Rune Seeker

Two minutes was how long it took for Hiral to gather his thoughts and push off the strange mental fatigue from modifying the ability – Runic Regeneration+ and his Rune of Restoration really showing their worth. Feeling good enough to move on to the Mid-Boss, he stood and looked around until he found Seena, Seeyela, and Left all standing near the lip of the pit. The other party members were spread out among the researchers, clearly keep an eye on them.

“All done?” Seena asked as Hiral came over to join the trio.

“Yeah,” Hiral said. “You should see a new entry under the Vanguard’s Presence.”

“Healthy Living?” Seeyela asked, having obviously found the entry. “Take it from the note, that’s not going to stack with our Gourmand ability, huh? Two food buffs from one meal – or different meals – would be asking too much.”

“Good for Gran and Romin, though,” Seena said. “Oh, and Wallop I guess. And now we get the rested bonus experience. Hiral, you sure you’re good with putting all this effort in making us stronger instead of yourself?"

"We’re a party,” he said, like that answered everything. And, to him, it did.

“We are,” Seena said, threading her arm around his waist.

“Ugh, before you two get all cute and cuddly,” Seeyela said. “Are you ready for the Mid-Boss?”

“I think so,” Hiral said, his arm likewise going around Seena. “Any idea what it is?”

“Would fit with the theme,” Hiral said with a sigh. “What kind?”

“Possibly all of them,” Left said. “I’ve spotted slots for the saw blades, nozzles for the flames, and holes for the darts. Those half-spheres on the walls over there,” the double pointed as he spoke, “are likely for the lightning we dealt with in the sixth tunnel.”

“I’m also feeling spatial disturbances,” Seeyela said. “Gateway attacks, probably.”

“Could the room itself by the Mid-Boss?” Hiral asked. “Nivian and Wule fought a wall, after all.”

“I don’t think so,” Left said, changing the angle of his arm to point at the middle of the room, and Hiral immediately spotted what the double had noticed.

“A track of some kind?” Hiral asked, following the rails from the center of the room, through the closed portcullis. “Mid-Boss is going come out on that when we drop down, huh?”

“That’s our thought,” Seena said. “We could probably slip through the gate with how fast you and your gropey scarves are…”

“But the researchers should stay up here in case we can’t,” Hiral said. “Then there’s the achievement for beating whatever this thing is.”

“Exactly,” Seena said. “So, we’re going to drop down all at once – think you can do that for us?”

Hiral looked at the fifty foot drop, and nodded. “No problem. Left should give us Path of Butterflies before we go down, though, just in case there are more pressure plates.”

“Agreed,” Seena said, then changed to speak into the party chat. “Let’s gather up people. Time to go down. Make sure the researchers know not to follow us until we take care of things.”

“Got it, Boss,” Yanily said.

It took a few minutes for the rest of the party to pass the plans on to the researchers, but then they’d all gathered up near where they’d entered. Since they assumed the Mid-Boss would enter from the opposite side, this’d give them the best chance to observe what they were up against before it tried to kill them.

“We expect there to be traps down there,” Seena started. “And a lot of them, Yan, you and I shouldn’t use our domains. Could make it too hard to see the traps.”

“Makes sense,” the spearman said.

“Sis, your summons are probably out of the question too,” Seena continued. “Hiral, your Resonance of Heroes might be good here. Feel free to use it if you think we need it.”

“I’ll probably use it anyway,” Hiral said. “Should be off cooldown by the time we get to the Boss, and the faster we kill the Mid-Boss, the safer.”

“Good enough,” Seena said. “Other than that, let’s go.”

The party nodded they were ready, and Hiral reached out with his scarves of energy, wrapping one around each of them – and two around Wallop. Li’l Ur just held on to Seena’s hair this time, and Hiral stepped off into the pit, taking the others with him.

Gravity and Rejection made the drop quick, but safe, and they all touched down on planes of pink butterflies a foot above the arena floor a few seconds later. As soon as they’d passed the midway point, lines of intense light criss-crossed the top of the arena, like a cage of energy. From the distance, the beams reminded Hiral of the attacks his Mobile Artillery Spheres used – or the energy attacks of the Enemy from the Rise of Fallen Reach dungeon – but even more intense.

