Lieforged Gale - Chapter 28

The last boss of the dungeon was in a cavern with a wide open roof that allowed glimpses of snowy, forested mountainside beyond. So far in the dungeon, the bosses had been simple, the trash mobs squishy, and the loot plentiful.

Noah was damned impressive too. He had to have some sort of martial arts training because the way he used his whole body to cast his spells was almost like an intense and artful dance. Actually, he was doing a bunch of katas, like for example, when he needed a big tower shield sized barrier, he’d swing his right arm around and up like he was actually using one. Then, his left foot would swing back while he pivoted on his right. It would actually be pretty fun to train with him.

“Something feels different,” Noah whispered from our perch high up on a ledge. The benefit of being so tiny is that the available space to plot and scheme while remaining unseen was significantly expanded.

I squinted and inspected the large cavern. An underground river burbled away happily, curling around a central and vaguely circular arena. A rickety wooden bridge mounted the river and connected the entrance to the boss area. Everything was moss and small shrubs growing on jagged rock and gravel, and throughout that the goblins had built a small village on the edges of the central arena.

Except Noah was right, something was out of place. In the middle of the arena, someone had planted a pole made of black, gold, and red obsidian. The goblins appeared to have been chipping away at it, because fragments of obsidian unsuited for use in weaponry were strewn everywhere.

“What is that thing?” I asked, more to myself than my new friend. “It’s too far away to inspect.”

Noah shuddered next to me and shook his head. “I don’t know, but it feels wrong somehow. Is it doing that to you too?”

“Doing… what, exactly?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at him.

“Makes my bones want to run away,” he said, frowning. “I don’t like it.”

I grunted in response, then gestured with a nod towards the far side of the cavern. “What I don’t like is that the boss is missing.”

“Oh…” he snorted, amused at himself. “I didn’t even notice that.”

“My my my,” A sickly sweet masculine voice said, echoing in from all directions. “These ones aren’t so stupid after all.”

Noah and I both froze in place, staring at each other in fear. That was not the voice of a goblin bandit boss. Slowly, we turned to gaze out over the cavern, until our eyes locked on a figure floating in the air high above the obsidian pillar.

His shoulder length hair was a mix of dark and light greys that danced with a breeze that didn’t exist. His face was pale and angular, pretty, but in a way that veered much further into handsome territory than the femboy tank beside me. His long, pointed ears made me think he was an elf at first, but no elf had skin like his. It was like it had been sapped of all vitality and coated in a thin sheen of plastic or even a transparent metal. Then there were his eyes, which finalised my conclusion as to his race. He was an unseelie fairy.

He was also just as tall as your average human dude, and over his slim, broad shoulders hung a coat that he had shed to reveal a white silken shirt cut almost like a dress shirt. I wasn’t looking at that, or his muscular legs covered by tight leather pants. I was looking at his sword, which he held casually in one hand while the other carried his coat. It looked like a cavalry sabre with a significantly less flamboyant guard than you might see on a similar weapon. Hell, if it weren’t for the obviously different curve of the blade, I wouldn’t have blamed someone for thinking it was a katana.

Fear chilled my bones at his smirk. It was so vicious, like he was imagining how he’d cut us to pieces and licking his lips. What the hell was an unseelie doing in the middle of a level twenty goblin bandit dungeon? It didn’t make any sense.

Beside me, Noah made a tiny noise, and I glanced over to see him staring at the floating man with a much different look in his eyes. “Oh dear god,” he whispered. “He is delicious.”

“He is the enemy,” I reminded my horny and apparently very gay friend.

“Yeah but I’d love to be railed by him anyway,” the boy grinned.

A whistling sound interrupted my incredulous glare, and I dove behind Noah just in time to avoid being impaled by a spray of red obsidian spikes. Noah was fine, of course, his passive shields snapped into place and protected him, but it also galvanised him into viewing the unseelie man as a threat and not food.

“I would never stoop so low as to court a pitiful seelie man,” the unseelie guy laughed, flicking his sword to the side with a flourish. “Your kind are small, weak, and no different to a woman.”

Noah flinched as if stuck by the evil bastard’s words, and I bared my teeth as a wave of rage swept through me. Motherfucker was going to die.

Scatterdashing towards him and growing in size to my normal height, I shifted my grip on my sword and ripped it from its sheath. A wave of energy lashed out at him, but he slapped it aside with a flick of his blade, then returned with an attack of his own. It was similar to mine, but where my energy was almost soft and whimsical, his was hard and shardlike.

