[Shrubley, the Monster Adventurer] Chapter 79 – Shrubley, the Monster Adventurer II

“Not a monster!” Shrubley protested. “I am a Hero!”

Any moment now, the mage would be set free and as much as Rykal was at least a full Rank above Shrubley, Steel was two ranks above Rykal’s strength. And from what little Shrubley knew of ranks, that was roughly six times or more his power. The only way he was able to deal with the adventurers was to trick them.

In a straight fight, the Snake Lord would be defenseless.

The canvas melted, the paint ran like water down to the study’s carpeted floor. Captured within the ornate frame was now a window to another place, where Fio the mage remained trapped. She pressed against the glass, struggling to break free.

The mirror essence still imprisoned the Steel Ranker.

“Cal, what’s going on?” Shrubley asked, looking over his shoulder.

“Big misssstake!” Rykal shouted as he struck as fast as lightning.

There was no finesse to it. This was pure animal brutality. The Snake Lord’s dagger was left behind in that web of light and the skin suit. He was using the tools he was born with. Brutal fangs dripping with deadly toxin.

However, while Shrubley was quite bushy, he was also rather hard to hurt. The snake bit and bit, but Shrubley was already immunized to his venom and, in any case, he wasn’t a mammal. There was no thick trunk or core for the snake to attack and inject the poison.

But Shrubley was so weak that it hardly mattered. He stabbed his sword into Rykal’s body, but it was covered in a thin sheen of Bronze aura so tightly controlled that it was like a second skin.

A skin that Shrubley could not break.

Unable to do much good with his poison, Rykal crushed the shrub’s pathetic branches in his mouth, shook him like a terrier would a rat, and threw the shrub across the room.

Shrubley hit the wall hard, dislodging more paintings and letting out a cry of pain.

Rykal loomed over him as an eight-foot-tall snake whose scales were so dark green they were almost black.

“You were amusing,” Rykal told him. “I will give you that. Your healing powers, in particular, are quite fine. Perhaps I won’t kill you after all and instead experiment on you. Without that infernal Igor around, maybe I can distill your–”

An incessant buzzing darted around Rykal’s head, the insect flicking in and out of sight. Then a spell shot off, but the familiar’s attempt to attack couldn’t make it past the Bronze aura either.

Shrubley’s glowbug didn’t relent. Spell after spell of the same kind barraged Rykal’s eyes, sharply draining the familiar’s mana to protect its master.

The glowbug couldn’t get through, but suddenly a short, hunched figure appeared behind the Snake Lord.

“I alwayth knew thomething was wrong with the Count!” Igor screamed with incomprehensible rage. A wrench larger than Igor himself was suddenly in his hands, and it came down with the force of a meteor strike.

Rykal turned his body. “Igor what–” And was immediately flattened to the ground.

During the battle, Cal had hurried from painting to painting, trying to free the adventurers from their Mirror essence prison. Each one turned into a glassy mirror like the first and was unable to break free.

Their power was siphoned by the serpentii for too long.

“They need help to get out of there! But what?” Cal asked. He was able to partially undo the binding effect, but Cal didn’t know how to complete the process.

“He will not stay down for long!” Igor shouted, repeatedly whacking his oversized wrench into the rising form of the Snake Lord. Shrubley could sense the Bronze aura from Igor, but it wasn’t strong enough to overcome Rykal’s mastery of his own aura, which had become harder than any armor.

Shrubley dragged himself over to the nearest painting. A handsome young man in resplendent armor looked back at him with concern. Shrubley placed a wooden hand on the frame.

Several branches were broken. He was losing quite a lot of sap from the puncture wounds, and despite the poison being neutralized, it still took its toll.

Slyrox shook one of the paintings that had gone runny. The person inside seemed to be jostled about but was unable to break through the pane. Nothing either of them did would shatter the glass fronting the picture.

Even being launched across the room into one of the paintings by the powerful Rykal didn’t do anything. Shrubley, however, understood something about power that even the Snake Lord hadn’t yet learned. Likely because he never needed to.

When all you had to rely upon was your own power, you never understood how greater your strength could be when joined with another. Sometimes the greatest power was what you offered to another.

Shrubley closed his eyes and used [Transference]. A faint prismatic glow spread out from his hand and across the glassy front of Jerric’s painting. Once it reached the wooden edges of the frame, it soaked into the picture, making it more vibrant and lifelike.

“You can’t stop it!” Rykal said, snapping out a tail as thick as a tree trunk and knocking Igor through the balcony doors and out into the manor yard. “Nothing you do will ever be good enough. Can’t you understand that you pathetic little streak of nothing? You aren’t good enough!”

Knowing they were running out of time, Cal conjured a floating mirror in the Snake Lord’s periphery and shot an Elemental spell of frost out of it. The skeleton continued to lob spells at him, alternating from his staff and the mirror to distract him as long as possible.

