Our pet salamander was waiting for us right where we left him. Apparently he hadn't been brought along by the wayport, although when Healina looked her skills over it seemed she could bring him through them if she wanted to do so.
“Something not toggled or what?” I wondered.
“He's in 'Field Mode' right now, which means he'll stay in the field of play like a guard dog, I guess,” our healer replied.
“Hmm,” I remarked, and then shrugged.
“We're pretty much headed straight into the west, right?” Lizzy said as she gazed across the increasingly bleak landscape.
“That's what the map shows.” Ariana replied, looking over it again. “I thought we'd have to search for it more though?”
“I guess because it's a special magic item it updates the map for us too?” I mused. Maryn started off towards the west, and the rest of us followed her lead.
“We might have time, but we do need to get going if we want to make use of it,” our shield-user told us as we picked our way through the swamps.
“At this rate maybe I should make her leader,” I muttered to myself quietly, and Ari giggled beside me.
As we moved deeper into the Fire Swamp, the heat that had already increased became stronger, and a kind of haze from steams and smoke coming up from various places began to blur our vision. Our attentive healer quickly noted it had status ailments, and raised some protective wards around us and we moved as steadily along as we could through the terrain. Of course, Sallymander seemed completely unaffected by any of it.
That's a salamander for you, I thought to myself. The fire-lizard trope was strong in fantasy games, and this one was no exception.
There was nothing we could see in the distance that encouraged our trek, but we could see our dots on the map moving closer towards the intended goal. Flame wisps and enemy reptilians picked up in number as well as the heat, so we were fighting both monsters and terrain to get there. The worst part were the elites--especially the turtle-like ones. These would breathe out a venomous steam at random intervals, depleting our health severely and tasking poor Heali to her limits in keeping us alive. Sure, the salamanders and wisps had flame damage, but those steam attacks made it seem like nothing.
And then there were the toads. Fire Swamp Toads. They had a heat aura around them, and attacking them was like trying to catch a bar of soap in the shower. As soon as you think you have it... you don't.
Well, somehow or another, we made our way through these venomous vermin and flaming fiends, until we got closer to the dungeon we had unlocked, and then we found it. Not the dungeon, mind you, a field boss. King Bombinatoridae, a flame toad to beat all flame toads. Which, of course, you might expect from such a pompous name and large size.
It started off as it had started off the last several times, with Maryn, Lizzy, and myself trying to attack it up close while Healina and Ari laid down support. Finally, frustrated with my lack of hitting it face-to-face I jumped back a few paces and switched to my bow. I got off a few shots, most of them successful; I was just getting into a groove and all but patting myself on the back for making this decision when all of a sudden, the boss expanded its body to knock Maryn and Lizzy away for a moment, and then it launched its tongue... straight... at... me.
Oh, snap, this isn't good... I thought as I felt the slimy thing wrapping around my waist.
“Hyeek!” I couldn't help but squeak as it did so.
“La--oh my Gawd that is gross!!” Heali said as she looked over at me. Ari was staring in disbelief.
“Don't make stupid comments, do something -- hyaaaiigh!!” I squealed out again as the tongue retracted towards the large open mouth.
Oh you are KIDDING me... this is NOT how I want to die my first time around--!! I thought to myself as I all but flew towards what could be my first death.
“Oh, snap--!!” Lizzy swore as I went over her head. Impulsively I nocked an arrow to my bow, activated a flame skill, and shot it directly into the thing's mouth. As soon as it impacted the tongue loosened, and I fell into the marshy water of the fire swamp for my trouble.
“Note to self, when tongue springs out, activate a flame skill.” Maryn said as both the boss and I got our bearings back.
“Glad I could be of help...” I said in a quietly outraged tone as I stood up, a piece of marsh-grass in my hair.
“Only you would react that fast though, so it's kinda good that it targeted you first.” Lizzy remarked. I couldn't think of a reply to that one.
“No harm meant,” Maryn smiled at me. “But it was kinda cute to hear you squeal like that.” she added with a wink.
“Ehh??”
