It looked like I didn’t have time to make choices. The boss fight was starting.

  Chapter 38- Stone, Fire, and Death

  The temple, or whatever it used to be was absolutely massive. So the fact that it was shaking was worrisome to say the least. Rather than letting ourselves be trapped with our backs to the gate that we’d just come through, we ran forward.

  Dori took point. I regretted that I’d been so distracted in the oasis that I hadn’t learned about my teams new uncommon classes. On the team interface, Dori was simply called a Shadow Reaver while Crag was a Steel Bulwark, and Nevin was a Dark Enchanter.

  They were all obviously stronger. Now that we were no longer trapped in the oasis, I could feel their aura. Sadly, I was sure we were going to need all this power and more. I only hoped that Samvek would be joining us. Dori moved with an astounding amount of grace, moving between the shadow as she raced forward, her form was difficult for my eyes to track as she seemed to blur at times.

  Crag was carrying his massive war hammer in one hand. It looked to have undergone a change, it now glistened with a faint blue light. He now carried it with ease in just one hand and as large as it was it didn’t seem out of place. On his other arm was a large, oval-shaped shield. On the front of it was a roaring monster’s head, but it wasn’t one I was familiar with. His armor also had been upgraded, and he was in full plate metal now.

  Nevin was the least unchanged. His robes remained the same. He had a new staff, but I didn’t get a chance to identify it. What was different though was that his first spell called up a squad of undead soldiers, plucking them from the remains of many skeletons around us. I looked at him, trying to determine if he’d suddenly turned towards necromancy, especially with ‘Dark’ as part of his class title. Seeing my look, he grinned and said, “They’re animated by my magic, not by souls or the remnants of soul energy. I’ll explain later.”

  He was right. Now wasn’t the time for questions, and I still had to find out just what I could do now. I stopped running and took the thirty seconds it required for me to cast Urg. His form was entirely different this time. Gone was the plant body. Now he was something darker and more vibrant at the same time—if that were possible.

  He was vaguely humanoid, but with spikes all over his shoulders, the outside of his arms, and down his back. Instead of a head, his shoulders seemed to rise up a bit more in a swell that contained four eyes, two on the edges, and two in front as well as a thin mouth. He glistened but was all black and gray.

  I would have studied him more, but there wasn’t time. I had to trust that he’d assumed the form that would work the best with me. I activated Stealth and was off and running once again. Urg seemed to match my movements. As I ran, I cast Rapid Flight, which due to our connection, affected my eidolon as well. So it was easy for us to streak forward and catch up to the others just as they rounded the corner to reveal a massive chamber.

  Clambering forward was a monster from a nightmare. In an instant, I understood why Azirin had been experimenting with fire, stone, and undead.

  The creature looming before us was like something dredged up from the darkest pit of hell. Towering and wreathed in flames, its very presence defied the natural laws of the world. The temple's massive chamber dwarfed us, and in its center, the beast raged, a sentinel of stone and fire.

  Its body, a grotesque tapestry of molten rock and charred bone, pulsed with a fierce inner light. Lava coursed through its veins, visible beneath the cracked, ashy surface of its skin. It stood on two legs, thick as ancient trees and just as sturdy, rooted to the ground with the weight of eons. Arms, vast and destructive, hung at its sides, ending in hands that could crush stone or rend metal asunder. One of those hands held a massive weapon created from a blending of stone, bone and infused with fire. It was shaped like a scythe blade on one side and a pick on the other, but without any of the clean edges. It was more like a jagged and primitive stone weapon.

  The face was a horror, a nightmare sculpted in obsidian and flame. Two eyes, burning with an infernal glow, sat deep within sockets that were more like cavernous pits of fire. It had no nose, only slits above a cavernous maw from which plumes of smoke and ash belched forth. That maw looked like the inside of a fiery furnace, one which triggered old memories and nightmares from my childhood. Of an old, run-down house on Elmwood Street, where all the kids in the neighborhood raced past in fear. The horns twisted skyward, adorned with runes that danced and flickered in the firelight, telling tales of ancient magic and untold power.

