We raced up the crest and through the massive gate that led into the encampment. Gnolls were few and far between at this early morning hour. The few we did see looked to be elderly or extremely young, and their surprised and then scared faces told us they were no threat. They did let out little yelps but these did not seem to be loud enough to draw a response towards us from more dangerous mobs. “Ignore the yard trash,” I told everyone.

“High level enemy just ahead,” Jessica announced. She was pointing to where the boss must be. There was one particularly large building just forty yards in the distance. It towered over the little mud-and-straw huts in the area and it was clearly significant. Not only that, Jessica continued, “There’s five or six people in close proximity inside.”

We raced through scattered abodes and eventually stopped under the animal skin tarp that acted as an overhang to the entrance of the large structure. “Gross.” Maria groaned. The walls just a foot away were a reddish-brown clay, but that wasn’t the cause of her dismay. The problem was the human skulls that had been embedded inside and covered every inch of clay between the pillars that towered twenty or thirty feet high.

“Richard wait, Alan in first.” Lucas whispered. “Mike’s undead after them. Everyone else, you know your role.”

“How many mobs inside?” Alan looked at Jessica.

“Five, elites,” she answered while tossing out a Quagmire Trap at the entrance, “Just in case, but they don’t seem aware of us just yet. They aren’t moving.”

“Strike fast.” I looked at Alan. The longer we waited, the more likely we would be discovered. He nodded and then walked with steady steps through the entrance with Richard directly behind. My skeleton troops trailed them, and had no difficulty entering as the doorway could fit a giant.

The entrance didn’t open up into one big room, as I had expected. Instead, there was a ten-foot wall in front of us. It didn’t go to the ceiling, so its only use was to obstruct direct vision into the main room beyond. Alan glanced over everyone and then nodded to the right to indicate our direction. A moment later we could hear talking, which caused Alan to pause.

“Did you hear something?” Were the muffled words that came through the wall. Something was placed down onto a table and then footsteps began approaching. Whatever way languages and translations worked in this game-world, my comprehension of the words was perfect, and yet there was an accent that sounded quite feral. I knew that gnolls could communicate through speech, but that they could do so at the same level as a human was a surprise to me.

The footsteps came closer and closer, until a shadow was visible on the wall and clearly just a few feet away. Alan didn’t wait any longer, and cast Charge with his sword pointed straight ahead. Richard was on his tail and my undead soldiers flooded the room a moment later. A loud yelp sounded out, and by the time I had turned the wall and could see our foes, a gnoll general had already been felled.

Alan had stabbed his blade directly through the heart of his opponent, whom still had a face of utter surprise and confusion. Beyond that were four more gnolls sitting around a large table. My first impression was that of a war room, and they were clearly strategizing based on the contents upon the table: layer after layer of animal skin maps.

“Impossible!” the gnoll sitting at the head of the table yelled. He stood up, towering over everyone, including my largest skeleton warriors. His face was speckled with brown and black spots in a healthy brown fur. His black eyes were crystal clear and contained an intelligence that it shouldn’t have if it were simply playing a role in game. My initial thought was that this person was a human in a gnoll costume.

The other gnolls raced around the table to face us, and we stood just a few feet from them. Alan kicked the corpse attached to his blade and sent it tumbling to the ground. The blood of the dead gnoll spread out on the rug.

“Who are you?” the boss asked. He moved slowly to the side of the table and grasped a weapon off the wall: a hammer, the head as big as a man’s torso and the shaft as thick as a thigh. No one spoke in response. “No matter.” He twirled the mace in his hands like it was a toy, “I’ll find out soon enough.”

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“Go.” Lucas said just one word and both Alan and Richard rushed forward. The other gnoll generals raced to grab whatever weapon they could muster. It was clear though, they had not expected any attack on their home turf. Other than the main boss’s mace, the other weapons on the walls looked to be mostly for show.

Alan charged directly for the boss, and Richard picked two elites as his own targets: one wielding a sword he ripped off a wall rack and the other just one dagger, embezzled with fancy jewels and definitely for decoration. The third opponent, who was my target, held a spear. As my skeletons rushed him, he flipped a table and propped it up as a makeshift shield.

