Aetuornos Beta 1-8

 First / Previous / Next / Latest

---

1-8: Bargain on Bosses

A minute or two's walk through the tunnel past the crystal took the small group to a much larger chamber, the walls opening up to the point where Kite's light proved insufficient to show their far edges on the left or right; even the cave ceiling arced too high up for even those with dark-vision to see the whole thing.

Scylla paused carefully, one hand on the hilt of her blade while the other went up over her brow so she could squint up and around at the place. "Such a big place, and...nothing here?" she said quietly.

"I dunno about that," said the mage at the same volume. "This place gives me 'Deku tree basement' vibes..."

"No, I mean I don't hear anything," the wolf-girl clarified, pointing to a twitching ear with her free hand. "Kite?"
"Nah," she shook her head, "Maybe we failed our spot checks?"

Jesse whispered, "Your what?"

"Let's just...take it slow, " Aranthra advised. "And keep an eye out. Actually: I'll watch the sides, Jesse our back, Scylla look ahead, and Kite look up."
"Got it," the fox-girl said, the others nodding.

They took several more slow steps inside, until the entrance they'd taken was as difficult to see as the walls. "Hmm. Hold still a sec," Kite said, getting an idea—so they did. She waved her hand upward, and was able to make the orb of light fly a fair distance toward the ceiling—but still not enough to see its top. Sweeping her hand from side to side, she got the light to reveal the entrance they'd come from, and more of the roughly dome-like shape of the walls. "This's gotta be it. Major boss room vibes. Just ain't standin' in the right spot?" The light floated back down to the party.

"Look out for webs," the mage advised quietly as they continued. "Weird we haven't seen any yet, but I guess they could just be 'not that kind of spider'."

"Does anything smell unusual?" Jesse asked. "I would expect some scent of fresh prey, perhaps."
Scylla turned her head upward slightly, closing her eyes and folding her ears to horizontal, and sniffed at the air a bit. She hadn't just passively picked anything up before, but now there was definitely a faint odor of blood and rot that went out in all directions, possibly permeating the entire chamber. "There's definitely been bodies here in the past, but..nothing useful." She continued on then, the others behind her.

The next time the samurai stopped, she put out an arm to emphasize that the others should do the same, then pointed. "Uh..suspicious, pile of rocks?" she half-whispered. "Just up ahead."
"Ten to one that's not rocks," Aranthra said.
Jesse said, "Kite, you..still have that bomb paper?"

"Well, sure," she said, half-turning backwards and holding it up, "but thissun's expensive. No good wastin' it if we ain't totally—"

"Ssh!" Aranthra pointed, drawing both of their attention to something the wolf-girl had already noticed: Some faintly glowing red points of light up ahead, distinctly in the arrangement one would expect a giant, monstrous spider's eyes to be.

No sooner were all of them aware of it than the eyes moved upward, to a position maybe thrice a person's height—as their owner stood up. This was followed by a loud, multitonal version of the high screeching noise the smaller spiders had used as an alarm before. Kite yelled "On it!" over this, pushing power into the charm and sending it forward. It wove back and forth, dodging Scylla and landing squarely onto the side of the mostly-unseen beast before bursting into a violent explosion of flame.

While the monster screamed, the red glow of the fire made its true, somewhat terrifying scale much more obvious. A black substance oozed out of the wound opened by the explosion, already starting to seal it. The fire also made it much easier to see a number of smaller spiders on either side of the

mother, arranged in a row which continued out toward either side of the party.

While the boss quickly skittered backward, her army closed in, making something abundantly clear. "When did we get surrounded?!" Jesse said.
"Whole way in, I s'pose," the fox-girl replied, drawing her staff. Aranthra was already busy casting a fire enchantment for everyone's weapons.

"I guess they can be really quiet if they wanna." Scylla backed toward the group, waiting for the telltale glow of her sheath before making her move. "Don't worry, I got this."

