Chapter Six

  Miranda gasped as the ecclesiastic viper’s sinewy coils tightened around her, squeezing her like a kitchen sponge and painfully forcing the air from her lungs. Its forked tongue danced gleefully in its mouth as it watched her life bar fall, likely wondering if she would die of suffocation before it could finish crushing her.

  She writhed in its grip, but wasn’t able to budge even an inch. It was like being encased up to her neck in cement. If she could just get her right hand free, she could use Eagle Feather to—

  Too late.Apparently losing interest in her struggle, the ecclesiastic viper stretched its mouth open unnaturally wide. Its fangs dripped venom that glowed green in the dim light, and it hissed in sadistic pleasure as it lunged—and then recoiled in pain when a fireball flew directly into its mouth.

  The gigantic snake convulsed in pain, thrashing violently as flames exploded into deadly life inside its mouth. Miranda was still stuck in its coils, but she suddenly found its grip loose enough that she could slip her arm free.

  “Silverwing!” she shouted, throwing Eagle Feather as hard as she could.

  The Faun vanished, reappearing on the other end of the chamber with the dagger back in her hand, and had to lean against the wall to keep from falling over. Her chest was burning, her head swimming, as she frantically sucked down a lungful of air. She didn’t need to look at her life bar to know she was below half health. If it had actually managed to bite her, that would have been the end of it.

  She grinned. This fight just kept getting better and better!

  “Are you all right?” Elise asked, running up beside her with a bottle full of a bright red liquid in one hand and Makolo’s chain in the other. The imp’s wings were beating furiously as he hovered beside her like the world’s ugliest balloon, but he seemed to be enjoying himself for once. Smoke curled from between his teeth, and he eyed the snakes with a hungry gleam in his eye. “Do you need a—”

  Miranda snatched the potion and drank it one gulp, sighing in relief when her health shot back to the top. “Nice shot. That thing was about to turn me from an is to a was.”

  Elise’s eyebrows lowered in confusion. “Wh- What?”

  “Never mind.”

  With the fire in its mouth finally having gone out, the viper came at them again, its smooth body practically gliding across the floor. Its health was still in the red, but it wouldn’t be for long with Visantii’s Blessing still in effect. Elise let out a yelp when she realized she had just made herself a target for a monster almost twenty levels higher than her, but Miranda shoved the young woman and her imp away and then rushed forward to meet it.

  Aaron was still holding his own against the broodmother, but the other viper had apparently figured out that the key to taking the Neanderite out was to kill Derrick first. Now the Sniper Cleric was running as fast his wooden legs could carry him, firing shuriken and shuriken over his shoulder as quickly as he could pull them out of his inventory.

  All right, fine, Miranda thought reluctantly, and raised Midnight Frost. Time to stop playing with my food.

  The snake struck, its head darting out at lightning speed, and Miranda reacted just as quickly. Fangs met obsidian as she parried the attack. The black blade ground against the serpent’s venomous jaws, throwing up a shower of sparks.

  FAIL

  The viper reared back and struck again, and its fangs collided with Midnight Frost a second time.

  FAIL

  “Come on!” Miranda growled under her breath. “Don’t play coy with me!”

  The viper struck twice more, and both of its attacks were deflected by the small, black dagger. Miranda started to sweat. Even with Midnight Frost extending her parry window, the snake was fast enough that she barely had half a second to react to each attack. It was taking all of her concentration to keep parrying it like this, and its health was still rising every second she did so.

  If she wanted to help Derrick, though, this was the fastest way she had of dealing with it. Every time she parried an attack with Midnight Frost, she had a one in ten chance of…

  “Yes!” she exclaimed as the telltale flash of light came from the black dagger’s blade. “Freezing Riposte!”

  The temperature in the chamber dropped more than eighty degrees in the space of a second, and a frigid wind exploded seemingly out of Miranda herself. It blasted the viper hard enough to push it backwards, and before it could recover, a layer of ice three inches thick formed over its entire body, freezing it in place.

