Deserts Of Naroosh

by Bradford Bates

  There was a riddle he’d never have been able to answer before now.

  Cassie was getting up close and personal with Jabari and doing her best to keep his attention by whacking his legs with her staff. She took pretty decent damage whenever one of the legs brushed against her. The damn legs must have barbs or blades because being hairy wouldn’t explain the spikes in her health that he saw.

  A Healing Orb stopped Cassie’s health from dropping, and it slowly started ticking back up. Tim checked his status effects to make sure she wasn’t suffering from any kind of debuff. She was clear, so Jabari’s basic attacks hit hard. With eight legs to dodge, there wasn’t a lot she could do to avoid them all.

  ShadowLily entered the fray from behind, landing a critical hit to one of Jabari’s back legs. Grinning from ear to ear as she fell into her rotation, the assassin went to work doing what she did best. Any Guildmaster would have appreciated the ruthless dedication she had to pumping out high numbers and surviving fights. Every group needed one of those players to carry the load.

  If you had two or three like they did, it made things easier.

  Getting two large daggers shoved into his leg from behind must not have been Jabari’s kind of thing because he spun while kicking out at ShadowLily. One of his massive feet slammed into her stomach, tossing her aside like a child's favorite toy during a tantrum.

  Tim hated seeing her go down.

  He checked his interface to see how much time was left before Behold My Power did its thing. Seeing that there was only a second left before it went off, he switched his Way of the Boulder stance from Cassie to ShadowLily, and cast Who Needs a Shield on the tank to give her a defensive boost while he stripped away her other protections.

  If he played this right, things would work out perfectly.

  ShadowLily shot back to her feet looking like Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction.

  There wasn’t time for him to think. He had to act. With a thought, Tim flipped his stance back to Cassie and blasted her with a Healing Orb to take care of any extra damage she received while not getting the reduced damage benefit from his stance. The boss's health seemed to be moving downward at a slower pace now.

  Turning away from what he was doing, Tim scanned the battlefield looking for a reason. It didn’t take him long to find the culprit. JaKobi was stuck in a web, and all of them were so wrapped up in their things that none of them had noticed. They couldn’t afford to fall behind on them or they would be in real trouble. Despite the slowed DPS, if enough of them got webbed, they wouldn’t be able to recover, and they would die.

  Tim really didn’t want to get eaten by a spider.

  “Get JaKobi out of that thing!” Tim shouted at Lorelei as he cast a bolt of Divine Light at the webbing to help speed up the process.

  Lorelei stopped DPSing the boss and went to work trying to free JaKobi right away. Tim trusted that the ranger had things under control and turned back to see who else needed help only to find Cassie also encased in webbing. ShadowLily had the boss on her and was kiting him to avoid a quick death. She wasn’t in any position to help break Cassie free as the boss was right on her ass.

  Tim switched his stance again, hoping it would be enough to keep the assassin alive until they freed their tank.

  “JaKobi, get Cassie free the second you’re out of that shit.” Tim turned away and fired a Healing Orb at ShadowLily and reapplied Curse of Giving.

  “Yurumph, goit, bothe.” JaKobi spat, reached up and pulled some webbing off his lips, and started spitting like he had hair caught in his mouth.

  JaKobi clapped once, sending a flaming Phoenix straight at his girlfriend. The flames engulfed the webbing and vanished in an instant. “That’s what I’m talking about.” He pumped his fist once and sent his next spell at the boss.

  Cassie ran back to the fight with her staff above her head. Tim didn’t envy Jabari. She was pissed off, and he was going to feel it.

  Tim splashed ShadowLily with another heal and flipped his stance back to the tank for what he hoped was the final time. Cassie had Jabari focused on her now, and all of them were free to do their jobs again. It wasn’t easy for him to admit how close a call that had been. If they had noticed JaKobi in the webbing any later, they all would have been dead.

  Their reward for surviving was they were now twenty-five percent done with the fight.

