The snakes hesitated only a few feet from Esther’s neck as the oil slick gave them pause. The woman cursed the sticky black goo but understood the snakes didn’t like it either. Still, it would only be a matter of seconds before they found an angle that would allow them to strike out over it and latch on to her exposed flesh.
Then, the room shook with thunder.
Esther had been constantly testing the tentacles, knowing the magical arms would eventually lose their strength. They slackened now, and she wriggled a leg free. Straining against the remaining disembodied arms, she angled the toe of her boot until it pressed against solid wood just outside of the black circle. Connection with the oil-free surface restored her agility, and she wrenched her right hand free.
The snakes had been startled by whatever had caused the thunder and were slow to regain focus, giving Esther a few precious seconds to work. She retrieved a ruby from her gem bag and activated the bracer on her left hand to summon her dragon shield. Hearing the renewed hissing only inches from her ear, she raised her shield toward it and dropped the red gemstone on the other side.
Dragon fire ignited around her, blasting the snakes away. The shield protected her from the initial explosion, but the oil caught fire as well, and it surrounded her. She convulsed in pain, and so did the tentacles. They tried to hold her for another round, but as the oil burned up and vanished, they lost strength. Esther cut herself free, rolled out of the fire without taking too much damage, and rose quickly to her feet.
As she took stock of the chaos around her, the shift in the weather drew her attention. The sky had grown suddenly dark, and the wind blowing through the room carried an unusual chill given the desert environment. In the distance, she heard rolling thunder. Something pivotal had just occurred. She searched the room to find out what and focused on the action closest to her.
She saw Pok standing with the priest and alchemist, and all three of them were staring at Gromphy. The goblin backpedaled slowly, holding two different vials, threatening to throw them. Pok and Kelrick closed in on him from opposite directions, casting defensive spells and limping on wounded legs. Esther saw Jaheed begin casting a spell toward his partners and remembered she had to take him out. Sprinting toward the priest, she saw a translucent cylinder of magic around him. As she closed the last few feet, she hoped her weapons would be able to penetrate. Chill and Char deflected ineffectively against the barrier, but her momentum carried her into the cylinder, where she bounced off his body and landed in a pile of crates.
“Foolish girl,” he said as he completed his spell and granted relief to Pok and Kelrick so that they lost their limps and closed on Gromphy faster.
Esther refused to give up. She sheathed her weapons and returned to the man with her arms out. Once again, she passed through the cylinder but, this time, grabbed onto his waist. The priest cursed as he had to stop casting and address Esther. The rogue smiled and flexed her ability to elevate the Grapple to the next level, but Jaheed simply stepped away from her.
That couldn’t be possible. She’d never met a priest that could come close to matching her physical prowess before. Jaheed began casting again, and Esther pursued, stepping a few feet forward to wrap her arms around him. She disrupted his casting a second time, and when she tried to secure him, he slipped effortlessly away.
“What’s happening?” she asked out loud.
“You’ve never heard of a sanctuary spell before?” Jaheed responded, not even bothering to turn around and look at her. “You can’t attack me. Go bother someone else.”
No. Gracie had told her to take out the priest, and that was what she needed to do. He resumed casting, and she jumped toward him to initiate the Grapple again. This time, he cast a much shorter spell, and he released it just before she wrapped him up. Esther was beginning to realize that a simple Grapple wasn’t considered an attack. It restricted a character's movement and action choices, but it would never cause them harm. So as long as she . . .
Her train of thought derailed suddenly as the spell the priest had just cast came into full effect. A dozen butcher knives rose into the air around him and spun in a circle, hacking and slashing at Esther’s exposed skin. She cried out in shock at the knives, though she quickly felt that they didn’t hurt her. Jaheed was level 20, so his spell and the knives that attacked her were also level 20. Her scale armor protected her from all slashing damage level 20 and below.
“Now, will you let me go?” he asked, again not turning to look at her and keeping his eyes focused on the action before him.
“Never,” she said through gritted teeth. “I can take it.” She did her best acting, filling her voice with pain.
“We’ll see about that,” he said. As the next round started, the knives fluttered to life again as if they were a colony of startled bats.
