Pocket Dungeon 2, page 31
“The Frost Orb,” I gasped. Sweat dripped down my forehead and into my eyes, but I still didn’t move from my position at the front of the group where I braced against the onslaught of flames. “One of you get it out of my pocket and activate it.”
If anyone was confused by my plan, they didn’t mention it. Yasha quickly reached into my pocket, and after a second of fumbling that might have also counted as groping, the sexy, armored fox-woman pulled out the magical orb and held it aloft in the air. She tapped the device to activate it, and instantly, the air around us dropped in temperature as frost began to form around the outside of the orb and over Yasha’s hands.
It didn’t eliminate the heat that came off the dragon’s flaming breath or the fire that circled us in the room, but it did make it at least slightly more bearable.
The Ruby Dragon’s breath finally ceased, and I had a second to breathe without feeling like I was inhaling the flames directly from the dragon’s mouth and into my lungs.
As I lowered Aegis and moved Phantom Doomslayer out in front of me, the flames that circled us moved toward the blade ever so slightly. They bowed inwards toward us like the branches of a willow tree, and I wondered if I would be able to use that to my advantage somehow.
I barely had time to even process the thought before suddenly, the massive Ruby Dragon lunged at us.
It moved faster than I could even fucking blink. One second, it was on the other side of the massive room pressed almost directly up against one of the walls of flames it had created, and the next, I was pushing my three companions backward with all the force I could muster as the dragon landed exactly where the four of us had been standing only seconds before.
The four of us were scattered across the room in an instant. I rolled up to my feet and looked around to make sure no one had been injured in our sudden split.
Yasha and Iris appeared to be fine, and both women were back up on their feet with their weapons extended out in front of them, but Monty was a different story. The man was shaky on his feet, and it appeared that the wounds he had sustained from the mimic creature above us sucking out his blood were now leaking more profusely, like a faucet that had been turned on and couldn’t be turned off.
The blood seeped through his clothing and left bullet hole sized patches of blood that were spreading even wider. It wasn’t a pleasant sight, and it appeared that the scent of fresh blood had attracted the Ruby Dragon’s attention, because the oversized lizard turned its head toward Monty.
Its slitted pupils narrowed even further, and without any more warning than that, the creature lunged across the space toward my new companion.
Monty let out a blood-curdling scream as he threw himself out of the dragon’s path, but he was a few seconds too slow. The Ruby Dragon swiped out with one of its gigantic talons and caught the very edge of Monty’s pants with the tip of its knife-sharp claw. It tore the material all the way through without any resistance, and it also managed to cut through the flesh of Monty’s calf like it was made of softened butter,
The man let out another scream that would haunt me all the way into even the best of dreams and dropped down onto his knees as he lost his balance completely.
“Shit!” I shouted as I leapt into action.
I managed to clear the four or so yards that separated Monty and I in a few seconds, but even then, I was more than a little worried I was going to be too late.
Monty’s sword wavered in front of him in the air as he tried to fend off the dragon, who seemed to be toying with him more than anything else.
The Ruby Dragon lunged to one side, and Monty violently threw himself toward the other and skittered across the ground. The creature seemed to be enjoying itself, which was honestly the worst part.
I leapt in front of one of its gigantic talons before it could slice down and cut through Monty’s uninjured leg, and as I did so, I raised up Phantom Doomslayer in retaliation.
As the Ruby Dragon’s claw swiped down, it caught the edge of my blade. It wasn’t able to cut through the magical sword, but it bore down on me with more force than I had anticipated, and I dropped down to my knees as I tried to fight off the attack.
At the same time, Yasha leapt out, from where she had been knocked to the side, with her wickedly sharp katana raised in the air. She slammed it down into one of the Ruby Dragon’s oversized flanks and plunged the blade all the way into the meat of the creature’s haunch.
The Ruby Dragon dropped two percent health at the same time it let out another bellowing cry complete with a gust of fire that probably would have singed off the hair on my arms if I wasn’t wearing my Smelter’s Maile, but I managed to roll up to my feet.
So far, this was not a very pleasant fight.
The Frost Orb in Yasha’s hand cooled off the air around me as the fox-woman leapt over to stand at my side, but it also just managed to freeze the sweat on my body at the same time, leaving me feeling incredibly clammy.
“Iris!” I shouted. “Check on Monty. Yasha and I have the dragon taken care of.”
The other woman didn’t need to be told twice as she darted across the flaming room with her head dipped down. She skittered over and landed in front of Monty and quickly began to tend to the worst of his injuries.
Once I was certain the two of them were temporarily out of harm’s way, I turned my attention back to the Ruby Dragon. It eyed me and Yasha with a new sort of interest. It reared its head back, but this time I was ready.
Before it could unleash another flaming breath, I raised Aegis up in front of me to block us from the damage it put out. At the same time, Yasha touched the back of the shield and spread the frost from the Frost Orb to cool it off. The two of us functioned like a well-oiled machine as we kept the Ruby Dragon away from both Monty and Iris.
“What do we do next?” Yasha gasped. The air around us was so hot that even with the Frost Orb’s cooling effects, it still made it hard to breathe.