  Jabari was pushing them now. His attacks came faster than before, and the damage was pretty constant. It was all Tim could do to keep everyone afloat. Contributing any DPS right now was an experiment in wishful thinking.

  There was no way to know if the whole fight would be like this or not. The group was taking a lot of damage, but none of them had a debuff. Getting webbed did a small amount of incremental damage until the webbing was removed but didn’t seem to have any lingering effects. Something else was draining them, but he didn’t know what. At this rate, he would be out of mana before they reached fifty percent. Something had to give.

  What was he missing?

  Tim looked around the room, but nothing had changed since the Goliath died. There wasn’t a super-secret button he could hit to give them a momentary reprieve from the battle to recharge. What they needed was a break in the action and what he was getting was more heals going out than he’d ever cast before.

  Everything turned into a blur.

  When Jabari’s health hit fifty percent, a blast of webbing shot out and engulfed their entire party. His spider form teetered around the theater for a moment and fell onto its back. The legs curled up in the way dead insects tended to do, and the body melted in on itself. A puddle of goo spread out as the spider continued to melt, but rising from its center was a man.

  Jabari rose back to his feet like a Terminator sent back through time. Dark visceral fluid that stank worse than one of the Goliath’s farts covered him from head to toe. Looking at their party with hatred burning in his eyes, Jabari snapped his fingers, and the servants came running.

  The men and women cleaned and dressed him. One of them found his scepter on the floor and returned it to him. When it became clear that their master was satisfied, the servants streamed from the room as quickly as they’d come. Now Khalid's nemesis stood before them again as if he hadn’t turned into a spider so big Tim would have gladly left the continent to avoid even seeing it.

  The man looked slightly haggard as he plucked an errant thread from his robes and tossed it aside. The webbing surrounding them started to deteriorate, letting Tim know the fight was about to resume.

  He didn’t know if he needed to thank Eternia or if they had pushed the phase change soon enough, but the break was just the thing he needed to recharge his dwindling mana supply. Now they had new problems to deal with. With a spider, they knew what to expect. With the man, they had no idea what was coming.

  Except that Jabari’s scepter could be deadly.

  “Watch for magical attacks,” Tim shouted to Cassie.

  The tank grunted as she broke out of the last of her webbing and started running. “Spider-man, spider-man, goes splat in the way only a spider can.” Her staff whistled down at Jabari’s head.

  It stopped an inch away.

  Magic was in the air, or more to the point, Jabari had some kind of magical shield that prevented Cassie from making contact with him. That put their tank on defense. All she could do was dodge and poke at him to keep him interested. Flames washed over the shield and arrows bounced harmlessly away.

  How did you beat something you couldn’t hit?

  Tim’s mind was racing. Normally he would have applied some out-of-the-box thinking to the situation, like having JaKobi heat the area around Jabari and make it so hot he had to break his shield. If the solution was that simple, anyone could think of it, but why was he bashing his head against the wall when he could call on his lifeline? No one knew Jabari better than Khalid and the Desert Wolf.

  “Khalid, we need some help down here,” Tim called up to the section where the old warrior and Neema were tr
apped.

  Khalid’s face appeared in a gap as he watched the fight. “Hold on!”

  “Easy for you to say.” Cassie was hit by an invisible force and thrown to the floor.

  Tim was on healing duty so he missed the first part of what came next as he brought Cassie up to full health. While he hadn’t seen what happened, he heard Khalid shout a warning. Then he picked up something flying through the air right at Jabari’s head.

  “Now!” Khalid roared.

  Neema stepped to the slats, aiming an arrow through a small gap. All Tim could do was watch as it sailed across the open space. Somehow she hit the bag right as it crossed above Jabari’s head.

  He crouched, expecting an explosion.

