The Scyllan Terror was always meant to be a Lovecraftian kraken, even before things went off the rails and you and your friends saw it face to face through a broken sky. A single enormous eye with a single bar for a pupil, socketed in a cone of mottled rubbery flesh, stared at you and yours through a impossibly large spherical drop of startlingly blue ocean, hanging 10 meters above your party and the Neverglades in the middle of a newly forming gray cloud full of gathering storm.
You briefly recall that the high elves of the Neverglades should be able to control the weather in this space - to prevent that kind of cloud from gathering - and wish you hadn't.
Sprouting through the ground, tunneling through space, are three grabber tentacles taller than some of the trees here. Each with a smaller eye, a smaller brain to relay orders, and the capacity to cast smaller, weaker spells than the main body.
It's one of these, wounded by arrows fired from Sekhmet's shortbow and Siobhan's formidably long one, that Ace just dodged lightning to charge. The bright runes of shock and wrack laid down by the Scyllan Horror had triggered a second after she sprang right over them, hammer raised, ready to slap this thing through increasingly non-euclidean geometries and back to the sargasso sea it came from.
Which is exactly what it was prepared for, as it conjured an imploding field of ice, brine, and slow time to stop her in mid-leap, leaving her body below the neck hanging in mid-swing, agonizingly slow. You see her armored form flex, inward, briefly, from the immense pressure, and she coughs up blood.
Not much.
Too much.
Time seems to slow further. Not just in the bubble, but all around. As the bubble fades, and Ace lands in a heavy one-knee crouch, you hear her scream.
It's not a scream of anguish or agony. Not from pain. Some part of you, deep inside, the logical part that's already realized what's happening and what's
about to happen, wonders if screams of pain and terror would have been better.
She looks up, rising to both feet in an expression of fury, and you see the telltale glint of red to her eyes that shows what's happening.
Oh god she went Lolzerker, you had thought back when you'd met her. Thinking about it in terms of a newbie trap.
Not thinking about what that would look like when you
were your character, and your character sheet says it's time to
go berserk.
As Ace hefts her hammer, you hear her roar. It's hard to make out the exact words, but you catch enough obscenities to single-handedly justify the
online interactions are not rated disclaimer and enough threats of violence to make a slasher movie look tame.
As she swings her hammer around her effortlessly, a windmill slicing through air, you catch the rest more clearly than you want.
"...Then DIE! Get out of my way, I'll kill you! I'll smash this whole damn WORLD, crack your gods like eggshells–!"
And your heart is, likewise, gripped by ice.
You remember discussing Ace's build, as she uses the spike end of her hammer to carve into the nearest tentacle. All Vigor and Agility, some Resolve for defense; Spirit and Mind, and the Breath it gave, was her last concern because she was deliberately optimized to mulch trash mobs at the expense of protracted combat.
And Ace was tired before the fight even started, wielding a heavy warmaul. And then
this.
She should be out of stamina by now.
You can't look away from Ace in all her apocalyptic fury as she screams death at the First of the Profane Beasts of the God-Queen of Monsters and roars deicide, and then
kick yourself. Stamina is a number on a sheet. People surpass their limits every day, to survive, and in moments of strong emotion.
Ace's fury won't let her stop until all the enemies are dead, or she is.
She absolutely took the "burn HP as SP" skill and you do
not want to see what that looks like.
You hear crackling like ice in a drink at your feet and snap out of your rubbernecking long enough to look down. Another magic circle is forming up under you, Alesha, and Hikaru - not filled in yet, but it's probably not a good idea to stay.
You run, chanting under your breath, and making hand signs to shape the chants. When your hands start glowing and wisps of bright wind swirl around them, you speak.
"Tayeb, stay back! Alesha!
Cover her!"
You lay your hand over Alesha's, gauntleted, hand and squeeze, willing the blessing of Zephyr's Grace to transfer to her. That's about all you can do, running at full tilt towards the battle to make sure Ace doesn't commit suicide by Cthulhu.
But you feel Leesh squeeze back. "Should we heal her?" she asks, and you can tell she hopes the answer is yes as much as you do.
"She took the
Undertow tankbuster directly to her chest.
Don't stop healing her," Hikaru barks, jogging out of the line of fire and raising his staff.
"Levinpilum!"
The runic circle he placed crackles and glows, and a bolt of golden lightning leaps from it, forking
around Ace while her hammer is behind her, and blows the eye in the center of the Right Hand of the Scyllan Horror into vitreous chunks.
Ace throws her head back and screams a savage note of victory, before throwing herself hammer-first toward another tentacle. The two other graspers lash at her, cracking like whips, breaking the sound barrier. She idly slaps away the first, but her reckless, all-out attack stance leaves her open to the second.
Until Siobhan puts an arrow through it and it cringes away, keening like a drowning man.
"Death to the worldbreakers," Siobhan hisses. "Glory to those who stand against the slaver-queen."
"I owe you several drinks," Hikaru sighs.
The tentacles try for another slap. But suddenly, Alesha is there - in the literal blink of an eye, buoyed by Sylphans winds and fear for her friend and spent Tension, and they bounce ineffectually off of her shield.
"Fiat lux, et vidit quod esset bonum," she recites, and a ray of sunlight pierces through the clouds, illuminating an area that catches herself and Ace at the edge.
And you, at the other end, also get to feel the gentle, warm touch of Alesha and Aurora's resolve.
Alesha gathers that light around her sword in a shaft that contracts into a single, coherent ray of light, then brings that laser crashing down in an arc to cut through the monster's face and one of it's tree-trunk thick arms alike. The drop of ocean suspended in the air boils, absorbing the worst of it - it doesn't penetrate through.
But you and your friends hear the bellow of Echidna's prototype, and that, too, is heartening.
