“What do you mean? Plan two?” Fritz said scathingly through panting breaths, his spells having taken a huge portion of his stamina. He cursed himself for not aligning more points into Endurance, he’d gotten carried away with his new Advanced Attributes and that had blinded him to the necessity of stamina.
“You’re the scout, Fritz, find us a route to victory,” Bert commanded with cool confidence in his comrade, while searching the circular room for the disappeared but still loudly charging green glass bull.
They were staring at the wall, right at the spot the bull ‘dove’ into when Fritz felt a shudder from his right. The bull burst through the wall to his right, rampaging towards Bert. Fritz dodged out of the bull's path and called out “Right!” Sid was moving in an instant, but Bert had a moment’s delay as he oriented himself to see the hulking enemy that was fast approaching.
Bert was agile enough to dodge most of the glass beast's bulk, but the construct angled its head in such a way that they still caught him with the edge of its sweeping horns. He was hit in the shoulder and was flung from his feet into a violent, crashing tumble. Fritz heard Bert’s bones break, shattered by the force of the charge and now accompanied by his agonised yelling.
The bull ploughed on and away, plunging into the wall again. More glass spears fell. Fritz dodged one he could tell was falling straight down on his head, he didn’t even have to look. Awareness and Trap Sense seemed to complement each other perfectly, warning him of the peril before it could strike him.
There were cracking, popping sounds coming from Bert and he staggered back to his feet, his twisted arm realigning itself and the bone protruding from his flesh retreating, setting properly back into place. The bleeding didn’t stop completely but Fritz suspected that the wounds should be bleeding far more than they were. The hole the broken bone had left was scabbing over before his very eyes.
Turning away from the horror that was watching Bert recover, Fritz focused his mind to the task of attaining victory, or at least survival if that was out of the question.
“Into the centre. Away from the walls!” He ordered, employing a rudimentary tactic. They scrambled to the middle of the circular room, avoiding contact with the fallen spears.
The bull burst out again, but as they were already moving escaping the beast’s assault was far easier. If they had thought the spears sticking out of the ground would slow the beast’s charge they were wrong as it glided through them as if they didn’t exist, leaving them untouched and gleaming in place.
They had reached the centre when another charge came, this time from a different section of glassy wall. They scattered and easily stayed out of reach of the bull or its great green horns.
We can outmaneuver the bull, but we can't dodge it forever. It doesn’t slow down but it doesn't speed up and seems indefatigable. I’m so glad we all have ‘The Observations’ Technique, this seems to be exactly the kind of situation it was made for, the thought worried Fritz in that moment but he dismissed it quickly, plenty to be afraid of right now.
He thought on the wisdom ‘The Observations’ had provided, slow it down, blind it, stall it, somehow.
“Can you hit it in its other eye as it goes past?” Fritz asked Sid, as they both panted from exertion.
“No, too fast, too small a target. I only got it in the eye the first time because it was lying still,” Sid replied, wiping her sweaty fringe out of her eyes and then putting another stone in her sling.
“How about the leg?” Fritz asked.
“Maybe, is that the plan?” Sid said uneasily.
“Only good one I can think of, we all aim for its front legs as it passes, prioritise the right, but strike at the left if you can't reach it,” Fritz ordered. “Time to put our Abilities to use.”
Fritz reached out with his senses, trying to pinpoint which direction the bull would charge from. It was difficult but there was an intensity, a rumbling of hooves, he could vaguely follow through the wall. He closed his eyes relying on his hearing and Awareness to track the glass bull’s location.
The intensity changed for a brief moment and Fritz spun around, shouting, “Behind!”
Sid followed then Bert spinning to face the beast, as it ploughed out of the green glass a moment later. That moment however had given them time to prepare their attacks. Sid let her wind-empowered stone loose with a snap and it flew at dizzying speed straight into the creature's thundering right leg, just above its knee.
Pale cracks spread out from the stone's impact, but the carved beast didn’t slow, it headed, unstoppably, straight toward Sid.
Bert attempted to flank the right side of the beast, stepping in from an oblique angle as it careened towards the young lady in her shining silver breastplate. Fritz stood just past Sid, waiting for his turn to strike. The bull passed by Bert, attempting to gore him, but he swiftly slipped under the green horn, then with all his might he threw a devastating hook into the construct's already cracking knee. His fist rippled with the familiar pulsing of Concussive blow and connected with a bone-rattling thump.
It was more than bone-rattling for Bert as his forearm snapped cleanly down the middle, bending away at an unnatural angle. He screamed. Sid cursed, wrapped her sling’s strap around her hand like a knuckle duster and leapt out of the way of the beast’s path. It was a near thing, and as the horns swept down on her she spun into a kick that swirled with a small cyclone, hitting the horn in with a gust of air that cushioned her from the worst of the impact.
