4
‘Tank it!’ yelled Severina as she fired a spray of healing bolts from her wand. In the cold mountain wind her white robes billowed grandly.
‘What does it bloody look like I’m doing?’ shouted Ghorborosh in return. His voice was muffled behind the skull-shaped faceplate of his heavy steel helm. He banged his enormous ultra greatsword’s blade into the edge of his tower shield. ‘Hey! Right here, you scaly bastard!’
The eyes of Glacierheart the Frost Dragon swivelled towards him. Icy globes set deep in the skull of the enormous beast, they sparkled with hunger and malice. The dragon was a mass of furious muscle bounded by scaly hide so cold that ice crusted around its body and constantly broke away in a storm of razor-sharp shards.
‘Yeah! Come and get it, dickhead!’ shouted Ghorborosh above the howling of the mountain wind. Glacierheart lunged at him, fangs snapping shut around the armoured warrior. Ghorborosh thrust his shield forward, bracing it between the yellowing fangs of the dragon and holding on as Glacierheart shook his head from side to side to dislodge him.
The healing bolts shot into Ghorborosh’s back, and for a moment his huge frame was suffused in a green glow. A stream of green numbers flickered over his head, indicating the effectiveness of Severina’s healing magic.
‘Go! Go!’ Reynard Slithersteel emerged from the shadows beneath Glacierheart’s wings, twin Leaping Steel Daggers in his hands. Reynard’s long black cloak snaked behind him as he leapt at the dragon’s rear leg and sunk both daggers into the scaly flesh up to the hilts.
The number ‘320’ appeared over one dagger, and ‘323’ over the other. ‘Sneak bonus!’ exclaimed Reynard gleefully as he withdrew his daggers and rolled off into the shadows, vanishing from sight again.
A jet of fire ripped from above the dragon, streaking past its unfurled wings to bathe its neck and back in flame. The iridescent blue and red robes of Bartholomeo of the Flaming Doom reflected the orange blaze of his spell. Bartholomeo was surrounded by a halo of white light already to indicate the flying spell he had cast on himself, and now he was at the centre of a spectacular light show of magical effects.
An arrow shot past Bartholomeo that thwacked into the flesh between Glacierheart’s wings.
The number ‘445’ appeared over the arrow’s impact. ‘Four forty crits again,’ said Asphodel Arrowbright from her vantage point on a nearby mountain peak, as she notched another arrow.
Dozens of tiny numbers in the low hundreds appeared as the flames of Bartholomeo’s magic rippled across the dragon’s scales. Glacierheart let go of its grip on Ghorborosh and turned its mighty head towards the sky.
‘You’re getting the fire damage bonus!’ said Severina with a scowl. ‘Stop pulling aggro!’
Glacierheart’s mouth yawed wide and he exhaled a stream of icy shards through a gale of freezing mist. Bartholomeo banked away from the assault on wings of magical light as red numbers flickered above his head.
‘Get it back!’ shouted Severina as her hands whirled in a complex spell gesture. A burst of green light and healing numbers sparkled over Bartholomeo.
‘Crit time!’ said Ghorborosh, who shouldered his shield and gripped his ultra greatsword in both hands. He ran right at Glacierheart’s muscled chest, bringing the square-cut blade down in a tremendous arc and slicing deep through the dragon’s sternum and ribs. Ghorborosh put his weight behind the blade and drove it deeper, grabbing the crossbars and twisting it with enough force to open up a huge gash in Glacierheart’s torso.
The number ‘299’ appeared over the wound. Glacierheart turned its eyes downwards again, Bartholomeo temporarily forgotten.
Ghorborosh tore the blade free and swung his shield back in front of him an instant before Glacierheart’s clawed forepaw slammed down on him. The shield took most of the blow and Ghorborosh fought to keep his footing under the enormous force of the dragon’s assault.
‘Focus up, you cockwits!’ demanded Severina. ‘Or when the adds come out we’ll be screwed!’
Bartholomeo swept around to the dragon’s blind spot behind its wings as another volley of arrows streaked between the mountain peaks. Reynard rolled and dodged between the stomping back feet as Glacierheart tried to kick him off the mountain. With each flash of his daggers the Rogue sliced off hundreds of hit points from the dragon’s flesh.
‘I got him,’ said Ghorborosh. ‘He’s under control. Keep it up but don’t pull. And Reynard, interrupt the breath attack!’
‘Do it yourself,’ snapped Reynard. ‘You’ve got a shield bash.’
‘Shut up!’ said Severina. ‘You lot are bloody impossible! Just focus!’
A glittering beam of multicoloured energy leapt from Bartholomeo’s outstretched hands and punched right through Glacierheart’s neck. More than five hundred hit points were torn away as the Prismatic Annihilation spell hit home, generating random status effects as it dealt several different damage types at once.
‘He’s dazed!’ shouted Bartholomeo. ‘Use your cooldowns!’
‘Hear me, Tyrhannyl!’ said Severina, her face turned to the sky. ‘Let your light punish the darkness! All the suffering of your people, let the heavens repay!’
A bolt of golden lightning speared down from the sky and earthed right through Glacierheart, outlining the dragon in a stuttering halo of power. In an instant the bolt seared through him and into the rock of the mountaintop, leaving the dragon reeling and noxious smoke coiling off his scales.
‘859,’ said Ghorborosh. ‘Nice.’
‘Asphodel, keep it pinned,’ said Bartholomeo from the sky above the dragon. ‘I’m going to Touch of Mortality.’
