Wallace rose from her chair the instant Elisabeth rounded a corner and entered the study. Vithium had to catch his breath first. He worked in a brothel and employed many alluring men and women, but Elisabeth had a graceful quality that made her seem to float across the floor, her feet hidden beneath a modest, full-length gown. Her black hair was up, revealing her slender neck and tanned shoulders. She wore emerald earrings and a matching necklace. She wasn’t smiling.
“What involvement do you have with my father and brothers? If this is about their business, I have nothing to discuss. I assist my husband with his trading company. He is away for a few days. Without him present, I will not discuss financial matters. You may have just wasted a long trip out here.”
“This is not about money,” Wallace assured her, bowing slightly in her presence. “This is about life and death.”
Elisabeth’s arms crossed over her chest. “Many think gold is more important than life and death, and strange men have made much bolder claims to gain a private audience with me. You will need more than idle idioms to gain my trust or my patience.”
Vithium finally moved to stand next to Wallace and offered his input. “Your older brother is dead.” Elisabeth gasped at the direct statement, and her hand went to her mouth. Vithium continued. “We found him this morning, killed in his shop.”
Elisabeth regained her poise quickly, her hand moving from her mouth to her chest to steady her breathing. “So,” her voice squeaked a bit, and she tried again. “So, this is about money. I told you, I am not in business with my family. I am grateful for this house my father left me, but I have nothing to do with . . .”
“This is about your father,” Wallace said, daring to step closer to the woman. “About the magic he used, the demon he served, and the deals he made.”
The woman’s hand went back to her head. “So it’s true,” she whispered, her voice failing again. “Tristan said . . . but I didn’t want to believe . . .”
Wallace nodded. “It’s true. Your father’s wealth and power are ill-gotten in the worst way, and now a demon beast has been sent from hell to collect a price. It will come this night to kill you.”
The woman took a stumbling step back and found support against a bookshelf. Next to her head was a diamond-encrusted bookend. She lifted it, a symbol of her father’s wealth. “I will give it all back,” she said, finding strength in this bold strategy. “I don’t need riches or gold. I don’t need this house. I will give it all back. I have Peter, and soon . . .” her voice trailed off as her other hand dropped to her slightly swollen abdomen. “I didn’t ask for . . .” but her voice broke off in a sob.
“Lady,” Vithium said, walking several paces forward. “We will do our best to protect you. Is there an area of the house that is safest?”
Elisabeth sucked in her tears and tried to pull herself together. The concept of “safe” restored some level of confidence in her. “This house is safe,” she said. “The outer fence is enchanted. Nothing can break through. Even birds that try to fly over at night are hit with an electrical charge that would . . .” her voice trailed off as a bracelet on her right hand pulsed with mana. She glanced down at it in terror.
From bellow, Wallace heard a commotion, and she moved away from the lady of the house to look over the railing at the large common area. Several men rushed into the kitchen and spoke with the housekeeper. Wallace realized they must also have warning devices and watched as they discussed a defensive strategy while drawing weapons.
“The breach is on the south side.”
“Did the lightning defense go off?”
“It did.”
“And . . .”
“It seemed to have no effect. Whatever it is, it jumped the fence and is still coming.”
Outside, they all heard horses whinnying in fear. The guards turned toward the back of the house, peering through the tall windows. “Men, brace yourselves!” one of them ordered. “We need to defend . . .”
But he didn’t get to finish as one of the enormous windows exploded inward, and a nightmarish beast flew into the dining room. Wallace stepped back in shock, her 14-year-old-self rising to the surface as an overwhelming sense of fear consumed her. The move cut off her line of sight momentarily, and she was saved from seeing the first attack as the beast leaped at one of the men below. She heard the gut-wrenching scream, though, and another wave of fear coursed through her, accompanied by nausea. The sounds of bones crunching and blood and guts splashing on the floor brought her stomach up into her throat.
