SU&HM Bk 1 Ch 49

The start of the climb to the boss room was the worst, the flimsy staircase exposed to a drop of thousands of feet to the Martian desert below. The stairs rose up to the side of the city itself and ended at a corrugated metal landing about four feet square. To everyone's relief, a door led back into the walls of the city.

Rick stepped inside and groaned as he took in the stairs leading up. They climbed, spiraling in on themselves. He craned his head back and stared upward where the steps vanished into the darkness. Sighing, he started the long climb. These stairs were spiraling stone, similar to the set they had descended to get to the last boss. Every hundred or so steps, there was a small landing with a locked door.

At the first, Sam paused. “Here?”

Rick considered. From his host he received a strong sense that they needed to keep going up. “Not yet.”

Five landings up, as Sam reached the platform, the door burst open and guards came rushing out.

Sam turned into a bear in an instant and smacked the first guard off the ledge with her paw, sending the Rork screaming into the depths below. The next two came in rapid succession. Daniel, as the next person in line, took some damage as he struggled to get his bow in play. Rick started a cast of Restore as Gambit edged past him and Nia, up the narrow stairs, to engage Daniel's foe.

After that, it was over quickly. The second and third guard joined their friend in the five-story drop down the open middle of the stairwell.

Gambit looked wistfully over the edge after them. "Should we go back down and loot them?"

Sam shook her furry head just before turning back into a human. "Trash packs rarely drop anything," she said.

At the top of the stairs, a single door opened out into a narrow service tunnel. This one did not have a throbbing ley line conduit. They passed several doors before reaching the large one at the end. Obviously, this was their destination, but Rick still felt compelled by the system to spout off.

"This is it, the main control room. There's several plinths around the room which can be activated to control the cities devices. We have to activate a particular plinth and keep it active long enough to drain the ley energy reserves of the city. If Marcasite is in there, we'll have to deal with him."

The compulsion faded, but Rick had more to say. "One of the ranged DPS should probably activate the plinth. I don't know if it will let you fire while activating it, but that seems to make the most sense."

Sam and the others were nodding. "Did it tell you anything else about the fight?"

Rick shook his head. "Not really, just vague impressions. I don't know."

Sam shrugged. “Guess we’ll find out.” She pushed open the door.

The boss room was built like a cathedral. Pillars topped by arches soared high overhead. Sunlight, pink-tinged from the Martian atmosphere, streamed down between the pillars in luminescent shafts to light up the white marble floor and columns. There were six columns, three to a side. Along the outer edge of the room stood glowing plinth that looked like birdbaths each topped with a large crystal pulsing with energy.

"There it is," Daniel called and pointed to the green one off to the left.

Even as he spoke, the figure at the far end of the room turned. The boss was on a raised dais with three other plinths around him covered in glowing light, red, purple, and orange.

"I knew you would come here," the boss sneered. His nameplate said [Marcasite] and he looked at Rick and the others with disdain. "How dare you turn your back and betray everything we have built together?" The boss gesticulated wildly as he worked up to a good monologue.

Rick tried to throw out a snappy rejoinder and break him out of his rant, but as he opened his mouth to speak, other words tumbled out. "Our work? This city is my work. Without my brilliance, none of this would have happened."

Rick felt a sudden burning sensation on the top of his shoulder and a feeling like he wanted to raise an arm and point a finger at the boss, but it was an arm he didn't have. An upper arm.

Oh crap, Rick thought. I'm the one monologuing. His voice continued to run away with him. “You perverted my work and I am merely reclaiming it. Betray? You’re the one who betrayed us all!"

Behind him he heard the others' footsteps moving away and Sam said, "Daniel, get to the control font and be ready."

"Your interference will not be tolerated!" Marcasite yelled from the dais across the room. "Guards! Seize them!"

Doors at the left and the right of the dais at the front of the room burst open, and a stream of armed Rork guards rushed in—four from each side.

Each group had two melee guards wielding two-handed sticks, crackling with energy, in one pair of hands and a large shield held by the other two hands. They moved forward side by side, forming a line across the center of the room. Behind them came pairs of staff-wielding ranged enforcers. Like the security boss' ads before, two had a lightning rods and the other two, flame rods.

Sam crashed into the line of melee guards with Gambit close on her heels. They pushed forward into the line, who use their shields to deflect her slashing claws and their two-handed sticks to deliver quick strikes through the gaps between the tall shields. She immediately started taking damage as blow after blow rained down on her. Gambit shifted off to the right and attacked the guard on the end of the line.

The enforcers’ lightning staffs crackled, the fire staffs hummed with a deep, roaring sound like distant ocean waves. Sam's health was starting to dip. Rick held off his heals until the enforcerspicked their targets. Three of the four pointed their glowing staffs at Sam while the fire caster on the end swung theirs over to point at Gambit.

A moment before the casters fired, Rick threw Protection on Sam. Then he thrust out the spell focus at Gambit and cast the Protection he had stored there during their climb. The whoosh of flames and crack of thunder was deafening in the marble hall, the roar echoing off every surface. The hits blasted through Rick's Protection on Sam. He immediately started a Restore cast. Her health was down to half by the time it went off, but the spell immediately filled her bar. Gambit's health hadn't dropped at all as the Protection spell from the orb blocked the fire stream completely.

