CHAPTER 1 – REUNIONS AND BATTLE
The Matriarch was huddled in the back of the dais and in a defensive posture after watching it’s last Champion’s lifeless body being tossed by Dozer against the back wall, more adversaries following his steps in, not to mention us throwing off her poison and up and at’em with edges in hands, pissed. It also had been abandoned by it’s Momma from the look of it, no longer in the skein of things, otherwise I’d be hearing her pop off with her talky talk. I am sure it was feeling pretty isolated right about now.
It was still a Level 15 Mini-Boss and would be a bitch to tackle. No time like the present though to put it in the ground. Mase, Ruri, Melody and I though invigorated by whatever Gramps did and purged of all toxins, we were still not at full health after multiple bites from the Matriarch. I looked at my screen and saw us all wavering at about the halfway point, the sprite even a bit lower.
Gramps piped in. “Show me what you got boys. Let’s see how much of your Fathers you got in ya. You start it up, we’ll follow.”
My Brother and I grinned at each other. “The Mongoose and the Crow” He chirped at me. I threw back. “The Bones of our Fathers.” He nodded.
I activated Lunar Wrath as my legs spun ground and sent a pulse to Dozer who was stampeding in Taurean hoof planting to get a chunk of the shit stain who had taken his life.
A haze of silver red filtered my gaze, anger chewing rampant over thought as I churned space, Fang and Talon sending out echos of hungry edges to finality of corpses in near futures. The music was a dirge, a low thrum of heavy bass slap and kick drum booming with throbbing guitar strings spinning graveyard thrums and horror flick soliloquies.
Mason curved in backstabbing arcs dancing on balls of feet anticipating my initial bloody hellos. Lola circled his movement in figure eights trailing shadows.
As I cut up distance the Matriarch attempted to do it’s go to, lifting up on hind legs to spin out it’s all encompassing webs but out of nowhere, a blood covered whip shot out and wrapped one of it’s forelegs, piercing it’s chitin with bloody thorns and a hefty yank, almost sprawling it, it’s limbs scrambling back down to earth to keep it stable and not face planting.
“None of that Bitch!” Danny’s raspy voice called out with a chuckle just as my axe arrived into fending, jabbing foreleg, Fang’s edge taking it off, green spurts of putrid gifts showering my face, and my fucking mouth, again. It was like my lips had an incubator saying insert spider shite here. I spat an unwholesome amount of green painted liquid to the stone.
Dozer, activating Frenzy and Gore slammed into it just to my left, his tusks eviscerating a piece of it’s abdomen with a harsh vengeance laced squeal from my boy as he continued to swing his razor sharp tusks back and forth, spelling in flesh his memory of fangs taking his everything.
The Mini Boss started to respond when Mason announced himself from behind, his glaive spinning in complex weaves, it’s slashing edge inscribing gifts of hurt in meat while Lola did her dizzying immaterial ghost swoops through the Matriarch’s head. It was reeling, confused and battered, spinning one way then the other while trying to bat Lola’s wraith shape in futile swings of the one foreleg still wholesome.
The music trucked it’s way through concrete and trees, ominous stage plays and gravel laced cemeteries, the dirge tilting echelons of feats leading to conclusions.
Shields of matrixed mathematic runes now sprung up on us all and three sprites danced in from the right side, rapier singing focal estuaries in thrusts through skin. Melody was incoherently spewing invectives. “You were gonna eat me?!! Eat me?!!! There is too much amazing Fey for you to handle you overgrown buggy boo!!!! I will not be eaten by you?!!!! I still have fables to pen and wild sex to experience!” And with each scream her rapier shimmied holes in spider shishkabob.
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Dozer and I took advantage of the beast’s spinning conundrum of endless adversaries. My weapons, dancing with moon lit kisses of heat, cannoned through flesh while Dozer kept at it with his tusks from the left and Mase danced puppeteering stories of umbral bent from behind.
The Spider’s motions became slower as my Brother’s birthed faster, his Rune of Midnight taking it’s toll. My eyes clocked the inundating arctic flames of my edges flickering in wounds, mud sticking it’s agility in symmetry to my Brother’s machinations.
