10. Chapter 10 The Yeti #3
The creature opened its mouth. A cone of freezing air blasted from its jaws, white and dense, rolling across the chamber toward the backline. Toward Nott and me.
I planted my feet and threw my hands out.
[Bubble. Hold fast.]
The dome spread from my palms and sealed over Nott and me.
The ice breath hit the barrier and broke around it, the freezing air splitting to either side and coating the walls in a thick layer of frost. The dome held for five seconds.
I let it go. The drain hit my chest and sat there, heavier than the first time in the collapsing corridor.
"That looked like it cost you," Nott said.
"I'm fine. That's getting easier. A little."
The creature swung at Bjorna again and she braced and took it and her boots carved fresh lines in the ice.
Sif was chasing down the last wolf. It had gotten past her and gone for Nott.
It hit Nott from the side and she went down, her casting arm pinned under the wolf's weight.
I was there in three steps. I grabbed the wolf by the scruff and hauled it back and it twisted and its teeth caught my sleeve and tore the fabric.
Sif appeared behind it and opened its throat.
I put my hands on Nott. She had a bite on her forearm, deep enough to bleed through the cloth. I ran [Mend] through it and the wound closed.
"Are you okay?"
"I'm fine." She got up and raised her casting arm. "Thank you."
"Any time. Please don't get bitten again."
"I'll add it to my list of priorities."
The boss fight was getting worse. Bjorna was taking hits that shook the floor.
Each swing from the creature cracked ice three inches thick on impact, and Bjorna was absorbing every one of them on the shield.
Her arm had to be screaming. I ran to her between its swings and pressed my hand to her shoulder.
[Mend.] The light spread through her shield arm and the damage released. She didn't thank me. She just reset and braced for the next hit.
With the wolves gone, Sif turned to the boss and started looking for openings.
She circled behind it and found a gap in the frost armor on its lower back.
Both daggers went in. The creature spun and its arm caught Sif across the ribs and sent her sliding on her back.
She rolled and came up and she was moving but her hand went to her side.
I got to her. Bruised ribs, one of them cracked. I pressed my hand against her side and the crack knitted together and she straightened.
"I'm getting tired of being thrown," she said.
"Then stop being where its arms are."
"That's my job."
"Your job is going to get you killed."
“Occupational hazard, my dear.”
Liv was putting arrows into every wound the party opened.
Three arrows into the wound Nott's bolt had opened.
Two in the back where Sif had cut. She was burning through her supply.
Every arrow found its target. The creature bled from half a dozen wounds, still standing, still swinging, still hitting hard enough to kill any of us if it connected clean.
The creature slammed both fists into the floor.
The shockwave was bigger than the depth four version.
Cracks spread outward from the impact point and jagged spikes erupted from the floor in a ring, shoulder-high, expanding toward us.
Liv dove sideways. Sif rolled. Bjorna braced behind her shield and the ice spikes hit the blackstone and shattered.
Nott didn't have time to move. The ice was coming at her and she was still casting.
I planted my feet and threw my hands out.
[Bubble. Hold fast.]
The dome of gold light spread from my palms and sealed over the four of us.
The ice spikes hit the barrier and broke apart, the fragments sliding off the curved surface and falling in piles around the base.
The creature's roar followed, and a wave of freezing air rolled across the chamber and broke against the dome.
Inside the dome, the cold stopped. The air was still. Nott and Sif and Liv were on their feet beside me. Bjorna was outside, between the dome and the creature, still fighting.
Bjorna was hurt, her shield arm telling the story, the muscles locked and trembling. The cumulative damage from the fight was building. I reached for her.
[Mend.]
The gold formed in my hands. I pushed it toward Bjorna and it left my fingers and passed through the barrier. It went through. The gold touched her shoulder and the light spread down her arm and the tremor stopped.
I stared at my hands. The gold had gone through the dome. I'd cast [Mend] and the heal had passed outward through the barrier like it wasn't there.
"The dome. The heal went through it," I said.
"I felt it," Bjorna said. She rolled her shoulder. "You healed me through the barrier."
If [Mend] went through, that meant other things went through. Outward was open and inward was blocked.