“Quit teasing and get guarding!” Lizzy called over as the boss recovered itself. Maryn used a shield-taunt on it right away, and we went back to burning down its health--sometimes literally.
The second time the tongue shot out, it was aimed at Ariana; but since she was sharper than I was, she had figured out the tongue would appear every time we took down ten-percent of its health. As soon as it had reached eighty percent she had a flame-spell ready, and the tongue never even reached her. Instead the toad got a mouth full of flames.
“Nice going!” I cheered, and Lizzy whooped as she and Maryn got back up from a second knock-down.
“Now we got it: every ten-percent, huh?”
“I'll keep that in mind, too!” Maryn said.
Armed with this knowledge, we continued to evade the monster's attacks as we whittled down its health. Every time it tried to grab one of us with its tongue Ari or I would send something fiery into its mouth, interrupting the would-be one-shots while Maryn and Lizzy would jump back up from being knocked over. This continued at a steady pace for us until the boss reached the last ten-percent of its health, and then the attack changed. Instead of trying to grab someone after it knocked our melee fighters away, it hopped back and let out a loud bass-register croak.
Oh snap, now what?
It was answered by lots of higher-pitched croaking, and the boss itself raised a ward around its body as a horde of toads and frogs came hopping towards us. They were all around our size or so, and the five of us regrouped to deal with them, seeing that our main target had decided to side-line itself for a while.
“Champions!” Ariana noted at once.
“And an elite on this side!” Healina added.
“The rest are all normal,” Maryn said.
“Watch the attacks; we'll decide how to go from there,” I said, and the others nodded back.
The regular ones died fairly quickly; they didn't have much substance to them, it seemed. But we figured out just as quickly that their deaths put an enrage buff on the stronger ones: +5 attack speed per death. So we had to deal with the champions and the elite before turning our attention back to the small fry. Go figure, huh? And it was while we were finishing off the elite that I saw a timer running down on the boss.
Timer? This isn't a timed encounter; those only happen in dungeons, right? I mean, I guess this is a field dungeon, but still, timed encounters ask for your approval. Which means that timer is something else. And the only thing I can think it would be counting down for right now...
“I think the King is about to enter the fight again!” I said, slicing up a couple more frogs as I frantically looked back towards it in-between taking down the enemies before me.
“Huh? Oh!” Lizzy said as she looked over for a moment. “I getcha; good thing we figured out how to deal with these guys!” she said, sweeping a few of them with her halberd.
“I bet it does that tongue thing while we're all occupied...” Healina grimaced.
“Probably...” Lizzy reluctantly agreed.
“Just a few more!” Maryn called over, bashing the elite in the face and stunning it. “Hit it hard!” she shouted to us, and we obliged her as fast as we could. The monster went ka-poof, and we hastily made an end of the minions that had been with it.
I looked over towards the boss; the timer was almost done. Lizzy's halberd finished off the last of the mini-frogs. The timer ended. King Bombinatoridae made the motions that signaled he was going to try and snatch someone up. As fast as I could I set a flame arrow to my string, and Ari hastily brought up a flame spell while Lizzy queued up Flaming Strikes and Maryn readied a fire-reflect on her shield. Healina summoned up a few flame-sprites, and then the boss launched its final attack.
The tongue sprang out at lightning speed; Ari and I reacted at once, and two missiles of fiery pain landed in the mouth of the great frog. This time, however, he didn't recoil; he flinched, but the tongue kept going and grabbed Healina, who let out a scream as the slimy thing wrapped around her and began yanking her towards its mouth.
“Heali!!” Lizzy shouted, charging with Maryn towards the monster.
“Dang it!” I cried out, switching my bow for the daggers and speeding after them. Ari began chanting something as soon as I took off; no doubt some serious back-up was going to follow us.
Oh, boy... I thought to myself as we reached the boss monster; our healer was almost to its mouth. Then Lizzy jumped into the thing's mouth, and went with what was probably one of the oldest cliches in the book: she set her halberd in its mouth so that the creature couldn't close it. She then grabbed Healina just as the poor Sea Elf entered the maw, holding her tightly.
