by Domino Finn
Power Slash
A vicious strike to your enemy, causing up to x2 damage at level 1.
Spirit Cost: 10
Cooldown: 20 seconds
Helmet Stun
A rattling strike that stuns opponents with armored heads.
Spirit Cost: 12
Cooldown: 40 seconds
Position Swap
Trade places with an engaged melee opponent.
Spirit Cost: 12
Cooldown: 40 seconds
Tornado Spin
A spinning attack that deals heavy damage and clears a 2-yard radius.
Spirit Cost: 22
Cooldown: 120 seconds
I still didn't want to spend points on the power slash when my deadshot was my damage move. The helmet stun seemed too specific so that left me with protection skills. Tornado spin was a good mix of offense and defense. Plus, it sounded badass. I picked it up.
As the mountain steepened, our progress slowed. Bandit picked out the most viable path. I had to close my menu and focus on the terrain. Kyle slipped a few times. It wasn't a cakewalk for Izzy and I, but we had better balance overall. Our new brewmaster leaned on the mountain bongo for support. At times we needed to take turns with her assistance as she went back and forth. It was tough going and we climbed in silence until we crested the peak.
Lucifer was up here all right. He was perched on his obelisk like a raven, black robes sparkling where the moonlight caught the reflective rune stitching.
Unfortunately, he wasn't alone. The pagans had beaten us to Blind Man's Peak. A contingent of twenty goblins and three boggarts circled the obelisk. I froze in terror as I recognized the unique enemy that had scooped out my insides in the tutorial. [Crowlat - Boggart Witch] stood with her two sisters, [Havlat] and [Somlat]. All three of them had empty eye cavities. They held a gleaming blood-red gemstone in their hands. The Eye of Orik.
"The land of the blind," I muttered under my breath.
I recalled the map without going into the menu. The mountains stretched over the landscape to the south of Stronghold. The river came from the high ground and led north to town. It was the water I was focused on. The raging current under the rope bridge. The waterfall. The boggarts were a holy people, and this was a holy place...
The tutorial had been close to here. So near to Stronghold all along.
"Intruderses!" cried a goblin on the perimeter. "Protect the Eye!"
The goblin contingent fanned out before us. I wasn't too worried about them at this point. They were hardy mobs, but our newly unified party could handle them. The boggarts were the problem. They stood seven feet tall and had terrible countenances. Blackened skin, patchy and scaly and bumpy in ways that made my stomach churn. Despite lacking eyes, Crowlat locked her head on me and hissed. Every weapon on the summit readied.
"Stand down!" cried Lucifer. He flung himself from the top of the obelisk, glided down with his fluttering robe, and hurried to stand between us and the pagans. "They're friends," he assured. He leaned close and lowered his voice. "Or they can be, if they pick the right side."
"Killerses!" wailed the goblins. "Tricksies!"
Crowlat stepped away from the ritual. Her breathing was coarse and grated my ears. Her voice scraped like gravel. I could feel her sensing my -405 faction rep. "The children speak true. This one is a pagan killer."
Even with the boggart towering over him, Lucifer was unmoved. He squared off against the grotesque creature and spoke calmly. "Many must die for the greater good. Was the Eye not worth the lives of a select few heroes?"
She sneered. "You claim him an asset to our cause?"
"He helped acquire the Eye."
The witch's eyeless gaze faced me, slightly off kilter. I was afraid she saw everything I was, but she snorted and spun away. "Leave them be," she ordered the goblins. Then she returned to the ritual.
The goblins kicked and spat but backed away. Slightly. Their grips remained tight on their weapons, and they wisely maintained the line that barred us from the central obelisk and the ritual. I peeked around them, trying to determine what the boggarts were doing weaving in and out of the giant stone hand sculptures that acted as a shield.
Lucifer casually fell in line with us. "It is good to see you decided to join me."
"You lied to me," I spat.
He frowned. "I did nothing of the sort."
"You didn't tell me you were helping the pagans. Directing their actions."