Noah dove between us and spun into a kick that trailed his trademark silver magic behind it. The unseelie’s attack crashed harmlessly against the barrier, but Noah wasn’t done.

“Hey, how’s this for a weak little seelie man,” he growled, and threw a fist forward. His lance flashed past us both and rammed its point deep into the evil asshole’s shoulder.

The harsh lines of his face contorted with pain, and he turned his next strike against Noah. The tiny fairy boy laughed and batted away the attack with a barrier, then threw that barrier out at our enemy and bounced the hardened edge off his skull.

Spinning backwards through the air from the blow, the unseelie summoned a pair of large, leathery wings to steady himself.

In front of me, Noah turned and threw me a wink. “Obviously intelligent enemies are way more fun to taunt than dumb goblins. I get to troll them and block all their damage!”

“You are… you are Ascendants!” Mister Misogynist exclaimed, glaring daggers at the tank. “What are Ascendants doing here?”

“What the hell is even the difference between an Ascendant and a Seelie?” I asked, genuinely curious.

He didn’t reply, opting instead to pull the lance from his shoulder and throw it at Noah. It was a futile act, because Noah had apparently specialised into telekinesis with his weapon, and it simply floated back to hang beside his right shoulder.

“Thanks, dude,” the shit stirring little tank laughed, wiggling his perfectly arched eyebrows at our foe. “I was wondering where I put that.”

Letting out a cry of rage, the unseelie man threw a spray of sharpened power at us and lunged to follow it. Smoke coiled out from him like a cape, and then swept around to engulf us in darkness.

“Oh, shit,” Noah muttered, raising his hands into a guard position. “I kinda need to be able to see him.”

“Me too,” I replied, searching the darkness for any sign of him.

I didn’t see him, but I did begin to feel a burning in my lungs. A shiver of apprehension ran down my spine, and glancing at my status UI I saw what I’d feared. The smoke was a poison, and it was eating away at my stamina and my health in equal measure.

“Dive to the ground,” I whispered urgently to Noah, then pulled my wings in and dropped, taking my own advice.

It was not a moment too soon, either, because a second after he cleared the fog, it pulsed with a violent spasm of red lightning. The smell that followed caused me to retch, and I finished my descent to land in the boss arena.

The unseelie man exploded out of the boiling fog like some sort of fallen angel of edgy fury, and slammed into Noah as he tried to touch down. Dust and dirt sprayed in all directions, and for a moment I feared my new friend had been dealt a killing blow.

My fear was mostly unfounded. Noah was down on one knee, arms raised and crossed above his tiny frame, with a silver and lavender dome of magic protecting him. The tip of his attacker’s sword was lodged firmly in the barrier, and even as I watched, our foe shoved down with all his strength, causing a spider web of cracks to fan out from the point of impact.

Raising my left hand, I cast Mind Flutter, and dashed forward, sword outstretched. The boss flinched sideways as the imaginary blow flickered in the corner of his vision, and it was all I needed to sink my blade into his side.

He howled in pain and turned his hate-filled eyes on me. “Little whore. I will enjoy cutting you down.”

I kicked his knee out from under him and ripped my sword free. I wasn’t going to dignify that with a response.

Noah had no such inhibitions. “Why does everyone always assume that a woman having sex is a bad thing?” He grunted, still holding his shield up with both hands. “I mean, really… It’s just business.”

“What are you talking about, foolish boy?” The Unseelie man hissed, yanking his sword out the barrier to turn and face me.

“You called her a whore,” Noah explained, almost casually as he stood and centred himself for battle again. “But, your tone implied it was an insult. I don’t get the insult?”

Distracted by the tank’s words, he didn’t see me attack. My blade seared the air with its passage, and I poured mana into a Pinprick Strike. This time, though, I wasn’t so lucky, and he blocked my ability with inhuman speed.

I stared in stunned confusion as my sword spun off out of my hand to clatter on the ground, and realised that I was very, very screwed.

As if he was trying to confound me as many times in one fight as he possibly could, the Unseelie boss stepped back and sneered. “You are fortunate, whore. My plans are on a strict timeline, and I cannot waste any more time ending your useless, meaningless lives. Enjoy yourselves as you pick at the corpses of these goblins like the disgusting carrion birds that you are.”

Then, with the crash of parting air and the whistle of air over wing, he was gone.

QuietValerie