To triumph over the infernal legions, you must relentlessly disie the frailest fragments of your body, mind, and soul. Heal the very ashes and fe what remains into an indomitable bastion of purity and resilience. Do this a thousand times, ahousand more, until you transd your limits and emerge as an unyielding paragon of strength.
- Azryet, Dragon God, Harbinger of Chaos, Herald of Havoc, The Camity.
Aliandra
The bone-shattering bst wave impacted her body, ung Ali into the air again. Her acolytes had doheir job well this time, and almost everyone had been pre-loaded with a Restoration that would tio heal them over the hirty seds – but the flickers of holy spells nding did not cease; even as the kobolds were flung into the air, they still diligently distributed their healing magic.
Her ribs snapped bato pce with a painful ch while she rapidly riffled through the senses of all her minions. She switched pces with one of her acolytes using Minion Teleport, halting both of their forward momentum. This trick allowed her to nd one of her healers closer to the ter, where it could heal anybody critically injured from falling or being forced to swim through va while they all ran back to the fight.
She ignored her own precipitous dest, pg her trust in her health and the Restoratiohat slowly pulsed through her body. Her attention remaiirely on the senses of her minions, while fshing her barrier magi all dires, defleg boulders and sbs of rock that threateo crush them on nding. Her eyes widened briefly as a several-ton boulder broke free from the ceiling but, with a hasty sweep of a barrier, she swatted her Hobgoblin sideways in the nick of time. At the st possible instant, she used a small barrier to catch herself right above the bubbling va of a pool, and two more barriers to scoop a rogue and a shaman out, saving them a couple of seds of searing agony and burns while they swam out. With the holy Restoration spells cast on them, swimming through the va for a few seds wasn’t an immediate death sentence, but they would emerge low oh, and vulnerable to the hail of falling debris. She hadn’t lost any of her minio, but with their levels barely above twenty, most of them had insuffit health to survive without help.
She flew forward tage with the Inferno while her small horde of Kobolds and Goblin shamans emerged from the va ot up from their bone-crushing ndings and scampered across the rock-strewn terrain to close te once again.
“You good?” Malika asked, sprinting past her with a tap on the shoulder that topped her health up to full.
“Yup,” she shouted at Malika’s departing back. After the intense focus on trag the trajectories of all her friends, minions, and dangerous flying boulders, the task of fiuning her minions’ formations and trolling several sharp slivers of barrier magic to attack felt like a rexing lull itle to her. Crazy, she thought to herself. That she sidered standing in front of the t pilr of furious fme ‘rexing’ surprised her. It sizzled and roared, i on iing all of them, while her body burned within the fire aura, sustained only because of the magic of her minions.
“We missed an explosion,” called out, already on top of the boss’s recharge timers. The ground shook with every sm and smash that Mato tanked, his normally huge Bear Form dwarfed by the enormous elemental. Missing the bst wave was their sign that Malika’s mana attacks were having a signifit effect. It likely didn’t mean that the boss was out of ma, she could still see it using mana for its attacks, but the disruption to its effit ability use seemed like a positive sign.
The hirty seds passed slowly, and where Ali would have normally expected yet another bst wave, ihe domain summoning formation sprang up in her mana sight. We definitely messed up its skill rotation.
“Summons!” Ali yelled, warning her friends. The expansive formation of fire mana drawn from the surrounding domain was plex beyond belief and, in a way only truly appreciable to a magic schor, she found it remarkably beautiful. Each ethereal rune hovered in the air, each e, each stru, the flow and movement of the giant three-dimensional structure – all of it had a efficy that spoke to her inner passion fi all its forms.
Wait. Why am I just standing here? I… break it? The instant the thought occurred to her, she unleashed a trio of barrier shards at the rapidly accreting formation. If that idiot could do it… she grumbled inwardly, recalling the disruption of her own barrier spell by a gloating would-be assassin. The golden shards of her barriers sliced through the fire mana, leaving ripples and eddies dang across its surface like is skating over a still pond.
The delicate magical formation imploded with an audible ch, and Ali’s breath caught ihroat. But, despite her efforts, two dozeals suddenly appeared at the feet of the Inferno – well, where its feet would have been if it had them – surging outwards with growls of fiery rage.