  The snake, being a reptile, had a natural weakness to ice attacks, and Miranda grinned as she watched its health plummet almost to zero. She had hoped that the spell would be enough to kill the irritatingly stubborn mob, but this was just as good.

  “Weak Point!” she declared, dashing up to the immobile serpent.

  Three small glowing spots appeared on the snake’s long, sinuous body. They were placed randomly, with two located a couple of feet away from its head, and the last closer to its tail. They didn’t correspond to any real weak points the snake might have had, but Miranda had learned years ago not to question this world’s logic—or lack thereof—especially in the middle of a fight.

  Laughing with manic excitement, she leaped into the air and drove Eagle Feather into the nearest weak point. The silver dagger slid easily through the frozen shell and into the ecclesiastic viper’s body. The ice shattered as the snake’s health bar zeroed out, and it collapsed to the floor, the glow fading from its eyes.

  As soon it fell still, a cloud of glowing green fog rose from its corpse, and promptly shot across the room to hit Miranda square in the chest. A gasp escaped her lips as power surged through her, making every cell in her body glow with an electrifying warmth like she’d just drank a cup of coffee caffeinated by a nuclear battery.

  Another bar appeared in her vision, this one labeled “XP”. As more energy flowed into her, the contents of that bar slowly rose higher and higher until…

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  TRADE ACCEPTED

  The feeling abruptly vanished, taking almost all of the XP she’d earned along with it and leaving the meter just a tiny bit fuller than it had been before. Miranda couldn’t help but wilt a little, the chamber suddenly feeling cold, and her body somehow hollow without the invigorating rush of energy. She shook the momentary gloom off, though, and hurried to toss another spent mana crystal into her—

  A scream echoed through the chamber.

  Miranda spun around, quickly scanning the room. Aaron was still furiously trying to pry the broodmother off of him. He was poisoned again, but he hardly seemed to notice. Derrick’s buffs were still in effect, but to her surprise, the Sniper Cleric was sprinting away from the fight.

  Miranda followed his gaze, and her heart fell into her stomach when she spotted Elise backed up against the wall. The third ecclesiastic viper had decided to abandon Derrick for easier prey, and was preparing to deliver what would undoubtedly be a one hit kill.

  “Ashes and flame!” Miranda cursed, and flung Eagle Feather across the chamber. “Silverwing!”

  The world turned silver for half a second, and then reformed around her as she reappeared right between Elise and the serpent—just in time for the snake’s fangs to sink into her shoulder.

  She cried out in pain, and the snake recoiled in surprise. She could already feel the venom creeping through her veins like liquid fire. The word POISONED flashed in front of her eyes a second later.

  Before her health could start to fall, though, something struck the side of her head, and the air was suddenly filled with sparkling white dust. The poison notification vanished, and she sighed in relief.

  “Binding Blade!” she yelled, spinning. Like before with the goliath rat, Eagle Father passed through the snake as if it wasn’t even there, and a ring of light appeared to immobilize it.

  A heartbeat later, Miranda heard the thwap of Derrick’s slingshot, but this time it was a glass bottle that came streaking across the chamber. It hit the snake right between the eyes, and a thick black liquid began to ooze across its scaly skin. The word OILED appeared over its head.

  “Elise, blast it!” Derrick yelled.

  “Makolo, fireball!” the Impwarden exclaimed.

  The imp was only too happy to oblige. Opening his mouth, Makolo made a gurgling sound in the back of his throat, and then spit a ball of flame the size of Miranda’s head at the snake.

  The oil caught fire instantly, spreading across the snake’s entire body in less than a second. All it could do was thrash and hiss in agony as the flames drained its life bar. Finally, it went limp and collapsed to the floor in a charred, lifeless heap.

  Another cloud of green energy rose from its corpse, but this time it separated into four smaller streams, one going to each of the party members since they had all helped to kill the snake.

  And just like before, it vanished right as Miranda was beginning to enjoy the exhilarating warmth building up inside her.

  “I…I did it!” Elise exclaimed in disbelief.

