The Tower of Infinite Evil [A LitRPG Horror Comedy]

Nice Hat, Bitch

I called fire. It broke the charge a little and the goblins and shadow monsters scattered away from their already chaotic formation into bands and parties. I looked to Emma to my left.

"Got any mana potions?" I said.
"Cheers, bruv," she said, tossing me two, one after another.
"Then I've got a plan. Stay close," I said.
She threw some sort of a device onto a particularly large goblin charging straight at our group. It sprung spider-like legs and attached itself to the goblin's face. Who then died with muffled screams.
"Plan sounds good," she said.
We were surrounded and had seconds to act. But I had changed my school of wizardry, after all. As soon as a half-dozen goblins were in range, I dropped the Stasis Field spell, and we were in a time bubble with them. I just hoped we could take six. I was out of prepared spell-slots, apart from my water ball spell that just never seemed to come in as handy as I'd like it to, so I had to stick to first tier magic.

My very first combo of conjured icicle did some work. At this level, my icicles were really razor sharp blocks of ice so cold it actually delivered frostbite even if it didn't kill, and weighed more than 10 pounds flying out of the pseudoportals at terminal velocity. They hit hard. And I had nothing on Emma in this environment.

As soon as she understood the assignment, five runes of different colours activated on her fists, shins and on top of her hood, and she blurred with near-instantaneous movement, appearing behind the goblins at a speed that seemed almost like teleportation.

"Nothing personal, kid," she said, leaving a device on the ground, then dashing back to me as it went off in a perfect 5 foot radius sphere, seemingly evaporating everything within, including leaving a hole in the ground. I hit one of the two remaining stragglers with an icicle between the eyes, and she kicked the last one, which somehow electrocuted the creature and it went down twitching.

"Guessing this shit of yours is expensive though?" she said.
"20% mana down," I said. It had been full when I first activated the bubble, but even with my attributes, spamming second tier spells got pricey quickly.
"Time stop?" she said.

"Kind of," I said.
"So we use it all up in an instant. Morale damage type shit," she said.

I could see it. From the perspective of our attackers it would look like I was casting one spell and disintegrating a squad instantly, teleporting for free to boot. It'd make it look like I was a lot stronger than I really was if they didn't know what I was doing.

"We need to find Artemis. And the hag," I said.
"Damn right we do. How long does this thing last?" Emma said.

We'd been quick. We still had minutes left, so I scanned the frozen battlefield outside us for a while. The Guild was arriving to the battlefield properly, and doing damage. Not everyone was doing as well as we were. The warriors in particular were a lot more evenly matched against the goblins, as they seemed to be pretty straight-forward skirmish fighters, so it was just a question of level and numbers. There were so many of them that our fighters were outnumbered three-to-one in just about every engagement I saw, and most of them were taking wounds.

On the other hand this was mage paradise. Fireballs and lightning storms were going off, destroying enemies in numbers with each casting. The issue were the shadow creatures. I saw dead wizards on the ground, still wrapped in a deathly embrace by the monsters. Their stealthy nature combined with the relatively low endurance of the casters was a bad combination. No one I knew. Not yet. But I saw a shadow under Mrs. Hoxley, that was not quite right.

"Alright, I can drop it when I want to, we go for that group there," I said, pointing to a larger group of goblins with a few shadows, "And we'll fucking have to use fire."

The slower second tier spell combined with the dangers of casting area spells in a confined space was a necessary tactic against the shadow men, but I didn't have to like it. On the plus side, I could probably get more of them down in one attack.

"Three, two…" I said, and cast my other Chronomancy spell, which instantly canceled both of them out. I called for Mrs. Hoxley to look down and immediately began casting the stasis field.

The second time, Emma had to do all the work. Each of my castings of the greasefire had to be interrupted to cast a shield in order to survive ranged attacks and spears. But she got the job done, and, hey, it cost me less mana.

"Fuck my ego, can you deal with them if I keep you safe from ranged shit?" I said.
"I'm running low already," she said.
"Can you protect me while I do fire shit?" I said.
"Sure, that's easier," she said.

We got a hang of it and our explosive, apparently instantaneous evaporation of goblins, leaving burned husks behind quickly had the desired effect. On the fourth time, where I had only a little over a fifth of my total mana left, when we ran towards the next group of goblins, they turned and ran away. We chased, and I threw up the bubble once again.

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I was conserving mana, and Emma was conserving her… whatever juice she was running on. We were getting pretty confident about this, so we could just use low level attacks and active defenses to-

As I turned to the burning battlefield behind me I saw a smiling, ugly face, covered in moss and a felt hat. The hag was moving slowly, like in a dream, but reaching towards us. And when she touched the barrier, she passed through it with ease.

