Fiona drew back her bowstring, laced a mithril arrow between her fingers. The four remaining DPS in our group, two wizards and two rangers, joined the attack. Spells and arrows were flung at once.
“Fireball!” Leo shouted again. “Level 5!”
The barrage hammered the dungeon ruler’s back and broke its stone skin. Shards of rock hurtled to the floor. It turned to us; eyes brighter than before. Leo was prepared to teleport with another blink, but it approached slowly, with an axe twirling in its hand. Before the dungeon ruler was near enough for Leo’s blink, the axe was hurled.
Intercept! Shield! I instructed.
Leo’s hand lit up and a fireball was launched.
Khelero stamped his sword to the ground. “Bulwark, Rank 6!”
A giant, phantom kite shield appeared between the raid and the spinning axe. The fireball struck the axe blade, shattered the stone, but only dented its speed. The dungeon ruler charged, the axe fell against the shield, and Leo blinked. The stone, heated by the fireball, exploded on the shield and a cloud of dust obscured our view.
The dungeon ruler cut through it, hewed so hard that its axe swept the dust away. It was in the air, soaring like a stone hurled by a trebuchet. It hit Khelero’s phantom shield and I felt the feedback immediately. To negate that strike and maintain the barrier that shielded us, Khelero had to use more mana than he had. By our connection I knew he was in pain.
The dungeon ruler dropped to the floor and I noticed Leo. He was injured, his shoulder drenched in blood. Although he had blinked in time to avoid the dungeon ruler, he had been hit by shrapnel. Leo needed healing.
[Liz, go,] I commanded. She knew what to do. [Cassius, support.]
He nodded and followed her around the side of the room. Leo was far out of Elizabeth’s reach, the had to cross most of the floor to reach him. Cassius was there in case the dungeon ruler turned on them, but I had hoped that I could generate enough aggro to keep it where it was.
“Spirit Barrage,” I said and raised my hand. White circles of light over me. “Level 6!”
Small orbs, like heat-less fireballs, launched from my mana circles. They battered the dungeon ruler’s face and broke chunks off its beard. The dungeon ruler looked at me with enmity in its eyes, but something happened: It turned its head and looked at Liz.
I had not realized it until then. The dungeon mutation we faced was more severe than taunt immunity. It was by far the worst possible mutation: Aggro immunity.
The dungeon ruler had been picking its own targets.
[Liz!] I uttered in the black of my mind, tried to communicate my surprise. I tried to instruct her, but words failed me.
I hoped Cassius would be enough.
The dungeon ruler charged the pair of them, collided with the colonnade. Columns tumbled to the ground. Khelero dropped his bulwark skill and ran, sword out swung.
Attack! I ordered the raid.
Liz screamed, Cassius raised his shield, and the axe fell in a rage. The light of our bombardment flashed in the dark and smoke clouded my sight, but I could feel Elizabeth through the gloom. She was shocked. As we struck the dungeon ruler, Cassius had held back its axe. He had fallen on his knee, his shield crushed into his shoulder and near broken through. Blood poured on the floor, but he held himself up, back straight against the blow. Elizabeth could have healed him, but she was stunned silent. Her eyes were fixed on the dungeon ruler’s baleful orbs. The enmity that had flashed at me, I felt from her perspective.
Hatred, for us.
What appeared from the shadows in a dungeon, such things we call monsters, are not something we consider to ‘feel.’ They are like dreams in a sense, a nightmare that acts as an animal against the dreamer. When they are destroyed, their bodies disintegrate into dust and disappear. What is left behind are our rewards, their gems and treasures. The guild considers dungeons a challenge from the gods, to determine the worthiness of mortals. For what end, the guild does not speculate.
I believe dungeons are an evil. I know they’re evil, because of what I’ve seen. Dungeon rulers were meant to have a pattern. They were meant to be predictable, within a certain degree. The mutations were challenges, and because of mutations I can understand how the guild became confused.
However, did they really not know? Thousands of years tending to dungeons, thousands upon thousands of dungeon breaks defeated, and never once had they witnessed eyes as spiteful the ones that burned for us?
