Timewalk
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Chapter 191: Demon Hunter
🕑 Added 2024-12-12 15:00:06 +0000 UTCBasil
“Ten percent!” Aiden shouted.
“Stupid Goblin!” Havok yelled, smashing the Storm Shaman in the face with his glowing Holy Shield.
From the pristine lake of mana-purified water, yet another circular blast of water bolts shot out in every direction. Shields were raised, and defensive spells cast as the raid group reacted to the monster lurking down in the depths.
“Seven!” Aiden yelled again.
“Kill it!” Kaitlyn shrieked, her body sparking from channeling excess lightning mana as she unleashed a massive bolt at the boss.
The powerful Goblin, the last of its three twins, raised a sparking mace and a huge bolt of lightning ripped through the mossy ground, knocking several of the adventurers sprawling amid the massive crack of thunder.
“Two percent!”
Basil crouched behind his tree. As the only non-combat member of the team, his job was to hide and not get killed. All his work had been during the preparation phase, making healing and mana potions for the team – for this boss specifically – not a lot was needed on the spur of the moment.
Devan did something spectacularly noisy with her Wind Blades and buried her daggers deep into the Goblin’s back with a whip-crack of sound that might have been louder than the Lightning Bolt, and the monster keeled over to its left and collapsed. Its shield and mace clattered beside it, sparking as its potent defensive enchantments grounded into the dirt.
“Yay!”
“We did it!”
The battlefield on the lake shore erupted with hooting and hollering, but it was short-lived. The lightning pulsed once from the final shaman’s corpse and then rapidly discharged along the ground into the lake. From deep within the pristine waters, something began to glow. The waters swirled and began to bubble.
“Oh, shit!”
“That’s not good.”
Basil backed up, even though he was the furthest from the fight. High above the lake, a sudden flicker caught his eye, and a black shape appeared under a disk of golden magic. Immediately, he Identified it.
Warrior – Skeleton – level 4.
The incongruous undead skeleton plummeted upside down toward the water, with Basil unable to tear his incredulous gaze away.
Suddenly, the surface of the lake erupted as three epicenters of water bolts blasted out at the adventurers. And then the lake began to glow as rings of lightning pulsed from deep underwater, making the surface bubble and boil. Of the unfortunate skeleton, only smoking fragments of shattered bone rained down into the lake.
Brine Ooze – Ooze – level 19 (Water / Lightning) x3
As the cloned oozes slithered up out of the water, all hell broke loose, and the raid collapsed. Lightning cascaded in all directions, like the monsters were the living incarnations of the former Storm Shaman totems, all the while blasting everything with continuous waves of water bolts that shot in all directions.
Basil ducked as one hit the trunk of his tree.
“Run!” Teagan shouted.
Basil ran. Screams and shouts faded as the pops of escape skills and potions went off.
***
“What the fuck was that?” Aiden said, still panting, as he threw himself to the ground. The monstrous water-slinging, lightning-enchanted oozes had retreated into the lake, and the sorry, battered remains of the raid group slowed to a halt in a small grove of trees.
“The Brine Ooze picked up the Clone ability as soon as the Goblin died,” Teagan said.
“It was more than that,” Devan added. “It added the lightning affinity, too.”
“How the heck are we supposed to fight that?” Aiden said, throwing up his hands. “I still had that blasted vulnerability curse.”
“I don’t know,” Teagan said. “It was so hard to heal as soon as they reached the group.”
“At least everyone got out safely,” Basil put in.
“Yeah, but now we have to wait for the recallers to come back from town,” Aiden grumbled. “We need a full group to try again.”
“We’ll just get wiped out when we get to the second phase again,” Kaitlyn said. “That’s far too much lightning damage for us to handle right now.”
The group fell silent, each nursing their bruised egos or sitting with their thoughts.
Basil, however – his mind was abuzz with ideas. I wonder if Morwynne’s training would work on this? He had been studying the making of the fire resistance elixirs she supplied to Aliandra’s group, but there seemed to be no reason it wouldn’t work on other affinities. All he needed was a source of lightning affinity…
“Hey,” Basil said. “I have an idea, but I’m not sure it will work. But, in order to try it, I need some ingredients from over there. Do we have enough people to kill a few wolves while I go collect herbs?”
