SU&HM Ch 51

"Damn it!" Rick screamed. But there was no time to react to Daniel's death. He whirled and started a Restore cast on Sam, whose health was flashing into the red. She took another big hit before the cast went off, so Rick immediately followed it up with Healing Cloud bringing her health well back into the green.

His Protection was almost on cooldown, but he saved it and continued casting Healing Cloud, and Restore as fast as he could, all the while yelling curses.

Nia was beside herself. "He can't be dead. He can't be!" She still had the presence of mind to raise her staff and fire a final lightning bolt that killed the remaining guard.

Gambit screamed his own frustration in the form of his battle cry that gave them all a boost.

Rick swore even louder as he remembered what he had been overlooking—his mantle's special ability. He selected it, shifted position to get a view of Daniel's body, and triggered the effect. His hand snapped out under system control as a torrent of green energy poured from his outstretched palm at Daniel's corpse.

The body twitched, spasmed, and then rose. The health bar went from gray to a sickly brown. Daniel's corpse staggered to his feet and moaned. Then he lifted his bow and put an arrow to the string. For a moment, Rick thought Daniel's zombie might shoot him, but the arrow whizzed past his head and thudded into the boss's chest.

"Holy crap!" Sam yelled. "What did you do?" The bear twisted to look over her shoulder toward Zombie Daniel

"I'll explain later!" Rick cried as he went back to casting heals as fast as he could. Every other heal he laid on Daniel as the zombie, which looked like it could barely stand, continued shooting arrows at the boss. The first Restore that hit him filled his bar a third full of a healthy green color, pushing back the sickly brown that still filled the rest of the bar. Thank goodness healing didn’t damage zombies like in some games.

Two more Restores and one Healing Cloud later, Daniel's health bar went full.

Rick had been healing him by just looking at the interface health bars, but as Daniel's health went full, he turned and saw the man glowing with blue light. It faded as Daniel straightened up, all signs of zombieism gone.

He grinned at Rick. "Thanks!"

Rick's Protection came off cooldown and he cast it into his sphere again. The boss's health was half down now and without the guards or the other enforcers' lightning rod, Rick was able to stay on top of the damage coming out of his attacks. Sam herself dodged some of the boss's scepter strikes, which helped Rick's healing out considerably.

The boss lifted his scepter. "You won't take this city from me!" He fired another bolt of lightning that seared across everyone and into the plinth. As the lightning was passing him, Rick thought maybe he should have blocked it with his body, but it was already too late and he wasn't sure he would have survived if he had.

The lightning crashed around the plinth. It looked worse than ever with furious sparks spraying out of it like several roman candles.

There was only one chunk of leyline energy reserves left in the interface bar. One more activation of the plinth would probably be enough, but the device still crackled with lighting. Rick was certain none of them could take the damage it would take to activate it.

Rick yelled to Daniel, "Don't go near the plinth! You can't possibly take another hit."

"I'll do it!" Sam growled. "None of the rest of you have the health pool!"

"I don't think you do either!" Rick shouted back.

"I'll do it!" Nia said. "I can absorb the lightning with my rod!"

Rick considered. Her rod had the ability to absorb an attack, but would the plinth's damage count as an attack? And even if it did, would it count as one big attack that she could absorb, or a hundred little attacks, and her rod would only absorb one?

"We can't risk it!" Sam called. "I'll do it!"

"Shut up and burn the boss!" Rick yelled. He was desperately trying to figure out a way that Sam didn't have to take that hit. If he could figure out a sequence of Protection and Restore, maybe Sam could soak it. Sam had a lot more hit points than the rest of them. He also knew she had a trinket that would let her defy death. But he couldn’t gamble her life on that, could he? There was no guarantee it would work. Even if it did, how would they finish the dungeon without her? As Rick considered the possibilities, he cast Restore into his Spell Focus.

