NOVEL NEXT Chapter 56 - About time
In order for our reinforcements to arrive before our party gets torn to shreds, we will need to buy some time in the dressing rooms. Thankfully, the room theme here is very conducive to this, and so I direct my monsters to enter one of the rooms at random.
I wait until the Bone beast as well as the lead cultist closes in on the room before triggering the room's ability. I feel space warp and distort, quite the unpleasant experience, but when the cultist opens the door to the room we have just fled into, the room appears empty.
Understandably, he is confused. I can see his eyes glowing underneath the mask as he likely employs some form of sensory skill, yet he still fails to detect us in the chamber he peers into.
Frustrated, he tears open the next door in line, revealing another empty room. As he does so, the door he peeked through first closes again.
When he moves to the third door on the side of rooms we fled into, I trigger the room’s ability again.
Another sickening lurch, and the room the cultist barges into is empty once again.
The [Swapping] rooms are really quite handy to confuse intruders and buy some time, I just wish it wouldn't be so painful to employ them. At most, I can do it two more times, but if it keeps us alive, it is well worth it.
As quietly as we can manage, my escorts open the door of the very first room the cultist checked and creep across the hallway into the opposite room. More of the cultists are arriving, unfortunately, and spy our little party crossing into the new room, but also our nearing reinforcements. Their cries of alarm alert the leading cultist, who quickly lunges for our new position while the bone beast, the radiance mage, one of the skull masks and two of the large four-armed skeletons take up position in the hallway to intercept our backup and the rest of their forces that made it here join in the pursuit.
And a pursuit it is, as the room they go for is empty once again, since I triggered the second to last swap I can manage.
The clashing of steel announces the arrival of our forces, my dungeonwide vision giving me a rough idea of the engagement even while I am inside an adjacent room.
It started with five armored bodies, the mannequins in knight’s plate led by Siegfried and the leader of that adventuring party, barreling into the bone beast. In the last seconds of their charge, Siegfried and the adventurer shift the position of their shields and push against the protruding spikes of the creature, knocking it off balance and the spikes off course,
allowing the blades of their fellows to connect with its torso without their wielders becoming impaled on the creatures defenses.
Now, swords might not be the best weapon to bring to bear against bone, but they are still quite hefty pieces of metal. Swung with sufficient force, the bones of the beast splinter under the assault even as it attempts to reposition its bestial neck to clamp down on its attackers with its jaws.
Its attempt would not be met with success, however, as with a frightening roar, the tallest of the adventurers leaps over the mannequins, her body wreathed in an aura of bloody red and her eyes glowing in the same color hatefully, and brings down her greataxe on the creatures spine.
The arc of her axe is trailed by a red glow which explodes out with furious force when the weapon makes contact with bone, and the bone is annihilated beneath it, as well as a large part of the creature’s ribcage.
Whatever magic animated the creature is lost and it dissolves into a heap of bones upon which the angry berserker lands, quickly righting herself and raising her greataxe for another swing.
Seems like the cavalry has arrived.