  It roared, and the sound was the wailing of souls and the crackling of an inferno. The temple shook with the force of its fury, and we stood, tiny and defiant before it. I didn’t know for sure, but my gut was telling me this was Azirin, the spirit of the Darje necromancer, bound to a monstrosity of his own making. His final form took a shape crafted by his madness, his grief, his unchecked power.

  "What have you done with her?" The words thundered around the chamber, a demand laced with a thousand years of pain. When we didn’t answer, he spoke again. “What have you done with my darling wife? Tell me where she is and I’ll grant you a quick death.”

  I put two and two together as I remembered the banshee. He wasn’t done, though. “She was my wife, I freed her from death to live as a banshee. She sings to me whenever I visit her, but now I can’t sense her presence in the dungeon.”

  His accusation was a lash, stinging with the raw edge of loss. The banshee, whose spirit I had released, was his wife. In freeing her, I had committed an act he saw as murder. His wrath was the wrath of a lover scorned by death, now scorned again by my hand. Not that I felt any guilt. I had given her what she wanted; freedom from undeath, freedom from a husband who bound her against her will.

  Urg bristled beside me, his new form dark and potent, ready to leap into battle. The spikes on his body were like the spears of a phalanx, eager to strike. His eyes, devoid of mercy, met mine. In that glance, I knew he was prepared to unleash havoc and that was oddly reassuring, despite what Identify was telling me.

  Azirin Larlo (Rare) Race: Formerly Darje, now- Lich

  Body- Hell infused undead, elemental construct.

  Variant: Dungeon Boss

  Level: 101

  Disposition: Hostile

  Threat: Deadly

  I steadied my breath as I called forth my polearm. The feel of it in my hands provided an anchor of comfort. I was struck by the irony of this. By everything I’d seen. Azirin was a foul and evil being, but his original intention wasn’t based upon evil. He had set upon this course by his desire to help his wife, as twisted as it was. Once again, the system had put me in the middle of a tragedy. Was this the system’s way of testing my character or mettle? Was there an overarching purpose aside from getting stronger? I took a deep breath, this was not the time for introspection. Still, the concept was still valid, this was a tragedy. I didn’t know if there were any living Darje left, but these monsters we were fighting were the product of a tragedy.

  "I released her," I admitted, my voice steady.

  “Released? You mean you destroyed her?” He screamed back at me. Coming out of the giant construct, the sound was more like an entire stadium full of voices combined with a landslide.

  "She asked me to free her. She only wanted peace,” I snapped back. There was no way this wasn’t gonna turn into fight, but I was buying time. Every time Azirin shouted at me, I had the opportunity to cast a buff and my team got to prepare whatever measures they needed too.

  “She would never…”

  I cut him off this time. “Then why did she gift me her Spirit Singing ability?”

  Silence filled the air for a moment. I could hear the flames along his body burning, the air crackled all around him.

  “You lie!”

  Rather than argue now that I’d already activated my buffs, I flared my Adorably Harmless aura and then began to sing a song of loss and yearning about a Candle in the Wind. The tune filled the air and began to warp the undercurrents of darkness which filled the room. My voice still wasn’t anything to put on display, outside of the shower, but it was all I had and it seemed to catch him for the moment.

  The melody unfurled from my lips, a haunting serenade that wove through the cacophony of the chamber. The song was Elton's, but the sorrow was my own; a lament for a banshee who had longed for the end of her cursed existence. My Spirit Singing was raw, untrained, yet it held power—the power to distract, to delay, to stir the echoes of love and loss that even a monster like Azirin could not ignore.

  The chamber's energy shifted, bending, twisting with the notes of my song. The heat from the monster's fiery form seemed to wane, if only slightly, as if the music quelled the rage that fueled it.