The truth that we were out leveled and fighting a Boss came abruptly and with bold letters of come uppance as the thing shrilled it’s frustrations and rocketed in the air, then landing with a thunderous crash, legs spinning out in palpable recompense for our arrogance. We were all tossed back like crumbling leave’s in Fall’s stretching hands, shields shattering and bruises and cuts shading flesh in holiday cards of checks cashed before prizes earned.
I spun to hard smacks of back against stone, my head riding groggy as a bi word.
Health – 90/300
My eyes diffused and vision blurred as I took in a huge shape above my own, sight clearing just as I saw the Matriarch began to bring legs down in the finality of my drifting dirge.
The conclusion of action was stifled with a stop sign in it’s swing and a no apologies given interspersal of it’s intention, IE... saving my bacon from sizzling as a huge ass warhammer carved it’s way into the noir snapshot, uppercutting the spider’s clicking mandibles as it fell, and stutter stop reversing it’s momentum, it’s many digits now fumbling backwards from the concussive force of the blunt instrument and the man behind it’s greeting.
Gramps was now in the game as he chanted something and his hammer took on a purplish glow as he spun, his weapon tight to body, arcing over his shoulder, slamming down with tumultuous force on top of the arachnids head, the glow jetting from hammer to the entire frame of the Boss, stunning it, it’s limbs locked up, then came Danny, now with her two short blades flickering from fists as she leapt, twisting and flipping in mid air, landing and straddling the body of the huge spider, throwing a wild maniacal grin and stabbing furiously with her blades pointed down into the back of the Matriarch’s cranium, green ichor fountaining in rivers of porous rain.
Time to bring this lilt of symphony to a triumphant beat down. I scrambled to my feet, Fang and Talon still held in worn toughened palms and charged it, slipping past Gramps, who gave a nod and an approving smile, leaning on his hammer as if he was on break. My eyes zeroed in on dregging, failing spider. Dozer careened back into it from the left, my boy also not done with his payback, Frenzy still chewing his veins as his tusks went back to work. The whole gang had rolled back in, Ruri’s shields also playing hop scotch along our flesh and my pride for my people rose as skyscrapers to unity and pop tarts in morning mists. Who doesn’t love pop tarts?
Lunar Wrath was on it’s downswing but still shifting through limbs, Back to Back kissing hungering blades, Talon’s Rune of Synchronicity adding it’s own tally to what was about to come to this side step jig. I pulsed Dozer. My eyes took in Danny’s whooping holler, still straddled and plunging blades.
Dozer let loose with Warhorn, on cue, pulling the Matriarch towards it’s vibratory salutation and his gore covered tusks, shifting towards his clock hand.
I took a breath, two, three, then rumbled forward, heavy steps, knees bent, pistoning all my strength to legs, body lifting from ground as Fang led the final parse and posey of this ring a round the rosey. It’s edge, in lunar flames, tore over my shoulder landing just behind Danny’s bucking form, opening up a huge divot of flesh into the Matriarch’s exoskeleton, Talon following it’s lead plunging low and to the hilt, as my weight and violence, mac trucked the giant beast onto it’s side, collapsing under the final straw of a bow backed camel.
My lungs were emptied, Stamina flashing, yet it still moved and my cards had been played, Danny tumbling off her perch and crouching, visceral covered blades ready to still continue the tango. Dozer a few steps back bellowed his heaving heavy gasps of breath, Frenzy now having run it’s course. Melody stood away as well to wait for what the arachnid would do, now prone on it’s side, an ocean of it’s vitae from endless wounds rolling Picasso’s on cavern floor.
My Brother made it’s decision for it as he came out of the darkness, airborne, and as feral as Thanatos in cloak and hook, Midnight’s gleaming point sliding into the Spider’s brain stem like liquid from a barista into a Starbuck Venti cup. And finally, the fucking thing gasped it’s last and shuddered into an ending.
Notifications ram punched my vision but all I could do is roll off the corpse onto my back and lay there, eyes staring at rock ceiling, and start laughing, endless, long, belly rumbling laughter, the kind of laughter you hit when watching the Three Stooges and Jerry Lewis, Eddie Murphy talking about McDonalds or Richard Pryor talking about, well whatever the fuck he wanted to, he was just a funny mother fucker. The laughter was joined by more as other bubbling cackled and melodious tittering sifted into a chorus. It felt good, right and good.