“Uh, I think?” Aiden said, seeming a little surprised as he surveyed the people left. “We don’t have a tank.”
“I can heal,” Teagan said. “And you have enough armor to handle a wolf or two, let’s go check it out.”
“Ok,” Basil said, springing to his feet. “Over this way.”
He led them around a few trees, back behind a ridge, and waited while they cleared out a low-level pack of wolves before he reached the flower garden. If I remember correctly, it should be… “Aah, here it is,” he said, kneeling in the dirt and reaching for a pretty white flower.
Arc Lily – Wildflower – level 8 (Lightning).
“You brought us all the way here to go flower picking?” Kaitlyn said, but when Basil glanced up at her, he found her grinning at him. “That’s so sweet.”
“Uh,” he said, feeling a bit of a flush creeping into his cheeks. “It’s a lightning-affinity flower, you see?”
It’s like I’m cursed with little-brother syndrome, he sighed inwardly. All the girls do that… so I happen to like flowers. What’s wrong with that? These are even her affinity. Mind, if he offered her a posy, he’d probably get his butt lightning-blasted. Basil sighed again. To work.
Retrieving a set of protective gloves and his tools, he quickly harvested several and then began to prepare them for essence extraction. “Three should be enough,” he muttered, crushing them together with some reagents from his ring and wringing the juice out into a vial. Then he pulsed his mana into Combat Potions and began to distill the essence while he added the proper reagents according to the recipe he had memorized. “It just needs a little change here… and here. Hmm… yes. Here we go!”
Suddenly, the concoction crystallized into a sparkling white liquid, and he knew he had succeeded. To his further delight, a familiar, vibrant green vine grew in his mind, the notification lettering neatly following its coils and curves as he read:
Adventurous Collector has reached level 18
Combat Potions has reached level 17 (+2)
Lesser Elixir of Lightning Protection – level 20
Consume: +135 to resistance against lightning damage. Duration: 1 hour
Unstable (This potion will lose potency in 3 hours)
Created by Basil Watercress
Potion
“Do you think this will help?” Basil asked, holding up his trophy for them to see. The contents of the vial glittered, casting bright white patterns of light that rippled across the ground.
It was far from as potent as the creations Morwynne or Eliyen could make, and his Combat Potions creations were always unstable. It was both a blessing and a curse – his creations never lasted more than three hours, which meant it was very hard for him to make money like a traditional herbalist or alchemist. But Combat Potions was far more lenient when it came to ingredients, proportions, and taking the proper time to brew – and it was hardly a problem when they intended to use them immediately.
“Ooh!” Teagan exclaimed.
“Impressive!” Aiden agreed, his soot-streaked face losing its downcast mien in an instant.
“How many of those can you make, flower boy?” Kaitlyn asked, her green eyes widening as she stared at the potion as if it were an elixir of eternal life.
“There’s a lot of Arc Lilies around here…” he murmured.
“Let me help you!” she offered enthusiastically.
Aliandra
“I don’t need those anymore, if you want to skin them,” Ali told Calen, pointing to the two remaining Hellfire Warg corpses. “Or the Flamecallers.”
Calen nodded, retrieving his skinning knife and setting about his gruesome task.
While Malika gathered up the various essences, and the items used by the Flamecallers, Ali tracked down the four imp corpses and deconstructed those also. Again, one of the imps dropped a lesser hellfire essence, so she called Malika over to collect it, rather than burn herself by touching it. She had just about enough of hellfire by now, but she was hopeful the uncommon drop would prove useful for opening the next rune lock and grant them access to the final wing of the mines and maybe – finally – they would eventually find the anvil and forge of Thovir Emberforge.
Imprint: Hellfire Imp completed.
There it is. Ali looked at the notification thoughtfully. She had not gotten much in the way of useful imprints in here, so she wasn’t holding out too much hope for this one either. She opened her Grimoire, but she already knew she had no free chapters left, the last one taken up by the Flamecaller Elementals. It was also her least useful imprint, but she was loath to simply discard the powerful curses possessed by the Flamecaller warlock – a variant she had just recently recorded in her Grimoire.