Sekhmet has been leaping between tree branches the whole time, landing on four paws or two as the situation required. Now she stands tall on a limb that can almost see eye-to-monstrous-eye with Scylla's gigantic face, and their arm becomes as a looping blur from bowstring to quiver, as they lob arrows from above and downrange into the Unholy Beast and each of its remaining limbs, each broadhead drawing ichor.
She pauses, for one sec, to aim the last of these, just as Sio does the same - sighting down the fletching, hovering with those wings to hold a bow slightly taller than she is vertical.
"How does it go? I do not kill with my bow?" Sekh growls.
"For whoever kills with her bow has forgotten the face of her elders," Sio quotes. "I kill with my heart."
"Damn fucking straight we do," Sekh says, as they both release their bowstrings.
Two arrows find the eyes of the tentacles, and a rubbery, mottled orange tree-trunk comes crashing down. The other, Sio's target, doesn't have time to react as Alesha puts in her own sword swings, pale purple fluid spilling from the Beast's wounds.
They have the monster's whole attention, which means you can slip in.
First you fling a ball of healing wind, and in the heat of the moment you use "HEALDOKEN" as the incantation instead of the proper one. Fortunately, Sylphan has enough of a sense of humor to let that slide, and you feel the cool breeze lick your weariness away and see angry red scratches close up on Ace and Alesha alike. You're not entirely sure how you were able to run as fast as you did to close the gap, but you have, and when you arrive you're a whirlwind of punches and kicks - ducking and weaving between the undulations of the final tentacle and Ace's wild and reckless swings alike to slash at it with your gauntlet claws.
You
see it struggle to hold itself up, as you slash and slash and slash.
It's not quite enough, and you can clearly see the main body focus it's eye on you as the spell it laid seconds ago explodes upwards into a pillar of ice chains, and it starts laying another Cavitation Bubble Implosion's runes under the feet of everyone in melee.
Hikaru steps well back, hoarsely bellows
"morglawdd alfsaethu!" and fires a barrage of pale blue egg-like spheres from the runic circle at the thing's tentacle and eye, and
that still isn't enough.
Tayeb and Shadi, from the cart,
well away, can't stop looking on in horror; it's all Tayeb can do to stop the horses from finding their own exit.
As you glance back from them, though, you realize too late: You shouldn't have taken your eyes off Ace.
"Kill with your 'heart'?" Ace snarls. "'Worldbreaker,' Slaver-queen?!" And you hadn't realized she was close enough to hear Sekhmet, but then she keeps going- "Who
gives a shit?!"
She leaps forward, and with far too much force, she pivots her hips, and plants one foot against Alesha's shield. "We're fighting- for our god damn LIVES here- and you can't stop quoting this stupid lore- and this STUPID game- As if any of it
MATTERS!"
Bracing a leg against Alesha's shield, she swings low, more a golf club than a hammer. The force of her leg shoves Alesha back, hard, and that extra torsion goes into the horrible tentacle, ripping it from the ground and hurling it unceremoniously into the Horror's eye.
"As if this - stupid
game world matters! This whole world is a shitty game and I'm not going to DIE here! Why won't any of you take this SERIOUSLY?!"
She turns toward the rift, as if to leap into the water at the Beast; but there is movement in the water, and a cloud of deep purple ink, and then nothing.
The Scyllan Horror had fled, presumably to find easier prey. Like an orca.
You breathe a sigh of relief as Ace turns around.
And you see red still in her eyes.
Hikaru and you discussed once, over Ralph's weekly Dungeoncrawlers game, about the launch of AWOo. Among other bugs, there was
Berserker's unintended effect at launch: It targeting allies when necessary, he had said, and so sometimes the script to end battles didn't register properly. A berserk player could continue to fight their own allies until they were defeated, healed above critical, or TPKed.
At the time, you'd laughed. "Who forgot to toggle a bit?" you'd asked. It got patched out in the first major update, and the detail was forgotten to time except as a silly story.
And now, with all enemies gone, your friend - a Berserker - stands in front of you with bloodthirst in her eyes, and you are forced to wonder: what version is this world running on?
"This whole shitty make-believe world should just… fucking…
BURN!" Ace charges at the person standing the closest - you - and you can hear Shadi gasp behind you as you rush over-
Dark, deep red-purple fingertips brush against her naked, bleeding cheek.
"Be healed," Alesha says, softly.
As her wounds close, you see the red drain from her eyes.
".... What was I…." She suddenly sags, no longer supporting her weight with fury but with limbs that had passed their limits ages ago. "I… I don't… feel well…"
You catch her as she falls. Once you know you're safe from her, you check her pulse.
She has one.
You sigh relief, and hold her close, and want to cry into her hair.
Siobhan's shout snaps you back to the moment.
"Everyone in the cart, NOW!" she booms, louder than anything from those small lungs have the right to, and you
comply before you collapse. You lay Ace down as swiftly as you can without hurting her, resting her head on a bag of flour, as Shadi scoots away from you both.
Soon everyone has joined you with haste fueled by terror.
"You've - you've saved our lives," Tayeb starts.
"After my fuckup nearly cost it," Sio snarls, looking over Shadi in the corner - and Alesha pouring her water, offering her un-gauntleted hand. "Get us out of here, along the road, and don't stop till we see open blue skies."
"Hai, madam," he says, and snaps the reins. The horses whinny, and the ride gets bumpy.
And none of you can breathe again until you see wheat fields, and windmills, and the setting sun to your left.
Everything of Ace's was @FoxHana. Editing by @NekoIncardine. Please PM me any other errors.
Next week is chapter 2.6, and from there it's four stops to Book Three.
Level-up ballot to follow soon.