"I do not direct the snake to swallow the mouse. This is the normal state of the wild. I merely choose to let it be." I scoffed while he continued. "You saw the proof. Your personnel file. You know what the saints did to you."
"What about the innocent people in Stronghold? You're gonna destroy the town."
Lucifer's hooded head turned toward the mighty gates in the distance. "Maybe I am," he admitted. "Maybe they deserve it."
Izzy pursed her lips. "So just because you can't have it, no one can? I happen to like that city."
The self-proclaimed devil regarded her. "So Isabel has found a life she tolerates. Big surprise it's an illusion. Pure escapism."
Her knuckles squeezed white around her frost wand. "Escape this, you prick."
I gently held back her arm before she attacked Lucifer. They had some limited history but I doubted she knew how powerful he was. None of us did, really. His mouth was the only portion of his face not hidden in shadow. A smug smile played across his lips as I contained the situation. For a moment I felt that, once again, I was doing his bidding.
"So what's your goal then?" I asked, trying to steer the conversation toward something productive. "Anarchy? You wanna bring down the very idea of order?"
"Would that be so terrible? The saints lied to all of us. They promised us Heaven but gave us an endless grind. We're nothing more than inmates of a digital prison, marking our days by their clock."
His words were twisted but they weren't false. "It's a second chance."
"It's a lie, Talon. Look at how they took advantage of your accident. Your physical body still lives but they mean to trap your soul."
I threw my hands up in exasperation. "Doesn't that mean they could be helping me? Maybe I'm in a hospital bed, strapped to machines. Maybe I'm in an induced coma for my own good. Maybe they're healing me."
Lucifer laughed. "If you believe that you're more gullible than I thought. This is about control, Talon. Incarceration. Haven's the world's newest for-profit prison system. We're its literal captive audience."
Kyle adjusted the weight of his crossbow. Lucifer tensed. I began to wonder how invincible the fallen angel really was. If my two companions wanted to have a go at him so bad, maybe that would give me a chance to nab the Eye.
I paced sideways, attempting to get a peek at the ritual. "What's gonna happen?" I asked.
Lucifer canted his head. "Half the fun is finding out."
"I mean with that thing." I waved at the obelisk. The chanting boggarts. "What are they doing with the Eye?"
Lucifer swept his gaze off us for only a moment. "It's ceremonial. A symbol of their oppression. Now that they have it back, they honor the long lost Nine. Turn around, Talon. The real show is on the land that sprawls below."
The three of us faced the plains. The pagan flood was finally creeping into the tended lands. I'd been right about them moving through the road in shifts. Columns of beasts emerged from the pass and formed up, waiting for the next to fall into line beside them. The army was an undisciplined force. Their troop movements were slow and sloppy. With three thousand of them sure to take the field within the hour, I didn't think it made a difference.
The chanting witches reached a fever pitch. Crowlat held the red gemstone above her head and leaned against the obelisk. Havlat and Somlat each hugged a stone hand. Despite Lucifer's admonition, he was watching the ceremony along with me. Crowlat scraped dirt away from a small slot in the obelisk. The ground began to rumble.
"What's going on?" asked Kyle, raising his crossbow.
Bandit shuffled nervously at the edge of the summit. Even Lucifer appeared concerned. He strode past the goblins and approached the obelisk. I tried to as well but the goblins crossed into my path.
The ritual continued. The Eye was neatly placed into the obelisk slot. Crowlat pulled away victoriously. The other two boggarts extended their hands and she grabbed them, forming a chain. Stone hand to Havlat to Crowlat to Somlat to stone hand. The red Eye glowed brightly between them.
Our little instigator in the black robe with silver runes paused, afraid to approach the perch he so often favored.
Rocks cracked. It was an explosion at first, demolition deep in a mine. The giant stone hands trembled. I thought of the statue of Magnus Dragonrider crumbling, but this was different. The fingers shuddered. The boggarts looked up in wonder as they dutifully beckoned their master.
Why hadn't I seen this coming? This was not going to end well.