“Hang on!!”
“Get me out of this thing!!” the other girl screeched.
“Left!” I cried out as I got to the monster.
“Right!” Maryn nodded back. The two of us charged in from our chosen directions and then sliced the monster's tongue, freeing Healina. As the useless appendage fell to the ground she scampered out of the mouth and ran back to Ariana, while Lizzy snatched her halberd from the maw and did some more damage before heading back as Maryn and I dashed out after Heali.
“Now!” I called over to Ariana, who looked as if she was ready with her own attack.
A literal hell-storm then enveloped the boss monster, and it croaked almost pitifully as the last remnants of its health burned away. I shot a few arrows towards it for good measure, and in a few moments more the boss was down. We collected some rare materials and a couple special items as a reward, and then continued on towards our destination.
When we found it at last, we were in the hottest part of the fire swamp region. There was a statue, a gargoyle-type statue with a down-turned sword standing before a staircase heading into the earth below the swampy terrain.
“Is that it?” Maryn wondered.
“There's herbs around here,” Healina told us.
“We should get them.” Ari said.
“Be quick, it might be cooler inside there,” Lizzy said to them. I wasn't so sure, but I silently headed towards the entrance with Sallymander at my side.
This thing... it almost looks like Molek from the game... I noted as I looked closely at the gargoyle. It was probably an homage... which meant that inside the dungeon... wait a minute, aren't the developers of Panarena somehow connected to the makers of the older game?
“Oh this will be good...!” I said to myself smugly.
“Hmm?” Maryn looked over at me curiously.
“I'll tell you when we find the boss.” I replied; she continued gazing at me with interest but softly shrugged.
The ingredients that Healina and Ariana found turned out to be ingredients for flame-resistance potions, which we took as an incidental warning to what lay ahead in the dungeon below. After the two of them had crafted enough (we hoped), I then led our party down the stairs and into the Fire Dungeon, the first of the six dungeons we needed to get through for the main quest chain.
When we got to the bottom of the stairs--which were pretty long--there was a wide, open subterranean area revealed to us; oozing rivers of flame slithered along or fell in cascading falls, some of them bridged by precarious-looking rock formations, and flame-type monsters nearly filled the place. Flame-sprites, fire imps, salamanders, more fire toads, hell gators, infernal tempters, burning souls, pyromancers, and conflagrated ogres.
I examined several of them with a skill to check out their stats; there was heavy flame-resistance, as one might expect, and moderate resistance to most other elements. Even cold-skills would have a hard time wearing them down, and I wasn't sure about poisons.
“Hmm... I wonder if I can combine a frost skill with a poison one, just to try it out...” I heard Ariana murmuring to herself as she examined her skill list, making some recombinations on the fly.
De-fi-net-ly don't want to make you mad, I inwardly thought as my face scrunched up in a bemused look.
“This whole place looks like it just spirals down to the bottom,” Lizzy said as she looked around. I turned my attention to the dungeon itself at her remark; it did seem to be a more abnormal dungeon, by which I mean it wasn't divided into floors or levels in the usual sense. As Lizzy noted, the path (insofar as it could be called that) seemed to wind its way down and around towards the depths.
I looked further down with another skill; way down there I could see something that resembled a particularly nightmarish monster that had made its mark on popular culture at the beginning of the twenty-first century in a certain film franchise based on a certain legendary book written by an English professor. Before I could spend any more thought on the matter, we heard a loud, insensible chorus of whoops and cackles heading our way. We looked to our left, where the sounds were coming from; heading straight for us was a small horde of gremlins and goblins.
“Time to get fighting!” I said as I rolled back and drew out my bow as the others also readied themselves.
“Hyah!” Maryn called out in challenge.
“Here we go!” Lizzy exclaimed at the same time.
“Heals ready!” Healina said, summoning up an ally or two as Sallymander went to stand with Lizzy and Maryn.
“Let's do it!” Ari and I said at once, and the two of us let our attacks loose simultaneously, taking down five or six of the monsters and beginning the fight. After a few moments I switched to my daggers, slipping into stealth and rushing forth to assassinate a couple of the stronger ones before joining in the melee. But no matter how many we downed, they just kept coming.
