Biohazard

The disgusting shlopping sound of decaying flesh falling from Moira’s hammer echoed in the empty chamber, the last vestiges of their last foe fading away a moment too late to prevent that particular noise from haunting John’s nightmares for all of eternity.

“I wish that so many undead creations were not as disturbing in **** as they were in undeath,” John noted, wrinkling his nose as the shattered remnants of a bone construct scattered on the ground at his feet before beginning to dissolve.

“Now imagine if your abilities made the stench of them doubly worse, and made your skin crawl just when one is nearby,” Moira grumbled. “Speaking of which, I’m not sensing any further abominations in the immediate area, and the end of this wing is just ahead. Can you detect any other beasts ahead?”

“No, I can’t… and if the sounds of our fight didn’t draw them out, there’s not much that I can do that will draw more attention,” John noted, glancing at his sidebar. None of the other health bars were moving now, save for the slightest ticks of regeneration, but if they had already killed all of their enemies, that meant the mini-boss should be summoned at any moment.

“We should check the last few rooms quickly, then retrace our steps to the training room,” Moira said, an edge in her voice. “Their wing should have been slightly shorter than ours; the boss could appear at any moment.”

John was already striding toward the end of the hall, but he gave a grunt of agreement as they hastily began searching the last few rooms. Aside from a few thankfully inanimate skeletons and some spooky décor that rather resembled high-budget Halloween props, there wasn’t much of note in the last few rooms. As John slammed the door to a cobweb-filled barracks room behind him, Moira was already stomping down the hall back the way they had come, hammer switched to her other hand while she reached for her phone.

“Where are you? Is your side of the manor cleared?” Moira demanded, before John had heard even the slightest sound from the other end of the line.

“Of course. We dispatched everything on this side quickly and efficiently; if no boss has spawned, you must have overlooked something.” The voice came over the line clearly enough for John to hear, and confidently enough to set Moira’s jaw so sternly John could see her face clenching up.

“There is nothing left on this side either. Double check your own efforts; trace your steps back and we can meet again where we began once you’ve corrected your errors,” Moira advised, her voice terse but contained. Probably because, just as Kim’s voice picked up on the other end, Moira swiftly cut her off, “Save your indignation for after you’ve secured your end of the dungeon. We will see you shortly at the starting point.”

“I’m glad to see you two have been getting along so well in my absence,” John noted dryly.

“What, that? That was Kim on a good day. I’ll have you know that we get along just fine, she just needs to learn to take orders,” Moira scoffed, even while they were jogging down the halls.

“I get the feeling you might have said that about me a few times.”

“Yes, I have, you damned fool. If I have to save you from one more brash mistake, or spend another month worrying about you crossing the entire country-”

“I missed you too, Moira.”

Moira furrowed her brows but said nothing as they raced through the emptied halls of the forlorn estate. They were quick but careful to check each room they passed as best as they could, but saw no signs of missed or hiding foes. John glanced out the windows as they ran, but saw nothing but a haze so gray it was nearly black. He suspected that the grounds of the manor weren’t a part of this dungeon at all.

“Has something like this happened in your other Barriers? I do not recall it being so hard to locate our foes,” Moira remarked as they approached their initial spawning room.

“Never. Sometimes the layouts are a little more intricate, but I’ve never had to work very hard to find the enemies, even when they were in caves that felt like mazes,” John recalled. Most of the time in his dungeons, it felt like whatever direction he went, they would end up encountering more foes. “Even when you and I used to go to places like vast forests, we just sort of… stumbled across them.”

“I have a strong distaste for unexpected changes,” Moira growled, and John could hear the creaking of metal as she gripped her hammer just a little bit tighter. “They are never followed by anything good.”

“Neither am I, but you still let me in every time I show up at your gates,” John said, smirking as Moira’s scowl turned so deep he thought he could hear her muscles straining.

“And as always, I do so against my better judgment,” Moira shot back.

