Crystalfire Keep

by J. A. Cipriano

  Spinning to face Lucar as the waters rose up to bring him to my level, I called out to the group, “Crysta just bought us time to go all out! Go for it!” Taking advantage of the fact that I had the Warlock’s undivided attention, I brought my shield up into a defensive stance and clenched my fist, focusing on the pristine Watchdog Stance Gem in my Ring of Promise.

  I hadn’t had much chance to try out this new ability in a fight that was challenging. Earned from the One in the Vale of the Three Wolves, Kayla and I had done some testing with the Stance, doing some farming on lower-level stuff to see if there were limits to the Stance’s ability to retaliate to enemy attacks. We hadn’t found one so far, making Watchdog a good answer for this situation.

  “Do you mean attack?” Wazif called out from the far end of the gallery. “I don’t really have any Gems for that.”

  That was something I hadn’t really considered a possibility, and I really should have. After all, I was a big proponent of specialization, with only a couple of Gems that had any offensive use at all. Heck, Wazif barely fought anything in his day-to-day gameplay.

  I tried to shout some kind of reassurance back but that was the moment Lucar let out a devilish cackle, the usual tell for entering one of his Octo-Flail stages. In his normal mode, Lucar would glow bright blue and gain a Boon quadrupling the speed of his attacks for a five-second frenzy of activity. As his tentacle attacks swept areas in front of him, this meant that anyone who didn’t have a tank’s defenses that were dumb enough to be near the tank would get torn to shreds.

  However, instead of that blue glow, black ooze leaked out of the rotting flesh at the start of Lucar’s tentacles as he raised them to strike, coating the lengths of jagged bone. I had a sinking feeling as the Warlock’s rearing form loomed over me, engulfing me in shadow.

  Lucar the Tide Warlock invokes the power of Darkness! He gains the Boon ‘Shadow Flail’, increasing his Attack Speed by 400% and inflicting extra Darkness Damage per hit for 5 seconds!

  The air before me filled with tentacle after tentacle, ebony streaks of liquid Darkness trailing behind each and every strike. My eyes grew wide before those practiced tank instincts kicked in and I braced for impact. My Watchdog Stance took over from there, moving my body with inhuman speed. Every tentacle lash was met with my shield or blunted by my banner pole, not enough to completely stop the hits as the flexible tendrils curled around every defense but enough to lessen the force. I was both amazed at the power of the Stance and worried at how much damage was still getting through.

  The strength of the blows wasn’t the big problem with Lucar’s flailing, though. With every strike that made it through, more and more of the black, watery slime splattered on me, seeping through chinks in my plate armor and into my pores. It was a direct injection of the Darkness into my body, and it burned as it froze in my veins, adding stacks to a Seeping Toxin Bane that ate at my Health Points more than the attacks then.

  You gain the Bane ‘Seeping Toxin’! You take 1% of your maximum Health Points in unresistable Darkness Damage every second per stack of this Bane for 10 seconds!

  Even as my limbs grew cold and my life force dwindled down below fifty percent, new life surged through my body. Kayla, Crysta, and Wazif all decided that keeping me alive was better than taking advantage of the offensive opening and, to be honest, I was glad they did. If I fell, any one of them would be next, and they would all go down fast. Even Kayla with all her PvP tricks and avoidance spells would get locked down and flailed to death sooner or later.

  That realization made me wince more than the pain of the oncoming damage. Yes, dying was part of the game, and I’m sure Kayla had died plenty in the Arena. I still didn’t want that to happen, as irrational of a thought that was.

  Two Greenlife Arrows, another Ice Shield, a Soothing Cascade, and a Cauterize blasted into me, managing to just keep pace with the ice-numbing poison and constant barrage of blows.

  The only person that didn’t seem to be doing anything was Burndall. There was no way he wasn’t back in a safe position; he was a bit faster on his toes than the far less sprightly Wazif. Even through the biting cold and flurry of activity, I focused enough to send a direct message through to him. I knew I had aggravated the kid over the past weeks, but that wasn’t any kind of reason to be laying down on the job here.

  Shale: Man, what are you doing? We have to –

  Burndall: Dude, you really think I’m sitting on my bouncy castle here? You’re the guy that fluffernutted off and left me high and dry.