  Dori moved like a specter, a dance of darkness and deadly intent. Her form, a flickering shadow against the flickering light, cast from Azirin’s flames. She circled around the beast while he was distracted by my song. When she struck, her blades moved with a scary precision and confidence. I couldn’t see what she could from where I stood, but she seemed to know exactly what she was doing. Each weapon blow became an empowered shadow strike. Blades of twisted shadow extended her range, enabling her to hit the creature’s knee while still on ground, despite it being twice her height.

  Her objective was obvious. Anything that large depended on its legs to keep it mobile. If she could topple it, the threat level would be cut dramatically.

  Nevin’s undead soldiers, a macabre squad, clambered over the monster’s other leg. They were like ants attacking a mountain, insignificant alone but relentless in number. They scaled Azirin with eerie determination, their weapons—rusty swords and broken spears—finding purchase in cracks and crevices. They hacked and stabbed, their efforts less about damage and more about distraction.

  At the same time, I saw him drawing power into his crown. A sphere of black flame began to form overtop of his head, steadily growing until it was nice and big as a basketball. It seemed that Nevin had learned a bit more about manipulating the crown. Still, he didn’t fire the attack off. If anything, it was like he was trying to compress the power, compacting it more tightly together.

  Crag stood defiant before the monstrosity. He stepped up and boldly took his place at the center of our formation. Then he raised his shield, triggering some new ability which caused it to rapidly expand into a dome. It completely encased him and yet when he bellowed forth a taunt, I could feel the pull to look at him. I wasn’t even the target of his ability, and yet it nearly broke my concentration.

  As for Azirin, he was immediately enraged. Any pause which had been in place was broken, and he brought his weapon up overhead. His swing went so high that it brought down rocks from overhead before it began to fall. The descent of his weapon was terrifying, and I couldn’t imagine how Crag expected to survive it. But survive he did, and more. The curved stone blade was chipped and cracked as it slammed into the metal dome. The ground trembled once again, and I heard the sound of metal being pushed to its limits.

  Urg seemed to have found his moment to strike. He flew upward as a blur of darkness moving at a staggering speed thanks to Rapid Flight. He emerged from a cloud of gloom right in front of the monster’s down-turned face. It jerked back in shock, but not before twin bolts of lightning burst forth from Urg’s odd three-fingered hands.

  One bolt was a brilliant green lightning, which pulsed with the power of life. It cut into the burning mask of bone and stone which made up the creature’s face. From his other hand, a black bolt of lightning which seemed to absorb all the light and heat around it blasted into an open eye-socket. The flames inside seemed to waver for a moment before the monster stumbled backward.

  We were doing it! We were winning against a rare boss monster. I needed to add my force to this attack, and together we might just take him down. Maybe it was going to be easier than I’d dared hope?

  Damn… why had I let myself think that?

  Chapter 39- Teamwork

  Azirin’s rage broke through the calming effect of Spirit Singing. I could literally feel his rage devouring through my spell like fire on spider silk. And then it was gone. He roared in what I took to be outrage. The taunt had pulled his attention. Dori’s attacks had to be drawing notice as they whittled away at the creature’s knee, or at least they would have been, but for lightning bolts which Urg was hurling into those open eye sockets.

  Despite it all, the constructed body was so massive that there were few, if any signs of damage yet. I needed to join the fray, but quickly ran over my new abilities. There hadn’t been time for me to practice with them and some caused me a bit of concern. My healing would be less effective at early stages now, but more effective if I let my allies get closer to death.

  The ability to share force constructs was potentially powerful, but we hadn’t practiced it and they wouldn’t know what to do with that. The biggest benefit I saw was that I could swap out Mage Shield, since it would always be active now, as long as I had bio-electrical energy in my body.

  On gut instinct, I swapped it out for Hunter’s Tether. Then I realized, that at Uncommon Tier, I got a fourth active and passive ability. So I quickly added Searing Arc and Vampiric Aura. There might have been better choices, but I made all these decisions in a split second while running closer to the monstrosity.

