1-Up

by Dean Smith

  They nodded to him in acknowledgement and Valiant took off to engage the dragon at close quarters, all the while dodging the falling icicles from above. When he got close, a red cone appeared on the floor in front of the dragon and Valiant barely escaped its vicinity before the dragon lashed out with its claws. A few seconds later, the area around the dragon shone red as dots appeared underneath Valiant’s feet. He stepped back to avoid the icicles and ran out of reach of an attack from the dragon’s tail.

  Another thick straight line emanated from the dragon, another breath attack which was followed by more icicles, then a claw attack, with icicles and tail strike straight after. Valiant realised that the dragon had an attack pattern and once he figured that out, he easily dodged the dragon’s attacks.

  He looked to Nina and Mordoom as they looked around frantically, now he knew what to expect from the dragon, he didn’t need to keep his focus on it so much as it never deviated from its attack pattern. He noticed while dancing around the dragon’s attacks that there were four large iced over furnaces in each corner of the cavern.

  ‘Try turning on those furnaces on!’ He called to them. They split up and each took off towards a furnace on opposite ends of the cavern. Nina’s furnace was the first to light up as it’s frozen body melted, causing a roaring flame to billow forth. The dragon roared as it aimed a breath attack at Nina but she was quick to move out of danger as she took off to the next furnace. The dragon went to give chase but Valiant couldn’t allow that to happen. He swung his sword at the dragon’s body and watched as his blade cracked the icy armour and a smidgeon of the dragon’s life bar was shaved off. The furnaces were the key to winning this battle and Valiant believed that if all four were turned on, it would be enough to melt the ice and allow him to land a true blow on the dragon. The dragon roared as it turned its attention back on Valiant and continued its familiar attack pattern. Soon Mordoom’s furnace activated, and the dragon tried to attack but Valiant once again pulled his focus. Immediately afterwards, Nina turned on the third furnace and Valiant caught sight of the melting ice on the dragon’s body. One more furnace and this battle could be over.

  The dragon turned its attention once more to Nina but instead of a linear breath attack, the entire side of the cavern turned red. There was no time for her to escape as the dragon began a wide breath attack that covered the whole affected area.

  ‘Nina!’ Valiant cried, there was no chance of avoiding that attack and it looked lethal. Valiant could only watch in shock as he dealt with the reality that Nina was gone. He had failed to protect her like he would fail at everything else. He wasn’t a hero, he was a fraud and Nina’s death was proof of that.

  ‘Valiant, watch out!’ The dragon was about to strike him with its claw attack when Mordoom pulled him out of the way.

  ‘She’s dead.’ Valiant said breathlessly but as the icy mist cleared, he saw a familiar outline, it was Nina and she looked fine.

  ‘There’s a safe spot behind the furnaces!’ She called out. ‘If he does that attack again, hide behind them!’ Overjoyed at her survival, Valiant focused on keeping the dragon busy while Mordoom returned to light the last furnace and when he did, a similar wide attack covered his side of the cavern like it did with Nina’s but Mordoom knew the trick to surviving it and did so with ease. With all four furnaces alight, the ice melted from the dragon and Valiant went on the attack with each of his swings landing true. The dragon roared in pain as half of its life bar disappeared. As it got low to the ground. Two red circles appeared in the middle of the cavern away from Valiant and his allies and those areas burst into an icy blast as a floating series of ice shards appeared where the blasts had taken place. Almost immediately, red lines burst forth from each configuration of shards and soon volleys of razor sharp ice blades were being blasted from the shards. Coupled with the dragon’s attack pattern, it made movement difficult. as almost the entire arena was covered in red markings at all times.

  ‘We need to deal with these ice things!’ Mordoom stated, but the challenge was how. Valiant was busy keeping the dragon busy and Nina’s knives bounced off the shards. Valiant tried to look around for something to help them with destroying the shards but between the dragon’s relentless attacks and the ever-changing direction of ice volleys, it was difficult to focus on anything other than dodging. It was down to Nina and Mordoom to figure out this latest mechanic.

