Phantasmal Party

by Trey Myr

  "…forces fully deployed around the perimeter," came a voice through the communicator. "Enemy forces will be within spell range in fifteen minutes. Scouts have confirmed the presence of liches and abominations among the horde. Accurate numbers aren't available at this point in time."

  "Roger that, Master Olav," came the voice of the arms master in reply. "All capable armsman have been relieved from their posts and are on their way to the portal. I will be passing through in the next ten minutes."

  Interlude:

  The Legion

  Olav Bjørnson was not a happy man. It was bad enough that the dwarven Alchemist was out of his favorite brand of coffee ent beans. It was even worse that he was stuck in the floor eleven installation while his party mate and husband, Mathias, was out hunting snarks in floor thirty. It was beyond maddening that in a few short minutes he would, once again, be fighting a horde of undead monsters while the elixirs cooling down in his lab slowly lost all of their potency because he wasn't there to add the stabilizing agents.

  "We have confirmed the presence of six hundred skeleton warriors, sir," the eagle-kin scout who just flew into Olav's operations room reported. "Arms appear to match Roman legionnaire standard. Lorica segmentata, shield, javelins and gladii. The six centurions appear to be mountless death knight variants. The cohort is accompanied by twelve abominations and commanded by a trio of liches."

  Olav swore under his breath. He had a total of thirty one armsmen to defend the installation, of which twenty five were tier three, and only six of tiers four and up. The arms master was a tier five Bladestorm, and would be practically undefeated by the monsters, which were likely taken from at most floor thirty.

  Olav himself always said that he was a crafter rather than a fighter, and most of his tier five Shards would be completely irrelevant in this fight. His potions and bombs, of course, were definitely going to come in handy.

  "I want our archers and mages to focus on the liches," Olav told his aide, whose Air Elemental Raceshard allowed her to quickly move around the battlefield without being obstructed. "And the catapults to focus on the abominations. Those things will smash through the walls like so much cardboard, and I don't want them anywhere near the portal room. Everyone else is to stop the skeletons from overrunning us. And get the arms master down to the battlefield as soon as she comes through."

  "Yes, sir!" the elemental whispered, and quickly vanished to carry his orders to the rest of the defenders.

  Olav turned to his communicator, and called up to the rest of his family in the Arctology operations center. "Cathrine, I could really use a competent commander down here."

  "You're getting the arms master, Olav. We don't actually have anyone else available with Mathias out in a delve."

  "Bah, you and I both know the arms master will be better out in the field than here in the command room. She's one of the best fighters I've ever seen, but she's too much of a berserker to be an effective commander."

  "Then I guess it's up to you, Olav, since dad has no head for tactics, and I'm too dispassionate and uncaring about human lives to command the armsman."

  "Can't you contact Mathias and get him to come back and take over?"

  "He didn't take his communicator to the delve. Apparently, he thinks that the essence vibrations will scare away the snark. And I wouldn't be calling him even if I could, since we've been tracking that beast for half a year, and we're finally close enough to catch it and get that damned horn."

  "This is precisely why we said you were too dispassionate, Cathrine. The lives of our armsmen are more important than a snark horn."

  "This discussion is irrelevant, seeing as I can't actually contact my brother at this time."

  Olav left the communicator in disgust, and climbed the stairs to the catapult platform above his command post. The first of the skeletons could be seen approaching the installation, and he went over to where a gnome wearing a leather apron was loading a large ceramic jug on the catapult. "Careful with that, Barry. If it breaks, the alchemical fire inside will ignite as soon as it's exposed to the air."

  "I am familiar with this compound, Master Olav," the straining gnome said, "And I assure you I will not drop it."

  The gnome positioned the jug on the catapult, and Olav could see in the middle of the sea of skeletons one of the ten-meter tall abominations. The undead construct looked like it was made from the body parts of a dozen different monsters, stitched together haphazardly into a semi-humanoid shape. Its left leg was taken from a rukh, the bare yellow limb ending in vicious talons, each as long as a man's arm. The right leg must have come from an elephant, giving the abomination a lopsided gait. The monster's torso used to belong to a giant ape, and the heavily muscled chest was still covered in luxurious black fur, from which sprouted one giant skeletal arm, which held a four meter long sword in its huge fist, and one long tentacle that might once have belonged to a kraken. The creature lacked a head, but still unerringly lurched towards the small fort.

  Olav placed his hands over the ceramic jug, and activated one of the few skills he had that could be used outside of his lab.

  Potency

  Tier 2

  Level 5

  Locked

  Increase the potency of one alchemical product by 300%. The effect lasts for one minute.

  Mana cost: 50

  Like most alchemical skills, Potency took a while to activate, and Olav spend half a minute stooped over the ceramic jug while the undead horde closed in on his position. While he was concentrating on his skill, Barry the gnome used a complicated system of gears and pulleys to aim the catapult at the approaching abomination. Finally, Olav stood up and jumped away from the catapult, shouting, "Clear!" as soon as he was far enough away that the arm wouldn't hit him.

  Barry immediately pulled a large red lever, and the catapult groaned in protest as all its tension was released in an instant, launching the alchemical firebomb high up into the sky.