The two great stone hands immediately snapped shut, crushing Havlat and Somlat to pulp. Crowlat recoiled, her sister's limp hands still locked in hers.
The entire mountain shook now. The goblin ranks broke. Even the witch stumbled backward as Blind Man's Peak became an every-man-for-himself bounce house.
Stone hands pulled against the ground, seeming to drink the juices of the dead pagans. The obelisk cracked away and rose from the rock. Crowlat tumbled off the rising platform. Lucifer struggled to keep his footing. His hood fell away and his face, full and surprised, ran over the crowd. He froze as he looked at me, for the first time lacking a poetic observation.
The air around him glitched. His body pixelated and winked out. He was gone.
Holy crap, this was a problem even Lucifer himself didn't want to deal with.
"Uh, guys," I said, watching as fresh rock emerged from the ground. "I don't think that lore about the Nine is just lore."
We backed away as boulders fell, crushing screaming goblins below. The stone hands spread out with giant arms and pulled a body away from the mountain, half rock and half living being. At the top of the protruding head was a large horn. The obelisk. A single eye in the center of the face was shut against the raining debris.
"Bros," said Kyle, "it's the one-eyed king."
We stood stunned as one of nine pagan titans, gods in their own right, was reborn right in front of our eyes.
0390 Shadow of the Colossus
Quest Update: Unveil the Pagans
Quest Type: Epic
Reward: Unknown
The boggart witches have used the Eye of Orik to resurrect the titan himself. He must be defeated.
1500 XP awarded
Great. Orik, in the flesh.
The cyclops had reddish skin, the color of rock. The top of his head was bald but a ring of hair skirted his crown, black strands held together with stone beads. For the moment, anyway, he was struggling to escape his mountain prison.
A distant screech tore the sky. The same black dragon that had attacked Stronghold swooped past the summit. Lucifer straddled its back. Holy crap. A modern-day dragon rider. Awe and fear fought for dominance of my body. For a moment I thought the fallen angel would do something heroic, but the dragon retreated to the horizon and disappeared from sight.
Just like the devil. Open up a can of worms and leave the consequences for everyone else.
A rush of ice magic dropped the temperature a few degrees. Huge ice spikes coalesced and fired at the titan. A giant... a one-eyed god... a cyclops. The magic crumbled against his rock flesh, so inconsequential that the attack was completely ignored.
Amidst the chaos, a goblin charged me with a sword. His reach was no match for mine. I impaled him on the end of my spear as others came at us. Kyle took out two more with his crossbow.
The cyclops might have been ignoring us, but Crowlat wasn't. Enraged by the death of her children, eerie red lasers darted from her hands. Kyle ducked behind his mirror shield and reflected the spell. The witch avoided the counterattack but the beam glanced the titan's side. He groaned and fixed on the source of the damage, head turning to the witch. The cyclops opened his large eye for the first time, a newborn struggling against the world. The monstrous eye cavity was a sickening void. Crowlat begged for mercy as a massive palm smashed her into the rock.
Izzy launched battle magic again without effect. "We can't take him on," she said. "He's too powerful."
I stared at the cyclops as I knocked another goblin away. The Eye. It all made sense now. Blind Man's Peak. The Eye of Orik. Orik was a god, a titan, blinded by the humans when his eye was stolen. When Stronghold was founded.
I just needed to get the Eye.
Large and hollow, the titan's eye socket was empty. Whatever true eye it once had was long gone. The horn that protruded from his forehead was a different story. At its tip was the red artifact that had been stored in Stronghold's tabernacle for centuries. It shone with demonic fire. If video game bosses and weak spots had taught me anything at all, this was the key to stopping Orik.
I charged through the pagan line, slaloming between flashing swords and clubs.
"What are you doing?" screamed Kyle.
Izzy's ice magic backed me up, taking out another goblin moving to intercept me. The ground split below us.
Agility Check...
Pass!
I deftly maneuvered over a chasm as a pagan fell to his death. Two corrosive bolts popped against the titan's skin. The damage was infinitesimal, but the great cyclops turned his head toward us.