It’s not like I’m ever likely to be able to create them, she thought, staring wistfully at the imprint. Not unless something fundamental about her class or mana changed; they required fire-affinity mana to give them life. A memory drifted to the surface of her mind; Why not worry about the things you can do, instead of what you can’t? Her father had liked that pithy quote, and she had always thought it to be a little annoying when he would repeat it after she had struggled and failed at something that felt impossible or out of reach.
Now, however, she remembered his voice with melancholy and nostalgia. She missed him terribly, but she knew he would have been happy to know that his advice was helping her, even a little bit.
Quickly, Ali selected the chapter to replace the Flamecaller Elemental imprint with the new one for the Hellfire Imp, but then she paused as a half-formed thought bubbled up into her mind from somewhere obscure. “Can we stop here for a bit?” she asked. “I need a few minutes to test something.”
“Sure, no problem,” Calen said.
“I’ll get some snacks ready,” Mato added.
“Snacks?” Malika asked, incredulously. “We’re in a dungeon, it’s hardly a good place for a picnic.”
“Come on, picnics are always a good idea,” Mato said, offering fruit and prepared bags of nuts to everyone. “You’ll fight better on a full stomach, Malika.”
“Knowing your cooking, I’d… waddle!” However, she smiled, “I guess we’re burning through a lot of resources in these long, long fights. Bring it on. Something hotter and spicier than hellfire, please!”
Calen groaned, “Did you have to?”
Ali nibbled on a slice of pear as she paged through her Grimoire, tuning out their banter. Now, where was that… Oh, yes, the Bamboo Crawler.
She opened the Grass imprint to find the entry for the strange blowgun creature she had learned up in the jungle above the mines. It had possessed the strangest property, something she had barely registered at the time. A single variant with pages of runes shared across two imprints. She switched to the elemental imprint, studying her Grimoire closely as it reshuffled the pages to ensure her Bamboo Crawler was offered here too.
It's not a whole lot different than when I reordered the chapters, she thought. It had been this observation that had percolated up into her conscious awareness when she had looked at the Flamecaller imprint. After all, she had never been able to figure out why the Flamecaller variants – which were also elementals – had required their own chapter.
Idly, she reordered the chapters in her Grimoire, comparing the process with the strangely migratory pages of the Bamboo Crawler variant. It’s almost the same… if I just… Hardly thinking about the details, she pushed some of the pages around. There was a little resistance as if her Grimoire was hesitating, but then Sage of Learning chomped down on her mana pool, and with a little flare, the Grimoire responded with a surge of light.
Variant: Flamecaller Hunter added to Imprint: Elemental.
Wait, just like that? She stared at it in surprise, but then she swapped back and forth between the Flamecaller and Elemental imprints and, sure enough, her Hunter variant flipped back and forth between the two, just like the Bamboo Crawler.
Excited now, she sat up taller and flipped back, and with just a few thoughts, she received two new notifications.
Variant: Flamecaller Spear added to Imprint: Elemental.
Variant: Flamecaller Warlock added to Imprint: Elemental.
Wait, what else can I do? Eagerly, she paged through her Grimoire, trying all sorts of combinations, but the resistance to her manipulation seemed far greater. It would seem she either needed to get something with a greater degree of compatibility or level her skill far higher. Still, she had just freed up an imprint, without losing anything that might one day prove valuable. Smiling, she removed the Flamecaller imprint, replacing it with the Hellfire Imp, and verified that she had indeed retained the other three variants.
With her magical tome already open to the correct chapter, she channeled her mana to create an imp. A few minutes later there was a pop, and a sizzle of flame along with a strong odor of sulfur, and a Hellfire Imp appeared in front of her, hopping up and down and cackling wildly.
Her friends’ heads all snapped around; their conversation instantly forgotten as their combat reflexes kicked in.
Hellfire Imp – Demon – level 55 (Hellfire)
Your reserved mana has increased by +355.
Is it alive? “It’s mine,” she reassured them. She had been fully expecting it to behave like the elementals, after all, it was a creature of flame. But she supposed she was actually able to create the wargs, so perhaps this monster was similar.