  Ouch. Kayla was right. I needed to deal with this but after the fight. For now, though, I could at least take my lumps like a man.

  Shale: Sorry, you’re right. I trust you to kill this guy.

  Burndall: Discus right I will!

  Of course, those grueling five seconds didn’t go any better for the undead Nix-topus. Every time Lucar’s tendrils ripped into me, they were met by a burst of Primal Light, piercing thorns that burned into him courtesy of Crysta’s Prayer to the Light, before triggering retaliation from my Watchdog Stance. Those counterattacks came in the form of blazing swipes from my shield or buffeting cracks of my banner into his horrid form. Each Chastising Swipe was backed by the Light, and that collective effort finally cracked the protective shell of corrupted water around the Warlock’s form with my last retaliatory strike.

  Your Chastising Swipe hits Lucar the Tide Warlock! His Elemental Shell (Water) interferes with the Primal Light! The Shell takes 7.3% Physical Damage and 8.4% (+1.1% vulnerability) Light Damage!

  Lucar the Tide Warlock’s Elemental Shell (Water) shatters! He is now vulnerable to direct attacks from Light Elemental attacks!

  The watery ooze burst outward, splattering the gallery walls near our end of the room, sizzling off walls, bone, and coral while adding another stack of poison to me. Another trap, that would have added yet another ticking time bomb to the rest of the group if we had crowded him when the shell broke. Lucar let out an ear-splitting shriek as he recoiled back from me, hands and tentacles darting out wildly in some vain attempt to gather up the protective waters.

  Now that Lucar was out of my face, I could see what Burndall was up to as I sagged onto my banner for support. At the back of the room, he was building up a tremendous ball of energy, using the same trick he used against the Solar Guardian. Stacking two Builder Gems one atop the other, his plan was what he had hinted at before, to do so much damage in one burst that we would skip the various phases of the Tide Warlock’s AI, assuming that worked the same with this undead version. That was something of a big if but with the nature of the protective shell, it was still a sound idea. Kill Lucar before he could bring up another shield.

  What was different this time was that it wasn’t a simple Pyroclasm Spell Gem he was using. It was immediately obvious from the glowing diamond mounted next to the ruby of the Pyroclasm Gem that he had linked his one Light Gem to it. Instead of a huge ball of flame, a miniature sun grew in intensity in the Ember’s outstretched palms.

  Burnie would need a few more seconds to charge the spell, at the very least. Even though I still seemed to have the bulk of Lucar’s attention, the aggro built by the Chastising Swipes matching that built by the three healers going to town on me, the Tide Warlock wasn’t out of tricks yet.

  “I’ll drag you down into the Darkness,” he growled as his tentacles and hands made intricate weaving motions through the fetid air. “You may destroy me, but you will be scarred by my passing!”

  With a guttural word in some dark language, the Warlock plunged all ten of his limbs towards the water, his tendrils plunging into the rising water. In response, the waters turned black as pitch and churned before huge, ebony whips of befouled liquid, one for each member of our group.

  Before those tentacles could begin lashing, even as the Darkness continued to freeze my blood, I shouted above the Warlock’s monologue, “I’ll use Last Stand! Don’t worry about me, keep Burnie alive!”

  Last Stand would keep me from d
ying for twelve seconds. The lingering bits of Crysta’s prayer would help the others, but Burndall was a glass cannon. If those tentacles were any kind of threat, he would be toast before he could blow Lucar out of his socks.

  No one hesitated. Kayla turned towards Burndall, raising the glowing orb in her off-hand to conjure an Ice Shield around the kid, even as her Ring of Promise glowed, invoking the Power of Love to mend the worst of my wounds. Crysta was right behind her, pointing toward Burnie and commanding Loi to spring into action. The little merman air-swam across the gallery, darting between the water whips as they crashed down on us, even as Wazif produced some sort of clay pot, some kind of Alchemy item from what I could see, from his inventory.

  I barely had the moment to invoke the power of my Last Stand Gem before the tentacles hit. The tendril slapped off me painlessly as the glowing aura of invulnerability suffused my body. The others weren’t so lucky but the one status bar I kept my eyes glued to was Burndall’s.