Rick distantly heard Daniel say, "How do I activate this? Oh, it's as simple as that, is it?" At the top of Rick’s interface a bar appeared, labeled [Ley Energy Reserve]. It started nearly full but flashed and began dropping at once.

Another crash of lightning sounded. Rick's hair stood on end as the bolt whizzed past him from his left and blasted into the shield of the guard Gambit was fighting. Nia had engaged the foes. The guard caught most of the blast with his shield, but he was already staggering. His health fell past half as Gambit continued slashing him from the side. The guard cried out and staggered back, dropping his shield. One of his left arms was bloody and limp while the other he held out, trying to stop Gambit’s furious assault. Rick took the opportunity to cast Restore into his spell focus.

The next slash of the giant razor severed the arm at the elbow. Even as he wilted under Gambit's furious assault, his focus returned to the tank. The guard's right arms still lifted his oversized baton and swung it toward Sam. His health was dropping into the red as the ranged guards lifted their weapons again. Three of ranged enforcers again pointed their staffs at Sam and he started a Restore cast, timing it so it would complete after they fired.

"Gambit, the shield!" Rick yelled. The Mongolian warrior threw a glance over his shoulder and then down at the shield the guard had dropped on the floor. Rick saw comprehension dawn on him, and he lunged for it, but too late.

The wave of fire blasted over Gambit, dropping his health by half. Meanwhile, two lightning bolts and another wave of fire slammed into Sam. She roared in pain. An instant later, Rick's Restore cast went off. Her health plunged down deep into the yellow and flickered red briefly before the Restore hit her and filled her bar well above half. Rick immediately threw the Restore from his spell orb; it filled her health bar completely.

Sam reared back, ignoring the guard's blows for an instant, and let out a tremendous roar. All four of the guards took a step back, their eyes wide and their weapons drooping as they were momentarily stunned. She slipped between their line of shields and flashed across the ground, charging at the caster line, then slammed into one of the lightning enforcers and sent the Rork sprawling across the ground. The other casters scattered in terror as Sam chomped down on the fallen guard's neck. She lifted the Rork bodily from the ground and shook her head side to side like a terrier with its favorite chew toy. The Martian's body flopped like a ragdoll, and its health simply evaporated.

"Holy crap, Sam, what was that?" Rick muttered more to himself than anything else. Protection came off of cooldown, and he cast it immediately into his orb to get its cooldown cycling again. If only he had had two orbs, or maybe a better one that could hold two spells, that would be amazing. He wondered if Slate knew whether or not items like that existed.

Nia's next lightning bolt shot out across the room and struck one of the fire-staff Rorks with as he was fleeing away from Sam. The Rork took massive damage, health plunging by nearly half, and was momentarily stunned, dropping its weapon, but recovering an instant later and stooped to pick it up. Meanwhile, Gambit had killed the guard he was attacking. He charged across the room, straight into the recovering Rork. The impact damaged the creature and sent him flying back into a pillar, where he cracked into the marble and took even more damage. His health was nearly gone as Gambit stepped forward and brought his blade down in an overhand strike, slicing him through from top shoulder to bottom shoulder on the opposite side. Before the two halves of the Martian had toppled to the floor, Gambit was already jogging away, looking for another victim.

The guards that Sam had stunned now came out of their stupor and turned to come after her. An announcement popped up in Rick's vision [Phase 1 complete]. A bar appeared at the top of his interface labeled, [Mana Reserves]. It flashed, and a big chunk, around a fifth of the bar, faded away.

"You fools!" the boss screamed. "If you deplete our reserves, we'll plummet from the sky."

Rick felt a laugh boiling up inside him, not his own emotion, but that of his host. He threw his head back as the laugh burst out in a loud bellow. "You idiot! You don't even know how my city works!"

"It's my city!" the boss screamed. "And no one will take it from me! Least of all you!"

Lightning bolts criss-crossed the room, bisecting a stream of fire. Sam was on another of the casters, ripping him limb from limb, as the Rork’s blood splattered her white fur. Gambit was behind one of the melee guards, hacking into his exposed back as he attempted to attack Sam.

Rick threw Healing Cloud, since Gambit was close enough for its effect, and then started a Restore cast.

But another bout of laughter from the will inside him interrupted his cast. Sam's health was deep into the yellow now.

Dammit, stop! he yelled in his own mind. As he pushed the will away, his laughter cut off. Then he threw the Protection from his orb onto Sam and restarted casting Restore. The fury of blows coming at her only took a couple seconds to pop the Protection shield, but it was enough. His Restore healed her well above half. Fire washed across the wild melee of bodies, but Sam ducked away and most of its damage hit one of the enforcers, who screamed and dropped his staff.

The other casters were all down and dead. The boss was yelling something, and to his dismay, Rick saw another wave of guards coming out of the doors on either side of the room. Things were about to get bad.