“So, that was your burning hands skill?” Izumi asked as she sat down on the steps next to Lilit.

  “I think…I think so. I’m not really sure,” Lilit answered.

  Izumi looked at her like she was confused. “How do you not know? Didn’t you have to like activate it or whatever?”

  Lilit shrugged sheepishly. “I just kind of…” She waved her hand vaguely as she trailed off. “I’m not sure what happened. I saw Awenda get hurt and I just saw red. The next thing I know I’m sending that vampire guy flying across the room with a burnt throat and crushed ribs.”

  Izumi bobbed her head side to side, “Alright. That makes a little sense I guess. Are you going to be ok?”

  Lilit nodded before holding up her hand to pause their conversation. “One second.” She pulled out her prayer book as she felt the cooldown for her minor healing skill finish. She cast healing on Awenda again. When casting her healing magic she got a general idea of where her target was at physically. She was getting better at gauging how effective her prayer would be for someone’s injuries. Her ability had also increased by a decent margin when she leveled up yesterday.

  It was easy for her to tell that Awenda was pretty much all healed up. Anything else she poured into her would just go toward a few superficial aches and pains and then be wasted as excess. The next time her cooldown kicked over she’d need to help poor Rana and then Izumi if she needed anything.

  Lilit let her prayer book slip back into her p. She looked at Izumi, “Yeah, I think I’m going to be ok. I just—” She broke off with a hiccupped sob. “I just don’t know what I would do if something happened to her, or any of you. You know?” There was a burn in her eyes as tears threatened to fall.

  Izumi leaned over and wrapped her arm around Lilit’s shoulders. She was small so it was a little awkward with her breast crushed against Lilit’s arm so she could reach all the way around. “I know. We got this though. We’ve got each other and we’re going to be ok.” She rested her head against Lilit’s shoulder and they rocked side to side for a minute.

  Lilit picked up her book and fired off another healing prayer toward Rana this time. Wow, getting the healing feedback, she wasn’t sure how Rana was still standing. She had taken a beating from the vampire mage queen it seemed. Thankfully with her new healing strength Lilit figured it would only take two, maybe three more prayers to bring her up to speed again.

  Unfortunately, Lilit’s mana was getting low. She’d need to wait an extra couple minutes for her reservoir to fill back up partially before doing anything else. “Ugh,” she groaned. “We’re going to need to either wait for a while for my mana to recharge or I’m going to need to use one of my mana potions,” she compined.

  Izumi just shrugged, “I’m in the same boat. Those ghouls really kicked Bob’s ass, and we didn’t get a chance to recover before we stumbled onto Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum.” She hooked her thumb over her shoulder toward the thrones. “What’s your mana regen rate anyway?”

  Lilit shrugged her shoulders.

  “You mean this whole time you never checked to see…” Izumi trailed off. “Ok, pull out your thingy and look up your stats.”

  Lilit pulled up her Delver and pressed a few buttons to navigate to the right window. Huh, she’d never taken the time to actually look at this before had she? She just kind of ran on intuition and how things felt.

  Lilit – Lvl 2 Acolyte (37%)

  Weapons – Mace and Wing-Shield

  Mana (17/450) +8/min

  Stamina (98/250) +4/min

  Health – Normal

  Str – 11   Wis – 18

  Dex – 9   Char – 16

  Con – 10   Mana – 18

  Int – 12   Stamina – 10

  “It looks like I recover eight mana a minute,” Lilit showed Izumi her screen.

  “Huh, I have the same regen rates for stamina and mana, but I have different capacities. At least for mana anyways. Obviously they’re tied into the stats somehow, but I don’t have enough information to say how.” Izumi started mumbling numbers under her breath.

  Lilit did some quick math in her own head, “It would take almost an hour for me to regenerate all of my mana.” She hung her head, “And that doesn’t even account for the mana I’ll burn healing Rana or you.”

  “Oh, I’m fine. I don’t need any healing.”

  “Well, that’s good at least. But poor Rana is going to need a couple rounds of minor healing,” Lilit expined.

  They spent a while in the throne room. They collected the loot, which was quite nice. There was even a small chest, which was a first for them. Inside it they found some armor that Rana or Lilit could use to repce theirs. Considering Rana was an actual front line fighter, they all agreed that she would use the armor and sell her old stuff. So, Rana upgraded from stiff, but light leather armor to a more robust medium leather armor. It covered more of her body and was quite a bit thicker while still allowing her to move fluidly. Lilit also managed to heal all of Rana’s injuries.