Esther cried out in pain but didn’t let go. Instead, she took several steps backward, pulling the priest with her. Jaheed accepted the movement, not resisting. Esther understood that the man thought she could do nothing to harm him, and the damage she should have been receiving would be worth the loss of position. Esther dragged him back another ten feet and cried out in pain again as the knives activated a third time.
“Are you really ready to die over this?” Jaheed asked. “You can’t possibly take another round of damage.”
Esther didn’t respond and instead looked at the battle before her. Gromphy and his two opponents were stalemated, but she saw Delly running toward them and didn’t want this priest helping anymore. However, she also realized she wouldn’t be able to keep up this charade much longer. She trusted the priest’s estimation that she should be dead in a round or two. When she wasn’t, he would eventually free himself and turn to inspect her.
She moved him back another ten feet, and the next round of knives sliced into her. She laughed instead of crying this time.
“What kind of sadomasochist are you?”
Esther leaned in close and whispered into his ear. “You’re about to find out.” With one final tug, she bent the two of them backward, and they fell over the waist-high rope railing and out of the top-floor room, spinning into the open air.
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When Delly hit Vulder with her axe, the room shook, and every one of his companions stumbled and needed a round or two to recover. Chago wasn’t aligned with the evil lord yet, and he never let up his assault on Jace. With intermittent access to his totems, the orc struggled to repel the fighter’s onslaught. However, the shaman occasionally stepped on a marble line in the floor, giving him a +18 to his defenses and connecting him to his damage sink so that any attack he didn’t deflect went into the totem.
Two things happened to turn the flow of battle. The first was that Jace began to identify the attack routines. Like most players, Chago was on automatic, letting the computer game fight for him. This meant all his attacks were dice rolls. Sometimes, he rolled high, and sometimes, he rolled low. Jace had never fought against someone wielding two long swords before, and all the attack routines were new to him. It took him a while to identify the good attacks that he probably needed a perfect parry to deflect and the weaker ones that he could get away with something less.
The second significant change happened when Chago backed him into the corner of the throne room where the bath stood. The entire area was covered in marble tile, and Jace no longer had to pick his steps carefully to maintain a connection with his totems. The fight changed in an instant.
Jace identified a weak attack coming in, probably a roll of five or less, and took the time to execute a perfect parry. It must have been a 20, earning him two bonus criticals and giving him a massive boost to his counterattack. He finally hit the fighter, doing enormous damage. Usually, this would cause his NPC opponents to falter, and Chago’s face did register distress, but since his attacks were automatic, he kept on chugging.
His next attack wasn’t great either, and Jace executed the same response, this time parry bashing him in the face. This move was meant to throw an opponent backward and Daze them for a round, but Jace angled his block with the wall, so Chago only flew ten feet before he collided with a bronze snake holder.
Jace felt confident in the fight now and risked a look over at his companions. Psycho struggled with one of the female monks, who Grappled him from behind, while Draya weakly fended off the other one as she lay vulnerable on the ground, swiping her staff back and forth desperately. Jace saw that Psycho and his assailant straddled one of the marble lines, and he took a moment to cast a spell, calling forth a stone wall matching the width of the half-inch inlay that rose directly between the two characters.
He couldn’t witness the result of the strategy as he sensed movement from his left. He turned to see Chago coming off the wall after disentangling himself from the forked pole. Jace always attacked manually but had played around with switching to and from automatic. The game guided your attacks like a puppet master, and it was difficult to fight the urge to take over. It was like holding the steering wheel of a self-driving car. If you maintained a loose grip, the wheel would turn on its own beneath your hands. But if you exerted even the slightest influence, the car would let you take over.
Chago exercised heavy influence now. He had seen Jace with his back toward him, gripped his swords tight in his hands, and meant to cut the arrogant orc’s head off under his own power. Jace recognized the primitive attack immediately and executed another perfect parry, blocking both blades with a single swipe of his sword. The twin weapons went high, exposing Chago’s body to attack. Jace thrust Diamond Etcher forward, skewering the flamboyant fighter through the chest, earning a total of four criticals, which he spent all on damage. The trafficker’s health plunged below zero as Jace’s attack momentum sent them both back toward the wall until Etcher’s tip stuck into a wooden pillar.
