The door slides open and Alicia rolls forward and pops up, guns drawn. The chamber ahead is circular, and about 30 feet across. Aaaaand it's full of thousands of skulls. The walls and floor are covered in skulls. And they all begin to clack and clatter.

Alicia opens fire on some of the clattering skulls, shattering one with each bullet. Thousands of eye sockets begin to glow red. Then the skulls begin to float.

I throw five blades forward and cast Holo Shield on each one. Shields of yellow light flicker into existence and I push the rapidly approaching skull horde back. Alicia pulls two grenades from her belt, pulls the pins, and tosses them towards my center shield and I tilt it to let them pass through. Then I pull my shields back and layer them over each other right in front of Alicia.

The double explosions of the grenades rocks the room, sending bone shrapnel in every direction. I check my radar to see how many enemies are left and unfortunately I see only one red dot on it.

“There's just one real enemy,” I say to Alicia.

Quins is at my back and taps me on the shoulder. “Mind if I cut in ‘ere, captain?” he says, totally unfazed by the skeletal onslaught.

I slide against the wall to let him past and he carefully draws an arrow in the tight quarters. Then, before he places it on his bow, he does something to it. It looks like the item creation glowing gears, but the arrowhead comes apart in fragments, swirls around and then comes back together again. Except now there's a glowing blue core to the arrowhead, and it has four blades instead of two. Then, without looking at anything in particular, he draws back and fires the arrow into the room ahead.

The arrow moves slowly through the air, maybe only a few feet per second. It's clearly being held up by whatever Quins did to the arrow. And it's path turns as if it were swimming through the air, rather than flying in any semblance of a ballistic trajectory. It dips below my shields, flies around several floating skulls, then rotates towards the floor. It comes to a complete stop and then jets off like I'd expect an arrow to, firing down into the pile of skulls. There's a sound of snapping bone and the red dot disappears from my radar.

“Homing shot,” Quins replies, as if it were incredibly ordinary. “Works as advertised, I suppose. A bit on the slow side, yeah?”

“How the crap does being a Grenadier give you homing arrows?” I ask, genuinely stumped.

“Well ya see,” Quins begins. “It's like this, yeah? I figured I'd be able to use whatever I got with my bow and turns out I was right. I got offered a subclass thing, one of those off-the-books ones. Bomb Arrow Grenadier, it's called. So I got things to make arrows into bombs and missiles. Like that one, that's an ‘oming Missile, mixed with an arrow. Bleedin’ arrow finds the target itself.”

This guy is much smarter than I thought he was. He's clearly just a British Jose, hiding genius behind odd mannerisms. Jose does it because he doesn't want to stand out. I wonder if this guy is the same.

“Well, great job then. Alicia doesn't seem to care about the coins so they're all yours. If you can find the creature's body to smash.”

After 5 minutes of rummaging through broken bones for the right broken bones, he gives up and grenades the room again. This time the skulls are well and truly in tiny shards and loot drops from one of them. It's a pair of rubies.

Red Eyes Of The Skull. If you replace a lost eye with one of these it'll function as a regular eye, plus give you heat vision. If you use both, you gain the ability to manipulate skulls.

“They're only useful if you lose an eye first,” I tell Quins. He shrugs and pockets the rubies. Maybe they'll go to his probably-cheating significant other.

I trudge through broken bones to the black steel double doors on the far side of the room. I pull on the large metal ring that functions as a door handle. Nothing happens. I pull again, using strength that exceeds world class body builders. Nothing happens. I strain my muscles, pulling, almost wrenching the doors away from the wall. Right when I'm about to resort to magical means Quins comes up behind me, coughs politely, and then casually pushes the door open.

“It's a push, captain,” Quins says with a wry smile.

“Of course,” I say. “Just warming up my muscles a bit first.”

“Of course, sir,” Quins replies.

I mutter things under my breath and shove him out of the way. I'm still muttering as I descend the stairs to the next floor.

