Chapter 27
The Manticore was the first to emerge and it was the size of an African Elephant. It possessed the body of tawny-furred lion with a thick mane of darker hair tipped with the orange-red of actual flames. The lion’s tail had been replaced by the segmented, jet-black stinger of a scorpion. The beast flew out of the dungeon entrance held aloft by two dark green, scale-covered wings.
The flying monster whooshed over our heads, though not close enough to attack and before it reached the edge of the dungeon’s domain, veered up and ascended into the sky. The speed with which it moved made striking it in the air very difficult. The manticore flapped its leathery wings powerfully and soared back over to the dungeon where it alighted on a balustraded viewing platform on top of the cathedral.
This section had been nestled into the surroundings surreptitiously, hard to notice, but that part of the architecture was more militaristic in function than decorative. Flanked by a panoply of grotesque statuary, which helped the platform blend in with the gothic aesthetic, the manticore looked down upon us imperiously and gave me a chance to get a proper look at our monstrous opponent.
Black, barbed quills, several feet long, rose along the well-defined contours of its back when the beast struck an aggressive pose. Most horrifying of all was the almost human oversized face which had replaced a lion’s features. This was a detail I’d missed during its initial emergence. It looked so out of place, disjointed and wrong, nightmare fuel for a sleepless night.
“You dare challenge me, worms!” The manticore screamed. Its voice had a shrill timbre that put your teeth on edge. Much like it’s face, it possessed an inherent wrongness that froze me in place. “This fortress is unassailable, but I do not need its solid defences to dispose of the chaff I see before me. It is good that there is an audience.” The shrill creature raised its paw and gestured beyond the horizon.
I couldn’t move to follow its gesture but wasn’t overly worried by this detail. The sounds of the oncoming monsters had also ceased. They too were frozen in place. Older, experienced dungeons could do this. It was a semi-scripted event that allowed the dungeon avatar to monologue for a moment without the pesky delvers ruining the performance by blasting it with a fireball mid-speech. It was similar to the moments when Quixbix altered my perception of time when he provided quest and notification updates.
Regardless of my pseudo-paralysis, I knew who the manticore was referring to. The crew members who had been kicked from the party hadn’t been teleported very far. They were gathered perhaps a hundred metres further from where we stood. And because we were outside the dungeon, they could see everything that was happening.
The pompous manticore hadn’t quite finished. “I have been bothered by the weak and the witless far too often of late. They shall bear witness to the true might of what lies within these hallowed halls and tremble.”
The beast paused for a breath, readying itself for another verse but I’d lost patience by that point.
{GET ON WITH IT ALREADY!}
The bellowed response wasn’t spoken but projected through the secret channel I had access to. The manticore stopped halfway through whatever it was about to say, and its gaze settled on me with an expression of pure hate.
As I suspected, the dungeon’s link to the fragment allowed me to broadcast my thoughts directly at it. The move had its risks, but Hudson’s erratic behaviour had given me confidence that the fragment was no longer fully compos mentis. Provided all I did was shout through the channel, not insert my consciousness where it could be seized, then it should be safe.
“Die!” the manticore finally finished.
The feeling of being frozen departed.
Up on the battlements, the manticore lowered its head below the crenelated wall and a mass of quills were ejected from its back like javelins. I was the focal point for the barrage, though the quills did spread out and cause problems for those nearest to me. I timed a leap with my boots to avoid the worst of it, the barbed tips of the quills dug into the earth and left a small patch of spiky obstructions.
Fortunately, my leap carried me forward, so I didn’t need to worry about landing on top of the embedded quivering quills. Unfortunately, the damn manticore had another ranged trick up its sleeve. When I reached the apex of the jump, a blob of green-hued energy shot out from the tail stinger and hit me dead centre in the chest.
*** -200 Hit Points. (9,600/10,500) Acid source. ***
The bolt also had the undesired effect of pushing me back through the air back into the bed of quills. Doing the only thing I could, I flipped the hood of my coif up to prevent anything from sticking into the back of my neck or head.