“Let's press forward and see if we can cut them off!” Maryn suggested as she bashed one.
“Good idea!” Lizzy nodded back, and I took the initiative, slipping back into stealth and queuing up a new skill: Shadow Blitz. It was kind of like Shadow World, except it was a charge skill that could only go one direction. With this I slashed through several goblins and gremlins, killing about half of those I came into contact with and leaving some bleed effects on the others. Lizzy used her own charge skill, as did Maryn; our two mages didn't miss a beat. They came rushing after us, Heali's pets creating a distraction while the two of them caught up to us.
We continued forward like this, but the stream of monsters did not end -- and we were getting dangerously close to another group that would probably give us more trouble.
“Lana, Ariana! The capstone on that tunnel -- to the right!” Maryn shouted, and the two of us looked over.
“Left!” Ari said.
“Right!” I answered her, quickly switching to bow and stringing an arrow. We fired at the capstone, and it collapsed, killing a few monsters and trapping the rest inside. I fired a few more shots at the pile we were still dealing with, and then switched to daggers again to help finish them off. When it was done we looked around at each other, catching our breath. There would no doubt be more mechanics like that as we kept going.
“No safe space in this dungeon,” Healina quipped as she stood up, looking ahead to the plethora of flame creatures before us.
“Let's keep an eye out for more capstones and tunnels, and see if we can't be preemptive about them. Nicely spotted, though.” I said, and Maryn smiled.
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“Should've thought about that to begin with,” Lizzy sighed.
“Lana, some of those are elites!” Ari then told me, and I looked over. Sure enough, right out of the gate we had some tough monsters to deal with.
“Feeling confident about that new spell-mix?” I asked her with a faint grin, which she returned at once.
“As confident as I ever am with you in a tough dungeon like this,” she winked back.
“So much for the fifty-five level cap; this dungeon might see us to fifty-seven!” Lizzy said as she gave her halberd a test swing.
“I'll bet on fifty-eight!” Maryn returned as she raised her shield.
“I hope we don't run out of restorative potions...” Healina in a lamenting tone.
“Ready or not, here we come!” I said, launching myself forward with Shadow Blitz again as the others followed after me. And with that first strike, our second battle in the Fire Dungeon began.
***
It really felt like an endless grind, that battle. Mostly because it never really ended. I mean, we had respites, but this dungeon really was all but packed to the brim. There were many more tunnels we had to close off to stop reinforcements, sometimes several at once. Somehow or another I got the feeling that this dungeon was meant for a raid party.
Normal parties can have up to ten players in Panarena Fantasy Online; a half-raid is two parties, and a full raid is forty players. For some places, or so I've read, you can have a double raid party -- or rather you need eighty players to complete the objective, such as defeating world bosses. This feels like it's meant for at *least* a half-raid, based upon how it's taxing us, I thought to myself as we carved our way through a group of hell gators. An infernal temptress elite seemed to be directing them. Maryn and Lizzy both used area-stuns to create a break, and then I blitzed forward to do as much damage as I could to her before I had to retreat. Sure enough I only took out maybe a quarter of her health, even with booster skills.
“Gotta hand it to the developers, they made this one a real challenge!” Lizzy said as she saw me scurrying away to regroup with them.
“I think I see a clear-er spot up ahead!” Ariana told us. “We need a breather, soon!”
“Let's wait for Lana's skills to reset, and then we'll try that tactic again,” Maryn said.
“Works for me!” Lizzy nodded.
“You're all healed up,” Heali said to me.
“Thanks!” I replied. “Skills almost back; maybe fifteen seconds more.”
“And then we just do our thing three more times, hopefully.” Lizzy remarked.
“Hopefully!” Maryn agreed.
“Watch for switch-ups in their attack or defense patterns, though,” I cautioned.
“Will do!” Ariana replied. “I'll try to punctuate some on your attacks as well,” she added, and I nodded back.
“Counting on you, partner!”