The boss's health was low but it didn't look like it was going down any more. "He's shielded!" Gambit called from the boss's left flank. He swung his sword again and Rick saw he was right. The health bar didn't even twitch. The boss was stuck with just a sliver of health remaining. The system apparently wasn't going to let them kill it until all the Leyline energy reserves were gone. That made sense, since that was supposed to be the victory condition. But it also meant Rick was out of time to figure anything out.

"You fools!" the boss started yelling.

Sam turned and dashed across the floor in her four-legged bear run. "I'm going for it!" she yelled.

"Wait, there has to be another way!" In his own ears, Rick's voice sounded stupid and desperate. He just needed more time. But he didn't have it. So he cast the only sequence he had figured out; he put Protection on Sam and then as she approached the plinth, he moved for a clear line of sight and raised his orb.

"I'm going to get you. I swear you will never take the city from me!" the boss was screaming.

"He's still shielded!" Rick heard distantly as he lined up his Spell Focus. The Leyline Energy Reserves bar on his screen lit up and everything happened at once.

Sam lunged forward, slamming her paw down on the plinth. Bolts and snakes of lightning danced across her, popping the Protection bubble then burning hair and slicing deep gashes into her flesh. The Leyline Energy Reserve bar dropped as Sam's health bar plummeted. Rick cast Restore from the focus. His healing flowed out and washed over Sam as Rick followed it up with Protection. Her health bar stopped falling and crept and ticked upward. And for just an instant, Rick felt a surge of hope.

He threw Healing Cloud just as the lightning storm around the font stopped. Sam lifted her paw off the plinth. She turned as the last of the lightning faded away and the plinth went dark.

 Her transformation faded and she was a woman again. She still had a sliver of red health. For one instant she turned toward Rick and smiled.

Then the Plinth exploded.

Sam was thrown forward and hit one of the pillars with a sickening crunch. Rick heard a strangled cry as she crumpled to the floor and he distantly realized it came from his throat.

"No, no, no!" the boss yelled. His cries of dismay mixed with Rick's own shout. The floor trembled. Rick felt an emptiness inside him and it took him several heartbeats to realize the city was falling.

The boss's voice changed. It sounded deranged now, crazed and desperate. "You will not steal it! You will not take it from me! You will not turn my masterpiece into a mortal ground city populated by bandits and..."

"He's still shielded!" Gambit yelled from the other side of the room as Rick fell to his knees by the smoldering corpse of his ex-girlfriend. The boss's voice echoed through the room. [Phase three complete. Phase four begin]

Rick looked up and saw the boss had moved all the way to the back of the dais. Gambit was behind it, still slamming sword strike after sword strike into its back, but the health bar stubbornly refused to move and none of the cuts did any damage. The boss slammed his hands down on two of the plinths and then reached for the third, activating all three plinths on the dais.

[Warning: self-destruct activated.]

"You will not take it from me!" the boss yelled in a long, drawn-out scream with his fist held to the sky. At that moment the unnatural protection around him vanished. Gambit's next swing of his razor sword chopped through the boss's knee. Marcasite’s health, only a sliver, was flashing red as the Rork tumbled to the ground.

Gambit raised his sword high and brought it down in a two-handed strike onto the boss's head, splitting it like a melon.

[Fall of Skyrend, Boss three, victory. Self-destruct in five minutes.]

"What the hell?" Nia cried. "The timer's still going down!"

Rick's heart was pounding in his chest and his head felt. His head was a maelstrom of emotions. The thoughts in the back of his head screamed that everything was wrong. For an instant, he heard one of the voices in his head scream louder than the rest.

The self-destruct. It wasn't wrong. It was what he had expected. And he knew how to stop it. The city wasn't supposed to explode. All the other adventurers were wrong.

Rick lunged to his feet and took two staggering steps forward.

"I know how to stop it!"

Gambit, Daniel and Nia turned to look at him.

"I know what the secret is! I know what we have to do!"

Gambit gave him a bland look. "Can we loot the boss first?"