I looked toward the door. The slammed shut. They had been hanging off the frame and were now wedged in there good. The wood structure of the church groaned, popped and then cracked. Whatever was out there seemed to have subsumed the building.

Elijah- I really feel that name should have air quotes around it- stood statue still with a blank look on his face. I considered chucking a pew at the not-actually-a-kid, but decided not to. It would be petty and it was clearly not vital. Also it vanished a nanosecond after I decided not to. The body was yanking into the darkness and down the stairs. It moved like a bit of cloth floating in the water suddenly being pulled by a hook. I got a fleeting but deeply upsetting glimpse of the body wiggling bonelessly with unfocused eyes and a slack mouth before it was just gone.

Don’t get me wrong, the adrenaline had absolutely hit by this point. I activated both Claws of Darkness and Tenebrous Form. With three layers of Ablative Shell I could and probably should use this magic. I was as ready as I could be for a fight. The thing is, all of this made me so fucking tired. Maybe I pressed too hard but I couldn’t just walk away from whatever this was. I didn’t want this battle. Hell, Elijah even pointed out this was pointless. He could very well be right.

“You ready?” Angelica asked. She had swapped her spear for her hammer.

Before I could speak a neon blue ichor began to seep through the walls.

“I was,” I admitted not making a move.

Angelica sighed, “That is … yeah.” She didn’t want to touch it either.

The glowing goo didn’t just run down the walls. Instead the droplets began to flow together. Tiny rivulets moved lateral and even slid up the walls to form dozens of shining puddles. From there the puddles began to bubble. The surface roiled and then formed a skin. That skin was immediately distorted and distended as a reptilian face pressed against each and every one of them.

A dreadful wet ripping noise preceded dozens of human sized creatures bursting forth.

That was really goddamn weird, but the spawning process did reflect the final product. Every monster glared at us. All of them had two sets of bulbous, luminous eyes on their heads. One set forward facing, and another set aimed sideways. Their skin was scaly and resembled armor with finned ridges running down the spine and along their tails. They stood upright on two legs, but were hunch backed. They also had four arms ending in clawed, webbed hands.

Several of the creatures hissed almost like a snake. Others opened their Telescope-fish-esque maw to reveal rows upon rows of jagged fangs. There were dozens of these things. Each was about the height of Angelica. We were completely surrounded.

All of this would have been extremely intimidating if they didn’t then proceed to do a prolonged choreographed dance with a lot of broad gestures and snappy motions. When it was finished each struck a menacing pose and hissed “Ictheys!” They then stood there waiting.

“What?” I asked to break the silence.

“Aren’t you going to transform?” One asked, its voice not hissing at all.

“No,” Angelica said bluntly. Clearly feeling the ick with these guys.

The Ictheys were deeply disappointed. A bunch of them scoffed. A few sagged visibly. One rallied the rest, “That doesn’t matter! Fire weapons. Stone Shields! Kill!”

There was a snap of energy, similar to that microsecond clipping of equipping gear from inventory. Now all the weird fish men had flaming pole arms and rock great shields. In the shows this resembled, one -maybe two- mooks would attack a hero at any given time and the rest would dance around in the background. These guys didn’t do that. They ganged up on us.

Attack from Ictheys Blocked x7.

Weapon is Fire-type. Ablative shell takes 7 damage.

Attack from Ictheys Dodged x 9.

Attack from Ictheys Deflected x 5.

Weapon is Fire-type. Ablative Shell takes 5 damage.

Attack from Ictheys successful x 2.

You phased through the attack. No damage taken.

Weapon is Fire-type. Ablative shell takes 9 damage.

Counter-Attack Successful x 23.

Ictheys Ablative Stone Shields take 623 damage.

Ablative Stone Shields destroy x13

Ictheys A -J take a cumulative total 571 damage.

Ictheys C has the Shattered Knee Condition.

Ictheys F has the Bocken Jaw Condition.

Ictheys H has Missing Arm Condition.

Ichteys A, B, D E, G, I, and J slain.

Attack Successful! Ictheys C takes 49 damage.

Ictheys C is slain.

Attack from Claws of darkness Successful

Ictheys H takes 24 damage.

Ictheys H is slain.

HP: 600/600

I always heard about how a clear mind is the key to marital success. There is a lot of philosophical discussion about inner peace and clarity of purpose leading to superior results. What I was finding was removing the opportunity to overthink and forcing myself to match the violent intent I faced resulted in clockwork Orange Style Ultraviolence. It was a horror show, not Clockwork Orange horrorshow, just the regular kind. The bad kind. This is why I don’t reference high art.