  Nina kept trying to deal damage with her knives but gave up as her blades bounced off the shards leaving no damage upon them. She looked around as she moved with the shards, avoiding their attacks. She caught sight of one of the lit furnaces closest to Mordoom and watched as a compartment opened on the side and dropped four torches onto the ground. Four torches, four furnaces.

  ‘Mord! Grab those torches behind you and throw two of 'em to me, light one of them and hold them to the shards closest to you!’ She couldn’t say for sure whether that was the right thing to do, but it was the only idea she had. She caught the torches that was thrown to her and ran to one of her furnaces and used its roaring flames to set one of the torches alight. Moving quickly as to avoid the oncoming ice blades from the shards and the icicles that still dropped from above, she dived at the shards nearest to her and thrust her flaming torch into them. The shards vibrated violently as they melted before her eyes. She looked over to Mordoom and saw that his shards had melted as well. The torches they held broke down in their hands, a second pair of circles appeared by the other two furnaces which resulted in another pair of living shards appearing. Knowing that to do this time, Mord and Nina dispatched them. With the last two shard creatures destroyed, Nina assumed that there wouldn’t be any more as they no longer had any torches to destroy them with and with them gone, the dragon was once again wide open. Valiant unleashed a flurry of attacks that left the dragon with only a sliver of life left on his bar, the next blow would be the one that would win the battle but the dragon, Rimeroar, would not go down so easily.

  He took to the air and crashed down in front of the frozen door and upon landing, he roared at them which such force that Valiant, Nina and Mordoom were blasted off their feet. They collided with a wall and groggily got back on their feet. The dragon looked to the ceiling at the icicles above and roared at them which caused them to shudder and loosen. The entire floor bar a small circle in the middle of the cavern glowed red.

  ‘Quick!’ Valiant ran with Nina and Mordoom to the unblemished circle. The noise of the icicles dislodging from above matched the dragon’s roar and the initial barrage of icicles dropped as Nina and Valiant made it into the circle.

  ‘Mordoom!’

  He had lagged behind and he froze as he looked above and saw the icicles falling towards him. Acting without thinking, Valiant charged forward into the red zone and grabbed hold of the stunned Mordoom and threw him towards the safety circle. Knowing he was only seconds away from being shredded and that he wouldn’t get back to the circle in time, Valiant raised his shield above himself and braced for impact. The shard’s collided with the shield with heavy impacts that forced Valiant to his knees. It was agonising to withstand the endless impacts but Valiant could only persevere, if he let down his shield for an instant he would be a goner and all would be lost. After what felt like an eternity, the last icicle dropped and a blissful silence greeted Valiant. Everything felt sore but he was alive. He lowered his shield before remembering he was still in the midst of battle with the dragon. He cast a weary eye to where the dragon had landed and saw its icicle-ridden corpse. It had destroyed itself to kill them and they watched as the dragon’s body exploded into snow that melted along with the ice on the door.

  ‘We won.’ Valiant said breathlessly before laughing. ‘We won!' He wanted to cheer but his ribs hurt too much.

  ‘That box thing was right, we need tactics and teamwork to win these battles, I dread to think what’s coming next if that was just the first battle.’ Nina looked towards the newly opened door and Valiant groaned in response.

  �
�I can’t think about fighting another battle just yet, I just had a few tons of ice dropped on my head.’ He opened the menu and selected one of every potion he owned and consumed them all. He sighed as he felt them work their magic as the aching pain faded.

  ‘Give me five minutes and we’ll go on to the next one.’

  ‘Hey, Val?’ Mordoom approached him cautiously and Valiant was too tired to admonish him for calling him Val.

  ‘Yeah?’ Valiant responded wearily.

  ‘Thanks for saving me.’ As ever, Valiant’s interactions with Mordoom felt bizarre, and it was still difficult to reconcile the Mordoom that used to threaten Venturis with the one that thanked him for saving his life. Valiant had risked his life to save Mordoom and the thought of doing so made him feel a little light headed.

  ‘Don’t mention it, was it as weird for you as it was for me?’