*** -300 Hit Points. (9,300/10,500) Piercing source. ***
The quills hadn’t landed barbed side up, and my armour prevented most of them from penetrating my flesh. Most snapped when my bulk crash landed on them, and I pulled out the couple that managed to find the gaps in my armour. I could only imagine the smug smirk on the manticore. It continued to hide its bulk behind the battlement walls. In response, several of my people fired their ranged options up at the beast.
“Don’t bother,” I ordered. “Save your resources. That cathedral is made from dungeon stone; it is virtually impregnable. Not even Sheamus’ favourite concoctions will do much more than leave a blackened stain.”
A second after the words left my lips, a new distraction came boiling out of the gate. Scorpions with black carapaces skittered out of the cathedral doors, pushing, shoving, and crawling over one another in their desire to reach the interlopers.
Giant Scorpions (Acid Spitters) x 40
Grade: U
Level: 37
HP: 2,340
Mob Description: The carapace of these scorpions acts as high mitigation armour, but the softer underbelly only offers medium mitigation. Like many lower-graded mobs with high armour mitigation against physical attacks they lack a similar degree of protection against magical damage. Their stingers are capable of firing bolts of acid but also contain the traditional venom associated with monsters of this type.
The first of the four dungeon chamber’s mobs had been emptied onto the steps. Each of the many-legged arachnids was the size of a badger and scuttled down the steps, unleashing a volley of acid-based energy projectiles from their tails before making a beeline for us.
“Magical attacks work best,” I called out to inform the rest of the delving team the results of my analysis.
With one eye on the prowling manticore hiding above, we moved forward and engaged the mobs. The invertebrate creatures lacked tactical acumen and tended to launch themselves at the nearest person rather than stay together as a group to overwhelm. Quickly, we spread out and separated the scorpions to make them easier to deal with. The casters in the group despatched the first few before they hit our loose line and then the rest of us went to work with close combat weapons.
Crynn and Fang Mei flanked me on either side. Crynn carved off a clacking claw with her cutlass, spun her body and jammed the pointed tip between the jaws and into what passed for the brain. Meanwhile, Fang Mei jumped above another, used her small wings to evade the strike of the stinger, got behind the scorp, and then buried one of her daggers into the softer underbelly that was exposed by the stinger flexing forward to strike. A quick sideways yank with the blade and the scorpion’s innards decorated the grass.
Not to be left in the cold, I tanked a couple of the beasts myself. When one tried to use its stinger on me, I deftly grabbed the tip that dripped with poison and hauled the scorpion off the ground to clobber a second. I didn’t get to use my enhanced strength in such a display of brute power often. Releasing the tail of the now upside-down scorpion, I drove my blade through its belly, all the way through, and skewered the mob struggling underneath the one I used as a club.
Looking up, all around, my people were handling the threat with composure and panache. Half of the scorpions were dead, and the rest soon would be.
The manticore seemed to realise this as well and its tail twitched, rose into the air and fired off another of its acid bolts that hit the leg of a man named Greenfield and caused him to fall. Targeting him was an act of deliberate opportunism. There were three scorpions nearby, including the one he had been directly fighting, and the trio of beasts used the opening of him being off his feet to strike.
Tavar was quick to spot the problem and blasted the three with firebolts, but the damage was done. Greenfield had been stung three times in quick succession.
Luckily for him, nowhere vital. However, the parts of his body stung started to swell up and Greenfield quickly necked a universal antidote for the venom coursing from his wounds. This arrested the issue but didn’t reverse what had already happened. Greenfield was alive but lay on the ground struggling for breath while his internal stats cycled through the inflicted negative status effects trying to purge them.
Brant pushed forward and bashed a scorpion away from Amber who had been dancing around it. “Grab Greenfield,” he barked. “Pull him clear of the melee so he can recover.”
The manticore popped its head up for a quick smirk. “These are but the least of my servants, and if mine ears don’t deceive me, you are about to meet the next.”
The bastard was true to his word. The next wave slinked out while we were still knee-deep in black-carapaced bodies. Each member of the new threat was larger, the size of a Great Dane. The animal had black fur with a white streak that ran down its back. Embedded in the white fur and oscillating dangerously were dozens of quills.