“Now!” Ali anded, biting back her disappoi at the failure and direg her Bone Mages. She rapidly assigned each of them their tributions, visualizing the precise arra of walls she wahe charging elementals suddenly found themselves crashing into walls of bone, spines and spikes jutting out in all dires. She reinforced the gaps with judicious application of barrier magic, further funneling the creatures into a tight clump as they pressed up against each other their eagero reach the entig Goblins standing just beyond reach.
“Shamans, Lightning Bolts down the ter.” The green-skinned Goblins stood directly in front of the funnel, wearing gleaming mail shirts aing the arg lightning-ented Eimuuran steel shields she had made for them. Fnked by the two Hobgoblins for prote, they were her only Goblin forces, and they were fag dowire horde of level sixty Shards of Inferno. The Hob on the left shouted a booming war cry. Steel totems appeared in the midst of the elementals and their distinctive spherical pulses of lightning surged outward. Perfect pt, Ali smiled; the elementals were bunched up in a narrow passage allowing each pulse to hit every one of them. With a ripping crackle aonation, the Lightning Bolts tore through the mass of elementals, passing right through the pad out the other side.
Ali gnced upward, just in time to notice h, hanging there on indest white wings of light. Four shining arrows were his b and a look of profound focus was etched upon his face. The string twahe arrows hurtled forth, followed immediately by another wave with a rapidity she could only admire. Her vision saturated with white as his intense explosions begaonating among the elementals in a tinuous roar of brilliance, only her mana sight providing any reliable clue as to what was actually going on within. She flickered a couple of barriers into pces where the bone walls had sustained severe damage a her will tes. Fresh walls appeared, reinf the area, and immediately she switched her barriers to block yet anap or prevent aal from esg.
The explosions and fshes of lightning seemed to go on forever. Still, she kept up her reactive barriers ensuring that none of the spawned elementals could escape until the cascade of notification chimes ceased. Only then did she call her minions to a halt and watched as slowly desded to the ground.
She gnced curiously at him just standing there.
“Out of mana, and I already drank a potion,” he said soberly, then he grinned. “You know, we should pi easy fight for a ge. Just one.”
“Hmm,” Ali smiled back, weighing the possibilities. She hadn’t been able to prepare any runic circles feion or mana – she hadn’t had access to the battleground before the fight. She did have oion, however, it meant burning her most powerful ability. Oher hand, if she did use it, her minions would be able to take advantage of it too…
“Be right back,” Ali said as she made her decision. She cast Are Recall. Sudden relief from the stant burning washed over her like plunging into a cool pool of water. I guess I’m getting used to being burnt, she thought, realizing how much she had been ign the scalding atmosphere. The t Inferno stood frozen, mid-strike, while Mato guarded against the ining damage. Ali eled her mana through Runic Script and spent a couple of subjective minutes inscribing an Inspiration circle around ’s feet. The small extra mana reservation to keep it running would easily be worth the enormous return in mana it would provide to her friend and her acolytes.
The spell pleted, and the rude shock of searing pain reasserted itself. blinked, looking at her in surprise.
“Thanks!” he said.
“You’re wele,” Ali said, already w out her minion rotation through the circle to ehat it remained in use tinually, to get the most out of the spell.
“Fire shield!” she called out, reizing the spell formation as simir to the one used by the Living Fmes a st few seds before the dense barrier bubble of fire magic sprung up around the Inferno. A t maelstrom of fme ignited within, and Ali immediately checked on the boss via her acolyte’s Healer’s Sight.
“It’s healing… slowly.” Ali lobbed shards of her barrier magic at the shield, notig that while the torrent of fme was regeing the boss, it was a signifitly mradual recovery than with the Living Fmes. The spell itself seemed subtly altered, too, and it took a while for her to realize it seemed more focused on mana than fire. And with less fire damage, the boss was healing less. Or maybe it has that muaximum health, she thought soberly. It might have been that it was healing more, and she simply saw it as a smaller pertage. Either way, the shield was tough – way harder to break than the ones used by the Living Fmes. Their attacks rained down onto the unyielding shield fes before it finally cracked.
Abruptly, the fire shield burst into a cascade of splinters and shards of magic that quickly evaporated into red sparkles and fshes of fme. The maelstrom of fme encirg the boss sputtered and died. But something was different. Within the monster, a vast swirl of fiery mana ignited – a stirring in the domain magi a scale that filled the entire arena. She studied it carefully, puzzled as to what it might be, her focus drawn to the flows of mana. The Inferno was simply standing there, taking Mato’s hits without retaliating in the slightest.