  Seconds later, the firebomb crashed down on the abomination with unerring accuracy, testament to Barry's Siege Engineer skill, and the giant monster was splashed with a viscous, oily liquid that almost immediately caught fire. Some drops of the fiery payload splashed on the skeletons surrounding the misshapen construct, immolating them instantly. The abomination itself proved extremely sturdy, and managed to survive the conflagration for almost a full minute before toppling to the left, crushing numerous skeletons and igniting others.

  More firebombs dropped from the sky on the other abominations, but none of the other catapults had Olav to increase their power, and the charred giants continued their way towards the installation.

  ◆◆◆

  Gillian Solomon was a very happy woman. With a dagger in each of her four hands and an uncountable number of skeletons in front of her, the everyday concerns of watch schedules, security and logistics could be shoved into the darkest corner of her mind, and she could focus solely on doing what she loved best.

  The mantis-kin leaped from the top of the wall surrounding the Bjørnson installation, heedless of where she landed, and ran into the mob of undead. Between the skeletons natural (or unnatural) resistance to piercing and slashing damage and their well-maintained armor, daggers were far from being the ideal weapon to use against the skeleton legionnaires. Gillian’s enchanted daggers, however, were empowered by her prodigious strength stat and numerous Shards and sliced through armor and bone with equal ease, leaving dismembered and beheaded skeletons behind the running arms master.

  If she was bothering to dodge properly, none of the skeletons would have been able to land even a single blow against the experienced and agile warrior. But paying attention to dodging would mean taking attention away from stabbing, and Gillian trusted in her carapace enough to just take whatever blows came her way, shrugging the ineffectual attacks off. Given enough time, the arms master would have been able to defeat the entire cohort on her own, with the possible exception of the trio of liches. Unfortunately, by the time she managed to fi
nish the skeletons and abominations off, the research compound would have been flattened to the ground.

  A ball of sickly green magic launched from somewhere in front of Gillian, and flew over her head to splatter against one of the guard towers around the compound. The stones making up the tower immediately started to corrode, exposing the slain forms of the archers who manned it just a few short seconds ago. A barrage of arrows and spells focused on the spot the attack came from, but Gillian didn’t have much hope that it would be enough to kill the lich. She didn’t actually have the time to dwell on it, however, as the huge form of an abomination appeared in front of her.

  The giant undead construct was visibly singed from being hit by an alchemical firebomb, but it wasn’t nearly enough to even slow it down. Gillian charged at the abomination, using her daggers to latch onto the monster and climb it hand over hand. The abomination tried to snatch her up, but its misshapen arms proved too short to reach behind its back, and the arms master had little problems getting high enough to reach its monstrous head. Hanging on from two daggers, Gillian reached into her belt pouch and pulled what looked like any other Shard, but was full of a bright golden light. Raising the Shard in her top right hand, she stabbed it down into the head of the monster, and immediately jumped off.

  A beam of bright golden light launched from the golden Shard and into the abomination’s head, continuing down into the top of its chest, only to finally burst from the bottom of the monster’s torso, and stab into the ground. The abomination, transfixed by the beam of light, slowly eroded from the inside out, leaving nothing behind but a large pile of dust.

  Gillian looked into her pouch, seeing that she had only one more of the expensive single use weapons, and launched herself back into the fight.

  Solar Lance

  Tier 3

  Level 5

  Sealed

  Modified by alchemical and magical means, what was once a Skillshard had been turned into a weapon. The beam of light generated by the Lance does light element damage which increases with the length of the beam’s pathway inside the target, making it especially potent against giant sized foes.

  Damage: 5-30/meter*second

  Duration: 10 seconds.

  The skeleton legionnaires had reached the walls by then, using each other as ladders to scale the wall, and the armsmen trained in melee combat met them on the battlements, fighting to keep them from entering the compound itself. A brief surge of guilt caught Gillian at the thought of her armsmen fighting the cohort without her direction, but was quickly squashed at the sight of another abomination approaching. She had complete faith in her armsmen’s skills, she rationalized, and her own abilities were better utilized out on the field of battle.

  The second abomination proved trickier to battle than the first. Its left hand, made from what appeared to be the vines of a giant plant creature, was long enough and flexible enough that it could easily reach anywhere on its body, making climbing it into a real challenge. Rather than try the same stunt she did with the first abomination, Gillian ran under one of the giant monster’s feet, raising her second solar lance above her head so it pierced the sole of the construct’s strangely humanlike foot, and immediately activated a blink Skillshard to teleport ten meters away before the monster could crush her. Pierced by the weapon’s beam of light from the sole of its foot and up to its shoulder, the abomination didn’t last long, and another pile of ashes scattered to the wind where it stood.

  Gillian was now out of weapons capable of destroying the giant constructs, and instead turned her attention towards the source of another ball of green corrosion, laying waste to dozens of skeletons on her way to find the lich.

  There was another abomination between her and her chosen target, and the arms master had to circle around the giant undead before it caught sight of her. Soon afterwards a tall, decaying figure wearing a purple toga, a crown of decaying laurel leaves sitting on the top of its skeletal head.