The stairs are made of the same dark green stone as the attempted temple outside. And as we descend, they get bigger. The steps start out at a normal, 5 to 10 inch height. Then they extend to 12 inches per step. Then 14. The tunnel is dimly lit but without any visible light sources. The passage widens from just 4 feet wide to 6, then 8. The passage gets wider with each step, each step getting taller and harder to climb down. I'm three quarters of the way to the bottom and the step is now three feet tall and 20 feet wide. And it doesn't let up. By the time we get to the bottom we're climbing down 6 foot steps and the passage is 50 feet wide.

Mercy is the one who says it out loud, but I think we all realize it. “I don't think these steps were made for humans,” she says, and instead of echoing in the stone tunnel her words seem to be absorbed by the stone, coming out muffled.

There's no door at the bottom of the stairs. It just opens up into an absolutely massive complex of arches, altars, short-ish free standing walls with carved scenes and statues depicting alien gods.

“Well,” I say to the group as we gather together. “Time to fight Cthulhu, I guess.” And unfortunately, I'm right.

The far side of the room has to be at least a mile away, and there seems to be a trench or gap in the floor over there. The entire chamber is dimly lit like the tunnel was, and in the dark distance I see something massive rise from the gap. And it's clearly just the head.

A dark green, mottled, squid-like head rises from the gap. It must be at least 30 feet tall and twice as wide. Dozens of tentacles as big as fire hoses swirl and slash out from where a mouth should be. The creature rises more, revealing muscular shoulders, with each shoulder being extra thick to accommodate the two arms Cthulhu has on each side of his body. An arm the size of a firetruck reaches up from the gap and tries to pull the massive body up into the chamber. I don't know if the 100 foot ceiling will even fit this thing in a crouch. The arm grabs a nearby column and tries to pull but the stone column simply crumbles in the massive webbed hand.

I scan it, knowing full well as to what this thing is.

Star Spawn Of Cthulhu. Tier 6. A dark god. An old one. A devourer of worlds. A king of chaos. Also a bad houseguest. This isn't even the big guy himself, it's a fragment of a memory of a dream, which is real because of chaos magic. You know what? Just run this time. Seriously. No, I'm not being sarcastic or making fun of you. A Star Spawn Of Cthulhu can and will kill every living creature on your planet given the chance. You are nothing before his might.

Possible Loot: Cursed Items, Necronomicon.

Well that's cheerful. “Alright, anyone got a plan?” I ask the group.

“In the story they rammed a boat into him,” Mercy says. “Anyone have a boat?”

I don't think anyone does. I glance around the room and see if there are any clues or advantages we can take. Dotted around the room I see four pedestals with faintly glowing tomes on them. Green energy wafts up from each open book like glowing smoke.

Jose and Quins are already opening fire at this range. Their attacks don't seem to be doing anything. Jose charges and fires a lightning bolt into one of Cthulhu's eight totally black eyes. After the bolt fades there's no visible damage at all. Quins fires some kind of explosive arrow into another eye and similarly there's no damage.

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“No damage even to the eyes is a bad sign,” Jose says.

Alicia asks, “are we supposed to treat it like a trap and just avoid it?”

Star Spawn Cthulhu's eyes glow purple and the ground beneath us glows the same purple. “Move!” I shout. Most of us get out of the glowing area but Franco, slow ass Franco, doesn't. Purple flames erupt from the ground and he's covered in searing purple heat. He's already in motion though, and keeps moving, taking two slow steps until he's clear of the flames. His armor and skin is ON FIRE but he seems... Okay?

His eyes glimmer with hatred and he says, “you were right, I do like the Barbarian class.”

He must have taken the Indomitable Barbarian subclass. It reduces damage you take while in a rage, which he probably is in, judging from his clenched jaw and furious tone. He raises the MK 16 SCAR L I'd given him to replace his wrecked machine gun. He empties a whole clip in Cthulhu's face which, again, does nothing. Rage gives you bonuses to attack and other stuff, but forces you to attack.

Though he's probably only taking a tiny amount of damage, being ON FIRE is still bad. I slap him on the back of the head and cast Pure Palm as I do. I feel my Ki drain as the ability reduces both the rage and the flames, but this costs me 55 Ki. The rage ends, Franco shakes the anger from his head, then he reloads.