That dungeon ruler had no pattern. Aggro, taunting, kiting, none of it mattered. There could be no order to that battle, only chaos. It hated us, Zenos. It hated adventurers; do you know what that means? It could recognize us for what we were. It had a theory of mind, or so it goes. It was no animal, but sapient.
Liz couldn’t move. The dungeon ruler lifted Cassius by its axe and flung him aside. He died on impact. Elizabeth was certainly the next target, but before the next swing landed, Leo blinked in, grabbed her, and blinked away. They rolled together on the floor beside the raid.
“Liz!” Fiona shouted and ran to them.
“Leo,” Elizabeth whimpered as she crawled to him.
I knew he was dead. The axe had grazed his back, but that was enough. My friend of two decades, my brother, was dead. I couldn’t maintain my focus. The dungeon ruler turned and assaulted the party. We did the best we could, but having felt its hatred, I knew that no strategy could succeed.
Escape! That was my thought. We had to save what we could. The door was still open, we could have left the room at any time. Yet, Leo would still be dead. Cassius and Damion would have been left to rot, unburied. And, of course, if I abandoned that fight, I would have condemned the island to destruction.
In the end, I held my ground, but I didn’t know why. I searched for an answer in my memories, looked for anything that could salvage that battle. Bronze group was destroyed. Silver group followed shortly after. Khelero had them buy time. He was confident I would think of a way, like I always had.
Liz was killed by an axe blow and Fiona was killed on impact when she was thrown into the wall. It was down the Khelero and I, and the dungeon ruler looked damaged, but not exhausted. Red fire licked through the cracks in shattered skin and its eyes glowed in an unwavering glare.
“I’ll take it on,” Khelero said beside me. He had lost his helm in the fighting and taken a blow to the chest. His armor was split and he was bleeding, badly. I couldn’t staunch the wound.
“Why?” I asked.
We were going to die anyway, after all.
“I smile for everyone…” he said, panting. “But it’s not because I’m confident… I just need them to believe the lie: That I know what I’m doing, that I have it under control. That smile is the same, for everyone, but you.”
Khelero made a step forward. He was trembling on his right leg, but he was still upright. It took all his effort to move.
“You’re the one… that makes my fantasies possible,” he said. “So, I have one wish, Mad…. If you have to run, then run. If you can win, then win. But live on, Mad. Don’t die today.”
He walked ahead of me. The dungeon ruler made its approach, axe low against the floor. “Did that sound cool?” Khelero asked. He flashed a smile and ran with all the power he had. He charged the dungeon ruler.
As I looked on, I understood what Fiona had done. The night before, she had left her mug on the roof top beside me. The words she had said then, what she could not express, was an understanding our party had. They thought that, if the worst were to happen, that I was the one who would survive; that I deserved to survive.
The mug was for later. When I emerged from that place, in victory or defeat. It was for me to remember, so I’d pour out their drinks for the last time; the adventurer’s farewell.
I closed my eyes and saw darkness. It was a darkness that was blacker than black, separate from the dark behind the eyes. That was my first experience with the black ocean. A pair of orbs, pale and white as the moon appeared ahead of me. I felt a hand reach for me and words fill my mind.
I do not remember what was said, but I remember opening tear-filled eyes and seeing Khelero on the floor. He was crushed. The fate of that battle had fallen on my shoulders. Whether my family and friends lived for something, or died for nothing, depended on the drop of black water I cradled in my palm.
I had a speck of fathomless power and with it, the words to a spell. It was unlike anything I had heard before, but it felt correct. I knew I could have whatever I desired, once. The dungeon ruler rushed toward me and I spoke the phrase. It went like this:
“Administrator Command: Kill Target.”
The dungeon ruler’s red eyes were snuffed out and its body crumbled. It disappeared in a gale of black dust.
That victory felt hollow without the weary cheer of my raid; without Khelero slapping me on the back, and the congratulations we shared together. I left my staff on the floor and went to their side.
I buried them on this mountain. Left mugs of ale on their graves and left the Adderhorn. I had saved Adheim, but come next dungeon break, it would return. That dungeon ruler, I felt, would be back.
Its hatred hadn’t been answered.