“Come on, you know you’d miss me.”

“Yes… I already have been.”

A somewhat comfortable silence overtook them, punctuated only by the clanking of their armor as they finally reached the place they had entered the dungeon. Kim, Sophia, and Shishun were already standing outside the room, a trio of stoic faces, given only a sliver of animation by the slight wiggle in Shishun’s tail and the barest pull of a smirk on Sophia’s slightly bloodied lips.

“Managed to find your way back at last, have you? Perhaps you should spend less time critiquing others, and focus more on your own endeavors,” Kim remarked, not bothering to hide the smugness in her smile.

“Perhaps you would not have made it here so quickly if you were less arrogant and could stand the idea that you might have made a mistake,” Moira countered. “I can assure you our wing is clear; if there is no final enemy yet spawned, we will simply have to find whatever foe you missed during your purge!”

“All three of us scoured this wing from floor to ceiling; if anyone has made such a basic mistake, I can assure you…”

John gave a quick jerk of his head as a signal to Sophia and Shishun while he turned toward the room that they had spawned from. The two of them silently slid away from the arguing pair, falling in behind John as he faced the door back to the room they had arrived in.

“Sophia, Shishun, any chance that something was overlooked?” John mused.

“No, Father. We scoured every inch of that wing.”

“Then there’s only one place left to look.”

John didn’t bother with the door handle – he simply strode forward and kicked the door open, the mundane metal and wood giving way with a loud snapping sound. Sword in hand, John brought his leg back down in a battle stance and gazed into the opened room, only to find himself greeted by an empty space and no sign of threats, real or imagined. John glanced around the room in a moment of dazed confusion, genuinely shocked at the lack of an enemy.

“Was that supposed to be impressive?” Kim’s voice called out from behind him, a wry smirk on her face. “Or did you simply think that door was the boss we’ve been searching for?”

“If you’re quite finished abusing the architecture, we’re trying to determine where in this blasted Barrier of yours the final enemy is,” Moira called out, the sarcasm in her voice a most unusual sound for the usually direct Warden. John turned around and saw that both Kim and Moira were staring at him with rather self-satisfied smirks.

“I don’t like this. I preferred it when you two were at each other’s throats. Teaming up against me just feels… wrong,” John murmured, narrowing his eyes at the two. The speed at which they shifted their barbs from each other to him was unnerving.

“We are women of honor and dignity,” Kim pointed out, crossing her arms smugly. “Dignity that includes the proper use of door handles, an etiquette you seem to lack.”

“Come, John Newman. We will see if there is a door to the courtyard in this replica; if there is, please restrain yourself from assaulting it until we decide on a plan of action,” Moira added, though as she spoke the last words she nearly broke into a fit of giggles.

“I know you both-”

John bit back the remark as his injured pride was interrupted by the strange sound of the floor beginning to shift. Moira and Kim’s facade of mockery broke as the ground underneath them began to slide, a section of the tiled floor lowering slightly and then beginning to retract into the rest of the flooring. Moira and Kim leapt apart with their weapons at the ready, though there was no foe revealed underneath the floor – only a long, white staircase that descended to a security door below.

By the time the grinding noise ceased and the building below them stopped shifting, all five of them were standing around the exposed staircase. They held their armaments at the ready, as if expecting the door below to burst outward, though it remained silent and still.

“This is rather… unusual for your dungeons, no?”

“Well… maybe? The boss always spawns in on their own, and sometimes they spawn underground, but almost never in their own room. Much less right at the start, far away from where any of us were when the last enemy fell. It’s… probably normal?”

Moira’s eyes narrowed at the tone of John’s voice, and she hefted her hammer and shield a little higher as she began to stride down the staircase. John followed closely behind, and heard the others following suit closely.

“Poor terrain for a party of close-ranged fighters,” John mused. “If anything comes out of that door, we’d best fall back into the area above, and quickly. Otherwise, let’s hope the other side of that door is something more open.”