I am delaying. I’m just not proud of the fact that I can deal out wholesale slaughter. Everything happened all at once. Five of the fishy fellas charged me. Then they tried to impale me with the point’s of their flaming weapons. I slapped them out of the way fairly easily. This knocked them off balance. Rather than counter them, I put the hurt into the second group coming up behind me. My first kick shattered one shield and sent its user flying. Used the momentum to turn and shatter another with a punch and third with a back hand. I snap kicked a forth but they got the shield between my foot and them. I slapped the last one’s shield out of its hands to be a completionist. Five counters, five broken shields.

The Ictheys kept pressing their attack. And I kept doing what I do. Block, dodge, and deflect before countering. This resulted in me wrecking most of the shields of the crowd in my immediate vicinity. All of that happened in a fraction of second. The length of time it took them to swing the polearm. These guys were actually fairly tricky. The swipe with the blade lead into a followup with the butt of the staff. Against most opponents that would have been a nasty surprise likely resulting in some real damage.

Sadly for the fish dicks that just gave me another swing at their pinata. In the shows this whole situation seemed to reference impacts resulted in a lot of sparks flying and some cool backflips as people were stricken to the ground. Here though bone crunched and blood flowed. Most of the things I hit without shields died outright. I stomped one’s leg and bent backwards. Another whose chin I clipped didn’t lose their lower jaw, but that was only because it only tore loose on just one side. I ripped the arm off of one when it grabbed me.

Seven dead, and three crippled in another fraction of a second. I dislodged the hand still holding onto me and used the severed limb to club one with the broken leg over head. It died as its head split open. Eight dead in a second. The dark, shadowy claws swirling around me the entire time had tipped the scales. They pried apart the cracks in the shields. Tore open the flesh of the fish men if pummeled, and severed the ligaments in one's shoulder whose arm I ripped off. They even took the free action to rupture the thing’s eyes. Nine dead.

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Like I said, I am not proud that I can do that. Don’t get me wrong, I sure as hell ain’t ashamed either. Any moral superiority that could be held by nonviolence would ironically only be a cold comfort after being stabbed in the face with a flaming halberd. I had mostly come to terms with being a violent person, but standing in a pool of my victims' sickly sweet smelling blood was a grim reality. These Ictheys acted more human than any mob I met until the fighting started. Once we got going they didn’t react to having their kind slaughtered in front of them. I understood their resolve not buckling but the lack of anger was surprising as well. These things fought with the relentless determination of Snow Lions.

Fuck Snow Lions by the way.

Angelica may have been having similar mediations about the nature of ictheys and the morality of violence against them. It didn’t show. She was doing her Norse goddess of thunder impression. She swung the hammer side to side in an extremely loud, and profoundly violent game of whack-a-ictheys. She was probably going to get the highscore. She definitely was going to be way up there on the combo count. The unfortunate fish bois she clobbered were launched into walls and they tended to… splatter.

All said and done in the space of about ten seconds we killed about sixty of these things. That would have been a good thing, but they then dissolved and more climbed out of the blisters. So actually this was negative progress despite our success on the first wave.

Construction Check… Successful

Stone Shield Fragments have been consumed.

Ablative Stone Dome was created.

“Hey! No Fair!” One of them shouted from outside the dome. This was followed by the sound of them wailing on the structure.

“We need a new plan,” I declared, crouching under the impromptu roof.

“We had one?’ Angelica asked, able to stand.

Rather than argue, I asked,” Got any ideas?”

“Yeah lift the this up a bit,” She told me as she rolled her shoulders.

“Like this,” I stood and lifted our protective shell up off the floor.

“Yep,” She said before charging. Her shoulder slammed into the side of the dome causing a resonant thunk noise.

This launched the massive stone disk into the front doors. It was too big to fit through the doors. So rather than crash through them. The dome pushed and took the whole wall with it. This took the steeple with it and it all crashed to the ground with an almost ceramic crash as the dome broke.

“Run,” Angelica told me. She immediately zipped out of the collapsing church.

She didn’t have to tell me twice. The ground was beginning to shake. The whole thing fell in on itself just as I got out from under the roof. The building was encased in layers of amorous glowing blue-white flesh.

We probably would have kept running we found ourselves surrounded by hundreds more of the Ictheys. I talked shit about the posing earlier but when an entire army does it… okay it still looks a little dumb but it hits different. Basically it is the understanding the stupid assholes are going to try and hurt you. That is the threat, not the posing. I may still be talking shit. Apparently this is a hill I am willing to die on. They were certainly willing to kill me on it.

Why was nobody helping us?

I understood people not kicking down the door to the church to get to us. Besides, things just happen fast. It was a long way to get to the church. This was a bunch of creepy fish men attacking their warlord. Wait goblins really liked that fish faced Chimera Corp soldier. They thought he looked great, the universe's gift to goblins. Perhaps the goblins were hesitating because they thought Angelica and I were killing an army of eye candy types.