Still, she fell to the yellowed ground hard, her breastplate clanging as she clumsily rolled into a heap. Fritz had no time to be concerned for his two crew, it was his turn to face the bull. He stretched his senses to the very limit, trying to plot where exactly he needed to be to both hit the construct’s leg and avoid its horns.
He moved precisely two steps back and readied his fish blade and bone dagger to strike. The bull rushed towards him, just as he predicted and he dodged being gored by the horn’s point by inches at most. Fritz swung his blades together, aiming at the glassy knee, stabbing above with his dagger and slashing below with his fish blade.
The dagger bit deep and was yanked from Fritz’s grip, clattering to the floor, whilst his fish blade sparked against the construct's leg and cut a jagged groove where it had struck. The beast which had been eerily silent except for its booming steps, swung its head up and bellowed as it thundered past him. The sheer volume threatened to deafen Fritz so he clasped his hands to his ears in a futile attempt to protect them.
Again the bull dove into the wall, becoming hidden from their sight. Fritz staggered, dizzy from the cacophony and reclaimed his cursed dagger from where it lay. He rushed back to the centre to join Bert, who was rubbing at his injured but whole arm, and Sid who while looking a little bedraggled seemed uninjured.
“Think it's working?” Bert yelled, revealing his deafness.
“Yes, one more pass,” Fritz yelled back.
Sid just nodded and started spinning her sling up to speed again, waiting for Fritz to point out the bull’s approach and direction.
“Front,” Fritz shouted as he felt the slight change in the rumbling again.
The bull appeared just as he predicted and Sid’s sling snapped as soon as the damaged leg stomped out of the green glass. With a thunk and a sound of splintering the stone connected. The cracks on the construct’s knee extended and deepened, but it continued its unstoppable rush, this time towards Fritz.
His feet felt stuck to the ground as the enormous bull of green glass rampaged towards him, “It’s coming for me! Bert!” Fritz screamed. He seized control of his legs, forcing them to run out to the side where Bert stood.
Bert met the bull’s charge with one of his own, both his fists flaring with the rapid waves of Concussive Blow. He didn’t punch this time though, he ducked under the horrendous horns, spread his hands open and readied two palm strikes. The great green hoof came down meeting the ground and it looked as though Bert was timing his strike for that very moment when the construct was putting its titanic weight on that damaged front limb.
Bert struck, rapidly thrusting both of his hands forward, right onto the carved glass joint. Then he pushed. The joint bent, snapping to the side and forcing the bull to stumble and slow. Shining shards of green glass fell out from the cracks and glittering dust leaked from its ruined knee. Still, the bull barrelled forward, letting out another booming cry.
Fritz didn’t have the room to react, as he felt the falling spears of glass cut off his routes of escape. He couldn’t place himself perfectly like he had last time, but he didn’t have to now that the construct was limping, its lumbering gait was filled with more openings than ever.
Fritz leapt into one of those openings, avoiding the horns by a foot instead of inches. He plunged his dagger and swept his fish blade. The bone dagger stuck deep and was being pulled from his grip again. Rather than fight the pull, he let the dagger go and allowed the force to spin him. As he spun he seized his fish blade with both hands and cut another deep furrow in the bull’s knee as it stormed past him.
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The bull had almost reached the wall when another snap and whizzing of a sling stone soared past Fritz’s ears. The stone that was sped up by the wind strike struck. With a crack that sounded like lightning the construct’s knee exploded in a glittering cloud, spraying the air with shards of shattered glass.
The bull fell to the side skidding across the yellow stone and bellowing out in booming bovine tones.
Bert, Sid and Fritz were already moving as the glass stalactites started to fall like hail. Fritz could feel where the spears were to fall and dragged Sid to his side, holding her close, standing where they would be safe. Bert was unfortunately just out of reach and Fritz watched on in horror as he was skewered through the thigh and shoulder by long spears of green. Bert yelled, adding his voice to the bull’s.
The hail of glass stopped suddenly and Sid pulled free of Fritz’s one-armed embrace, stepping away her face flushed. She spun up her sling and started hurling stones into the bull’s back right leg with deadly accuracy as the construct began to stagger up, lifting itself to stand on its three remaining hooves.
Fritz ran to Bert’s aid, he grabbed the glass shaft pinning Bert’s shoulder and pulled, not caring as the glass cut at his palms and fingers. He pulled it free with a surprising amount of ease and blood. Fritz threw it to the side and it rang almost like a bell, vibrating in a low hum. Fritz suspected there was something to the noise but he put it out of his mind, focusing on helping Bert.
Bert didn’t need any more help though, he was already pulling the other spear free, grunting in pain as he yanked it free of his flesh.
“You okay?” Fritz asked his friend, who responded with a weak smile and a tired nod.
