As we charged, I did not let myself go into a mode of swinging my weapon and pretending I was in a sword, sorcery, and sandals movie. I had to focus on the one strength I had at this time; my intellect and depth of experience from my life before arriving in Hekatondrona. Commands came forward to my monsters, with Bagheera quickly overtaking Baloo in the charge simply because of the amount of mass the bear cub was moving versus the cat.
“Baloo, when we get closer do a bear-rel roll. Try to get the Cobliath off balance. Bedevere, I’m going to toss you onto Baloo when he lands and I need you to hit with a breeze call right as you do. Bagheera? If their strikes can knock it off balance hit the cobliath with a vulcan’s crescent. If not, hit it with a pounce.”
When we got there, I was treated to the sight that yes the impromptu sauna we had created did stagger and slow the cobliath a bit. The fact that we charged through a faint mist helped and soon Baloo was slamming into the boss monster with his momentum. As he came to a stop, I threw Bedevere and the little bee fluttered to the bear before launching a blast of air at the boss monster as it grasped Baloo’s back. The air caused the pair to rocket backward and the cobliath to stumble slightly, but a mere moment later Bagheera charged and let out a roar as it slashed and snapped at the air and created a streak of fiery energy flying towards the behemoth evolution of a cobluchin.
It caught aflame, and as if on some signal a volley of attacks came from the side - the other members of the party. They continued and Bagheera stood her ground, letting out little roars in between sending blast after blast after blast at the orangutan-like monster we were in battle with. It truly was like unloading a shotgun, but instead of a single target, her blasts were in closer effectiveness to unloading one against a hundred-strong horde of zombies.
It was taking damage, and getting closer to going down but not before its heat-stunned self took a swing at Bagheera. For a moment, I had images of one of my kids being hit by something before I could react – and felt dread. Sure Bagheera was just a monster cat, but the ossicarn was – my – monster cat. The same feeling of protectiveness I felt towards my kids urged me forward and I charged.
No one has ever said that the young learn their lesson easily, after all. So despite my declaration that I would not engage in the fight if I could help it, because I was too young, small, and not strong enough – instincts moved me forward. As the strike would have connected with my partner, my training sword met it – and its metal was red hot. Subconsciously I had activated the technique, as I had let it go before running. Now, it brought heat painfully closer to me as the Cobliath’s shovel head of a fist came closer to me and Bagheera – and the metal began to heat up.
As the temperature generated from the technique rose against the sword, blisters began to grow on the cobliath. The metal began to change color, and I heard the screech of it warping, but the blade and I stood our ground for thirty seconds. Then as I could not hold it any longer, as the heat began to cause pain in my own body, I released the technique.
It blossomed in a wave of energy, like a wielding torch’s flame in the shape of the blade and that strike sent the Cobliath itself flying backward. My sword fell apart. My body ached. As I saw a prompt declaring our victory over the dungeon and the boss monster grade cobliath, I fell to my knees.
As the steam dissipated in the room, I regained some energy. With that combination, I noticed figures I had not noticed in the room before. Wearing the tabards of the Darville household’s guard, I almost felt relieved. But then I saw him.
Instantly Edbert was smirking at me and speaking down to me as he always did. “As always, outworlder, you fail to truly impress. Break into the dungeon without the Lord’s permission, almost get yourself and six other children of the town killed, and for what? Some experience? You realize that you technically failed, right? You were supposed to defeat the boss and claim the treasure without intervention from others or losing your equipment.”
As he said it, he then turned to Eris. “And to think you put him up to it. He’s a tiny kid, Eris. Outworlder or not, he’s not got what it takes to be able to pay back the debt you and your father owe my Uncle Charles. Further, I believe your group’s failure here only increased the number of years of service that you are required to provide my uncle and his family before they release you from the contract.”
Then he started laughing at us, and the anger I had felt and tried to control since I got here welled up. Before I realized it, I was throwing myself at Edbert and punching him. In the groin, in the stomach, really anywhere I could read on the teen. Even with the increased strength the stats had provided me, it did not do much but provide me cathartic relief - at least until Bagheera launched herself at him and used the technique we had just used.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
As his tabard caught alight, the teenage noble guard threw himself to the ground and began rolling. Instantly, his compatriots noticed and began to step in my direction. With a look of apology on my face to Eris and the others, I ran from the site - summoning Baloo and Bedevere to their reliquaries and carrying my ossicarn with me. Bagheera let out meows of protest at being carried, but she did not try to get down.
