“I told my people not to load Potiphar’s ship until we got back,” Joe told the group as they walked through the plantation and toward the docks. “If he can’t be convinced to give us passage back to the mainland, another ship should arrive later this afternoon. They don’t trade in workers, so they shouldn’t have a problem . . .”
Joe’s voice trailed off as he stood outside the main walls of the village just off the coast and stared at the location where Captain Potiphar’s ship should have been. The dock was empty. “What happened . . .
Jace looked at Psycho and then at Esther. The rogue cracked first. “It wasn’t my fault. There was this squid and a fire, and my clothes were covered in ink.”
Jace peered in the distance and saw dozens of seagulls swooping down to feast on burnt calamari and several sharks helping with the cleanup effort. “We shouldn’t need a ship,” Jace said. “If the module is cleared, a travel node should open up. I can’t imagine Gandhi would make us take the long way home.”
{Yes,} Gracie said. {I agree. I’ve been tracking your experience points, and nothing has screamed Final Boss yet. Maybe you’ll get all the experience when Joe restores Leah’s kingdom, but there might still be something you need to do.}
“Joe, where is your mother?” Jace asked. “Is she staying here? Will she come with us?”
The priest turned away from the missing ship. “I told her to stay inside. It would be too dangerous for her. She isn’t an adventurer.”
Jace looked around and didn’t see Rachelle leaving the palace or coming to meet them. “There must still be danger about. Something we haven’t finished.”
Joe shook his head and brought his scepter out of his inventory. “In human form, I can’t use this to control the troglodytes, but I can still sense them.” He lifted the rod in the air. “This is empty. Everyone under my authority is gone. We’ve killed them all.”
Then it clicked. “Everyone under your authority,” Jace repeated. “What about the ones not under your control?”
Joe shook his head. “I was second in command on this island. The only troglodyte not under me was . . .” Then it clicked for him too.
“Did anyone fight the queen?” Jace asked.
“She attacked me,” Joe said. “Then your wolf tackled her, and I didn’t see her again.”
Jace turned to Snowy.
The shaman was impressed by how communicative his familiar was becoming, though it didn’t answer where Pharah was.
“Uh, boss,” Draya said, looking away from the missing ship to the other side of the dock. “Something is coming.”
Jace saw it too. Massive ripples cut through the waves, making a straight line toward them. It looked like a serpent. No, hundreds of serpents gliding in just under the water. “What is she?”
Joe assumed the question was directed at him. “I don’t know. She has a pair of electrical eels in a tank in her room, and I know she enchants each of the tridents my soldiers used. But other than that, I never asked. She went for a long swim every day. I just thought she liked the water.”
“Gracie,” Jace said as the ripples in the water grew ever closer, “I’m going to need stats as soon as you can get them.”
{I don’t know what we are looking at either, but I’ve got my search engine ready.}
Jace stepped toward the water, noticing that the sandy beach didn’t give him any stone benefits. He didn’t see anywhere to erect one of his totems. He could summon a stone pad, but he would have to stand on it to stay connected to his magic, and he couldn’t have totems less than 50 feet apart. Just over his left shoulder, Psycho had his bow out with an arrow nocked. Jace smelled acid. To his right, Esther stood on the balls of her feet, her weapons drawn and ready, Snowy by her side. Draya was further back, elevated up the beach so she could shoot over the heads of her friends. She clenched her dragon staff in two hands.
Leah and Joe stood off to the side, unsure how to contribute against what they thought would be a foe beyond either of them. They were correct. Pharah emerged from the water while still thirty feet from the shore. She rose vertically, as if standing on an elevator in what must have only been waist-deep water. Around her, a swarm of smaller currents sped up to create a whirlpool.
Pharah no longer wore her robes, adorned only by her golden chest piece and a small loincloth, her curvy scaled body glistening as sheens of water flowed off her.
“You pathetic fools,” she started.
Psycho didn’t wait for more and fired three rapid shots. As each arrow approached, an eel jumped out of the water to intercept it. The creatures were level 2 with 10 Hit Points and were obliterated by the ranger’s powerful attacks, wasting most of the damage potential. Jace imagined she could summon a few mighty eels or a multitude of fragile ones. She had chosen the latter, and by the ripples in the water, she might have more creatures at her disposal than Psycho had arrows. The elf also did the math and nocked a fourth arrow but didn’t fire.
“Perhaps not so foolish,” she smiled at Psycho. “But it matters not, I will . . .”