“You suck . . .” Chago started, but the rest of his insult was lost as his body slumped in death.
Jace wanted to gloat, but Gracie shouted at him. {Turn around!}
He obeyed and saw Odalga limping toward him with a look of pure hatred. Behind her, Snowy’s snake body lay cut up and dying, her health dropping every six seconds. Jace focused back on the rogue sniper and wondered how she was still standing. Her health was also dangerously low, and every effort she took looked strained. Still, she hoisted a pair of daggers and threw them toward Jace.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
He had never tried to block thrown weapons before and let the game take over. Jace guessed if she were at full strength, he wouldn’t have had a chance, but his sword danced back and forth, easily knocking the knives from the air. As they sparked off the marble tiles, Odalga dropped to her knees as if that attack was the last of her energy. Jace didn’t trust her and ran forward, leaving the protection of the marble in the process.
“Why?” she gasped. “Why did you have to come and ruin everything?”
“Nothing personal,” Jace said. “It’s my job.” Then he killed her.
The woman’s body flopped to the ground, and Jace ran around her to tend to Snowy. The familiar’s health was already under ten, and he wasted no time healing her. He raised it to fifty, and she stabilized. The snake remained unconscious, but she no longer lost HP. Jace had no idea how the rest of his crew was doing and was just about to ask Gracie when she screamed at him again. {Look out!}
Jace leaned backward as a massive sword came down at him. His Dodge ability stunk, so he took full damage from the attack. His left hand touched a line of marble, and his Damage totem exploded behind him. Jace gathered himself and scrambled back to the safety of the stone slab around the bath. He finally looked at his attacker and saw a headless knight standing before him. Ahbid must have had a two-handed sword in his inventory.
A glance over the paladin’s shoulders where his head should be revealed Pok standing apart from the action with his eyes half closed, his fingers coiling and flexing under the powerful spell. Ahbid’s dead body responded in kind and attacked.
Jace parried cautiously and stayed defensive for a moment, waiting to see if the undead creature had monstrous strength or any other special abilities. After a couple of rounds, it felt just like fighting a level 22 character running on automatic. Jace could handle that. He stepped up his game, executed a perfect parry, and returned a powerful strike. Etcher cut through the enchanted armor like butter and knocked the paladin back a step. Jace glanced above his headless body to see how much damage he had done and was surprised to find the creature’s health already at zero.
“How do I kill it?” Jace asked as he readied for another round of combat.
{Turn undead, holy water, a divine weapon,} Gracie listed off several options, none of which Jace had. {Or just chop off all his limbs.}
He nodded. Jace wasn’t used to targeted attacks like that, but he could try to make it work. Before he could get started, his operator drew his attention elsewhere. {Looks like you’ve got more problems, though. Behind you.}
Jace Parry Bashed the knight in the chest to give him a chance to turn around, and he saw Chago’s dead body rising from the ground and retrieving his swords. The shaman did something Gracie had never heard him do before.
He swore.
“Crap.”
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Psycho felt stupid wrestling the monk who clung to his back. She was almost a foot shorter and half as heavy as the broad-shouldered elf, yet he could not get rid of her. Esther had offered to wrestle Psycho and Draya on multiple occasions when Jace had been away, and they eagerly accepted, knowing the training would come in handy on a mission.
Usually, a character didn’t try to Grapple you unless they had skill. That meant they would almost always be successful on the initial hold. If you tried to free yourself and failed, you were considered Securly Grappled. If you tried to free yourself from that and failed, you were considered Helpless for at least a round, depending on how poorly you failed. If your attacker had significant skill, they would be able to spend critical successes from the initial grab to make you Secured and then Helpless instantly. Esther did this all the time and could do it to Psycho easily without even hiding in the shadows first. Because of this, she had to actively try to do a lousy job when she wrestled with Psycho and Draya (especially Draya), or they wouldn’t get a chance to fight back.