After completing the spell, the mage said, "Just don't get too far away! I could've sworn this was a setup to get hit from above."
"No worries!" After a brief mock-salute, the wolf-girl took off, slicing her way in a circle around the group to clear the monsters away. A few of the spiders got skipped by her combo and closed in toward the others; Aranthra threw a fireball where the samurai wasn't, and Kite blocked each one that leapt at one of them with a barrier, stunning it long enough for Jesse to finish it off.

Scylla's combo ended with her sword stuck into the latest target, and she channeled the momentum from yanking it out into a backflip that landed her next to the mage, softly panting as she slowly resheathed it. "Back the way we came!" the mage said, pointing. "We need a wall on one side, so—"

BOOM

The giant spider landed right in front of them—making it appear briefly that the mage was pointing at it. Its feet cracked the cave floor from the impact, and it screeched again, raising three of its front-facing legs in preparation to attack. "Oh, you want some?" Scylla said, standing up straight and drawing her blade into a defenseive stance while Aranthra took a few quick steps back. "Come get some!"

One of the miko's barriers appeared in the way of the giant beast's long, spiky legs as they swept forward in a flurry; the first one glanced off of the barrier, cracking it, and the second shattered it entirely; Scylla sidestepped it with a counter-slash that hardly scratched the limb's hard shell. The third strike she met with her sword's blade, its hilt in both her hands; the impact pushed her back a fair bit and made her wince, her ears folded back, from the sharp force hitting her arms. "Rrr-aah!" She slid the blade along the limb and swept it off, moving aside and letting it land.

This distraction lasted long enough for Aranthra to charge another fireball and send it right at the giant spider. It landed opposite where Kite's bomb charm had, the glow of the explosion showing an army of smaller spiders arrayed to either side of the giant one, all seeming to climb around on top of each other in impatience to reach their prey. Then, screeching, the mother leapt again, going forward to sail over their heads and audibly land somewhere beyond them, well out of sight.

During this maneuver, Jesse did her best to prevent the smaller spiders coming in from the back and sides from getting too close, occasionally darting forward to grab one by the leg and sweep it around or toss it away into the growing stacks of beasts beyond, but it wasn't really enough, and by now they were uncomfortably close to the group. "Scylla!"
"Hm?" She turned back to see the situation. "Oh!" And went to work again right away. Aranthra led the rest of the group into the gap the jumping mother had just left behind before the army could close it, and joined her efforts with a swarm of crescent blades aimed to keep their way as clear as possible.

Almost as soon as the wolf-girl stopped, the giant spider landed again, this time to one side and dangerously close to Kite. She was lucky enough to have a barrier prepped, which caught some very caustic-looking green slime the mother spat at her, but then one giant limb disintegrated the wall with a sweeping slash. The miko had to jump roughly backwards out of the way to keep from being impaled, and Jesse stepped in between after that since the samurai was still busy catching her breath. Knowing she couldn't hurt those legs and having something of a mad idea, the sheep-girl squatted, put all her strength into as high a leap as she could manage, and then wrapped her legs around the upper part of one of the spider's legs on the landing, following this up with a swfit clamber up onto the main body to punch/slash at its hide with her clawgloves.

The mother turned her head to an unnatural-looking angle to look at the brawler, and she barely had time to jump off before being spat on, landing with a short tumble that ended half-knelt over near the others. Another fireball hit the beast, square in the front this time, and she leapt away immediately.

"Grrah! I wasn't ready," Scylla complained, slashing away some of the small spiders in frustration. "That stupid boss is cheating, being all invisible in the dark and stuff!"

"I could make us invisible too, if you think it'd help," Kite offered facetiously.

Both Jesse and the mage responded in chorus: "Don't."

They went back to fighting the smaller mobs, again making slow progress toward what Aranthra was pretty sure was the direction they'd come from. "Say, you really think it'd help if we could see 'er?" the miko asked in between casting barriers.
"Yes! We'd know when she's gonna jump, and where she's gonna land," said the samurai.

"A'right, well, I gotta idea. Dunno if it'll work or not. Next time she lands, just keep 'er busy like always."
"On it!"