Draya tried her hand, casting a massive fireball at the creature. It hit an unseen barrier of water ten feet from the female troglodyte. The shield boiled and hissed into oblivion, and none of the flames touched Pharah. Draya cast a second fireball, and another protective layer of water rose to dispel it.
“Your mana pool is impressive,” Pharah said to the mage. Her hands then motioned to the infinite horizon of water behind her. “Mine is larger. Do you want to test it?”
Draya held her next attack in check.
“Anyone else?” the sea creature asked. Leah was already casting, and a green blob left her wand. Pharah laughed and didn’t bother with a defense, letting the spell hit her. The level 25 character must have saved critically because nothing visible happened.
“I thought not.” She turned her attention back to Jace, recognizing the leader. “You think you have won, but this isn’t over. I am going nowhere, and I can build another army. You cannot hope to defeat me. I give you but one chance. Leave and never come back. I will open a node for you. Then I will wipe this location from your map and not pursue you. Or you can stay, and I will throw your corpses into the volcano. Choose quickly.”
“We have what we came for,” Esther said.
“But my people,” Joe said. “She will enslave them again.”
“And my people are dying too,” Leah countered. “If we stay and die, we help no one.”
“I will stand by you no matter your choice,” Psycho added.
Nice dilemma, Jace thought. Just what this module needed for a finale.
{I still don’t know what she is,} Gracie said. {I think Gandhi is making this one up. She does that sometimes.}
“Well,” Jace said out loud. “You do not leave me with much of a choice.” He drew Diamond Etcher. “Let’s fight.”
His decision did not surprise Jace’s core group and readied their weapons, but his next call did startle them. “Retreat!” He turned and ran up the beach, back toward the plantation’s entrance. Jace heard Pharah curse and utter a magical command. He glanced over his shoulder to see two dozen electric eels leap out of the water and fly toward his group like arrows. Three each targeted Jace, Esther, Psycho, and Draya. Only the mage stumbled from the attack, but a few bursts of fire rid her of the creatures. The other three had no problem dealing with a few level 2 eels, cutting them up without breaking stride.
The queen had wisely sent the rest of her attacking pets at Joe and Leah, the two physically weakest group members. Jace assumed they would all be okay and didn’t stop running until he was off the beach up on the walkway, a good 100 feet from the water’s edge. When he turned to look, he saw the priest and witch rolling in the sand, wrestling with the long eels, jolts of electricity coursing through them. Pharah eyed the two entangled characters and smiled, calling her pets back to her with curled fingers. The eels responded and dragged Joe and Leah back toward the water.
“No,” Esther cried and broke rank to run back toward them. Ten more eels leaped out of the water and tackled the woman before she made it close to her friends. She hacked apart two of them before they ensnared her, and she struggled mightily against the rest. They had the Swarm ability, so they each got a grappling bonus for every other eel in contact with her, and it was too much. Soon, she was on the sand too, dragged toward the water.
Psycho pulled Dragonwing, which gave him severe penalties for a shot this close, and drew a mundane arrow. He took three shots; two hit eels, while the third hit Esther’s shoulder but didn’t exceed her damage resistance. Only four eels held her a round later; she was strong enough to wrestle them off. By now, the two weaker characters were in the water, and Esther wisely scampered back to the safety of the grassy hill above the beach.
“You have a plan, right?” Draya asked.
“Something like that,” Jace said. “We need to get her out of the water.”
“She won’t leave voluntarily,” Psycho said. “She draws power from the ocean. At her level, we won’t be able to defeat her.”
“Then we have to make the water dangerous for her,” the shaman replied. He turned to his mage. “Draya, you and Snowy run to the end of that pier toward where Potiphar’s ship used to be. I need you to lob a powerful fireball out toward those seagulls.”
“You want to scatter the birds?” she asked, confused.
“No, the sharks beneath them. You and Snowy carry as many dead eels as you can.” The beach before them was littered with over a dozen defeated creatures. Jace turned to Snowy. “Mangle them in your mouth until they are covered in blood.” He turned back to Draya. “After the fireball, toss them out toward the seagulls and try to make a path back to us. Go!”
“Do you really think that will work?” Psycho asked as they watched the pair run back onto the beach.
“With my god, Dexmachi, helping us, yes. He’s the only reason any of my crazy plans work.”
Psycho shrugged and returned his eyes to the water. It looked like Pharah would send more eels toward Draya and Snowy, but she held off when they veered away from her location and ran onto the distant dock. Jace turned to Esther. “I need you to Haste yourself and Psycho to give each of you an extra attack each round.” He looked at the archer. “You can fire four arrows a round, correct?”
