Asheron's Fall: The Power of Ten, Book Six

With proper tactics for this worked out, our advance through the Dungeon was steady, if not fast, and it was very definitely not quiet.

Which was why we were currently standing quietly behind a wall of black magma as a whole lot of tromp-tromp-tromp marched by on the other side of it.

-Our good friend Scold actually ordering his guards and workers around?- Princess Kristie /mused in the Markchat,

-Must be the noise we be making,- the Mick /chortled, while Healing Magic crawled over him and buffed back his Soak. Minor magic flowed over him and cooling black blobs of lava shattered as they fell to the stone floor from his Armor and Shield.

-It can be damn hard to concentrate on precious experiments with all the earth-shaking booms and stuff going off,- I /agreed. -Congrats to us for being more than minor annoyances?-

-If it has the ability to command its golums, then the fact nothing respawned behind us was probably alarming enough to trigger this sweep, right?- Selena /asked, listening to the clomping.

-Aye, good thought. Which reminds me… the thing ain’t no general. Ye think it was stupid enough t’ send out its real ones with its Summons here?-

I think everyone tilted their head at the thought. -Then it’s worth it to kill them all here, especially if we can beat the respawn of the Summons...- Kris /smiled.

-Uh uh. First, Invisible Kris is going streaking through all the remaining rooms and vivifying all the Summons points she can suss out with her Tremblesense. Then she comes back and we kill them all.-

I pointed as a transparent circle waited around the head of Crown as I tipped it in her direction.

-Oh, fuck yes.- She clapped her hand atop my Staff, and I made a slender slot in the wall, which she promptly skated sideways out of and was off and running totally unseen, even as the sound of loud footsteps grew much louder with the opening.

We watched her dizzying progress in the Markspace through three rooms we’d cleared and a dozen more rooms and halls we hadn’t gotten to, which I also tracked up in a Holo in front of us all.

The floors of the place were generally quite smooth and didn’t have much dust, but that didn’t mean much to her Tremblesense. The places worn by the weight of something heavy standing there simply showed more wear and tear than other sections of the floor… and an adamantine Blade shearing through the stone sputtered with soft vivic flames as the vestigial magic of the Summoning points reacted to Quaver’s presence.

Scold might not have been the brightest, but he’d at least left two Plasma Golums and an overbuilt Pyroclastic half again as tall as its fellows waiting at the entry to what was probably the final room, judging by her glance within it. A familiar Magma Golum was standing in the middle of various blocks of stone and iron in a round circle in the middle of another of the crazy lava chambers here, the red-hot stone held back only by the magic draining the heat and power for whatever purpose he had.

Kris was on her way back as the Mick /observed, -Ye saw the Runes on that one column were all in virindi purple?-

-I’m thinking that our extremely intelligent golum here might not be interested in playing the final boss to the Dungeon,- Kris /deduced.

-Awwww, I wanted to kill him and his little kids again,- Rogar /protested, earning a laugh from everyone.

-We’ll do what we must,- the Mick /pointed out, -but that column indicates he’s measuring the manaflow an’ energies o’ neighboring mountains, an’ he managed to suck some of the virindi energy out o’ there before the vivus got to it all. That’s not a simple thing t’ do.-

-Upgrades to himself being only part of the potential process,- Kris /agreed. -This place needs to go, and I’ve the feeling that he’s perfectly ready to blow it as well with that virindi energy.-

-At least he’s not trying to force Summons through the vivic seals on them. He’s got more than enough arcane power pumping through this place to do so,- I /added. -I could always drill us a new tunnel out, but that would be annoying, having to fight our way back out through his enhanced golums.-

-I want a chokepoint so we only have to take on one of these golums at a time and can cut them down in series. There, there, or there.-

We all looked at the map at the points Kris had indicated.

-Second point. Shape it like this.- The Mick indicated a thick wall, the passageway through it like an L, with the bottom opening fan-shaped so he and Kris could hold the way. -Make ‘em slide through it at an angle so they can’t snipe from behind the one fighting easily.- He drew two more lines. -Archers an' ye stand behind walls with slits in them here, while Her Highness an' I can swing behind these if there be an explosion. Counter any fire or electric magic if there be a threat, prime for Healing if need be, an' I think we can take down most of these things.-

They had been getting murderously fast at the task, the building cycle of Opportunity Attacks an engine of slaughter the golums simply couldn’t deal with normally.

Didn’t help them that Kris could also pump some point-blank shots into them if she didn’t have magma to cool down, either.

-Line it up.- Disks snapped into order, I sat on Rogar’s Disk as the Mick grabbed Crown again. -Go.-

The concealing wall flowed away in front of him, deeper and wider than the opening I’d made for Kris. Lord Mick was already in motion and sprinting towards the hallway we’d been driven back from.

Everybody was looking backwards, the golums having mostly marched past us. But guards had been posted, and one Magma raised its crude arm and pointed at us, magic flaring and coming after us. I flicked a Dispel into the Volley’s path and it shattered in Silver sparkles, but all the golums that had passed us by in sight, and likely those beyond sight, spun around to face us.

