Nay felt like her mysterious quest giver was having a little fun with her notifications again. Which seemed oddly inappropriate considering the danger level at the moment. She could die at any moment. But an electric guitar thrum came out of nowhere and the text was pulsating in different pixilated colors. It was like an obnoxious insert from some Edgar Wright movie.
[A New Contender Has Entered The Ring!]
[The Njorbane!]
[Is this a Boss Battle?]
[It Could Be!]
[That’s Up To You!]
Not only was it inappropriate and obnoxious, it was a bit odd. What did that last bit me? That it was up to her.
The Njorbane had a bald head but had salt and pepper muttonchop sideburns. There were twigs and leaves braided into the hair, giving the ogre a strange druidic look. Its mouth was twisted in a sneer, revealing its remaining teeth which had a green sheen.
It was about twelve feet tall, and its arm was long enough where the knuckles were almost scraping the ground. The other arm was just a stump, ending in scar tissue where the elbow should be. It wore some type of armor that looked like it was made out of bark.
It had left a graveyard of skeletons in its wake, where it had battered a hole through the dome of bones. It scanned everyone in the chamber and it clenched its jaw, pissed off. “You have come to the wrong place. You will not touch the Ygdar tree here. Here, you have found death.”
Gideon, who had been fighting Ilyawraith, but now had paused to look at the newcomer, said, “No one touches the maugrim but me.”
The Njorbane lifted up its tree-sized club, revealing the armored form of Fluxwell who had been smashed into the roots. Surprisingly, laughter came from the dented helm and the maugrim moved, surviving the blow thanks to his armor. One of his mechano legs gave off steam and sparks.
“Finally!” Fluxwell said. “A worthy contender!”
He tried to climb out of the maugrim shaped hole in the roots but the Njorbane’s club came down again, smashing him back in with a clang of metal. His armor crunched from the blow and he disappeared underneath again.
Gideon frowned at the Njorbane and then gestured with his free hand as if he was a composer conducting a symphony. All the skulls in the chamber began to rattle. Then they began rolling across the ground and accumulating into a pile. It grew, forming a pile taller than the Bjorbane.
Then the skulls began to form into a humanoid shape. The different bones composing the skull began to separate from some. The parietal, the occipital, the temporal bones, they began pull apart and reconnect, forming into bigger plates. A chestplate. Pauldrons. All made of skulls.
What formed was a humanoid giant made of skulls that had a gigantic and terrifying super skull for a head.
This was the Skull Golem.
Purple vigor light flared within the sockets of all the orbital bones, animating it into life.
It stepped between Gideon and the Njorbane. The ogre swung his tree-sized club at the necromancer but the Skull Golem blocked it with its arms. Several skulls crunched and pieces of bone fell to the floor.
But the purple vigor fire flared along the appendage and the bones reassembled, self-healing. Then the two creatures slammed into each other and everyone dodged out of the way, giving them room.
Tuk-Tuk helped Fluxwell up and the maugrim grunted. His armor was dented in and scuffed. “I think my ribs be broken,” the maugrim said.
A flash of gold light hit him, healing him. He sighed in relief and looked over at Lain, who had tossed him an acorn of healing.
Ilyawraith reengaged Gideon, coming at him with a sequence of bo strikes and feints. He danced back, parrying with his bone scythe.
“Go now,” Ilyawraith said to Nay over the Whispering Wind party line. “Get the Delicacy while they are all distracted.”
Nay disappeared through the hole the Njorbane had made through the bone wall and she headed for the Ygdar tree.
#
She glanced at the green dot of the Delicacy on her mini-map. It grew closer as she drew near the massive trunk of the Ygdar. Its gnarled and mighty roots spread across the floor and formed some of the walls of the spacious chamber. She could feel the ancient and mysterious aura radiating off the wood.
The root floor was riddled with the bones of Gideon’s minions. And there were other remains down here. Ones still wearing clothes and armor. And a pile of weapons was formed in a circle around the tree. A ring of blades and blunt instruments of fallen adventurers, thieves and graverobbers who had come seeking glory in claiming The Njorbane’s head.
But The Njorbane was still here. Blood still pumped through its veins and heart. But the others weren’t. Only their bones, armor and weapons remained. Their blood had run dry long ago while The Njorbane lived.
She circled around to the side of tree where the Delicacy was located. The top of the trunk reached to the ceiling, where it ended in a jagged and blackened cut. This was all that was left of the Ygdar tree. There were no boughs overhead displaying leaves. That part of the tree would have been on the surface and it only existed a long time ago.
However, there were a few fresh branches growing out of the trunk. They had just emerged from buds and they were so new they were still smooth and green. They were so small in circumference they were more tendrils than actual branches. Maybe one day, given enough time and growth, they could turn into normal branches. But these were signs of the tree’s longevity and strength in the face of time and ruin.
From one of these new branches, there was a single round fruit hanging from it. It looked a lot like a pomegranate except it was purple. Motes of purple and gold light drifted from its aura, floating in the atmosphere around the Delicacy.