‘Make it quick,'’ replied Asphodel, and let three arrows loose from her bow at the same time. Each one split into three more, and all nine whipped and buzzed like fireflies to punch into the weakest points of Glacierheart’s anatomy: the eyes, the joints, the wounded scales over his heart. Glacierheart took a backwards step, almost treading on Reynard, and roared in pain and frustration.
Bartholomeo swooped down to within arm’s length of the dragon and held out one hand, which was suddenly surrounded by a nimbus of black flame. ‘Feel the Touch of Mortality!’ he intoned. A distant chime, like the ringing of a huge bell, punctuated his words. He laid his palm on Glacierheart’s hide and a ripple of black energy passed over the dragon as death magic coursed through it.
Glacierheart swung its head as if clearing its thoughts, reared up and breathed an icy blast against Bartholomeo, who had to dart to one side to avoid being caught in the torrent again.
‘It’s supposed to be mortified!’ exclaimed Bartholomeo. ‘It’s an eighty percent proc!’
‘Reynard, poison the damn thing!’ snarled Asphodel.
‘This stuff costs twelve hundred a vial!’ retorted the Rogue, who was still evading the dragon’s stomping rear feet.
‘Just bloody do it!’ said Severina.
With a sigh, Reynard took a glass flask from inside his cloak and uncorked it. He poured the contents down the length of his dagger. The effervescent liquid hissed and spat. Glacierheart lunged again at Ghorborosh, who deflected the worst of its claws with his shield, and Reynard plunged the dagger into the dragon’s extended rear leg.
The skin around the wound bubbled as the poison ate away at the flesh. Glacierheart bellowed again and the back leg folded underneath him as the muscles were paralysed.
‘Keep it under control! Keep at it!’ Severina was still firing streams of healing magic into Ghorborosh as the dragon’s claws and teeth slammed down at him.
Asphodel fired a single arrow that caught the dragon in the back of the neck, where the spine met its enormous skull. The dragon’s head reared up, pointed skyward, and it let out a roar loud enough to shake the nearby mountaintops. Flurries of snow fell from their peaks as the dragon thrashed around, its bellowing becoming a strangled whimper of pain.
‘Did we get it?’ asked Reynard.
Glacierheart sunk onto the cold stone and let out a final rumbling exhalation. Asphodel ran from her vantage point over a bridge of green energy that appeared beneath her feet to join the rest of the party in front of the stricken dragon.
‘We got it!’ said Ghorborosh. ‘Must have tanked half a million.’
‘Yeah, it’s down,’ said Bartholomeo, who drifted down from the sky to alight on the stony plateau of the mountain’s peak. ‘Phase two.’
‘Ghor, take the adds,’ said Severina. ‘Summon some fodder to take the first pull. If any get loose, Bart, you control them. Ash and Reynard on the boss.’
‘You heard about the comet spam?’ asked Asphodel, popping the stopper off a Potion of Healing.
‘Yes, we know,’ said Severina.
‘It’s what got the Doomgrad guys,’ continued Asphodel. ‘Got them right when they were about to-’
‘We know, I’ll make the resistance dome,’ said Severina hurriedly. ‘And when did you get hurt?’
‘Got caught in the breath,’ said Asphodel, taking a swallow of potion to heal a few dozen hit points.
‘Next time bloody say something,’ said Severina.
‘It’s starting,’ said Reynard. He took a tiny bottle of glowing purple liquid from his cloak. ‘Going undead. Down the hatch!’ He swallowed the contents and his face became instantly deathly pale, his cheeks and eyes sunken.
Glacierheart’s corpse shuddered as a line of blue-white energy pierced its back. With a sound of tearing flesh and breaking bone, it split open down its spine and a blaze of chill energy shot skyward. From the dragon’s body rose an inhumanly tall figure of ornately carved bone with the face of a gilded and oversized skull. It wore a headdress of gold inlaid with brilliant blue and silver robes hung with hundreds of charms carved from bone. In its spindly fingers it held a staff topped with a jewelled spider and around the others played sparks of black energy like tame lightning.
‘Who lays low my plaything?’ the figure hissed in a voice that echoed across the mountains. ‘My pet, my creation? Glacierheart may have fallen, but I shall raise it once more! And I shall do the same to you, when you are dead!’
‘Suck it, Hypoxia,’ replied Ghorborosh. ‘We’re gonna loot the hell out of you.’
‘Watch the spam!’ shouted Severina. ‘Adds incoming!’
The mountaintop rumbled and the stone splintered underfoot. Dozens of skeletal forms scrabbled up from the breaking rock, wearing rusted armour and carrying the corroded weapons of a defeated army. Each had a pit of flickering black fire in its eye sockets, and they turned towards the party of adventurers.
‘My children. My minions,’ hissed Hypoxia as she rose above the battlefield on wings of blue fire. ‘You will join them. In death, you shall find your purpose!’
‘Going stealth,’ said Reynard. ‘These idiots think I’m one of them. They can’t see me, it’s working!’ The Rogue vanished to be replaced by a wisp of smoke that flitted between the skeletons.
‘To me, loyal brothers!’ called Ghorborosh, and around him burst a squad of NPC soldiers in flares of yellow light. ‘Hypoxia, right here! Come and get some if you want some!’
‘You know the drill,’ said Severina grimly. ‘Tank, spank and control. Company of the Waning Moon, kill them all!’
‘And take their stuff!’ chanted the rest of the party in unison, and battle was joined.
Fodrish gasped in the sudden cold. Uneven stone was beneath his feet and the breath he gulped down all but froze his lungs. The glare of the transporter device died down in his eyes and suddenly he was surrounded by noise and frenzy. Glittering bolts of power whizzed overhead and bursts of flame erupted against the backdrop of knife-like mountain peaks. Raised voices and the clatter of bone and steel came from everywhere.
