The Nettle Tea Chronicles

Zoe

"Oh, great," was the first response to seeing [Fridraig] begin casting a spell later on in the fight. He had that same silvery-white casting effect as before, with the additional darker threads running through the magical weave.

Zoe was just hoping that the boss wasn't about to pull out tricky illusion magic or similar nonsense to what Áine had used. While that had been a really fun fight, a boss suddenly swapping to a whole new style of combat in the late game wasn't something she liked.

Thankfully, when his cast finished there were no tricks or illusions added to the field that Zoe could see. Instead, the Fae dropped his lance - which quickly plummeted to the ground below - and had a new weapon appear in his hands.

A whip made of shifting water.

"Fuck, I hate whip enemies." Fiona said as the party tried to form up to assess the new threat.

"Why? Are there even that many of them?" Firo asked.

"No, but their attack patterns are always difficult to block. Whips hit from odd angles and have weird off-tempo attacks that hit after you would expect them to."

"Just what we want to hear."

"I'm more concerned that the whip is water. That doesn't usually mix well with lightning elemented stuff in games." Mellody said, quickly swapping to a shield-focused [Musick], clearly untrusting of whatever came next.

"On your guard, everyone." [Scathach] said, floating up next to the party. [Firdraig] laughed in response, testing his whip in the air next to him while his dragon charged a lightning attack.

Zoe could immediately see what Fiona meant. She had never paid much attention to basic attacks from them before, but the snap at the end of the whip was clearly delayed from the attack motion of the Fae's arm. The tip of the whip also clearly curved, as if designed to slip around a [Block] if the player simply faced toward the boss at all times.

"Any plan?" Bisky asked as the ranged party members continued attacking.

On the plus side, the party had figured out exactly how they were meant to actually affect the boss fight. While [Firdraig] barely took any damage from them directly, whenever [Garmiad's] HP fell dangerously low, the Fae would heal it at the cost of some of his own HP.

It left the party focused almost entirely on the dragon for attacks, only dealing with [Firdraig] himself when he attacked or a mechanic needed solving.

"None."

"Ugh, I hate when fights put difficult shit right at the end!" Cass whined. Zoe chuckled at that, but she absolutely agreed. Even if it felt natural to put the more difficult mechanics right at the end of a fight for the big, high-octane finale, it was also a pain to have to get through the entire fight to get back to the hard bit for practice. It was a solid design catch-22.

The party didn't get a lot of time to relax before the hopefully final phase began. [Garmiad] launched a targeted blast of lightning at Mellody, who dodged the attack neatly. The beam, however, did create a nice bit of cover for the enemy to approach while everyone scattered away from the blast.

The Fae naturally charged at [Scathach], who had been the one engaging him the most directly throughout the fight. Fiona and Aleister both moved to support her by blocking attacks wherever they could. They had seen what happened when they allowed [Scathach] to take yet unknown attacks earlier in the fight - it led to a wipe.

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Caoimhe and Nyx slid down and underneath [Garmiad] to attack the dragon's belly while [Firdraig] focused on the tanks above.

Zoe could clearly hear Fiona's mutterings of annoyance as attacks regularly tried to sneak around attempted [Blocks].

"Water-whipped." Cass said aloud, and Zoe assumed she was reading a debuff's text. "[Firdraig's] whip leaves you drenched and susceptible to certain follow up attacks."

"Bet that means lightning ones." Mellody said.

"I'd put money on it, yeah." Fiona agreed.

As Zoe hit the fifth skill in her combo, she saw [Garmiad] begin to gather lightning.

"Something's coming."

"Thanks for the warning."

The party members all scattered back a bit, while Fiona and Aleister remained in front, ready to sacrifice themselves in case something bad seemed to be targeting [Scathach]. The party hadn't used any [Resurrections] yet during the pull, so they were still relatively safe if someone made a snap judgment to absorb an attack.

[Garmiad] curled up to breathe out a short puff of lightning onto his tail, similar to the tell for the tank buster from his solo portion of the fight.

"Do we limit test or play it safe?"

"New phase. May as well limit test." Cass said.

Fiona moved in front to take the following couple hits immediately. She was already under the effect of the [Water-whipped] debuff while Aleister wasn't, so this was the easiest chance to see what the effect was like.

Fiona [Blocked] two basic attacks from [Firdraig] before [Garmiad] spun horizontally to smash into the tank with its electrified tail. Fiona successfully [Perfect Blocked] the attack and had two other mitigation skills active, which had been more than enough to take the dragon's tail slam attack earlier in the fight.

This time, the attack left Fiona in the triple digits of HP, but alive. However, [Water-whipped] had been swapped out for three new debuffs.

Cass, as she had gotten in the habit of doing, read them out quickly. "Shocked. Taking residual lightning damage over time. Paralyzed. Static electricity can cause your body to lock up. Livewire. You take additional lightning damage from both lightning and water attacks."

"Oh, lovely. A feedback loop." Aleister said dryly.

"Why did they put in a forced tank swap when we aren't even tanking them?" Fiona grumbled, while swapping spots with Aleister.

"Wait, I don't think -" Caoimhe started to say something, but cut off when Aleister cleanly blocked the next strike from [Firdraig], claiming a [Water-whipped] debuff for himself.