Up close, she could see its leathery hide and the dark flames emitted from its small form. For once, she had a monster smaller than herself that wasn’t a cute lump of moss. Standing at full height, its horns reached only to Ali’s waist. If it wasn’t on fire, she could easily have patted the top of its head.
Why am I imagining petting a demon burning with hellfire? Idly she wondered if it was healthy that she found terrifying monsters suddenly cuter as soon as she could summon them.
Carefully, she slipped her mind into its awareness, recognizing the strange shifting and blurring of heat-based vision, and she called up its status sheet.
Race: Demon
Active Buffs: Demonic Power
Class: Hellfire Imp – level 55
- Fireball – level 47
- Hellfire – level 45
- Flame Form – level 43
- Accelerated Casting – level 35
- Amplified Casting – level 35
- Heat Vision – level 32
- Demonic Power – level 35
- Flame Shield – level 35
- Fire Mastery – level 31
- Ritual Summoning – level 22
Aptitudes
- Mana (Affinity): Hellfire
- Languages: Demonic
- Immunities (Racial): Fire
- Vulnerabilities (Racial): +50% extra damage from Holy, Ice, or Cold
- Imp's Cunning (Racial): +55 to Intelligence
Attributes
- Vitality: 65
- Strength: 16
- Endurance: 39
- Dexterity: 227 (+113)
- Perception: 72
- Intelligence: 495 (+247)
- Wisdom: 241 (+120)
Armor: 385
Physical Damage Reduction: 20%
Evasion: 462
Dodge: 23.07%
Resistance: 792
Magical Damage Reduction: 33.96%
Health: 650/650
Stamina: 390/390
Mana: 1928/2410 (482 Reserved)
Ali could see her companions staring at her new minion with curiosity, but they all waited politely for her to study it before interrupting her. She knew Calen would be itching to get the specifics written down in his notebook so that he could help optimize their strategies even further.
She browsed through the skills. Fireball – no surprise there. The second skill, Hellfire, seemed to be a versatile combat support skill, adding more hellfire to everything the imp did. Hmm, two meta-magic skills, she thought, reading through the descriptions for Amplified Casting and Accelerated Casting. The skills both functioned similarly, there was a small passive boost to cast speed and magical power, but the crucial part functioned as a support skill accelerating or empowering whatever spell the monster attached them to. It explained how it made the fireballs instantaneous or more than double damage occasionally. The two skills had a significant recharge time which further explained why they hadn’t been doing it all the time. Something to study. Extensively. She had the feeling that metamagic would be very useful in the long run.
She opened the details for the Flame Form skill.
Flame Form – level 43
Mana: Turn into a form of pure flame. While in this form you are immune to physical damage and cannot cast any spells or activate skills. Teleport to any visible flame. While you are surrounded by flame, your mana regeneration is increased by +538% [skill + intelligence]. Duration: At will.
Fire, Movement, Shapeshift, Intelligence
Oh, now this is amazing! It was a remarkable movement skill for a fire caster, and Ali finally understood how the imps were traveling within their own fireballs. It was quite an unusual mode of transport, but it granted significant mana regeneration and defensive protection. If it weren’t for the extreme speed of lightning, it was unlikely that they would have ever been hit in transit. Their Flame Shield ability meant they would do continuous damage to whatever was standing in the vicinity of their destination upon arrival. Unlike most Fire Mages she had encountered, these imps seemed robust enough to survive being up front in combat, and their Flame Form was a powerful escape tool if they needed it. I can’t believe it has no recharge timer. The little demons could hang out in fire all day, regenerating at an incredible rate while remaining immune to all physical damage.
Its other abilities were mostly defensive enhancements for resistances and attribute boosts. It had a similar reservation skill to Malika and Calen, improving intelligence, wisdom, and dexterity, making the imp quite a powerful and reactive caster. I wonder if that explains its ability to latch onto a just-cast fireball, she thought. It was quite a feat of reaction and timing.
The last skill on the imp’s list, however, brought her up cold, causing a chill of fear to run down her spine.
Ritual Summoning – level 22
Mana: Summon an unbound Hellfire Imp from a nearby abyssal plane. Requires a planar rift to an abyssal realm, or similar connection within 22 [skill] km of the summoning. Cast Time: 15 minutes, Recharge: 5 hours. Duration: 24 hours.
