Don’t let me hold you back? Zenos wondered as he stepped ahead of the party. He glanced at its broken sword and saw how a phantom blade was projected above its shattered end. Why am I thinking about this now?
The dungeon ruler stomped forward and Zenos straightened up. I have to focus. He stared up through the ruler’s baleful eyes. His reptilian pupils sharpened in predatory diamonds and the orange of his eyes glimmered with light.
[At-Will Ability: True Eyes of the Emperor Activated.]You could ignore everything in the world, Zenos thought. But you cannot miss me. Am I not what you’ve been waiting for? Dazka!
[Connection Established.]The dungeon ruler suddenly halted and its arms came to rest at its sides. The axes once held so rigid in its hands, sagged from its grip and tapped the floor. The ruler’s eyes were fixated on Zenos, their hateful energy dim with confusion.
“We never met, you and I. Balagrim never spoke of you, so forgive me for not recognizing you sooner,” Zenos communicated through their mental bridge. “Great King Dazka; Ondolin Dazka, the last king of Golud Baradash.”
The dungeon ruler’s chest quaked, as if it had felt the trepidation of its stone heart for the first time. Its hands shook and its axes rattled loud against the floor.
“Do you not know who I am?” Zenos asked the dungeon ruler. “The one who burned the dwarfs from their mountain homes. The one who laid waste to their ancestral land. The one, of course—the only one—that could have turned the good Balagrim against his father.”
“Yes, Dazka. I am here. You know it to be true.”
Red flames erupted from the cold sockets of its eyes. It lifted its axes and cried; a wail of pain so loud it made Elizabeth’s translucent barrier visible by its own force and it nearly snuffed the flames of the golden braziers.
“I’ve taken aggro,” Zenos communicated to Mad.
“Follow my directions,” he replied. “We’ll do the rest.”
Zenos held his sword out and tucked his shield close to his chest. The urging he felt in the back of his mind were Mad’s subconscious instructions, a collection of movements—felt as emotions—that he had to interpret. It would take a novice adventurer months of practice to communicate through con-link alone and years longer to master its use, but Zenos was the sort to follow his gut.
Don’t over think it. He sprinted toward the dungeon ruler, the effigy of the dwarf king Dazka. Khelero’s specter 6’4 specter overlaid him and moved in lockstep, such that they were perfectly synced. I’ll just trust this intuition!
King Dazka, as Zenos thereafter recognized him, leapt into the air. His stone form—a boulder of raging stone—soared overhead. Mad’s order was to dodge by running past Dazka, but the instruction was muddled. The necromancer wasn’t certain what Zenos was capable of. For that matter, Zenos himself wasn’t certain what he was capable of.
From point A to point B, he thought and flexed his calves. If I could just jump.
His legs did the rest. Dazka crashed to the floor, uprooted black marble tiles with the weight of his landing, while Zenos leapt twenty feet in a single bound. He hadn’t anticipated the power of a doubled strength stat, and no sooner had he considered how to land. His left foot hit the floor and he twisted on the ankle, fell on the left shoulder. A quick maneuver raised his shield and he deflected the energy of the landing, turned his momentum into a roll, but his back hit a stone and he bounced into the air. Zenos moved his legs and adjusted his weight, swung his sword to skewer the floor.
His blade was already broken, of course. When he landed on his knee, he felt his body shudder from an immediate stop. Zenos glanced over his shoulder to see Khelero’s spectral longsword stuck between the marble tiles. The specter’s own miasmic resistance, like a protective gelatin, had provided the necessary break.
Dazka turned, twirled its axes. It swung for columns, swung for the floor, swung for anything that it could hit. Winds of dust and debris whipped the air, and Dazka ran for Zenos with one axe raised.
“Hold fast,” was his next desperate, uncertain instruction. Mad and the phantom party were preparing an attack. It was Zenos’ job to make sure Dazka didn’t turn to face them.
It would only turn if I was dead, he thought and raised his shield. Khelero matched him and raised his own spectral version of the same black-gryphon shield. I’ll just have to not die.
As the old king came to striking range, there were two things that worked in Zenos’ favor. Firstly, he was well secured by the sword in the floor, so he would be difficult to displace. Secondly, Dazka had thus far failed to hit him, and therefore combat had not begun. Zenos’ damaged ankle had already healed from its sprain and his health pool—that which hadn’t filled to its new maximum—had more time to regenerate.
Dazka slammed Khelero’s spectral shield and broke through its phantasma, but that vital defense spared Zenos the absolute energy of the king’s attack. [Your HP was reduced from 1,675 to 1,600. Your left forearm was hit for 75 (150) lethal damage. 50% was mitigated by blocking.]
That startling reduction didn’t slip Zenos’ mind. It was possible he missed a detail in the player manual and constitution also reduced damage taken, or perhaps the added defense of his shield was significant enough to turn 2,000 damage to 150. He couldn’t account for Khelero’s intervention, either. He realized he just bet his life on a system he didn’t understand, the powers of a specter he didn’t know, and the instructions of a friend that couldn’t account for his mysteries.
Somehow, there was a smile on Zenos’ face.
Dazka reeled back its axe and swung again for another blow. [Your HP was reduced,] the system reported. [Your HP was reduced—Your HP was reduced—]
The messages piled in Zenos’ mind; his own voice repeated itself until it became collection of tangled noises. As Dazka alternated its hands, hammered away with the repetition of a practiced warrior, Zenos watched his HP diminish. He could hold for a moment or two longer, but Dazka was driving him into the floor. Retreat would be impossible.