  They looked around the throne room, searching for the exit to the room, but couldn’t find anything. They then had to go back and start looking more closely for hidden doorways. Izumi and Lilit went over the thrones themselves with a fine toothed comb, looking if there was a trigger somewhere on them. Awenda and Rana ended up knocking on walls and pressing on bricks.

  After over half an hour, everyone kind of just gave up. They met back up on the dais and flopped down onto the stairs together. Lilit leaned up against Awenda. Her armor was cold and hard, poking her and digging into her side, but Lilit still managed to find comfort from it.

  “What does everyone want to do?” Awenda asked. Lilit could feel the vibrations from Awenda’s deep voice rumbling through her chest.

  “I don’t know. Maybe we’re supposed to wait?” Rana suggested.

  “Wait for what though? It’s already been a while.” Izumi argued.

  “We could try going back out the main doors. Maybe there’s somewhere else in the graveyard we’re supposed to go.” Lilit said.

  “You reckon we’ll have to deal with the ghouls again?” Awenda asked.

  “I don’t know, but I can’t think of anything else and it beats sitting around here.” Lilit said.

  “Worst comes to worst we can always come back in here and look again I guess.” Rana hedged.

  “Should I pop one of the mana potions? Do any of you need to take a stamina potion?” Lilit asked.

  “They’re meant to be used, not hoarded. There’s no telling how long they take to work, so taking it now instead of in the middle of a battle or something makes the most sense,” Awenda said.

  “You’re right. I’m just used to the idea of holding back in case I need it ter. But, it’s not like I can’t buy more when we get back.” Lilit brushed her hand over her face. She sat up and dug through her pack until she found the mana potion. It was bright blue, but clearly beled on the bottle. She was still a little surprised about them being capped like beer bottles instead of a cork. Steve the alchemist had expined that needing a corkscrew to open a potion made no sense at all if you needed it in a hurry, and keeping in taller corks that could be accidentally pulled out was dangerous.

  Lilit twisted the metal cap off the top of her potion and chugged it. It surprisingly didn’t taste horrible. Lilit had been prepared for a more medicinal taste based on the smell, but this was actually quite smooth and a little fruity.

  She could feel that little reservoir behind her heart filling up. The mana was regenerating so quickly. Her regen rate jumped up from eight a minute to seventy a minute! There was a small timer she noticed on her screen when she checked it. The potion’s regeneration only sted three minutes.

  “Alright, it works by vastly increasing the mana regen per minute, but it takes several minutes to finish. So, not a good thing to try using during a fight. Maybe there are different ones that just dump in mana directly.” Lilit told the group

  “We’ll have to ask Steve if he has any other kind of mana potions, or maybe shop around a few alchemists.” Izumi said. Lilit nodded in agreement.

  They waited the few minutes until Lilit’s potion finished filling her reservoir. When Lilit checked again, she was enjoying being able to see actual numbers and not just going on feelings, she had managed to hit her cap. Time to get the show on the road.

  Lilit stood up and the rest of the party followed her. Izumi brought Bob back out in preparation for dealing with the ghouls. Hopefully they wouldn’t be waiting for them when they came out.

  The doors swung inward, so Awenda wouldn’t be able to shove the door open and head through shield up. Instead, Lilit and Izumi stepped forward to pull the door open so Awenda was free to fill the gap until she could burst forward shield leading the way. The door was kind of heavy and they both had to strain a little to pull the door open. Gods, how strong was Awenda anyway?

  Awenda waited until the door was wide enough and then strode through it, Rana on her heels. Izumi and Lilit quickly let go of the door and followed behind. Outside everything had changed again.

  There was no church yard or cemetery in sight. Instead when they stepped out they found themselves in a long deserted crypt. The room was barely lit with flickering candles interspersed throughout the room. It was just enough to not be completely dark, but not enough to actually light anything up.

  Along the walls were rows of stone sarcophagi. Tall stone lids adorned with images of the dead rested on top of each one. Each lid had to weigh at least an actual ton unless the stone was much thinner than they appeared.

  The room seemed to fade into the distance as the light seemed to light up less and less. The stone sarcophagi marching along neatly on each side of the aisle. There was the chittering of rats and the dry rustling of rge insects scuttling out of the way as the party moved forward.

  Awenda paused once she was even with the first set of tombs. The rest of the party lined up behind her. Behind them they heard the door sm closed, sending a small wave of wind sweeping down the aisle.