We set back to work on our fight; as planned, we repeated our strategy for the elite three more times, but nothing happened to throw us off. She went down without a problem, Ariana adding her own attacks to mine whenever I went to attack our main target. After that, we went through a few more waves before finally reaching the spot that our mage had noticed earlier, where we gained a respite at last from the constant combat in the dungeon.
The five of us looked around at the place we had reached. It was part library, part alchemy station, and there seemed to be some sort of magic-artifice station nearby as well. Lizzy went to explore this one herself, while Healina and Ari went to examine the alchemy station to see if there was any good recipes or ingredients nearby. Which left Maryn and myself to keep watch or explore the books. Our Cymbroga tank seemed more set on watching the entrance, so I amused myself by looking around at the books, listening to the other girls chatter as they uncovered the mysteries of the place.
“Oh nice! A whole volume of alchemy recipes!” Ariana remarked.
“Cool! Oh, excellent, we should hang on to that.” Healina returned.
“I bet most if not all these ingredients are in the Marshes...”
“Right?”
“Oh wait! I see, it indexes them by regions; Aldholt, Heimgar, the Marshes, Stormwraith Hold, the Wastes...” Ari said as she read from the contents list.
“Xuanpu, the Yucu Jungles, Sylvanian Reaches, Kunlun Province, the Jade Sea... wow there's a lot of places we've yet to visit...” our healer remarked.
“I bet we could spend our whole lives here and never see everything.”
“I bet your SO would love that.” Healina said in a softer voice that I could just barely hear.
“I know they would.” Ariana replied; I could see her softly smiling out of the corner of my eye.
A book suddenly grabbed my attention, distracting me from any further tidbits of their conversation. On its spine were some characters on it that were a fancified, scrawling, and fairly magical looking version of normal (well, English) letters: The Six Guardians of the Wyrd.
Wait... six... six guardians, six dungeons... this can't be a coincidence, I thought to myself, picking up the book and blowing some dust off it as I opened the pages. I heard Lizzy let out a grunt suddenly, and turned to look in her direction.
“Ah! There we go. Now I see what it does; it's a tuning station for weapons and gear. You can attune your weapons to do a certain kind of damage or your gear to resist it.” she announced.
“That sounds handy!” Healina said.
“Right?” Lizzy beamed. “I just need to figure out how to set it up right...” she then said, and set back to work while I returned my attention to the book.
“Lana?” Ari said as she came to join me.
“Look at this,” I said to her as I adjusted the book so we both could read it.
“Hmm... 'The Six Guardians of the Wyrd'... oh!” she blinked in recognition. That was confirmation enough for me.
“Looks like there's six chapters, each of them describing the lore behind the dungeon and the guardians, the bosses, in the innermost or deepest parts of them.” I noted as I scanned the pages.
“I wonder...” Ariana mused softly, then flipped through some of the pages herself. “Lizzy, hang on,” she then said, and our Nordian smith paused, looking over expectantly. “I think this book might give us details on just how to attune that thing!” Ari said to her.
“Well that's great!” the blonde girl said as she stood up. “So what's the scoop?”
“It's probably not that straightforward,” Ariana smiled sheepishly.
“Riddles and stuff, huh?” Lizzy returned in a tired tone. “So long as it doesn't take too long to figure out.”
“Look for odd words, patterns in the letters, sentences, or paragraphs, hints of code, that sort of thing.” Ari told me as she returned her attention to the book.
“Ahh--” I started, uncertain of how to spot them.
“Here!” Heali nudged me, taking over. I let go of the book to let them deal with it and shrugged, a wry smile on my face.
“Guess I did my part anyway in finding it.” I quipped, heading over to watch with Maryn.
“All we wanted was a breather and we find more things to help us out,” Maryn said with a grin.
“Funny how things work out,” I said with a giggle.
It didn't take Healina long to find out the secrets of the tome; and fortunately for us, all of what it said we needed was either in the room or in our inventories. After a few moments more, Lizzy had adjusted the magic-artifice station for fire resistance and cold damage, and we each took our turns going through the beam that it emitted to gain the bonus. As the first person through, I noticed straight away that there was a time limit to the effect.