  “Get ready to do it again,” Derrick said, jogging up to them, then turned to look at Aaron. The Neanderite had finally pulled his living scarf free, and had hurled it down onto the floor to stomp on it. “That one’s a broodmother, so we need you to take care of it.”

  “What’s a broodmother?”

  “Just be ready to hit it with your strongest area of attack spell!”

  With a roar, Aaron slammed his axe into the broodmother’s neck one last time, and its head went flying across the room. The rest of its body fell to the floor with a wet slap…just before hundreds of smaller snakes began to pour out of its neck stump.

  “Now!” Derrick shouted.

  “Makolo, Judgement Blaze!” Elise yelled in response.

  The imp chattered excitedly, then hunched over, clutching itself like it had a stomach ache. The ground beneath the broodmother began to glow orange, and then a pillar of flame erupted out of the floor.

  The majority of the newborn snakes were caught in it, and were vaporized instantly. A couple managed to get away, and rapidly began to grow. Miranda had never faced these before, but she knew from experience that they would turn into full grown ecclesiastic vipers in a matter of seconds if they weren’t dealt with. Luckily, Derrick was quick on the draw, firing a round of shurikens that cut each of them clean in half. Aaron stomped on the last one hard enough to shake the room, grinding it under his heel.

  Once again, the green energy rose from what little remained of the broodmother’s corpse, splitting into three streams to flow into Aaron, Derrick, and Elise. Miranda hadn’t attacked that one, so she didn’t get to share in the reward.

  Letting out a long breath, Derrick lowered his bow and turned to Elise. “You did good. Did you level up?”

  Elise was practically dancing as she answered, “Yes! Even after the crystal took most of it, I still went up to level eleven!”

  Derrick nodded. “Good, but don’t relax yet. We still have that to deal with.”

  He jerked his thumb toward the Naga woman, who was still chained to the altar. She writhed and screamed as more and more green lightning poured into her body.

  “This fight is going to be even harder,” Aaron said.

  “Right,” Derrick agreed. “If you don’t feel like you’re up to it, go wait in the—”

  “I can do this!” Elise glanced up at Makolo, who cracked his knuckles eagerly. “We can do this!”

  Derrick hesitated, then nodded again. “You’re going to be a great Mistake someday, kid. Now get ready!”

  A final surge of lightning poured into the unfortunate Naga, and her body began to glow with an evil green light.

  Snakes and green, Miranda thought as the serpent-tailed mob sat up, snapping the chains that had bound her like paperclips. Those are the themes here. Everything is green and covered in snakes.

  Shining so brightly that it hurt to look at her, the Naga pointed imperiously down at the party.

  “Sicitereah sirtsev subidep ni erats em maroc sitsedua odomouq?” she cried, her voice inhumanly deep and distorted. “Etaroda martsev maed te sov etinretsorp!”

  “Whatever you just said,” Derrick replied, “the answer is no.”

  “Unless you want it to be no,” Miranda quickly added. “In which case, the answer is yes.”

  The Naga’s face contorted in rage and, with a hiss so full of hatred that Miranda could feel it echoing in her soul, she began to grow. Her dress was torn to shreds as she quickly became several times too big for it. The scales on her tail crept upwards to cover her torso, darkening until they were as blue as sapphires. Her arms and neck grew longer, thicker, losing their human shape to become something far more monstrous. Fangs and eyes sprouted from her hands, and her face pushed forward into a reptilian snout. Hoods flared out of her newly grown necks, and the three headed cobra reared back to display itself in all its nightmarish glory.

  LEVEL 40 VISANTII, MATRIARCH OF SERPENTS

  “Don’t be intimidated,” Derrick said, loading his slingshot. “We’re a team! As long as we work together, this thing won’t—”

  “Right! I’m here to help!”

  The new voice rang through the chamber, so out of place it was almost comical. But for Miranda, laughing was the farthest thing from her mind.

  Because she recognized that voice.

  She spun around, her eyes growing wide with horror as the last person on Nyr who should have been here stepped into the boss chamber.

  “Jeremy?” she screamed.

  And then Visantii’s tail slammed into her.