The next jump was at their rear, aimed to try and impale Jesse with the landing; even though she neither saw nor heard it coming, the brawler felt some unaccountable instinct or reflex that made her dive back toward the group just in time to avoid it. Only halfway through her latest combo this time, Scylla managed to chain over to the giant beast not a second after it landed, planting her feet on the side of a leg and running vertically up it to hop over and make a rapid-fire series of slashes to its side before kicking off again well ahead of the retaliatory stream of acid. Some of the spiders to that side caught it instead, and screeched pathetically as they were absolutely melted by it.

Scylla landed to that side of the spider but much more forward, at an angle relative to the main group. "Ya missed me!" she taunted, which was sufficient to get its attention and have it slashing away at her. Kite took this opportunity to pull out two charms, one in each hand, and overchanneled each before throwing them forward. They swept up, dancing through the air before landing on the beast's body. From one of them, a ripple of bright color spread out across the short hairs on the giant arachnid's body; the other seemed to similarly spread out an effect that made the hairs it affected glow. The glow on the original, dark hairs was somewhat difficult to see, but before long both waves had covered the whole of the beast, covering it in bright neon-pink hairs that were also very visibly glowing.

The monster seemed to notice this—particularly the light surrounding it—and screeched confusedly, staggering back a few steps instead of pressing a planned third strike at Scylla (who'd handily dodged the first two), then leaping away into the air—only this time, everyone could easily see where it landed.

"Hahaa, yes! I wasn't too sure those'd work on a monster," Kite said. "'Hair dye' and 'glowy hair' enchants. Think they'll last maybe ten minutes on an unwilling."

"And these are among the useful charms we bought for you?" Jesse demanded, throwing another spider at a group in the way by its leg.

"Well that is useful, ain't it?" Kite placed a barrier to block another one tackling her from the side.

Aranthra, at least, appreciated having a glowing target. Her fireball spell prepped once again, she aimed it straight at the mother and scored a direct hit on the side, not far from where Scylla had just been slicing holes in it. She screeched in pain and ran in a panicked-looking fashion, her legs audibly squishing right through some of the army arrayed around her.

Through catching her breath, Scylla went back to helping cut a path toward the entrance—or at least, the same direction they'd been going for a bit. Any wall was good, she figured, for keeping them from being totally surrounded all the time. Aranthra turned her own attention to some more crescent blades for cutting through the mass of them, and Jesse helped clear the pile of bodies by picking them up and throwing them to either side or behind them—into more of the live encroaching beasts to keep them away.

"Heads up—scatter!" Kite yelled, being the first to notice the boss jumping with an aim to land directly on top of the group. They dove off to four sides of her, Scylla recovering the quickest and going to clear out some small spiders that were entirely too close to the two physically weaker party members. This left Jesse in front of the mother, who was flailing her four forelimbs around wildly, sweeping several of her own presumed offspring away in the process. The sheep-girl backed away from the attack, putting a hand behind her to catch a smaller spider's attempt to tackle-stab her and judo throw it forward into the sharp end of a panicking limb.

"I don't think she likes being a light source," the brawler observed. Aranthra scattered a glimmerblast to keep the spiders from getting too close to a briefly-winded Scylla, and Kite moved to follow the mother spider, placing a barrier to protect Jesse from some smaller ones coming at her side.

The samurai stood up. "Too bad! Jump assist, Kite?"

"On it."
"Hyyah!"

The wolf-girl leapt, shattered a barrier by pushing off of it, and landed on top of the boss just behind her head. Her sword came out of its sheath, raised high and pointed downward, and then stabbed straight down into the head, making her screech and spasm wildly in response. She stumbled forward as she rocked back and forth, trying to make Scylla let go of the hilt of her blade and fall off.

Trying to get away from the giant spider, Jesse backed into something solid, her left hand quickly touching the surface and feeling cold stone. "Uh—wall! WALL!"

"Wall!" Kite answered cheerfully, putting a barrier not in front of the mother's flailing forelegs, but her body, and she bounced awkwardly against it so that she began to stumble backwards instead. Scylla took the brief loss of momentum as an opportunity to wrench her sword loose and leap off before the ride could get rough again, landing next to Jesse and slashing away some smaller spiders that were getting too close on one side.

