image [https://i.imgur.com/LPhS25C.jpg]
I recognized none of their nameplates from Tully’s Bar. Perhaps they served as recruits or members from another city.
Of the gnolls rushing at us, I’d already picked out my target, the largest warrior in the pack. His coat had stripes instead of spots. The leader might not have realized his healers had emptied out their mana, so I expected it to Charge. I guessed correctly. Two minutes inside the Wall of Thorns hadn’t endeared it to us. The alpha lunged without fear.
Name
Rotgut, Gang of Three Enforcer
Level
18
Difficulty
Challenging (yellow)
Health
485/630
Rotgut showed his commitment to their cause. We needed to put him down fast before he could rally the panicked healers. He likely led the pack.
“Focus-fire! Pour it, Fab!” We exchanged blows with the beast. When the other warrior started attacking me, I blocked the damage as well as I could. Rotgut’s initiative emboldened the last two healers, and they attacked alongside the second warrior.
Against multiple opponents, our training faltered, and we took on damage.
I switched my efforts to block incoming attacks when my health dropped below 20 percent—ribbons of Rejuvenate worked against the falling numbers. Fabulosa’s Restore landed on me in the nick of time.
Rotgut barked when his health dropped to a quarter.
When the healer’s whines answered, I recognized the conversation. Rotgut wasn’t accustomed to out-of-mana healers. Sorry, pal, you should always check your teammate’s mana before leaping into melee.
I broke off my engagement with him to stave off the incoming attacks from the remaining three gnolls.
Fabulosa finished him.
When Rotgut dropped, the two healers dropped back and scrambled up the rope, leaving the last warrior to the fate of Bleeding to death. He collapsed on the ground while the Tangling Roots withered away.
Though wounded, I threw a Restore on Fabulosa and backed away from the incoming gnolls. At least she looked formidable. She tossed a Fireball onto the remaining five gnolls to establish the new alpha.
After the Wall of Thorns and Fireballs, one gnoll had only 100 health. It followed the healers up the line, ignoring Rooter’s barks of rebuke.
Rooter and his three companions took in the star chamber’s carnage and the absence of allies. All six of us looked in rough shape, and the battle could go either way.
Fabulosa slowly raised her sword and pointed upward. Her gesture made the proposition apparent—leave or die. We barely had half our health and a sliver of our mana. We’d consumed our potions. Fabulosa and I felt vulnerable, but the four gnolls had no healing.
I let them save a little face and bowed in respect. I wasn’t too proud to call it a draw.
After a staredown, Rooter lowered his head and tail. The gnolls-for-hire had had enough and clambered up the lifeline. I couldn’t blame them for giving up. A mercenary had no dog in this fight.
After the gnolls left, we exited our combat state, and my interface scrolled with experience point gains. Each gnoll had been worth almost 20 points each, and we’d gotten credit for the ones we’d let go.
Fabulosa gave a wan smile. “Ding.”
She and I collapsed and performed a Rest and Mend without ceremony. I checked my character sheet. I hadn’t leveled, but I stood only seventy experience points away from level 25. Unfortunately, summoned creatures, like chimeras, gave no experience, so it looked like I would be a level behind her until we faced Winterbyte.
When I checked my experience, I noticed my stats had dropped again. The overnight march and fight had taken their toll.
Debuff
Exhaustion (3)
-3 to stats
Duration
Until 8 hours of uninterrupted rest
“This debuff is getting serious.”
Stolen novel; please report.
Fabulosa nodded. “Yeah! I feel like you look!”
“Anyway, back upstairs to plan A?”
“You reckon we’re fit to fight like this?”
“We can’t rest for eight hours. That’s for sure.”
I looked down the wide hall leading to the grate above the crypt. If Winterbyte had placed an alarm at the reliquary’s rear entrance, I hated to think about what she had in store for the grating. Detect Magic confirmed my suspicions.
Glowing runes covered the hall.
I gave Fabuosa the scouting report. “There are Compression Sphere alarms around the grate. It’ll take time to defuse them, and I can’t be sure I won’t trip a proximity trigger.”
When we finished our Rest and Mend, I scanned the carnage of the star chamber for magical glows. Nothing lit up, so I decided the gnolls had nothing important.
Stepping around the bodies, we returned upstairs to the secret door leading into the organ room. We avoided the trap I spotted during our first visit to the dungeon and listened down the tube.
We heard nothing.
I doused Presence, lowered a knotted rope, and dropped into the tube. We placed glow stones in the organ room for light. Climbing down a rope in the darkness presented no challenges. Why announce our arrival if we could avoid it?
Fabulosa followed me.
I peered at the statue upon reaching the shaft’s bottom. If I turned the dial to the right setting, the inert figure would spring to life as a stone golem. This numbered as the very last thing I wanted to happen.
After ascertaining the golem wouldn’t be a danger, I directed my attention to the crystal window overlooking the crypt. We’d killed the mummy in the sarcophagus on our previous visit, and seeing the lid on the coffin flooded me with relief. Ignoring the architecture’s organic contours, I focused on its occupants.
Winterbyte had surrounded herself with lanterns, so plenty of light illuminated her progress.