It circled the dome, looking for a way in. Its fists hit the barrier twice and the gold held, the impacts absorbed and dispersed across the surface. We were safe inside. Outside, it paced and snarled and its breath frosted against the barrier in thick white clouds.
I reached for [Smite]. The cold came up from my chest, the opposite of gold, and I aimed it at the creature through the barrier.
The bolt left my hands and passed through the dome and hit the creature in the chest. The ice armor shattered on impact and the bolt went into flesh.
The creature rocked backward, its legs buckling for a second, and it screamed.
The scream was deeper than the roars before it, broken and raw, and it shook frost from every surface in the chamber.
The creature staggered. The Smite hadn't killed it. But it had cracked the thickest armor on its body and opened a wound in the center of its chest that was bleeding dark blood onto the ice.
I let go. The dome faded. My arms dropped and the cold rushed back in, the noise with it.
My legs had weight in them and my hands shook.
I'd used [Bubble] three times tonight, all three in the last hour.
Every use cost something. But I could stand and fight and heal.
The fatigue sat in me like hour twelve of a long shift.
I was tired, not broken. Level 33 had some advantages.
"Daniel opened it up!" Bjorna shouted. "The chest is exposed. Everything on that wound!"
She charged. The creature was still reeling from the [Smite] and Bjorna hit it before it could set its feet, driving it back toward the wall.
The creature's back hit ice-covered stone and Bjorna pinned it there, her shield grinding against its body, her longsword finding the chest wound and driving in.
Sif came from the right. She'd seen the opening and she was already there, both daggers working the cracked armor around the [Smite] wound, peeling ice away from flesh and cutting deep.
Nott put an amplified bolt into the same spot, the [Ember Bolt] sinking into exposed muscle, and the creature's roar broke into something higher, something that sounded like an animal that knew it was losing.
Liv's arrows came in a steady rhythm. One after another into the chest wound, each shaft sinking deeper as the armor gave way.
The creature swung at Bjorna and the swing was slower, weaker, its massive body finally showing the accumulated damage from the fight.
Bjorna caught the blow and barely moved.
She'd been absorbing hits all night and this one was less than the first.
Sif got behind it. She found the kill zone through the cracked armor at the base of its skull, the same spot she'd used on the depth four creature. Both daggers went in, deep, and she drove them forward with everything she had.
The creature's legs gave out. It went to its knees and the floor cracked under its weight and it fell forward and the chamber shook one final time.
Nothing in the chamber moved. The wolves had already started dissolving, their pale bodies losing definition on the ice. The creature lay facedown on the broken ice, its massive body still, its pale eyes dark.
Nobody moved for a few seconds.
"Is it dead?" I asked.
"It's dead," Bjorna said. She was breathing hard and so was everyone else.
I went to Bjorna first. She was the worst. Her shield arm had taken punishment all night, from the frost brutes at depth three to the depth four creature to a boss fight that had gone on longer than any fight in my experience.
The magic worked through bruised muscle, compressed tissue, a hairline crack in her forearm bone that she'd been fighting through without saying a word.
Her ribs had taken compression from every hit the shield had absorbed.
I stayed on her for a full minute, longer than any heal I'd done tonight.
"You fought through a cracked forearm," I said.
"It wasn't broken."
"It was cracked and on the verge of shattering."
"Then I appreciate your timing."
I went to Sif next. Wolf bites on her calf and shoulder from the pack fight, the bruised ribs from the boss's backhand, and a deep bruise on her hip from the ice floor. She had more individual injuries than anyone. The gold worked through them one at a time.
"You look gorgeous when you're healing me," she said.
"You look gorgeous when you're stabbing things in the skull."
"I love it when you talk dirty to me."
I went to Nott next. There was a wolf bite on her forearm and strain in her casting arm from sustained amplified casting. She sat still while I healed her and said nothing until I was done.
"Thank you, Daniel."
"Thank you for the firepower. Those amplified bolts made this victory possible."
The corner of her mouth moved. "The crystals did most of the work."
"The crystals didn't aim themselves."
Color crept into her cheeks.
Liv came last. I healed the glancing hit from a wolf and muscle fatigue in her drawing shoulder from the intense archery. Both healed in seconds.
"You were amazing tonight," I said. "The trap gauntlet, the shooting. All of it. You never miss. It’s unbelievable.”