{Take a moment,} Brodie spoke to her in a soothing voice. He could monitor her heart rate and knew she was physically stressed. {It has a Fear aura, but you saved against its attack. You are only Shocked for one round. The rest is in your head. Remember, you don’t need to kill it, and it isn’t after you. You just need to hold out for a few rounds.}
Wallace focused on her breathing and let the fear wash off her. After six seconds, the in-game penalty wore off, and her mind found the focus it needed.
{Good job,} her operator complimented her. {And it was a good thing you still had on your Wisdom ring to boost your Magic Defense, but it might be a good idea to switch to Strength now.}
Wallace agreed and changed her rings. Below her, she heard another man gruesomely meet his fate, but she steeled herself against it, drew her axe and shield, and ventured back toward the railing to examine the scene.
Chairs were tossed about, and the flowers and plants that had decorated the area were broken and scattered on the floor. Blood splattered across everything, and the torn bodies of the two dead men threatened to send Wallace into another spiral of fear. Instead, she found focus by staring at the monster as it faced off against the last two men across the dining room table.
It was shaped like a cross between a wolf and an alligator, with a slender body and tail supported by four long legs. Covered in black scales, with a ridge down its back, its skinny limbs didn’t look strong enough to pose much threat, but it tossed a chair aside with one of its legs, sending the furniture crashing into a brick fireplace where it shattered into kindling. The men opposite the creature moved quickly to their left to keep the bulk of the table between them. The beast opened its long jaws and spewed a stream of acid at the closest man. He screamed in pain and terror, dropping to the floor and failing his saving throw. His scream ended quickly as his remains smoked on the wooden floor.
The demon didn’t waste any more time, flexed its long legs, and leaped over the table at the remaining guard. He raised his shield and swiped his sword, but the blade bounced harmlessly off the tough scales, and he was knocked to the ground, the fiend’s legs pinning him to the floor. Wallace couldn’t see the end of the encounter, as the large table blocked it, but she saw the massive head go down, heard the man scream, and flinched as the jaws came back up, entrails and guts hanging from its mouth. It tore them away from the body, shaking its head side to side to further coat the room in red before releasing them back to the floor with a sickening plop.
Wallace stepped away from the railing before she puked, cursing herself for having her gore setting set so high. She wouldn’t waste a round to change it now and turned to see the other two people upstairs with her. Monks usually specialized in physical defenses, not magical ones, but the fear spell did not affect Vithium, as he stayed ready for action, bouncing back and forth on his feet. Elisabeth wasn’t as composed, leaning against a bookshelf and breathing heavily. Once the sickening noises from below faded away, Wallace thought she detected music. Upon closer examination, she heard the woman humming to herself. The song rose in volume, and the tune helped wash away any residual discomfort the paladin felt.
“My father,” Elisabeth whispered, ending her song and pushing away from the wall. “I sense his presence. Somehow, he has returned.”
“No,” Wallace corrected. “You sense the demon he served. It must have hung about him like a fragrance before.”
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
“What . . .” Vithium asked carefully, “what is down there?” He had no in-game banes from the fear spell but was still nervous.
“A beast from hell that we will have to fight.”
“I thought you said this module was safe. I didn’t sign up for . . .”
Wallace ignored him and turned to Elisabeth. “You are a bard, correct?” The woman nodded. “Then I need you to sing any defensive songs you know. The monster will be upon us in a moment.” The paladin eyed the stairs they had ascended a few minutes ago, and Vithium stopped complaining and resumed a ready stance.
The monster decided not to take the stairs, vaulted its body twelve feet into the air, and crashed through the railing to Wallace’s right. Her shield was up, and she had just enough time to pivot toward the demon and accept the attack. The defensive stance wasn’t enough to completely block the fiend, but it couldn’t get a critical attack through and did a handful of damage to the knight. Wallace struck back, but her enchanted axe only bounced off the armored creature.
Vithium charged the combatants, wisely approaching from the opposite side to get a Flanking bonus. The beast sensed his approach and turned to meet him. The monk had the initiative and struck first. It looked like he only waved his fist at the monster, a flailing attempt to hit it. The beast snapped its long jaws at the jab, missed, and looked somewhat confused. Vithium followed the miss with his other fist, landing a solid punch on the side of its head. The fist did minor damage, but a surge of power transferred between the combatants, and the beast looked Dazed for a moment and failed to take another attack that round.