[Delicacy Detected]
[Pomegranate of the Norn Arborist]
Bingo. All that was left to do was to pluck the Delicacy from the branch and store it in her inventory. Then she could get back to her party to help them.
She was still in stealth when she saw a black and purple anomaly form in the air next to the Delicacy. It was a Nether Portal. She recognized it from when they fought the Nether Sister back in Lucerna’s End.
Someone stepped out of it and Nay could only see their silhouette. Was it the Nether Sister herself?
The form raised both arms, reaching for the Delicacy.
#
Quincy had recovered from the blow from the giant skeletal hand that dazed him. It had been a long while since he encountered someone with Gideon’s power and he cursed himself for being ill-prepared.
Part of him felt guilt for not keeping up with his progression to Silver, but he couldn’t change the past. He didn’t regret retired and running the Lodge. But now that such things mattered, he wished he had somehow kept up with his advancement at the same time.
He saw the necromancer’s massive minion fighting the ogre. Their blows were shaking the chamber floor and the noises of their strikes were like claps of thunder.
In the air, he caught sight of two dark creatures fighting each other. He realized it was Nom fighting the necromancer’s dark vampiric fiend. The tentacle and shadow twisted and writhed through the air, their forms serpentining and expanding and increasing as one tried to consume the other. He saw a blast of red light from Nom’s Disintegration Ray and still the two beings fought.
Then he saw Ilyawraith still engaged in combat with Gideon. The two healers, Lain and Bianca, healing their respective fighters.
He scooped Samuel, his crossbow, off the ground and loaded it. He took aim at the dark healer, Bianca. Then he remembered she had some type of vigor shield ability. So he picked up a femur bone next to him and he hurled it at the healer.
Sure enough, she turned at the movement as she was healing Gideon with her umbrella. The femur hit her shield aura. There was a ripple of shadows, as if tiny umbrellas appeared, blocking the bone. When it hit them, they disappeared in a splash of vigor.
And Quincy was ready. He pulled Samuel’s trigger. The bolt was true and hit the healer in the chest, downing her.
Quincy was airborne then, his Bronze-enhanced athleticism even more modified by the special food Nay and Nom had prepared. His jump was boosted by the Frog Ups spell and he closed the gap, holstering Samuel and drawing Gertrude, his axe.
He brought it down to split the healer’s skull, but a shield of rotating bones formed around her. Gertrude’s blade bounced off the spinning bone shield in a spray of sparks.
He looked at Gideon, who was no longer smiling. There was nothing but cold cunning on his face now. The two skeletal arms on his back bent so that they were like two extra arms bent over his shoulders. They drew two sickles from the necromancer’s back. The bone blades were a part of the back plate and were embedded there.
But each hand-held sickle was connected to a chain that had a nasty ball of spiked bone on the end.
Kusarigamas.
As Gideon slashed at her with his double-handed bone scythe, his two extra skeletal arms holding the kusarigamas vertically spun the spiked balls on the chains.
It released one and the chain unfurled and coiled around one of Ilyawraith’s arms. The chain went taut and the skeletal arm yanked, pulling her arm forward.
She was forced to turn and pivot her feet or lose her balance. So she followed the chain. The other ball and chain whipped around her neck. As the skeletal arm pulled, the chain tightened, cutting off her air supply.
With each step Gideon took towards her, the more chain the skeletal hands cinched, lifting Ilyawraith into the air and pulling her closer to the necromancer.
Quincy dashed towards the necromancer but the bone scythe pierced his stomach and the tip popped out of his back. The pain was cold and sharp. He looked down at the weapon inside him.
Then it wrenched out of him as Gideon pulled it out. It would have disemboweled Quincy but Lain was next to him, her hoop bathing him in light. He felt her touch as the Gloom Ranger laid her hands on his wound as he crumpled to the ground.
Quincy started to fade, feeling a mixture of pain and balm as Lain worked to heal his wound.
Then his eyes went to Ilyawraith. Before Gideon could pull her closer, a blast of blue light and frigid cold exploded out of her staff, Hoarfrost, encasing her in ice.
Gideon cursed and chopped at the ice block with his scythe and twin kusarigamas. Chipping away the ice to get at his opponent underneath.
#
Nay activated Blade Rush, de-stealthing. She rushed into the figure reaching for the Delicacy. Thorn landed in the form’s chest but she was surprised to discover that ice scythe met no resistance and cut through a nebulous portion of the torso.
And Nay was also surprised to discover that it wasn’t the Nether Sister she was facing, even though this person had some of the same characteristics. There was the strange black and purple armor, the half tangible and half corporeal form that the Nether Sister had.
A single eye burned with a violet flame in the pupil.
But that wasn’t the only thing that burned. Malice and hate simmered in that single eye as well.
“You,” a female voice said.
Nay recognized that voice. The other eye had a nasty scar running through the mangled socket. There were runes on the pale skin that wasn’t the spectral nether matter. This person was slightly taller than her. The muscular form of a half-human, half-maugrim.
It was Mishell, the Fishmonger’s daughter. And now she was part Nether Being.
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