“What's the play, boss?” he asks.

“Books!” Mercy yells, her flight unit lights up and she jets off towards the nearest tome-toting podium.

“Split up,” I say. “Avoid anything glowing purple. Find a book, close it. Stay on comms. Go!”

We all head in different directions. I decide to go for the book closest to the big monster. Mini Cthulhu reaches out a massive hand towards me and I feel like I'm dodging a bus hurtling towards me at 60 MPH. I barely escape the massive hand as I leap to the right of it. The arm just keeps going and smashes through one of the short walls behind me. I see the arm begin to shift and I leap 20 feet into the air over the freight train of an arm as it sweeps towards me.

Mercy is on the comm channel and updates us. “I closed the book but that didn't stop the green light so I cut it in half and that worked!”

“Blast those books!” I cry out and follow my own command. I fling a wakizashi forward and use Flame Thrower to torch the entire podium ahead of me. “Second one down!”

“Got a third,” comes Jose's voice.

Quins chimes in, “fourth is finished.”

Alicia lets us know, “I have a fifth book... Destroying now.”

I try to attack big green and ugly. I shoot a few rounds from my Sig Sauer P226. I'm close enough to see the bullets actually bounce off the creature's skin. It looks soft and glossy, like a dolphin. Cthulhu turns to me and his mouth tentacles waggle at me. The tips of the dozens of appendages light up with a piercingly bright purple light. That's probably bad. I dash straight to the left and dozens of purple lasers cut across the room, chasing after me. The swarm of cutting death slices a pillar I pass. I run behind a wall but don't stop. I hear it get lasered apart and then collapse into rubble behind me. I keep running.

I am fast. At 89 Agility I'm over twice as fast as the previous fastest human. I have to be running at close to 50 MPH. I curve my trajectory to Cthulhu's right, the left side of the room. I'm hoping to get out of his laser range. The lasers chase me. If I wasn't super humanly fast I'd already be dead. I keep running.

Unfortunately I'm running out of room. I approach the gap Cthulhu's in and have to come to a stop at the edge. He's turning his massive head towards me, the lasers getting closer by the second. I look down into the pit and can't see the bottom. Cthulhu's massive frame is wedged in there without room to maneuver. He starts to swing his arm again and from here I can see how hard it must have been for him to even get it up in the room. This dumb floor plan is literally the only reason we're not dead already. Lasers close in on me. They're almost here. I have nowhere to run.

I start using Holo Shield on several wakizashis when I hear Franco's voice. “Found one, trashing it.”

As soon as he cuts off the lasers also cut off and a horrible squelching roar echoes through the massive room. Cthulhu rears back his head, possibly in pain. And I see something really, really important- his neck. The skin there is saggy and thin and I don't hesitate. I immediately open fire with my gun, send five blades over to the exposed flesh, and shout, “shoot the neck now! Everything you've got!”

My blades close in and I cast Freezing Beam through all five, hoping to freeze his upturned head in place. A massive blue lightning bolt surges through the room and I see an explosion of dark green blood as a hole the size of a small car opens up. I hear the echo of rifle fire and the whir of Mercy's mecha chain gun. Bullets rain down the length of the room. I aim and fire an Obsidian Sphere from one of my blades and the void orb sinks into the hole already left by Jose's lightning bolt. The orb tries to absorb whatever it touches and the already opened hole becomes a tunnel of gooey flesh.

That's when I finally see Quins. He's got three arrows strung, each with a different, large arrowhead on it. I see him in profile as he fires all three. I see the arrows arc through the air. I see Cthulhu's head starting to come down to protect his neck. And I see all three arrows narrowly make it into the tunnel we've dug into the monster.

Three different explosions happen in rapid succession, each with a different effect. The first explosion inside Cthulhu pushes his head back up. The second explosion sends a stream of fire out the neck hole. And a third, clearly MUCH larger explosion blasts the neck right in half, sending his head flopping backwards into the wall. There's a sickening sound of slapping of meat as the massive head backs into the dark stone wall.