After Caoimhe's quick shout, Zoe realized why he had tried to stop the swap. The remaining time on Fiona's debuffs were all over 30 seconds, and now Aleister was also at risk for getting punished.

Aleister was too busy blocking attacks from the enemy to say anything other than a confused "Huh?", but Fiona paused for a moment before letting out a quiet "Oh. Oops."

"Yeah, 'oops'." Caoimhe laughed.

"Are we dead?" Firo asked.

"Almost definitely." Zoe said.

"What? Why?" Aleister asked right on cue as the boss queued up another lightning-based tank buster. Fiona still had 15 or so seconds on the debuffs, meaning they were pretty much sunk here.

"Y'all, prep a res." Fiona said, and stepped in front of Aleister to intercept the attack. Actively choosing not to block or use mitigations skills had Fiona's body floating in the air a second later.

"I got ya." Cass said, and the [Resurrection] spell was cast before Fiona's body even began to fall from the short grace period of remaining flight.

"One of us needs to take Firdraig's attacks, while the other takes the dragon's. It's not a normal tank swap, it's more like we need to tank different targets that are the same enemy." Fiona explained as the [Resurrection] went through, causing Fiona to reappear at full HP and without debuffs among the party's backline. A quick gap closer sent her flying back to the boss in no time at all.

"Oh, I see now. Interesting. Which one you want?" Aleister stepped aside for Fiona to slide back into position.

"More attacks are coming from Firdraig, let me take him. More perfect blocks means more damage procs from my shield."

"Copy."

Zoe marveled as the two tanks recovered remarkably well, and flowed into a well coordinated show of teamwork.

The fight from there actually proceeded quite easily, as far as Zoe could tell. [Firdraig] had gained access to a couple interesting attack patterns with the whip, but it was still mostly contained to single target attacks, mostly targeting [Scathach] who continued to strike the Fae with very impressive looking shadow magic.

Zoe had to actively avoid watching the NPC because everytime she did she got jealous of the attack animations and particle effects on display. [Shroud] was very cool, and mechanically right up her alley. But there was something about [Scathach's] myriad of shadowy weapons and the animations that went with them that spoke to her on a fundamental level of what Zoe thought was cool.

Meanwhile, there was also a part of her laughing at herself for having the same tastes that she did in high school. She shrugged that off though; who needed to grow up?

When [Firdraig] dropped to 10% of his HP remaining, he changed things up again. He utilized the water whip as a casting tool and used another Fae spell.

Zoe blinked when she saw the entire area they were fighting light up with red AoE markers. Several flashed in different locations in quick succession, and she had trouble parsing exactly what was safe and when. The markers weren't even all the same shape - some were cylinders while others were massive spheres, which made pattern recognition tough. If there was a discernable pattern, she had totally missed it.

"What fresh hell is this?"

"Just move!"

Zoe did exactly that, sliding over to a spot that she had noted as being safe for the first volley. Caoimhe and Aleister had moved with her, while Fiona split off in a different direction with [Scathach]. The ranged party members were far enough away that they would no doubt have their own safe spots.

"We who are about to die salute you." Coaimhe said with a laugh as [Firdraig] began his assault. He swung his whip around almost like a lasso over his head, and it split into multiple whips of water. And then each of those morphed again into dragon heads.

"Well that's pretty fucking cool. Can we do that?" Firo asked, as the onslaught began. The dragon heads all lashed out at the previously denoted AoE spots. They either lashed out and bit at the location for the cylinder AoEs, or blasted an explosion of water at the sphere ones.

Zoe and her little group stayed together for the first two rounds of AoEs, then Aleister split off and got smacked by one on his own. Zoe stuck by Caoimhe, who had seemed confident in moving to a new safe zone, only to get washed by the next round of AoEs.

The single hit was enough to leave Nyx's lifeless body floating in the air as she watched the chaos unfold. The ranged party members' attempt went about the same, they were split apart now and each dead in the air.

"Caoimhe, you were supposed to lead me to safety!" Zoe joked, laughing at the sheer amount of death on screen.

"Lead you? I was following you!" Caoimhe laughed too. So did everyone else, unless Fiona spoke up.

"Guys? I'm not dead!"

After the sixth round of AoEs, Fiona remained alive, standing next to [Scathach], who had been apparently cleanly moving to safe spots the entire time.

"Nice!"

"I guess we know the strat for next time, then." Mellody said.

"Seems like it."

As Fiona followed [Scthach] to the seventh safe spot, [Garmiad] began to prepare an attack. On the eighth, the dragon blasted an array of lighting beams over the battle arena, one of which all but consumed the safe zone that [Scathach] had led Fiona to.

[Scathach] had clearly begun some kind of animation or response to the attack, but Zoe's screen went black before she could see what happened. Fiona had been standing in front of [Scathach] and had gotten completely fried by the lightning beam.

When the screen resolved into the party once again standing in the blue sphere at the beginning of the fight, Fiona cleared his throat.

"Sorry."

Zoe snorted. "Yes, how dare you get killed by an attack after the rest of us died."

There was some chuckling going around at that, while everyone collected themselves for the next pull.

"We've got a little less than an hour left. Everyone still good?" Bisky asked.

"Yep."

"Yeah.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Don't you 'ma'am' me, you little shit."