Fire, Ritual, Minion, Intelligence
This is dangerous, Ali thought. As she rapidly read through the ability, her mind conjured an image of Myrin’s Keep overrun by the cackling, pyromaniac demons as they summoned more and more of their kind. And they can use Accelerated Casting on this to make it instant. She had, in fact, actually witnessed one of the Imps do exactly that during the fight.
But why isn’t this dungeon full of them then? It didn’t make any sense. She read the ability one more time. Perhaps that 24-hour duration means the summons are temporary? Still, they could likely summon a literal army of the imps if they needed to.
Still worried, Ali scanned through the remainder of the abilities. The imp had weak armor, but strong resistances, making it most vulnerable to physical damage. But given its powerful movement skill, her Hobgoblins had had a difficult time pinning them down. Calen would like to know this though, she thought. Physical damage with conventionally crafted arrows might kill them even faster than his conjured ones.
Her eyes paused, scanning through the imp’s attributes, and then widened in surprise. Her heartbeat quickened. It had a staggering 495 intelligence, which surpassed her own by more than two hundred points! Granted it was boosted by its Demonic Power skill, but still. She did some quick arithmetic in her head. It must have a base of almost 240 intelligence. Obviously, it was heavily enhanced by its Imp’s Cunning aptitude – a massive racial boost to the attribute.
What are you doing, Ali? she thought, as she realized she was being stupid.
“Hey you, turn off your Demonic Power for a second,” she instructed, taking care to form the images and visuals of her intent due to the lack of a shared language. It cocked its little head at her and then the mana around it shifted. I was close. Its actual unbuffed intelligence number was 248.
Mine is 204 before my Empowered Summoner buff, she thought. Curious, she switched her minion target from her trusty Kobold Bone Mage to the Hellfire Imp, and her intelligence attribute leapt from 294 to a whopping 479.
“Holy shit!” she exclaimed and then clapped a hand across her mouth as her friends stared at her in shock. It reserved a prohibitive 355 extra mana just to keep the imp around, but the gigantic boost to her intelligence percolated through every skill she had, and nearly every single ability. It was more than a sixty-percent improvement. Arcane Insight was the only skill she possessed that did not explicitly list the intelligence trait. But the feeling of all her magic swelling with new power was what brought her up short. Ali dismissed the status sheet and looked at her companions.
“You seem excited,” Malika observed flippantly.
“This is a scary creature,” Ali answered. “We are fortunate they seem to be chaotic and disorganized, otherwise we would probably be knee-deep in hundreds of them. But I have a new walking buff – it is increasing my intelligence attribute by more than a hundred and eighty points.”
Mato gave a low whistle of surprise, an expression echoed on the faces of both Malika and Calen.
Ali shared the status sheet with all of them and a few moments later, Calen’s face blanched, paler even than his normal pale skin.
“I see what you mean,” he said. “Accelerated Casting with that Ritual of Summoning – if they chained those, they could have an instant army of imps, as many as were in range of their summoning.”
“I know,” Ali said. “I won’t be doing that; unbound demons are just as likely to just attack us as the enemy.”
“Didn’t we see an imp use that earlier?” Calen asked.
Ali nodded; she had definitely observed it in the first fight.
“You know, that means there must be a planar rift somewhere nearby,” Calen observed, his expression growing grave. “We should probably tell the Guildmaster, and maybe Commander Brand too. Open access to an abyssal realm could be very dangerous.”
He was right, if the rift were nearby, there was a good chance that Myrin’s Keep would be in danger from stray demons. Just one of these imps loose in the town was more than most of the residents would be able to handle.
“This dungeon has been here for a while, presumably,” Malika noted reasonably. “And we haven’t seen loose demons running around in all the years I’ve been here. I say we keep exploring, and if we find any portals or rifts, we will be able to understand any danger better.”
“Ok,” Ali said, getting to her feet. “At least I have my walking intelligence buff now.”
“You know you’re going be Mieriel’s least favorite person, right?” Malika said, eyeing the imp.
