Chapter Thirty-Six
Reve saved them all with a telekinetic barrier that dragged the globe out of the water and sent them crashing to the ground on the rocky shore.
The glass of their transportation had already begun to shatter while they momentarily flew through the air, and thick, jagged shards of it were sent out to litter the ground after they bounced off the stone floor.
Kora sent those shards blasting away from the Party with an air-aligned Elemental Wall.
Vester watched Reve gather every piece and start them spinning in the air around herself.
The Avatar of Life spread her wings and sailed into the air to confront the dragon—and fortunately this time she was allowed to fly.
Its next breath attack splashed across one of her telekinetic barriers and was met with numerous glass bits stabbing into its bony muzzle.
The metallic thumps of Woody and Ripper hitting the ground sounded behind Vester, and then the golems were charging past him toward the huge monster that was even now pulling itself out of a sunken depression in the ground.
It appeared as though the dragon’s skeleton had been lying within the floor like a fossil until they’d reached its chamber.
The neck of the monster was still shedding rock debris while it shook itself to try and tear its wings free.
Vester saw stony flakes cracking upward along the ground every time the bones shifted.
The anchoring proved opportune for Li Ra. Her rifle released a brilliant green bolt that splashed across the skeleton’s neck. Acid began bubbling immediately, sinking into the gritty vertebra, and Vester was relieved to see that unlike the T-rex, the thing actually took damage.
Hopefully this isn’t a trap set by the dungeon to fling us to another floor. His guess seemed supported by a notification that was demanding attention in the corner of his vision.
Stage Three Quest Complete.
Stage Four: Defeat the Lost Guardian.
Maybe this means we’re close to finishing this, he considered optimistically.
Boss fights usually mean the end… Vester stopped letting himself be distracted and conjured dozens of illusions of Reve circling the beast. They flickered into existence, each with their own storm of razor-sharp glass to threaten it.
At the monster’s feet, numerous copies of Woody and Ripper concealed the true golems. They swarmed over the skeletal dragon, and to join the illusions, Vester tried to envision the idea of just the tips of their claws being real before the moment of impact.
Half his mana vanished in a gulp and he swayed where he stood, but the Boss was suddenly gouged in a dozen places. A pulse swept over him, and he recognized the feeling of Krysta’s Sanctuary activating. The pandali put her hand against his back and his head cleared instantly.
Kora wasn’t standing around doing nothing; she’d advanced just ahead of Krysta and slammed her tower shield into the ground, then swept her arm out to the left.
Stone erupted from the dungeon floor to form a wall that created a berm to give the Party something to hide behind, and then the kitsune leaped over it in a crackling rush of lightning.
Vester had never seen anyone shield bash a gout of flame from the sky until Kora did it before his eyes. The Prismatic Paladin was wreathed in an aura of electricity, and the rush of green flames blazing through the sky at her didn’t cause her to slow at all.
She just swatted the flames with her shield and a corresponding shockwave of lightning tore away from her. The fiery attack came apart and then Kora was landing on the skeleton’s bottom jaw. She slashed twice to carve into two of its fangs, but it was the static discharge that did the true damage.
The monster locked up, frozen with the sparks dancing down its spine, so Li Ra took that moment to unleash an empowered shot straight through its flaming eye socket. Acid burbled within the skeleton’s skull and the beast screamed in a sound that shook Vester’s bones.
Somehow both incredibly deep and terribly shrill, the noise marked the moment the Boss finished tearing itself free of the floor.
Kora was contemptuously spat onto the floor and then stomped with a huge paw.
The dragon’s bony wings snapped out before arcing forward to stab at Reve where she hovered in midair.
Its long tail continued ripping out of the rocky ground and tried to come down on the rest of the Party, but it struck the border of Krysta’s Sanctuary and the entire perimeter flexed—the pandali went to one knee with a gasp.
Vester actually saw cracks seem to form along the invisible perimeter of the Sanctuary.
Woody and Ripper continued climbing the Boss, and their talons and serrated lashes dug deep cracks into its bones. The Boss swept its head around and bit at them, but Vester maintained the illusions surrounding them; all the skeleton succeeded in doing was biting into its own wing at the shoulder.