B-Ranked power, and with that many, nope, we aren’t going back up that way until they turn off.

Like his thought was a cue, the portcullis of the far end of the arena opened, and a large shadow moved within. A loud ka-chunk, like two huge, metal slabs locked into place, followed by the sound of a massive chain dragging across the ground, and something emerged from the gate.

“Is that a moon?” Yanily asked. Shrouded in shadow as it was, it certainly had that image until it emerged.

A sphere, twenty feet in diameter, made of the same brass as everything else in the dungeon, came out on the tracks, the portcullis closing immediately behind it. Besides the small trolley-like device moving the device out into the center of the room, the sphere was perfectly smooth, though a name appeared above it as Hiral’s View activated.

(Mid-Boss – Construct) Tomorrow’s Death-Sphere (Unknown Rank)

“Not exactly what I expected,” Yanily said.

“No, but don’t take it for…” Seena started, but cut off as two rods with spheres at the end emerged from the top of the globe. Looking comically like antennae, there was nothing funny about the sudden, building charge in the air. “Scatter!” Seena ordered, and the party dashed to the sides, leaving only the spearman standing in place as an arc of lightning shot from one of the rods.

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Barely moving more than to lift his spear in front of him, Yanily absorbed the lightning as it struck. Or, tried to, with the arcing energy flooding outward, the air around the spearman charging and sparking. Frowning, Yanily began to get pushed back by the ceaseless current, while the other rod unleashed its own blast.

This second stream of electricity chased after Hiral and his doubles – who’d sprinted right along the wall – the sound of it like a constant tear of fabric. Still, at the speed it was moving, it wouldn’t catch Hiral’s group, and as long as it was focused on them, it left the rest of the party free to counterattack.

Realizing the same thing, Wallop charged forward while Romin popped a shot off from his Runic Blunderbuss. The burst of Impact splashed off the hard, brass shell without any apparent effect, but Seena’s Cinders came a heartbeat later, slashing across the metal. A bamf signaled Seeyela was getting in on the action as well, just as Wallop closed half the distance.

Except, that was when Hiral noticed multiple things happening at the same time. First, the bolt of lightning chasing Hiral and his doubles strafed along at exactly the right level to hit those half-spheres in the wall Left had noticed earlier. And, to Hiral’s sensory domain, the charge was spreading faster than the bolt was moving. Spreading and powering the other half-spheres around the border of the arena.

Ahead of Hiral, sparks spat and arced along the wall, while the charge in the air continued to climb.

Second, something about a quarter of the way up from the bottom of the sphere shifted, and suddenly thin blades of brass unfurled. Defying the original size of the sphere, these blades extended thirty feet around the central Death-Sphere, and began to rotate. From practically stationary to moving so fast they were a whirling blur in less than a second, Wallop’s feet slammed into the planes of pink butterflies in an attempt to stop his charging, forward momentum.

Rejection flooded from his feet, but it wasn’t going to be enough – he’d gone in hard with the rune from the beginning. Directly ahead of him, barely a few feet at this point, the blades whirred at face-level, and maybe his horn would be strong enough to block them. Then again, even if they did, the sheer speed of them would give the huge Rune-o a bad case of whiplash – at best.

Romin seemed to realize the same thing, his eyes widening as he reached for his companion – the gesture nothing more than symbolic. There simply wasn’t anything the Bonder could do for his companion.

But, just maybe, there was something Hiral could do.

Slowing, just slightly, Hiral fell behind as Right and Left zig-zagged in front of him, Auroran Conquerors and bothDaggers of En and Sath intercepting the arcing lightning bolts. For Hiral’s part, with his path safe – for the moment – he’d already threaded solar energy into his Rune and Edict of Attraction. Focusing not on himself, he instead tethered a distant point in the room – thanks to the Edict’s power – to the charging Rune-o.

With the Edict floating between Wallop and the wall, thick strands of Connection formed in between, strengthened by Increase and Dreaming, then strained like a rope pulled taught. Hiral clenched his fists like he was holding the rope in his bare hands, willing it not to break against Wallop’s momentum. It only needed to hold for a second…

The huge Rune-o pulled up short, the spinning blades at eye-level slicing through the air just a few inches in front of him. Hiral let Attraction fade as soon as the companion was safe, just in time to turn his attention back to his own problems. Namely, the arc of lightning that’d caught up from behind while he’d slowed to help Wallop.

