Guards wrestled a feisty Lily and a resigned Chester out of the cage and toward the pyres.
“At least send Malice to unlock the other cage,” I told Dom.
“Do I have to?” Dom put on an amused smirk, but I could see a black smudge sneak between the feet of guards whose attention were more on the spectacle than their charges. I gave Dom a look over glasses I didn’t wear anymore.
Intimidation +1
Exp +10 (3,154,555/5,985,462)
“If you come out now, I’ll spare your friends,” Fizzbarren proclaimed the lie only children who had never watched Survivor could believe. Still, I considered it. It was part of the plan to duel him at some point anyway.
“Do you think you could work your way up behind him?” I asked Dom skeptically.
“I can’t get behind him on a parapet,” Dom pointed out logically. “His throne doesn’t even fit up there.”
The plan had been made for doing this in the main throne room or the cathedral’s main chapel. It wasn’t made for parapets or pyres or thunderstorms for that matter. We had grandiose ideas of me dueling with Fizzbarren with him casting spells from the pulpit or throne while Dom sneaked up behind him for an epic backstab. We’d already replaced half the guards with our own men, including Mack, Tommy, and the rest of our poker buddies, but they weren’t set to blow their cover until after the duel was near its end. This just wasn’t the place for that plan. Still, what was the worst that could happen?
Intelligence -1(Never say that!)
“What are you doing?” Dom asked me as I headed to the door to the cellar.
“Going up there?” I told him, not sure, but what the heck, I’d just hit reboot or get killed by smite and be resurrected and hit reboot when I woke up.
“I don’t think so,” Dom’s eyes got big.
“Just heal me after the smite and we’ll see how it goes,” I waved it off. “The worst-case scenario is that I have to be resurrected so we reboot in a week.”
That is not what happened. Even as I said it, my mind conjured up a very epic scenario of my resurrection stone being found by an errant traveler hundreds of years from now in some dusty chamber filled with pirate bones and cursed mummies. My hand paused on the door handle just long enough to shake that thought out of my mind. Okay, so I wasn’t going to tempt fate that boldly, but I clutched a healing potion in one hand and kept a hovering thought on that reboot button.
Intelligence +1
Lily was being tied to the stake when I stepped out in the main square and pressed my way through the crowd. I saw Terra padding up along the outside of the crowd and two of Dom’s crows circled in to land just behind but out of reach of Fizzbarren’s throne. Most of the guards tensed as they recognized me, some from hostility, but a lot just readying to take their cue. Beau and his family had escaped, not that I’d ever thought he would stay to help me out. What could he do anyway?
“Don’t do it, Karma!” Lily yelled in defiance with her measly little less than a hundred health points worth of rebellion. “It’s a trap!”
“I kinda figured,” I said softly as she noticed me and slumped in defeat. “I find your lack of faith disturbing.” Some of these I do just for Dom. I could hear him chuckle in my mind.
Comedy +1
Exp +10 (3,154,565/5,985,462)
“Run Karma!” Lily tried again and I cast Heal at her with my one free hand. It overhealed her back up to her whole hundred and eight points of health and I only barely resisted rolling my eyes.
Without her screaming, Fizzbarren probably wouldn’t have seen me in time to stop the spell he was getting ready to cast on the pyre to light it up, so hey, that worked in my favor. I strolled forward boldly, silence descending on the crowd and guards. For once I hadn’t needed a spell to get silence.
Luck +1
“You rang?” I called out to Fizzbarren, craning my neck to look up at his perch.
“Karma!” Fizzbarren called out dramatically and all I could think was cue villain speech. I wasn’t disappointed. What am I saying? I was very disappointed. In. The. Writing!! “You have been charged with high treason against the rightful ruler of this land and blasphemy against god himself!”
“Seriously? You’ve had all night to plan that speech and you pull a scenario from Disney’s Robin Hood and a script from some B-movie no one remembers but you?” I drawled out on an almost yawn that he ignored, his face reddening with rage.
“You are sentenced to death!” Fizzbarren still couldn’t stray from this script. No wonder he was a frustrated writer.
Health -23,516 (1/23,517)
High Priest Fizzbarren level 25 (Health 10,000/10,000) (Mana 9,500/10,000) – Blessed
It wasn’t like I could dodge the blow, but with that Fizzbarren had blown his wad. Me, on the other hand? One second later, as Fizzbarren was puffing out his chest and casting a Levitation spell to dramatically descend to the ground to finish me off, I had cast a heal with one hand, drunk my strongest healing potion, and received a duel-wielded blast of heal from Dom from somewhere. I’d also gotten a heal from Terra, and one from Shadow who was around here somewhere channeling Kat’s heal into me. It gave me back about seven hundred of my twenty-three thousand or so max health. Compared to Fizzie’s ten thousand health, he probably thought he still had the upper hand even with all those heals.