Bone splintered, yet Vester didn’t think the damage was extreme.
“Anyone have any ideas on weak points?” he asked.
He tried to examine the beast with his Mana Sense, but it was coated in an even sheen of sickly gray energy that didn’t seem stronger at any point in particular. “I don’t see a core or central node.”
“Skull is the most likely vulnerability,” Li said while firing yet another blast into the beast’s face. Acid charred bone, yet the Boss appeared to be ignoring her and had gone back to trying to swat Reve out of the sky.
Just like Vester had done with the golems, he maintained the mirror images around the Avatar of Life to make it harder for the Boss to pinpoint her location.
It seemed to be working, because Reve darted around with impunity while doing her best to shred the monster’s bones with her cloud of shrapnel.
Kora pulled herself out of the crater she’d been stomped into and rolled her shoulders. She sheathed her scimitar and wrapped both hands around the handle of her tower shield, then jumped up to slam the dragon in the chest with it.
This time, ice spread out from the impact. The frosty coating grew over its bones in a cloud of steam and Vester watched white lines curl up and around the skeleton. The Boss’ chest and shoulders were soon coated, and its front half now moved visibly slower than the back.
It was simply too large for the elemental energy to completely coat.
Its retaliatory blast of emerald fire turned the ground Kora had landed on into broken slag. The rock began melting, though Vester saw a strange green tint to the liquid stone, and then caustic vapors began rising out.
Kora reeled, gagging, and Vester noted black lines creeping across her face and throat. “She’s been poisoned!” he yelled.
“Get her!” Skylar shouted, though Vester was moving before the words had finished leaving the djinn’s lips.
The air yanked at his clothing and he swept out of the Sanctuary at full speed.
Since he’d yet to have time to adjust to the physical changes of becoming a Trickster, Vester felt like the world was slowing down around him.
If his intelligence and wisdom hadn’t risen to match his dexterity, he likely would have tripped and fallen.
The greatest issue he had, however, wasn’t processing his own reaction time, it was his muscles and tendons straining at being forced to move so quickly.
His constitution wasn’t even a quarter of his dexterity, and he was starting to suffer for the imbalance.
But he wasn’t going to let that stop him.
Vester ran with his body tilted toward the ground, his entire frame pumping to get every ounce of speed he could manage out, and when he reached Kora he skidded into a circle that saw his feet heat up from the friction.
His arm looped around her waist and he felt his shoulder dislocate with a pop that flashed pain through him.
But he changed the shape of Trickster’s Cane into a hoop around the pair of them to lock her in place, then used her to anchor the rest of his turn.
Once his feet braced firmly on the melting stone, Vester kicked off.
Kora’s body folded over his shoulder and her weight slowed him down, but he was still running fast.
Krysta swung her staff over her head and an invisible force slammed down on the dragon’s head like an anvil. Rebuke the Guest drove the monster’s jawbone into the ground, and instead of biting Vester in half, the creature found its snout sinking into the half-molten floor it had torched.
Then all the glass Reve was manipulating came crashing down on the back of its exposed neck in a rain of splintered shards. Li Ra fired two bolts into the same vertebra, and the dragon’s spine started cracking.
When he reached the Sanctuary, Krysta immediately turned away from the dragon to start healing Kora.
The poison released had to have been potent, because in the time it took Vester to run out and bring her back, Kora’s flesh had started to rot all over her face.
Her milky eyes were bleeding, and he could see the inside of her jaw through her cheeks.
Then Krysta was pushing him out of the way and channeling energy into the kitsune.
The Prismatic Paladin’s flesh began mending, and Vester let out a breath of relief. He turned his attention fully to the Boss and saw something strange taking place. Ripper and Woody had reached the spinal column, and the golems clambered up to attack the same cracked bones the Party was targeting.
But when their claws and blades sank in and finally shattered the Boss’ neck, they found a thick, slimy spinal cord. The red meat pulsed faintly, which gave Vester a premonition of what was about to happen. “Everyone get back!” he roared.
