Tink! Tink! Click! Crack!

Those were the faint, deathly quiet sounds that preceded the cavern's roof falling. I had a brief moment of empathy with Chicken Little as the sky fell. I had just enough time to think ‘that isn’t fair’ and then the rocks fell… and nobody died. The rocks didn’t even touch us. The roof fell like a massive plate, except for the circle directly above us.

So while I almost soiled myself, we were unharmed. This adjustment of surroundings took us from being high in the air to being on the ground floor. I could even see the distant light of an exit: far above us, up an upsetting amount of stairs, was a line of light.

“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” Angelica said. She leaned on the handle of her hammer.

Brand coughed. He tried to talk, but coughed again. After gasping for breath he managed, “We need to get the heart of the boss.”

“Doug, toss the body into your inventory.” Angelica instructed. She hid it well, but her voice had the faint hint of strain she only had when we talked to Wilson.

Was she scared?

“Shouldn’t we loot it?” I asked, reaching for the body.

Warning! You have entered the domain of Grond, the God of Beasts.

Your Scale is suppressed in this area

The locked door leading out of the dungeon burst open. A massive wolf made of bronze with fire exploding from its mouth bounded into the room and passed us before diving into the boss’s body. A brief moment of silence followed. This gave me just enough time to wonder if that was a Tolkien reference.

Out of the corpse of the Mother of Snow Lions rose a gaunt man. He was somehow completely free of the gore splattered everywhere. His arms had massive bracers made of some gleaming silver metal. Each one ended with 3 knifelike claws. He had a metal breastplate that was covered in runes that reminded me of the ones surrounding Adora’s place. He looked up from the corpses, and two eyes full of insatiable hunger glared at me from under a wolf head cloak. “You would kill my priestess?” This is a bit hard to explain. Grond didn’t so much speak as the dungeon trembled to convey his overwhelming contempt.

My health was ticking up, but both Angelica and Brand looked to be on their last legs. Also, this was a fucking God in their own domain. This was going to be a truly bad time.

“We need to…” Brand started, but Grond eyes flashed and all of us froze.

The prompt flashed so quick in my eyes I wasn’t able to read it, but whatever the god had done left both Brand and Angelica petrified.

“I do not appreciate divine envoys killing my true followers,” Grond growled. He stared into me, “You have slaughtered my lions like cattle.” The focus of his eyes sharpened like someone using the Analyze skill. He went very still as he read my stats. He slowly moved toward Rebecca’s body. He pressed two of his overlong fingers to her body. They came away red tinted. For a long moment Grond examined the blood.

Then he tasted it.

“Titan Spawn,” he rumbled.

That didn’t seem great. “I think we should talk.” I started.

“You take from me, and now you wish to talk!” Grond roared. This wasn’t going well.

“We don’t have to be enemies,” I tried.

“Yes we do, unless you can replace my priestess!” Grond demanded. He looked at Angelica for a second of appraisal and scoffed dismissively.

“What?”

“Do you have any idea how valuable she was?” the god snarled.

That was the limit. I no longer had any interest in making peace with this clown. He clearly was just going to wind himself up before attacking us anyways. “What was her name?”

Grond stared at me.

“Tell me her name!” I roared back at him.

He didn’t know. In a world where all you had to do was look at someone to see their name, this bastard couldn’t tell me the name of someone that he sent into this dungeon.

The contempt displayed on his face was slowly replaced with a lupine grin. “You are fine prey. I won’t have a better opportunity. All the other gods are tied up with the Awakening. Let me slip on an Aspect more appropriate.” His cloak changed. Suddenly he was wrapped in white furs similar to mine. He held the skull mask briefly before sliding it over his head.

Warning Grond, God of Beast (Aspect of the Snow Lion) has spawned.

You are fighting a Divine Scale Boss in it’s domain! You no longer have Scale!

This is dumb, you should run!

