19. Chapter 19 The Succubus #2
The chamber opened into a wide space where the stone floor dipped into a shallow bowl, the walls coated with something red and translucent that pulsed with its own light. The heat was oppressive, the air thick enough to taste. Sweat dripped from my chin onto the torn robe.
The slimes sat in the bowl like boulders made of gelatin.
Red, amorphous, each one the size of a large dog, their bodies rippling with internal heat. Six of them spread across the chamber floor, and in the center, one twice the size of the others, a throbbing mass of red that absorbed the light around it.
Bjorna assessed the situation in two seconds. "Physical damage won't work on those. Sif, hold back. Nott, you're the primary damage dealer."
"Finally," Nott said, and stepped forward.
Her [Ember Bolts] hit the first slime and it split, dividing into two smaller masses that kept moving.
The smaller masses were faster and harder to target.
Nott switched to [Static Shock] and the lightning ripped through the slime's body in a way that fire hadn't.
The thing shuddered and collapsed into a puddle that stopped glowing.
"Lightning," Nott said. "They're vulnerable to lightning."
She went to work. The small slimes died in clusters, the [Static Shock] forking between them when they grouped together.
Sif found she could distract them by cutting through their mass with her daggers, splitting their attention while Nott fried them from a distance.
Liv's arrows passed through without doing much, so she switched to calling targets and tracking the ones that tried to flank.
The big slime was different. Nott hit it with everything she had and it absorbed the first two bolts. It split into three large masses that immediately recombined. She hit it again and it split and recombined again.
"It regenerates." Nott's breath was coming harder. "I need to hit it faster than it can reform."
She threw a sustained chain of [Static Shocks] into the mass, bolt after bolt, the white-blue light strobing across the chamber. The big slime split and split and split, each piece getting smaller, each piece taking another bolt, until the last piece stopped reforming and collapsed.
Nott sat down on a rock ledge and put her head in her hands. "That was expensive."
"You okay?" I knelt beside her and put my hand on her shoulder. Her muscles were locked tight from the sustained casting, the tension running through her neck and back and down her arms. The gold went in and the knots released under my palm. She straightened after a few seconds.
"Thank you. I'll be fine."
"You were incredible."
"I was doing my job." But her cheeks were pink.
Sif opened her mouth and I pointed at her. "Don't."
"I wasn't going to say anything."
"You were going to say something about Nott blushing."
"I was going to say she's beautiful when she's exhausted and sweaty, but since you brought up blushing, I'll mention that too."
Nott stood up. "I am going to kill you before the dungeon boss does."
The voice came again. Closer than it had ever been. So close it sounded like it was coming from the walls themselves, intimate and warm.
"I can feel your warmth, healer. You're different from the others who come down here."
The chamber went quiet. Everyone looked at me.
"Your friends are brave," the voice continued. It was low and smooth and something underneath it made the hair on my arms stand up. "They'll make lovely decorations."
"Decorations?" Liv said. "I'm nobody's decoration."
"She hasn't met you yet," Sif said. "When she does, she'll realize you're more of a liability than a decoration."
Bjorna checked her shield. "One more depth. She's down there."
"She's down there and she sounds like she wants to take Daniel home," Sif said. "I have opinions about that."
"Save your opinions for after we kill her," Bjorna replied. "Formation. Last floor."
[The Splits. Depth: 8.]
The corridor opened into a chamber that made every room we'd fought through look like a closet.
It was massive. A hundred feet across, the ceiling arching up into darkness above us.
Lava ran in channels cut into the stone floor, rivers of molten rock that divided the chamber into sections connected by stone bridges.
Pillars of dark stone rose from the lava, their surfaces carved with patterns that caught the red light and threw it across the walls.
Heat pressed against my skin from every direction.
Someone had designed this place. The stone hadn't been carved by mana density or shaped by natural forces. It had been built with intent, and it looked like a throne room.
The boss stood at the far end.
Her voice had been with us for three floors. I'd imagined something. What I got was bigger.
She was twelve feet tall at least.
She stood on a raised platform of dark stone at the chamber's far wall, her body framed by two lava channels that ran on either side like armrests.
Dark skin, deep red-black, smooth over a body that was built to be looked at.
Horns swept back from her forehead in two curved arcs, black and polished.
A tail, long and whip-thin, curled behind her with a barbed tip that tapped the stone in a slow rhythm.
