Rune Seeker

Yanily’s Dragon’s Breath removed his cannon from existence, while the one in front of Right got torn out of its moorings by the power of his blow. Where Seeyela’s weapons hadn’t been able to damage the metal previously, her chain of Bamfs – and the bonuses they gave, thanks to her Primal Chord – made all the difference.

This time when she attacked, the brass of the two cannons crumpled inward before her Fangs even reached them. Then, when her daggers finally struck, the pulsating collection of energy ate through the brass in a heartbeat.

Just like that, all that was left were the two cannons in front of Hiral, though, not for long.

The Greatsword of Amin Thett – tethered and with its weight increased – tore through the cannons like a runaway carriage. Separation, along with an unhealthy amount of flame borrowed from Seena, was more than a match for the two cannons. The barrels parted like water, as did the brass casing of the Death-Sphere between them. More than that, the arc of Hiral’s swing swept greater than half the sword’s length – almost four feet – deep into the Mid-Boss.

Metal and components shattered under the force of his swing, and he wasn’t the only one who’d bypassed the outer later. Opposite him, Yanily’s attack plunged deep inside, shredding anything in its way, and blasting the extra energy out of the slots where nothing but broken cannons now rested.

The combined effect was a massive blow against the Death-Sphere, practically gutting it from the inside-out. That had to have…

Hiral’s head snapped up as his sensory domain told him the near-constant lightning that had been arcing above had stopped. His eyes settled on the closest of the two rods – small sphere on the top – before electricity crackled around it, then zapped in his direction. Fast as it was, Hiral turned out to be faster.

Up came the Greatsword of Amin Thett, and Hiral twisted his wrist, blocking the lightning strike with the flat of the blade. Still, the muscles of his entire right arm clenched as the jolt traveled up it, and some kind of concussive component threw him back. Ten feet, and pink butterflies sparked under his feet as he skidded backwards, Rejection getting his movement under control. Another sweep of his sword cut a second lightning bolt out of the air – though he added some more Rejection to the blade to protect him from the shock.

Back around the sphere, the other lightning rod took a shot at Seeyela, and hit nothing but fading purple smoke as she vanished with a bamf. Like the Death-Sphere outright gave up on trying to hit her, its next bolt arced at Right. Like Hiral, he intercepted the attack with his own – a fist, in this case – and lingering electricity arcing up his arm to leave burns that leaked solar energy in their wake.

No sooner had the lightning passed, than a crimson needle and thread hit Right’s shoulder, energy pulsing out of it to repair the damage done.

“Don’t got much healing left in me,” Gran said over the party chat. “I can’t do enough damage to this damn thing to get more back. Stop dawdling!”

A bellowing snort was the reply she got, followed by thundering steps charging across the room, splashes of pink trailing a Runeocerous-shaped blur. Wallop’s Charge ability slammed into the side of the Death-Sphere, the whole thing rocking under the impact. Actually rocking!

“Seena,” Hiral said into the chat interface, watching as the Mid-Boss wobbled, and Wallop slammed it again with his horn. “Whatever you did down there weakened the mechanism keeping it in place. I know you’re short on solar…”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Seena said. “But what about the whirly-blades-of-doom?”

“She’s right,” Seeyela said, Bamfing in between the twin lightning rods on top of the Death-Sphere. Dropping to a knee between the poles, the woman drove a dagger each down into the base of where the rods emerged from the Mid-Boss’s top. Still glowing with a rainbow of deadly energies, the Fangs tore into the metal, but didn’t go deep enough to completely sever them. Another second, and she was gone again, arcs of lightning between the rods filling where she’d just been.

That wasn’t Hiral’s concern for the moment. The two sisters had a point – if Wallop did manage to knock over the Death-Sphere, the angle of those blades would change. A lot. Then it would be a question of which was stronger – blades or floor.

Better not to have to find out.

“I can stop the blades,” Romin surprisingly said into the chat. “If Left can give me Shield of Peace so I don’t get cut in half, I have an ability called Immovable. Lasts for up to thirty seconds, and, like the name implies, it means I don’t move.”

“Is thirty seconds enough?” Yanily asked.

“More like six,” Hiral corrected. “That’s how long Shield of Peace lasts.”

“I’m tough,” Romin said. “Without the speed of the blade hitting me, I’ll hold it.”

“I’ll make it work,” Seena replied.

Wallop reared up and slammed his horn into the Death-Sphere again – despite the lightning bolts striking him one after another – as if that was his answer. Or, maybe he was saying he wouldn’t even need thirty seconds, it was hard to tell. Either way, they had a plan.

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“Left,” Hiral said. “You know what to do. Rest of us, anything we can do to help… do it!”

A wave of Left’s hand, and a brief shield appeared on Romin, before the man bravely charged the spinning blades. Not even slowing or hesitating, the Bonder stepped in at the same time a powerful wave of solar energy rolled off him, and the razor-sharp, B-Ranked blade struck.

Struck… and stopped.

Shield of Peace had negated the damage of the initial hit, while Romin’s ability had turned him into a barrier the blade couldn’t pass. Just like that, the three terrible blades ceased moving, though a whine near the base of the Mid-Boss began rising in pitch. Small streamers of smoke, along with pops and clunks echoed from the bottom.

Romin had done his part.