Electricity pulsed and tore along the wall – while the other constant stream kept Yanily pinned back where they’d started – and Hiral threw his Rune of Dreaming against it. The lightning dimmed immediately, the potency of it dropping at least a Rank – if not two – while the tearing sound dulled in Hiral’s ears. Then, confident he could take the hit thanks to Friend of the Storm, he quick-drew his RHC and took aim at the rod on the sphere’s top.

Without spending time to charge Power Attack+, Hiral pulled the trigger to spit a Piercing Shot-enhanced bolt at the Mid-Boss. The searing bolt of Impact crossed the distance at the same time the lightning washed over Hiral. His muscles spasmed as the electricity coursed through him and then passed without lingering. His Runic Regeneration+ was already taking care of the minor damage he’d suffered, while the lightning continued on at the same pace.

It wasn’t chasing us. Must be rotating around the room to charge all the smaller spheres.

As for the results of his shot? He’d landed a glancing blow on the sphere, leaving a nasty… dent… in the sturdy brass. Whatever Tomorrow had made these things out of, it was nothing if not hard to damage.

“Get above the blades and lightning,” Seena ordered into the party chat, clearly seeing one of the arcing bolts coming in her direction… only for it to stop at a complete one-eighty from where it started. “Or at least the blades.”

Quick on their feet, the party – including Wallop – climbed another ten feet into the air on the Path of Butterflies, while the arcing lightning that had struck Hiral reversed course. The charged half-spheres around the arena were still sparking bolts at anything within fifteen feet, which only left a very narrow region of safety between them and the spinning blades – if the party had stayed on the floor.

Now above the whirling rotor of death – and the angled chain of lightning – the party had a straight shot at the Mid-Boss, safe from both it’s weapons. Sure, they’d have to time the passing of the electricity, but that didn’t look to be a challenge for even the slowest of them.

Only Yanily had remained pinned by one of the two initial bolts, and even he freed himself from it as he climbed straight up, like his feet were on rungs of a ladder. Thin steam wafted off the man’s armor, but his health had barely dropped under the onslaught, and lightning crackled on his spear – more than ready to return it to where it’d come from.

Really, if those were the only tricks the Mid-Boss had – on top of its durability – the fight might be a long one, but it wouldn’t be a difficult one.

Clearly the Death-Sphere thought the same thing. Dozens of sawblades emerged from slots along the floor, making that place even more treacherous. Gouts of flame placed haphazardly around the arena intermittently shot all the way to the energy net capping the pit, forcing the party to scamper to the sides to dodge. Romin, Gran, and Yanily didn’t quite move quickly enough, and the party’s healer quickly snapped out some of her healing threads.

That wasn’t the end of the traps, though. Holes around the exterior wall – at all levels – opened, and nearly silent fft, fft, fft sounded to Hiral’s high Atn.

Poison darts!

His sensory domain – which covered the entirety of the pit – showed him exactly where they came from, and where they were going. Dex proving its value, he easily took a single, simple step to escape their trajectories, but the other party members wouldn’t have that chance.

Instead, he reached out with his Edict of Attraction and focused on the feel of the darts. They were dangerous, but small. Light. Without their own intent. There was no will to challenge his own, and he created a pair of nexus points near the bottom of far wall – on either side of where most of the party was. With darts coming from all angles, putting a pull near the center of the arena would still create narrow lines of fire.

Where he put them though? Well, hopefully it would create a wide enough lane of safety for the others.

Now all they needed to do was stay off the floor, weave through the rotating lightning arcs that each strafed one side of the room, dodge the vertical flame jets, and stay in the safe lanes of darts – all while trying to damage the Mid-Boss. No problem.

Except, said Mid-Boss wasn’t finished there, more plates opening up on all sides of the sphere. Devices that were unmistakably barrels like Hiral’s RHCs emerged – pointing in all directions – as the Mid-Boss made it very clear there was no safe zone in the room.