Kaia the Argent Wing

The glass shattered into twinkling shards. In moments, the contraption that gave the boss a portion of its shields spun out of control. The spike on the back of my new axe pierced the disk inside the machine on my second swing, as I made damn sure it wouldn't spin up again.

Almost immediately, we heard a dozen inhuman voices howl with dust-and-tin voices. The horrors we'd been fighting since we stepped into this place began to swarm once more. They crawled out from under bookshelves that had obviously not previously held monsters. More scrambled over those bookshelves, knocking them down in their mindless haste to kill us.

To my surprise, I felt a rush of excitement at their arrival. So far, this dungeon had been fun, aside from the hundreds of corpses that'd been stuffed into shelves.

With a shrug of power, I rolled my aura out over the slavering tide, and watched while it did its work. Chloe, like she'd done a couple times today, touched my back and reset my cooldowns, and I was able to cast the aura again, doubling its effects. She could only do this once per ten minutes, we'd discovered, but when most fights lasted for a minute or two at most, the time limit wasn't an issue.

My confidence wavered when I saw the office printer. It was twice its usual size now, as it walked on thick legs armoured with panelling, while its touch-screen head swivelled to face me. On one arm it had a shield made from the lid of its document scanner, while the other arm wielded what I could only assume was the internal rail for the printer. The rail dripped with black, magenta, and yellow inks. Cyan was nowhere to be seen. It'd run out.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Quinton whined. “It's like the universe is trying to punish me for dropping out of college.”

“The millennial can't tell if this is a fever dream or not!” Scott laughed.

I ignored both of them and shrugged my shield down to my forearm. I was willing to bet an attribute orb that the ink was acid or something.

The printer ducked and charged, slamming its shield into mine with a crack. We stood there for a moment, shield to shield, until I attempted a vicious shove. To my utter shock, the extremely heavy mini-boss actually stumbled backwards. Thinking quickly, I flipped my axe so I could bring the point to bear, then hammered down at its shield. The spike pierced the thin metal and plastic and lodged there.

Oh. What now? Wait… I had like, pretty good control over its shield now. What if I just—

With a yank, I pulled the barrier down, batted away a feeble attack from the ink-stained baton, and rammed the thick metal edge of my own shield right into the LCD screen it was using as a head.

It shattered and the monster stumbled, so with a savage cry I let go of my axe, kicked it over, drew my second axe, and stepped in for the kill. Another monster—a book with four limbs sprouting from its open pages—tried to come between me and my prey, but I slapped it away with a casual swing of my shield.

Goddess, these things were so weak. It felt like this whole place was like… like half our level, or something?

The printer tried to thrust at me with its baton, so I stomped down on the arm, pinning it in place. Now that all the irritants were out of the way…

I buried my axe so deep into the chassis of the mini-boss that the haft started tearing into it as I ran out of blade. Frowning, I shifted my foot from its arm, tore the axe free with the new leverage, then hacked at it again.

A dusty arm suddenly grasped mine as I went to rip my axe out again, but before I could so much as growl at the offending creature, Scott put a dagger through the magazine’s spine and it crumpled.

“Thanks, Scotty,” I grinned, getting a raised eyebrow and a smirk in return.

Behind him, a hexbag flew into a group that was trying to get past Quinton to attack me. It exploded into a twisting mass of thorny vines, which contracted, holding them in place.

Chloe laughed behind me and said, “Oh fuck yes, it worked!”

I chuckled to myself and slid my shield back up and around to my back. That was when I realised that I hadn’t even used an ability besides the weakening aura. Ah! Maybe it was the aura that was causing the monsters to be so useless?

Either way, I needed my axes back, so I extracted them from the corpse of the printer and glanced around. Huh, one of the dust monsters was flying. It took me a moment to realise it was a drone, although none of the electronics were working. Instead, it just flew on dusty wings while two oversized arms hung down below it.

It flew in fast and aggressive towards me… and then tried to wrap its weak, dusty hands around my neck. It did not succeed. I grabbed one of its wrists, and using the momentum of its charge, I spun it around and slammed it against the ground. Apparently that wasn’t enough to kill it, so for good measure I put a foot down onto the squirming torso and wings of the creature and pulled. The arm separated from the whole with a slow, visceral popping as paper ligaments and coke-bottle bones snapped one after another. That appeared to kill it.

With most of my job done in this fight, I picked a target at random and prepared to— Nevermind, Ben put several sharp chunks of ice through that one. The second target I chose didn’t immediately die, so I pointed at it and with bared teeth, called, “Burn!”