“Yes, but with an even greater penalty to my accuracy.”
Jace shrugged off the concern. “You can hit these eels with your eyes closed, especially since the queen purposefully uses them to block your shots. Don’t waste your magical arrows and fill the water with dead eels.”
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
He turned back to Esther. “We will wade in and hack and slash everything we see. I’m hoping that if the eels are busy blocking arrows, she won’t be able to send them against us directly.”
Everyone nodded, Esther cast her spells, and the three attacked. Jace was correct that Pharah couldn’t simultaneously use her eels for too many things. They were currently Grappling Joe and Leah in shallows and then needed to jump out of the water to block four arrows from Psycho each round. When she also tried to send a few to attack Jace, two of Psycho’s arrows slipped through her defenses and struck her in the chest. They did minor damage, but she didn’t like it and focused on using her minions for defense.
Jace turned his attacks and parries to automatic. It wasn’t something he liked to do, but hitting or blocking the low-level creatures was beyond easy, and only a roll of 1 would have him fail. Manually blocking each eel attack was too difficult to track, and the game's AI did a better job.
Esther reached the shore first, and the eels naturally swarmed to her location. With two weapons and Hasted, she had four attacks per round. Char was ineffective in the water, and the eels were immune to the cold damage from Chill, but the physical damage was more than enough to deal with the creatures, and she never let enough of them get close to her to trigger their Swarm abilities. The water was electrified, and she took damage each round from that, but it wasn’t much above her Damage resistance.
Jace arrived later and cast Summon Stone to drop a slab in the water for him to stand on. He put a Damage Sink totem on it, so it stuck halfway out of the water. Once on the solid surface, he felt many bonuses return to him. Standing on stone with his Boots of Grounding, the electricity had no chance to harm him, and with his auto attacks, he kept up nicely.
Pharah grew frustrated. Joe and Leah were immobile, half out of the water, but she couldn’t give them the attention necessary to kill them. The eels could Grapple or attack, not both, so she only kept them out of the fight for now. She quickly saw Jace and Esther were more potent than their levels implied, and her pets would not have a chance to defeat them. She had other powerful spells at her disposal but couldn’t take the time to cast them with her attention so focused on her attack and defense.
Eventually, she drifted back into deeper waters. Jace gave chase hesitantly, not wanting to leave his stone platform, and Esther wasn’t tall enough to keep her head above water. Once the blade attacks of the two fighters stopped, she had a moment to cast spells. A tidal wave rose behind her, washed over her form, and crashed into Jace and Esther, tossing the two characters like beach balls toward shore. They each took damage when they hit the ground 20 feet from the water.
Pharah summoned larger eels to her now, and the python-like creatures wrapped around her arms and legs, conforming to her human shape. Soon, it looked like her body was made of snakes, electric sparks popping and crackling from the magical spell. She grew in height, towering over the water by ten feet. Her head remained visible, but the rest of her body was pulsing, slithering eels, many of them a foot thick. Enough of the smaller eels remained to jump out of the water to block Psycho’s continued onslaught of arrows, but soon, her upper body rose so high that the archer angled his shots up, and the tiny creatures couldn’t jump that far.
Pharah took a few strikes to her upper body, but the shafts couldn’t penetrate the living armor. It must have done damage, and she couldn’t absorb it forever. Once her new form was completed and she stood 25 feet tall, she reached toward the archer, the end of her new right arm a mass of wriggling eels. Electricity accumulated from every portion of her body and shot out of her right hand in a massive lightning strike. Thunder boomed through the air, and Jace turned to see the bolt strike Psycho in the chest. He had the lowest Magic Defense in the group and failed the save critically, taking over half his health in damage. His golden dragon armor prevented him from entering a death spiral from an elemental attack, so he only lost consciousness and fell to the ground.
“I’m done playing with you,” Pharah said, her monstrous body taking several steps toward the characters lying on the beach. Jace got up and sprinted back toward his stone platform just as the towering foe released another lightning attack. Jace saved and took half of the damage, all of which went to his totem.
Pharah frowned and turned to Esther. She stood next to the water, which was dark and churning with dead eels. The rogue tipped her hat and disappeared before the queen could summon the mana for another attack. Jace didn’t know where she would go in the bright sunlight, but when the column of darkness vanished after six seconds, and she wasn’t there, he assumed she had gone underwater.
That was when the first shark showed up. Dead squid was usually good, but it was covered in burnt ink and not that appetizing. Not nearly as appetizing as fresh eel. The little eels were hard to catch, but the thick, stationary animals that made up Pharoh’s legs were not, and they were delicious.
