Rune Seeker

As the huge undead took another step towards Hiral, its head now less than thirty feet away, a memory of the entry hall to the Forge of Ur’Thul flashed before his eyes. This… this thing was the skeleton of one of the legendary beasts Odi’s Ancestor had killed. How had she managed to move—let alone fight—when faced with something like that?

He couldn’t. They couldn’t.

This was the end of…

Golden light washed over him, pushing the insidious pressure out of his head like a bucket of cold water to the face.

You have been buffed by Banner of Courage.

Critical Strike Rate increased by 12% for 180 seconds.

Critical Strike Damage increased by 40% for 180 seconds.

Moderate Healing Over Time for 180 seconds.

Moderate Shielding granted for 180 seconds.

Solar Absorption Rate increased by 1 Rank for 180 seconds.

Banner is stronger thanks to the Second-Skin of Ur’Thul, he thought, but the notification window vanished as he focused on more important things.

Up went the RHCin his left hand, and his bolt of Impactslapped into the Dracolich’s forehead. Back reared the massive head—more in surprise than pain, judging by how the health bar barely dropped—and Hiral finally took a good look at the Mid-Boss.

Terrifying as it was, its health bar was barely above forty percent. Its entire left side had been devastated by something—probably what killed it the first time—and its left foreleg and wing were entirely missing. The ribs on that side ended in jagged, broken points, and its back leg hitched with every step.

Maybe things weren’t so bad…

The massive head reared back as blue flames coiled in the chest, raced up the neck, and collected in the jaw. Then it leaned forward and breathed a tidal wave of unholy flames.

Yup, pretty bad!

Hiral’s right hand shot out as he channeled solar energy into his Rune of Rejection, but what would it be able to do?

He didn’t have to find out, as Nivian was suddenly right in front of him, his skull-shield up and carving a safe path through the endless flames washing over them. There was no heat as the blue flames roared by on both sides, but something pulled on Hiral from within the fire. Like it hungered for the life inside his body.

A shiver ran down his spine as the breath finally ended, and Nivian took a step forward. Twin spears of blue energy like the flames shot from the Aegis of Extinction’s eyes, driving into the surprised Dracolich’s chest, but they weren’t nearly enough to end the fight.

“Hiral, it’s up to you, me, and Yanily,” the tank said, thorned whips uncoiling from his right hand. “Wule is taking care of Seena, and Seeyela is still down. You with me?”

“You know it,” Hiral said, unsheathing the Emperor’s Greatsword in one hand while he gripped his RHC in the other.

“Don’t forget about me,” Right said, sliding in beside them. Flames roiled around his fist, and his Meridian Lines glowed fiercely.

“My big moves are all on cooldown,” Yanily said over the party chat. “I’ll support where I can.”

“Good, let’s show this big lizard we aren’t afraid of it,” Nivian said, blurring and stretching forward to lash his whip across the Dracolich’ssnout.

“I dunno, I’m still kind of afraid of it,” Right said as a notification window appeared in front of Hiral’s eyes.

Nivian wishes to bring you to his position with Swarm Tactics

Accept? Yes / No

Hiral hit Yes with a thought, then dashed out to the left of Nivian, while Right appeared on the other side and ran in the opposite direction. He popped a shot into the side of the Dracolich’s head, then launched himself forward with a burst of Rejection under his feet. Swinging out and around in a horizontal slash, the Emperor’s Greatsword slammed into the Mid-Boss’s foreleg, but the damn thing was apparently made out of something solid.

Rebounding off the bone, the energy blade kicked backwards, twisting Hiral from the force of it, and he went tumbling into yet another museum display. That roll probably saved his life, though. The monster’s back foot crashed to the floor right where he would’ve been, and Hiral pushed a pair of oddly dressed mannequins off himself.

A pull of his trigger carved a little more off the Dracolich’s health bar, but it was still sitting at almost the full forty it’d started with. Right laid into it heavily from the other side, the lack of a foreleg over there giving him room to pound away. From the way lightning hung in the air, Yanily was on that side too, which just left Hiral over with all the pointy bits.

Wonderful.

What was he doing over there, attacking alone, when the other side was practically safe?

The boned tail that went sweeping around at his allies made him quickly reassess safe, and only Right’s quick thinking saved the pair from getting pasted. Tail met flame-enshrouded fist with a WHOMP, and both went flying in opposite directions. Right hit the ground twenty feet back but rose to his feet with only a single swaying stumble, while the tail bounced back away from Yanily, who charged in with lightning arcing around him.

The spearman leapt into the air, spinning to create a sawblade of cutting lightning, but it hardly dented the Dracolich’s health bar. They still weren’t doing enough damage.

Hiral hefted his sword and got ready to charge back in, but a swirl of blue flame in the Dracolich’sribbed chest made him stop short. Building and building, the flames twisted in on themselves, a palpable pressure practically giving the fire weight.

“Nivian, look out!” Hiral shouted in warning as the monster snapped its head forward.

The inferno in its chest squeezed into the base of its long neck, then shot up along the bones that weren’t even connected—just hanging near each other by the undead magic giving the creature life—and finally out of the mouth with enough force to knock almost anything aside.