“It's giving us six Panarena hours to use this buff,” I said as the others walked through.
“Gotcha,” Lizzy nodded back. When the others had gone through she switched off the device, and we resumed our quest downwards with a new vigor.
Now, even with that unexpected bonus, it still took us quite a while to get through the place. But all of us noticed that it was less hard than it had been. We weren't using our potions as frantically, and Healina could even help us with crowd-control now and again. Boy I'd hate to think of how we'd be getting through this without Maryn, I thought as I vanished to launch a surprise strike on a few mobs that had been giving us a hard time. She had some wicked aggro-holding skills, and I could only wonder what they would be like as we all progressed in levels.
Come to think of it, once we get to Xuanpu we may be breaking off into teams... Lizzy might be getting her jobs and stuff, after all, possibly Maryn and Heali as well... and of course things might get more intense for us in the spring -- academically, that is. We've gotta enjoy this while we can, huh?
I took down three of my four targets with one hit each; the fourth survived with a handful of health that I quickly nixed before I vanished again to repeat the trick on another group. Lizzy was carving her way through another pile of mobs on the other side of the battle. She had kind of fussed at that “barbarian” jibe earlier, but she certainly did live up to it.
After I downed another small pack, I inadvertently blitzed my way towards a half-broken pillar, and, without thinking, jumped up on it. It took me half a moment to realize that the mobs here were too daft to try climbing up after me; with a grin, I took out my bow, and began using my archery skills on them instead. Healina and Ari both caught on to my trick moments later, and the two of them found their own perches.
“That's nice, but we can't stay here forever!” Lizzy quipped as she caught sight of us.
“Then we'll just find others further along!” I quipped back, taking down a monster that was about to attack her with a well-aimed Puncturing Fury. I unleashed a more explosive shot at a capstone I sighted a few moments later, and as the monsters lessened we moved off to a new spot. Armed with the knowledge of these safe-spots (none of us could figure out if it was intentional or if we had found an actual bug this time), we raced down to the depths of the dungeon at an almost breakneck pace. By the time we had gotten to the bottom, there was still three and a half hours left on our buff.
Quickly, we identified and destroyed the capstones to cut off reinforcements. Then we dealt with the champion elites and mini-bosses with mobs swarming around them. This took us another half-hour to do, and finally the chamber was cleared. We had gotten to level fifty-seven; as we recuperated, we allocated our skill and stat points, and then looked at the gate separating us from the boss. It was the creature I had half-imagined seeing earlier.
I brought up its ID; “Lord of Flames”. It had fire immunity and heavy lightning resistance, moderate physical resistance, mild cold and poison resist, and low holy resist. There was a weapon in its hand that looked like a glaive of some kind. It seemed to have some sort of wings, though they may have been just some strange effect of the smoke and flames coming off of its body. The eyes gleamed like coals in the fire, framed by jagged features, and two horns like the horns of a gazelle grew out of its head. It was massive and muscular, and it seemed to be chafing to get at us. I reported the resistances to the others, who looked around at each other somewhat anxiously; I couldn't blame them.
“Well dang,” Lizzy remarked as she looked over towards it. “And those bars are all that keeps him from us?”
“You kept the book, right?” Healina said to Ari.
“It's right here,” the other girl replied, taking it out. “There's a series of levers in this room we need to pull in the right order to face him.”
“What's the order?” I asked her.
“We also need to pull them in thirty seconds or less.” she added with a wry expression. I looked around; there were ten levers, two each in five spots spaced fairly evenly around the room.
“This should be nearly a cinch,” I said.
“True.” Lizzy agreed. “Each of us gets two levers.”
“Right,” Maryn nodded, and went off to one of the lever spots. The rest of us followed her example, and when we had gotten into position, Ariana read the book again carefully.
“All right; here's the order: Lizzy, Maryn, Heali, myself, and Lana; then Lizzy, Lana, myself, Heali, and Maryn.” she called out to us.
“So basically it's clockwise from me the first time, then counterclockwise the second.” Lizzy called back.