Crack. Another stone hit the bull and Sid shouted, “Bull’s still coming! I’m out of Stones.”
The bull reared its head and turned towards them, somehow even though it only had three legs, it began to charge again. Not as fast or as strangely graceful as it had been but still too fast to ignore. Fritz made to run but found the bull was targeting Bert now, and Bert’s thigh was still yet to fully heal from its puncturing.
Cursing Fritz searched for anything to help, but then smiled a wicked smile, and called upon his Power, shifting the stone below the front green glass hoof that was left with Stone Pit. The bull stomped into the pit. Without one of its other legs to compensate for the sudden shift in the stone and prevent its fall, it charged horns first into the ground.
The long green horns dug troughs in the stone before finally plunging deep within the ground bringing the bull to a standstill. It bucked its body trying to free its stuck horns and the pale yellow stone began to crack.
Taking advantage of the bull's current immobile state Fritz lunged into action. With his fish blade still in held with two hands, he chopped down like he was trying to split wood. He hacked at the construct's neck repeatedly, the edge of the fish blade sparking as it ground against the glass. The strikes left their marks, a rent that was being expanded with each swing. Not enough.
The bull lurched and its head rose, its horns burst free from the stone in a shower of pale stone that rained upon Fritz as he stood there panting with exhaustion. The terrible horns swept towards Fritz, but he was too slow to move at such short range. He saw the awful green glass swing brutally towards him, inevitable as the dusk, and knew he be hit, hurt and maybe struck dead.
But Bert was there, he ran in with a loping charge, slipped under the horns and threw a mighty, rippling uppercut that landed square under the bull’s carved chin. Bert heaved, keeping his fist in contact with the underside of the bull’s head, lifting it up. The horns swept over Fritz instead of through him and he struck again with his fish blade opening the rent a little more.
Sid rushed to Bert’s side and almost in unison, they struck the bull’s head from underneath. Bert with another rippling uppercut and Sid with a kick wrapped in swirling air. Their attacks collided with the glass with a thud and a clunk and they leapt away.
With a sound like a tree snapping in a storm cracks spread from the rent Fritz had cut, then the rent expanded, becoming a fissure and the pale lines of broken glass converged around the bull’s neck. Bert ducked in close to the construct and with one final rippling punch to its head, the bull’s neck shattered in a blast of green shards and its head fell, crashing to the stone.
The bull’s body froze in place. The horns clanged as the head rocked from side to side on the stone before eventually lying still.
Fritz searched for any new threats, unsure if the battle was over. When he saw and heard nothing he let himself sit down with a thud.
Sid lay down on her back panting and Bert limped over to Fritz and joined him by sitting nearby. They gathered their collective breath, not speaking and revelling in the quiet which was so refreshing to Fritz’s ears after the incredibly loud encounter.
After a few minutes of rest and blessed silence, Fritz spoke up, “Good job. How are the injuries, Bert?”
“Healin’,” Bert grunted, looking over his already scabbed-over wounds, they still seemed painful and clearly hadn't healed fully but they weren't bleeding at least. “I’m sure the Well Room will heal me up proper.”
“It’s not a full restoration, Bert,” Fritz chided. “We shouldn’t count too much on that healing us, especially as we climb higher.”
“Yes, Mother,” Bert said grinning.
Fritz scowled and put on his best impression of one of the shriller nannies he had when he was growing up.
“And don’t forget to change your clothes, young man, the state of your dress is unacceptable. You’ll need a shave as well, and a bath for that matter! We don’t want to give the impression that you’re a street rat, a ragamuffin and a sneak-thief.”
“Oh, the scandal!” Bert laughed and Fritz thought he could hear Sid quietly giggling. “But a shave would be welcome and a bath would be paradise.”
Fritz silently agreed, and even Sid let out a grunt of longing. As street urchins they may have been used to the filth but even in the gutters you could stand out in the rain for a while to get the worst of the day’s grime off of you. There had been none of that here and Fritz was really beginning to see it, feel it and smell it building up on their bodies and clothes.
“He’s right you know, the deadlier threats will have worse venom and afflictions that the Well Room can't heal,” Sid supplied, changing the subject back to something serious as she sat up.
“That’s what Vitality is for,” Bert answered with a self-satisfied grin. “Which leads me to a question for you two book buddies or should I say scholars? Do Advanced Attributes also ‘multiply the base’, as it were?”
“Maybe?” Fritz ventured, “I know the magic Advanced Attributes give you a mana reservoir as well as increasing the potency of similarly aligned Abilities. But as for the others, I’m not really sure.”
Fritz turned to Sid to see her also puzzling through the question.
“I think we can assume that Advanced Attributes function a little differently to the Basic Attributes,” Fritz stated. “For one, my Awareness Attribute seems to be working with both my Perception and my Sense Abilities. On its own, it feels like I can just, you know, notice things, better, even things that I shouldn’t be able to see or hear.”