A look of severe pain crossed the queen's face, and as a pool of blood formed around her knees, more sharks showed up. Her left leg buckled under the attack, and she stumbled forward. She took two more clumsy steps toward shore, and a massive fireball hit her in the back, sending her face-first into the waves.
Pharah quickly got up to her hands and knees and lifted her upper body out of the water. Bites covered her chest and arms, blood and gore oozing down her body. A large shark remained firmly attached to the end of her right arm, chomping away. The queen aimed the damaged limb toward the docks, where Draya prepared another attack. Pharah beat her to it, releasing another lightning strike. The bolt tore through the rear end of the shark, killing it and stealing most of the spell’s strength. Draya couldn’t avoid the attack but saved against the spell, taking half of the remaining damage, which wasn’t much. She responded with a fireball to the beleaguered female’s face.
The living mass of eels rose to her feet and ran for the shore as sharks nipped at her heels. Jace had cast another stone platform at the water's edge and met the grotesque creature with Diamond Etcher out. He cut into her massive limbs, and severed eels fell from her body left and right. Pharah tried to swipe him out from in front of her, but it was a backhanded, half-hearted effort, and he critically blocked it, which allowed him to Parry Bash her in the chest. She didn’t fly backward, but she did stumble and fall into the water, earning her three more shark attacks on her arm, back, and shoulder.
She rolled in the waves to escape Jace’s reach and finally crawled onto the relative safety of the shore. Getting to her knees, Pharah began clawing at her chest desperately. She had numerous fingers on each hand in the form of writhing eels, and they ripped and pulled at the thick strands covering her body like an explorer trying to make their way through the dense jungle. During the effort, Draya hit her with another fireball, but besides stumbling slightly, Pharah didn’t register the attack.
The 25-foot monstrosity eventually succeeded, creating a gap in the overlapping eels so Jace could see through to the troglodyte’s actual torso. Or he would have seen her golden chest plate if something else wasn’t in the way.
A black-clad figure, covered in eel slime, burst out from the swarming mass of bodies, slashing at the thick creatures with two rapiers upon her exit. Esther landed and rolled forward, standing before Jace and sprinting past him. “Run!” she said, and Jace didn’t ask questions. Had she snuck through the water, avoided the sharks, and then Grappled her way in amongst the nest of eels to attack from the inside? Jace shook his head in awe and sprinted after her.
Pharah gave a stumbling chase after the two characters before a surge of mana within her brought her to a sudden stop. Three separate explosions ripped through her constructed form, blasting her stomach, leg, and shoulder. Flames joined in a massive fireball and eels tore away from her, burning to pieces. Jace had dove to the sand, following Esther’s lead, and rolled over to watch the spectacle. He didn’t know how the creature was still standing. Large chunks of her manufactured body were missing, eels dangling from the open wounds like intestines. They weren’t quick to slither back in place as before, and Jace knew now was the time to take the creature down.
He guessed Esther had placed three dragon fire rubies inside the female and programmed them with a timer. While Draya’s attacks had hit the outside of the creature, where a sheen of water somewhat protected it, Esther had avoided that armor. Jace picked himself up to charge and stopped short as arrows flew over his head. He turned to see Snowy standing next to Psycho. The wolf must have used her last healing spell on the ranger, and he was back in action. Fireballs came in from the other side, picking apart the open wounds and ensuring they would never close.
Pharah fell to her knees, her legs so torn apart they couldn’t support the heavy mass of eels above them. Jace saw her turn to the ocean, lapping up on the shore a few feet beside her. She might recover if she could reach the water, assuming the sharks didn’t eat her, but one last arrow found the troglodyte’s chest. She stopped all movement and made eye contact with Jace. “It isn’t over,” she gasped. “I will rise again.” Before Jace could challenge the claim, she collapsed in a heap. The swarm of eels stirred for a moment and then stopped. The Hit Points above her head dropped to zero.
Jace moved to the shore to pull Joe and Leah free from the water before the sharks got any ideas. The pair lay in ankle-deep water, too shallow for the enormous man-eating fish, but there was no reason to risk it. The eels came off them like burnt ropes, and both woke up from their Helpless states as soon as they made it to dry land.
“It’s over,” Jace said. “The queen is dead.”
“Joe! Are you okay?”
Jace turned at the call and saw Rachelle running from the plantation, past Psycho, and down to the beach. The orc smiled. She was scripted to make her appearance once the fight was over. Jace looked toward the entrance to the dock and saw the travel node he was expecting.
