by Oliver Mayes
“I thought I taught you better.”
Damien was about to lose it when Lillian butted in, her eyebrow twitching as she stepped between them to grab him by the shoulders.
“Sorry to interrupt, but in case you forgot, we’re under attack! Bartholomew says another fifty players have shown up! We need to get into position!”
Damien gritted his teeth. Reinforcements. As if he didn’t have enough problems already. He shot Bartholomew a final angry glance before turning his attention to Lillian.
“Let’s go. I’ll see you up there.”
He checked to make sure his destination was unlit before beckoning Noigel to the edge and Demon Gating to the fifth platform. Man, this skill is useful in here. It was becoming less useful as he lost control of more of the dungeon, though. Rising Tide was already more than halfway through. He’d softened them up with his ‘imp-rovised’ trap. On this floor, he intended to hurt them the most.
The incubus and his second succubus had been waiting stoically for Damien's arrival. These two units were where he’d invested the vast majority of his pilfered metal. He usually opted for leather armor on his succubi so as not to limit their movement, but this one would be right in the thick of things. She was wearing steel armor from head to hoof, along with the whip Damien had become familiar with.
The incubus was something else entirely. While the succubus was sleek and refined, Damien had not equipped the incubus with subtlety in mind. It was a brutal war machine. Every last scrap of iron that hadn’t been commissioned for buckshot was now wrapped around its considerable frame, right down to the tip of its tail.
The weapon choice had been difficult. There were so many options in the Demon Forge he wanted to try, but he’d lacked the materials to experiment with. In the end he’d gone with a weapon he’d never heard of before. It was called a macuahuitl.
While he didn’t have the foggiest idea how to say it, he’d been encouraged by the description: ‘A hefty, flat wooden paddle with blades affixed around the rim. The flat side can be used for stunning blows and blocking while the jagged edge is capable of decapitating a horse.’ Damien had decapitated a horse already, so this struck a chord with him. He’d poured his scarce true-silver into this weapon to increase the damage as much as possible.
There was a clang as Bartholomew’s spiked door trap smashed into the side of the player shield wall, followed by a choked scream. The group was continuing their descent and soon the last of Rising Tide’s expendable forces breached his floor.
They were terrified. At the back were a couple of the elites that had previously been part of Aetherius’s honor guard: the wretched gunslinger from the Malignant Crypt and one of the paladin tanks. A good sign. Damien had scared them enough that the big players were stepping in to babysit.
Damien had an incubus, a succubus, two wraiths and four imps to repel them. He picked out his targets and ordered the succubus to set her Circle of Hell when the gunslinger pointed his gun into the darkness and fired. It was a flare. It pinged off the wall over Damien’s head and landed right at his feet. Oh, goody. So much for directing the battle from the shadows.
After that, everything happened very quickly.
The Circle of Hell opened in the middle of the enemy ranks as everyone in the group turned toward Damien and opened fire. Damien gave his orders and threw himself behind the incubus, the majority of the arrows and shrapnel pinging off its iron armor. His resources had been well invested.
But the mages were already channeling their spells and melee units were closing in. The incubus’s armor would be much less helpful against their assault. Fortunately, they were very close to the bottom of the dungeon by now.
The wraiths ascended from the underside of the platform and commenced their butchery on the unarmored, distracted back line. An imp flew over their heads and landed in the middle of the succubus’s circle, all but ignored in the frenetic activity of the last three seconds. Damien Imploded it and the party members that weren’t already being torn apart by his wraiths were pulled in, capturing all but the fastest-acting of the melee units heading for him. They’d be on him in moments. Damien had no choice. He ordered his succubus to cast Bloodlust as he possessed the incubus.
