The sound of the massive stone club slamming into the ground was like a thunderbolt followed by an earthquake. The floor actually shook, making me sway as I struggled to keep away from the lumbering monstrosity that was the second floor boss.

“It’s a rock troll!” Lance yells, “I’ve seen them before, outside, in the untamed lands!” Lance danced away from the troll, his men focused on simply luring the huge beast in circles around the room, each man taking the creature’s attention momentarily yelling and waving their arms. “It’s dumb and slow, but near unkillable, and one hit of that club and you’re done!”

“Any weaknesses?!” I yell back, struggling to stay out of the way of the running royal guards.

“Yeah, the eyes are soft, too bad our archers are busy placing bets,” Lance replied. “Also, if you can make it trip, it will take some damage from it’s own sheer weight.”

“The bigger they are, the harder they fall?”

“Just be sure it doesn’t fall on you, or you’ll be a pancake.”

I nod. I focus my will, and breath out letting my mana gather around my staff. I realize that I could just use a magic missile, which were little more than tightly wound spikes of telekinetic force and try to hit the troll’s beady eyes, but what would be the fun of that? I finally had a working staff, and I wanted to show off by doing something a little more dramatic.

“Twenty seconds from now, make sure no one is behind that thing,” I told Lance. He nodded.

The spell I was about to use was pretty much exclusive to wizards, for good reasons. It took a lot of effort to pull off, and more than anything else, the fabric of space-time was really stubborn, able to fend off all but the most powerful of intent. In fact, in order for the spell to work, it had to be layers and layers of reinforced intent, which simply wasn’t possible to do without a staff. I began casting the same spell over and over, each on a progressively shorter and shorter delay, so that when the timers ran out, each iteration of the spell, anchored to my staff, would activate at once.

With the last of my mana I finished the final repetition, unleashing it in perfect sync with all the prior castings. I was calm and focused, determined that my will would prevail. And I was rewarded.

A dark swirl formed behind the troll, and I felt a tug. Gravity began to warp and distort, pulling all of us towards the sudden swirling black void that had formed behind the troll. It was a “Black Hole” spell, named for the distinctive look. Anyone caught directly in it’s center would be squished into a bloody ball, but for the troll, it was enough that the uneven gravity right behind it’s back forced it backwards, through the black hole, then on to the ground with a tremendous crash.

Panting, I released the spell as soon as the troll passed through. The right shoulder of the troll was crushed by the spell, spitting chunks of rock across the entire room, and when the Troll slammed into the floor with earth shattering force, it’s right arm actually snapped off, more chunks of rocks flying as the elbow landed first due to the troll twisting mid fall. Already weakened by the damage to the shoulder, whatever magic held that arm together failed at that joint.

“Not bad!” Lance said approvingly. “Boys, hit that thing while it’s down!”

The troll was emitting a keening noise, and I sensed that there was considerable internal damage, microfractures all throughout its body from the stupendous force of the unexpected backflip. That was a good thing, because that spell had pretty much wiped me out. I circulated mana through my conduits, trying to catch my breath and recover even a portion of my now depleted mana reserves. The royal guards started chipping away at it’s tough skin with repeated blows.

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Lance himself managed to bury his sword into one of the troll’s eyes, and after slamming both fists down on the cross guard a few times, the blade made its way into whatever passed as the troll’s brain, killing it before it could recover.

“No bad, huh, can you mages do that?” Lance taunted, grinning as the shocked adventures filed down from their perch, a long balcony that overlooked the boss room that resembled a viewing gallery for an arena. “I bet that was a new record or something.”

“Hah, you wish, I’ve seen high tier teams do it faster. Sonic attacks were the right way to win this fight,” the tank said with a grumble.

“Hmm, that spell was sexy,” the female mage purred, “maybe a man with a big staff isn’t that bad,”

“Honey!” the other mage protested.

“I guess you’re not the court wizard for nothing,” the rogue said quietly, giving me an appraising look.

I smiled weakly and tried to pretend I wasn’t completely spent. If that spell hadn’t worked, I wasn’t sure what I would have done next. I had thought about just aiming the spell directly inside the troll, but whatever magic held that thing together would have resisted, making the required force of intent even higher, and the spell was already hard enough to pull off. Usually this spell required at least two wizards working in tandem, but because of my oversized mana core, I could do it myself… but only barely.

After that brief battle, the adventurers were more respectful of me, but the tank continued to needle the royal guards relentlessly, arguing they’d not really done much more than run around. He could have tanked that club with his mighty shield, or so he claimed. I had my doubts.

That night, in the safe area beyond the second floor boss room, I woke from fitful sleep to discover why these two mages were not welcome in most adventuring parties.

“I’ll show you my staff is plenty big!” He yelled, grunting.

She squealed gleefully, “Oh my!”

My ears burning red with embarrassment, I wove a hasty silence ward around their tent, cutting out their exceedingly loud nightly activity.

“Think they are like that every night?” I asked Lance, who’d been keeping guard during the first watch, even though the adventurers had assured us that no monsters could enter the safe zone.

Lance laughed, “Gods I hope not. Can you make that silence spell last the rest of the night?”

“Sure” I said, weaving a bit more mana and a tiny piece of my soul to stabilize the ward, greatly extending it’s duration. I really shouldn’t be so willing to use my soul like that, I thought to myself, but the tiny missing pieces did heal. Blackwing’s teaching on how to use my soul that way had definitely made me much better at enchantment than my peers who didn’t use their souls. Blackwing had assured me that so long as I didn’t overdo it, my soul would regenerate the damage quickly. So far as I could tell, she was right, my soul was actually stronger and healthier now than when I’d first met Blackwing, almost like the constant minor damage had toughened it up. But it still felt… sacrilegious somehow. Soul magic was often considered the domain of demons. I turned my thoughts away from the dangerous topic.

“Jason,” Lance turned to me earnestly, “Do you really think we can make it down to the eighth floor? I was expecting a much larger team of adventurers, a group with… less misfits, more elites.” He said with a grimace.

“I wonder if the guild master even wants us to succeed,” I admitted, “It seems like it might be more convenient for him if we didn’t.”

“If that’s the case, shouldn’t we abort the mission? I know the king’s nephew, he’s a decent enough lad, Jason. But the king can ill afford to lose you. My orders are to send you back alive, even if it means giving up,” Lance told me.

I shook my head, “This is my first mission, I can’t just give up. We have to try.”

Lance sighed deeply, “I was afraid you’d say that.”