  Once I got within melee range, it was truly daunting just how big it was. It must have been at least sixty feet high and more than twenty feet wide. It was physical and elemental energy made incarnate, while powered by the dark and twisted undeath mana. I didn’t know how effective my polearm would be against something this size, so I took a page out of Dori’s book and conjured force shields, which I immediately shaped into blades.

  I worried that the raw power of a rare tier boss was going to make my abilities seem pathetic, but I grinned with the way the force constructs transformed into what I needed effortlessly. The process felt so much more natural now. It wasn’t just the monster who had power, that simple use of my new tier told me just how much stronger I was than before.

  Then I sent two blades straight up into the monster, right at the point where its leg fused to the torso. They cut deeply into the stone and bone which made up the frame of the monster, but even then, it wasn’t enough. Or rather it wasn’t going to be fast enough.

  Whatever ability that Crag was using was starting to fade and the last blow he took cut his HP in half in a single stroke. I cast Lingering Grace and worried about how its effects might have changed. I was pleased to see that the spell was more effective than ever before, presumably because of my increased tier. Upgrading my core had simply made everything about me better. It was a rush. I then layered a pair of force shields over him, to help soften the blows against him.

  Maintaining four shields was now as easy as maintaining and moving two had been before. I was definitely enjoying my new functionality and I could feel how the passive class shard upgrades were making my constructs more durable.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Nevin hurl the massive sphere of black fire straight at the monster, just as he called, “Look out.”

  The roiling ball of soul fire struck the monster and staggered it. No physical force was actually imparted, but I could feel the spiritual energies as they curled and burnt inside him. Then that energy was consumed and Azirin just laughed. “Nice try, mortal. But you’ll find I’m not vulnerable to your pathetic soul attacks.”

  For once, Nevin seemed at a loss, but the answer hit me. I should have realized it before. Identify said that he was a lich. Lichs’ removed their souls from their bodies via phylactery. Of course, soul fire wouldn’t harm him. That’s not to say damage couldn’t be done. After all, the construct or vessel required spiritual energy. This body had absorbed a lot of it, mostly due to the horrors of his experiments and the now closed portal. One that had been leaking hell mana into the dungeon for a very long time. Therefore, soul fire was the wrong tool for the job.

  I shouted a warning to the others about what a lich was. Nevin, his face set in grim determination, shifted tactics. His hands wove a spell of biting frost. Whatever it was called was a clear upgrade from the frost bolts he’d used in the past. It was almost like a small, localized blizzard struck the monster’s arm.

  Nevin focused his attacks on the areas where flame most strongly covered the monster’s body. The resulting conflict created clouds of steam which filled the air. Little by little, Nevin was having an impact. Wherever his conjured frost touched the monster, the flames flickered and slowly began to fade. The magma within its body seemed to solidify in that area. The problem was that if Nevin let up for more than a couple of seconds, the flames began to reclaim the area.

  Crag, on the other hand, was struggling a bit more. The massive stone weapon was battering him around. The size difference made it seem like the elemental construct was a housewife in one of those old cartoons, trying to smash an agile mouse with a broom. He zipped around the battlefield, showcasing some new movement abilities while continually taunting Azirin.

  Even when he didn’t have an active taunt ability, he kept up a steady stream of digs. “Oh boo hoo, I bet you just want to wail for your little lost wife.”

  At one point he looked over at me and winked, “Wail… banshee… see what I did there?”

  I could only groan in response as I kept laying shields to help keep him alive. I stacked on another heal whenever he dropped beneath half of his HP. Not that it was all bad. Crag was taking a licking, but his shiny new armor would mold itself back into shape after he got too battered. It was literally repairing itself mid-battle. That just seemed OP.

  Dori's frustration was apparent on her face as her shadow blades struggled to make an impact on the creature's stony flesh. Each slice, each thrust, was met with resistance, her efforts not yielding the results she desired. The stone and bone that formed Azirin's knee were a fortress in themselves, impervious to quick victory. This was likely one of the worst type of monsters for her to fight. Even the obvious spots to strike were so thick and protected that her specialty attacks weren’t doing anything.