Arena Sealed! Oh…Dear

“Let’s go!” Grond charged faster than I could see. It was almost like he blinked out of existence and was suddenly in front of me instead of across the room. He came at me low. The first hit caught me in the stomach, it cut through my flesh and pulled out several organs that looked important. The second hit connected with my wrist and fingers, my pinky and ring finger were just gone and my wrist was cleaved in half. The third came down on my face. My right eye immediately burst from the impact. I felt bone cleave, and teeth shatter as claws etched my skull. The fourth hit was a kick that crunched my chest and sent me flying.

Grond attack Successful x4

You take 87 points of damage

You now have the gutless condition

You take 25 points of damage

You now have the disarmed condition. Right hand and arm are useless until you recover 70 HP

You have the Cyclops Condition. You are blind in one eye and your face is fucked up, until you recover 40 HP

You have the winded condition. You are immune to the effects of this condition

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Titanic Regeneration plus 14 hit points

HP 202/300

Oh shit…that was bad. I mean that attack hurt so much that I literally just lay there for two seconds. The damage was awful, the inflicted conditions were so much worse, and the lack of Scale was going to be the thing that killed me.

I sat up to see Grond tear Brand almost in half. Grond stabbed his hands into Brand’s stomach up to the wrist and pulled them apart vertically for about six inches. Flesh tore bones crunched, Brand shrieked, and when Grond tossed him to the ground and Brand didn’t move. He just lay there face down in the snow bleeding at a terrifying rate. I had to focus. Brand was either dead or he wasn’t, but if Angelica dropped, we were all done.

Before Grond could move I put a boot to his back. The hit did next to nothing. Grond whirled around on me. Through sheer luck the first attack missed me by a hair. I stepped forward at the perfect moment, and managed to block the off balanced follow up. This triggered my counter attack. I clocked the bastard in the throat. It did damage, but nowhere near enough to matter. Grond’s knee came up and splattered my mess of a stomach everywhere. Thankfully the hit flung me from his reach.

Angelica is many things. Indecisive isn’t one of them. Grond took a moment to leer down at me. The hammer took the smile off his face and sent him flying back. He didn’t crash to the floor. Instead the ‘god’ halted in mid air and stepped down to the floor.

“Step aside, girl,” Grond said contemptuously. He wasn’t damaged at all.

Angelica eyed the god dubiously, “How about you just back off, boy.”

“Don’t you talk back to me, you self-important fuckhole. Last chance out of my way or I kill you in the worst way,” Grond growled. He kept slowly walking toward her and loomed maliciously as he glared into her eyes.

He was so busy being misogynistic and menacing he didn’t even notice the knife appear in Angelica’s hand. The hit punched through his lower jaw and deep into his head. Angelica darted backwards dodging an awkward swipe from the god. As he wrenched the blade free. Angelica pulled the anti-tank rifle out of her inventory.

Whatever that thing was loaded with it hit Grond center mass and erupted. Dirt and ice filled the air along with pungent smoke and the scent of burnt flesh. I saw that the attack wounded Grond, but he had a healing factor that made mine look shitty by comparison, or at least in his domain he did.

Grond charged Angelica and he shattered the rifle. “Your pathetic toys are so breakable, girl…”

He probably would have kept monologuing, but I took that opportunity to punch him in the head.

Attack successful Grond takes 2 points of damage.

I… could be punching about my weight class.

Grond turned to glower at me. “Is that all a Titan Spawn has…”

Angelica impaled Grond through the neck with her spear. Then to further demonstrate that she wasn’t someone to fuck with she levered the spear over her shoulder and flipped Grond head first into the ground. The impact was so tremendous that the god was smashed through the floor and into the depths below.

Angelica pulled a bottle with some sort of red liquid in it. She took two deep breaths and popped the top. Then she chugged the beverage.

I have no idea what that tasted like but the smell on her breath as she exhaled was septic. Her health did jump back to the yellow range shortly after.

“Ugh! This is going to be bad!” She looked at me, “Grab the Hammer.”

Shell Cracker

This epic Scale hammer inflicts [Power]+8 blunt damage on a hit.

Increase damage by 5 vs. structures

Increase knockback effect by one level of Scale.

This wompin’ stick was hefty. I wasn’t trained in using this thing, but in this domain I wasn’t going to benefit from Scale anyways. “Tanking ain’t easy.”

