It's about time we had a boss fight!

"Let's get this over with." I sigh, and together we all approach the boss doors. The energy coming off of them, is purple and hazy. Not wanting to risk traps or curses, I don't bother testing the door. Instead Melli and Cyrus take out the purple gems they'd collected from the rest of the dungeon and slide them into place. The magic disappears, and the doors open with an appropriate amount of gravitas.

We entered into the boss room, not a still heart amongst us.

It was a long hallway, the walls made out of more cave material. It stretched on for a hundred meters or so. At the end of the hallway was a more purple stained glass work. An image of The Raven Lady giving the gift of night to a sun bleached world. Below this image was our foe.

The Archon is hard to describe, but let me try. In it's simplest form it's three purple circles, resting on a crystalline type of base. The circles appear to be made of glass like the art behind them. Two of them side stationary on the left or right, with the third circle rotates between them in a counter clockwise manner, it reminds me of the lens on a telescope. Why we had a telescope in the windowless dungeon I grew up in, I'll never know.

Nox of Ages The Shadow That Embraces The World

Our minds rumble with this unsaid name, as the archon lifted itself off of the ground, and whirred with killing intent.

"Does anyone hear music?" I ask, looking around for some unseen band.

"Kill that thing!" Elizabeth roars, and charges forward.

The battlefield before us look to be some kind of stone walkway three people wide with stone railing leading right up to our foe. Every ten feet or so on the other side of the railing is a stone state of The Raven Lady, and beyond that a field of stone, rockiness and not much else. Cyrus immediately jumps over the railing sensing that the walk way could be some kind of trap I guess.

"1 Star! Goblin King!" He bellows activating his very first power. Suddenly three goblins are beamed in beside him, each hold a crude goblin weapon and wear similar armor. They roar and keep pace with him as he runs of the field.

I take his lead, and jump over the railing on the left side of the path, now we're on either side of the walk way with Elizabeth far ahead down the center.

Melli is staying back. She raises her staff into the air and shouts her own move. "Shadow bolts, 1 star!" Again I feel a surge of something move through me, and into her. There's a satisfying' gong of power, as she unleashes her attack. Despite being out of mana she can still cast magic as long as she has active stars. Six bolts in total soar above our heads, like artillery fully doubt the amount there should have been. Two list uselessly to the side and crash early into the ground before us, dissipating in small shockwaves of mist. However Nox is quite a big target, and four manage to hit is frame, each doing absolutely no damage.

"It's immune to shadow damage." Elizabeth is quick to recognize the signs.

"Then I'm useless!" Melli says, meaning every word of it.

"You've still got a stick!" Elizabeth shouts back.

At this point I notice the back circle overlap with the circle on Mox's right. As soon as the overlap was complete, my side of the dungeon fully half of the entire space was plunged into shadows. I instantly halted, fearing I'd trip in the oppressive dark, or something worse. My fears were justified when a moment later an awful scream emanated from the other side of the dungeon. Cyrus, Melli, and Elizabeth all cried out in pain.

Then suddenly the shadows were gone.

I look to the other side of the room, and see Cyrus and Melli hunched, over smoldering. Cyrus' goblins were nowhere to be seen. "What happened?" I called.

"There was a light!" Melli coughed her voice shrill and pained. "It burned us."

Elizabeth was hit too, I could see that, but she was made of sterner stuff than those two. She kept a hobbling pace towards the target, while Cyrus and Melli had stalled?

What was that?

I keep running, and I keep my eye on the boss.

I see that moving circle making it's way towards his left side now.

The who circles overlap, and the other side of the dungeon is plunged into shadows now.

Then that singular lenses on his body begins to hum, and glow.

Shit.

I have a theory so I throw myself to the side, behind one of the statues of The Raven Lady. There's a snapping sound, dust wooshes around me, there's a bright light, and then no pain.

The shadow lifts from the other side, and I see Cyrus and Melli have started moving again.

"You have to stay in the shadows!" I call to them.

"We figured it out!" Elizabeth calls, she didn't look to be damaged from the newest attack. She was in a good position right on the border of where the shadow fell so she could jump between safe spots.

We moved forward, making sure to keep close to the statues now.

One side of the dungeon would go dark and the other would jump for cover.

Once you figured it out Mox isn't so bad. He doesn't appear to have any other tricks up his sleeve, and Elizabeth is almost to him.

In fact she's clutching her sword tight as she leaps for the stairs...

There's a low 'whomp' of ****, and a shockwave emits from the archon.

It rolled across the ground sweeping Elizabeth off of her feet, but not just her. The statues were next, and they were swept up as well crumbling and tumbling as a base collections of rocks. Then me, Melli, Cryus we were all swept up, and away, right back where we'd started on the other side of the planet.