“What… why… oh!” Ali said, as she suddenly realized that walking into the guild hall with a hellfire demon would probably set all the couches on fire.
“Look on the bright side,” Mato said. “Zombies leaking on the carpet won’t be her biggest worry anymore. Come on, snack time!”
***
Several long hours later, Ali gazed ahead at a plain stone door set into an arched opening, clearly crafted through the rocky wall with advanced stone-working skills. There was nothing particularly remarkable about it, no runes of fire to put out, nor warnings, nor even carvings. It didn’t even seem to be locked, with no keyhole or similar binding devices in evidence anywhere. However, it was an artificial doorway deep into a fire dungeon that had spawned in the ruins of an ancient mine. Ali regarded it with suspicion – deeply justified suspicion.
It was significant, only in that it was the end of the long winding passage of caverns and tunnels. They had fought their way through numerous packs of Flamecallers and their minions, with many variations. Some having multiple hunters, and some adding spear users to the mix. The hardest one had been a group of two warlocks and nine imps. She had lost all her minions during that fight; save the two healers she had been able to protect, her fire-immune imp, and the Hobgoblins with their higher levels and decent health pool.
“Let’s see what’s inside,” Mato suggested, ever eager for action.
“I’m game,” Calen said, eagerly. “After all, this looks like it might be the end of this wing.”
“Should we be worried about a boss?” Ali asked. “The domain mana seems to be behaving a little strangely around here.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if there was,” Malika agreed. “We should be careful, regardless.”
Mato stepped forward and tugged on the door. Surprisingly, it swung open easily, revealing a great cavernous chamber beyond, lit by a surreal shifting light. A rough-hewn set of stairs had been crudely carved into the wall, descending toward the expansive floor below.
As Ali entered the vaulted cavern, she saw it on the far side. How could she miss it? How could anyone? A jagged horizontal tear hovered in the air near the rocky wall, wide enough for all of them to walk through side-by-side and tall enough for even Mato to pass through with only a little stooping required. The edges of the tear were indistinct, shifting softly in continuous motion and throwing glittering multicolored light into the cavern in patterns reminiscent of aurorae. The ambient mana swirled chaotically, twisted and warped by the strange phenomenon.
She stared at it, gazing through what was clearly a rift in space to somewhere else. As she watched, something within shimmered and shifted, like watching an indistinct form moving through some turbulent lake or river. Then a small cackling creature appeared as it passed through from the other side, its horned demonic form wreathed in familiar hellfire. A whispering swoosh was all the warning she had before a rapid succession of dark arrows slammed into the imp, pinning it to the ground and killing it instantly. Ali’s eyes snapped to the far end of the room where an enormous Flamecaller loomed, dark flames fading from the still-buzzing recurve bow in its hand. A giant of its kind, its scales were of a deep red so dark the enormous monster almost vanished against the rocky backdrop. Were it not for the sudden attack and the sound of the bowstring, Ali might never have noticed it until it was too late.
“Raid boss,” Calen whispered urgently, slinking backward as if wishing to merge with the wall.
The rift shifted and swirled again, and this time a Hellfire Warg slunk through, to meet with a similar fate as the late imp – only this time with significantly more arrows required.
“Welcome to my hunt, I hope you will be worthy prey.”
The sibilant hissing voice, speaking recognizable Dal’mohran, echoed through the chamber as the monster’s forked tongue flickered in the shifting darkness.
Shit, it heard us.
Suddenly, Ali’s chime sounded.
You have been cursed with Mark of Prey
+25% to all damage taken.
Mark of Prey taunts every hostile entity within 100 meters to attack you.
Curse – Duration: 1 minute.
Ali stared at the curse in horror. Another imp crawled through the rift, but this time, there were no arrows to greet it. As soon as it emerged from the rift, its glowing eyes locked onto her and it unleashed an accelerated and amplified fireball. A glittering golden sphere snapped into place around her body as her reflexes took over. It was just in time to block the deafening hellfire explosion and the body of the flying imp that appeared right in front of her face as it slammed spread-eagled into her barrier.
Ali flinched backward.
At the far end of the room, the Flamecaller’s bow exploded into black flame and let out a nail-scratching howl as it launched an arrow directly at her chest.