Health +700 (701/23,517)
Health -53 (648/23,517)
High Priest Fizzbarren level 25 (Health 10,000/10,000) (Mana 9,310/10,000) – Blessed
I suppose Fizzbarren was disappointed when his Holy Fire spell didn’t kill me outright. He was certainly surprised. It only did fifty-three points of damage and by the time he got over his shock, I’d healed another twelve hundred health from Dom, Kat, Terra and a few helpful guards who were sneaky enough to slip their heals in.
Health +1,200 (1,848/23,517)
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Health -53 (1,795/23,517)
High Priest Fizzbarren level 25 (Health 10,000/10,000) (Mana 9,150/10,000) – Blessed
“That tickled,” I told Fizzbarren who must have finally taken a peek at me with that identify thingy.
“Guards!” Fizzbarren hollered, “Evil must not be allowed to stand in our world. This heathen freak of nature shall not be allowed to exist in a world of pure, god-fearing citizens!” He cast the Holy Fire Spell again and I quickly calculated how many times he could cast it before he ran out of mana. A double-cast of my heal spell healed me up more than he could take me down so I concentrated on that for the moment. It helped that I had help on heals.
Dual Spell Wielding +2
Exp +20 (3,154,585/5,985,462)
Health +1,100 (2,895/23,517)
Health -53 (2,842/23,517)
High Priest Fizzbarren level 25 (Health 10,000/10,000) (Mana 8,990/10,000) – Blessed
“Ah, come on, I brushed my teeth and brought cookies,” I replied to Fizzbarren, who was backpedaling on that levitation so that he was back up on that dumb wall. His guards were working their way down to me so he wasn’t guarded up there, but Dom would have a really tough time getting up and behind Fizzbarren with that stupid throne in the way. My mind caught up on calculations. Fizzbarren could do a total of a little over thirty-three hundred points of damage if he used all his mana. A few more heals and my health would be out of his reach unless he had another trick up his sleeve, so I left my heals to friends and cast a double-blast of Fireball.
“Poison!” Fizzbarren nearly foamed at the mouth. “Our kingdom and our world will not tolerate the poison of your goods or your ideas, infidel!”
Dual Spell Wielding +2
Exp +20 (3,154,605/5,985,462)
Health +900 (3,742/23,517)
Health -53 (3,689/23,517)
High Priest Fizzbarren level 25 (Health 9,970/10,000) (Mana 8,830/10,000) – Blessed
“Not the first time I’ve heard that concept, actually,” I replied to Fizzbarren, new calculations spinning through my mind of how many fireballs it would take to drain his ten thousand health down to zero. It wouldn’t come to that, but I had to keep my brain from fogging over in boredom at his dialogue. I cast another Fireball as my health increased.
“Guards!” Fizzbarren screamed again, fury manifesting in the smoke coming from his ears. Okay, it was smoke from his singed garments, but you get what I mean. He cast his Holy Fire again and I wondered if he was a two-trick pony after all. “Serve your god! Do your duty and wipe this monstrosity from the face of this world. Let her burn in a hell of her own making! And when I am done casting you into hell itself, you can watch from hell as your loved ones die on the fires of righteousness!”
The guards had their own problems, since our infiltrators had risen to stop the ones loyal to Fizzbarren from coming after me. My friends smaller heals ceased, but I was less worried with my health creeping back up. Kat and Terra’s heals could keep me going. I got a few from Spite and Malice, but Dom was distracted by having to climb a wall. I imagined he was getting some good skill ups.
Health +400 (4,089/23,517)
Health -53 (4,036/23,517)
High Priest Fizzbarren level 25 (Health 9,940/10,000) (Mana 8,670/10,000) – Blessed
“This is why your writing is so bad,” I called to him conversationally. “You get onto rants that reuse words too frequently and are so trite that no one can stomach them.” My Fireballs weren’t doing enough damage and I figured it had something to do with that Blessed tag Fizzbarren had on him. I could switch it up though, especially now that I knew I was gaining far more health than Fizzbarren could shave off of me.
“Everyone’s a critic!” Fizzbarren threw another Holy Fire at me, but it was obvious that finally I’d rattled him. “You try writing something new when you’ve read everything ever written and see if you can find a new way to twist words together that hasn’t already been done to death. It isn’t easy being a writer! It’s more luck and popularity than it is talent. The only reason I’m not a best-selling author is that I’m not a famous actor or a drag queen!”
Health +400 (4,436/23,517)
Health -53 (4,383/23,517)
High Priest Fizzbarren level 25 (Health 9,940/10,000) (Mana 8,510/10,000) – Blessed
“What a load of bullshit!” I countered with Lightning, hoping for my own form of godlike striking him down for his own blasphemous ideas about his own talent. “I’ve read your writing and if you can’t write better than this speech after centuries of studying the craft, you don’t belong putting pen on paper. Letting some machine do your writing for you isn’t going to help. It’s just pathetic.”