  Instead of a blast, the arrow simply pierced the bag and continued on its way. Light golden dust filled the air and slowly trickled down to Jabari. He looked up and tried to get out of its path, but Cassie and ShadowLily kept him corralled. They hammered at his shield with brutal efficiency, forcing him to stay where he was and let the sparkling dust land on him.

  Whatever Khalid had thrown at them stuck to the surface of Jabari’s shield. It looked as though the shielding covered his entire body but only a few inches away. Cracks were forming in the surface of his shield now, and the top started to melt away. It was weird to watch something invisible melting even when bright golden dust outlined it.

  Jabari screamed in rage as his shield finally broke apart. He waved his scepter in a vicious arc, sending them all flying into the opposite side of the room just like when they had fought the Goliath.

  “Not fair, asshole,” Cassie growled, ready to charge back into the fight.

  She was clearly ready to kill this asshole before he could turn back into a spider. It wouldn’t have surprised Tim in the slightest if she was pissed about being forced to take damage while not getting to deal any. Sure, her role wasn’t to do a ton of damage, but hitting things was an oddly satisfying way to work out some stress.

  Jabari might have been a shitty ruler, but he was even worse at reading the situation. No one wanted to deal with Cassie when she was mad.

  Nobody.

  Waves of electrical energy rolled across the floor in front of them. The boss was at the other side of the room and to get there, they would have to navigate the pattern without getting hit. Tim loved movement-based combat. It wasn’t all that hard to stand in one place and blast off spells, but it was hard to be moving, jumping, dodging while doing the same thing. A little challenge never hurt anyone.

  Unless they died.

  The best part about this situation was that they would probably get to deal extra damage for a short duration once they made it to the boss. They couldn’t waste a moment of opportunity like that. He was tired of dealing with Jabari. He just wanted the fucker to be dead already.

  The downside to a fight like this was that traditionally any missteps on their run toward Jabari meant instant death. Tim couldn’t think about that now. He needed to figure out the pattern so they could get across the room. He formulated a plan and hoped he was right.

  “Everyone follow me.” Tim looked back to make sure everyone was huddling behind him, then sprang into action.

  The key to these puzzles was to find the right bit of movement and go with it. He ran into the room, almost looking as if he were trying to kill himself by immediately running into the bar of crackling blue energy. Tim wasn’t trying to off himself. He simply knew that for them to make it across, he would have to play it a little fast and loose. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be enough time for the others to follow him.

  Pushing forward, they crossed the room, never stopping. They came close to getting fried a couple of times as Tim waited for the right moment to run, but soon enough they were standing in front of the boss as he struggled to maintain the spell.

  Jabari’s hands shook, and he dropped them as he fell to his knees in exhaustion. His breaths came in ragged gasps as he tried to regain his energy. “It isn’t possible.”

  “Guess the impossible is possible!” Cassie roared as she charged forward.

  Tim cast Curse of Giving and Divine Light before stepping back to assess the situation. None of them were too banged up, but they’d taken a few scrapes from being dragged across the room and slammed into place. A single blast of Healing Storm fixed most of their pressing issues.

  Jabari was getting hammered now.

  The boss had started this phase of the fight at fifty percent health and was dipping below thirty percent now. Tim made sure everyone’s health was topped off and cast Behold My Power.

  At twenty-five percent health Jabari waved his scepter again and swept the group across the room. Now the boss’ outline pulsed with a slightly red glow. It was enough to let them know if they didn’t defeat him after this trip across the room, things were going to get real interesting. Like, splat, you’re dead interesting. The last thing they needed was for Jabari to turn into some kind of crazed spider they couldn’t defeat or had to fight while waves of blue death balls covered the room.

  This time, not only did the pattern on the floor change when Jabari cast his spell, there was an additional wave of fire added to the mix. Now they had to watch their feet and periodically duck or jump to make sure they didn’t get roasted by the fire. It was the same thing as last time, only on steroids.

  Time to level up.