Skunkupines x 20
Grade: P
Level: 37
HP: 8,580
Mob Description: Skunkupines combine two different prickly creatures’ defensive capabilities into a much deadlier whole. They have quills, tipped with poison that can be fired from their backs or used in an offensive roll attack. Secondly, they can spray a nasty, debilitating, and toxic concoction from their rear end which they are immune to. They have sharp claws and teeth; it is advised to kill them before they get too close.
“Second wave incoming,” I yelled and fired a Chaos Missile into their midst which exploded and knocked a few of them off their feet. “Gas attack mobs, kill them from afar if possible.”
It was great advice; the only problem was that there were ten scorpions still making life difficult for the party and only half of the party could react to the new threat.
Nazz was one and she summoned her enormous, preloaded crossbow and squeezed the trigger. With a twang, the metal bolt shot forward and slammed home into the forehead of a skunkupine. The heavily wounded creature stumbled and fell down the rest of the steps. A few other attacks ploughed into the creatures that ran forward with a strange lurching gait, but three-quarters of them were still capable of reaching us.
Once they hit the bottom of the steps they curled into balls, spines protruding. Several of these spines were used as a ranged attack that had to be fended off, but they weren’t intended to harm, it was to force us to take cover and prevent any disruption of their next manoeuvre. It was something anyone who had played Sonic the Hedgehog would recognise; they used their running momentum to turn into spinning balls of imminent pain.
The fifteen mobile skunkupines spun across the gap quickly and slammed into whatever targets they could find. Four came directly to my small group. Cold Feet disrupted the momentum of one and caused it to flop out of its spin attack, but the other three bounced onwards undeterred.
I grabbed Crynn by the waist and activated my boots to take us off the ground just in time. Fang Mei managed to use her wings and do the same. We avoided being hit by the spiny furballs but couldn’t dodge the mist of stinking fumes they released as they spun past us.
The cloying toxic nastiness slathered all over our skin and acted like a contact poison.
*** -100 Hit Points. (9,200/10,500) Poison source. ***
*** The Feverish negative status effect has been inflicted upon you. Physical activity will drain your stamina at a greater rate. Your physical stats and health will be halved until the full Feverish status is lifted. ***
I coughed loudly upon landing and the spinning skunkupines came to a halt not far from our position and unfurled themselves. Crynn and Fang Mei were sweating profusely as was anyone else who had been caught up in one of the stink attacks. The only saving grace was that the toxic clouds didn’t linger for long before dispersing.
*** You have passed a periodic constitution check, and the Feverish status effect has been fully lifted. ***
The secondary notification flitted across my perception when I put Crynn down. Clearing Feverish quickly was a benefit of a very high constitution. The girls still looked a bit green around the gills and wouldn’t recover anywhere nearly as swiftly as I did.
My lips pulled back in a rictus smile. I rushed forward to confront the three attackers who charged back in expecting their victims to be severely weakened by the skunk attack. They would be in for a very unpleasant surprise.
The Goresteel blade carved through their furry hides which provided little mitigation against attacks. This was the skunkupines weakness and why a creature with such a harmful debuff up its sleeves was not graded higher. Each blow hacked off a minimum of 650 points with half that again as a bleed. Over 1,300 if the sword swipes cut into the head or another vital spot.This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
They fought back with more fired spines, but I was able to knock most of those away and finished the fight only losing a few hundred more Hit Points. I turned around to check on Crynn and Fang Mei. They were doing okay, they still looked sick but didn’t look quite so peaky, through our soul bond I could feel that they had both had partial successes and reduced the severity of Feverish to a quarter.
Any joy was short-lived. Several thunderous roars emanated from within the dungeon/cathedral. The third wave was ready to meet us head-on.
Chapter 28
The Giant Scorpions of the first wave were all dead. Which was a good start. Half the skunkupines were alive but several of those were part of the group we’d partially disabled before they could launch into the stink-roll. The damage the rest had wrought before we took them out was evident, though.
Greenfield was no longer the only party member down. Two others lay unmoving on the turf and another seven, not including Crynn and Fang Mei who made nine, were under the influence of the Feverish debuff.