“You may run, little one. I will find you.”
Whistling through the air, the arrow slammed into her golden barrier with a power she had not believed possible. Cracks radiated through the sphere with small fragments falling like glittering dust to the ground. Urgently, she summoned a new barrier as another Hellfire Warg entered the chamber and let out a chilling howl.
“What is it?” Calen asked urgently as he drew his bow.
“Curse. Taunts everything!” Ali shouted, and then she shared the details in case any of them had the time to read it.
“Shit! Everyone, kill the Flamecaller. Ali, just focus on your barriers.”
Mato’s reaction was an immediate roar and a charge that launched him across a dozen meters of uneven ground in a flash, slamming himself into the immense serpentine boss with a great crash.
An arrow flew in a strangely indiscernible direction, clearly obscured by illusion magic. Familiar illusion magic. The oversized serpent creature vanished, and five animated images of its form materialized, spread out across the chamber. Calen’s arrows filled the air, and Ali had the presence of mind to make her minions engage before she reinforced her barrier against the hellfire breath of a warg. Yet another imp arrived through the rift and immediately teleported to the hellfire breath surrounding her barrier and began summoning fire.
“Ali, fly!” Malika yelled as she punched a Hellfire Warg in the side of its left head.
Ali levitated herself in her spherical barrier, quickly removing herself from the range of the warg, but it was debatable if she was better off in the air. The two imps had clear shots at her and launched a pair of fireballs. No, three! Monsters were steadily entering the chamber and the more there were, the more precarious her position became. At least her hugely upgraded intelligence allowed her to track everything visible in the chamber effortlessly.
She heard the howling roar before she even knew what hit her. A bolt of hellfire crossed the entire chamber in an instant, punching through her barrier like a sword through gossamer silk, tearing through her body, and ripping her left arm clean out of its socket.
“Ali! No!” Malika’s shout was the last thing she heard before everything went suddenly black.
Ali came to as her body slammed into a rock about halfway up the wall. Her instinct to summon her barrier around her was the only thing that had saved her from the two Hellfire Wargs attempting to eat her. Everything around her swirled in disorientation as her wound pumped her blood all over the inside of her bubble of magic.
Must… fly… She willed her barrier to lift her above the wargs, and slowly it did, bringing with it a chunk of rock cleanly cut by the intersection of her bubble-barrier and the wall. She had no idea what her minions or her friends were doing. She had barely enough focus to lift her broken body off the floor and out of reach of the demonic wolves. A pulse of soothing holy magic coursed through her body, and then another. The world stopped spinning, and she looked around. She was still missing her arm, but the grievous wound was no longer spurting blood everywhere. The Hellfire Wargs were trying to scale the wall to reach her, their heavy claws scratching grooves in the granite. Up where she flew, she only had to contend with the fireballs and the boss’s arrows which were smashing into her barrier at a pace that boggled the mind. Fortunately, none of them were nearly as powerful as the Power Shot and Ambush combination that had taken her arm and very nearly killed her. She focused her will, channeling more and more mana into rebuilding and reinforcing her barrier magic.
As her mind cleared, she realized that the Flamecaller was not just attacking her. It fired six arrows at a time into the cavern, striking her minions, her friends, and the demons indiscriminately. But the demons had an advantage, the hellfire from its weapon did not damage them. In the case of the wargs, it was actively healing them. But not every shot was fire, and a rapid stream of dark arrows suddenly crossed the room, impaling her intelligence-boosting imp. Instantly, her mind sagged, suddenly struggling to keep track of every spell going off.
Ali stopped counting after the eighth or ninth demon entered the cavern, focusing her entire being on defending against the onslaught.
“You will be my prey.”
The voice echoed through the chamber, cutting through the noise of howls, cackling, and the detonations of hellfire. Every single demon in the room turned and looked at Malika.
“I’m it,” Malika said, her voice unreasonably calm in Ali’s opinion.
Crap… Ali felt a sharp pang of guilt at the relief that welled up in her when she realized the curse had swapped to Malika, followed by a sudden surge of worry for her friend.
