Paths of the Chosen

Aidan
The Realms
Secondday, 1st week of the 12th month, Age of the Chosen 1
Mid-Afternoon
Karsarrym's Lair

As soon as the two gargoyles passed the threshold of Karsarrym's Lair, a Quest prompt popped into Aidan's view.

Aidan glanced over the Quest, then dismissed the window. The optional goals didn't suggest anything new, so there was no reason to let them distract him.

Conor's summoned dakhols followed Iossif and Stamatia into the dark cavern. Before they'd even vanished from sight, a familiar voice, seething with hatred, rattled the cave. "Chosen." A brilliant bolt of lightning lit up the lair along with a deafening peal of thunder. Aidan could see Karsarrym heaving its stadium-sized body into a standing position in the brief moment of bright light. "Thou hast forsaken all sanity. Thy minions will not shield thee from my wrath. Indignity upon indignity hast thou inflicted upon me, and now, here, away from thy Throne, I will make thee pay."

At a signal, the remaining Snow-Water Rider mercenaries used slings to plaster the voluminous cavern with enchanted lantern-stones. Each device could only illuminate an area ten to fifteen feet in radius, but every marine had a dozen in their belt pouch. The mass-produced magic items also stuck to anything they struck, so within a minute, hundreds of steady lights glowed from the battlefield's every surface.

A few soldiers, brave or foolish, even managed to strike Karsarrym with their payloads. Those lanterns, however, winked out as soon as they lit. Shadows clung to the wyrm's body like a second skin, shifting and shimmering, dancing and darting. Aidan couldn't make out any details aside from its eyes and gleaming fangs.

Unperturbed by the lights blossoming all around it, the dragon continued ranting. "Better ye waited in thy city until these whelps thy magic quickened within me flew free. A year thee would have had to prepare, not these scant weeks." Iossif soared on stony wings up to the dragon's fanged maw. Karsarrym snapped at him to no avail. "Gnats thou hast brought before me when thou could have had an army."

If the gargoyles responded to being compared to tiny, blood-sucking insects, they were too far away to hear. Iossif made a nuisance of himself, flitting around Karsarrym's head and landing the occasional blow with his hammer. Stamatia took advantage of the dragon's distraction to smash into Karsarrym's right foreleg to no apparent effect. She did say her attacks would get stronger as she kept fighting.

The dakhols, scattered by the initial lightning breath, reached their target and started climbing up Karsarrym's legs. The wyrm ducked under another attack from Iossif, caught a dakhol in its jaws, and tossed it against the nearest wall. The summoned monster was up and on its feet again in seconds.

"Alright, he's as distracted as he'll ever be," Aidan declared. "Second wave, go." He, Eldrid, and Ysbail moved up as a group, shielded by a swirling hemisphere of water. Aidan kept his burning blades gathered close behind him, attempting to hide them from Karsarrym's sight. Aija, meanwhile, flitted from shadow to shadow, placing explosives on the stalagnate pillars buttressing the ceiling.

"Ah, at last, thou showest thy face, Chosen." A deafening boom and blinding light overwhelmed Aidan for a moment as a bolt of lightning impacted with Eldrid's shield. "Clever, clever. But such tricks will avail ye not, little gnats. Think ye none before have sought to guard against mine breath?"

Before Karsarrym could demonstrate whatever he meant, Aidan struck. Five sword-shaped beams of contained plasma screamed through the air toward the dragon. Two skittered off one of the dragon's forepaws as it swiped at them. The other three met scales along its neck and head.

The results were dangerously disappointing.

"His resistance to fire is 200%," Aidan said with a groan. "The only reason I got any damage through at all is my Journeyman perk."

"Didst thou think I would fall for the same tricks twice, Chosen? Sheer arrogance. Thou earned thy victory when last we met, but I am prepared for thy flames now." Karsarrym's smug declaration of invulnerability seemed to distract the wyrm from its previous intentions.

"We'll see," Aidan said, then raised his voice. "Plan C! Everyone, attack!" Pandemonium followed.