Aranthra managed to arc her next fireball up over the body to the giant's head, just about where Scylla's sword had been, and with its explosion came the sound of a screech that started ear-piercingly loud, but faded to a weak sort of whimpering sound before long. In the wake of it, her head was gone, and the same green, caustic substance she'd been spitting gushed out from the neck and melted parts of the body nearby as its legs skittered around wildly, rocking it back and forth briefly before it collapsed onto one side.

The mage panted; casting a strong (for her level) spell so many times in quick succession was really taxing. "Got it! I think? Whoa!" No sooner did the giant spider collapse than all the smaller ones had stopped in their track and stood still, appearing to watch her. Then, they all began to move seemingly at once, the nearby ones swarming toward the fallen body and seeming to take care to step around the two adventurers when they would otherwise be on their path to the target. They covered the mother spider like flies, completely obscuring her body and audibly tearing pieces of it off; if it hadn't been dead before, it definitely was now.

Scylla's ears folded back a bit, watching this. "Uuuhhh.."

"This is disgusting," Jesse said, turning half-away with one of her eyes closed on the other squinted.

"I think it's just a 'boss death cutscene' equivalent," the mage said. "So we don't have to...yeeaah.." The majority of the spiders that had been feeding on their (presumed) mother's flesh began to screech in pain, collapsing and melting as if they had just been covered in her corrosive acid. Those that didn't began to scatter away, fleeing the cavern entirely, and in this way it rapidly emptied of living monsters until the four adventurers were left with only the bodies.

"Well, that sure was somethin'," Kite commented first.

"Hahah...yeah. I guess we won?" Scylla said. "Victory pose!" With this, she threw an arm over Jesse's shoulders and used the free one to hold up a peace sign.

"H-hey!" She put a half-measure of effort into pulling out of the unwanted hug, and brushed herself off after it was released.

"Yeah! Staff clink," the fox-girl said, holding out her gohei toward Aranthra.

"Uh, okay?" She tapped an upper bit of her staff against the miko's.

The wolf-girl bounded over to the mages (taking care to go around what was left of the mother spider's corpse), and Jesse followed slowly. "Oh man, that was great! Way bigger and flashier than that bear boss. I wonder what kinda crafting stuff this one dropped!"
"Hahah, no kidding. That thing broke right through my shields like they were paper," the fox-girl said, nodding.
"I am so glad I picked fireball to learn first," Aranthra added almost simultaneously.

With all three of them briefly talking over each other, they didn't immediately notice a sound echoing from a distant edge of the chamber. Jesse waved at them and pointed, and all three turned the same way she was looking. The sound was that of a single person slow-clapping, and when they looked they found someone coming out of an entrance which was much closer to their present position than the one they'd come from. A bright glow surrounded this person without having a terribly obvious, singular source.

It was a tall woman in something resembling a military outfit, including a hat and a long coat that failed to entirely hide a bright red skirt, black stockings and a pair of boots. She was curvy, with deep purple eyes and a cape silver-white hair nearly down to the hips; the hilt of a sword was visible on her left side, constantly crackling with what looked to be electricity. There were also two short, curly horns ending in spikes coming from the corners of her head, and something like wings made of several pieces of metal that appeared to be floating in place a short ways behind her. Now that she had their attention, she put a finger up to her lips.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt," she said in a low, smug voice, getting just into conversational distance. "By all means," she smirked and put out a hand toward them, gesturing to continue the celebration.
"You kinda ruined the mood with the slow-clap," said Scylla. "So, who're you?"

"You may address me as General Iella," she said. "I was sent here by her majesty, the demon queen, to clear out some pests, but it seems that's already taken care of. My assignment also involves searching out the defenses of this country, but there really isn't much to speak of. Only a few scattered groups of adventurers who wouldn't pose much of a threat to the weakest of the queen's glorious army. I could probably mow down the few pathetic town guards myself."