  The lich raised its hands, and a swirl of sickly green light slowly began to build between them. Gillian had little interest in ancient dead languages, but she assumed that its chanting was in Latin. Not that she paid it that much attention, of course. Her daggers went back into their sheaths, and her huge bow came out from behind her back. The arms master took an arrow that might have doubled as a short spear, and held the bow in her two left arms, using her two rights to draw the string. The huge arrow flew true from the bow, striking the lich’s temple, doing little damage but breaking its concentration enough to disperse its spell. The undead mage turned its head to look at the mantis-kin, who grinned gleefully and drew her daggers in preparation.

  ◆◆◆

  Mathias Bjørnson could have been described as happy, but he was a tired man more than anything else. He looked down at the long, sinuous body lying before him. Fins, or possibly spinal platings, ran down its back. A long spiral horn emerged from its forehead. Shiny scales covered the body, except for the six feathered wings. The elusive snark took him on a long chase through countless locations in the thirtieth floor, sometimes flying, sometimes swimming and sometimes burrowing into the ground. Mathias's family had been tracking this particular specimen for almost half a year, and he himself has been inside the Labyrinth for a full month now.

  But the long chase was finally over, and the snark lay dead. Mathias picked up a bright red Shard that appeared on the monster's wing, raising his eyebrow at the description he saw inside it, and then used his Butcher Skillshard to harvest the beast's horn. Once he had it in his bag, he took out a magic door. The single use item was crafted from essence crystals and mana receptive metals, and would open up a door from anywhere in the Labyrinth that will lead up to five people to whatever preset location it was attuned to. In this case, the door would deliver Mathias into the portal room of his family home.

  The portal room at the Arctology was empty. A confused Mathias hurried from the room towards the Bjørnson family wing, getting more and more confused and worried as he saw the empty corridors. Rushing into the family meeting room, Mathias was greatly relieved to see his sister Cathrine and his father Daved, but a knot of worry remained in his heart when he heard the two speaking into their communicators, and the strained voice of his husband Olav answering.

  "What's going on here?" He breathlessly gasped at his relatives. "Cathrine, Dad? Is something wrong in the installation?"

  "Mathias?" Daved's eyes lighted up as he saw his son was back home. "What are you doing here? I thought you were closing in on the snark?"

  "I caught it, and I've got the horn right here," he patted his bag wearily. "Now tell me. What's going on? Where is everybody?"

  "There's a horde attacking the installation," Daved explained. "Almost all of the armsmen are up there with Olav fighting what looks like Roman skeletons and liches."

  Turning around without another word, Mathias marched back to the portal room, ignoring his father's shouted questions. As soon as he passed through the portal, he could hear the sounds of battle from outside.

  Not even stopping to orient himself, he stalked out of the portal room and up the nearest stairway to the top of the wall. Mana swirled in Mathias's hands, flowing down into the ranks of skeletons waiting to climb to the wall. A dozen vargr materialized in the midst of the skeletons, and immediately started tearing into them. More mana flowed into the battle, and a pair of orcs manifested. Shouted commands rallied the vargr, and the wolflike mosters started fighting in a coordinated fashion, protecting each other and their orcish commanders. More and more mana flowed into the battle, and a small horde of hobgoblins appeared, jumping on the backs of the vargr to form an instant cavalry force.

  By now, the summoned monsters had started to push the skeletons back, and Mathias turned his gaze towards the approaching abominations. A smile appeared on his face, and he took out the new Shard he got from the snark, Slicing it and instantly activating his new skill. Bright red streams of mana flowed into the sky, separating into two clouds, and slo
wly coalescing into a form that few people other than Mathias himself had ever seen before. Fifty meters long, and covered in bright red scales, except for six feathered wings colored blue and purple. Fins, or maybe spinal plates, covered the monsters' back, and a single spiraled horn graced their large heads. The two snarks called out in a voice that was part hiss and part screech, and flew with blinding speed towards the nearest abomination.

  More and more monsters appeared in front of the angry Summoner. Elves and naga. Ents and fire elementals. Orcs and dwarves. Within minutes, an army matching that of the skeletons was standing before the walls. And this was no undisciplined mob like that summoned by a Horde Summoner, where each monster fought according to its own instincts, united only in their cause to obey their creator. Two orcish generals called out orders that were instantly obeyed by monsters that shouldn't have cooperated with each other. By beasts that shouldn't have been able to understand the words shouted at them. By beings that didn't even have the ears to listen with.

  This was all, of course, thanks to Mathias's tier six class. It took great dedication and effort to reach this class, and even greater resources to acquire the Shards needed to summon strong enough creatures to make it worth using. But the results spoke for themselves, and the army of summoned creatures quickly pushed the skeleton horde away from the installation, dropping the abominations one by one.

  Legion

  Tier 6

  Level 2

  354,000/600,000,000

  As the amount and power of a summoner's minions grow, it is no longer possible to directly control them all, and chaos in the battlefield grows. The legion has learned to appoint legati, officers to command the other summons and forge them into a coherent force.

  +7 Intelligence

  Permanently designate one summon as legatus. That summon will command the others in battle.