Ysbail charged out from behind Eldrid's cover, her Aura ignited and covering her from head to toe. A crescent of crackling golden energy swept from her blade and crashed into Karsarrym. Dark blood trickled from between cracked scales in its wake.

At the same time, an arrow streaked past overhead. A sonic boom rattled the cool underground air following Alkelda's opening shot. The arrow found its mark, drawing a cacophonous roar as it buried itself inside the wyrm's right eye—the same one Aidan's Passion Elementals blinded in their first encounter.

The wyrm thrashed in pain, its head and tail whipping from side to side. Armored flesh crashed through several stalagmites, shattering them and sending bits of stony shrapnel as large as man's head ricocheting around the cavern. Eldrid lunged in front of Aidan as a spray of needle-like rock fragments pierced her watery shield. Hot liquid splattered across Aidan's cheek.

Behind them, a shocked, agonized cry could barely be heard between Karsarrym's roars. Aidan glanced back to see Enys, the wolven necromancer, with a three-foot-long shard of calcite embedded in her belly. She collapsed to the ground in a pool of her own blood. To Aidan's amazement, while she clutched one hand to her wound, the other sketched black glyphs in the air before her.

"Wretches! Worms!" Karsarrym raged. Iossif bounced his hammer off the wyrm's snout only to be met by a point-blank blast of electricity. The gargoyle crashed into the debris-covered ground, raising a puff of dust. A heartbeat later, he launched himself back out of the dust cloud, clearing the air.

The dakhols continued to swarm across Karsarrym's body. They pried and yanked at scales and pounded it with their ham-sized fists. The dragon bit them and plucked them from its hide with fang and claw, inflicting grievous wounds and sending them flying through the cavern. One such flung monster missed colliding with Alkelda by such a narrow margin that the harpy sniper tumbled a dozen feet before managing to right herself.

Still, Karsarrym wasn't the only one inflicting damage. Ysbail, darting in and out between the dragon's feet, drew blood time and again with Aura-infused swings of her greatsword. Ritva, the harefolk dragoon, was right there with her, stabbing with her heavy lance and leaping away from retributive strikes. Alkelda's arrows rocketed through the air, each striking a broken scale.

Enys's work was less obvious to see. Only the darkening of the wyrm's blood as it trickled onto the ground from dozens of minor wounds bore visual evidence of her magic. Aidan thought the others were inflicting injuries with higher and higher frequency as the fight dragged on, but he wasn't certain what to credit it to.

For his part, Aidan kept his Blades of Burning Wrath attacking in a constant flurry. They mostly deflected off heavily-resistant scales, but sometimes he'd manage to land a hit on a broken or torn-away scale and deal some real damage. He did his best to focus on those areas, but Karsarrym was in constant motion, and even with the marines' lights, it wasn't easy to keep track of such weak spots on a black dragon in a dark cave.

Stamatia and Aija were the first to strike a telling blow. The gargoyle brawler landed a series of punches along Karsarrym's right foreleg. Fragments of scales flew through the air with each hit. Meanwhile, having finished planting the bombs, Aija made an explosive entrance to the fight by launching herself out of the shadows feet-first. She collided with a bare patch of skin beneath Karsarrym's ankle, sinking in several inches, then rebounded away with a flex of her legs. The wyrm roared and staggered to the side, cradling the newly-broken leg against its chest.

"Enough!" Tendrils of blue-white lightning lashed out from its body. "Beg thy Gods for mercy in thy next lives. I send ye now to meet them." The wyrm reared back on its hind legs and spread its wings wide.

"Duck and scatter!" Aidan screamed, knowing something big was coming. He followed his own advice, throwing himself to the ground inside Eldrid's bubble and covering his face with his arms.

"Witness thy ending!" Bright light erupted with a sound like the end of the world, visible even through Aidan's arms. Unlike Karsarrym's breath attacks, this wasn't over in a flash. It went on and on, and after a couple of seconds, he felt Eldrid collapse across his back. Immediately after that, pain engulfed him as electricity coursed through them both.