Then we were around a corner, and a dozen War spells blew against the walls, gouging out chunks of black rock and dust as they did so.

----

Princess Kristie was coming back in the other direction, meeting us where we were going to make a stand, such as it was.

The golums were not slow, pounding after us with heavy steps powered by the Force Matrices animating them. But I could move a lot of stone really fast, there was stone all around us, and suddenly the nice and wide hallways that allowed them to move two or three abreast was down to only a couple feet wide here, and they could only move by turning sideways to do so, even the ones ostensibly made out of gas.

They could, of course, start beating on the stone with the reinforced limbs they had, and given they were used for mining, they’d make relatively quick progress.

At which point I’d just put the walls back up. And even more fun, I could easily pose tons of stone atop them to come smashing down if they removed the supports, which I was absolutely sure they would do. It likely wouldn’t kill them at all, but they would be trapped and slowed down… and I could fill in the stone all around them to basically trap them there, although they could certainly try to blast themselves free from their awkward positions.

The blind turn was up, our protected enfilade was ready to go to work, and I sealed up the end of the hallway behind us as Kris and the Mick lined up for the first golum to come clomping out of the narrow cut, take a load of frozen OMAs to the face, and diamonds of Lost Light were fracturing as they began to cut and thrust with swirling speed.

------

It went surprisingly well, all things told. The gas golums being chopped down were out of direct line of fire of the incoming golums, who weren’t smart enough to light up the stiff breezes that popped as they slowly decompressed after falling. Any rubble from Pyroclastic golums going down was iced down in short order and could not ignite anything coming afterwards, scattering by the sweeping legs of the golums advancing eagerly behind to come to grips with us.

They were making decent progress on the walls I’d put in their way, at least until multi-ton blocks and spheres came crashing down on top of them, giving them more work to do.

They didn’t help one another, either, simply queuing up to beat on us as quickly as we could chop them down.

I Sifted away any gems or pyreal from those destroyed, of course.

There were two explosions, both caused by the hot bodies of magmas igniting gas golums. Neither explosion was unexpected or dangerous, as the Mick and Kris spun away to the alcoves there so the fires blew past them, and the archers and I simply stepped away from the slits and let the fires blow past and above us.

As for the exploding Pyroclastics, Kris’ two Shields and the Mick’s Clan formed a trifecta of cover as they snapped together back to back and the hot lava spattered over them, failing to harm them. They spun back apart just as smoothly, and the fighting continued, scarcely broken in tempo.

------

The oversized Magma Golum guarding the final entryway died first, Shields warding off the supporting Plasma Golums until its 20k of Health and Health Qi was chewed through. Its detonation was enough to blast Kris and the Mick fifty feet back through the air when it exploded… and left two Pyroclastics behind it to cause more trouble.

I blew some Healing Cold Shards through the two of them to take the edge off of any damage, and then they kicked off one another to separate and dodge the incoming Firebolts coming in to finish them off.

Their charge attacks hit the same one high and low, and the dance of dying golums continued in arcs and walls of frost and diamonds of Lost Light.

-----

“You again.”

It recognized us. Definitely not a standard NPC boss if it retained such knowledge independently.

The oversized Magma Golem swiveled fully to face us, crude fingers that had been manipulating odd lights and levers on the devices around it disappearing back into the big bludgeoning lower arms of its own kind.

“Your destruction of my little frozen toy was annoying, but I have better things to concern myself with than those sniveling balls of ice. As you have already proven you can defeat me in combat, I see no reason to remain here with you… or for you to remain here.”

His surge of motion towards the column with the purple Runes might have been a little unexpected, if he’d not said what he’d said.

“OUT!” I shouted, and my long-form Dimension Door popped up, a black doorway in space which everyone promptly jumped through.

I watched his head turn as the destroyed arcane device sparked, and then a plume of violent unleashed warring arcane energies blew for the ceiling. Scold leapt over the edge of his platform onto the lava field below, but I swear there was some irritation in his burning eyes as he left my sight, and I hopped backwards through the Door.

---

With a head-spinning jerk, we were up and outside on the side of the mountain, and I realized the world wasn’t spinning so much as the ground was jerking.

“Off we go!” Kris ordered, tossing me onto Selena’s Disk and promptly motoring down the mountainside, wobble-legged Roaches crouching down on their Disks and the Mick trucking afterwards as things began to bounce free on the mountainsides. Plumes of steam and similar things suddenly erupted out of vents that sent boulders flying hundreds of meters into the air.

-Two in three days? This be unfair!- the Mick /protested, unable to be physically heard over the rumbling in the ground.

-It’s not going to erupt, just bubble and flood. I think Frosthaven is far enough away to avoid it, and the cold magic there will freeze any lava regardless, but we’ll have to see.-

Stone cracked to the left of us, the landing where the entry to the Dungeon was splitting wide open and flinging one of the stone doors right out its hinges. A whole lot of hot gasses went roaring out of there in a blaze of flame we veered away from, raging for hundreds of yards as it vented angrily from below.

-Aye, see we will,- the Mick /mused, as we booked for distance down the unkind slopes of the mountain.