Scylla and Aranthra exchanged an uncertain glance in the wake of this. Kite was even less sure of what was going on; was this just some roleplaying, or what? Iella tilted her head slightly at this point, however, and continued "So how was that, I wonder? It's been a while since my last 'grand, villainous speech;' I'm afraid I may be a bit rusty."

"Um..it was better before you started asking for a rating," the mage said. "So you're a..player, or..?"
"Well, I just told you," she said, putting her hands on her hips, "I'm a general in the demon queen's army. What, you thought just because you're playing a beta there wouldn't be a story? We can't have our first players telling everyone else they found the game directionless and boring, after all! Anyway...

"A-hem." With a soft clearing of her throat, the demon-woman drew her sword and held it out toward them; the entire blade seemed just as full of electricity as the hilt. "You lot don't look like much, but out of gratitude...I'll let you live if you can manage to score a single hit on me." She smirked again. "I'll even let you make the first move."

Three out of four members of the party recognized this offer as a trap. Unfortunately, the one who didn't was also the swiftest of them by far, and Scylla put her hand on the hilt of her sheathed sword and made a charging slash at the demon general before anyone could get a word out to warn her. Iella seemed just as capable of moving quicker than the eye could see as the samurai—if not more so—and seemed to effortlessly catch the blade on her own. The electricity arced around from the point of contact to encircle the katana's blade, evidently magnetizing the metal since she was able to yank it entirely out of the wolf-girl's grasp just by swinging her blade away. Then it was released at the end of the swing, sending the sword flying across the cave elsewhere to clatter loudly on the ground.

"G'yaah!" Scylla stumbled slightly back, but didn't entirely lose her compusure, instead pulling one of her kunai and making a wild toss in Iella's general direction. She batted this away effortlessly, but needing to do so prevented her from countering the unarmed samurai. Jess stepped in with a punch (which she easily sidestepped), giving the wolf-girl a moment to run after her weapon—and having a plan besides. Iella swung back at her, Kite managed to put a shield in the way which shattered instantly but still slowed the swing enough for the sheep-girl to sidestep and grab the flat of the blade.

"Rrrg—!" Electricity coursed over her, but she had enough endurance to bear it and keep trying to pull the weapon out of her hand. Unfortunately, Iella far outclassed her in strength and maintained her grip, instead swinging the brawler up over her head and away to one side, ending in a rough landing. Predictably, she also had no trouble at all deflecting a shower of sparks from Aranthra and advanced unimpeded on their healer.

Kite pulled out a charm she'd rather have saved and stuck it to her gohei, planting its base firmly on the ground. Three layers of dome-shaped barrier appeared around her, and barely held up against Iella's hard swing—it shattered the two outer layers and badly cracked the third. Scylla was back before she could follow up, this time making a series of swift, low-impact strikes that pulled her blade back before it could get stuck to the demon's electrified sword.

Aranthra gambled a bit, taking this time to charge a fireball and send it Iella's way. She casually swiped her blade to one side and hit the fireball, batting it back the way it came and forcing the mage to dive out of the way of the explosion. She narrowly avoided getting blown up, but rolled painfully across the ground and still took some of the heat damage. Kite tried to assist by placing barriers in the way of some of Iella's counter strikes, or walls where she was about to move toward, or badly sloped floors just where her feet were going to step—but she shattered the first of those and always seemed to still have the reaction time to avoid all the more subtle traps. By now Jesse was close enough to try and get some punches in, timing them for when Iella was attempting to counter Scylla's strikes. Still, the demon general evaded everything and seemed to have more than enough time to make things difficult for both of them, hardly giving them room to breathe.

"Oww..." Aranthra pulled herself up to her feet slowly using her staff and examined the situation for a moment, thinking. The AoE explosion was a good idea against someone who no-sold everything with stupid fast dodging, but then she'd just deflected it back. She thought: What kind of sword lets you tennis a fireball, anyway? It must be some kind of high-grade artifact or something. Wait...

"Kite," she whispered, moving slightly closer to the fox-girl. The miko was concentrating on helping with the fight, but her eyes darted the mage's way for just a fraction of an instant to let her know she'd heard. "Mini-dragon strats." A slight, swift nod acknowledged that she understood, so Aranthra began charging antoher fireball.

