FHM ~ 52!

“Tier seven!” Taylor screamed as they all charged toward the Scar at full speed. A quarter mile was nothing to this group normally, however they were continually ambushed by chimeras that hadn’t been consumed by the spell thus far. The Scuttlers especially would erupt from the blood and corpse piles, trying to take Zed down off Arthur. 

“Why are they all after me?” Zed screamed as yet another Scuttler jumped at him only to be sliced apart by Luke. Its head bounced off Arthur, and there was enough life left in it to snap at Zed’s leg. He jerked himself out of the way just in time, “Celestial, are these things part eel or something?”

“Snakes do the same thing! They want you because of your Charisma! They ‘feel’ that you are the most powerful, so they want to take you down first! Great job being bait!” Andre called as his vines pulled a charging centaur down and into a seated position. With a shout, mana exploded from him and a hedgerow formed just in time to block a series of lightning strikes coming from lancers. “I’m… y’all, I’m outta mana!”

Luke took a pouch from his waist and tossed it to him. “Take a sniff. Do not drink that.”

As the words left his mouth, a group of Stone Sentries slammed into Luke, creating fracture patterns over the entirety of his armor. Taylor blew them away, and Luke rolled forward and onto his feet easily. Andre popped the top of the waterskin and took a sniff. Angry red blisters appeared all over his face wherever the vapor touched, and his veins started to bulge like he was having a wild heart attack after running a hundred miles.

“Ahh!” Andre dumped mana into the area around him as blood ran from his nose and eyes. An almost electrical storm of mana surrounded the group, causing their enemies to hesitate long enough for either Luke or Taylor to force their way through.

Luke grabbed the waterskin from the mana-charged Druid and snorted. He tossed back the drink like a shot, his armor fixing and the cracks vanishing in an instant. Luke smacked his lips and shook his head at the Druid, “Didn’t take you for a lightweight. Aren’t you supposed to have a massive Capacity?”

“Was that liquid mana?” Taylor took her eyes off the eighth circle that had just appeared in front of the Boss, her eyes almost hungrily staring at the waterskin. “I’d like some.”

“You know what it is.” Luke handed the near-empty waterskin over even as he shook his head. “Not a chance that you can open it. With a low Capacity, that would count as seeking your own death. I bet your mana channels would burn out in an instant.”

Taylor grabbed the top of the skin, but her Sigil chimed and forced her numbed fingers to let it go. “That attack is about to go off.”

“What is it?” Zed, even at the cost of his life, wanted to be involved. “If we make it out of here, we’re going to have the most amazing story!”

“All I know is that the spell is approaching tier nine. It used the death of thousands to power it, so the spell has to have something to do with either death, or blood, or maybe reshaping? As a nine, it’s a… country killer. That spell has enough power to wipe out a city; at the minimum. It is only kinda being used against us, the remaining power will destroy… I don’t even know how much. The entire mountain range?”

“The spell hasn’t been cast yet.” Something about Andre had changed. He dropped to the side, off of Arthur, and let his bare feet slam onto the ground. Mana whipped around him, and in an instant a dust devil had formed around him. The particle-filled whirlwind exploded outward, making the surviving chimeras stumble. The ground between them and the boss of the Scar shifted. Without a better way to understand it, Luke only saw that a direct road had been suddenly built into the pass. Their speed increased, and chimeras that had been waiting - partially buried in the ground - were trapped in the hardened stone.

“Did I just witness a Druid reaching the Third Circle?” Zed’s voice was filled with awe, and the others could practically hear the sound of his thoughts: coins falling and clinking into a large sack. “We can do this! Go team! I believe in us!”

Taylor ignored them all, her focus on the rapidly approaching Boss. “It’ll be a few minutes at least before it gets that spell to tier nine! We can do it! Kill him!”

The ground shattered as Andre created a jumping off platform for Luke. The Murderhobo in question didn't bother to ask questions. “Bum Rush!”

He crossed the remaining distance in a flash, the entirety of his remaining mana redirected to his right hand. The weakness of Mages was their need to cast uninterrupted. It was a well-known weakness, which made the next moment all the more confusing for Luke.

The hooded figure didn't move, didn’t move… yet was gone in the next moment, just as Luke’s fist *whiffed* through the spot it had been standing.

“An illusion?” Zed screamed the question at Luke. “Were we hallucinating?”

“Pff. I wish.” No one heard Luke’s words, since Taylor had directed a warning at them.

“He’s over there!”

Luke sprinted at the huge magical circle that was in the air in front of the Boss monster. He could barely see the hooded figure, but could clearly see that there were strange mystical markings crawling along the outer edge of the magical circles. A little over one-third of the final circle had been completed, making it easy to see exactly how much time remained as more and more was filled in. Something screamed a warning to him just before he dived into the circles, and his eyes took in the free-floating physical components in the circles.

Though he wasn’t concerned that the mana itself could hurt him, thanks to the pure mana-ignoring effect of ‘I have Concerns’, there was something about this structured power that told him that touching it was death. The circles and boss blinked, and Luke’s eyes focused on Taylor, who had just tried to jump into the rings. “Taylor, that’s death!”