Moira slammed the door open with her hammer, knocking the entire thing off its hinges in one fell swoop, the echoing crack of metal on floor tiles sounding as it bounced and skittered to a halt. Judging by how long it took for silence to reign again, the door covered a good deal of ground before it finally collided with something heavy and durable enough to stop it.

“...Well, on the plus side, plenty of room for us in there,” John grumbled, striding a little more quickly down the stairs to follow Moira into the room. As he reached the bottom of the stairs and strode inside, the room that came into view turned out to be some kind of laboratory, filled to the brim with vials and test tubes of varying sorts, many with some form of fleshy amalgamation inside of them.

“By the Lady’s light… this place smells more foul than anything I’ve ever experienced. I pray that your Barriers choose only the worst and most offensive of specimen. If this is to be an average day on the forefront of the war, I may have to ask Tricia to work on a gas mask,” Moira growled, visibly perturbed as her eyes darted around the room.

John sniffed the air, but although it was far from pleasant, he didn’t detect anything overwhelmingly foul. There was an acrid scent of chemicals, along with the decayed manor’s ever-present smell of **** and decay, but if anything, this room mostly seemed to smell of sanitizers and slightly sulfuric chemical odors.

“Not sure what you’re talking about… must be something from the Rose?”

“Of course. The Lady is representative of the natural order of the world and righteousness. The blessing is repulsed by this lair of unnatural-”

“I assume by the way you two are jabbering that there’s no enemy here, either,” Kim grumbled as she pushed her way between John and Moira, striding toward the center of the room. “John, we are wasting precious time here. What is going on with your Barrier?”

“I don’t know, this is unusual behavior for my Barriers. I don’t even-”

”Warning. Warning. Intruders detected. Initiating security measures.”

“That can’t possibly be good.”

In the center of the room, a large table covered in beakers and test tubes split in half as the floor parted, revealing a large chamber underneath the floor. From that chamber another section of the floor rose, along with a massive glass capsule occupied by a monstrosity not unlike what they had been fighting earlier, though with notable enhancements. It was a hulking humanoid figure of bulging muscles and sinew, easily ten feet tall and covered in open sores reminiscent of wounds, though they did not bleed. There was a distinctly noticeable difference about this one, though – it had a litany of cybernetic enhancements, wires and mana circuits traced between metal plates and weaponry – its entire right arm was replaced with what looked like a cannon, though it certainly didn’t look built to fire any ordinary munitions.

“Technecs, fantastic,” Moira growled. “Prepare yourselves. This beast will have some new tricks compared to its brothers.”

“Technecs? That’s a thing?” John asked, befuddled.

“Most forms of magic can be combined in one form or another. Bionic undead are particularly frustrating as they can typically function autonomously for a time, and much farther away from their masters without decaying or expending their reserves,” Kim explained. “It requires some measure of expertise in both to be effective, but we will likely see many on the fields of this war.”

“Let us at least be rid of this one,” Moira said, hammer raised as she started to sprint forward. “Before it attempts to be rid of us!”

Moira strode onto the freshly risen floor and brought her hammer crashing down onto the tank, shattering a massive section of the thick, sturdy glass. No doubt vile fluid gushed from the opening, spilling out of the damaged tank, Moira only saved from contact by a thin golden sphere that surrounded her from the apex of her shield and redirected the putrid water. She had a second strike at the ready, but didn’t land it before the glass itself rocketed forward to meet her – with a hiss of propellant and released pressure, the entire glass cover was ejected from the capsule entirely.

Despite already having her shield raised and being braced against the spewing fluid, Moira was still pushed back by the **** of the lid as it connected with her shield and the golden sphere surrounding her. Her feet slid back several inches from the kinetic energy as the door rebounded and landed in a far corner of the room, filling the air with the sound of overturned tables and shattered glass as it destroyed everything in its path. In spite of the overwhelming ****, Moira had recovered her momentum before the partially broken cover had settled in its new home. With the beast inside the tube now fully exposed, Moira’s hammer came crashing down once more, golden light surrounding the head of her weapon.

