DF257 - One Dance (Suliel) (Patreon)

“Giant, undead, flying lizards,” Kelsey corrected. “I do have a theme here, you know.”

“We should be safe enough in the trees, at least,” Suliel mused.

“They can get in here, and will if they chase you,” Kelsey agreed. “But they can’t do those swoops with trees in the way, so their patrols are all in the cleared areas.”

She grinned.

“Of course, there's totally a route to the exit that doesn’t go through a cleared area.”

“Of course there isn’t,” Suliel sighed. “At least I’m of a level to Bind a few of them.”

“Sure,” Kelsey said, nodding. “I’m a little curious to see how that goes; I’ve never set them fighting against each other before. But you know the downside of that, right?”

“Less experience,” Suliel said regretfully. “Also, the next floor is the haunted house, right? I can’t see them fitting through the doors there.”

“It’s… a little more complex than that,” Kelsey said. “But you’re right, there is a door or two that they won’t fit through.”

“Maybe we should divert from the fastest route to pick up some more wolves,” Suliel muttered. “But then—”

“No need, I’ve got you covered,” Kelsey said, pointing to the wolves slipping silently through the trees. Not from ahead of them, but from the side.

Instinct, or perhaps her previous experiences with Kelsey, made Suliel turn to look behind her. She cursed as she saw another pack of wolves coming from the other side.

“Skeletons, form a circle!” she ordered, and glared at Kelsey.

“What? This is your own fault; you should have kept moving.”

“What happened to the howls?” Suliel asked.

“Oh, those were just for atmospherics; I turned them off.”

Suliel didn’t have time for more, the wolves were already charging.

Bind Undead. Bind Undead. Bind Undead. Bind Undead.

She chose two from each pack, in the hopes of disrupting the twin charges. It worked, kind of. Each bound wolf turned on one of its fellows, resulting in four wolves taken out on each side. But each pack had at least eight. The melee quickly became too confused to count.

Bind Undead. Bind Undead.

Suliel kept using her Trait, even though she was feeling some strain. The Obsidian Skeletons were stronger than before, and managed to hold the swarm of wolves off. Steel and obsidian blades rose and fell, cleaving flesh and bone.

Her special defenders were still made of bone. Holding them back in reserve had meant depriving them of kills. This time, she didn’t have any choice but to push them forward. She winced as they were pushed back by a snarling jumble of teeth and claws, but their skills more than made up for their lack of strength. Swords slipped past claws and rotting flesh fell to the ground.

Skeleton Warrior has an upgrade available. Approve? [Y|N].Skeleton Warrior has an upgrade available. Approve? [Y|N].

She held off on approving until the fight was over. When it was done, she had six wolves and six skeletons. Three of her bound wolves had died—she’d managed to replace them, but she didn’t get experience for that.

Suliel authorised the upgrades to Obsidian and considered her progress. This fight had been disappointing. Despite fighting twice as many wolves, Suliel had gained less experience than her last fight. The individual rewards had been reduced, and she got no experience from Binding a wolf.

Which seemed unfair. She was supposed to get experience from using her Class, and this would seem to qualify. In fact, she was certain she remembered getting at least a trick of experience from Binding other undead.

It wasn’t like there was anyone she could complain to, though.

“We need to go deeper,” she announced. “Let’s brave the open area.”

“Smart girl,” Kelsey said approvingly. “You know the way.”

This time, Suliel used her own eyes to watch the sky. The drakes were easy enough to spot. Three of them banked as one and started to swoop.

Bind Undead. Bind Undead.

Suliel could have bound all three, but she wanted experience, and she wanted to see how drake fought drake. Badly, it turned out.

“Well, this is just embarrassing,” Kelsey confessed. “Undead savagery is all very well, but this is just…”

Two against one, the drake that had remained loyal never stood a chance. Suliel’s drakes had turned on it without warning, tearing into it with teeth and claws. It fought back without a care for its own unlife, grabbing hold and fighting with every limb it had.

Which included its wings. None of the drakes cared, and seconds later, the fight was a twisted ball of bones and rotting leather, falling out of the sky. A startled exclamation from Suliel counted as enough of an order for one of her drakes to disentangle itself before impact, but the other one didn’t manage it. Two drakes crashed into the ground. They were too far away to see the result, but Suliel felt a trickle of experience.

Then her drake started flapping its wings, gathering height to attack another, larger group of drakes. It was heavily outnumbered, but it didn’t seem to care.

Bind Undead. Bind Undead. That left three free drakes remaining.

“Go for separate targets,” Suliel ordered. A short time later, she was rewarded with the sight of three plummeting pairs of drakes. They impacted closer this time, with heavy thuds.

“It works, at least,” Suliel said doubtfully. “But it seems so wasteful.”

Kelsey sighed. “I don’t know what to tell you. At least most adventurers aren’t going to be taking them on in the air.”

“Depending on how the adventurers are managing to fly, it might still be effective,” Tyla offered. “Few flyers are prepared to carry that much dead weight.”

“Nice pun,” Kelsey observed. Mel glowered at the elf for some reason. “Drakes don’t weigh as much as you’d think, though. All skin and bones. Maybe I could put some bombs in them, is an idea. Or I could put some fricken lasers in their heads. Hmm.”