The other NPC soldiers ran past him, swords drawn and shields held high. They ignored him as they charged at a host of animated skeletons in corroded armour. Steel clashed on steel as the NPCs fought the undead, crunching skulls and cutting out skeletal legs from beneath the enemy even as one of the soldiers was impaled on a rusty pike.
Arrows clattered down from skeletal archers. A bolt of glittering blue-white energy slammed into the rock nearby, throwing shards of ice with the impact. Fodrish scrambled to keep his footing on the frost-slick stone as he hurried towards a large rock for shelter, his whole mind filled with nothing but a primal reflex to seek safety.
‘Hold the line!’ bellowed an enormous armoured warrior from behind a tower shield, and the NPC soldiers drew in around him as he clanked towards the skeleton warriors. The mountain’s summit soared beyond the battle, and Fodrish could see dozens of skeleton archers there launching volleys of arrows into the air. Above them hovered the most outlandish creature he had ever seen, a gigantic ornate skeleton in robes and crown, carrying a staff as tall as an oak tree and raining down bolts of icy power from its outstretched hand.
‘A lich,’ he said to himself. An undead spellcaster, master of the lifeless hordes.
He had been summoned into a boss fight.
Fodrish realised he had seen the armoured warrior before, not long ago. The warrior had been striding down the street in Noblehearth, watched with fascination by the city’s Commoners. He was part of a high-level adventuring party that had come to the city to resupply. Fodrish looked behind him to see the party’s Cleric and Rogue dodging arrows and icy blasts among the jagged rocks. The Ranger, in her intricate silver armour, scurried towards the Cleric with her bow in her hand, and slid into the cover of a low ridge.
‘Arborah’s teeth, she’s not making it easy,’ said the Ranger. ‘Can you heal through it?’
‘Of course I can,’ replied the Cleric. ‘If you idiots don’t get hit.’
As if in reply, a detonation of freezing cold erupted just past the rock Fodrish was hiding behind, showering him with painful flecks of ice and broken stone. He instinctively ducked down and covered his head with his hands, trying to make himself as small as possible.
‘Bart, can you interrupt her?’ shouted the Ranger.
‘I can’t get the timing!’ echoed a voice, magically amplified from somewhere overhead. Fodrish glanced upwards and spotted a streak of red and blue as someone swooped past.
‘Well get it fast,’ came the Fighter’s voice, booming from behind his faceplate. ‘She’s hammering my arse here!’
The Cleric sent a burst of fizzing green energy across the battlefield into the warrior, sending a cascade of healing numbers spraying through the air above him. The warrior planted his tower shield and swung his ridiculously huge sword in a wide arc, smashing three of the skeletons trying to swarm him.
A few bones clattered past Fodrish, along with a rusted sword. Realising he had no weapons or armour, Fodrish grabbed the sword and dragged it behind the rock with him. The weapon was so unbalanced in his hand it was difficult not to drop it or throw it away accidentally. The grip, wrapped in frayed leather, seemed to squirm as if offended at being wielded by such a low-level character,
If he had longsword proficiency, Fodrish could have used it properly. He remembered Melagorn deftly handling his sword during the giant rat quest and a numb coldness, deeper than the chill of the mountaintop, constricted his stomach again.
‘Screw this, casting star bolt!’ came the voice from overhead, and a sphere of red light shot down into the mountainside. A wall of low, thrumming noise slammed against Fodrish and a circle was blasted clear in the centre of the skeletons, vaporising a score of them along with the snow and rock to leave a hemispherical crater glowing with magical heat. More debris rained down, this time smoking hot like a scalding rain.
Too many damage numbers to count flickered over the battlefield. The warrior, who had been knocked over by the blast, lumbered to his feet. ‘Warn us next time, Bart!’ he growled.
‘Now the rage of ancients shall fall upon you!’ hissed the lich. Its robes opened up over its chest, revealing a cavity full of blue-white light. A painful, bone-deep sound, a rising note of building power, shuddered through the rock beneath Fodrish’s feet as bright points of light flared into being in the sky.
‘Comet spam!’ yelled the Cleric. ‘I’m casting the dome! Remember the plan!’
Fodrish had never seen a boss fight, but he had heard the tales of them told over drinks in the Tavern. They were at the end of quest lines or the deepest sections of dungeons, and were the most dangerous encounters a party could have. Some were against enormous monsters like dragons or golems. Others were supremely capable characters, spellcasters like the lich or enemy champions the equal of a whole party on their own. A boss was usually accompanied by minions who had to be dealt with before the party were swamped, all while dealing immense damage the party had to avoid or heal.
Fodrish had always assumed he would never see one, especially not up close. He did not know the name of the lich or the quest which led to it, or what level a party needed to be to face it. All he knew, from the tales of parties blindsided by unexpected fight mechanics, was that even this high-level party was not guaranteed to win.
‘Rally on me, brothers!’ ordered the Fighter, and the surviving NPC soldiers broke off the battle and ran towards the protective shield. Fodrish joined them, confident that in the chaos the adventurers wouldn’t notice the one soldier who lacked the shield and armour of a summonable NPCs. An NPC wasn’t a person, so a Player Character rarely even registered their presence unless they did something to call attention to themselves.
Fodrish passed through the dome of shimmering green light as the new stars overhead grew rapidly in size. They resolved into burning blue-white balls of ice, each the size of the Tavern building in Noblehearth. The first one slammed into the mountain where the warrior and his soldiers had been fighting with an impact that shook the ground and forced Fodrish to his knees.