Wallace took the opportunity to pile on, slamming her axe down on the monster's back, penetrating its scales, and finally doing damage. It wasn’t much, and it seemed to wake the fiend up from whatever funk Vithium had imparted. It struck back at the monk, its front claws raking against his unarmored chest. Blood flew from the wound, and the man flew through the air, crashing against a bookshelf.
As horrific as the attack looked, Wallace saw that his health only crept down a little, evidence of his massive physical resistance. As books rained down on the monk’s head, Wallace shifted her gaze to the side to see Elisabeth cowering behind the desk. “A song,” the paladin reminded her. “Sing a song.”
The demon had also spotted the woman and stalked toward her. Elisabeth obeyed and started singing. After a few seconds, her image flickered, wavered, and then faded away as if she had just dissolved into the air. The beast paused, and before it could sniff the air or dispel the bard’s defensive song, Wallace leaped after it and attacked again. Her axe did little damage, but it got the monster’s attention.
The beast turned on her and hesitated, cocking its head in confusion.
{The defensive song is aiding you too,} Brodie advised. {You aren’t invisible, but the creature will have a penalty to hit you.}
Wallace raised her shield as the demon attacked and smiled as it bounced back, doing no damage to her. She saw movement to her right as Vithium rose and had to squint in his direction, his body appearing as a reflection on rippling water. Because they were allies, she would always be able to see him, but she understood the fiend’s problem.
The monk attacked the monster from behind again, not bothering with a feint this time and slamming both his fists into the creature’s back. More mana rushed into the demon, and it was momentarily Stunned, allowing Wallace a concentrated attack on the beast. Now, she dealt significant damage to it. The fiend howled in pain but recognized it had to deal with the monk’s debilitating blows first and turned toward the man.
The monster bit Vithium on the leg this time, shook him, and tossed him toward the railing. The monk made a second hole in the wooden posts and screamed as he fell to the lower floor. Wallace winced on his behalf, hearing him crash into wooden furniture and hoping his Damage Reduction was up to the task. She didn’t worry about him for too long, as she now had to fight the beast one-on-one.
They exchanged blows back and forth for a few rounds, and Brodie gave her updates in her head. With her shield raised, Wallace had an Armor Class of 48, which was more than enough for the zombies, ghosts, and skeletons she usually fought, but Brodie was guessing this beast had a base attack of at least 50. It would typically be able to hit her without rolling an attack die, but the translucent appearance Elisabeth’s song imparted gave the attacker a -10 to hit her. The tune wafted through the room like a ghost from the invisible woman, light and airy, but Wallace also heard an underlying alto beat that she recognized as a more traditional defensive song. The woman must have the Harmony feat, which allowed her to combine two melodies that shared a similar structure. This boosted the paladin’s shield bonus by +10, so the fiend needed to roll an 18 to hit her. On the third round of combat, the monster rolled a 19, and its jaws closed on her shield arm. It wasn’t a critical, so it couldn’t enact any combat maneuvers to shake or throw her, but it still hurt.
Wallace retreated a few steps to shake off the strike and refocus. “Am I not hitting it, or does it have damage resistance?”
{Uncertain,} Brodie replied as the beast attacked again. The knight’s shield held, but her return attack bounced off its body. {I think you need a critical to get through its scales and another to do any damage. Based on your rolls, you’ve been pretty average, but you need a 20 to make any progress. It also seems to be healing each round, so you need a miracle.}
As Wallace took a claw attack to her midsection, she realized she needed more than a miracle. The three hits she had taken had dropped her to half health, and her Lay On Hands ability wouldn’t heal her fast enough. Plus, it would take an action, preventing her from raising her shield that round. Twice what she recovered would be dealt to her in damage. She couldn’t wait for a 20; she needed to generate one.
Remembering what Jace had done to the titan and his minions back in the Torrintank Keep module, she took her character off automatic attack, gripped her axe tightly, and manually aimed at the creature’s neck just behind its ears.
