even after Cuby’s leap. Hanging from it by a tether, I cast an Intuitive Hex of Chains, then dismissed my tether as the patriarch was momentarily immobilized. I cast a Charm of Gliding, and then—after the patriarch had fallen past me and broken free of the spell—dropped down onto its back and cast the last Purging Radiance, killing it and healing Cuby for 600 as she came into range.
How come you don’t—
The base spell doesn’t even last a second, I said through the mind link. So no dropping them to their deaths, unfortunately.
Aww.
We both glided back toward the boss, but Eradicia had closed some of the distance between us despite her slow aerial speed. She breathed a massive plume of fire—but by itself, the flames still weren’t enough to break Mana Shields. We split and soared to either side of her, aiming for the plateau once again and waiting to see which one of us she targeted.
It was, unfortunately, me. With a stunning cry she pulled me from the air just as I cleared the edge of the plateau—but I used a Rousing Command as I fell toward the ground.
And it did save my life. My 88.5% Power bonus to effects brought Rousing Command’s base 50% effect removal to almost full—the stun was gone as I hit the ground, and I practically bounced with how fast I used Mighty Leap. Sure enough, I heard Eradicia smash into the ground a second later, her jaws snapping shut with a crack that sounded like a shattering boulder.
And I ran. I had a little over 550 Hit Points and Cuby was almost full—I needed to heal myself and the only way we had left to do it were potions and my spell. So I ran for the broken temple, hoping that it would give me some cover from the matriarch’s attacks and get her to focus on Cuby. As I ran, I cast an Intuitive Haste on myself, fearful of another leap-and-bite combo—but the matriarch stayed behind, and I saw through the Mind Link that she had turned her attention to Cuby.
I reached the temple, running through a doorway and leaping over a pile of rubble to skid to a halt at the edge of a huge pit. I didn’t have time to consider the pit, which was a round hole in the stone floor that dropped away from view, instead stopping to cast a Moment of Mastery on Cuby through the mink link in case anything went wrong outside.
But nothing was going wrong outside. Cuby had been absolutely right—like the other spirefiends, the matriarch could be reduced to a set of tactics. And as I invested first a Moment of Mastery, then a Supercharged Moment of Solace in her, then healed myself, I watched her tank the boss with growing confidence.
We had this. Yes, the matriarch could hurt her with its claws and firebreath, but Cuby’s natural Haste and her dodges were more than enough to deal with all the problem abilities. My confidence turned into an almost pre-victory elation as the matriarch charged up and loosed another one of her massively powerful beams and Cuby simply tanked the whole thing with Moment of Solace and some acrobatics at the end.
And I spent the whole ten seconds that the boss spent charging and releasing the beam on spells myself—I invested Cuby with a Supercharged Haste, then myself with a Supercharged Healing Light that I could give her in an emergency. By the time the normal fighting had resumed, I was simply investing Cuby with Psychic Parasite and my damage spell, far out of sight of the boss.
Cuby was throwing the spell out every time she got it, massive bursts of divine power that would critically hit almost half of the time complementing her mostly defensive fighting style.
Eradicia’s Hit Points went down and down….
And then she hit 10%.
The boss loosed a stunning roar, and Cuby dodged as normal—but then Eradicia’s entire body began to glow with the intense red energy that we knew so well, and, with no charge time to speak of, she shot Cuby with her killing beam.