Scylla was reaching the end of her stamina, starting to feel terribly out of breath and making what her instincts told her were some fairly severe mistakes. "What's the matter? Can't keep up?" Iella taunted, deliberately not captializing on any of them—she probably wouldn't need to if things kept up this way. Just when it felt like she was really going to collapse or drop her sword, Jesse stepped in front of a downward chop from the demon and clapped her hands against the flat sides of the blade to hold it.
"RrrrRRRgh..!" She pushed back against the blade, shaking with effort, as it inched closer to her face and continued to force electricity into the ground through her. Just when it was about to cut her, Aranthra finished her spell. The chanting had a very particular end that indicated she was actually throwing the fireball, and Iella clearly knew what it was. She yanked the sword back out of Jesse's grasp and swung around with it to swat away the fireball again.

Her blade hit the fireball, and it got an inch or two away—and then a barrier formed right in front of it. The shield shattered from the impact, but did its job, making the magical bomb explode right in the demon general's face.

Once free of the sword, Jesse stuck a hand out behind her to help pull Scylla to her feet. When the explosion cleared, it revealed Iella looking enitrely uninjured—not even her hair or clothes appearing lightly singed. Still, she wasn't swinging her sword anymore, and even sheathed it as she looked around at the group—all of them panting from exertion. "Heheh..haa~haha! Nice work," she said, crossing her arms. "Maybe you lot have potential after all. I'll have to tell her majesty to kep her eye on you~."

The wolf-girl reasoned that this was a major antagonist, and so probably worth tons of experience. Her breath caught, she got ready to swing at the currently unarmed villain. Iella, meanwhile, pulled out a small crystal of some sort, holding it in the palm of her hand, and crushed it in a fist. As Scylla swung at her, she vanished, visibly teleporting away in a brief show of dark purple light—and the sword went right through the place where she'd just been. "...Dangit."

"Well, that was a...thing," Aranthra said. "I guess we got two bosses for the price of one, huh? And some plot exposition."

The samurai sheathed her sword, and looked around—particularly noticing the area where the giant spider had been. "Loot!" she said excitedly, running off toward it.

"That was a great plan, Ara," Kite said, clapping the mage on the back unexpectedly—making her stumble forward a couple of steps. "You've got the makings of a trickster yourself, girl!" Then she continued on toward Jesse to heal her wounds from being electrocuted—the worst any of the group had endured between the two battles.

"I sure hope not...

"Hey, is uh, is it racist to cast demons as the antagonists?" she said, following along in hopes of getting some of her relatively minor burns and bruises looked at afterward. Meanwhile, Scylla excitedly ran back and forth carrying the copious treasure that the spider mother and her spawn had dropped over to the rest of the group to split up.

"Well, someone's gotta be the bad guy," Kite said between reciting healing spells. "And y'know, historically, demons have tried to conquer the world repeatedly throughout history. Just 'cause it ain't all demons, don't mean that it ain't demons sometimes."

"Human society has placed demons as 'evil' for longer than human history remembers," Jesse added. "To such an extent that we say 'demonize' to indicate characterizing something as evil. There have indeed been many heroic demons, but if they were upset about it, I'm sure they would've said something by now. It is really no worse than characterizing Kitsune as tricksters, or werewolves as nature-lovers."

"I reckon they just get a kick outta how powerful they always are in fiction," the fox-girl said, turning to take care of the mage's wounds. "Anyhow, ya can't go through life wonderin' if every single thing's gonna offend somebody. Sometimes ya just gotta do things and hope they'll speak up if it bothers 'em."

"Yeah! Demons are a playable race, anyway," Scylla added, finished carrying everything over. "So if someone doesn't like it, they can be the good demons." Satisfied that the discussion was done, she went straight to picking out her portion of the spoil.

---

It's more of a fun easter egg than something that I think will be story-relevant, but General Iella's "player" is actually someone we've met in another ongoing story. I wonder if anyone has a guess who it is?