Her claws were black, long, catching the lava light.
She was terrifying and gorgeous. There was no point pretending otherwise.
The outfit was almost nothing. Decorative, not functional, strips of dark fabric and metal that covered the minimum and left everything else on display. I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to kill her or fuck her. I shook my head rapidly trying to gain my focus.
I looked up and she was watching me. Red eyes, bright, lit from inside, locked on me with a gaze that had nothing to do with combat.
"There you are," she said. Her voice filled the chamber, the same voice from the corridors but richer now, deeper. "I've been calling you for so long."
Nobody moved.
"A healer who is able to cast [Smite]?" She tilted her head, studying me, and her tail stopped its rhythm. "Oh, you are rare."
"I've been called a lot of things," I said. "Rare is a new one. Who the hell are you?”
"He talks. My name is Verath.” She smiled. It was beautiful and it showed too many teeth. "Come with me, healer. I can give you so much pleasure. Leave these hags. Come to me and become my toy.”
Sif stepped forward. "I'm sorry, did you just proposition our healer three seconds after meeting him?"
Verath's red eyes slid to Sif and dismissed her in a heartbeat. "Your dog is fast. But she can't offer you eternity."
"I don't want eternity," I said. "I want to clear this dungeon."
"Such a waste." Verath stepped down from her platform. The ground shook under her weight. Twelve feet of demon boss, moving with a grace that shouldn't have been possible for something that size. "You can leave," she said, looking at Bjorna, at Sif, at Liv, at Nott. "He stays."
"Nobody is staying," Bjorna said. Her shield came up. "Formation."
Verath rubbed between her massive thighs. “Daniel’s face needs to be between my legs, giving me pleasure. Come, Daniel, taste me and your friends can leave with their lives.”
“Tempting, but I’ll have to pass.”
Sif laughed. “Gods, he said it was tempting. He’s such a manwhore.”
“Silence, dog!” Verath shouted.
“If you call me a dog again, I’m going to slice both of your surprisingly visible nipples right off those saggy breasts.”
Verath attacked.
The first fireball came from her palm and hit Bjorna's shield with a force that drove her back two full steps.
The blackstone held, but the dark metal trim glowed white-hot where the fire had struck.
Verath teleported. She was at the far end of the chamber and then she was on our left flank, claws raking at Sif, who barely dodged with a burst from the boots.
She teleported again. Behind us. Her tail swept low and caught Liv across the legs. Liv tumbled and I was there with [Mend] before she hit the ground, the gold closing the gash before it had time to bleed.
"I'm fine," Liv said, already pulling an arrow. "But if she asks you to taste her again, I'm putting this through her eye."
“Maybe you should do that anyway.” I smirked.
"She teleports," Bjorna said through gritted teeth. "I can't hold a line against a teleporter."
Verath reappeared on the platform. She threw two fireballs in quick succession, one at Bjorna and one at Nott. Bjorna caught hers on the shield. Nott dove sideways and the fireball hit the stone where she'd been standing, leaving a scorch mark three feet wide.
I healed the burns on Bjorna's shield arm where the heat had bled through.
"Are you watching me, healer?" Verath said from across the chamber. She was smiling. "I do so enjoy being watched."
"I'm watching you throw fireballs at my friends," I said. "I'm not enjoying it, to be quite honest."
"Oh, I like you." She teleported again, directly in front of me. Her claws swept down. I stumbled backward and Sif hit Verath from the side, daggers flashing, but Verath was already gone. She reappeared twenty feet away, a thin line of dark blood on her arm where Sif's blade had caught her.
"The wet dog draws blood," Verath said. She looked at the cut with more curiosity than pain. "Interesting."
"Stay still and I'll draw more," Sif said.
The fight escalated. Verath's fireballs got bigger. She started targeting me specifically, throwing fire in my direction to force me to move, to separate me from the group. She wanted me alive. She wasn't going for the kill. She was herding me.
"She's focusing on Daniel," Bjorna called. "Tighten formation. Don't let her get between him and the group."
Two fireballs hit the bridge we were standing on. The stone cracked and lava surged through the gap. I grabbed Nott's arm and pulled her back as the bridge split under our feet. Sif jumped the gap. Bjorna braced on the far side.
Verath appeared on the platform again, twenty feet above us, looking down.
"Your bear-kin is loyal," she said. "I respect loyalty. But she can't protect you from me."