{Wally, we talked about this. You are not Jace Thorne. Don’t . . .} but his warning was too late.
The weapon streaked in but at a horrible angle. Instead of letting the axe bounce off its scales as usual, the four-legged beast Dodged to the side, successfully avoiding the attack by a double critical margin. This left Wallace Flat-Footed against the fiend, and it took advantage, maneuvering to her back and attacking at an angle that prevented her from raising her shield. The beast got three criticals, used two to triple the damage of its attack, and then tossed her toward the railing.
Wallace flailed her arms and legs, dropping her weapon and shield to grab onto the broken railing she collided with and save herself from falling over the balcony. Now, her health was dangerously low, and she had no defense as the beast stalked toward her. It was all Wallace could do to stand up, and as she saw the monster close in on her, she wondered if maybe falling off the ledge would have been better.
In that instant, the song ended. As the paladin shimmered back into complete visibility, the demon tensed its legs to leap at her. It suddenly froze, and Wallace turned to see Elisabeth visible again, having just cast a spell at the monster. “Hurry!” the woman cried. “It won’t last long.”
Wallace didn’t need to be told twice and raced around the frozen monster, picking up her axe and shield and hurrying to the far side of the room. She pulled a healing potion from her satchel and wasted a round to drink it.
“It is a spell I used to use against my youngest brother when we were kids,” she said. “My dad taught it to me. It never works on anyone else, but I’m guessing it targets the same demon they were joined with.”
“Thanks,” Wallace said after she had regained much of her health. She added a few more with her own healing ability. Elisabeth was right, and the beast sprung into the air at the battered railing after only two rounds. The knight wasn’t there anymore to absorb its momentum, and it barely managed to stay on the upper level. As it scrambled about in the loose wooden shrapnel, Wallace grabbed the bard’s arm to race out of the room, but Vithium filled the doorway, finally making it back upstairs and not looking happy. He charged into the room straight at the monster, who had finally turned around and readied itself for action. Wallace paused to see the result.
The beast had endured enough of the monk’s debilitating strikes and spewed acid at him while he was still 20 feet away. It charged hard after the magical strike. Vithium took the attack full in the chest and froze, a look of pain plastered on his face. The two onlookers gasped in horror as the monster leaped at the stunned man, its jaws wide open to attack. Wallace would have thought a monk should have enough resistance to endure an acid attack without a problem.
As the demon’s vicious teeth clamped down on the motionless man, his body exploded in a spray of fibers that Wallace had never seen before. The monster was equally confused and came to rest amidst the plume of confetti with a dumbfounded look in its eyes. Vithium appeared suddenly behind the creature, as if stepping from an invisible door. He grabbed its tail and flipped it onto its back. “Wallace,” he cried. “Now!”
The knight understood her job and raced over to the Grappling pair with her axe raised over her head in two hands. She had stored her shield on her back to drink the healing potion. Holding her weapon with both hands gave her bonuses to hit and damage, and she used them as she swung down on the monster’s unarmored chest. She released the one-time-use True Strike spell stored in her axe. The blade sunk in, and black blood gushed from the wound. Brodie yelled in his sister’s mind that she had just gotten a double critical. She had already seen the alert and had directed the game to put everything toward damage.
Whatever boon Vithium had to wrestle the monster disappeared, and it flipped out of his grasp with a shriek. It turned back on the monk, and the paladin hit it again with her axe. She needed to waste the criticals to get through its protections now, but she scored damage with the added bonuses from the two-handed weapon and Flanking.
Vithium wasn’t done either and managed to Dodge the beast's first beleaguered attack before he struck back. He dumped mana into the creature to weaken its defenses and threw it toward a bookshelf.
The monk moved away from the monster to stand next to the paladin. Elisabeth was soon beside them. The fiend picked itself up slowly, chewing and spitting out the books that had rained on top of it. That was the best combo of attacks they could hope for against the thing. They had only decreased its health by about 20%, and it was already rising back.
“We run,” Wallace said. No one argued with her.