The enormous size was a drawback against missiles, but it had at least one identifiable advantage: long reach. As an assassin leapt for his throat, Damien drew back the macuahuitl with both hands and cleaved the air ahead of him at chest height. The weapon was light for its size yet still had enough heft to build up considerable force. Possession granted his new vessel 150 strength, his attack speed was Bloodlust-buffed and the assassin had the lingering effects of the Circle of Hell’s armor debuff. Damien’s first weapon test was a roaring success.
He looked up to find the other players fleeing back towards the Circle of Hell, preferring to burn rather than face this monstrosity. The Rising Tide party was getting a handle on the situation. The paladin tank had Smote one of his wraiths. The remaining wraith was still stabbing anything within reach, but it had lost the element of surprise and was quickly put away by a shot from the gunslinger.
Damien’s window of opportunity was closing. Once the party was out of the burning effect he’d be outmatched. He couldn’t take advantage of their disarray without leaving his true body behind, exposed in the light of the flare. Damien gritted the incubus's savage maw and expelled a sigh that rattled in his throat like a lion’s roar. This was going to be messy. He scooped up his own body in his left hand, clutching it close to his chest like a gargantuan child holding a stuffed toy. He faced the center of the Circle of Hell, lowered his head so that his targets were directly between his horns, and charged.
Ground trembling under his feet, Damien leapt forward, his macuahuitl stretched out behind him with his real body pressed firmly against his chest. Noigel’s assessment of the incubus hadn’t been entirely accurate. His enemies were too watery for the incubus to grind them into powder. ‘Mush’ would have been a more fitting term.
Damien landed double-footed on the center of the dogpile, his feet sinking into the struggling mass as if it were a sentient pile of mashed potato, and swept his jagged baton in a single-armed sweep that took full advantage of the demon’s enormous reach. He cut through the fleeing debuffed enemies without even the slightest trace of resistance.
The gunslinger and the paladin tank had avoided the carnage, making full use of the guild’s cannon fodder. Now the former was taking careful aim at the vacant body clutched against his chest, and Damien could do nothing to stop it.
Damien barely had time to throw his hand out to the side before the trigger was pulled and an explosive shell detonated over his breastplate, cratering a hole in the iron and cutting a 450 chunk out of his health points.
The paladin stepped forward and clenched his fist. The incubus burst into white flames as the Smite took hold, inflicting little damage since the paladin was built to tank but illuminating Damien clearly. Then the bombardment from above started. Aetherius’s group had taken their positions on the trap floor.
Even from a distance, the burning incubus was a very obvious target. As a line of red energy streaked its way toward him, Damien’s warrior instincts kicked in. He spun the macuahuitl round and covered his torso with the flat of the paddle.
The macuahuitl cracked under the brunt of the attack, the beam forcing it against his chest and knocking him back. His fall carried his shoulder into the beam’s path for the last second of the spell. His armor offered no protection against the overwhelming power of Aetherius’s assault, cooking him alive. Braised shoulder of not-lamb.
The beam subsided and Damien tried to push himself up, but his right arm refused to move. He’d barely assessed the damage before a fully charged fireball lazily plummeted down from on high, lighting up the dungeon as bright as day. He pulled his occultist body back against his chest, rolling onto his front to protect his empty vessel from what was to come.
The ground around him glowed as the fireball s
creeched closer and closer, threatening to end the campaign in a single hit.
Lillian had been standing at the top of the stairs, waiting for the Circle of Hell to dissipate before she made her move. This unfortunate turn of events had changed her plans. She ran up the incubus’s back and leapt toward the fireball, her brow furrowed in her trademark combination of zen calm and righteous fury.
Damien lifted his head to watch helplessly. Lillian must be sacrificing herself for him.
Nope. She drew her shield across her body as it glowed a brilliant white, then slammed it into the fireball with carefully calculated malice. The white of her Repent skill leaked into the spell, encasing it in holy energy and expanding it to the size of a wrecking ball. At the end of her swing, it screamed away in the direction she’d chosen: toward the two high-tier players who’d avoided the carnage. The Repent-buffed fireball landed in their midst and expanded to consume them, scorching the dumb surprise off their faces.