“Ghost Lance, Level 5!”
The dungeon ruler reared up and a beam of white light pierced him through his throat, melted a hole clear through his stone beard. At the same time, explosions of spectral fireballs flashed against his back, and he shook under a barrage of phantom arrows. Zenos watched Dazka’s health bar plummet to below 30%, but the attack—by all accounts a success—was received with confusion.
Mad thought that attack would have destroyed it outright. Through mixed emotions in the con-link, Zenos understood Mad had struck for the core gem and missed. It wasn’t in the base of Dazka’s neck.
“Zenos, use your eyes!”
The order erupted in the back of his thoughts, as urgent as it was clear. He pulled his sword from the floor and used the relief purchased by their assault to get distance from the old king. Dazka, meanwhile, fell on his knee and appeared exhausted by damage. His skin was riddled with cracks, his beard broken, and stone had blown clean from his muscular body.
Zenos stopped a dozen-or-so feet before Dazka, where he could frame the entire twenty-foot tall dwarf in his bestial eyes.
[At-Will Ability: True Eyes of the Emperor Activated.]The mana-sense buff appeared in the corner of Zenos’ HUD and Dazka was illuminated in red and blue. By the con-link, Mad pictured what Zenos saw: A star, so bright the center of its red light turned white. It was hidden behind the left eye, embedded in Dazka’s stone skull.
“We just hit that?” Zenos asked.
“That’s right,” Mad answered.
Zenos balanced his sword, and Khelero’s spectral blade turned to match him. “We can reach it—”
“Give us our chance.”
King Dazka stirred from the floor. It was beleaguered by its many injuries, yet it still had the strength to lift its axes. Stubborn dwarf, Zenos thought. I see where Balagrim got his nerve.
Dazka motioned to strike, but as it moved its arm, an ethereal chain shot from the floor. It wrapped around Dazka, tangled and immobilized his right forearm. The old king groaned; it sounded like gravel rolling in Zenos’ ears.
While its right arm tugged toward the floor, a second length of chain emerged to coil around its left forearm. They then pulled together and forced the dungeon ruler down, over his knees. He groaned further, weak and weary, until he saw Zenos again. Dazka’s eyes flared up and he roared, hard as his stone body could bear. Stone pieces rattled loose from his body, bounced and scattered along the ground.
An explosion ripped the air and a solitary column broke loose from its stand, fell square on Dazka’s back. White circles of light, like solid plates, appeared as steps above the dungeon ruler’s back, and Mad’s archer—the agile specter, Fiona—leapt from one to the other. She laced her bow with a quiverful of spectral arrows and fired a tight group into the back of Dazka’s head.
The king would not be silenced, but the force knocked him lower, until his head was pressed against the floor. Zenos launched from the floor and landed on Dazka’s face; his foot secured on the bridge of the king’s nose, and his hand gripped tight on a thick eyelid. He twirled his sword into a reverse grip and Khelero did the same. They plunged together, through Dazka’s pupil of fire.
The system did not report damage. Zenos’ broken sword had come short. The large ruby core, Dazka’s source of near-boundless mana, was run through by a phantasmal blade. Red flames erupted through the cracks in Dazka’s back. Its remaining mana, what had circulated through its body, had lost its regulator.
King Dazka exploded. The shock wave alone had force enough to snuff the braziers, toss their heavy gold bowls on their sides, and spilled their charcoal across the floor. Titanic stone chunks struck craters in the colonnade wall and the smallest slivers were accelerated as ballistic shrapnel that rent deep cuts in the floor.
Zenos was blinded by hues of orange and red. The air was so energized by mana that he could not see his own hands. However, he could feel the flex of his digits, and see the black outline of his diminished health bar. He was certainly alive.
What happened? he wondered and canceled his mana-sense buff. Only then did he see the colonnade had plunged into darkness and that he had come to rest beneath a dome of orange light.
Elizabeth’s specter stood at the dome’s center, silently chanted from the fluttering pages of her book. The others waited at the barrier’s edge, while Mad stood tense beside Zenos, one hand stiff around his staff, and the other outstretched as if to grasp a throat of air.
Wild excitement had briefly confused his concise mental communication, but as the moment passed, the con-link became clear. It was by Mad’s command, in those scarce seconds before devastation, that Leo’s specter had grabbed Zenos. Their retreat, instantaneous through Leo’s blink, was predicated on Elizabeth’s best effort; the ritual of Stormy Nights was chanted to its apex, focused on an area no wider than twelve feet.
Her energy trap was so effective it chilled Zenos’ skin and muted sound so completely that he could not hear his own racing heart. The air that touched the exterior turned to mist and rolled off the sides in thick waves.
Did we… win?
Zenos squinted and straightened up on the floor. There was a red glow in the distant black, clearly visible through Elizabeth’s field. King Dazka stood from the ground, his body obliterated, such that only a skeleton of jagged ruby crystal remained. He appeared to look at the party through the singular gem in the left eye socket of his luminescent skull.
“Balagrim,” Zenos heard in his mind. His hair stood on the back of his neck. “I still await… your return.”
The titanic skeleton raised its right hand, seemed to reach for the party, but they were far away. Its hand shuddered and crumbled. The ribs, the legs, and hips came down one after the other. Its skull broke apart, and the eye—pierced by Khelero’s sword—broke last. The red glow faded and the colonnade turned dark again.
[Experience cannot exceed Level Cap.] [Combat has ended.] [Quest completed; you have one reward remaining.]