The two unmoving crewmen might not be fully dead. The system got a bit funky when it came to Health that was reduced by status ailments because the health points hadn’t been truly lost, merely suppressed. If we could get a medic to them in time or they managed to pass a con check, which was unlikely in their current condition, then they could be saved.
This would be a problem as the next wave came roaring through the gates and down the steps. Massive lions that had to weigh close to half a ton each, their dark manes tipped with crackling flames.
Firemane Lions x 10
Grade: K
Level: 37
HP: 13,120
Mob Description: The Firemane Lions run in prides exclusively made up of males. They are large and powerful beasts who are immune to flame-based attacks, but this does make them vulnerable to the opposing harmony, Frost. Famed for their fire-tipped manes, which are highly prized by crafters of all kinds.
Do be careful, they are fire-breathers.
I glanced up at the smirking manticore. There was a definite theme developing with the monstrous mobs it had chosen, and I shivered with a sense of foreboding when the beast flapped its mighty, scaled wings. A fourth wave was yet to come, and I had a pretty good idea of what it would entail. I’d seen wings like that before.
“They breathe fire!”
The warning was almost too late as the pride bounded from the entrance in great leaps and belched flames across the battlefield from the sudden lofty position.
Everyone acted to protect themselves, shields were summoned and magical fields erupted from fingers. However, some had no protection which would be effective and simply had to retreat in the face of the conflagration. If the two poor buggers whom the skunkupines had taken down had a chance before, it was gone now. With mobs still pressing our positions, nobody had a chance to pull them out of the fray before the flames hit.
Crynn and Fang Mei sheltered behind me, and I conjured a rime of frost over the shield held out in front. Fighting fire with ice. The flame attack guttered out, the lion’s paws churned up the earth when they landed, and they immediately launched into an attack vector. The only upside to the wave of fire was that the skunkupines had no special protection either. Any caught up in the conflagration lay curled up in a charred ball, fur and quills burnt down to the roots, skin seared black.
“Tavar hit them with Frost bolts, they are vulnerable,” I shouted whilst layering frost enhancements on the weapons of Crynn and Fang Mei so they too could take advantage of the lion’s vulnerability. Tavar was an Elemental Mage, versatile in most situations. “Nazz, watch the door and reload that crossbow of yours, we’ve got Wyverns incoming, I’m sure of it.”
There were ten lions versus seventeen active combatants left in the party. Unfortunately, the beast’s affinity for fire meant they could sense those of us rocking the opposing element. Therefore, the pride ignored and shied away from my little group, surged to our right, and attacked the party members clustered on that wing instead. Brant led the line over there and stepped up with two other shield-bearers to do what they could to protect the less tanky fighters sheltering behind them.
Ten big lions slammed into their shield wall with immense force and ferocity. Brant’s class ability helped them dig in and extend the protection but there were simply too many of the enraged beasts and the three shield-bearers bowed and then broke.
Tavar did what he could, and a dozen frost bolts thudded into tawny fur, dropping one lion and forcing two others to back off, but the remaining seven started to savage the three downed men who were at their mercy. I was in motion too, adding thrown conjured ice daggers to Tavar’s magical assault, and outstripping Crynn and Fang Mei who were not as quick in a running race.
Nevertheless, I was not the first melee combatant to reach Brant’s side. With a screech of rage, Amber activated her Duellist Charge using one of the lions as the target. She shot past me and into the midst of the lions, who snapped at and fought each other as much as the three men on the ground. All eager to get a piece of human meat.
Amber used her buckler shield and belted the lion standing directly on top of Brant in the mouth, breaking a tooth and burying her rapier into the creature’s mighty chest under the armpit of its front forepaw. The monster tried to turn and gore its new attacker, but her weapon was still buried inside its body and the sharp movement only accelerated the internal damage that was done to its heart and lungs.
I lost sight of the young woman in the pile of battling bodies. The lions were at least five feet at the shoulder and made an effective screen. Amber was knocked over in the crush, but her action had probably saved Brant’s life. The other two men were hauled off the ground in the jaws of lion attackers and subjected to intense heat attacks from close range. If the attacks weren’t fatal, they might wish they were.