The dragon’s fire continued to burn against Aegis, and it reared up toward Phantom Doomslayer where I held the word aloft with my other hand at my side.
“I think one of us needs to keep it distracted so it stays away from Monty and Iris, and the other is going to have to do the majority of the attacks,” I said. “You’re quicker than me, so I’ll be the distraction, and you work on actually injuring the creature.”
Yasha flashed me a wicked grin and passed me the Frost Orb.
“I can do that,” she said with a deadly glint in her eyes. The words had only just left her lips before she leapt to the side with agility that was in no way human and rolled up onto her feet once more. Her katana glinted in the flaming light that filled the room around us.
The dragon belatedly seemed to realize she had moved, but it was too late. Just as the dragon’s fire ceased, and it turned its oversized head to the side to follow the path of Yasha’s trajectory, the fox-woman launched herself back at the massive beast with a terrifying war cry.
She sliced out with her katana and dragged the tip of the deadly blade along the side of the dragon’s body. It left a deep gouge in the metallic scales, and blood the same color and consistency as liquid gold began to seep from the new injury. She knocked the creature down another five percent with the attack.
The Ruby Dragon made a quick, hairpin turn, and as it did so, the flail at the end of its tail whipped through the air like a weapon all of its own. It bisected the flames the dragon had created around the room with a massive whoosh.
“Duck!” I screamed to Monty and Iris, who barely had time to hear my words, much less fully act on them. But the pair dropped down to the ground with enough force that the room seemed to shake with it.
Yasha and I both took advantage of the dragon’s temporary temper tantrum and lunged at the same time. Yasha continued to attack from the side as I ran forward toward the broad column of the dragon’s chest with Phantom Doomslayer raised up in the air.
The dragon’s own flames were compelled toward my sword, and the magical weapon seemed to drink in the power from the flames as I swung it out in a powerful arc.
The fire sucked into the blade and caused the opalescent metal to supercharge, while at the same time the Frost Orb sent icy waves down my arm and into the weapon. It created a strange, dueling vortex of temperatures that made a mini tornado appear in the air along with the swing of the blade. The tornado followed closely along the path of the blade and flung off the tip to slam into the dragon.
It sent the oversized level nine monster stumbling back a single step, but it was enough to drive it further into the sharpened edge of Yasha’s katana as she chopped and hacked at one of its back legs.
The dragon bellowed out a roar again and sent out a gust of flames up toward the top of the room and the shaft we had fallen through in the first place.
My body was damp with sweat, and I felt as though it added an extra ten pounds to the weight of my already heavy armor, but I wasn’t going to stop the fight any time soon.
Yasha pulled her blade free of the dragon’s back leg only to swing it in again and again.
The dragon made a move to curl its body around and slam into the fox-woman, but she moved too quickly for it to keep up. Yasha threw herself backward in a graceful leap and landed on her feet like she was in a superhero movie.
As the dragon reeled back toward her, I lunged again and swung my sword at one of its front legs. If we could chop off its limbs, then the only source of attack it had was its fire. A plan started to form in my mind, and I felt recharged as I knew what to do. We could finish this, I just hoped we managed to do it without getting fucking roasted alive.
Yasha ducked and rolled back up onto her feet a few yards from where the dragon had attempted to launch its attack, and as it did, I swung Phantom Doomslayer down with more force than I think I had ever managed before in my life. And with the added benefit of the dueling temperatures to cause another little tornado, I managed to slice off one of the dragon’s front legs in one fell swoop.
Gold blood began to spurt from the open wound like it was spraying from a fountain, and I caught a glimpse of some sort of metallic bone that made my stomach churn before I moved away from the dragon’s immediate range of attack. It threw its head back in an ear-shattering roar and spat out jet after jet of fire as it raged.
Its head swung toward me, and at the same time, I lunged forward with Aegis braced and slammed the front of my shield directly into the monster’s open mouth. It clamped its teeth down around the shield’s rounded edges and began to spew flames directly into the metal as I pushed it harder and harder against the creature’s mouth.
The metal felt as though it was going to melt in my hands and was only being held together by the power of the Frost Orb. But I wasn’t sure how much longer I could rely on the Frost Orb’s power, either. I remembered the warning that had come with the magical orb about overusing its power, and I hoped we didn’t reach that point, because right now it was the only thing keeping me alive.
“Yasha!” I shouted the fox-woman’s name, and as if on cue, she sprang up and into the air. It was a sexy sight as she dropped straight down onto the dragon’s back in an action hero pose and slammed her katana straight down into the dragon’s vertebrae without any further hesitation.
The dragon chomped around my shield, and the metal finally began to bend under the force and pressure of the monster’s attacks, but I didn’t move. I said I was going to be the distraction damn it, and I wasn’t done distracting the creature yet.
As Yasha continued to attack the monster while I held its focus with my shield, the health bar above its head began to tick down in earnest as more and more blood started to spurt from the monster’s body. It carried the overwhelming, cloying reek of burnt sugar and iron, and when paired with the scent of sweat pouring off all four of us, and the aroma of burnt hair, the entire room smelled rank.