“But together with my Abilities, it’s almost as if I had a tactile, an instinctual feeling of where certain things are or should be like traps and Doors. It’s supremely odd, I can tell you that much. I wonder how many more ‘Senses’ I can attain before my mind is overloaded by the sheer number of things I could be feeling,” Fritz ended thoughtfully.
“I noticed something similar too,” Bert rejoined standing up and striking a battle stance. “When I hit the bull I was able to push it. Now I know I’m stronger but I don’t think it was all Strength. I think that Momentum helped me move the bull. Just a feeling I get.” Bert copied the movement he made when he had nudged the bull out of line, a punch then followed up by his palm strike push.
“I’m sure you noticed but my Grace and Reflex help me dodge and react quicker, I don’t think I would’ve been able to get out of the way in time or make the decision wind strike quick enough.” Sid piped up, almost boasting.
“That was an interesting use of Wind Strike, very clever, much better than just breaking your arms,” Fritz said both in compliment of Sid’s quick thinking and mocking Bert’s stupidity.
“What's the point of having imbued bones if you’re not going to use them,” Bert argued flippantly.
“Bert, you cretin, that is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. What's the point of having bones at all if you’re just going to break them?” Fritz asked rhetorically, annoyed at his friend’s casual disregard for his own pain and health.
“That’s a mighty philosophical question there, Fritz. Why indeed?” Bert intoned his face cast into a mask of false pondering, as if he were thinking deeply, trying to grasp at the nature of the Spires and the reality around them.
Fritz glared at Bert who glanced at him furtively as if seeing if he was still watching. Then they both burst out laughing, Fritz pulled his friend into a manly hug, clapped him on the back and disengaged when he heard Sid sigh then saw her roll her eyes and heard her mutter, “Mad. Totally mad.”
“Ignore her, she’s just jealous she can't get in on the Fritzbert sandwich,” Bert grinned arching a golden eyebrow. “Who can blame her.”
“I would rather die,” Sid said bluntly, her eyes narrowing into slits.
Fritz coughed. “Anyway I also noticed something else strange, did you see what happened with my Illusory Shadow?” Fritz asked, sailing the topic away from such dangerous waters.
“Not really, too busy slingin’ stones,” Sid said.
“Well I was able to stretch it, change its shape a little,” Fritz answered.
“Can you do it again?” Bert asked while checking over the bull’s broken-off head, tapping on its horn with his knuckles.
“Sure,” Fritz nodded and summoned up his shifting shadowy power, just as before he imagined the black orb stretching out. It worked, sort of, the sphere was now more of an egg shape, rather than a disc or perfect circle of blackness.
“Huh,” Bert grunted.
“Huh,” Sid replied.
“Huh,’ Fritz concluded.
Fritz circled the floating ‘egg’ of shadows, wondering why it turned out like this, instead of a disc like before. He reflected on his previous attempt and how he had forced it into shape. He made a second attempt, this time holding the power steady and pushing it into the shape he wanted in his mind's eye then releasing it.
It worked this time, it was a circular sheet of shadows he could only just see through. Fritz sank to his knees and his head spun awfully as his stamina drained away, leaving him empty. Vertigo hit him like a stone brick from a tenement's roof and he clutched at the ground as if it were trying to fling him off the face of the world.
A trickle of blood dripped out of his nose but stopped after a couple of moments. The spinning stopped and Fritz fell sideways, lying down and moaning as if terribly hungover. Which he supposed he was in a way. I must have overdone it on the stamina expenditure, he concluded.
“You okay, Fritz?” Bert asked laying a hand on his shoulder and looking into his face with worry.
“Stamina, all gone,” Fritz replied.
Bert nodded leaving Fritz to his self-inflicted misery, taking some time to look around the room.
“Maybe it’s the Control Attribute?” Sid suggested after staring at the disc of shadow in interest for a couple of moments. The darkness dissipated without a sound and Fritz nodded. He agreed with her theory but was unwilling to open his mouth and answer due to his nausea.
With nothing left to do but search the room and wait for Fritz to recover Sid walked up to the body of the carved bull, inspecting it carefully. “How are we gonna get the heart out?” She asked no one in particular.
“Smash it?” Bert called out, his voice echoing across the room.
“Wish we had a hammer and chisel,” Sid muttered under her breath, whilst rapping her knuckles on the bull's glassy side.
“Bert’s the hammer, I’m the chisel,” Fritz interjected cheerily as his dizziness receded.
Sid glared at him furtively, obviously annoyed that he had overheard her talking to herself.
Fritz broke the eye contact and instead followed Bert’s meandering with his eyes, then thought he spotted a dark spot of something behind one of the sheets of green glass, just past where his friend was walking.
Something the shape of a Treasure chest.