Once in range, I expended a charge of my Breath Weapon. Fortune shone down upon me and the closest three Firemane Lions were enveloped in a cone of frost. I had to be careful where I aimed the attack, so as not to encompass Brant, Amber, and the other two currently being savaged.
The Lion’s vulnerability to Frost garnered results that were more than satisfactory.
*** Critical Strike! x8 You have inflicted 13,440 of cold damage to three Firemane Lions. The Firemane Lions have been slain. ***
Outright kills, the three struck lions flopped to the ground rimed with ice, sightless eyes glazed over, their thick pinkish tongues lolling from their open jaws.
Clambering over the dead beasts, I reached the fight and hamstrung the nearest of the four that remained in this fight and went to work with my sword. There were two others still alive, but they had crawled off to lick their wounds. Belching flames at anyone who tried to approach. Tavar could finish them off.
The lions were so large, that it was not difficult to make contact, and I decided to abandon finesse in a frenzy of strikes, whatever it took to get them down as fast as possible. Crynn and Fang Mei weren’t far behind and joined the fray. We pushed the few surviving members of the pride back and the Knight underneath the scrum was revealed.
Brant had been hurt badly, the lions had done a number on him, but he was alive and slipped a healing pellet under his tongue with his left hand that still worked. The right arm which held his shield had been twisted and broken in a couple of places by the rough treatment. He was out of the fight.
Miraculously, Amber popped back to her feet once the creatures were forced to back up. There were dozens of claw marks on her armour where she’d been gouged while on the floor, but she didn’t let that slow her down.
Amber was the most stubborn person I knew, not even a pride of fire-breathing lions could stand in her path. She summoned a secondary weapon and rejoined the battle; teeth grit in determination.
Up above, the manticore took the opportunity to show itself again and let loose with another acid bolt that hit one of the party members who’d become isolated and forgotten to keep an eye on the sky while he fired arrows at the swirling melee of lions. He was hit in the side of the neck and crumpled to the ground.
Before I could snarl an insult at the cowardly bastard, the air was rent by a series of horrible screeches. The fourth wave had made their way up from the final chamber and glided out of the dungeon doorway.
Dwarf Wyverns x 5
Grade: F
Level: 37
HP: 26,670
Mob Description: Wyverns are cousins to the larger wyrms like dragons. They differ physiologically from their more famous relative in that they only possess four limbs. Two hind legs and the forelimbs which form their wings. Another difference is that they don’t possess a breath weapon, though their bite is venomous. Wyvern’s scales provide high mitigation against most forms of damage, and they are almost immune to slashing attacks. The Dwarf Wyvern is a smaller subspecies. Smaller and with fewer hit points, but that does make them more manoeuvrable in flight.
Believe it or not, when that description popped up it was something of a relief. A couple of months prior, I’d summoned a wyvern from the rift with my spell in the past and seen them in action. They were terrifying to behold.
Once I’d figured out the dungeon’s pattern, that each chamber was populated with beasts that represented one of the manticore’s monstrous features, I worried that the dungeon might have condensed its allowances in order to unleash a couple of B-grade monsters in our laps. The dwarf variety was still large and formidable, but they were half the size of the Wyvern I’d summoned from the rift.
The first dwarf wyvern out the door didn’t get very far, Nazz had obeyed my command and was lying in wait. A bolt, especially prepared by none other than the alchemic genius, Sheamus, was loosed and struck home under the lead wyvern’s eye. Where it promptly exploded and took half of the beast’s skull with it. The wyvern flapped its wings once, a reflexive action that carried it clear of the descending steps before it crashed into the ground.
Before Nazz could reload, the other four swept out of the entrance and onto the battlefield. Not only that, the smirk on the manticore’s lips faded and it launched itself over the balustrade, abandoning its protection, and peppered Nazz with a salvo of back quills which had regrown over the last couple of minutes.
“Nazz!” Crynn shrieked in warning to the Saurian woman.
The call came too late, with four other dwarf wyverns soaring out of the dungeon entrance and a couple of separated lions prowling the grounds, there were too many targets for Nazz to remain alert of. She saw the incoming quills a split-second too late and only managed to shift her body a few feet out of the way.