Ali’s eyes met Malika’s and then she heard, “No barrier, Ali. Let me run.” Malika’s form blurred as she threw her body into motion, running straight up the rock wall of the cavern with blasts of fire detonating in her footprints.
Malika
As soon as Ali had said ‘taunt,’ Malika understood the fight. Almost everyone would be left alone, except for incidental area damage, while all the power of their foes would focus on killing a single person. And now she was that person, the mark in the Flamecaller’s deadly game.
She ran, sprinting up and around the cavern wall, using her Divine Step to put her out of reach of the wargs. Hellfire fireballs detonated on the rock all around her while powerful arrows of fire from the Flamecaller’s bow zipped by her ears. The fireballs were not nearly as much of a problem for her as were the arrows. The arrows were simply a lot faster and harder to dodge, all of them were conjured out of hellfire and she had to heal every time she failed to dodge one – and each hit was like a gut-punch, throwing her off her rhythm.
At least I can do it on the run.
But she stood by her decision to run instead of hiding in Ali’s bubble. For one thing, her skills were great for this. With room, she could dodge fireballs and even arrows, and she was fast and could stay out of range of half the demons. But also, Ali looked shocked and hurt, and Malika knew she needed time to recover.
If only the Flamecallers weren’t immune to fire, she thought as she discarded the idea of drawing the imps’ fireballs to target the boss. She simply dodged and ran, healing whenever she needed.
A vast surge of stamina erupted from a vaguely indeterminate location near the center of the chamber. She could see it with her Soul Sight, but for some reason, the exact location was obscured to her. I missed a teleport, she realized. The stamina pattern matched the other Flamecaller hunters’ Power Shot, and she prepared herself and concentrated to figure out the exact location.
There!
At the last second, she saw the shot and she tucked her body into a ball, falling into the ravening mass of wargs below. The howling bolt of hellfire whipped past her, missing by an inch and slamming into one of the wargs, smashing it bodily against the naked stone. Unfortunately, it too was immune to fire, so it simply shook its heads and got up, looking dazed from the impact. Malika leapt from the ground and hopped off the back of a warg and into the air once more. But this time, Ali’s barriers flickered in the darkness deflecting fireballs and arrows.
Catch me, if you can!
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Comments
Ulsar
tyfc
JHD
Thanks for the chapter.
Danel4d
Though one slight error - not sure you’d usually call three twins instead of triplets?
Danel4d
Thanks for the chapter. It’s great to see the bronzes, and fun to see them struggling with a boss just as our heroes find the same. It’s really interesting and fun to see them struggling with a nasty and unusual mechanic like that - wonder if that curse is something specific to this boss or one of its enhancements? And I’m now more curious than ever to work out what’s happening with the chapters, and why the Flamecallers can work like that!
InLucidReverie
Still don't see why Ali isn't using the wargs as melee fighters that can't be hurt by the enemy attacks- they don't even need to do much, just be in the way and interfere. Like, it doesn't matter if it heals a little if it is preventing the mcs from taking damage in return. Perfect for marking enemies they aren't planning to focus yet.
Chyre
Demon Hunter Basil
HornboozeWFG
So first havok what the hell bro... Second... Clarence we need help! Clarence we need help! It can speak the old toungue... RUN OR USE EVERYTHONG TOU HAVE! DECONSTRUCT THE RIFT IF TOU HAVE TO MAYBE EVEN YOUR ARM! CALEN,IT MAY LOOK LIKE AN TIME TO TAKE NOTES ON BEING AN HELLAVA GOOD ARCHER FROM THE HUNTER BUT PINCUSHIN IT AND HELP ALI! MALIKA RUN, FIGHT AND RUN LIKE TOU NEVER BEFORE AS TOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT! MATO DROP AN BEAR TREE ON THE FOOL IF TPU DONT WANT TO END UP ON HIS TROPHY WALL! OR BETTER YET RETREAT! RUN AWAY! SURVIVE! GET NEW ARM! MAKE REINFORCED BARRIERS! HIT THE LAB! REASEARCH FOR A MONTH!
Fredrik Rikheim
Tyftc. I hope the healing can grow back an arm fast
Cameron Orr
Fun battle mechanics! Thanks for the chapter
Dero_Dore
The seer hath forseen this