There was a snarl and then a smirk on his face as if he held the upper hand. Spells exploded into the wooden table and bit off chunks as my warriors did their best to attack him. Unfortunately, in such a closed space they couldn’t show their full strength, many of them struggling to move around each other or striking empty air.

I cast Decay, not on the gnoll, but on the table that hindered our advance. It took only a moment before it decayed into a rotted wood that fell apart in chunks of dust, unable to support its own weight. My skeleton general kicked the scattered debris into the gnoll elite’s face, allowing a fireball from my mage to hit the elite a moment later. “Shitty human! Weak!” He hissed out through the dissipating flames.

Before another word could come from his mouth, before my undead troops could rush over him like a wave, Lucas appeared to his side and sent his head toppling with a single wind slash. “The squeaky wheel gets the grease,” Lucas said, which I assumed was him shit talking in his own weird way.

Gnoll elites now were pushovers for us. Some of us had literally doubled our stats since our last battles with them. But the boss, the boss was a different story. Its hammer came down on Alan and sent our tank buckling to the floor. If Alan wasn’t so STR heavy, he would have been flattened or buried three feet into the rug. I felt bad, as it seemed like his role had become that of a punching bag.

“A little help!” Alan yelled. All his boasts of taking the boss solo went out the window. Maria and Anna both sent out supporting spells and attacks, as did Jessica. The next time the boss went to swing his mallet, an arrow pierced his underarm and a freezing pulse trimmed the hair around the nape of his neck. He lost balance from an explosive arrow at his feet and was forced to step back, not daring to swing again.

Richard remained fine in the two-on-one, but he didn’t excel in doing damage. He was just a sustain tank, and the two gnoll generals watching their leader being barraged with spells let out loud yelps of frustration. Richard was an unbreachable wall, they could neither attack nor defend and were at the mercy of our attacks. “Don’t worry it’ll be your turn soon.” Richard yelled at them while deflecting the dagger and sword in unison.

The two elites grew more frantic and eventually, after losing their cool, fell to a Godless Arrow from Jessica and the frenzied and suicidal attacks of six of my skeletal warriors. It was now just the boss and us remaining. We were stronger than ever before, but I felt that this would be our most difficult challenge yet. A dungeon boss was a different beast altogether.

“Careful,” I said, “let’s take our time.” I assessed everyone. We were all in good health, and now completely in control of the situation. Alan and Richard backed away and the boss stood uneasily at his war table.

“You are his men,” the commander of the gnolls spoke with some confidence. His eyes looked around the room and rested on a piece of paper. He grabbed it with care and tucked it into his palm. The mace couldn’t be swung with one hand, but he pointed it out at us. “He will pay for his betrayal.” There was a low growl to the words that made him sound even more bestial.

There was suddenly a low rumble, and the ground beneath Richard exploded upwards. The earth had formed a jutting rock that aimed to impale him from below. “Careful, Earth magic! Richard was struck on the thigh and then sent hurdling into the wall. Everyone else rushed towards the sides of the room to avoid an eruption.

In the brief moment I had taken my eyes off the boss, he had turned around and attached the piece of parchment to a hawk’s leg, and then sent it hurdling up towards the rafters. The roof was merely a tarp, and it wasn’t sealed at the top. There was a large gap between the walls and the tarp roof, which the hawk flew directly out of.

“Jessica!” I yelled. She had seen it already too. Whether it was a message to the city or a signal for reinforcements we had to stop the bird. I saw her close her eyes and pull her bow string. The sound rang out even in the rumbling, and the hawk suddenly screeched. There was relief in her eyes when she opened them again.

“Got it,” she said.

“Outside!” I yelled at everyone. The room was too cramped, between my undead and party members, there wasn’t much room to maneuver. On top of that, we couldn’t even see the ground through the rugs on the floor.

“How are you?” Alan raced to Richard and helped him up. The boss was still by his table, and had no ability to obstruct our leaving.

“Fine, just a scratch,” Richard said and then cast his instant heal on himself. They were the last out, and the commotion had drawn a crowd now.