I whispered up the tube to Fabulosa. “When you get to the bottom, put away your glow stone. She doesn’t know we’re here.”
Fabulosa affirmed she understood. I left the tube and approached the window to get a closer look.
A half dozen level 4 skeletons surrounded the sarcophagus. They accompanied Winterbyte’s latest monster.
I didn’t know what game mechanics involved summoning chimeras—I suspected it included a mix of nature and arcane magic. Her dinosaur chimera showed creative promise, but even the most jaded gamer had to be inspired by the monstrosity beside the coffin.
Name
Winterbyte Chimera (12)
Level
19
Difficulty
Challenging (yellow)
Health
1120/1120
The flavors of this undead cocktail included rodent, amphibian, and serpent. Skeletal rat-claws formed its forepaws, but the back legs looked long and froggish. The center head’s deteriorating tissue exposed a long skull and teeth shaped in a distinctive rat overbite. Like hunting trophies, the lifeless heads of an undead frog and snake bookended the rat.
The frog’s neck skin had deteriorated, and I could see a coiled, rotten tongue rolling around its throat.
The serpent skull had eyeless sockets—its wide jaws missed a fang. Its head extended ten feet beyond the other heads, and its tail continued past the frog legs, ending in a bony rattle.
I pondered how this abomination might attack. The frog tongue could reel us into the rat’s jaws. The serpent’s head had reach, and the frog legs could reposition it anywhere in the room. As awful as it looked, zombies represented weaker versions than their base monsters—a level 19 chimera zombie would be easier to kill than a living counterpart.
Winterbyte took center stage. She’d only leveled three times since we’d last faced her.
Name
Winterbyte
Level
27
Difficulty
Challenging (yellow)
Health
460/460
Behind her hung a rope tied to the grated opening in the ceiling. She’d probably used a shrink potion to climb down.
Winterbyte had outdone herself with the chimera, but not because of its fighting abilities. She used it on the lid of the sarcophagus. It tried to pry it off with the help of six skeletons. The undead served as a workaround to the protective aura, which aged creatures to death. Her strategy made sense.
I couldn’t hear anything through the crystal, but Winterbyte clenched her claws and shouted orders. How many hours have they been down here, working on removing the lid?
The undead chimera ineffectually pawed at the sarcophagus lid, but its digits found no purchase on the lid. The skeletons looked even more useless. Two stood frozen in inaction. Another weakly whacked at the coffin with a mace as if it mined for precious metals. Two skeletons with daggers tentatively stabbed at the lid in downward strokes, wholly ignoring Winterbyte’s horizontal gesticulations. Her lackeys proved less than dependable, and the scene of another contestant’s best-laid plans falling to pieces refreshed me.
One skeleton had wedged a dagger beneath the lid but wasn’t strong enough to pry it open. The chimera looked able but couldn’t get its oversized digits around the dagger or under the lid. Winterbyte directed the undead to work together. But devoid of intelligence, they couldn’t understand her instructions.
Part of me wanted to leave Winterbyte here. If we could get around her runes, pulling up the rope might starve her out, like the gnoll warlock in the demon dungeon. Leaving her to a fate of her making smacked of just deserts. If using the undead exemplified her improvisational skills, giving her more time might be a mistake. She would find a way out.
Fabulosa giggled as she watched the monsters fail to lift the lid. “She has the worst luck with NPCs.”
Since the lighting shone on Winterbyte’s side of the glass, I felt reasonably sure glares and shadows hid us.
We watched in silence as they worked.
Fabulosa turned her attention to the looming silhouette of the lizardfolk statue. “I know we don’t need to activate this, but maybe we can use it to our advantage.”
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe we could turn it on before we attack.”
I stiffened at the memory of that indestructible monster chasing after me. “Are you insane?”
“What if you set the dial on another setting?”
“Another setting?”
“You know. To do something else?”
Experimenting with the dial would blow our surprise. I had the tube’s end cap still in my void bag. If I gave it to Fabulosa, she could cast Compression Sphere into the tube to create the Don’t-Pulverize-Apache chime if efforts to tame it proved fruitless.
The dial of options didn’t look promising. It might as well have been an Aztec calendar. “What do you mean? Like, kill-the-undead setting?”
She rolled her eyes. “Don’t pitch a hissy. I just asked. Or maybe you could make the window disappear. We set the golem to attack mode, zip up the tube, and let the mech here turn her into jelly.”
I grimaced to show my dislike for the idea. There wasn’t any guarantee the golem would switch targets if we escaped its wrath. And I didn’t want to be inside the tube if the golem started to ring it. If it killed Winterbyte, I wasn’t sure only two of us could turn it off by making the correct sound. Nor did I like someone doing my fighting for me. It wouldn’t feel like an honorable revenge.
We didn’t need a walking wrecking ball to kill a few undead. Her suggestion overcomplicated things—and coming from me, that meant a lot.
“Are you cool with letting a golem balance the books between us and her?”
Fabulosa’s eyes darted toward Winterbyte, then back to mine. After a long stare, she grinned. “No. And to be honest, I’m a little ashamed to have suggested it. Let’s do this the right way.”