We landed with a 'oomf', thankful that attack didn't at least do damage to us.

We grumbled to our feet looking at the now flat landscape before us, no more statues to hide behind.

"This just got a little trickier." I grumbled.

"I think it's getting worse." Elizabeth pointed towards Nox, his two side lens were slowly rising to meet the central lense at the top of his body.

"Uh oh!" I started running. "Scatter!"

Despite my order everyone pretty much runs as a group to the center of the room. None of us want to be caught out like we were last time. Least of all Cyrus and Melli who'd already taken a hit.

I look over at Elizabeth as she limps by me, not as fast as she should be. "You're still hurt?"

She grunted. "It's not healing."

"Must be fire damage." I say, remembering that Elizabeth's mutation was supposed to mimic a troll's hide. Fire was the classic method of taking them down.

"No shit." She suddenly shoves me, as Nox's lens align. "Here it comes."

Suddenly the room is dark again, the whole room this time, not just half.

Then seven beams of light suddenly appear around the room, like spotlights in the darkness. Some of us are the targets of the spotlights but other just randomly scatter across the room. Even in the intense darkness we can see the beams cutting through it, and Nox glowing on the other side of the room.

We're well trained by this point and jump out of the spotlights as fast as we can. We plunge into darkness, but I can hear a sharp sizzle from behind be where the beam would have fried me alive.

"Those are worse than the last ones!" I shout out.

"The last ones were bad enough." Cyrus responds.

The room is light again, we blink disoriented as the room floods again with light.

Up on his pedestal nox's central lens begins to rotate around his body a count down until the next attack.

We sprint madly forward, jumping of the debris of the statues and walk way that used to fill the chamber.

Then all too soon it's dark again.

Melli is able to keep running. Her dark vision really gives her the advantage on this sprint. She doesn't miss a beat as the darkness envelopes us all and keeps on navitaging the ankle twisting terrain as easily as if it were the day.

I skid to a halt, not will to stub my toe on something sharp.

Well that loss of momentum screws me.

I'm lucky for a second time, and have a spot light land straight on me. I gasp and go to jump out of the way, but the timing isn't all that generous. My legs from the knee down gets caught in the beam.

My robe blocking the light incinerates and the flesh doesn't fair much better. The pain is immense, and crippling. I drop to the ground a moment later, and I know I'm done for. "Fuck." I wheeze miserably. I don't have the will to look down at the leg, the pain tells me all I need to know.

"Boss is down!" Cyrus calls out.

I can almost hear Elizabeth smile.

"Manticore Spikes 1 Star!" She calls out. She throws her hand forward and tries to shoot a fan of projectile's at Nox's great lense. However the attack is out of range, they seem to just disintegrate before the reach her mark. "Crap." She picks her pace back up.

"Goblin King 1 Star!" Cyrus calls out, figuring I think wisely that the extra bodies might draw some of the beams away from him, or maybe even me. Now we have four goblins on the right side, running for the gold, and Melli making good pace. I stare expectingly at the diamond tip of her staff. One jab with that, and Mox's whole lens would shatter.

It's dark again, but not for me.

I'm dead center in the beam again, this time it will be lethal.

"Darkness 1 star!" I cry out, surrounding myself with a cloud of darkness. It's a **** move, but I've got nothing else.

The move works.

I lay useless under the shadow of darkness waiting to be microwaved, but the pain never comes. I can only let out a sigh of relief, this is the realm of The Raven Lady, and in her domain darkness triumphs over light.

Of course I'm blinded to the rest of the exchange until the darkness clears.

All I know is that another cycle of running takes place, and then I hear Melli shriek in pain. It's the mad **** wail of a person being burned alive. Mox must have had the same idea as me, and scattered her side of the dungeon with beams, there's no way she could have dodged them all.

"Fuck!" Elizabeth calls, he voice is distant now, she must be right up on Mox ready to strike.

Then I hear "Whompf" Again, and I'm lifted from the ground, and thrown back into the wall. Elizabeth, Cyrus, and a goblin all splat beside me.

Melli's **** body flops through the air, and lands atop some debris, her body still smoldering from the legs down.

"This guy is really starting to piss me off with that." Elizabeth growls, getting to her feet. She looks down and see's Melli's Diamond tipped staff sparkling besides her.

Hoping beyond hope I can get my legs in working order I lunge for the goblin, and activate Vampire Bite. I hold him down and sick my new fangs into his neck. With that active I have him drained like a child's drink pouch in a few seconds. He shrivels like a raisin, and vanishes into star dust. The flesh on my legs begins to heal, pink and irritated, and sunburnt to hell, but I can still walk on it.

"Boss!" Cyrus cries aghast.

On his Pedastal Nox's is shifting his lenses once more, and I don't much care for the look of it.