{Now you’ve got an influx of experience,} Gracie confirmed. {Not enough for a new level, but close.}
Jace realized why most players leveled up so slowly. He had completed the Constitution module, killing many times more creatures than usual and finishing with a massive boss. Now, they had defeated a hoard of troglodytes, a demon, a god, and whatever Pharah had been, and those two combined still weren’t enough to level him up. The quickest way to advance was still to kill players.
Leah, Joe, Rachelle, and Esther stood in a circle talking while Psycho walked up beside Jace, who had moved over to look at the dead pile of seafood on the beach. “She couldn’t have been a sea dragon?” the elf asked.
Jace chuckled. “You’ll get your dragon eventually.” He knew as a hunter, Psycho was assigned a legendary prey, and if he ever killed an actual dragon, he would get a lot of bonuses. “Do you want to tell me what happened last night?”
“No,” the elf replied honestly. “We got our stuff back, and the slavers who mistreated us paid for their sins. Don’t burden your conscience with it.”
Jace nodded, extending his ranger the trust he deserved. The group all drank healing potions and moved toward the travel node. Rachelle wasn’t coming with them. Someone needed to stay back and run the island. People still lived here, and they needed supplies. Another ship would arrive in a few hours to trade timber and stone for food and spices. Rachelle had helped Joe with much of the planning and organization, and she had many friends here.
Joe agreed to accompany Leah to her kingdom and set things right, but he would likely return to this island. It felt like home. There was a woman he loved, and he wanted to start a family. Leah hugged her sister goodbye, and the group got ready to leave.
Right before Jace was about to activate the travel node, Esther pulled him aside. “What do you think Pharah meant when she said it wasn’t over? Do you really think it is safe to leave?”
“I don’t know,” he replied. “I know this mission is over. Another one might pop up in the future, and we will have to come back here, but we are ready to leave for now.”
The rogue nodded, and Jace led his group magically through the node and directly to Leah’s home, the Kingdom of Canaan.
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Ignis was still getting his feet wet with his new toy. He had many other magical unions to other items throughout the realms, several actively burning villages or forests, but his attention was exclusively on this new connection.
Shortly after the mage and her friends had left, he made the volcano erupt. It wasn’t a violent explosion. He gently raised the lava pool inside, feeling as it burned the walls and eventually spilled over the top. Magma flowed down in all directions, cleaning up the mess of bodies left behind by the humans. As the sheet of lava expanded, growing exponentially in surface area, Ignis needed to pump more and more molten rock out of the throat.
Then he hit the first line of trees. The demon had never experienced such a feeling. Each trunk went up like a firework, instantly engulfed in flames. He remembered the mage's warning, “Don’t burn everything at once.” Even as big of a pyromaniac as he was, Ignis understood the wisdom in moderation. Instead of spreading the lava out in all directions, he chose a specific path down the back of the volcano, finding and consuming one tree at a time. The lava curved and flowed until it reached a section of level ground. Ignis was about to stop when he sensed an irregularity in the terrain. It felt like another mini volcano, round with a steep lip around the circumference.
Could he join these two openings? Create one massive volcano? He was too excited and had to explore. He flowed up and over the lip. It wasn’t another volcano. It was shallow and filled with rocks.
One of the rocks vibrated.
It was alive.
Ignis paused, perplexed. The objects were large, smooth, oval, and several feet in diameter. They had to be rocks, but when the lava got close, they reacted violently to the heat. Then he knew what it was. A vindictive mage had once cursed him into his ex-wife’s frying pan so that she burned everything she tried to cook. She had gone through dozens of eggs before she eventually gave up. These were the proper shapes, and he could feel the thin shell protecting something alive. What could be inside?
Ignis was curious and covered one with lava. The shell burned and cracked open, revealing a giant lizard almost as big as the bodies he had covered with molten rock on the side of the volcano. This one was maybe a day or two from full maturity. These were the enemies of his dragon friend. Did she know about them?
There had been eight in total before he had cracked open one and burned the contents. Seven of them had surrounded one in the center that was much bigger. He could access that one now and sensed the power inside. This was a queen, and she radiated almost as much energy as the volcano.
The mage had said not to kill humans, but she had said nothing about lizards, so Ignis covered the eggs with lava. Each one burst open and released its magic, the contents burning alive in seconds. When the queen died, Ignis felt a shock of power like he had never felt before. He basked in it for a while and then drew back. That was enough fun with the volcano for now. He would do it again tomorrow.