Three more hammered home, each one with an ear-splitting boom. Waves of power and torrents of fractured ice broke against the Cleric’s energy dome like waves against the shore. Another wave fell, filling the air outside the dome with an unbroken mass of blue flame and ice shards. Fodrish could no longer hear the distinct impacts, just a wall of white noise.
‘Is it done?’ came the Rogue’s voice, though Fodrish could barely make it out. Fodrish was alarmed to see the Rogue had the appearance of an undead, though a tiny decreasing circle displayed above his head told him the Rogue was under a magical effect with a finite duration.
‘It had better be,’ replied the Cleric. ‘I’m down on mana. Dome’s going.’
The energy dome vanished. Through the blizzard of falling ice, Fodrish could see the lich’s skeleton minions still swarming across the mountainside.
‘What now?’ asked the Ranger.
‘Don’t know,’ said the Cleric. ‘Be ready for anything. Ghor, if she lands, make sure you grab her.’
‘If she doesn’t?’ said the Fighter.
‘Improvise.’
Fodrish kept behind the NPC soldiers. They were drawn up around a small rockfall, and Fodrish took the chance to crouch behind it away from the random arrows and bursts of magic falling around the mountaintop. The ground was covered in the shattered bones of skeleton minions, and among them something glinted brightly enough to catch Fodrish’s attention.
It was an instinct hammered into every character, even since their time in the Meadows, that treasure was life. Fodrish dropped his useless sword and grabbed the shiny object. In his hand he now held a chunk of black stone with a silvery sheen and red veins running through it.
It was Biolium, a rare ore used in mid- to high-level crafting. It was beyond the capabilities of a Commoner to work into arms or armour, but Fodrish had seen it used in the gear of adventurers passing through the city. Biolium armour increased the effectiveness of healing used on the wearer, and at medium level it was highly sought after. Fodrish remembered wondering what he would have to go through, how many XP he would have to accumulate, before he could create a breastplate out of such rare and magical material. He had always assumed he would never get there, that he would never have a piece of it in his hand.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
It must have been a random drop from one of the skeletons. The adventurers had ignored it, for at their level Biolium gear was of no use to them, but it was the highest-level piece of treasure Fodrish had ever seen not being worn or carried by a Player Character. And now, it was his.
He tucked the Biolium chunk into a pocket. His inventory now contained a Rare item for the first time.
He should have felt something then, to know one of his inventory slots was now shaded in blue to denote the rarity of the item inside. But he did not. The chunk of rock had done nothing.
‘Who are you to stand before a monarch of the dead?’ intoned the lich, its deafening voice shaking the whole mountain peak. It conjured an enormous leatherbound book into its free hand and flipped to one of the pages as the adventurers scattered and began resuming damage with spells and arrows. The Rogue became a vague shadow that rushed between the undead, severing spines and heads as he went. For the moment the soldiers remained near the Fighter and the Cleric, and Fodrish with them.
‘For only the most persistent of foes I reserve the Incantation of Oblivion! Savour this moment, for it is the last and greatest honour you shall receive!’
Runes danced in the air around the lich. A corresponding rune appeared over the Fighter’s head, a figure sketched in pulsating red.
‘Whoa, what the hells is this?’ said the Fighter.
‘I don’t know but it’s not good,’ came the voice of the Wizard, who had by now recast his Fly spell and taken to the air.
‘I’ll shield you and put up heals over time,’ said the Cleric. ‘Also get well clear of us, just in case.’
‘Hold position!’ ordered the Fighter, and strode towards the skeletons again. The NPC soldiers stayed where they were, and Fodrish took the chance to get into relative cover behind another rock.
Skeletons charged at the Fighter but he batted them aside with his huge shield. The rune flared brighter and grew, its pulse creating leaping shadows in the red light. The Cleric cast several healing spells in succession and the Fighter was outlined in green, showing the shielding magic waiting to kick in.
‘Rot your soul!’ cried the lich, and the rune shattered.
Numbers in red-edged black appeared in rapid succession over the Fighter’s head as his hit points were stripped away. The Cleric made a complex gesture and sent a stream of green magic from her outstretched hands pouring into the Fighter, counteracting the enormous damage from the rune. Black fire flared around the Fighter, somehow casting a black light across the mountainside that made Fodrish’s eyes hurt.
‘Pop resilience!’ shouted the Cleric. ‘And second wind!’
‘Using it all!’ said the Fighter as he dropped to one knee.
The black fire died and the Fighter was standing, but only just. Vapour coiled off his frost-covered armour.
‘Nearly… nearly bought it,’ gasped the Fighter. ‘Down to double digits. Bring me up!’
‘I’m almost out,’ said the Cleric.
Skeletons were streaming past the Fighter now, focusing on the rest of the party instead. The Cleric drew a wand from her robes, a short rod of gold with a fat green emerald on one end. ‘Damage dealers, take these things out! Ghor can’t tank!’
The Ranger fired three arrows from behind the Cleric, spearing three skeletons and sending them clattering into piles of disjointed bones. The black shimmer of the Rogue flitted from one to another, puncturing skulls with his twin daggers. A stream of fire washed down from above, searing several more undead into piles of charred detritus.
The Cleric fired bolts of green energy from her wand at the skeletons. Fodrish recognised it as a Wand of Lesser Healing, a lower-level magic item that some of the artisans of Noblenhearth could make. It made no sense for her to be casting its built-in healing spell at the enemy, until the bolts of energy hit the skeletons and burned right through them, shrivelling their bone into flaking black ash. The Cleric aimed low, burning through the skeletons’ legs so they were forced to crawl across the stone instead of rushing at her.