We had to get out of there. So we exited the room on the first hallway we found, and with the weight of my monster cat in my arms I made for a mad dash through hallways. When it sounded like they had gotten too close, I kicked a rock down one hallway and rushed down another. We continued this until we came to a dead end, and despite that, I rushed to the end. There had to be somewhere to hide in the hard stone decorations that lined the dead end. Both in my flight and in my attempts to find a spot to hide in, there had been the telltale glow of the Strange Ways trait guiding me.
I should not have been surprised when the floor fell out from under Bagheera and me. I tried not to scream as we fell through darkness and down an ancient stone shaft. The shock, the exhaustion of the battle and the run, or something else made me fall unconscious.
***
When I woke up, it was to the tapping of Bagheera against my forehead. Impatiently, the jaguar-like kitten with smilodon-like sabers for fangs paced, and it tapped my head every few minutes.
“Mrow.” She demanded as if I could understand the speech of a cat. “Mrow.” She continued in between taps, and that was what had brought me to the waking world. As I came to be, I found that I had somehow not taken any damage; but we were at the end of the trap we had fallen through.
We were not in a trap though, as I saw the glowing amber flames of the torches, as I saw all of the adornments of the room. In a dungeon that had been mostly sparse and spartan, possibly even emptied of anything truly worthwhile? This stood out like a glass of water in the desert.
Beautiful tapestries of a pantherian monster chasing what I took in to be jackanacks could be seen all about me. More tapestries featuring the panther-like monster showed themselves. In some images, they hunted, in other images they played, and in other images, they fought in battle. Each looked to be as if in different ages of development based on the backgrounds of the tapestries. With one depicting a hunter-gatherer society, another that of a classical age civilization, and then what I would call an early medieval kingdom. In each, the commonality was the panther-like creature was present, and in each stood a young man – or perhaps lineage of the first young man’s family.
Outside of the tapestries, there were piles of gold and silver overflowing from treasure chests. Scrolls were bulging from several large shelves. Fine furs stood in piles and comfortable rugs covered the floors. Weapons of various states of repair and make, some of which I could not even identify, hung on the walls, on racks, and in piles.
In a bowl on a table, orbs with the eerie LCD green glow of prompts sat, and a mere glance told me they were experience points in a currency form. But above it all stood an altar, and on that altar stood a short sword. One that looked like it had originated from the fang of a smilodon, or possibly an adult ossicarn.
Looking again at the tapestries, I understood. They weren’t simple panther-like creatures, they were jaguar-like ones. They were some evolution or advancement of an ossicarn. As I pushed myself up I checked for my backpack, and after finding it there and my monster’s reliquaries still in it, I got to my feet. I couldn’t take it all, not yet, but I could get the important stuff. The smilodon fang blade. The orbs of crystalized experience pioints, and as much gold as I could carry.
Grabbing the experience points and dumping them into my bag first, I then used the bowl they had been in to scoop piles of gold. Beneath my feet, Bagheera paced impatiently, slamming into my legs bodily once or twice. The ossicarn clearly thought I had gotten it out of order and was expressing as much. So when I didn’t think I could carry anymore, I went for the blade.
As I grasped it, another prompt appeared.
[[You have found the Ancestor’s Grasp. This ancient saber from another world will grow with you, and help you grow. Master it to learn more. Additionally, you have gained the trait ‘Panther King’s Heir’. With this trait, you gain access to the ancient panther king’s vault. You may withdraw or store the items within it at your leisure, so long as you have the Ancestor’s Grasp saber and the Panther King’s Satchel in your possession.]]
Which is when my backpack changed, from that of the leather and rough fabric backpack I had been gifted by the Darvilles to one of rawhide and leather; and from a backpack to closer to that of a satchel. As it changed, specialized pockets for each of my monster’s reliquaries began to form, and the reliquaries themselves transformed from the coin-like forms they had before to that of pyramids. The reliquaries were now shaped like that of tetrahedral dice.
Something told me that this was not something others had stumbled upon before – no way anyone would have left it here if they had. So with this new equipment, I turned to the only door in the room and took off as quickly as I could to find and help my friends.
The dungeon was over, as far as I could tell – it was time to deal with the aftermath.