“Exactly.” Ari replied.
“All-righty then; all ready?” our smith called out.
“Go!” Maryn nodded; we pulled the levers according to the order given to us by Ariana, and then the bars began receding into the floor and the ceiling. The boss was now let loose. Our final battle in the Fire Dungeon had begun.
“Ariana, focus on holy damage; Heali, get your cold sprites out, and that frost bird also. Don't forget warding lores!” I said to the two of them as we grouped up in preparation.
“Got it!”
“Will do!” the two of them replied.
“I'll stick with basic retaliations and adjust as I need to,” Maryn told us. “He probably has some sort of big flame attack, and I'm positive that sword will do massive damage of some kind.”
“I'll keep you healed.” our Sea Elf said confidently.
“Lizzy, you and I should attack it from the sides or the rear, if that's possible.” I said.
“If it's possible? Look at the size of that thing!” she returned.
“I mean if there's no flame reflect or something!” I told her quickly.
“Ah, okay -- gotcha!” she nodded.
“If there is the two of us are in trouble,” Maryn noted.
“Not Lana?” the Nordian said with a funny look.
“Um, bow?” I quipped to Lizzy, who stuck her tongue out at me. The grinding of the bars ceased, and a heavy foot stepped forth, then another, and the Lord of Flames emerged from his alcove.
“Ohh boy.” Lizzy gulped nervously. “That thing's as big as a modern house.”
“Here's Johnny...” I muttered anxiously as the undeniable boss monster halted before us.
“Mortals... prepare yourselves, prepare your souls: I am the Lord of Flames; die!” the creature said to us in a voice that sounded like a raspy avalanche. It swung the sword down, and the five of us scattered to avoid being hit.
The impact on the ground alone was enough to knock us over. Healina quickly let off a heal, and then applied a few heals-over-time on us while she coordinated her cold minions to attack. Our adversary swung his sword down again. This time, Maryn stood her ground, shield raised.
You're bonkers!! I thought to myself as I sucked in a breath. There was a loud clang. The boss reeled back; Maryn seemed to be quivering from the blow, but amazingly her health was in the green--though it had taken a hit. I gaped in disbelief, as did Ariana beside me.
“Ho-ly...” she sputtered in amazement.
“We can do this!” Maryn called out to us. I slapped myself a couple times, and then looked over at Ariana. We nodded to each other. Ari let loose several holy bolts and then a new skill, Purifying Wave, and I rode on the tails of those skills as I dashed in with daggers this time, preparing a skill of my own.
“Holy Crescent Flash!” I called out as I reached the boss, striking its ankle.
“Hy-yaahh!” Lizzy roared, leaping into the air with her halberd raised over her head; she brought it down with a thunderous rapport, and a few of Heali's cold minions began swarming the boss. It then stamped its feet a couple times, knocking us back. I quickly looked for its health bar; we had dealt about four-percent damage to it. But we weren't in danger of dying ourselves any time soon.
You're right, we can do this! I thought to myself with a surge of confidence.
“So it's to be a true battle, then,” our giant-sized adversary rumbled.
I hope we didn't just wake up some rude mechanic designed to one-shot us... I thought with a brief panic, but the Lord of Flames showed no signs of one.
“Very well! Prepare yourselves!” he then thundered out. Maryn's response was to shield-taunt him; he swung down again, and this time our shield-user used a bashing skill to block his blade, knocking him off balance just enough for Lizzy and I to get a few hits in before we needed to scamper again.
“Ninety-three percent!” Ariana called out. Our enemy then stomped again, dazing us for a moment. Maryn quickly recovered herself and went on the defensive while the rest of us reoriented ourselves. I saw a particularly heavy blow descend upon her; it knocked a third of her health out. Healina quickly responded with several heal-over-time skills and a protective shield to bolster our defender.
Nice!
“Lana, stay back here with Ari and me; there's less damage to us, and it'll be easier for me to heal two in this situation rather than three,” Heali said, and I nodded back, switching to bow again.
“You got it.” I said, and then queued up a few ranged skills I knew would work.