Aegis began to bend out of shape and melt around my arm as the dragon’s fire seemed to increase in temperature somehow. I felt burns begin to spread up my arm even through my Smelter’s Maile, but I didn’t make any moves to free myself. I was the only thing holding the dragon trapped in place as Yasha flitted around like a deadly butterfly and sawed at the massive monster’s limbs to ground it.
She had managed to knock its health all the way down to thirty percent as I dropped to my knees from the strain of keeping the dragon busy and maintaining the power of the Frost Orb all on my own. My vision began to go dark around the edges as the heat started to creep in and make me grow lightheaded, but I couldn’t stop or give up. We needed to fight this fucking monster, and we needed to win.
It seemed impossibly difficult for a level nine.
The shield bent around my arm as the dragon’s teeth chomped down closer and closer together. My arm was nearly invisible inside the monster’s mouth, and I wondered if I was going to lose the limb, and absently, I wondered if I would look cool with like, a hook prosthetic or something for a hand.
But before that strange idea could come fully to fruition, something slammed into the dragon’s eye out of nowhere and caused the creature to rear back entirely.
It pulled my shield from its mouth with a slick, disgusting snapping sound, and I realized the force of the Ruby Dragon’s retreat had caused at least four of its sharp teeth to snap off. Golden blood started to pour from its mouth now along with the rest of its overwhelming injuries.
A dagger protruded from the dragon’s eye like a toothpick spearing an olive in a cocktail. I looked over and saw that Iris had come out of nowhere to stab the creature and effectively save me from losing a limb.
“Thanks,” I gasped as I stumbled backward and shook my newly destroyed shield from where it had formed a strange, molten gauntlet around my arm.
“Of course,” Iris said with a grin on her face. The heat of the battle had made a healthy flush rise to the tops of her cheeks, and I didn’t think I had ever seen her look any sexier than after immediately saving my arm.
She couldn’t get her dagger back, because the dragon, now only at twenty percent of its initial health, threw itself backward into the wall of flames it had created as it let out a pained snarl.
Yasha had managed to cut off another of its legs, and I was impressed the dragon could even manage to move at all with only two legs now. Its tail was missing the strange weapon at the end, and it appeared that Yasha had chopped that off, too. The fox-woman had certainly been busy as I held off the dragon’s attacks.
The Frost Orb was growing colder and colder in my hand now, and it was absolutely painful to the touch. At the same time it radiated a bone-chilling cold, it also seemed like it was going to start boiling at any second. The magic and power that radiated off the item felt like it burned through my entire body, and my limbs felt supercharged.
An idea came to me, and I looked around. The fire that bordered the room was still firmly in front of the barred metal gate we needed to get through after we slayed the dragon, and we were going to have to take care of that somehow.
“Everyone, get close to me,” I warned. I had to shout to be heard over the roar of the flames and the dragon’s desperate bellowing. “I’m going to try and explode.”
“You’re what?” Monty screamed. He had to limp over to us, but I was glad to see that his leg was attached by more than a thread at the very least.
“The Frost Orb is burning low and getting dangerous to use,” I explained. “The power is getting out of control, but I think I can harness that power into creating a snow explosion that should douse all the flames in the room. At the same time, I think we can use the chaos to finish the dragon off for good.”
“I trust you,” Yasha said. “Just tell me what I must do to help.”
“When the explosion goes off, throw everything you have at the dragon while it’s distracted,” I explained. “That’s all there is to it. And try not to die. But that goes for all of us.”
“That works for me,” Iris said.
It was the last thing any of us said before the power emanating from the Frost Orb became too much for me to handle. I clamped my eyes shut and focused on the power and ice now bubbling through my veins, and then, I let it all loose.
Chapter 22
My entire vision went white as the power that had been surging through me exploded out of me all at once and filled the room. It was like someone had let loose an avalanche without so much as a warning, and I felt as though I was going to blow apart as it rushed through me.
I barely had time to tap the Frost Orb to turn the fountain of power off before it ripped me apart entirely.
At the very least, the dragon didn’t seem much better equipped to handle the attack than my own body was, and as the ice and snow exploded from the orb and doused the flames all around the room, it threw the oversized beast straight at one of the walls.
The Ruby Dragon slammed into the wall with an earth-shattering thud that even made some of the stone tiles that made up the walls shake loose from their holdings and tumble to the ground.
The metal grated door was now exposed and open, but we still had one final thing to finish before we could escape and move on to the next terror the dungeon had to offer us.
We had a dragon to slay.
As I dropped to my knees and gasped for air like a fish that had been yanked ruthlessly from the water, Yasha attacked just like I had told her to.
The fox-woman was a blurred flurry of metal and luscious curves as she brought her katana down against the dragon again and again like she was going to hack it into tiny, bite-sized pieces.
With one final blow, Yasha lopped the head off the beast, and it dropped to the ground with a wet, sickening thud. Golden ichor-like blood gushed from the wound and created a disgusting puddle on the snow-dusted floor of the room where the battle had raged.
Yasha’s chest rose and fell quickly as she skittered to a stop once the creature was dead. Her tail flicked with obvious pleasure, and she looked over her shoulder at me with a smirk on her gorgeous face.