“He’s doing something… big,” Ali announced, still trying to figure out what exactly it might be. “Be prepared for anything.”
The swirling formation suddenly accelerated as the huge elemental drew vast amounts of mana from the surrounding domain a to his spell. Ali’s eyes widened in shock as a chill of fear ran down her spine. A faint whistling sound echoed through the chamber, rising to a roar that began to vibrate through the rock as the mana drawn into the boss pressed into a brilliant bzing ball.
Suddenly, the Inferno spoke, its voice deafening.
“BURN TO ASH!”
The ball of mana at its core fred with light so inte overwhelmed Ali’s mana sight entirely.
“Hide! NOW!” Ali screamed, dug behind a rge boulder.
A howling torrent of fme burst outward from the monster with deafening violehat shook the cavern to its very foundations. Her bones rattled as the elemental rage of fme tore past her suddenly ie-seeming boulder. Ali screamed, but nobody would ever hear. Three rogues had been on the far side of the boss wheeral inferno had desded. They sprinted past, disiing before her very eyes. ue reached healing range, legs and arms sprouting anew only to be torn away by the ravenous fmes. The cycle repeated before the poor kobold mao stumble past a boulder and crawl to safety. Of the other two, nothing remained but motes of ash lost iorrent. Malika and , with their magical speed enhas, were safely hiding behind nearby boulders, as were many of her remaining minions.
Wait… where’s Mato? But the Beastkin had no such speed enhas.
Mato was dying. He lumbered across the molten ground, body afme, buffeted, and rapidly disiing in the inprehensible, all-iation so suddenly unleashed. Ali screamed again, this time p all her mana into a barrier that she summoned right behind him. The fme tore around her barrier, melting golden streamers from its edges that vanished into the fire. She spent mana at an astonishing rate in a vain effort to rebuild the meager prote in the face of the raging storm. “Run, Mato!” she screamed, but she might as well have thought it for all the good it did. Right as her barrier shattered into slivers and shards that were picked up and catapulted into the distance by the force of the fmes, Mato charged, reag the dubious safety of a misshapen boulder that sagged like a melting dle on the fmeward side.
Streamers of molten rock were torn from her own cover, slipping away in the unceasing gale. Mana thrummed through her body as the fmes barely parted around her rock, leaving her in a tiny pocket of retive safety, only the radia searing into her skin and tending with the slow pulse of her minion’s holy magic. There was so much power and mana sc through the entire arena, that Ali’s mind simply gave up processing it in stunned shock. She stared, wide-eyed at the unleashed might of the Inferno. It went on and on until her body and mind were numb to the sound, vibration, and shog torrent of mana.
Suddenly, the fme cut off, and the deafening silenapped her out of her daze. She hurriedly looked left and right, seeing her friends and her minions huddled down behind boulders that might better be described as half-molten sg heaps now. All of the smaller debris that had accumuted throughout the arena during the explosions and the sm attacks had beeed or blown away, leaving a clear pin of rod va, all glowing with an intense radiati and the sound of crag as it rapidly cooled.
“Run or tinue?” Malika’s voice called out, breaking the silence.
tinue? For a moment, Ali didn’t parse the idea correctly. The very cept of going up against a monster with that much power was unthinkable.
“tinue,” answered, choosing the unthinkable option. “Incredibly, we only lost two of Ali’s rogues.”
Ali’s mind caught up, dragged back to sanity by Malika and ’s calm rationality. She took a deep breath and got up, levitating above the still partially molten ground. The Inferno stood tall in the epiter of the devastation it had unleashed. As she watched, it slowly swiveled toward them, but before it could act, Mato charged. Whether it was sheer force of habit by now, or actually her presenind, she didn’t know, but she checked with her acolyte’s sight.
“Three-quarters to go,” Ali announced, finally finding her voice. She felt like she had just endured ay of fme and fear, but they still had three-quarters of its health to burn through. Only her friends’ determination staved off her despair.
Maybe we really are crazy…
“Explosion!” she called out a few moments ter.
Mato
This is no fun, Mato thought. At that precise moment, he happeo be flying through the air, exactly like a bear shouldn’t. The fight itself wasn’t particurly bad – he quite enjoyed hitting the giant fireball. The bst wave attack was stronger, but it was more annoying to have to run back from wherever he nded. He preferred actually fighting. Running was for scouts and rogues. But it was the flyied. He grimaced at the sight of the distant ground whipping by beh his dangli.