Moonlight descended from the darkened ceiling, regardless of the roof above us and the interdimensional fuckery of the dungeon. The VHS tape, along with its three legs and one arm just exploded. What the hell? How— oh. Dust was usually highly combustible, and well… I just set it on fire.

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. This was just so cathartic after how much of a struggle everything had been since the Storm arrived. Now we were in this dungeon with all these obscenely creepy monsters, and they were just so pathetic.

My laughter died when I heard the rumbling.

Red light could be seen through the shelves, and it was approaching, fast.

“Hide!” Quinton hissed, dispatching the enemy in front of him with a swift strike from his axe.

Hide? Where? I looked around, and half the shelves had been toppled by the huge swarm of monsters, a significant number of which were still alive. Surely… surely with one machine thingy destroyed, the robot wouldn’t be invulnerable? Tough, yeah, but not impervious to damage.

I did a quick reset, holstering April’s axe, palming the new one, and shrugging my shield back down into place. There, I was ready.

When I looked up from shifting my shield to be comfortable, I saw Chloe watching from beside me. She raised her eyebrows. I gave her a wry grin, which she responded to with a slight rolling of her eyes. So, I stepped around the printer’s corpse and walked calmly towards the aisle where the red light was approaching at high speed. I opted to shift so the shelves were partially covering me, mainly so I wouldn’t be directly in its path when it arrived.

“If you have— have— have—,” the robot began, until the poor dying electronic brain of the thing got stuck. Grinder a-whirring, the boss ploughed into the carnage of the skirmish at full speed. It was here.

In the few brief moments where it was scanning the scene—getting its bearings—, I imbued my axe with holy fire and swung with all my might at its side. The burning anger of my goddess rocked the bot as it was channelled through my axe, and I saw a small dent in the metal chassis of the monster. It was the hidden and often ignored aspect of that ability that began to deal true damage. Since I’d gained the ability to become Silver, the taint of the demon that’d killed my predecessor had lurked in my shadow. Now, its black tendrils latched onto the remaining two shields that protected the robot.

The magical energies hissed and burned, seething against each other like two opposing tides, until one of the dull red shields shattered. The bot screamed—its inhuman voice entering my skull through my ears, where it rattled around like a spent shell casing. Individual shards of red energy twirled off into space while I battled against the sensory hell of that scream, then faded from view. The demonic power from my ability was gone too… but there was only one shield left! It was so weakened by the removal of the two stacks of the buff that it was barely visible now.

My smite ability would be on cooldown for a while, but I could totally dodge around this bloodthirsty, hateful cuboid until it was ready again.

The robot, having recovered at about the same time as I realised that, whirled on me with its twisted metal arms raised in anger. In each hand, it held a— a fucking kitchen knife. Lovely.

I got my shield up to block the flurry of vicious slices by the skin of my teeth. It had a lot of strength behind those blows too, because I felt the force through the shield each time it got struck.

“Oh fuck, Silver is tanking that thing!” Mel shouted, and I turned to glance back reflexively. Everyone save for Chloe had been intent on running, but now that they saw me locked in combat with the thing, they rushed to my aid.

Unfortunately, my lapse in concentration cost me, and the robot got a knife past my guard. It scored a hit on my forearm with one knife while pulling my shield out of the way with the other. I flinched just the barest amount, bracing for pain… but the armour! The knife just scraped down the vambrace, throwing sparks but otherwise dealing no damage.

I was so surprised by the fact that taking a hit didn't result in blood and pain, that I failed to block the next three stabs. One skittered off my breastplate, while the second two stabbed into the leather of my corset. The toughness of my own skin was enough to stop what was left of the force behind the stabs.

I couldn't believe it, though! I was too tanky for the boss to deal any consistent damage!

“Guys!” I called. “It's struggling to get through my armour. I'm waiting for my cooldown, then I'll break the last barrier and we can wreck this asshole!”

My party rallied around me while I blocked, dodged, and shrugged off the murderous robot’s attacks. It was tough, dicey, and hectic… until my ability came off cooldown.

Same as last time, I powered up my axe with the ability and slammed it into the top of the robot. The moonlight flared, then the corruption constricted around and shattered the flimsy obstacle.

As soon as it was gone, a hexbag flew in and exploded, coating the machine in sticky goo. Then, a dozen heavy shards of ice hammered into it from the side. Mel and Quinton were making sure I wasn't ambushed by the straggling dust creatures, so the honours of the final blow fell to me.

I spun my axe in my hand so I could bring the spike to bear, and with all my strength I drove that sucker right down through the top. Something sparked internally, flared up in flames that belched blue-grey smoke, and then fizzled out. That was it. The boss was dead, and it was official. We were over-levelled for this place. Well, that and it pays to have some seriously sketchy, caustic shit in your back pocket.