"Well aren't we fancy, messing with time? I'll have you know, sweetie, I'm plenty fancy too," the hag said.

She seemed to be in no rush. She licked her lips with a wet slapping sound and sucked at the holes in her teeth as she approached us.

"Good. There's an old nag I've been itching to fuck up. You'll be-" Emma said.
"No stalling," I said and rushed forwards. I didn't even prepare a spell, just raised my staff like a baseball bat, and swung for the hag's face. It hit with all the force I could leverage, which must have been pretty fucking great with the length of the staff, and it felt like it broke things, but I saw it smash into her face like a stick smashed into the moss covering a fen. Sure, there was a break, but it affected the surrounding area not at all.

And then, faster than I could pull back, she grabbed my staff with both hands and started chanting.

"Isk-va-toon!" Emma shouted, and an arc of lightning zapped the hag in the chest, right where her heart should have been, but instead of producing any visible results, the electricity arced through her, then through my staff over to me. She raised both staves in the air now, and screamed out the last of her incantation, and I was overwhelmed with a primal, unnatural fear. My trauma trait was gone, and my willpower was much muted, but it was like she'd taken a hold of my amygdala and squeezed, a purely physical reaction of terror. My legs moved on their own as I scampered back away from her, and it was clear that Emma was doing not much better from how she was howling a wordless scream.

Oh god, oh fuck, oh god, I was dead, she was going to kill me. She was going to torture, then kill me. She was going to take my body, and use it as a puppet to kill my friends and I will be stuck inside my head, unable to move, unable to do anything, at her mercy. I couldn't stop these thoughts for my head for more than few heartbeats of clarity at a time, and my heart was beating faster than it ever had before.

"Now what shall I do with you misbehaving children?" She crooned, as she walked over to the screaming Emma. And that just was not going to happen again. I hadn't the focus to cast anything complex, but with my Chronomancy specialization I could at least-

As I cast my other Chronomancy spell, the one that stopped time for everyone including myself, the stasis field instantly collapsed. And I was frozen in terror. Before this, every time I had immediately canceled this spell too, so that we could go back to doing whatever we were doing, but as I sat staring at the hag with her hand less than a foot away from Emma's face, I forced myself to stay in frozen time. The fear was unchanging. So the one that had to change was me.

I sat there in frozen terror, and slowly thoughts began taking order. The overwhelming majority of my consciousness was still terrified internal screaming, but I could find those thoughts of mine that were working on a solution and focus on them, turning the terror down from eleven to a much more manageable nine. The feeling was still the same, but I had found a space, a little corner of my mind, where I could do work.

I didn't need most of my body. It could do whatever instinctive bullshit it wanted to. I didn't need to hear, to smell, to feel. My sight and my voice would have to be enough. I found that I could detach in this way, and when I understood it, I felt that presence inside me, more clearly than before. It wasn't not me. But it was a separate instance of my self. And I wanted to help me. In my head he/I spoke, and I heard the fourth to sixth syllable of the Overcharge spell. It made sense. I was all but out of mana.

When time resumed I spoke with two voices and my spell took form in half the time. It spooked the hag enough so that she looked up at me, ignoring Emma for the split moment, and that was all I needed. My brain lit up with every chemical reaction, every bit of adrenaline, dopamine and all of the other brain juices that made you act to such an extent that my fear became only one of a myriad screams in the darkness. At the same instant my mostly feeble muscles flared with the sort of strength they say mothers achieve when lifting cars off their babies. And when I darted forward at the hag, I flew faster than any human on Earth could ever have. I shoulder tackled her, and this time she moved, I pushed her over and we tangled on the ground.

And then she incanted a single, simple spell. And the magic was gone from my body. The dispel magic spell had removed not only the boost from the Overcharge spell, but also the remaining effects of Emma's potion. Even the fear was gone, and I couldn't help but miss it in the terrible numbness. The hag slowly, systematically took my nigh-limp hands and stood up to her full height, so I was now hanging in front of her face.

"Well, if you're so keen to cut the line, boy, then I will oblige," she said with rising hatred, as she dropped me in front of her and I collapsed to my knees. Maybe, if I cast a big enough spell from hitpoints now, I could die rather than be taken over.

I felt the hag's pox-ridden hand on my face, and a burning came from inside my head. Then, a clang that was almost comical, and the burning was gone. I forced my eyes back open and saw the hag turn, and there behind her was Artemis with her burning mace in hand. She swung again. And again. And the hag dropped to the ground. And Artemis followed her, straddling and pinning her to the ground. And she kept hitting her in the face with an enchanted mace the size of a turkey leg. Until there was nothing but pulp and boneshards.

Time passed. And Artemis spoke.

"Alex. She is still inside my head," she said. And her voice was a frail thing that I had never before heard.