  Blackwater Tentacle A hits Burndall! He takes 0 (+22 vulnerability, -220 shielded) Water Damage and 210 (-58 resisted, -22 shielded) Darkness Damage! HP 1360/1570

  With Kayla’s Ice Shield now on cooldown, the Blackwater Tentacle would tear through Burnie without help. If we could hold on for a few more seconds … I had to trust in the team to do their job. Lucar laughed crazily, hovering out of reach even as the waters started to rise.

  Fortunately, I could trust my friends. The Blackwater constructs lashed out again, but Loi and Wazif managed to act first. The Water Weird spiraled around Burndall’s head, conjuring up a Watery Aegis, immediately bolstering the kid’s protection from Water Damage, while Wazif hurled the clay pot right at the tentacle. I swear he was praying under his breath as he did so.

  The pot shattered as the Tentacle swung downward and it exploded into a white, glittering liquid. Immediately, an alchemical reaction rippled through the tendril wherever the white fluid mixed with the black water, ice crystals forming in the heart of the whip. In the blink of an eye, the thing froze up, an immense black ice sculpture on display for our edification.

  Wazif uses a Liquid Ice Pot on Blackwater Tentacle C! Its attack is Interrupted and it gains the Bane ‘Frozen’ for 2 seconds!

  The kid was safe, even as the waves of befouled water crashed down on everyone else. Again, I was safe, but that blow brought Kayla and Crysta both below half Health and Wazif down to less than a hundred Health Points remaining. Burndall’s expression was full of grit and anger as the sun in his hands swelled, almost to the point of launching. As the tentacles surged back into position and the frozen one shattered back into a flowing tendril, I could see that our miner friend was knocked flat, agony etched into his wide face.

  He had told us back when we first met he didn’t adventure because of the pain feedback. Deep down, an anger that I couldn’t direct at anyone (who could I hold responsible for this, after all?) welled up in me that he was being forced to feel this, just for a stupid mining node.

  That was when it hit me. I could get Wazif out of the way from this next strike and protect Burndall in one fell swoop, just long enough to let that sun loose. I’d have to time it perfectly, but I trusted my reflexes here in the deep dive. Years of virtual therapy and developing the NSAF gear before it even began to be used in gaming honed the link between my brain and any avatar I inhabited in the dive. “Keep healing through it! I’ve got the kid!”

  Kayla grunted an affirmative as her own rainbow Gem in her Ring of Promise, immediately activating Harmonic Aegis, the sister to my own Watchdog Stance, even as she began to weave into a healing spell. A golden, nigh-impenetrable shield of harmonic energy surrounded her as soothing waters gathered around her fingertips before they shot out towards Burndall.

  Meanwhile, our Ranger activated some Gem I wasn’t familiar with, an opal on her archer’s bracer flaring with pearlescent radiance as she reached into her quiver. Instead of drawing a single Greenlife Arrow, she drew four, one between each knuckle and the last tucked in her thumb, nocking them all in one pull before launching them. That must have been a high-grade Multicast Gem, as glowing green arrows show into the entire party to heal them even as Crysta’s Elemental Power took a massive hit. Multicasts really ate into the EP cost for any skill, but this time, its use was warranted.

  Even with that healing, I wasn’t going to risk a lucky crit killing Burnie. The Blackwater Tentacles rose for their next strike, and that was when I moved. Thrusting my gauntlet out towards Wazif, I mentally activated my Impose Gem. It surged to life, and I launched clean across the gallery, practically teleporting in on top of Wazif. It was a bit of pure luck that the miner was still flat on his face or else I might have knocked him clean off the coral pile. Instead, I was over him, having drawn all of his aggro onto me for a short time. The tentacle that had been rushing toward him now angled towards me while my own surged across the room to follow.

  That wouldn’t save Burndall, but my trust in my reflexes was well-founded. As I had surged across the room, I had my mental finger hovering over my Walking Wall Ability button even as I dropped Watchdog Stance. The moment I landed, I activated it, raising my glowing shield in front of Burndall and Wazif.