[Orik]
Unique Pagan God
100000 Health
We finally had the god's attention.
He was only partially free from the mountain. Still he towered twenty feet above us. If ever I could access the Eye, it was now.
"Give me a platform!" I shouted to Izzy.
Her head swiveled along my path to the titan. Her face tensed when she saw what I was going for. "You're crazy," she replied. "But I like crazy." A sheet of ice fired from her hands and formed its own obelisk on the ground.
I rapped a goblin on the head and jumped to his shoulders. Before he fell, I hopped from him to the top of the obelisk. Orik was just noticing me now, getting nearer. His hand reached forward, ready to squeeze me in its grip.
Instead of avoiding the incoming attack, I leaped toward it. My spear dug into the stone hand and I triggered vault, pushing higher and gaining distance. I swung the spear around and lined up a deadshot, dashing ahead to the confused giant. Twenty feet above the summit, I sped toward his weak spot. My jaw tightened. My knuckles whitened against the spear's shaft. The blacksteel tip converged on its mark, pinpointing the comparatively tiny gemstone on Orik's horn.
A foot away from the target, a barrier of ruby energy flared into life. The impact sounded like a symphony of clinking wine glasses.
The blacksteel snapped. The shaft drove forward and splintered to pieces. Without the spear to halt my momentum, I barreled through the protective energy and slammed into Orik's eyeless face. I tumbled downward and bounced on the rock below, instantly losing a third of my health in fall damage.
Break!
Your leg is broken. You cannot move unassisted until it is fixed.
I curled into a ball in pain. True pain. I had only the vaguest sense that a giant was above me. It was all I could do to keep from passing out.
Bandit rushed to my aid. As Orik moved to crush me, two bolts of corrosive acid glanced off his hand. It slowed the god enough for Bandit to scoop me up. I chugged a healing potion as she did. The regenerative effect took a full 30 seconds, and my broken leg wouldn't be fixed until that time elapsed.
We regrouped with Kyle and Izzy. Orik struggled to free himself from the ancient rock, wildly crushing anything that came close. The few remaining goblins scattered, putting their own lives ahead of killing us.
"Let's get out of here already," said Kyle.
And I thought he was the reckless one.
I nodded.
Izzy flashed a trail
of ice down the edge of the steep summit. "I always hated Slip'n Slide," she muttered. She jumped first, speeding down the slope. Kyle followed and I pushed Bandit to charge forward as well. The bongo slid down ungracefully, spinning on her back.
Izzy's slide of sheet-ice extended as she descended. I was impressed by her concentration. So this was what Iceman felt like. As soon as the slope leveled off halfway down the mountain, we regained our feet.
Amidst the screams above, a lone goblin tumbled down the rocks and landed beside us in a heap. His corpse was limp and battered, with joints bent at odd angles. Without Izzy, that could've been us.
"What now?" she asked. "We can't take that thing."
I waited for my broken leg to wear off and warily eyed the gathering army below us. Literally between a rock and a hard place. Maybe it was finally time to admit we needed help.
The walls of Stronghold seemed stout and invincible. Even without the Eye—with the horde at its doorstep—the city appeared impenetrable. The titan was a whole different story. The white robes were the only people who might have a plan.
"We need to get back to the city," I said. "We need to set up a meeting with the white robes."
Izzy grimaced. "The quest update didn't say anything about involving the saints."
"Yeah, well the quest update didn't say anything about a hundred-freaking-thousand health either."
Above us, the cyclops roared and the mountain shook.
0400 Time Crisis
We scurried down the foothills. I wasn't sure how long rocky-mountain-god births took, but Orik was still preoccupied. The pagan army, however, was already in place in the tended lands.
Mighty and sprawling, the horde had taken notice of recent developments. They waved fists and beat chests to salute Blind Man's Peak. Their drums fell in rhythm to the shaking mountain. Their horns blared every time the titan roared. They were already cheering their victory.