Her hammer crashed down on the collarbone of the unmoving creature. A sickening crunch, muffled by thick layers of muscle and flesh, echoed through the room. The hammer’s strike was narrow and deep, but the golden layers of light that emanated out from it and spread across the creature’s skin were clearly burning with a holy fire far beyond anything a single blow could convey.

Perhaps that was why the beast’s eyes abruptly shot open, and a half-rotting, half-mechanical arm shot out to grip Moira’s shield. Melting flesh oozed and solidified around the edges of the shield, lifting Moira up off the tiled floors even as the creature took its first unsteady steps free of its former containment. The pale, smooth, scarred flesh twisted and writhed as the creature’s jaw began to twitch in an odd and somewhat unnatural way, emitting a twisted mockery of speech.

“Sq-squares…” the creature moaned, its voice half wheezing as it fixed rotted eye holes on Moira, its voice barely audible as it struggled to lift her up off the ground. Moira frantically pulled and heaved at the creature’s malleable flesh, trying to free her shield, but although it didn’t have the presence to casually fling her aside, she also lacked the strength to completely pull free of its seeping influence.

“Wait, did we just get smack talked by a zombie? It called us- wait, shit. No, I get it. I get what’s going on now,” John growled. Had the stakes been just a little bit lower, he might have taken the time to curse the poor humor of his own Barrier – as it was, he barely had time to roll his eyes before Moira was sent soaring through the room, narrowly missing the rest of the party as she careened into the clerical desk to John’s left. She still held onto her shield, but the creature had used its grip as leverage.

Achievement Unlocked: Sense Motives
Description: You obviously rolled a nat 1, because I was not being subtle in the slightest. I can’t believe it took you that long to notice. Did you at least notice how many ideas I’ve been toying with for your dungeon revamp? If not, more fun for me. It was nice knowing you”
Rewards: I guess you have a vague idea about some of my plans for 2.0 now? If you were paying attention. Probably not. Are you even reading this?

“Squares!” The undead abomination’s left arm warped, metal fragments and copious fleshy pus amalgamating into a jagged, fleshy blade of extraordinarily disgusting proportions as it strode toward John. Despite being so massive, the beast was a lot faster than the rest of the undead they had been dealing with until that point – John was barely able to get his sword up in time to lodge it between a few of the metal shards to block the blow. Even then, the creature’s strike was powerful enough to toss him across the room just as easily as it had done to Moira.

-118 HP!

John felt the wind rushing out of his lungs as his back slammed into one of the lab’s metal walls. The shock of the impact was so great that even Gamer’s Body took a second to stop the spasms in his diaphragm; despite not needing to breathe, the sensation and instinctual reaction were both incredibly uncomfortable.

“Fuck, all that from a blow I blocked? Kinda wish someone had clocked my speed,” John grimaced as he half pushed and half peeled himself away from the slightly dented wall. Sophia and Kim were already covering the monstrosity, keeping it from pursuing either John or Moira, while Shishun’s enchanted knives peppered the creature and then warped back to their wielder’s hands for another throw.

Kim’s speed kept her ahead of the creature’s attacks, albeit barely, but Sophia’s mobility was not enough to keep her reliably ahead of the creature’s unpredictable flesh. Already her armor was smeared with blood and broken in places, but as ever, Sophia held firm as her claws tore away at the technological nightmare’s cybernetic flesh. The chaos of the battle reigned as John and Moira strode back into the fray, setting their jaws as their eyes met across the lab. Hammer and sword were raised in unison, a battle cry rang out as the two ejected combatants rejoined the fray.

”I’ve always worked well with my creations, occasional mishaps aside. But if I’m going to be fighting a war alongside Moira and Kim, let’s see how well we can work together,” John thought, knuckles white on his sword as he broke into a sprint toward the towering boss of the dungeon.