Somewhere in the chaos, Fodrish realised healing magic damaged the undead. It was a wrinkle in the rules which could be used to a character’s advantage. Some such interactions had been deemed exploits, illegal circumventions of the rules, but less egregious ones such as this were permitted and became pieces of lore to be traded between adventurers. These Player Characters were veterans, whoever they were, versed in all the complex rules interactions that governed their powers and the abilities of the countless types of enemy in the Known Realms. But even so, they were on the back foot.
‘I bestow upon you this honour!’ hissed the lich. This time the red-black rune appeared over the Ranger.
‘No way,’ said the Ranger. ‘I have half Ghor’s hit points. Come on!’
‘I got nothing left,’ said the Cleric. ‘I used my mana keeping him up.’
‘Do something!’ the Ranger glanced up at the Wizard. ‘Bart! Dispel it!’
‘I tried that with Ghor. It’s immune.’
‘Reynard? Any of you?’ asked the Ranger with more than a little desperation in her voice.
‘I’m thinking!’ snapped the Cleric. ‘I’m thinking! Do you have… can you port away?’
‘Not in combat!’ retorted the Ranger.
The rune flared and covered the mountainside in its red light. Fodrish’s eyes burned as the monstrous power contained in the rune bled out. It felt like a pollution, an abnormality inimical to life, that caused harm just by existing.
‘What do I do?’ said the Ranger, her voice wavering.
‘Rot your soul!’ said the lich, and the rune exploded.
Black fire consumed the Ranger. Damage numbers outlined in black poured out of her. A few green numbers from the Cleric’s magic only pointed out how little they could do to counteract the rune’s damage. The Ranger was just visible in the fire as a figure being rapidly stripped of its skin, then its flesh, leaving only blackened bones. The fire flared out and the remains of the Ranger, a scorched skeleton in pitted and burned armour, clattered to the ground.
‘Bring her back!’ said the Rogue.
‘Can’t,’ said the Cleric. ‘It’s… it’s Hexed damage, whatever that is. My combat res doesn’t work.’
‘Fall back,’ said the Wizard.
‘Wait!’ the Fighter was struggling to his feet. ‘We can’t just run away. We only get this shot!’
‘I can’t heal through that!’ retorted the Cleric. ‘None of us have the HP! I don’t have the mana!’
‘Fall back,’ repeated the Wizard.
‘Agreed,’ said the Rogue.
‘The Waning Moon does not retreat!’ growled the Fighter.
‘Do what you want,’ said the Rogue, materialising from his shadow form. The magic effect had worn off and he now had his original face. It was pointed and sly, like a fox. ‘But I’m not taking a TPK.’
‘Stay or go,’ said the Cleric, ‘but you’ll be staying alone.’
‘Damn it,’ The Fighter shouldered his shield and broke into a run, back towards the rest of the party. He knocked skeletons out of the way as the Wizard alighted on the mountainside and made a rapid, whirling gesture. A swirl of chill air formed a misty bridge leading from the mountainside across the chasm between the peaks, and the adventurers ran onto it as if it was solid ground.
‘Follow me!’ ordered the Fighter, and the NPC soldiers rushed to join him. Fodrish fought to keep up with them as his footing threatened to fail on the icy rocks.
He made it to the bridge just as the lich was conjuring another rune. The adventurers didn’t give it the chance to choose a victim. Suddenly Fodrish, the adventurers and the summoned soldiers were hurtling through air at shocking speed, carried by the Wizard's magic away from the mountainside and beyond the reach of their nemesis.
High in the Devilfrost Mountains, where the treeline gave way to the barren upper peaks, the Company of the Waning Moon paused to make camp. Without the survival skills of their Ranger, they had to rely on Bartholomeo’s utility spells to create a zone of warmth and safety. Ghorborosh’s summoned soldiers formed a perimeter, watching for the ravenous undead and predatory beasts that roamed the mountains, as Severina began her ritual.
‘Hear me, Tyrhannyl!’ cried Severina, her face turned towards the heavens. She was lit by the fire the company had lit, both for warmth and because the ritual required it. ‘God of Kings! Lord of the Highborn! Monarch in the Heavens, Great-Father! From this realm has fled the soul of our companion, Asphodel Arrowbright. Lead her home!’
Reynard rooted through the many pouches hanging on his belt, and took out a bright red cut gemstone. He threw it into the fire, and it vanished in a burst of crimson light. The fire turned red and the flames leaped higher.
‘Five thousand gold up in smoke,’ he grumbled.
‘Can it or you’ll screw up the ritual,’ said Bartholomeo. The members of the company all stood around the fire, eyes on the shapes cast by the flames. The sacred symbol of Tyrhannyl, a crown over a sun, appeared momentarily in the fire as Severina held out a golden medallion with the same symbol.
‘Come back to us, my sister! Follow the silver thread back to this world! By the grace of Tyrhannyl, be resurrected!’
Bartholomeo threw a handful of dust into the fire. The dust was the ground bones of a kraken and had cost even more than the gemstone.
‘Let the covenant be joined!’ exclaimed Severina, and golden power flared around her hands. She held them towards the fire, which took on the same golden colour.
‘Here goes,’ said Ghorborosh, who let a sheet of parchment, covered in dense script and runes, drop into the fire.