Almost.

Roots at his feet, Nivian got his shield up in time, thanks to Hiral’s warning, and braced as the flames slammed into him. As it breathed, the Dracolich inched backwards, the force of its own breath pushing it away from the tank attempting to weather the storm of unholy power. Like before, the fire held no heat, but seemed hungry for life as it roared over and past the tank. And even though Nivian had gotten his shield up in time, his health bar dipped down in the Party Interface.

When the inferno finally subsided, Nivian was ten feet back from where he’d started, the floor pitted where his feet had dragged through the stone, and he swayed slightly. He couldn’t keep taking hits like that.

Apparently the Dracolich realized that, too, driving its claws one after the other into the stone floor, more spiraling flames building within its chest. If the last breath had been strong, what was forming now was beyond absurd. Nivian wouldn’t just get pushed back; he’d be erased from existence.

Right and Yanily seemed to come to the same conclusion, charging ahead and launching attack after attack into the Mid-Boss’s side. The thing didn’t even try to defend itself, all its hate and focus zeroed in on the tank in front of it.

Spiral after spiral of flame twisted within the chest, a whirlpool of unholy strength like a Cycling technique, but more primitive. Yet as Hiral watched the energy reaching for its crescendo, he couldn’t argue with its effectiveness. The flames would explode out of the chest, shoot up the neck, and vomit from the mouth in a torrent of fire unlike anything they’d seen before.

Hiral blinked.

Up the neck?

Not giving himself a chance to second-guess himself—or admit how reckless this was—he launched himself forward with a burst of Rejection. A twist in the air at the same time the whirlpool of unholy energy in the chest reached its boiling point, and he turned his Rejection into Attraction, landing midway up the Dracolich’sneck.

The neck went horizontal in preparation for the powerful breath, and Hiral spun the Emperor’s Greatsword in his hand. He heard as much as felt a vacuum form at the base of the monster’s throat, the flames squeezing into their path and rushing in his direction.

Then he stabbed the sword straight down between the joints of the neck bones.

Sure, he couldn’t seem to break or pierce the bones, but…

BOOOOM! The flames hit the broad edge of his sword, instantly building in pressure like a closed cookpot, and then exploded in a massive burst of blue fire and force.

The air fled Hiral’s lungs as he—and the top half of the Dracolich’s neck—shot in the opposite direction of the rest of its body.

Some small part of his mind reminded him that the end of this flight could be very bad, and he leapt into the air with a quick change from Attraction to Rejection. Boots skidding on the floor, he landed twenty feet behind Nivian, and then a great crash sounded even further back.

Ahead of him, the Dracolich teetered but didn’t fall, and its health bar still showed at least fifteen percent. The damn thing wasn’t dead yet.

Of course, the head!

Hiral spun on his heel, sword still in hand, and vaulted through the carved wreckage of numerous displays. Following the clear trail, it didn’t take him long to find the ruins of the monster’s neck, and the large skull at the end of it. Blue flames still danced in its eyes, and its jaw shifted as if it wanted nothing more than to bite Hiral in half.

On guard for any more tricks—or magic—Hiral went wide around the side of the skull, then hopped up onto the forehead. The thing didn’t, or couldn’t, move, and Hiral looked down into the glowing blue flames.

Then he promptly stabbed one. His sword went up to the hilt through the eye socket and into the skull, the bones vibrating beneath his feet, and he half-expected it to explode.

Wouldn’t that be my luck?

Instead, the blue flames winked out, and the skull stilled. A look back showed him the rest of the giant, skeletal body toppling in on itself like a house of collapsing cards, bones clattering in a great jumble. And, with a deep breath, he felt the fear effect completely lift.

That should do it.

Dynamic Quest: Update

You have defeated one of the second seal’s guardians.

Guardians Slain: 3/?

Hiral’s eyes narrowed as they focused on that question mark. Shouldn’t it say three of three at this point?

Unless there are still more?

A pillar of blue flame erupted back near where they’d first been ambushed by the Nightmare, and Hiral vaulted into the air on repeated platforms of Rejection until he spotted the source. A display not far from where Seena pulled herself to her feet gushed fire straight up to the ceiling, washing outward to paint the whole room in a cold blue.

“What’s happening?” he asked.

“My guess would be another Mid-Boss,” Yanily replied flatly into the party chat.

“I figured that, Yan,” Hiral said, angling down in Seena’s direction. “What kind? Did anybody see what was in that exhibit?”

“Bones,” Seeyela said. “I got thrown through it. Like a big chicken or some other kind of bird.”

“Not just some kind of bird,” Seena said, her voice coming through like she was still clenching her teeth from the pain. Then massive, flaming wings spread from the column of fire. Wings that… looked familiar.

Where had he seen something like that before? It hit him just as his feet hit the floor beside Seena and her flaming mantle.

“Those were phoenix bones,” she said, and Hiral saw it wasn’t pain clenching her jaw; it was anger. “These undead are defiling one of my children.”

