[Beastborne: Tower of Blight] Chapter 50

Ashera leaped back just as a fist the size of a shack buried itself in the stone ground, sending up sprays of stone chips that cut at her exposed skin.

She lashed out with Barrier, spreading the thin stream of mana far and wide to protect her allies. They had climbed a total of two floors, but it was becoming increasingly obvious that they had overextended themselves.

Durvin looked ready to keel over. His Blight stacks were so high that he was more vulnerable than Kow would have been if she hadn’t made him stay back at the inn.

I am sorry, my sweet boy, Ashera said, watching the hulking golem slam its fists into her spell. Her Barrier would hold for a few more hits, then it would give out.

Nobody looked ready to take on the monster, and the beast knew it. The best Ashera could do was give them all a few more precious seconds of life. Her eyes flickered to her Ultimate, but it wasn’t ready yet.

She did not blame Hal. She was glad he had chosen his health and safety, but a small dark part of herself wished she had his Leadership traits.

Faster Ultimate generation might have saved them. The first casualties of war are always the hardest to take. I hope Hal is not too disappointed in me. I tried.

Nobody had expected the golem.

There was no boss room or arena. Nothing that would suggest it was supposed to be here at all.

It started when the Tower was struck like a gong. A resonant and painful sound that rang throughout the entire place.

The walls buckled. The floor cracked and split with festering wounds filled with fungal growths that oozed and spit spores into the air that rapidly applied Blight to anybody who breathed them in.

In an instant, Ashera’s group had gone from confidently strolling through their floor of the Tower to anemic and weakened.

We would have been dead if not for these amulets that resist the Blight, Ashera thought to herself. Not that it will make much difference in the end.

No matter what, she would not give in without a fight. Her friends, her companions, were counting on her.

Ashera poured every last drop of mana into her Barrier, giving it renewed life. If it shattered, they were dead.

Durvin rose to his feet, wiping the blood from his eyes. He raised his axe and bellowed a dwarven song to lift their spirits.

Ashera’s mind was filled with images of great banquet halls, feasting, quaffing, and much singing of the deeds of their fathers and mothers. Ancestors who would look down on them in their time of need and shelter them with their hands against all evils.

She could almost believe that they would survive.

Then the Barrier shattered like glass. Ashera was tossed across the cracked and broken room like a doll.

“Ashera!” Mira called. She snarled, turned to the golem and Jumped with such force that the ground shattered beneath her feet. Blue ethereal dragons swirled around her form as she launched herself at the golem’s chest.

She struck with the force of a comet, cracking the golem’s impossibly sturdy armor and sending ripples of magical power out in a shockwave.

The golem staggered back against the assault as Mira pushed her spear deeper into the golem’s chest. But it was not as hurt as Ashera would have hoped.

Getting to her hands and knees, Ashera watched helplessly as the golem swatted Mira off its chest. She hit the ground with a sickening crack, and went very, very still.

That was the last straw for the dwarves. Durvin, Athagan, even Bardan, roared defiance and took off while Angram peppered the golem with exploding arrows.

They were not strong enough to break through the golem’s armor, but the clouds of smoke high above the dwarven heads were enough to mask the dwarves’ approach.

Durvin’s people did what dwarves did best: they hacked and hewed and spat defiance in the face of the Gods.

Desperately, Ashera rose to her feet and staggered forward with an unsteady gait. She would go down swinging with the dwarves.

The Tower shook again, as if there was another golem on the outside that was smacking the thing like a bell. The walls rippled and shed their strange angular tiles.

Fractured pieces of the roof caved in, and a large chunk landed directly on the golem’s featureless face. A crack formed down its head, spitting blue streamers of light from the wound.

With small stubby legs, the dwarves had a much easier time dealing with the quaking. Ashera, even with her higher Agility, had a difficult time staying on her feet.

The golem, however, had it the worst of all. The ground was no longer firm and stable beneath its heavy feet. Feet that were beginning to crack around the ankles where the dwarves were ferociously hacking away.

No amount of smoke from Angram’s arrows could stop the golem from noticing the dwarves’ attacks. The thing bent down at the waist and swatted the lot of them aside like bothersome insects.

The dwarves were ready. They tucked and rolled, bouncing to their feet as soon as they were able to halt their momentum. The golem, bent double, just happened to be in the worst position possible as the Tower shook again.

Unlike the other times, which seemed to have been the Tower stretching and changing, this seemed different. A low-pitched sound, like an animal keening just below the edge of hearing, filled the Tower from top to bottom.

The floors buckled and jumped like a wild animal convulsing. The golem lost its footing and tumbled face-first into the ground that no longer could hold its weight. It sunk into the fleshy pits of fungus where it struggled to extricate itself.

Its own strength worked against it as cracks of light rushed all along the spaces where its strong fingers shattered the stone floor. The wounds of the Tower burned with argent light, cauterizing them and shriveling the fleshy sacks that spewed toxic Blight gas.

All around Ashera’s allies, the ground firmed up, while the golem’s grew weaker and sagged.

With the Tower weakening, the golem struggled to push itself to its knees. It punched its hands through the floor up to the elbows before it realized what was going on.