  “Well, I guess this was the right way to go after all,” Izumi grumbled. Everyone nodded or grunted in agreement. There wasn’t anything else to really say. They hoped that this was in fact the final room of the dungeon. But the fact that it had been depicted with a single figure in it didn’t leave Lilit feeling very happy about what was waiting up ahead. It was probably a boss of some kind. And those were rarely straightforward.

  Ahead of them, where the darkness seemed to swallow the rest of the room, a pair of red lights blinked into existence. The lights seemed to take in the party before rising up. They stopped well above the height of Awenda. Lilit had a bad feeling that these weren’t just lights.

  “Welcome adventurers. You have travelled far to reach me down here,” a dry, dusty voice croaked out of the shadows in front of them. “Though I doubt you truly understand how far you have travelled considering all the help you’ve received.”

  There was a sound like two bones rubbing across each other that only betedly did Lilit realize was a sigh. “There are two choices that lie before you today. One, I can allow you to return to The Inn, whole and hale, but never to return to the dungeon again. Once you quit, it will not accept you back. But you may live out the rest of your second lives in peace. Maybe you can open up a little shop like the others before you. Or…” The voice trailed off.

  After a few tense moments it was Izumi who broke the silence, “Or what?” she shouted.

  “Or I can grind your bones down to dust and you can join my companions here in serving me.” With that the sound of stone against stone ground out all around them. Lilit looked around and saw the lids to the sarcophagi slowly sliding off of the tombs. It wasn’t long before a loud crash echoed throughout the room as the first lid fell onto the floor.

  From out of the tomb rose a skeletal figure in rusted armor. In its hand was a rusty sword. Above its head was the bel Wight Lvl 2. It crawled out of the sarcophagus and stepped toward the party. Skin still hung tattered between its ribs and weathered and shrunken on its face. Milky eyes locked onto the group.

  “Blunted weapons everyone! Back up to the door and let them come to us.” Lilit called out. She ran up behind Awenda and hooked her hand in the back of her armor, once again guiding her back as she was ready to defend them from the front. “Izumi in the back. Rana you take one fnk, Bob take the other. I’ll float.”

  She heard everyone sheathing their weapons before pulling out their blunt edged weapons. Rana stepped far out to the side, she’d need a lot of room for her quarterstaff to move through without hitting one of them on accident.

  Several more booms sounded throughout the room as more lids were thrown to the floor and more wights exited their tombs. Once they were standing outside though, they stopped and seemed to be waiting. Not all of the sarcophagi opened up, and Lilit wasn’t sure what that meant for them. All told there were six wights. Four armored wights with swords, and two robed wights with staffs topped with dark crystals. Probably magic users then. Damn.

  “New pn. I’ll take Bob’s fnk. Izumi I need you to send Bob after those magic users. They’ll more than likely hang back and try to hit us from afar.” Lilit said over her shoulder.

  “Got it! Don’t forget my wand is out of uses so all I have are arrows, and I’m running low on those too.” Izumi calmly informed everyone.

  “Shit, I forgot about that. I guess focus on Bob as much as you can. Take headshots that you’re confident of. Those seemed to still be effective before, right?” Lilit ordered.

  Izumi nodded her head, “Yeah, for the most part.”

  “So…you have chosen death,” the voice from the shadows sounded disappointed. “So be it.” A skeletal hand appeared out of the darkness and waved the wights forward.

  The armored wights surged forward as fast as the ghouls. The only thing that kept the party from being immediately overwhelmed was that they were as far from the first tombs as they could get.

  Lilit stepped out to the side opposite to Rana right as Bob flickered out only to appear an instant ter behind the closest mage wight. As the warriors got close, all funneled into the aisle between the tombs, Awenda let out a rge wave of fme. She breathed her fme as long as she could, she was interrupted when the first wight ran through the fmes and she had to bring her shield to bear. It was still several seconds of sustained fire breath.

  One of the wights y withered and smoking on the ground. The other three warriors crashed into Awenda’s shield. Lilit immediately stepped to the side, shoved a smite down her mace, and swung with all her might.

  A bright fsh filled the room and the wight she’d struck in the side turned to her as what was left of its arm fell off and cttered on the floor. It stumbled slightly as it stepped toward Lilit, but was quick with its sword. Lilit barely got her shield up and in pce in time.