From the ground that deep voice rumbled, “Help me! Come closer! Everything is safe!”

Angelica stopped running and looked at me.

“Mind effect,” I told her.

“Shit,” She shook her head and then pointed, “Doug look!”

A large number of the goblins were simply walking down the stairs. Some of the ictheys were heading toward them, weapons at the ready.

Expend Free Action? YEs/No

Note: You must select the total number of seconds spent before activating.

I selected one second and hit yes. I felt the telltale thrum of time stopping

“Fuck, fuckety, fuck, fuck!” I muttered out loud.

That was not helping.

Okay, I needed to figure out a way to deal with the mind effects Elijah was throwing. He said something about pheromones. That said Angelica could just shake the effects if I told her she was being misled.

Was it that simple?

You have activated Voice of the Titan

“Don’t be deceived. Elijah is not a friend. Defend yourselves!” My voice rang with vastness of the cosmos

Leadership check… Critically Successful!

All followers are freed of mind effects.

Voice of the Titan deactivated.

Time surged and almost instantly the gunfire started. This wasn’t the checkmate I hoped for. While Angelica and I could cleave through the mooks. Other people had to put more effort into things. Those stone shields they used were fairly bullet resistant.

That said thousands of goblins was more than hundreds of flamboyant fish folk. So while we didn’t automatically win we absolutely turned the tide. I saw a lot of weird shit as battle started. Angelica impaled and armor shark-man. The icthyes began returning fire with rifles shooting lightning. That wasn’t great. Massive blisters bubbled up out of the ground and tremendous, flying jelly fish rose into the sky. They sprayed acid and lightning everywhere. A yellow goblin covered in dry ran past me. His arms were full of hastily rolled bundles of copper wire.

All the while Angelica and I killed ictheys and made our way towards the rim. We needed to get between these things and our people. They kept changing up elements on their attacks trying to see if anything worked better. These guys were throwing everything at us. I got hit by the standard things: Earth, wind, fire, acid, poison, and electric. They went for weird stuff: psyonic, divine, profane, magnetic and gavitonic.

“The only thing left is light!” an ictheys shouted, gesturing wildly.

The ground shook. “I shall handle it then.” A mountain of armored blue something erupted from the hole where the church had been. The nightmarish face of an angler fish gazed at us with eyes burning with power. Its head was wreathed with a crown of corpse all in their Sunday best.

Now say what you will about goblin’s sense of aesthetics but you cannot fault their survival instincts. They tried to bombard that thing as soon as it’s showed it ugly and/or pretty face. Trouble was those big flying jellyfish were running interference. They had the Gravitonic stuff too. So Elijah was free to collect power. With an ominous hum the colossal eldritch horror lit up.

Ah shit.

With a roar a massive pillar of light bore down on us.

Dodge check… failed

Weapon is Light-typed. Tenebrous Form has no effect.

You are protected by Spectral Protect. Damage Mitigate

Just as I scrunched my face as the resounding clear chime of Brunhilda’s gauntlets slamming together. I looked up. A three story tall semi-transparent armored dwarf stood between me and the hateful beam of light. The bearded ghost thing held a massive shield in our defense. The laser fractured and an aurora of every color washed off the edges of the shield.

“I can’t do this forever buddy!” Brunhilda called. She had fought up to me through the crowd of fish folk. The timing was convenient, a bit too convenient, but I wasn’t going to bitch about just now.

I could tell she was pulling mana from the well. Oh wow. She was drinking deep.

I turned to Angelica. “I am going to pull agro. Can you kill it?”

Angelica nodded.

I sprinted one way and Angelica went the other. When I was far enough away and didn’t have people I cared about behind me, I did something stupid.

You have activated Voice of the Titan

“Hey Elijah! I’m over here, you fishwife!” My voice boomed. Not my best insult but hear me out there just aren’t that many ocean related taunts. At least I don’t know them. I grew up in the middle of a continent so I could avoid… Well basically, exactly this.

Taunt Check… Critically Successful.

All enemies will target you.

Elijah stopped firing and then turned to me as he charged for another attack.

Expend Free Action? Yes/No

Note: You must select the total number of seconds spent before activating.

I immediately selected one second and hit yes.

The thrum of time stopping was welcome. The existential dread of a wall of light stopped in time an inch from my face was not. Well I guess it was better than getting nuked.

I got the hell out of the way. I just kept running.

Time started again. The colossal laser slammed into the ice and flash boiled tons of it. There was an explosion of steam. Elijah tried to walk the beam toward me, but I managed to stay ahead. I saw a flash of Celeste’s divine light and heard a terrible scream from something through the fog.

And Angelica said I didn’t have a plan.

That’s when the ground gave way beneath me. I was falling into the Dark.

This is unfair. It’s not like I gloated out loud.