Blood gushes from dozens, maybe hundreds of veins, sending a rain of dark green liquid into the gap Cthulhu is standing in. His arm comes up and grabs at the exposed neck, then tries to pull his head back down. He's STILL not dead? I send five wakizashis up into the head through the neck hole and set them to spin. The big monster lets out a massive keening cry that echoes in my mind, sending me to my knees. A psychic attack? Doesn't matter. Can't. Stop. Now.

I keep my blades in the monster and keep them spinning like drills. I drag them left, then right. I have no idea where they are or how much damage I'm doing. The rain of green blood seems to be slowing down. I can't slow down. I have enough Arcana Points to cast another devastating Obsidian Sphere and cast it from a wakizashi inside the monster's head. The guns of my allies haven't let up this entire time. Jose sends lightning bolt after lightning bolt into the Star Spawn's face. Quins fires two more explosive arrows and they blow blubbery chunks of flesh off the monster.

And then it happens. My Obsidian Sphere bursts up and out the top of Cthulhu's head and the entire monster slumps down into the crevasse. Blood seeps from wounds instead of spraying as whatever functions as this thing's heart stops beating.

I try to pull my blades out of Cthulhu's brain and it takes a minute as they work through flesh. When they finally get back to me they are utterly disgusting. I do my best to scrape off the gunk and gore by grinding them along the edge of the gap.

Everyone comes to the edge of the gap and takes in the horrid sight, some staring for just a second, others (Franco) drinking in the carnage. Everyone except Alicia.

“Alicia?” I ask over comms. I check my radar and see her a hundred feet back in the room. I run over in that direction.

“Alive,” she says, and then I see her. She's on the ground. Her right leg is cut off at the knee. It looks cauterized. Her face is a mask of pain and I can see that she's desperately trying to keep it together.

“Shit, the lasers,” I say and approach. I grab the cut off leg and bring it over to her stump. “I'm going to try something.”

“Better be fucking good,” she says through gritted teeth. I bring the two cauterized parts together and cast Restoration Palm. The healing Monk technique should patch up and restore flesh. But the golden light winks in and then immediately out.

“Shit, Jose, do you have a drink for Ki recovery?” I forgot that I'd spent all my Ki making Franco not be on fire.

Jose pulls a large plastic tote out of his inventory and pops the lid open. He throws me a bottle of water and I quickly guzzle it. It's barely recovered any of my Ki, maybe 5 points. Back when we first got powers, 5 points seemed like a lot. Now it wasn't even enough to initialize my Restoration Palm technique, nevermind sustain it through a heal.

I breathe deep and know I'm going to push myself hard. I hold my hands over the severed leg and use Restoration Palm again, this time dropping past zero Ki Points. I immediately feel exhausted. That's the side effect of Ki depletion, tiredness. Every second of Restoration Palm uses 10 KP, and every second I'm using it seems to be healing a mere centimeter of flesh. It's working, but it's working slowly.

I don't look up at her face as Alicia screams in pain and grasps her leg. I just concentrate on the healing. I'm already on my knees and I start to feel my legs fall asleep. The tingling first feels nice, then the sharp pain of blood loss stabs into me like a thousand needles. My arms feel heavy. My eyelids can't stay open. I can see her leg is just now halfway back together. Her screaming seems further away for some reason. My right arm drops as I can't hold it up any longer. The healing slows even further. My left eye closes in utter exhaustion. Then Jose is there and lifts my right arm back up, putting it where it needs to be over the wound.

I can barely remember what I'm doing here. Restoration Palm, I think. Man, I'm tired. This seems to be going on forever. I feel like a weight is on my chest even though I'm leaning forward. I feel hands on my shoulders keeping me upright. Was I just falling forward? I keep healing. I can't feel my legs any more. My head tilts to the side and I barely have one eye on the wound. There's less screaming now. That's nice. I hear my name. That's nice too. Gotta keep healing though. I gotta save her. Save as many as I can. Gotta keep...