My children? Hiral’s head snapped from the now fully formed phoenix—its wingspan easily sixty feet from tip to tip—to Seena beside him. And then he took a step back. Not from the giant, blue, flaming bird. No, that was just a Mid-Boss.

Hiral stepped back from what really scared him: Seena.

The mantle at her back had lifted her into the air, the flames usually hanging behind her spread out as wings to match those of the Mid-Boss. Over her head, another aura of flame stretched and shaped in the unmistakably furious visage of a primordial bird of prey. The sheath of fire continued down her body, spreading along her hands and legs to turn her into some combination of bird and woman. Heat rolled off her like a second sun, and on the floor immediately below her, Li’l Ur chanted atop his black-bound book.

Glyphs twisted along the stone into a circle of power, and the column of light burst upward to envelop Seena, the Mantle of the Phoenix roaring and expanding to stretch its wings from one end of the room to the other.

One of her children… Suddenly, it made sense. The phoenix on his right, formed from the same red flames that had birthed the universe, stared down on its small child, lost within the flames of undeath. The flames that somehow denied it the proper ending it deserved.

Seena’s right hand, tiny in comparison to the larger phoenix, extended, and four horse-sized balls of flame appeared.

For its part, the blue phoenix seemed unable to move in the face of its progenitor, and Seena’s hand thrust forward. The four fireballs truly created another sun in the center of the room, bathing the exhibits in the first rays of sunlight they’d seen in centuries. Within that plasma, the Mid-Boss simply vanished.

There was no screech of challenge or pain. There was no fight or struggle. It just ceased to exist.

The remaining phoenix loosed a screeching caw, triumph and despair mixed equally within its call, and then it too vanished, leaving only Seena within the afterglow of the flames.

The woman dropped slowly to the ground, the true mantle of the phoenix still covering her body from head to toe, though Hiral could see her face through the bird-shaped mask around her head. Still, given the molten crater now dominating the room—and the glowing heat it gave off—he didn’t immediately move forward.

“It’s okay… I’m me again,” Seena said, letting the majority of the flames vanish, while those that remained hung at her back.

“You… were somebody else?” Yanily asked.

“Maybe you were looking at something other than the giant burning bird?” Wule asked.

“My patron asked to borrow my body to give their child a chance at rebirth,” Seena said, shaking her head a bit. “There are still a lot of feelings and thoughts bouncing around in my head, but I couldn’t say no. I mean, I could’ve, but I didn’t want to.”

“Either way, did you… kill it?” Nivian asked. “Free it? Something that means we don’t have to fight it?”

Dynamic Quest: Update

You have defeated the last of the second seal’s guardians.

Guardians Slain: 4/4

Seal Located: 0/1

Locate the second seal.

“Good job, Seena,” Hiral said, approaching her when the heat finally dimmed to a reasonable level. “Saved us having to fight another Mid-Boss. Four in a row was a bit much.”

“Thanks,” she said, lifting her hand to look at it. Gentle flames burst around her forearm, shaping into a claw of sorts from her elbow down. “Got a new ability out of it in payment too.”

“Of course you did,” Hiral said with a chuckle. “You Growers and your spontaneous ability evolutions. How’s your arm?”

“Wule healed most of it, and the phoenix finished the job. As good as new.” She flexed her other arm despite the blood still covering it. “Sis, how are you doing?”

“Sore, but okay,” Seeyela said, actually walking over to join them. “Wule had to use his broken bone ability on me… and it feels weird. Not nearly as pleasant as his other heals.”

“I know, right?” Hiral said, remembering the almost aggressive nature of the ability.

“Stop complaining, both of you,” Wule said.

“Not complaining—just saying,” Seeyela said.

“That thing you just did,” Nivian said, joining them. “Can you do it again when we get to the Boss?”

Seena shook her head. “I think that was a one-time thing. All that wasn’t my power. At least, most of it wasn’t, which reminds me…” She looked to the little lich hovering over to bob beside her shoulder. “Good job, Li’l Ur.”

“Think nothing of it,” the lich said. “It would’ve been embarrassing if my mistress was defeated by such a lesser creature…” It trailed off as the mantle at Seena’s back flared. “Lesser, due to the influence of the undead curse, of course…”

“Of course,” Seena said before giving Li’l Ur a pat on the head. He practically leaned into it. “Anybody see Odi?” she asked with the rest of the party nearby, but the Lizardman was noticeably absent.

“Maybe he got eaten by something?” Yanily suggested.

“Or…?” Nivian started, and then he looked purposefully at the glowing crater.

“Even if he did, that’s not my fault,” Seena said.

“You explode as bad as Hiral does,” Wule said.

“I’ve been pretty good about exploding recently,” Hiral pointed out, a quick pulse of Attraction returning his fallen RHC to his hand.

“Back to Odi,” Seena said, glaring at the twins and Hiral. “We need him to seal the Urn.”

“Speaking of which, we should probably find the second seal too,” Seeyela said.

“I’ve saved you the trouble,” Odi said, jogging around a toppled exhibit of some kind of jungle. In the Lizardman’s hands was a pair of palm-sized crystal discs.