She muttered nonsense like this for the next few minutes, as Suliel led the team forward. Drakes continued to fall out of the sky, but Suliel made a point of keeping a few extra available. She was glad that she did when they got too close to the treeline, and some wolves charged out.

That fight managed to break Kelsey out of her brainstorming. “See, that is how it’s supposed to go.”

Two drakes had swooped down and utterly destroyed the wolves that were their victims. One of them scooped a wolf up off the ground and dropped it; the other landed on its target. Teeth, talons and its full weight made short work of the unlucky wolf. It never stood a chance.

“I don’t see them faring quite so well against prepared adventurers,” Suliel said. “Especially if they have spears.”

Pikes or halberds were probably too long for the rat tunnels, Suliel judged, but spears could probably be brought through.

“Nothing’s perfect,” Kelsey acknowledged, “But we are only talking about low Tier Three.”

Suliel murmured agreement and kept walking. They fought several more wolves and drakes, but Suliel had their measure now. They were grist for her mill now, not even enough to get her to another level before she saw the house.

“Shouldn’t there be a boss before we get to the house? Or did we avoid it?”

“You can’t avoid the boss!” Mel objected. “It’s against the rules!”

“Mel’s right,” Kelsey said. “The boss is in there.”

Suliel looked doubtfully at the wooden structure. It was two stories high and featured multiple rooms—bigger than the average house—but she couldn’t imagine fighting a larger drake in it.

“I thought that the Haunted House was the next floor.”

“Some changes have been made,” Kelsey admitted. “You’ll be the first to see it—aside from Mel, of course.”

“I see,” Suliel said, narrowing her eyes. The Haunted House was supposed to be filled with ghosts. She wasn’t sure how Bind Undead worked on immaterial undead.

“If my Trait doesn’t work on ghosts, you may need to do magic on them,” Suliel told Tyla. It was a little early for the elf to be taking part, but the important thing was to get past. Unprepared, the House was impossible to beat. You needed a priest—the right sort of priest—or something like Ghostouch Oil.

Suliel opened the front door, and Tyla shoved her to the side. Hard. Something small and fast whizzed through the spot she’d been standing. Then Suliel hit the ground.

“Ow,” she said eloquently.

“Trap,” Tyla said. Kelsey just giggled.

“Keeps you on your toes, doesn’t it?”

“How did you know?” Mel shrieked.

“Heard it,” Tyla replied, peering carefully through the doorway. She held out a hand to help Suliel up.

“Yes, right,” Suliel said, pulling herself upright again. She patted herself down, trying to compose herself. “That was—what do we do about traps?”

Tyla shrugged. “Make the skeletons go first,” she said. “My senses are sharp, but not every trap can be seen beforehand.”

“What if she has more traps than we have skeletons?”

“Then you get to find your own traps for a while. Be careful.”

Suliel glowered, but she ordered one of her Warriors into the room. It was sparsely furnished with a few comfortable chairs and a low table. Two paintings hung on the wall; one of them had a hole in it.

“What are the paintings supposed to be of, anyway?” Suliel asked as her skeleton carefully removed the painting and tore out the crossbow from the mechanism behind it. “They’re terrible.”

“Everyone’s a critic,” Kelsey said, watching the warrior examine the other painting. It wasn’t trapped. “I just get them from a catalogue.”

Suliel entered the room, and the rest of her skeletons followed. The wolves and the two drakes had to stay outside. There wasn’t room for them. Only one more door remained, and after Tyla examined it closely, Suliel ordered a skeleton to open it. Beyond was what looked like a dining room. The windows were blacked out, just like the windows in this room. The skeleton would have entered the room, but Suliel stopped it.

“Kick the door fully open,” she ordered. It did so. As the door hit the wall behind it, a heavy, square blade dropped from the other side of the lintel. It crashed to the floor, narrowly missing the warrior.

“This is where Zaphar would have been useful,” Kelsey said. “I mean, it isn’t his specialty, but he knows a lot of the tricks.”

“Sadly, he wasn’t available,” Suliel said. She debated sending the rats forward. They wouldn’t be able to open doors, and they might not trigger traps meant for humans. But that might allow them to survive more easily. She could look through their eyes and see any suspicious mechanisms.

She ordered the rats forward and activated Eyes of the Dead. She was immediately rewarded by the sight of wires running from the base of the chairs into the floorboards. She was about to warn Tyla about them when Tyla shouted a warning at her.

“Ware! Ghost!”

Suliel dismissed her Trait and looked around wildly. Ghosts were almost invisible. Hard to spot, even when they were coming right at you. She saw a flicker of distortion, guessed that it was her target.

Bind Undead. No result. Not the blankness of an invalid target. She felt her Trait take hold, and then slip away.

“It’s too high a level!” she shouted.

“Bosses are always a higher level,” Kelsey drawled. “Everyone knows that.”

Suliel couldn’t pay attention to that, because the ghost was on her—rushing into her. She had to—

Suliel felt the ghost as a surge of anger. It welled up within her as a furious, justified rage. She tried to hold it back, but it was no use. Her fury would be released. They would all pay, each and every one of them.

“Everyone, kill the elf,” she heard her voice order.