The flames wound and pulsed into a humanoid shape, tall and lithe. With each passing moment more detail formed in the fire until it became the image of the Ranger Asphodel. Finally the fire died down, leaving Asphodel herself standing there, looking exactly the same as the moment before she had died to the Incantation of Oblivion.
Asphodel gasped and clutched at her chest, and looked rapidly around her new environment.
‘You’re back,’ said Severina.
‘It worked!’ exclaimed Ghorborosh. ‘I know it’s always supposed to, but, you know. You hear stories.’
‘Did that bloody thing get me?’ said Asphodel. ‘I died? I actually died?’
‘And how!’ said Reynard with glee. ‘She dusted you completely. There was nothing left. If we were still mid-level you’d have stayed dead.’
‘True Resurrection doesn’t need a body,’ said Severina. ‘Fewer res penalties, too.’
‘I should hope so, for the price,’ said Reynard. ‘That’s half a dragon’s hoard of materials we just spent.’
‘Happy to see you, too,’ said Asphodel. ‘Did we get her?’
Ghorborosh chuckled bitterly. ‘We wouldn’t be slumming it on a mountainside if we had.’
‘Shit.’ Asphodel sat down on a fallen tree trunk. ‘Were we close?’
‘Not really,’ replied Reynard. ‘We bailed as soon as you went down.’
‘We should have stayed,’ said Ghorborosh. He was removing the outer plates of his armour, starting with his helmet. His face was a battered cliff of dark, scarred skin, the hair shorn close as if blasted off by lightning. ‘We could have seen more of it. Gone back prepared.’
‘It was a TPK,’ said Severina.
‘I’m with Sev,’ said Reynard. ‘We were all dead if we stayed.’
‘Then we should have died!’ retorted Ghorborosh. ‘That’s how we beat a boss like that! If you lose, you lose, but you always make sure you learn something! That was the first time we had any idea what happened after the comets and we just ran at the first hurdle?’
‘For the record, the hurdle bloody hurt,’ said Asphodel.
‘It was a TPK!’ snapped Reynard.
‘The Guild would have ressed us!’ said Ghorborosh, throwing down one of his hulking shoulder guards.
‘And we would have been paying them back until level twenty,’ said Severina calmly. ‘Plus suffered the rez penalties, lost all our consumables, and probably half our gear. It’s bad enough as it is. I made the call, Ghor. You can’t go back and un-make it, so you deal. Understand?’
Ghorborosh grunted and unbuckled his second shoulder guard, turning away from the party.
‘Ghor!’ said Severina, louder. ‘Understand?’
‘Yeah, I understand,’ said Ghorborosh.
‘Good.’ Severina turned to Asphodel. ‘What’s the penalty?
‘Minus to hit rolls, ‘said Asphodel, calling up her character sheet. ‘Until the next full moon.’
‘Why the full moon?’ asked Reynard.
‘It’s an Arborah thing. Plus I can’t do any of the wild powers. No tree step, no finding a Druid grove. No trackless passage.’
‘Not too bad,’ said Severina.
‘It’s not too good, either,’ said Asphodel.
‘In the circumstances, we’ll take it,’ said Severina, with an air of finality. ‘We’ll rest. Get some HP and mana back before we head out.’
‘Head out where?’ said Reynard.
‘For now, off this mountain.’ Severina spoke now to Bartholomeo, who had been silent during the last exchanges and was watching the small band of summoned soldiers who had survived the battle and followed the party off the peak. ‘Bart, you with us?’
‘Yes, sorry,’ said the Wizard. ‘Of course. Merely contemplating.’
‘Contemplate us up a mana feast and we can get some shut-eye,’ said Severina.
Bartholomeo began to cast the low-level but lengthy ritual spell to create a hearty feast for the party. The soldiers remained at attention, all save for one who, far from the light of the campfire, lay down to find his own sleep.
In the night, Fodrish woke. Cold and hunger combined to force his eyes open. He rolled over, shrugging off the blanket he had taken from an NPC soldier’s pack, and realised again how long it had been since he had eaten.
Nearby, the embers of the campfire were still glowing. Beside the fire were the plates of leftover food that remained from the feast Bartholomeo had conjured. Fodrish could smell it from where he lay, and even mostly demolished it made his stomach quiver with anticipation. Gods, he was hungry.
Most of the party were asleep. Asphodel the Ranger sat on a rock, idly tying arrowheads to wooden shafts to replace the arrows lost in the battle against Hypoxia. Severina sat opposite her on a fallen tree branch. They were facing away from where the NPC soldiers were stationed and Fodrish was sure they would not notice him in the gloom if he approached.
Fodrish crept along the carpet of pine needles that covered the ground, watching for twigs that would snap and give him away. He heard the two Player Characters’ voices against the crackle of the low fire.
‘They won’t like it,’ Asphodel was saying. The firelight caught the slender lines of her face, and she seemed too slight to be a warrior. Her hair was paler than hay and her long fingers worked as quickly as spiders’ legs on the arrows.
‘They don’t have to like it,’ replied Severina. She was more solidly-built than the Ranger, with a ruddy face and black hair. ‘It’s the way it is.’
‘You ever had to grind?’
‘Everyone’s had to grind,’ said Severina. ‘I had to run the Savage Shore for more than a year before I hit level eight. I killed so many crab people they weren’t respawning fast enough.’
‘Weren’t you in a party?’
‘Not then.’
‘I thought Clerics always had a ride.’
‘I thought so too, when I took the first level in it. Things ended badly with the old party, though. Too many strong personalities. What about you?’
Asphodel shrugged. ‘The Cairn Barrows for a while, to hit level four. And Breakbone Ridge before I met up with you guys. Longest years of my life. So the others are going to complain.’