  The sword struck her shield and her arm ached from the blow. She stepped back, which was a mistake as she opened up the room for the wight to swing at her again. Again she barely got her shield in pce to intercept the strike in time. Again her arm ached from the force of the blow.

  There was another bright light, this time an icy blue and centered on Lilit. A freezing feeling swept over her mace arm, like she’d plunged it into icy, arctic waters. She gnced down quickly to see ice coating her arm and side. She skipped backward just in time to avoid a follow up strike from the warrior wight.

  With all her might, Lilit flexed and bent her arm, cracking the ice. She raised her shield arm up in preparation of the next sword swing. But it never came. In front of her the wight stumbled to the side with an arrow bored through the side of its head.

  Lilit didn’t give it time to recover. She surged forward and swing her mace up and into its skull. There was a sickly squelchy crunching sound as her mace became stuck inside the wight’s face. She gave a hard yank that sent the wight stumbling to the side. Awenda’s foot came in out of nowhere and smmed into the wight’s chest as Lilit pulled and the mace came free.

  The wight colpsed onto the floor and didn’t get back up. Lilit looked around and the other warrior wights had been dealt with as well. Bob was struggling against the two mage wights, but Bob was at least keeping them occupied for now.

  Lilit nodded at the others, and they began marching down the aisle. As they neared the mages, a figure finally stepped out of the shadows. It was hooded and cloaked in bck. Its features obscured by shadow. Only the glowing red eyes visible in the hood.

  “That will be far enough I think,” the dry desiccated voice from before spoke out of the hood. Above its head hung Lich Lvl 3. It waved its hand toward Bob and a bck ray shot out, striking Bob in the chest. Bob became frozen in pce and the mage wights turned on it. A few moments and several fshes of power ter Bob faded from view. Fuck.

  “Rana, you and I will handle the wights. Awenda…keep the lich busy. Izumi, do what you can.” Lilit murmured to her group as they continued to close the distance.

  In the short lull that followed, Lilit pulled out her prayer book and quickly chanted a ward around Awenda. She was going to need it more than anyone else.

  The wights seemed to need a moment to recover from the power they threw out to destroy Bob. The party took advantage of that. As soon as the ward snapped around Awenda she leapt forward and Lilit and Rana followed on her heels. When they were one set of tombs away from the wights Awenda let out a loud roar. The room almost seemed to vibrate from the sound and dust swirled in the air.

  The wights and lich all turned toward Awenda. The wights’ staffs lit up briefly and Awenda slid to s stop. Spells flew through the air, but passed through the space in front of Awenda, where she would have been if she hadn’t stopped.

  Lilit and Rana did not stop. They ran forward and as quickly as they could engaged the wights. Lilit was a few seconds behind the taller, faster Rana as she sprinted past Awenda.

  Lilit soon crashed into her target. Literally. She miscalcuted how fast she could stop on the smooth stone floor and instead smmed straight into the wight, sending it stumbling back and knocking it over.

  She recovered more quickly than the wight did. She dove forward and began raining down blows with her mace. They weren’t her most powerful swings, but they came down fast and without pause. The wight soon y still under Lilit’s assault.

  She stood up and backed away, breathing heavily. Awenda was doing her best to keep the lich engaged while avoiding its attacks. At this close a range, the lich wasn’t sending out spells. It had a rge mace in its hand it was swinging at Awenda as it towered over her. It had a lot more force than it probably should seeing how much it shoved Awenda over when she couldn’t avoid the swing and instead took it on the shield. The shield was quickly becoming very dented and bent out of shape. She must have already burned through Lilit’s ward.

  Awenda wasn’t completely defensive though. The lich needed a few precious moments to wind up its swing and in these split seconds, Awenda would sh out with her own rge hammer. She struck like lightning despite how heavy her warhammer was. It kept the lich dancing back and disrupted many of its swings. The few hits the lich did receive seemed to barely faze it though. It just kept coming.

  Lilit ran over toward Awenda. She had to skirt around an opened tomb and its fallen lid, but she eventually came up along the fnk of the lich. She couldn’t stand too close to Awenda when she was swinging that warhammer, its swings took up a lot more space than her attacks with her sword did. From this close, she could tell that the lich seemed to tower over everyone in the group at close to eight feet tall.

  Lilit lunged forward as the Lich danced back to avoid a swing from Awenda. She struck it in the back near its hip. It staggered away from Lilit, turning slightly toward her. As it was distracted, Awenda’s hammer pulsed a bright blue for a moment before she swept it horizontally in a huge sweeping strike. It looked like she’d activated her sweep skill as she stepped forward into the lich’s space.