“I’m pathetic?” Fizzbarren sputtered and forgot to cast a spell this round. “I’m over a thousand years old and have lived through magic drained out of the world by petty lords or kings who had to kill anything they didn’t understand. You have no idea how much I’ve lived through.”
Health +400 (4,783/23,517)
High Priest Fizzbarren level 25 (Health 9,930/10,000) (Mana 8,510/10,000) – Blessed
“You should have written that story,” I barked back at him, trying my new Acid Rain. “I might have read that if you could keep your bulbous ego out of it enough to tell the truth about your own history.”
And here is where Fizzbarren got hoisted on his own petard. You see, he wrote the rules, but had he never thought he’d have to live by them? Fizzbarren’s mouth moved, but no words came out. He was so shocked that he again forgot to cast a spell against me.
Health +400 (5,183/23,517)
High Priest Fizzbarren level 25 (Health 9,922/10,000) (Mana 8,510/10,000) – Blessed
I almost forgot to cast my own spell as I doubled over in laughter, but I’d learned from the dungeons not to let my guard down that much. Well, I’d learned it from professors who told me I could express my ideas in their class, but let’s go with dungeons. It sounds less bitter. Really.
“Switch back to Lightning or Poison, babe, or you’ll catch me in the storm,” Dom said in my head.
Fizzbarren lashed out with his oh, so terrifying Holy Fire as if it scared me now with five-thousand health regained from all the helpful heals.
Health +400 (5,583/23,517)
Health -53 (5,530/23,517)
High Priest Fizzbarren level 25 (Health 9,914/10,000) (Mana 8,350/10,000) – Blessed
“It’s your own fault,” I told Fizzbarren, casting Poison this time. “I didn’t hit the mute button on you!”
Fizzbarren’s mouth continued to move as furious spittle flew. It was a little gross.
Health +400 (5,930/23,517)
Health -53 (5,877/23,517)
High Priest Fizzbarren level 25 (Health 9,864/10,000) (Mana 8,190/10,000) – Blessed and Poisoned (-75/5 seconds)
“You put the rule on the engine!” I explained. “You limited villain speeches to five paragraphs, remember?”
Fizzbarren drew back like I’d slapped him with more than lightning.
Health +400 (6,277/23,517)
High Priest Fizzbarren level 25 (Health 9,829/10,000) (Mana 8,190/10,000) – Blessed and Poisoned (-75/5 seconds)
“But you are the villain!” I went on, making up what I thought he would say. Everybody else does it to me when I can talk. Was it so bad that I did it to him now that he couldn’t?
I wasn’t far off because Fizzbarren’s look of disbelief was priceless as he shouted something that would never be heard.
Health +400 (6,677/23,517)
Health -53 (6,624/23,517)
High Priest Fizzbarren level 25 (Health 9,794/10,000) (Mana 8,030/10,000) – Blessed and Poisoned (-75/5 seconds)
“You took over a kingdom, pretended to be a god, and forced the population into slavery,” I pointed my finger at him and not just to cast the Lightning. “That is the definition of a villain. Besides, you kicked the dog.”
Fizzbarren scowled at me, giving up on talking even as he cast another spell. Did he know yet that he couldn’t defeat me in a spell war?
Health +400 (7,024/23,517)
Health -53 (6,971/23,517)
High Priest Fizzbarren level 25 (Health 9,759/10,000) (Mana 7,870/10,000) – Blessed and Poisoned (-75/5 seconds)
“What dog?” I mocked him as if I’d heard him say it. “Me, Kat, and Dom were only a few of your victims. Then there’s Lily, Chester and even Beau and his family.”
Health +400 (7,371/23,517)
Health -53 (7,318/23,517)
High Priest Fizzbarren level 25 (Health 9,724/10,000) (Mana 7,710/10,000) – Blessed and Poisoned (-75/5 seconds)
“You did not give them a better life,” I countered his silent protest. “You put us all in this pit like dogs to fight to the death and the ones who won got the best food and good treatment.”
Health +400 (7,718/23,517)
Health -53 (7,665/23,517)
High Priest Fizzbarren level 25 (Health 9,689/10,000) (Mana 7,550/10,000) – Blessed and Poisoned (-75/5 seconds)
There it was. Fizzbarren shook his head like a father disappointed with a child and reached for his metaphorical back pocket. Dom had almost gotten there in time. Fizzbarren’s look turned smug as he threw the god card from the wall. The last thing I saw was the horrified look in Dom’s eyes as I disintegrated and all I could think was that we’d planned for this too.