‘Let me deal with them,’ said Severina, raising a warning eyebrow.
‘Ghor will say we can still take her.’
‘Ghor’s an idiot.’
‘He’ll still say it. Hypoxia’s supposed to be killable at level fifteen. The Silverblade Brotherhood did it.’
‘The Silverblade Brotherhood practically run their whole guild. They had their pick of classes and gear. And we’re hardly optimised. If we try to take out Hypoxia again, exactly the same thing will happen. I can’t heal through that Invocation of Oblivion, not even Ghor can argue with that.’
‘At least Reynard’s Potion of Undead Form worked,’ said Asphodel, reaching for something positive. ‘That’s something.’
‘Reynard’s the only one of us with stealth. Good for him but that’s not going to do anything for the rest of us except make us ugly.’
Fodrish had reached the edge of the firelight. The remains of the feast were an arm’s length away. A huge silver platter still held the devastated carcass of a roasted bird. A bowl contained half an elaborate trifle, and an entire roasted fish lay among wreckage of scales and bones. Fodrish dragged the nearest plate towards him. It had several chunks of bread and pieces of pungent cheese, which he eagerly scooped into his pockets.
‘Things I would have done differently if I’d known,’ said Asphodel. She slid her new arrows into her quiver and sat back with a sigh. ‘I blew one of my proficiencies on throwing stars. Five points in Herbcraft. I couldn’t find anyone who would min-max me. It’s like we’re in competition, no one will share the optimal choices.’
‘We are in competition,’ said Severina. ‘Everyone wants to be min-maxed, but only if no one else is. If there are too many optimal characters, the Core Manual will tweak everything to be more difficult.’
‘Is that true? I thought no one was sure.’
‘You hear stories,’ said Severina darkly. ‘Not even the twenties know how the Core Manual really works. And I made some screwed-up choices, too. I spent a spell on Purify Food and Water until I realised Paladins got it for free.’
‘Gods, I’d kill for a tabula rasa,’ said Asphodel.
‘You do have to kill for them,’ replied Severina with a smirk.
‘Figure of speech. And don’t tell me you feel any different. Rewrite everything from the ground up. I’d almost double my damage if I could make every choice knowing what I know now.’
‘Good luck finding a tabula rasa anywhere,’ said Severina. ‘You’d have to find a treasure goblin. Even then the drop rate’s something like five percent. The last one that came up for auction, it went for three million.’
‘Three mil? Who has that much to spend on anything?’
‘Some twenty who wanted to make it all perfect before riding off into the sunset. But it’s just a story, like everything. Might never have happened.’
Asphodel smiled. ‘You know a lot of stories, Sevvy.’
‘Hang around Wrathbringer’s Eyrie enough, you’ll hear everything.’ Severina looked around at where Ghorborosh and Reynard were sleeping on bedrolls, near a shimmering doorway leading to the extra-dimensional space Bartholomeo conjured to sleep in. ‘Reynard’s got the next watch, he’ll wake up soon. I’d better turn in.’
‘Don’t leave me alone with him. I’d rather talk to this rock.’
‘That’s what you get for being a Ranger,’ replied Severina. ‘Eternally Vigilant sounds like a great ability until you realise you can’t pretend to be asleep.’
Fodrish crept away as Severina rose and unfurled her bedroll. He had loaded his pockets with food the Player Characters would definitely not miss.
He had never heard of grinding, or of the Core Manual changing the rules of the world. And while he hadn’t known what conversation would be like between high-level adventurers, he hadn’t expected what he had heard between the Company of the Crescent moon.
His thoughts were confused as he rolled himself back up in his blanket against the mountain chill, already swallowing down pieces of bread and cheese. He felt a pressure behind those thoughts, a reality demanding he acknowledge it, something poisoned and angry inside him that he dared not allow to the surface.
His hand went to the Biolium ore tucked among the stolen food. It was warm to the touch. Aside from the giant rat’s fang, it was the first treasure he had ever looted.
He tried to feel that, to exult in the triumph of surviving a great battle and amassing his first treasure. The joy and the glory were dammed up inside him, that dark pressure refusing to let it through. He had what he wanted, he had done what he was made to do, but the exultation would not come.
He curled up around the magical stone, and tried to silence the confusion. Eventually, he drifted back into a broken sleep.
The way down from Hypoxia’s mountaintop lair led down into the deep valleys and shadowed clifftop paths of the Devilfrost Mountains. The dense conifer forests gathered below the treeline, broken by the ruined watch towers and fortifications of a long-fallen mountain dwarf civilisation.
Hypoxia’s legions had taken over the Devilfrosts and newer, cruder fortresses of rubble and bone rose among the lesser peaks. Reminders of the lich’s legendary cruelty were everywhere. Skulls mounted on poles lined the roads in their thousands, or were heaped up to form the walls of the undead strongholds. Gibbet cages, each with a victim inside, hung from cliff faces above the well-travelled roads, like signposts towards suffering.
The Company of the Waning Moon had travelled up these paths on their quest line to reach Hypoxia. They had attacked and depopulated undead strongholds, delved into ancient dwarven temples infested by monsters, hunted down the lich’s lieutenants and held a mountain pass against a flock of giant vultures and their vampiric riders. Now, on the way back down, there were fewer obstacles or enemies in their way. The enemies would respawn eventually, either over time or in response to a new party completing the stages of the quest line, but for now it was an uneventful journey towards the foothills of the Devilfrosts.