Neither does Elizabeth she reaches down and picks up Melli's staff. Then like a javeliner she cocks it back over her shoulder, takes a step forward, and let's it launch. It's an inhuman throw by inhuman muscles, and the missile rips through the air, easily towards it's target.

Then we're all plunged into darkness.

Only Elizabeth stands in light, a single beacon in the darkness. Every instant that passes the light gets brighter and more intense, the smell of cooking hair already filling my nostrils. I throw my hand out. "Darkness 1 star!" And shroud her in a cloud of protections.

Just in time.

A beam of light emits from Nox that's just otherworldly, truly the divine wrath of a god. It shoots forward instantly and evaporates Melli's staff diamond and all.

It's absorbed by the cloud of darkness, but doesn't go away. It stays in it's spot drilling into the darkness, the **** of it's energy spraying dust and pebbles up from the debris field. Then it starts moving towards me.

"Shit!"

I throw myself to my feet, my healed leg not as healed as I would like. I limp blindly forward in the darkness my naked foot screaming at me in pain, even before I started slicing it up on jagged rocks, and the cave's floor. "Fuck fuck fuck!" I cry looking over my shoulder at the beam quickly approaching me. It'd be hard to escape even if I could see, and had both shoes. Now I was just marching towards my ****!

Cyrus was groping forwards with a new trio of goblins, using the guiding light of Mox to move them forward.

"Darkness 1 Star!" I envelope myself in a cloud before the beam can pull me apart atom by atom.

Elizabeth emerges from her down darkness, trying to sprint forward her metal boots easily crushing rocks and shards of glass into powder. "Fucker!" She snarls launching a stone from across the room, into the lens of the archon.

It simply bounces off the front lens that aperture of creature now shielding the sensitive glass working underneath.

This guy was a real bastard.

That dark vision really would have been nice to have now. If only we'd been there for the whole dungeon.

I could hear the beam leave me. The cooking of rocks grew silent, and I crawled out of my cloud, though I'm met with no more light. Just's Mox's beam ripping towards Cyrus.

"Spread out!" He commands his goblins, and they do fanning out in the darkness. They're rushing forward blindly, not as delicate as humans. They scrabble over stone, and smooth ground alike.

The beam takes a long and winding arc to score a hit against the first goblin, vaporizing it instantly.

"Backwards, to the left!" He calls out again.

One goblin splits off to the left, passing the beam, causing it to hesitate and then move towards the closest goblin.

It buys Cyrus and the other goblin a few moments to sprint harder forward.

Once that' goblin's evaporated, Cyrus pulls a similar move with his last remaining goblin, using it as bait to draw the beam away.

It's a clever play, but it's running out of steam.

I'm hobbling towards the target, it's laughable to think I'll be able to make it at the pace I'm on.

I've lost sight or sound of Elizabeth.

Cyrus summons another clutch of goblins, his last? How many stars has he used?

Only Mox won't be distracted this time. The beam charges forward right towards my little guy.

"Cyrus no!" I cry out, his scared form just about the only thing in the dungeon I can see.

"Darkness 1 Star!" He shouts using his very last start to shroud himself in the protective smoke. A moment later Elizabeth vanishes into the cloud of well, the two of them safe, while the beam redirects to the goblins. Then from the safety of their little bubble Elizabethscoops Cyrus up in her arms. She then jerks her body and throws him like a football towards Mox.

Cyrus meanwhile has become a missile. He jets towards Mox. This time Elizabeth didn't throw him at the lense, but at his main body, where hie entire divine form rested on the ground, like a glass figurines. He skid on the ground, nearly losing his mace on the way, but he held strong the little bugger.

You can almost imagine fear in the archon. The beam is desperately melting through the cave floor trying to get to Cyrus. It's faster than I can run, but it's not fast enough.

He lifts his mace above his head, and brings it down on the archon with a satisfying crack.

A single hit.

That's all it took.

Cracks spiderwebbed their way through the creatures, a million little fractures. The lens split sending diluted beams of energy all across the cave, several shipping across my body scoring light burns through my robe and into my skin.

Then it call came crumbling down. A great glass sculpture broken, never to be made whole again.

Boss Slain!

I was going to kill Elizabeth off here, or at least create drama with the possibility of her dying. But I figured Cyrus had one more star to use before he was done, so he might as well save his mom, but for fun here's what I had written until the last second of editing:

It's just in time, and somehow also too late.

The beam is too close, it's sears through Elizabeth sharing no respect for her body or armor. The beam rips through her ankle, the knee of the next leg over, a good bit of her thigh and hip, and her arm from the elbow down. It's all just gone, as she collapses on the ground in the cindered husk.

"Elizabeth!" I cry out, surprising myself with the amount of anguish I feel at the sight.

She's only a ****.