  The lich took that hit right under its ribs, and it was not able to shake this one off. It stumbled heavily to the side. Then Rana was there with her whirling quarterstaff. She struck out at the lich several times, nding hard strikes to its upper body and head before it stepped back.

  With more agility than something so rge should have, it leapt backward putting space between it and them. They were now all firmly past the line of sarcophagi and into the deeper shadows at the back of the room. Behind the lich was what looked like a mad scientist’s b. Strange and dark experiments were obviously taking pce before they arrived. The lich raised its arm and a bck orb flickered into existence an instant before it was sent hurtling forward.

  Awenda rushed forward after the lich. She brought her shield up as the lich shot out its spell. The spell hit her shield like a freight train. She hadn’t had her feet pnted and was shoved over onto her back as she slid down the aisle.

  Lilit and Rana didn’t have time to stop to worry about Awenda though. Lilit had her prayer book in hand and flipped it open as she ran to close the distance with the lich. She chanted out her healing prayer as she swung her mace with all her might.

  With her attention split the way it was, it was little wonder that she didn’t concentrate enough on Awenda to target her with her healing. Instead she accidentally targeted the lich. As it was enveloped in the soft golden glow of her healing prayer, Lilit despaired that she had inadvertently helped the lich. Instead an instant ter, the lich seemed to freeze up and its body seized up with its head thrown back and a deathly wail echoed through the room.

  As the light receded, the lich was left cowering over and smoking slightly. Lilit was stunned and frozen for a moment. Rana was not. She quickly stepped forward and began to take the lich apart with her sweeps and spins as she struck with lightning speed and precision.

  The lich flinched and flopped away from them, seemingly vastly weakened from Lilit’s accidental healing spell. And then Awenda was there and swinging her warhammer like some avenging goddess. Lilit had to take a step back to stay out of Rana’s and Awenda’s way. It didn’t take but another minute before the lich stopped moving and y still upon the ground.

  Awenda stepped backward, breathing heavily, a wide smile spread across her face. “That was amazing! I would have never thought to use healing as an attack!” She shouted across the room.

  “Oh, I…uh…I did that on accident actually.”

  Izumi came rushing forward then, ughing. “The best kind of accident. That was brilliant.”

  “Ummm, guys. We may have a problem,” Rana spoke slowly. The group turned back to her standing over the lich’s body. The body that should have evaporated or whatever and dropped a loot bag by now. “It looks like it’s getting back up.” And sure enough, Lilit saw that the lich’s body had begun to twitch and snap back into pce under its heavy cloak.

  Lilit and Awenda jumped forward and they and Rana began quickly raining down blows upon the lich’s body, trying to break it faster than it could put itself back together.

  “Izumi!” Lilit called out, “Look for its phyctery. I don’t know what it could be, smash everything if you have to.”

  Izumi didn’t say anything, but there was very soon the sound of breaking gss and shattering ceramics along with other sounds of destruction. The other three continued to beat down on the slowly reforming lich, but as time went on the process seemed to speed up. They were in a losing battle against time.

  “I think I found it!” Izumi cried. “It’s the only thing like it and the only thing that doesn’t seem to be part of any experiments. But I can’t break it.”

  “Well, what is it?” Lilit asked.

  Izumi jogged over to the others holding something out in her hand. “It’s a silver bracelet. I can’t break it.”

  “Here,” Awenda held out her hand. Izumi dropped it in her hand. She looked at it for a moment before she dropped it on the ground. Then she stepped back, pulled her warhammer over her head in a two handed grip and then smashed it down onto the bracelet.

  The lich screamed in pain for only the second time. Awenda seemed to take that as a good sign. She swung her hammer down two more times, fttening and distorting the shape of the bracelet. Each time the lich let out an ear piercing shriek of pain.

  Finally she bent down and picked up the misshapen piece of silver in her hands. With a casual flick of her wrists, she snapped the metal in two. A darkness seemed to congeal around the two broken pieces of what once was a bracelet. They dripped out of the broken ends onto the ground as the lich’s body stopped trying to repair itself.

  The next moment the body disappeared and a rge loot bag appeared in its pce. At the back of the room a light shone out and traced around the outside of a door that hadn’t been there before. Looks like they wouldn’t have to look for the exit this time.

  SuperSapphicSydney