“I'll augment whatever you fire.” Ariana said as she came to my side.
“Right!” I returned, aiming for the eyes of the boss. “Twin Stars!” I called out, and as the arrow left the string it split into two. Ari sent a couple of holy bolts on their tails, along with a frost spear; we hit our marks, and the boss staggered for several moments, then stomped again, letting out a roar this time. Maryn and Lizzy struggled to stay on their feet this time, just barely managing. A wave of minions--elite minions, but minions all the same--came rushing in, and the boss activated an immunity shield. His health was at ninety-percent.
“One mechanic, figured out.” I said as I strung another arrow.
“This'll be harder than we thought,” Ari added, and Heali nodded.
“But like Maryn said, we can do this.” I replied. Ari nodded back to me, and we returned our attention to the battle before us.
***
Okay. So. It was actually a lot harder to get through in the end than we initially thought, but we did it. At eighty percent, the same thing that had happened at ninety-percent happened, but the boss also activated an uninterruptible healing skill that restored his health to ninety. Also, it may have been our imaginations, but we were fairly certain that more minions appeared this time. When the seventy percent mark had been reached (without an immunity shield stomp or minion wave happening again at eighty, thankfully), there were definitely more minions.
And then the sixty percent fiasco happened. It was just like the eighty-percent mechanic, where he restored ten-percent of his health, but this time some champion elites came in to join the fray alongside the regular elites. Healina was hard put to keep us all alive, even with me staying on ranged; I decided in the middle of this to go daggers for a few minutes and help with the melee, which worked for a while, but I soon found myself scampering back to use my bow when one of them actually landed a hit on me, taking down nearly half my health.
Healina and I exchanged a wry grin as I came back, and she softly shrugged, as if to say it had been worth the attempt. Ari, Lizzy, and I used a few multiple target skill for the next several moments, whittling down the minions as fast as we could. Maryn should have had a tough time keeping the three of us safe, but Ariana had put a holy-flame barrier around us to ward off attacks, allowing our shield-user to focus on keeping Lizzy from gaining too much threat.
Eventually we ground down the pile of minions, and then we whittled the boss down to fifty percent; here we found out that he had a special healing skill that restored twenty-percent of his health. And another pile of champion elites came swarming in while his immunity shield was up. Well that drove us practically crazy. This time I merely made a brief apology to our healer before switching to daggers again, racing around the edges of the fray to do as much damage as I could. Our pet salamander wove in and around the fight, doing what it could to aid us. Several times it actually saved my hide from a deadly attack, allowing me to continue my shadowed frenzy.
Anyway. Things went like that for pretty much the rest of the fight; fortunately he didn't have any restorative skills once he hit zero-health. By the time we got him there, we were both very frustrated from a super long fight and very elated at seeing his health fall into single-digits. The five of us attacked as one for the final blow, and after a prolonged death scene the Lord of Flames burst apart into nothingness, leaving behind a chest and a portal that led to somewhere else in the Marshes of the Wyrd. We looted the chest without really examining what we had gotten, and made our way through the portal. It was then that I noticed my quest journal updating.
Acquired: Frost Charm.
“Oh, wow. Nice, I guess...” I remarked, too tired to be enthusiastic about it.
“Hehh, screw that thing... where are we?” Lizzy wondered.
“Looks like a hunting camp.” Maryn said as we nearly staggered forward towards the light of a fire.
“So long as it's a safe place to log out.” Healina remarked, and then rest of us nodded eagerly in agreement.
“You said it.” I returned.
“Maybe we should skip tomorrow night?” Ariana suggested.
“Maybe.” I had to agree.
“We'll see how we feel tomorrow.” Lizzy said.
“Whew! It's a safe camp.” Heali then said.
We had stumbled into a hunting camp that was several long leagues northwest of either Berrydell or the Fire Dungeon. According to the map, we had traversed a fourth of the distance we needed to go -- which was still quite a ways. But all of our adventures had been quite enough for today. We paid the huntmaster a generous sum for lodgings, and then gratefully logged out for the night.