The trick was to test the hold on you to see how much of a disadvantage you were at before trying to escape. If you could sense they were too powerful, then, instead of freeing yourself, you needed to Grapple them back. You probably wouldn’t be successful, but since everything in the game relied on a die roll, you had a chance, and it would prevent them from escalating their hold on you. If you did nothing, then they could try to get a critical on the next round and possibly increase their hold. Plus, if you did nothing, then you might as well be Securly Grappled since the result was the same.
Psycho had several back-and-forth rounds with the slight yet wirey woman clutched to his back. He mostly failed and had even been Secured for two rounds, but he hadn’t been rendered Helpless yet, and the longer it went on, there was always a chance he could roll a 20, or she could roll a one, and he might free himself. She had knocked the bow out of his hands a while ago, and in between rounds, he could only look forward at Draya desperately fending off the other monk with her staff. The poison in her veins drained five hit points every round, and something had to give soon, or Psycho was going to watch her die.
That “something” came in the form of a thin stone wall shooting up from the floor. The rising barrier hit the monk’s arms and ripped them free from Psycho’s torso. He felt the wall on his back and braced himself against it as he reached down for his bow, knowing full well who he had to thank for the reprieve.
Draya hadn’t just been swatting at her monk but had actually done some damage to her. When Psycho unloaded three more hammer arrows into the woman, she teetered on the edge of consciousness, and Draya finally put her down with a well-aimed strike against her midsection. The monk shrieked in pain and fell to the ground out of Hitpoints.
Psycho didn’t revel in the victory and pressed against the wall behind him, listening carefully to sense from which direction the remaining monk would come. He heard noise from his left and turned in that direction with another hammer arrow nocked and all his buffs in place. He saw the orange-clad woman sprint around the side of the wall, and he fired from less than ten feet. The blunt projectile struck her in the forehead, dropping her to the ground in silence.
The elf regretted having to kill the two women but knew they would respawn in their private module, and hopefully, they could be picked up by a player who wasn’t a criminal in Jace’s world. He didn’t dwell on it and raced over to Draya. The young woman struggled to her feet, using her staff as a crutch. “Antidote,” she rasped.
“Of course,” he said, reaching into a pocket to retrieve one of the potions Gromphy made sure they all carried. He gently handed it to her, not letting go until her weak fingers closed on the vial. Just as he completed the transfer, an arrow streaked between them, hitting Draya in the arm and yanking her backward. Psycho’s eyes followed the potion down as it shattered on the floor and looked up to see Draya pinned to the wall, her staff on the ground by her feet. With the magical weapon in her hands, she had the strength to fight off just about anything, even in her poisoned state, but without it, she had no chance to free herself from the wall. As Psycho drew an arrow and spun about to return fire, a second shot flew past him, piecing Draya’s dress at the hip and rendering her Helpless.
Psycho found Tenesta quickly, upset that he hadn’t taken out the archer earlier. Before he could deal with her now, a sword flashed in from his right, knocking his bow away. The elf rolled in the same direction, coming up ten feet away with his katana gripped tightly. Ferric stood there, grinning at him. The human fighter’s eyes betrayed his companion, and Psycho sensed someone else creeping up behind him. He dove forward at the last second as Dreller’s flail swung through the air.
Melee defense wasn’t the archer’s forte, and he felt he would have to end this fight as quickly as he could. He charged back toward Ferrick and executed a double “X” slash at the man, a classic technique against someone wielding a raised shield on one side. Predictably, the first attack clanged off the iron guard, but the second cut into Ferrick’s side. The man winced in pain, but not nearly as much as Psycho had expected.
As an elf, he could innately detect magical spells and knew the fighter had protection from slashing. He would be better off with his bow, but as Dreller flanked him from behind and he dodged out of the way, he knew that would be a foolish idea. His defenses were even worse when using a ranged weapon. He managed to avoid injury for one full round until the two men successfully flanked him, and Dreller’s flail hit his hip. The scorpion poison flooded into his side, numbing half his body and causing him to fail his next Dodge badly. He took almost 100 damage from Ferrick’s attack, and then Dreller hit him again on the other side.
Magic Resistance was another of his weaknesses, and he had no chance to save against the poison. Luckily, he didn’t feel it hurting him, only locking his limbs in paralysis. The pain came from Ferrick’s weapon as the fighter swiped his sword against Psycho’s chest, doing another 150 damage and knocking him to his back. He couldn’t move to get up and was glad his body was numb and wouldn’t feel the killing blow.