“I’ll discharge my entire mana pool into that to interrupt it if I need to!” Taylor replied, sprinting at the new location of the Boss. 

“Will a huge influx of mana destroy it?” Luke’s question caught her off guard, but she knew what he was getting at. 

“Do not put pure mana into that!” She ordered firmly. “It’s a draining spell right now, and the only reason it isn’t ready to cast is that there isn’t enough ambient mana to fuel it. It is pulling in everything from miles around. Structured mana introduced to the system would re-write a section enough to make the spell self-destruct!”

“Are you sure?” Andre had caught up, and Zed held onto Arthur as he lumbered at the Boss and missed a swipe.

“No, but it would make something other than the intended effect happen!” Taylor’s exasperation was shining through her normally cold demeanor. “It should just explode.”

“But we are right next to it!” Zed snarled at her, face red with fury. “Just because you are so willing to die for the Hollow Kingdom doesn’t mean we are! Stop trying to kill us!”

“But that’s the only-” Taylor was cut off by Zed hopping off of Arthur and stalking close enough that their noses almost touched.

“Celestials above and Abyss below, if you finish that statement I am going to blow up harder than that spell would!” Zed’s teeth were clenched so hard he would likely need healing. “If the only way forward is to die for something, find another way! If it is impossible, make it happen!”

A grating laugh caused them all to freeze. They turned to look at the new location of the boss monster. “I do love watching lower life forms quibble.”

The circle was approaching the halfway complete point, but this was the first sign of true intelligence any chimera had displayed. It knew their language? Zed was the first to react, unsurprising since this had suddenly turned into an verbal battle. “I’m just going to go over to your home plane and wait this out. Unless you plan to send… whatever that is into your own house? To be fair, I wouldn’t blame you. If everyone around me was as ugly as the rest of your people, I might be tempted to chuck a few killing spells at them too.”

“Insulting our appearance? It’s just so… cute.” The Mage’s face was clearly visible, though painted by the shifting red and gold colors of the spell circle it was building. “Tell you what. You go through that portal; I’ll keep you as a pet until I get bored of you. You get to live at least a little longer!”

“Why are you attacking us?” Taylor demanded from the man. “What do you even get out of this?”

“Why, resources, of course!” The boss flickered and appeared in a new spot as a dozen vines whipped through where he had just stood. “Tut tut, that won’t do. As I was saying, there is so much here! And such a backward world that is barely protected! Almost no beings, hardly any understanding of magic, and so many food sources!”

“Too many people? You have a population issue?” Taylor’s mind was whirling with data and ways to mitigate the situation. “I can offer you land, and resources. All you need to do-”

“Hush now, shush now, settle down.” The being told her almost gently. “I am not given things. I take what I want. From how much you struggled against my cast-offs, my components, I know that your people will have no defense against my actual military force! We will sweep across this world and take it for The Twisted. It’s a small offering, but a welcome one. I’ll tell your Anarcanists that I thank them for providing a doorway, before I feast on their hearts to gain a few additional scraps of power.”

“You aren’t working with them?” Andre pressed for information as Luke threw a rock at the Boss. The attack was caught in one hand, though there was a brief flare of surprise on its face. A glow had appeared over its hand just before the rock stopped, a clear indication that there were magical protections in place.

“Pah.” The humanoid creature rolled it’s oddly square-pupiled eyes. “You were clearly not listening. We take what we want. We don’t ‘work with’. We dominate. We flood the world. We eat every scrap, and only when a world is an empty husk do we move on to the next.”

Attacks came from every side. The bear attacked, the Druid scattered seeds, the Mage blasted, and Luke ran forward screaming wildly. 

It didn’t matter. The hooded creature blinked again and again, reappearing with the circles nearly ninety percent complete. Deceptively slowly, the spell circle completed and began to glow brightly. Zed screamed in fear, as they were directly in front of the spell. “Do something!”

“He keeps moving! I can’t get close enough to kill him!” Luke’s anger was pure frustration, he wanted to punch that smug, goateed face!

“I can’t hold him!” Andre admitted sadly as he watched the end coming. “I can’t even get the smallest spore on him somehow!”

“What is this thing?” Taylor threw spell after spell at the circles, which shifted out of the way each time they got too close.

“You wish to look upon the face of your death?” The boss laughed at them, treating their attacks like children throwing tantrums. “Certainly! I’d be more than happy to let you know who defeated you so easily.”

His robe tore away, revealing thick, hairy legs with cloven hooves. Above the waist, he was pure human until the top of his head, where a pair of thick horns curled back and around. “Gaze upon me and despair! Gethedrel the Red Dread shall personally take your lives!”

“Yup. Whole world full of ugly.” Zed catcalled one final insult.

Gethedrel raised his hands and snarled. “Enough of this. Blood of the willing, wash over the world and bring its resources to me. All shall be collected. All shall be used in the service of the powerful. Until nothing remains! Spell of the ninth tier, activate!”

The ninth circle flared, and completed. 

“Reduce, reuse, recycle!”