  Walking Wall not only greatly boosted my Block chance, but it provided unbeatable protection for anyone behind it. The two Blackwater Tentacles crashed down on our rather crowded pillar, both slamming into my shield. Crashing off my shield and my own still-invulnerable body, everyone was safe. I wouldn’t be able to maintain the Wall for more than a moment, not with how much I had burned maintaining Watchdog Stance for so long, but I didn’t have to.

  “Suck on this, you chocolate-covered cherry!” Burndall shouted as he hurled the now-yard-diameter ball of pure solar energy at Lucar. There was a brief moment of clarity in the mad Warlock’s eyes, maybe even a hint of regret, before the sun exploded on him, engulfing undead flesh, bone, and sickly corruption in a blaze of cleansing flame.

  Burndall’s Solar Crash hits Lucar the Tide Warlock! He takes 27% (+17% Builder, -8% resisted) Fire Damage and 68% (+17% Builder, +34% vulnerability) Light Damage! Lucar dies!

  3

  As the Warlock was consumed by the light and flames, a great, heaving inhalation roared through Tamiroth, wind whipping through us as the seaweed curtain leading deeper into the dungeon was torn off its moorings. That same suction pulled the polluted waters with it, and when the pulling current had done its work, the floor of the Swollen Gallery was visible again, slick but unflooded.

  That wasn’t all. The twisted black coral we were all perched on began to crumble, the remains swept away by the flood waters. Wazif, still flat on his stomach, belly-slid down to the floor with a strangled cry but the rest of us managed to keep our feet with some scrambling. By the time the coral had been washed away, our perches were a foot shorter and much easy on the eyes.

  What must have been statues or ornaments made of some silvery metal had been worn and eaten at by the parasitic growths and now unrecognizable in shape. The metal, though, remained pure and let off a faint radiance beyond the pale reflection of the bioluminescent growths on the ceiling. They were all outlined in pale blue, the UI marking denoting nodes for gathering crafting materials. Not being a miner, they were all labeled Unknown Metal Deposit in my eyes.

  As for Lucar himself, in his place was one gleaming loot orb, larger than most I had seen. That was bizarre as in his normal form, the Tide Warlock was supposed to drop three to four items from his loot chart. To signify that the fireworks and flash of his demise were complete, a final UI message flashed in my mind.

  Victory! You gain 20% Experience! Experience 2,120,000/2,400,000

  For a moment, we all stood there in silence, catching our collective breaths as Wazif clambered to his feet. The miner was the first to speak, a mix of quiet awe and explosive enthusiasm. “Holy durian! We did it!” He ran towards the nearest deposit, eyes as wide as saucers. “There’s only supposed to be one or two deposits at that spawn! This is the mother load!”


  Crysta giggled at his enthusiasm as she bounded down from atop her perch while Kayla looked over at where Burndall and I were. “Great job, guys!” She grinned at the kid in particular. “If you keep that up, I may just go Support all the time and let you handle things.”

  Lowering my shield, I too looked to Burnie. “Yeah, you did great.” I rubbed the back of my head, dismissing my banner in the process. “So, can you forgive me for doubting you?”

  The Sorcerer crossed his arms as he seemed to mull it over, glancing up at one of the shadowy corners of the room. “I’m thinking about it.” He finally laughed a little and shrugged. “Well, sure, I guess. You just have to make it up to me, dude.” Before I could address that specifically, he slid down the smooth metal. “So, Wazif my man, what can you do with all this stuff?”

  Wazif was already at work, swinging his bejeweled pickaxe into the first deposit. “You’ll have your spellblade and more, I can assure you!” He shook his head as he worked, awe still catching in the back of his throat. “I actually fought a big bad boss with the Firsters. I can’t believe it.”

  Kayla followed after Crysta, still glancing at me sidelong, as I clambered my way to the floor.

  Kayla: You know if you don’t talk to Burndall right after we finish here, I will continually harangue you about it.

  Shale: No need for that. Trust me, I’m going to make this all up to him.

  She nodded at me as the Ranger was moving towards the loot orb. “While it’s, like, awesome that we got all these crafting mats, is anyone else going to address the Ogre in the room?” She did a graceful spin with her last couple of steps to the softly humming orb. “Namely that we just fought a hyped up undead version of a normal boss that not only spouted off about Crystalfire but had a mechanic I’ve never seen before and only dropped a single raid loot orb?”