The hole in the floor expanded. A massive void of blackness slowly widened. I stepped back onto the circular altar. Two golden malevolent orbs peered out at me.

From down in the dark there arose such a clatter. “You would oppose a god?” Grond thundered.

I shrugged, “You are no god. You are just an asshole.”

Something massive shifted in the blackness. “You would do well to mind your tongue.”

“Why, so we can be all civil as you try to kill me?” I called back. I shook my head, “Stupid asshole.”

Something massive crashed against the side of the altar. I kept my feet but only just. The ground sagged slightly. I felt the pillar lower. Oh shit. I really should have watched my mouth.

Angelica tossed a bundle of lit dynamite down toward the eyes in the dark.

The blast made me blink and flung more dirt and debris into the air.

For one brief moment the eyes were gone. Then the smoke cleared. The two predatory eyes narrowed. Something like a horrifying combination of a lion’s roar and the call of a hunting whale reverberated through the arena. Then the ground dropped. Out of the darkness a monumental creature emerged.

It was a giant snow lion made out of the bones of the regular sized snow lions below. I was pissed. This was clearly way too much snow lions. Bring back the bigfoots…bigfeet? Bring back the sasquatches.

Somehow the drop didn’t harm any of us.

I took a chance and tried going on the offensive. The giant skele-cat took a swipe at Angelica and missed. The paw hit the ground like a bulldozer and tons of rock and snow. Thankfully it missed me. I swung the hammer at the front leg still on the floor.

Attack successful Grond takes 3 points of damage.

Knock back successful.

The damage was still shit but the knock back effect is where the hammer became relevant at least when I wielded it. I sent the leg, well not quite flying, but back. Enough for the whole rest of the kaiju cat to topple. It fell like a rockslide.

I would like to take a quick aside. A lion skeleton is roughly 18 to 30 pounds. These were all really big cats. So lets say this bone kaiju was 25 times bigger than one of those. That doesn’t translate to 750 pounds of bones dropping to the ground. The giant skeleton was 25 times taller, 25 times longer and 25 times wider than a normal cat. That means the skeleton weighed roughly 15,625 times a normal skeleton. That meant more than 450,000 pounds of bone was tumbling down when the 100 foot tall monster fell down. Now that is a lot of math with big numbers, but this means something really important.

I should have dodged.

You have been crushed by a bone avalanche

You take 46 points of damage

Titanic Regeneration plus 14 hit points

HP 268/300

For a dark and terrible moment I was pinned and completely unable to move. I panicked. Really think about this for a second. Being hurt and immobile in complete darkness, and every attempt to move makes the pain worse. I didn’t realize this was fear of mine, or perhaps this experience created that fear.

There was a brief moment of silence. This was broken by an explosion of thunder.

After a few seconds the bone ground deeper into me. And then light. The moment I could move I sprinted. The colossal weight of a skeletal paw crashed down behind me.

I took a chance. I stopped, spun, and slammed the hammer into the leg again.

Attack successful Grond takes 1 points of damage.

Knock back successful.

I Sprinted for my life as the massive weight crashed down. Again I turned on my heels, just in time to see the tremendous maw of the skull rushing to swallow me.

Attack successful Grond takes 4 points of damage.

Knock back successful.

On pure reflex my arms swung the hammer. The damage was still utter crap but the impact knocked the jaws off course and kept me from becoming lunch… dinner? Snack? Shishke-

That’s when Angelica hit Grond again: she slammed her spear into the eye socket. There was a flash of light out of the eyes, maw, and the gaps in the bones. Then with a blast of thunder the top of the skull popped off,fragments of bones blasting everywhere. Smoke reeking of ash and ozone radiated from the destroyed skull.

For a brief second I almost thought we had accomplished something. Then I saw Gond burst out of the bones. His spiked gauntlet slammed into her stomach and tore upwards until it hit her ribs. He lifted her bodily and flung her to the ground.

She hit with such force the stone floor cracked. Angelica’s health was so low that for a brief moment I thought it was empty.

I turned to Grond and found the ‘god’ leering down at me, “You are all alone, now.”