Skylar must have ensured her golems listened to the warning, because the pair leaped off just before the flesh exploded outward in a tumor that seemed to swell and encase the entire base of the dragon’s skull.
The meat and muscle didn’t stop there: gristle, scales, veins, arteries, and nerves visibly grew outward to form a living dragon’s head, and then brilliant blue eyes opened to glare at them while emerald scales coated its face.
The same transformation spread down the Boss’ neck toward its shoulders, and the transition from undead to living monster looking to be mending all the damage they’d done to the thing. It shook itself all over, tearing away the icy chunks from Kora’s shield bash.
Li Ra fired bolt after bolt into the dragon’s face, but the head moved faster than before.
The Boss kept twisting to take the shots on its thicker scales, avoiding any damage to its huge eyes.
When its wings finished reforming the monster leaped into the air with a thunderous boom and a wave of wind that shoved all of them backward.
All of them but Reve.
The Force Master spun with her wings wrapped around herself in a protective cocoon and took the opportunity to drop down onto the back of the dragon’s head.
Her metal hand shot out and sank its fingertips into the beast’s horn.
She reached up with her other arm, and a thick stalagmite tore free of the ceiling to spear into the Boss’ back.
At least Vester assumed that had been her intention. The monster proved capable of protecting itself when it twisted in midair and caught her attack in its claws. The long tail snapped up and around and shattered the stone in a burst of raw power that was awe inspiring.
Yet Reve was no novice. She caught the broken chunks of stone and started them pummeling the monster’s wings immediately; it appeared that the flesh was mortal—because she punched massive holes in those huge green membranes and the dragon fell from the sky.
While Reve kept it distracted, Vester tried something Non said he should be able to do a while ago: he materialized a version of his hand against the dragon’s jaw and cast Deprivation Cage through it.
The sensation of a disembodied hand was a little disturbing, and his mana took a big hit, but the spell went off.
The other thing Vester did was spread his Labyrinth underneath the dragon so when it crashed down onto the ground, it hit the trap. Smokey gray walls flooded upward to form a maze around the beast’s mind, and its body slumped with a thud that shook the cave.
“I have no idea how long that’ll hold it,” he informed the others. “Or if it’ll hold at all. But I layered Deprivation Cage and Labyrinth to buy us some time. Maybe now that it’s alive again we can actually kill it.”
“Agreed,” Li Ra said. She sprinted to a stone column and climbed it swiftly. Vester helped her with a few footholds though was unable to avoid grunting at the mana demand. The move had been instinctual, but he hadn’t prepared himself for the higher cost.
Still, with the assist Li Ra was in position to start firing into the Boss’ head and she didn’t hesitate.
Reve used a different tactic. The bat-winged Force Master flew over the water they’d emerged from and gathered up a large bubble of it in her telekinesis; then she spun it around herself and poured it into the dragon’s nostrils and throat.
Vester had never heard a giant reptile start drowning—or essentially get waterboarded—and the noise was truly horrific. If plumbers tried making porn with plungers and deepthroat videos but added the sound of falling jello it couldn’t have been worse than what assaulted his ears.
Skylar actually gagged. “That’s… terrible,” she muttered with a hand over her mouth. Her other hand gestured for Ripper and Woody to go back at the Boss, and fortunately the golems had no issue being squeamish.
Blood flew when they started tearing into the dragon’s chest.
Kora coughed, gasped, and tried to sit up before Krysta sat on her stomach. “No, you don’t!” the pandali yelled. “I just regrew your lungs and you are going to fucking stay there until I tell you that you can get up!”
Her huge tail batted at Kora’s face, and the Prismatic Paladin slumped back and raised her hands in defeat. “Okay, promise,” Kora rasped. She’d never sounded so weak—Vester gave silent thanks to Non that Krysta had been able to reverse the rot.
“Her lungs were gone?” he asked, glancing their way. “Like, entirely destroyed?”
“Not completely,” Krysta admitted. She climbed off Kora and resumed channeling magic into the woman. “They’d just decayed to sludge, but if you’d been a few minutes slower they’d have been completely gone.”
Fucking hell, Vester thought, his eyes going back to the dragon. I almost wish we could kill this thing twice.