  Tim watched the pattern for a few moments and motioned for the group to get ready. “Follow me like last time, only this time I'll be making calls to jump or duck as we go. No matter what the call is, we always have to keep moving, or the floor will get us.”

  The rest of them didn’t look so sure about the situation, but he was feeling the flow. Tim was the human Frogger, the master of intricate patterns. He drew a few deep breaths and prepared himself. “When we get across, hit him with everything you’ve got. We need to end this now.”

  ShadowLily winked. “You get us across, and we’ll do our part. We’ve got this.”

  “Just make sure I don’t get fried. My hair doesn’t look good with static.” Lorelei looked like she was locked and loaded.

  “Feuer frei!” JaKobi cried with enthusiasm.

  Cassie laughed. “Whatever he said.”

  It was hard not to feel the love as Tim looked over the group. Not one of them had questioned his ability to get them through the danger safely. All of them were lined up and willing to bet their lives on him. That was the kind of friendship money couldn't buy.

  “Let’s fucking do this.” Tim held up a fist and dropped it as he started moving.

  They were cruising along nicely when he saw the first wave of red coming in low. “Jump!” They ran for a few more steps. “Duck.”

  That’s how it went as they crossed the room. He had to send out waves of Healing Storm a few times, but for the most part, it went better than he expected. These were the kind of sequences in fights that simply got easier the more times a player did them. He wondered why more games didn’t have training rooms for boss mechanics. It would certainly cut down on the frustration for players learning new fights.

  The last beam of fire was different than the others. It was coming right for them, but where the others had been high or low, this one was coming at them right at waist height. Tim was somewhere between jumping and ducking when he finally tried to throw his body over the top. He hadn’t made a call, but everyone but JaKobi was doing fine.

  JaKobi didn’t take nearly as much damage as Tim thought he would, maybe because of his affinity to flames. Still, they couldn’t afford to have him out of the fight for more than a second so Tim started healing the fire mage as his top priority. By the time JaKobi cast his next spell he was almost back to one hundred percent health.

  Jabari fell to his knees. The magic he’d used to flood the room had exhausted him. Behold My Power hit him damn near instantly, taking five percent of his health in one big chunk. Then the real DPS kicked in. All of them poured everything they had into it. Tim’s mana was flatlining,
but even when he only had enough left to cast Flame Burst repeatedly, he did it without hesitation.

  Nar’ha’s ruler staggered to his feet and waved his scepter one last time, sending them across the room. Tim didn’t know what happened. The boss’ health stopped dropping at one percent. Jabari didn’t have full control of his regalia though so its magic flailed around the room, threatening to bring more of the roof down on them. Jabari stopped the spell, but not before it had ripped away some of the bars blocking Khalid and Neema from joining the fight.

  The desert warrior stepped through the breach with his sword raised high above his head. “Today, you pay for your crimes against the people of Nar’ha.”

  Jabari held up his hands, pleading for his life, but the blade was already falling. An explosion of beautiful gold and platinum motes burst into the heavens as Jabari’s head caved in from the blow. The beautiful lights swirled through the air, then winked out of existence as if they’d never been there at all.

  In place of Jabari’s corpse was the most ornate chest Tim had ever laid eyes on.

  Today was a good fucking day.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Vitaria’s anger was palpable, and it was making Phandar uncomfortable.

  Everyone thought being Pharaoh was great, but there was always someone more powerful. He’d given himself wholly to the Goddess Vitaria, and now he saw that decision come full circle. His usefulness to her was ending. There was still a chance he could save himself, but he was no longer sure he’d get out of this alive.

  Now he had to break the news.

  As Phandar knelt in front of the goddess, she spoke. “The Juggernaut has been defeated, and we have one less guardian to secure your empire. Do you see now why I said to let that fool Jabari die alone? The man was worthless.”

  He’d always thought of Jabari as a close confidant, a man that could be trusted when called upon. None of them had foreseen this band of adventurers coming from another land, backed by the power of their goddess.