The floor was clear. Lillian touched down on the edge of the platform, her armor black and charred from stepping into the Circle of Hell. There was a brief pause as everyone processed what just happened before Aetherius’s party expressed their disdain the best way they knew how: by carpet bombing the now ally-free platform.
The incubus was no longer lit up by Smite, but it was still well illuminated in the glow of the fireball’s aftermath. Damien put it back on its feet and was about to cancel the possession when a ranger on the floor above obliged him, loosing three silvery arrows toward it in rapid succession.
The first two missed their mark, but the third went cleanly through the hole in the armor over its dark heart. Damien was dropped and repossessed his own body while still falling and under heavy fire. He dove behind the incubus as it started to disintegrate, leaving only the empty armor and irreparably damaged macuahuitl behind. Now that he was in contact with the floor, he was taking damage from his own Circle of Hell. At least the black flames weren’t illuminating him, but that wasn’t much of a consolation.
Damien only had the succubus and three imps left. A string of arcane missiles from Aetherius put an end to the former, the steel armor Damien had equipped her with counting for nothing. Without the advantage of striking from the darkness his minions were little more than sitting ducks.
Lillian’s armor was weakened from the Circle of Hell debuff, arrows sinking into her normally impenetrable plate. She gave up on standing her ground and started zig-zagging back, heading for the lower levels. The black flames finally left her, but she’d already taken heavy damage and her armor was too heavy to use this tactic effectively for long.
Damien crawled under his incubus’s back plate while Rising Tide were still focused on Lillian, calling all three imps up so he could try and Demon Gate out. Rising Tide saw it coming. The moment they crested the platform’s edge, all attention turned to the imps instead. Had Damien Demon Gated to them, he’d have been obliterated.
Noigel survived the longest, darting and looping in every direction to draw fire, but a fresh round of Arcane Missiles put his heroic efforts to a miserable end.
Damien had nothing left. He was stuck in the middle of the floor. The only thing saving him was his Shadow Walker skill, preventing his opponents from seeing where he’d gone. If he moved from cover and into the light of the flames, he was as good as finished. But he had to try.
He was counting down from three when the clatter of arrows and hum of missiles were drowned out by whoops and cheers from above. The Rising Tide reinforcements had arrived on Aetherius’s floor. The last nail in his plan’s coffin. It was only going to get worse from here.
He had to move, and he had to move now.
Damien crawled out from under the sheet of iron and started running after Lillian as fast as he could, expecting to be dropped by a spell at any second. Only the barrage had stopped. Stranger still, Lillian wasn’t moving, instead gawking at the platform above with her shield hanging loosely by her side. Damien turned to follow her gaze and then drew to a stop halfway across the floor to stare with her.
Rising Tide was under attack.
The whole platform had been illuminated by a pulsing mana wisp while the battle raged beneath. Rising Tide had turned around, concentrating their power at the stairs leading down to their level, but despite their efforts the horde of players was still surging through.
They all looked exactly alike. They wore the same armor, wielded the same swords, played the same class and shared the same face. A fifty-strong party of warriors. All with variations on one name. Scorpius.
It was a spectacle. They were all low level, but what they lacked in stats they made up for with gusto and numbers. As Damien watched, one of the Scorpius clones managed to break through to a ranger on the edge, plunging his broadsword through their body before the two of them went tumbling over.
The ranger cried out with dismay but ‘Scorpenis’ was ecstatic, trotting out an evidently pre-rehearsed line with much merriment in the face of his imminent death.
“MY MOM’S EXPECTING ME FOR DINNER IN TE—”
They plummeted past the platform and the rest of it was lost to gravity.
Scorpenis had done better than most. Very few of the players were breaking through and those who did were being swiftly cut down now the element of surprise was lost.