Nazz was struck by dozens of spines and collapsed to the ground, her body convulsing as it fought off the effects of the quill’s venomous tips. The slight shift of her bulk may not have carried the lizard woman out of harm’s way, but it did reduce the density of the sudden quill infestation and gave her a fighting chance at survival. If nothing else came along to finish her off.
“Go,” I urged Crynn. “Help her quaff a potion and pull out the quills. Fang Mei, go with her, use your warp and keep the three of you hidden.”
Crynn nodded at me gratefully and raced across the battlefield to assist the saurian who had become a surrogate mother to her.
Fang Mei was a little more reluctant to leave my side. “Will you be okay?”
“Don’t worry about me. Once warped, if you see an opportunity, go for it. I’ll handle the rest.”
The words of encouragement were enough, plus Crynn and Nazz were already exposed, and Fang Mei knew without her they were sitting ducks.
My claim to handle the rest was easier said than done. With a hand signal, I sent some of the others to the corner of the cathedral building and finished off the last two lions. Those beasts were already wounded and shouldn’t cause them too much trouble. The five flying beasts, four wyverns with the manticore directing traffic would be the real challenge. They circled up above us and mostly avoided the potshots of ranged weaponry.
“We make for the inner foyer of the dungeon,” I ordered. “We don’t want to make it easy for them to dive-bomb and Hudson is the priority.”
The group I’d assembled included Danny, Tavar, Amber, Doc and a few others. Brant was hidden amongst the bodies of the firemane lions, doing his best to resemble a corpse, a role that didn’t require acting skill given his current condition. As a unit, we made a rush for the dungeon entrance.
The manticore spotted the movement and anticipated our intent. It screeched at the four other flyers, and they coalesced into a cohesive attack formation and swooped down from the sky. Their goal, to block the way into the dungeon.
This didn’t surprise me. I suspected the fragment would have issued orders or compelled the manticore to do everything it could to prevent our ingress. But if we were going to kill these things, we needed a way to get them down to us where we could fight them, and this seemed like a win-win plan.
Two of the wyverns landed on the steps ahead of us while the other two and the manticore directly attacked the group from their dive.
I switched to the halberd in my inventory; it had a greater reach than my sword and used it to fend off the snapping jaws of a wyvern attacker after applying Shattering to reduce its armour. Danny attacked the same beast from the other side with his huge maul that thudded meatily into the elongated neck of the wyrm and we both heard one of its vertebrae snap from the force of the blow. The wyvern stumbled almost like it was drunk due to the onset of partial paralysis.
Quickly, I switched weapons and slipped under the beast’s belly while it struggled and targeting the gap between scales pierced through the hide of its underside and used the teeth on the reverse side to carve through the flesh and disembowel the monster. Timing my activities perfectly, I tore the blade free and rolled out of range just as the dwarf wyvern’s legs gave way and it collapsed to the earth. Danny’s maul crunched into its skull and helped finish it off.
Shaking the blood off my weapon, I got back to my feet and assessed how the rest of the battle was going.
Not well was the unfortunate answer.
Tavar held off the two wyverns guarding the entrance and conjured a wall of fire to keep them contained. The reason why was obvious. During the fight, one of them had jumped forward and snapped up Amber in its jaws, the girl had been thrown into the air and her leg had been badly broken on landing. One of her knees had been dislocated and pointed out at an unnatural angle. She was alive and in an enormous amount of pain.
The manticore had stung one of the other men in the throat and he was down permanently. Afterwards, it had ploughed through the group, knocking many over, grabbed Doc and dragged him off. I caught sight of them just in time to see the monstrous bastard open its jaw impossibly wide and bite into his head. The manticore tore Doc’s head off and swallowed it whole.
Doc had been part of my squad for over a year, often acting as the squad leader when I was absent. He was a good man and deserved better. The manticore smirked in my direction and licked its lips in mockery. This only stoked the fury, and I will admit that I lost my mind for a moment.
Shattering was followed by a Chaos Missile that I ran in the wake of. The shattering charge was applied but the manticore launched itself into the air and evaded the worst of the explosion, the edge licking at its feet only. Worse, I’d forgotten about the other wyvern in my anger and turned my back on it. The creature lurched forward, ready to swallow my head whole much as the manticore had done with Doc.