Initially, he might have been a bit skeptical about wearing armor in Bear Form, but he had to admit that this test piece Thuli had crafted for him henomenal. He already had a lot of natural armor, and Thuli’s creation simply added more on top of that – but it was magical resistahat had proved to be the lifesaver in this fight. His armor didn’t look particurly fancy – nothing like the armor he imagihe adventurers iories wore – but what it cked in decoration, it sure made up in robustness. It had takehing the Inferno could throw at him and for the most part, it was still i shape. Good thing Thuli used fireproof leather for the bindings.
The holy magic of one of the Kobolds settled gently into his body, pulsing against the damage he had taken before being unched into the air, augmenting his own Brutal Restoration. Ali’s minions were quite effit. As his thoughts turo his small friend, he found himself fronting the reality of what had just happened moments before the explosion.
I almost died. The thought focused his mind in a way that the rest of his meandering thoughts could not. Without Ali’s quick thinking, and rapidly disiing barrier magic, he would have been pletely ied. He was far more robust thawo unfortunate rogues, but nothing could survive that fgration. He could still feel the iy of the fmes tearing through his flesh and whipping past his body as he desperately charged for the dubious safety of an impossibly distant boulder. The image of Ali’s Kobolds being progressively vaporized hung over him like a specter of what could so easily have been his fate. He just hoped Ali uood the attack well enough from that one experiehat she could give him more time to get to safety if it happened again. He had burned his Last Stand just to make it, and that skill had a fifteen-minute recharge.
When it happens agaihought, unwilling to rely on fortune and desperate hope.
He sighed, nding on the ground with a crash and a huff, shaking off his mental funk. What is with these crazy abilities messing with my enjoyment of the fight? He charged forward, using his ability as soon as possible so that he would be able to close the distance quickly and regain trol of the fight. He used it once more before he was out in front of all Ali’s minions and then smmed into the giant tower of pissed-off fme. He Swiped at the elemental, triggering his Brutal Restoration, something that was being an automatic reflex in here. He most certainly needed his own healing to be maximized at all times during this fight, and he was saving most of his mairely for that.
Survival Instinct warned him a st half sed before the powerful overhead sm attack, giving him barely enough time to brace before the elemental’s arms crashed down on his body, smming him into the ground and tossing rocks flying. He got back up and Swiped again with his paws, feeling the surge of healing repairing the damage. Those sm attacks did vastly more damage to his robust body tha wave. He carefully sidestepped around the elemental, turning it so that Ali’s remaining melee minions and Malika would be able to fight from behind it, but not get tossed entirely in the opposite dire from the bst wave.
“Summons!”
He mostly ighis call, having nothing much to do with the additional elementals himself. Normally he was running back when this happened, so this time he just held back a bit to make sure he did not Swipe any of them by act when they appeared. That way they would ignore him and run into whatever trap Ali and had prepared. He and Malika focused on the boss while a roar of detonations and lightning crashed somewhere off to the side behind a rge wall of already smoking bone.
He braced for another smash, feeling the Kobold’s Restoration pre-empting the attack, and a bigger heal following immediately after. There was no further explosion for a long while until suddenly the fire shield appeared. He growled angrily, hitting the impervious transparent sphere with his paws. It was a frustratingly tough barrier and he much preferred hitting the elemental itself, even if he was essentially hitting an animated fire. After smming his paws against the solid bubble of magic seemingly forever, it suddenly splintered, exploding into a million fming shards.
“Hide!” Ali’s voice screamed.
Go! This time, he didn’t hesitate for an instant, immediately charging to the side, towards a boulder he had been keeping an eye on for a while. Please be enough time! His charge got him about halfway, and he lumbered on, wishing he was as fast as the graceful Malika who had sprinted by in a fsh. A whining whistle rose through the arena as he pushed his heavy body to the maximum. Fuck. Should have spent more points oerity. The ground shook as the monster roared something unintelligible, and he suddenly felt a huge surge of heat from behind him, smming into his bht as he crashed to the ground in the lee of his boulder, sharing the spot with Malika. She spped his charred leg mercilessly, pulsing her healing magic through his body and patg up any of the remaining burns.
The elemental let loose with his inferno, fme tearing past their hiding spot, melting ro the ground to either side of them, and sending streamers of liquid stone flying in the unceasing gale of intense fme.
Ali, you’re a lifesaver! He had made it to safety just in time. I guess we do stand a ce after all.
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