Damien was still watching when Lillian grabbed him by the arm and dragged him away down the stairs, the one-sided yet relentless skirmish still raging above them. The Scorpius crew looked like they were doing it for fun, yet they’d helped him and Lillian traverse the thin line between life and death. Better yet, they weren’t Rising Tide. Suddenly the battle seemed far more winnable.
Lillian ushered him past the sixth level before the yelling started to diminish, but the damage had been done. Their silly sacrifice had bought valuable time. Lillian channeled a heal at Damien, hissing between her teeth.
“Hurry up! They’re coming! Summon something!”
Damien shook himself and re-summoned Noigel first. He didn’t have the largest health bar, so it didn’t take long for Lillian to bring his hit points back to full. Then she began healing herself. That would take a bit longer.
Damien rushed below the sixth platform to summon two wraiths. If he used them right, they’d last longer than anything else he could summon. In the face of properly leveled players, his only realistic option would be stealth and ambushes.
The sounds of battle above had perished, the Scorpius clones likely perishing with them. Aetherius’s party would be on the move. He could already hear his enemies approaching from above as he moved to summon three more imps, draining the last of his soul energy.
His heart sank as he realized it was too late to trigger the second Implosion-based shrapnel trap he’d set on the sixth level. Somehow, he and Lillian would have to deal with well over a dozen fresh, high-level Rising Tide enemies by themselves.
Lillian was already in position protecting the alcove leading to Damien’s base, waiting in the darkness. Damien dispersed his two wraiths and three imps to the far edges of the dungeon floor just as Aetherius’s group arrived.
The first of them had no sooner reached the bottom than a portal opened in the middle of the floor, clear for all to see, and the reborn Bartholomew strode out of it with his hands clasped behind his back. Where once he’d favored stealth, he was now standing in plain sight, the demonic sigils adorning his cloak glowing in the darkness.
“Welcome back to the final level, Aetherius and friends. I trust you’re enjoying your stay?”
35
Bartholomew’s Revenge
Rising Tide stopped advancing and stared, taken aback. Bartholomew’s question hung in the air until a mage fumbled with his staff and pointed it at their revived foe, the tip crackling with luminescent blue electricity.
Bartholomew leapt back into his portal with surprising speed and it snapped shut, the jagged thunderbolt streaking through empty space. A new portal opened right next to it and Bartholom
ew nonchalantly appeared in its frame, tutting loudly and smiling broadly.
“Same old Rising Tide, I see, fighting first and trading niceties never. Since you’re so eager—”
His hands blurred round in a circle, index fingers extended and glowing. Five portals hummed into existence on the outer walls of the dungeon floor, much larger than those Damien used and imbued with the same regal purple tinge as Bartholomew himself.
“—let us begin.”
Bartholomew withdrew and the portal closed around him. As he departed, the group started murmuring among themselves anxiously. They’d come here to kill a single player, not to tangle with an elite dungeon boss. How many of them had accompanied Aetherius here when he’d vanquished Bart the first time? From the looks of it, not enough to reduce their fears.
Aetherius was, of course, the exception. He looked absolutely livid. He stepped behind a paladin and smacked him across the back of his armor-encased head.
“Don’t just stand there! Go do your job!”
The paladin crossed himself and lit up with the silvery light of his own Sanctification before trotting reluctantly into the darkness ahead. The party edged forward behind him, their heads swiveling between the five ominously humming portals.
Damien couldn’t know if Bartholomew had done it on purpose, but none of the portals had appeared too close to him, Lillian or his minions. If it had turned out otherwise they might have had their positions revealed by the glow.
As the players moved in, Aetherius subtly merged back into the center of the group, out of harm’s way. Damien had his eye on him. If he could drop Aetherius, this would all be over.
The paladin hadn’t quite made it to the center of the arena when one of the portals flashed around the rim and Bartholomew tore out of it, floating above the ground with his hands folded across his chest, a towering line of roaring red flames in his wake. He was heading for one of the two portals on the opposite side.