Out of nowhere, Fang Mei appeared, dropping her warping ability and intercepting the snapping jaws of the wyvern, knocking it off course and saving my neck. The pair of them tumbled to the ground in a heap, Fang Mei came up straddled across the wyvern’s neck and stabbed away at its earholes with her daggers.
The creature reared back and tried to throw her off. It was assisted in this endeavour as one of the two ‘guard’ wyverns had broken loose from Tavar’s containment efforts and flapped across the battlefield to come to the aid of its fellow. This was a good news-bad news scenario. Being down to one wyvern made it easier for Tavar and his companions to handle the beast, but it did mean the rest of us had another monster to contend with.
The wyvern/Fang Mei kerfuffle distracted me from what was ahead and the manticore took advantage, tearing up the earth with its claws and streaking towards me. Danny stepped up to the other side and swung the maul in a wide arc, that struck the manticore’s paw and snapped off a talon. The manticore hissed angrily and used its scorpion tail as a club and battered Danny in the head.
I had to act quickly and expended two charges of Breath Weapon quickly. The first, at the manticore, was supposed to be Frost, but I got the poison cloud instead. Not nearly as useful. I turned my head for the second attempt, applied Shattering to the incoming wyvern and then my breath attack. I got the intended element this time and shot an arc of lightning at the wyvern as it passed me.
The blow was enough to push the creature off-course, and it flew over where Fang Mei struggled with its downed brother.
“Eat a bolt!”
The cry came from the other side of the battlefield. Crynn had propped Nazz up and removed the quills from her flesh. The Saurian woman helped her hold and aim that giant crossbow of hers and between them, they launched another explosive bolt that thudded just under the wing of the electrocuted wyvern. The small explosion left its right wing hanging awkwardly and it crashed into the ground whimpering miserably.
Tavar and his group held off the fourth. Fang Mei was bloody but victorious over the other. The use of her warp ability would leave her almost weak as a kitten for a short while, though. That left the dungeon avatar, and it had no plans to go down quietly.
It pounced out of the cloud of poison in the blink of an eye and knocked Danny to the floor. One paw crunched onto the small of his back, trying to hold him in place and repeat what it did to Doc, the monster leant forward to swallow his head.
But Danny was too strong and managed to lurch to the side and it bit down into his shoulder instead, missing his head. The armour Danny wore prevented the manticore from biting too deeply, but it gave the beast enough purchase to whip its head back and wrench his arm out of the socket.
Danny screamed in pain, and I screamed in fury as the Goreblade sliced down onto the Manticore''s neck. I hadn’t been quick enough to stop Danny’s injury, but I would damn sure make the fucking manticore pay for exposing itself in the way it had.
The creature’s neck was too muscled and thick for decapitation, but the blade did sink an inch or two into flesh and forced it to release the wounded ogre in its jaws. The manticore leapt back and I followed after, blade flowing in a dizzying series of arcs, pushing the long blade skill to the limit. The manticore fought back, its claws gouging along my armour and the scorpion tail striking with rapidity and force, but it never quite found the mark.
The ferocity of my assault pushed the beast back, once we were clear of Danny who slowly crawled away, cradling the wounded arm, I hit it with a charge of Frost Breath.
*** Critical Strike! x4 You have inflicted 6,720 of cold damage to Madness of the Manticore. Madness of the Manticore is under 25% Hit Points. ***
This was the final straw for the manticore, and it attempted to flee, taking to the air. In its fear, it hadn’t seen Crynn approach from behind and the moment it unfurled those wings which had been tucked in, she struck with her cutlass and savagely cut at the tendons connecting the wings as it took off. The monster had enough oomph to get off the ground, but it couldn’t make it back to the safety of the cathedral balustrade with one gimpy wing.
With only one wing working it couldn’t navigate correctly and went careening into the gargoyle statues that dotted the upper parts of the cathedral and fell back down to the ground.
“Not possible,” It gasped, flecks of blood staining the wispy white beard that framed the hideous human face.
“Very possible,” I corrected the avatar and buried my sword in the back of its head.