Durvin wasted no time. As hurt as he must have been, he and his dwarves rushed the golem with axes and picks in hand, and murder in their fiery eyes.

Ashera and Angram found their steps easier and easier as they hurried with the last dregs of their strength to the dwarves’ side.

The golem, already wounded and now struggling to rise, had a circular crater in its back. The dwarves sang a battle hymn and worked like they were back at the mines, breaking ore and stone.

Ashera joined them, lending what aid she could, while Angram stood back and fired arrows into the golem’s cracked hide. The blasts that hadn’t been powerful enough to dent the creature’s armor now blasted chunks of ceramic-like shards away from the glowing core of the creature.

In the time it should have taken them to die, the Fates had deemed fit to reverse their course. Ashera drove her blade into the glowing, pulsing light of the golem’s exposed core, shattering it in a cascading explosion of light and sound that sent the party scrambling for cover.

You defeat the [Blight Golem | Lv.70]

Hissing vaporous moonlight rose up from the cracks all around the floor, shielding them from the worst of the explosion.

When it was all over, the Tower groaned one final time and went alarmingly still. The wounds were sealed up, only cracks of moonlight peeked through. It was as if Ashera could put her eye to one of those cracks and see the moons of Aldim, or perhaps the bandlight of Aldim’s rings.

Mira was crumpled across one of those cracks. Moonlight bled around her body and with a shock of horror, Ashera realized that the Dragoon must have fallen into one of those fleshy pits that belched Blight affliction.

But when she looked at the party menu… Mira lacked any Blight stacks at all. Her HP was a thin red bar, barely perceptible. Ashera rushed to her side, leaping through streamers of moonlight to get to her, but the Ranger was faster.

He turned Mira over onto her back, propped her head up on his lap, and dribbled a thin stream of his last potion into her mouth.

Ashera looked around, unsure of what had happened. If the Tower hadn’t shuddered at that exact moment… If the golem hadn’t been bent double and the ground weakened in such an odd way, they would have been dead.

It was almost as if, for the briefest of moments, the Tower fought against itself. Its previous wounds had been yet another obstacle to overcome, but now they were gone.

Silvery light leaked through a hundred different cracks in the Tower’s stone. Here and there they sealed up, as if the Tower was trying to repair itself, to shut out that light.

Wherever the light touched, the spores of the fungal mutations withered and burst into bright white flame.

“Look at this!” Durvin said, right next to another fractured stream of light. “Me Blight stacks are going away!”

Durvin leaped from one side to the other, passing through the vertical stream of light. He was soon followed by his dwarven companions.

Ashera looked down at Mira, glad to see her coming around at last. She plunged her arm through the glowing mist and watched with amazement as her own Blight stacks reduced by one.

That must have been what saved Mira. With all those Blight stacks, she should have died.

Soon, every one of them was cleansed of Blight once more. They had already taken far too much damage to even think about continuing forward, but they were no longer on the brink of death.

Whatever attacked the Tower had saved them all. Somehow, she knew it had to be Hal.

Ashera called for them to make camp near the remains of the golem. The rooms beyond had suffered much less damage. There were only a few cracks of light past this room.

For some reason, Ashera felt a connection to that light. Like it was watching out for them. She wanted to stay basking in its light for as long as possible.

And what better way to do that than to rest and heal their wounds?

A campfire was quickly made, small bedrolls rolled out, and soon the dwarves were singing with their mugs in the air. A new song about toppling golems and hacking at ankles.

It was wholesome, in the way that all dwarven drinking songs are. At least, if you took out all the blood and violence and focused on the camaraderie they spoke of, the love for their fellow dwarves–and elves and lamora too!–that wove throughout the chorus.

We nearly died, and the dwarves are singing. Ashera thought to herself with fondness.

They were such an odd group, so resilient and ready for anything. It was no wonder Hal had such a fondness for them, and the dwarves fervently returned the sentiment.

After hearing about Durvin’s true past from the exiled king himself… Ashera was hardly surprised that the dwarf had charged the golem with less than 5% of his HP remaining.

He should have died.

They all should have died.

And yet, they didn’t give up. They kept fighting even when the odds were hopeless, and somehow everything turned out okay.

Mira took a cup of stew from Angram and sipped it gingerly. She sighed gratefully, her hands gripping it as if it were a lifeline.

“So the florking Founder finally did something about the Tower,” Mira muttered. “Good for him.”

The dwarves stopped singing and stared at her.

Mira looked around at the faces all looking at her and gave a weak chuckle. “Please tell me you didn’t think we just had the best luck in all the Shardrunes!” She reached over to a stream of light and played her fingers across it. “This is the light of the Manatree. Whatever Hal did, taking a break sure as hell wasn’t it. And I, for one, raise my cup to him.”

Mira’s gesture was copied by all there. Nobody knew what to say. Ashera couldn’t fathom Hal lifting a roll of bread, much less attacking the Tower in his present state… but there was an undeniable truth to Mira’s words.

She had known it was him.

Ashera did something she hadn’t done since she was a little girl. She clasped her hands together, bringing them close to her heart, and prayed with all her might, Thank you, Hal. For not giving up on us.