He was joined by Slyrox, who jumped in front of Shrubley and put up her little dukes. “Time for a bingly-bang-up!” She charged amid the hail of spells, pelting the large snake with her fists.

Rykal shook his frilled head. “Absolutely pathetic,” he said, not bothering to block or dodge any of the attacks. They were all Mundane Rank, with a few nearing the floor of Copper, but they had no aura, no proper strength behind them.

“You bore me,” Rykal told them. With his coiled tail, he shattered Cal’s mirror and knocked his head clean off his shoulders to rattle and bounce down the hallway. “Your use of Mirror essence, while troublesome, is pathetic.”

He wrapped his body around Slyrox, slowly squeezing the life out of her as he slithered closer to Shrubley.

Brilliant light shined forth through Shrubley’s many broken branches and wilted leaves, as intense as the rising dawn. The sunlight Shrubley soaked up from his inventory continuously restored his health and siphoned it away into [Transference].

“Weak.” Rykal looked down at Shrubley. “What do you think you can do, little monster?”

“Not monster. Hero!” Shrubley corrected him.

“Please. If you were a hero, you would have saved your friends. You would have cut my head off and displayed it on a pike to showcase your prowess. What sort of hero heals people? That’s a servant! And now all your friends are gone. Look around you for once and face the facts!”

A tall, armored form emerged from the painting.

Jerric, the Steel Ranked Paladin, rose to his full height. It wasn’t enough to tower over the Snake Lord, but his light, steely gray aura filled the entire room with overwhelming strength. The walls buckled and bulged.

Jerric unsheathed his longsword from his side and spun it in his hand while hefting his shield with the other.

With infinite gentleness, he pushed Shrubley behind him. “You are a hero,” he told Shrubley while locking eyes with Rykal. “A hero need not be strong or all-knowing. Sometimes, knowing your limitations is enough. It takes a hero, a true hero, to keep fighting in the face of overwhelming defeat.”

Shrubley would have beamed if he had the strength. Shielded by the Paladin, he crawled to the next painting, and the next after that.

Adventurer after adventurer emerged from their prison paintings. Fio adjusted her floppy hat while a Red spell surged to life upon the top of her staff. Henry pulled his bow taut, aiming a set of three arrows at the Snake Lord.

The true Count Haalften adjusted his cravat, then scooped up Shrubley in his arms. “You have done well, little hero. Rest now. We will take it from here.”

Jerric nodded toward the door and Count Haalften took the cue to sweep out of the room, taking Slyrox out of the stunned Rykal’s clutches and picking up Cal’s head and body along the way.

***

The adventurers turned to Rykal. “We can do this the easy way, or the hard way,” Jerric told him with a malicious grin.

“Oh, please tell us you want to do it the hard way,” Fio snarled. “Please, do.”

Rykal couldn’t believe his eyes and ears. There was no way the shrub had been able to break his magic. There was no possible way! And yet… the proof stood before him, sword, bow, and staff aimed at him.

They could destroy him without hardly breaking a sweat. That was why it had been so imperative to split them up and take them separately. And now… his worst fears were made material.

“If you kill me, this world will break into a million shards, just like a mirror,” Rykal bluffed.

“I’m sure it will,” Jerric said. “And you’ll be able to tell us exactly how to prevent that so long as we let you go, right?”

“After being trapped in that painting, I think I’m okay with the world being broken, don’t you, Henry?” Fio said, her voice as sweet as a diabetic coma.

The three adventurers closed ranks. They forced him toward the balcony, giving him an avenue of escape.

Pity? They are taking pity on me? Something snapped in Rykal’s mind.

This wasn’t how things should go. This wasn’t right. He had done everything the Old Man had asked for and it had all turned out just as he had said it would.

Until that shrub appeared. The Old Man hadn’t spoken of the shrub, as if he hadn’t seen him in his visions. But that was impossible! The Steel Rankers had been a mere potential, but at least the Old Man had seen them. What was so special about a useless soul shrub?

Slithering with his back to the balcony, Rykal prepared to turn tail and run. The Old Man had promised him that he would take over Taamra. This was his by right! He earned this.

Against all reason and half-mad with fear, Rykal lunged at Fio. Despite being Steel herself, she wasn’t nearly as fast as Rykal when he was operating at his maximum strength. His aura coiled so tightly around his body that by using both his body and aura in conjunction, he was able to move significantly faster than he should have been able to.

Rip the throat out and slither away in the confusion, his thoughts told him. He could see it in his mind’s eye as her blood coated his fangs and ran like a waterfall to the floor.

He could see it all so clearly.

So it came as quite a surprise when Jerric’s sword turned into a silver bolt of lightning and speared his head to the floor mere inches from where he had started.

Darkness descended on Rykal’s life, and for the briefest moment he saw the Old Man watching him from behind the three adventurers. His purple-gray eyes looked thoughtful.

He had just enough strength to rasp, “Why have you forsaken me?” before everything went dark.