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Delly stalked toward the dissipating storm cloud, and as she saw the rest of Vulder’s crew, she realized she didn’t have a weapon. It didn’t matter; she looked forward to ripping these men apart with her bare hands. Paltine was the first in line as he battled a panther. Delly had no idea where the animal had come from, and as the mage hit it with a final blast of magical energy, it whimpered and vanished from the room.
Delly roared as she closed the last few feet, and Paltine turned toward her in horror. She felt energy in the air as he sent a rush of magic at her, but it flowed around and past her like a breeze on a summer’s day. She balled her right fist and cocked her arm back. The albino grew even paler as the barbarian planted her left foot before him and pivoted to deliver a right hook that would have splintered a tree trunk.
The high-level mage lost almost half his Hitpoints in that one unarmed attack, flew backward into a curtain, and disappeared from view inside a small chamber. She thought about pursuing him, but the other enemies caught her attention. Jace’s goblin companion faced off against Pok and Kelrick, holding two volatile-looking potions as he backed away from the powerful men. Both magic users had heard the crash from Paltine in the back of the room, and they looked up in terror at the enraged woman charging toward them.
The goblin took the opportunity to vacate the danger zone, and Delly filled it. Pok released a spell while Kelrick tossed an acid bomb at her feet. Nothing slowed her. She leaped at the men, leveling another jaw-crushing punch at Pok that sent him nearly out of the room. Only a narrow support beam saved him from flying dozens of feet further through an opening in the wall and out into the stormy weather. Again, she wanted to finish him, but she also wanted to save the necromancer for last.
Delly turned to Kelrick for now, and the terrified alchemist failed half a dozen willpower-based saving throws, reducing him to a quivering mess. The barbarian didn’t have any trained Grappling skills and only used her brute strength to take him in her hands and rip his body apart. Soon, the man was in multiple pieces, his magical items and crafted potions spilling out on the floor along with his bodily fluids.
The barbarian turned, feeling that her immense strength was close to ending but needing to finish her vengeful task. She looked back among the curtains and broken walls where Paltine had landed and eventually found the frail man standing amidst the wreckage. She stalked toward him. The albino avoided eye contact, not wanting to fail the same saving throws as Kelrick, and instead sought out the goblin.
Gromphy had wisely kept his distance from the volatile woman and now felt the penetrating gaze of the powerful mage on him. “Goblin, hold,” Paltine commanded, and Gromphy froze, still holding his two potions. “I command you to stop her!”
Delly walked right past the crafter, not caring what the little creature might do to her. She kept her gaze focused on the mage, tossing tables and chairs out of her way as if they were child-sized instead of the expensive stone and wood they actually were. She saw a thrown vial in her peripheral and still didn’t care. The yellow potion exploded at her feet in a cloud of mist, and she instantly fell to the floor, almost too weak to breathe, much less move.
“Wh-wh- what . . .” was all she could get out, barely lifting her head toward the approaching mage, who now had a broad grin on his face.
“You burned too bright for too long, and now you have to pay the cost,” he answered once he stood directly over her. “With as strong as you were, I imagine the fatigue might even threaten your life.”
To Delly, it certainly felt like it did. Each breath came with great difficulty as she lay sprawled out on the floor. Even her heart felt it might fail at any moment. Her arms lay curled beneath her, unable to lift her body, and she could only see people’s feet and hear their voices. She saw Pok’s black boots walk up beside her.
“That was more painful than I would have liked,” the necromancer said. “Are you sure she will stay down this time?”
“It wasn’t our preferred plan,” Paltine said. “As long as we kill her before her fatigue wears off, everything should be fine. And what are you complaining about? You look unharmed. Certainly better than I am.”
“The alchemist got himself killed, but his potions still work. Here.”
Delly heard one of them drink and knew they had healed all the damage she had done to them.
“Good,” Paltine said. “Now go deal with that orc. Use the paladin if you have to. Vulder should wake up soon. Again, not as we planned, but it will all work out.”
Delly couldn’t do anything other than lay there.