Fodrish trudged along the path with the NPC soldiers. The air was thin as well as cold and the walking pace felt more like a jog. The party crested a ridge and Fodrish saw below him a long path at the base of the sheer cliff. On one side, the treeline clutched at the narrow path. On the other the cliff was streaked with red, and hung with dozens of human-sized cages. The adventurers walked past without even glancing at them, but Fodrish couldn’t look away. The red might have been rust, or it might have been blood.
‘Is it east or south-west up ahead?’ came Reynard’s voice from up ahead.
‘East,’ said Ghorborosh. The Fighter did not wear the heaviest plates of his armour for travelling, but he still had them slung over his back along with his massive tower shield and greatsword. It seemed impossible anyone could walk carrying so much, let alone fight. Fodrish wondered what his Strength must be.
‘Wait,’ said Asphodel. ‘It’s south-west. I cut through the forest just below. Remember?’
‘That was earlier,’ said Ghorborosh. ‘After the griffon nest.’
‘Hang on, hang on,’ said Severina, holding the bridge of her nose as if fending off a headache. ‘I’m not wandering all over this sodding mountain. Which way is it?’
‘I told you,’ said Ghorborosh. ‘East.’
‘Ghor, you get lost for the practice,’ said Severina. ‘Bart, fly up and get a look around.’
Bartholomeo patted the spellbook he wore in a leather pouch hanging from his waist. ‘I’d rather keep the spell slots for-’
‘Just bloody do it,’ snapped Severina.
The adventurers paused at the side of the path, finding places at the edge of the treeline to sit and wait for Bartholomeo to scout ahead. The party’s Wizard spoke a few sibilant words of power and translucent wings flashed behind him before he lifted into the air and soared over the trees and cliffs. The soldiers waited a respectful distance away, and Fodrish took the chance to sit on a fallen tree trunk and rest his feet.
Movement caught his eye and he found himself staring up at one of the gibbets, hung just above head height. The other gibbets had piecemeal skeletons or mouldering corpses inside, but not this one. Fodrish’s stomach turned as he realised the inmate was alive.
They were emaciated and hunched, unable to straighten up in the tiny cage. Their hair was shorn close and they wore a tattered, filthy garment that might once have been a long shirt. Fodrish walked across the path, ignored by the Player Characters, until he stood below the gibbet.
‘Help…’ came the prisoner’s weak voice. It was a woman. She was young, with cheeks and eyes hollowed by hunger. The limbs emerging from her shapeless garment were stick-thin. ‘Help me… please…’
She was an NPC. Mere decoration for the path up the mountain, to illustrate the malice of Hypoxia the Lich. A person created to suffer.
An NPC, like Fodrish himself.
Fodrish knew metal. The cage door had been permanently fastened shut by a heated length of iron bent around the frame. The metal was corroded by the elements, and had been poor-quality to begin with. Fodrish still carried a sword he had picked up on the battlefield to make himself look more like one of the soldiers. While it was useless to him as a weapon without proficiency, it would serve as a crude tool.
He glanced down the path to see the Player Characters arguing among themselves while waiting for Bartholomeo to return. They were paying him no more attention than they had the caged NPC in the first place. Knowing their eyes were off him, Fodrish reached up and jammed the sword’s blade between the cage bars and the frame of the door. The sword was rusted and pitted, but it was in better shape than the cage. Fodrish forced the sword around like a key in a lock, and felt the iron giving way.
The bar snapped and the door flew open. The prisoner tumbled out and Fodrish barely caught her. She seemed impossibly light. He gingerly placed her on the ground, glancing behind him to see neither the soldiers nor the Player Characters had noticed him.
‘Thank you,’ said the prisoner weakly. Fodrish found himself imagining what she would look like healthy, elfin instead of skeletal, her eyes bright and blue instead of sunken and dull. ‘To die… to die free… is enough.’
‘You’re not going to die,’ said Fodrish.
The prisoner smiled up at him feebly. ‘It is enough, stranger,’ she said.
Fodrish didn’t understand why he had freed her. She was just an NPC. He should have left her be, not least because he still did not know what would happen if the Company of the Waning Moon realised he wasn’t just another summonable soldier.
He knelt beside the prisoner and put a hand on her bony shoulder. ‘You’re not going to die,’ he repeated. He realised he had the chunk of Biolium in his hand.
‘Here’ he said, handing it to her. ‘It’s an ore. Rare quality. It makes healing magic work better. Natural healing, too. Hold this close and you’ll make it.’ He rummaged through a pocket and found some strips of cured meat, chunks of bread and some tiny sweet cakes he had pilfered from the feast Bartholomeo had conjured the night before, all wrapped in a piece of cloth. ‘And eat something.’
The prisoner took the ore and the food. She clutched the ore close to her chest and a faint glow caught the edges of her overshirt and the raised ridges of her collarbones. She looked up at him with eyes that, were she not dehydrated, would be brimming with tears. She could not speak.
‘Get out of sight in the trees,’ said Fodrish. ‘There are streams from the meltwater. Find one to drink from. But drink it slowly, for now.’
She nodded and he helped her up off the ground. She was still stooped from the constraints of the cage.
Bartholomeo descended from overhead and alighted on the path near the party. ‘South-west,’ he said.
‘March on,’ said Severina and the rest of the Company of the Waning Moon resumed their trudge down the mountain. The soldiers joined them with a clank of shields against armour.
‘Go,’ said Fodrish. The prisoner limped off the path, and he soon lost her skinny form between the trees.
He hurried to join the soldiers as they marched, matching Ghorborosh’s step. Without his sword he looked even less like he belonged, but none of the Player Characters glanced his way to notice.