  Mordoom nodded and the hero and his former nemesis shared a laugh at the ridiculousness of it all.

  ***

  After taking a few minutes to recover, Valiant and company proceeded through the now unfrozen door which led to a spiral staircase dimly lit with candles. Valiant expected that, like with the dragon, the next battle would also take place in an area that would form part of the strategy to defeat whatever enemy awaited them next so he felt confident that the creature wouldn’t attack them before they reached the next arena but still, he exercised caution as he climbed the stairs. Just because they were told that the Obsidian Stronghold would comprise of three battles didn’t mean that there wasn’t anything nasty to catch them out in between those battles. Visions of deadly traps and attacks by lesser monsters swam in Valiant’s inner vision and so he kept his outer vision peeled for any signs of movements or contraptions. As they reached the top of the stairs in one piece, Valiant breathed a sigh of relief as a large red door greeted them. The non-existent threat had passed but a very real one was waiting for them.

  Valiant looked to his allies, Nina looked ready, Mordoom looked hesitant and Valiant felt he fell somewhere in between the scale they represented but he couldn’t allow it to show on his face or in his actions. If he wanted to be the hero he used to be, he needed to face whatever lay ahead head on and overcome it. This was no time for doubt, for the new worries of this new world to dull and divide his focus. It was a time for action, not contemplation. If he couldn’t walk the walk, he could at least pretend that he could and hope in time that the fiction of his confidence would become reality. Valiant opened the door to face whatever was behind it.

  A bridge stretched out before them into darkness, they couldn’t see what was below the bridge or what was beyond it but they didn’t doubt they would soon find out. With no other choice they crossed the bridge which led to a large circular platform, after a few steps onto the platform they heard a series of bestial roars followed by the unmistakable roaring of flames As the darkness surrounding the circular platform erupted into a sea of orange. Valiant gasped as he felt the heat on his armour from the wall of fire surrounding them. With the flames lighting the arena, Valiant and company caught sight of their next opponent and it was a monstrous foe.

  It was smaller than the dragon they had just felled but it was no less intimidating. Its body was lithe and both reptilian and mammal-like in appearance with patches of scales and fur spread throughout its body. On its back there was a solitary outstretched feathered wing, but its head, or heads, were what Valiant focused on. The creature had three of them. The left head was that of a copper serpent whose yellow eyes trained on Mordoom while its right head resembled an owl whose twitchy glare remained fixed on Nina. The middle head, the largest of the three, was a lion head which had an all encompassing mane that almost covered the other two heads.

  Three life bars appeared, one above each head and above those bars was a name, Triaton, the Great Chimera.

  Unlike the ice dragon, Triaton didn’t wait for them to make the first move as the serpent head hissed into life and unleashed a torrent of green liquid behind Valiant and his allies. The liquid pooled around the bridge as it sizzled and oozed with a vapour that made Valiant feel sick.

  ‘Stay away from the green stuff! It’s poisonous!’ called Nina, Valiant had guessed as much and they moved closer to the beast and away from the noxious fumes of its venom. The left half of the arena glowed a threatening red which meant that an attack was incoming. As Valiant and company moved to safety to the right half of the arena, that too became covered in red a second or two later. There was no safe zone for them to take refuge in.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ screamed Mordoom. Valiant looked at the two halves of the arena and an answer came to him.

  ‘As soon as the red marks fade from the left side, run over to it, the attacks are staggered so the first half will be the safe area.’ Valiant felt confident this was the right course of action. The snake head covered the left side in its venomous spray which seemed to evaporate shortly afterwards unlike the pool by the bridge. With the coast clear, the three ran to the left side of the arena a second before the Chimera flapped its wing, summoning blasts of winds that would no doubt have blown them off the arena and into the flames had they been a second later in moving to safety.

  ‘That was nasty.’ commented Mordoom.