Aidan focused all his effort on maintaining his spells as he writhed in agony. As the seconds slipped by, he felt first one Blade fade, then a second and a third. When at last the pain faded to a throbbing ache, he raised his head and looked around.

The first and most obvious thing Aidan noticed was Karsarrym's fatigue. The dragon was no longer standing on its hind legs. Instead, it was slumped to the ground, chest expanding in contracting as it sucked in great, heaving breaths. Thank all the Gods, Aidan thought, that he can't do that over and over.

The small reprieve let Aidan squirm out from under Eldrid and examine the situation. A quick glance at the party interface told him they were in bad shape. Only the gargoyles weathered Karsarrym's attack without taking significant damage. Aija, Ritva, and Ysbail were missing between a quarter and a third of their Health. Eldrid was well under half and short of Concentration besides.

None of them were as bad off as Alkelda or Enys, however. The latter was, somehow, still alive. The stony projectile impaling her was nowhere to be seen, and the hole in her belly was smaller than Aidan thought it should be. However, lacerations covered every inch of her exposed skin, and he could see a lightning scar engraved across her torso.

Alkelda was even worse off. It took a few seconds for Aidan to locate her. Eventually, he spotted her limp form a few feet from the base of a stalagnate pillar. Thick tendrils of black smoke rose from her body, and tiny fires burned among her crest feathers. Alkelda's bow, broken in half, lay just past her outstretched hand. A closer look at her Health bar confirmed the first death of the battle.

A scream of pain tore Aidan's attention back to those who still lived. He struggled to his feet and turned to find a sight that drained the blood from his face. Karsarrym, it seemed, recovered quicker than Ysbail and capitalized on the situation. The dragon had her by the left arm and shoulder, its tree-sized fangs crushing her as it raised her into the air.

Karsarrym jerked its head from side to side like a shark, and on the second shake, Ysbail went flying, an arc of bright red blood trailing her. She slammed into a stalactite and fell to the ground a second later. By some miracle, she still had a sliver of red Health remaining, but Aidan doubted she'd be a factor in the fight again.

"Thus I will do to each of thy minions, Chosen," a low, spiteful rumble filled the air as Karsarrym addressed Aidan. "I will rend them limb from limb and burn their corpses to ash while thou watchest. Then, I shall fly to thy city and raze it to the ground ere thy Goddess's blessing revives thee. When thou returnest, it shall be to the ruin of all thou—"

The dragon's tirade cut off with a crash of metal against scale as Ritva slammed into its right shoulder from above. The dragoon's heavy lance pierced between a cluster of scales and sank deep. Black, steaming blood spurted forth, coating the harefolk's heavy armor. "I bid you your tongue to hold, foul serpent," her voice rang out. "Battered are we, but not beaten." So saying, she yanked her weapon free and leaped off the wyrm's shoulder.

Karsarrym's tail swiped through the air and intercepted her path, sending her crashing to the ground. "Brave ye are, but bravery will avail ye not." Its serpentine neck craned around until the dragon looked at Aidan. "This one seems precious to thee, Chosen. I think I will take her next." No, Aidan realized, he's not looking at me. He heaved himself to the side on unsteady legs, knowing he would be too slow to intercept the bolt aimed at Eldrid.

Up the wyrm's head rose, its maw gaping open. Lightning crackled between its teeth. Then, with a now-familiar peal of thunder, electricity poured forth.

Zurai

Pronunciation Guide (infinitesimal spoiler warning, names only without any details)

Special thanks to Cenomy, Lupus, Emran Altaf, and an anonymous Patron for their exceptional support on Patreon!

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For the record, my Patrons voted on a specific aspect of this battle: the effect of the curse Aidan bought from his Patron Points store and inflicted on Karsarrym after their first fight. Their vote resulted in Karsarrym being recovered from the first fight and well-prepared for the second, but emotionally compromised and with some bonus loot in the form of the egg. Actions have consequences, and the lure of loot means the fight will go harder than it might otherwise have. Of course, it was never going to be easy.