Tearing his eyes away from the Bonder, Hiral lashed out with his own solar energy. He didn’t whip blades of Separation at the Mid-Boss, or drive back in with the Greatsword of Amin Thett. No, Hiral reached out to his Edict of Gravity, along with this Runes of Connection and Increase. He already had two nexuses of Attraction pulling the endless stream of darts in wide lanes across the room, but he needed something bigger and better for the sphere itself. Gravity seemed like just the thing.

Focusing on the Edict – and the wall opposite Wallop – Hiral tethered the Death-Sphere horizontally to it. Then he began layering on Connection and Increase. It was a lot harder to change an unwilling target’s point of gravity – which is why he mainly did it to himself – but the Mid-Boss had proven weak in the will-department. And, while the others distracted it with more direct attacks, maybe – just maybe – Hiral could pull this off before it noticed.

At the same time Hiral worked with his runes, Right shifted around and joined Wallop, timing his punches with the Rune-o’s horn-slams. Above, the lightning rods charging up to fry them both, a black sheet of nothingness unfurled, swallowing the bolts of electricity whole. Unlike before, a second portal didn’t appear to vomit the attacks back out. Below – the blade still paused – Seena gathered solar energy while Li’l Ur chanted atop her shoulder.

Working in concert like that, something about the yellow pollen surrounding Seena – from the cycle of rebirth of the plants around her – changed. Yellow became orange, then orange and red, as if the pollen itself was igniting. Another massive pulse of solar energy, this one entirely bottoming out Seena’s pool, and the woman thrust her hands forward.

Like an invisible wind picked up the sparking pollen, the cloud shot forward to gather around the weakened base of the Death-Sphere. Sticky, the individual spores latched on to whatever they touched, be it brass, floor, or other pollen. And, where Hiral expected it to all result in a massive explosion – because that was what Seena did – that’s not what happened. Instead, the spores did ignite, but instead of erupting, they burned with an intensity that made Hiral have to turn away.

Brighter and brighter, hotter and hotter, the spores clung tenaciously, and flared with an ever-increasing temperature. Even from the distance, Hiral could feel the room getting warmer, and his sensory domain told him how the metal underneath warped and melted.

“Hit it hard!” Hiral shouted!

Beside the sphere, Right and Wallop both wound up, while Yanily activated Skyfall+. Without his Aspect up, it wouldn’t be his most powerful attack ever, but that wasn’t what he was aiming for. This time, Yan didn’t shoot up to the ceiling and bounce off. No, he barely shot ten feet into the air before the angle of his lightning bolt changed, and he rocketed straight at the Death-Sphere, hitting it at the same time Right and Wallop did.

WHAM, the three titanic blows struck as one, tearing the Mid-Boss off it’s weakened base. Hiral’s tethers of Gravity yanked as soon as its hold was broken, and then the whole thing was in the air.

Romin was left standing where he was as the blade he’d blocked ripped up and over him. And, though the mechanism to spin the blades had been ruined by his bravery, the one he’d stopped still twisted in the direction of the three party members. Far too fast for them to dodge – especially since they didn’t even see it coming – the razor-sharp edge practically glistened as it cut for them.

As it cut through… the air where they’d been standing.

At the same time the Death-Sphere had been torn from the ground, the forward momentum of the three party members attacking had carried them into another sheet of black that’d opened perfectly in front of them. This one, like normal, had an exit, and Right, Yanily, and Wallop all stumbled out into the air beside Seeyela. Well away from where the Mid-Boss careened end over end – blades sparking across the floor and tearing off – to hit the wall with a dungeon-shaking boom.

Electricity sparked and sputtered out, one of the rods on the top of the sphere completely gone, while the other had been bent more than ninety-degrees. Dozens of small darts had pinged off the Death-Sphere during its flight, but stains of green showed even the durable brass wasn’t immune to whatever toxin they’d been coated with. Beneath it, the sawblades emerging from the floor paid no heed to whether it was friend or foe, happily spitting sparks where they chewed into its side.

Finally, above it, the Mid-Boss’s health bar sat at a measly five percent. They could probably let the saws finish the job, but on the off-chance it had one last trick up it’s sleeve, Hiral launched himself forward with Rejection. They’d all used a lot of solar energy in this battle – and they’d need some time to recover – but he still had more than enough to finish what they’d started.

His feet landed a few inches above the prone shape of the Death-Sphere, it’s structural integrity an absolute mess with how bent and battered it was. Directly below him, the openings where the cannons had emerged stood open and vulnerable.

Time to finish this!

Cocking the Greatsword of Amin Thett back and over his shoulder, Hiral flooded what was left of his solar energy into the blade and its runes. Energy flared as Expansion did its work – growing the blade to over twenty feet long and four feet wide – and the air around him shuddered. Brass below him creaked at the sudden increase in Gravity, even the tenacious buzzsaws groaning as they struggled to emerge from their slots.

Tethers stretched from the sword and into the Mid-Boss, and then Hiral swung. It didn’t take more than the blink of an eye – a crescent of glowing energy hanging in the air and through the center of the Death-Sphere – and the sword was out and above his other shoulder.

The health bar above the Mid-Boss shattered like broken glass, while the sphere itself split down the middle. One half fell to lean against the wall, the other crunching down on the floor, the simple weight of it crushing one of the buzzsaws sideways. And, with the death of the Mid-Boss, every trap in the room went suddenly still, even the concentrated beams of energy above the arena vanishing like they’d never been there.

“And that’s the end of that Mid-Boss,” Hiral said.