  ‘There’s more to come no doubt!’ Valiant gritted his teeth and raised his sword and shield. ‘We all need to take a head, I’ll take the lion, Nina take the owl and Mord, you’ve got the snake. I’ll try to deal with my head as quick as I can so just try to keep the other two heads busy and I’ll help you both out when I’m done.' It would be easier said than done, but it was the only plan Valiant could think of. He couldn’t take on all three heads alone, they had to divide its attention. Nina engaged the owl in battle with her knives while Mordoom picked up a nearby large bone to use as a club.

  ‘I wish I had my magic about now.’ He rued as he swung for the serpent.

  With all three of them fighting their respective heads, the chimera repeated its earlier attack, this time however, it was the front and back of the arena that was split into two red halves. Knowing what to do, they traversed the lion’s fire breathing by hiding behind the chimera only to escape its razor sharp tail that swept the back half of the arena in the nick of time.

  In between dodging Triaton’s wide reaching attacks, the three launched their own attacks on the monster and Valiant noticed with a mote of concern how fast each head’s life bar was depleting. He had hoped that it meant they were thrashing the monster but somehow he doubted that to be the case.

  All too quickly, Valiant had killed the lion head and as it drooped, the flames around the arena grew brighter and larger to the point that they had spread to the outside of the circular platform itself. Valiant took a glance at the encroaching danger as he tried to figure out the trick, the owl head was the next to die and Valiant watched as the flames grew ever closer. Realising that time was of the essence, Valiant helped Mordoom to slay the Serpent head and with all three heads dead, Valiant hoped in vain it would mean the end of the battle but the flames crept ever close with each head’s death. With the Chimera dying before them and the flames threatening them from behind, Valiant frantically searched for an answer, what did they have to do? What was the trick? A roar answered his question as the Chimera got back on his feet and its heads sprung back to life with full life bars. Valiant realised that killing the heads wasn’t enough, maybe they had to do it in some kind of order? They repeated the process while dodging Triaton’s renewed attack patterns and they tried different orders of killing the heads but each time the heads would come back to life and the flames would grow ever closer.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ Mordoom cried as he fanned himself in the heat. They only had a few more tries at getting it right before the entire platform would be consumed in fire. Valiant considered that they had been thinking about this all wrong, that it wasn’t a matter of killing the heads in the right order but something else.

  ‘What if....What if we ha
ve to kill the heads at the same time?’ Valiant mused as they dodge another arena wide double attack.

  ‘It’s an idea, and it’s the only one we got, let’s do it.’ Nina charged forward at her head. ‘What we’ll do is wither each life bar down to basically nothing and see if we can kill all three heads in one blow.’ It was a solid plan and neither Valiant nor Mordoom could see any issues with it and so once more they engaged their respective heads in battle until the Chimera was once more at death’s door.

  ‘Now, Valiant! Finish it!’ Cried Nina.

  Valiant opened his list of skills and selected ‘Storm Blade’. It was a wide enough attack that he could hit all three heads at once. He pulled off the attack, ending all three heads’ lives simultaneously. The Chimera collapsed to the ground and turned to ashes and Valiant laughed in relief as the encroaching flames faded away. Another bridge lay before them that led to another stairway. One more battle remained.

  ***

  The staircase on the Chimera’s floor didn’t lead to another floor but to the roof of one of the Obsidian Stronghold’s towers, the tallest one. Like with the Chimera’s arena, the roof was a circular platform but one that came with a barricade surrounding the edge. In the middle of the large balcony was a floating figure, a man perhaps although it was difficult to tell given the figure’s long coat that obscured any telltale signs of what they were up against next although it didn’t take much to piece together that they were likely a magical enemy.

  Not wanting to spend another minute longer in this place, Valiant stepped forward and the being’s life bar along with its name appeared, ‘Orion, the Wraithlord’. Like with the Chimera, Orion didn’t wait for Valiant to land the first attack and as soon as his health bar appeared, a red line showing Orion’s first attack trailed towards Valiant. He responded by moving to the side but the line moved with him, he ran in a circle trying to lose it but no matter how he moved, the line would follow relentlessly. Not knowing what to do, he kept moving until the line stopped for a fraction of a second before a dark lightning bolt blasted forth from Orion. If Valiant had remained still, he wouldn’t have dodged the attack.