Immediately, a quest popped up in Kaldalis’ vision.

The Second Raid Panic

Save the town from the second Infernal Horde attack.

Haldir didn’t even wait long enough for Kaldalis to read the little quest text that popped up on the side of his vision. The greenish-hued vathon broke into a sprint, crashing into the wall of foliage at the far side of the clearing towards the column of smoke.

“Hold up!” Kaldalis yelled. “We need to stick together!”

“I guess that’s our job, not his,” Myrin said. She started jogging across the clearing. “Are you coming, or not?”

Kaldalis grimaced and broke into a run as well, hoping that they weren’t too far away from the encampment. If they were more than five hundred yards out, the size of the column of smoke would be a lot more alarming.

The trio rushed into the dense jungle, making their way towards the smoke. It wasn’t long before they started to see signs of what was to come. A swath of the jungle had been stomped over, and a few plants seemed to be smoldering and smoking.

Kaldalis wondered why; had the Infernal Horde constructed some manner of flaming siege engine? Had they clumsily carried torches through the jungle?

“Uh-oh,” Balrim said.

Kaldalis was about to ask what was wrong when he noticed it himself.

Haldir’s health bar took a sizable hit.

“Faster,” Kaldalis said, moving from a careful jog through the jungle to a full run, praying that he didn’t twist his ankle. “Faster would be better.”

As they burst into the next clearing, they found both Haldir, and the source of the smoldering plants.

Haldir was locked in combat against a handful of strange creatures. They were flickering humanoid shapes roughly eight feet tall on average, muscularly built but without defined features. Their forms shimmered and wavered, as if made from some strange mixture of gelatin and smoke.

As Kaldalis rushed in to help, he saw one of their meaty fists slam into Haldir’s shield, and flames splashed around the impact of the blow.

“Let’s go!” Kaldalis yelled, running to Haldir’s side and whirling his glaive. He wanted to say something a bit more dramatic, but they weren’t in a dungeon anymore. It would have been a shame to waste good material now.

Especially since he was running into a pack of five Infernal Horde, and would put even odds on himself to die horribly in the next thirty seconds.

He struck the nearest of the creatures, and did what felt like a paltry sixteen damage, and not even a stack of Gust. He was about to curse whatever was causing his damage numbers to sink so low, but then he remembered his first fight with the syncoresi, where his attacks had been in single-digits.

Myrin was right behind him, but was holding back, waiting for Kaldalis to get a second hit in on the shimmering figure. The dungeon had taught her well.

But Haldir’s health was getting low, and so Kaldalis wanted to get the attention of the rest, but he wanted to enable Myrin to get started on doing her job. As he ducked under the first swing of a shimmering fist, he realized he didn’t have to make that choice.

“They’re overworld mobs again,” Kaldalis said. “As soon as I touch them, go nuts!”

Myrin let out a gleeful cackle and her greatsword carved into the one he’d already hit. It passed through its entire body. The creature didn’t immediately keel over, as its gelatinous flesh didn’t stay parted from the strike, but Myrin was putting out damage, which meant she was happy.

With that taken care of, Kaldalis set about gathering the attention of the rest of the group, tagging them one at a time while dancing around their swinging fists. Haldir cowered behind his shield until Balrim landed a heal on him, returning a big chunk of his hit points. Once he was in the clear, Kaldalis expected him to rotate around behind the nearest of the creatures to start putting out his damage onto it, but instead he staggered away from the melee and dropped to his knees once he was a safe distance away, even though he was barely below half health.

Kaldalis didn’t have time to wonder about that, though. He had a handful of angry shimmery monsters around him, menacing him with their flaming fists. Kaldalis was forced to dance around in place as they swiped at him with wild roundhouse punches. He felt a twinge of panic as Myrin smashed away at one of them again and again, worried that she was going to pull aggro and take a hit, but he pushed the concern down.

It was as he said. This was overworld rules once more. He could relax and focus on his defense instead.

Although with so many of them on him, no amount of dodging, ducking, diving, dipping, and dodging could keep him safe forever. Eventually one of their strikes caught him in the shoulder, and he cried out in surprise at the heat behind the blow.

It felt like he got smacked with a red-hot toaster, taking one-hundred and seven physical damage and fifty-three fire damage.

“Holy shit,” Kaldalis cursed. “These things hit like dungeon bosses!”

“Then don’t get hit!” Balrim yelled over the fight. “Please? I’m still trying to get Haldir back in fighting shape.”

Kaldalis grumbled, and focused on his movement. He lashed out when he could, but backed away from the cluster of furious humanoids, keeping out of their reach as his top priority. Myrin seemed to be having a grand old time, grunting with every sweep of her blade, hammering away at their backs as they ignored her.

It didn’t take long for the first of them to break. The one Myrin had started with turned and bolted out of the clearing. Its featureless form didn’t show any emotion, and so it felt extremely confusing to see it just run away without the customary mask of fear he’d seen on the syncoresi during the first raid.

“Let it go!” Kaldalis said when Myrin turned as if to follow. “Finish what’s on your plate before you go looking for dessert!”

“Tease,” Myrin called back as she turned back around and started on the next one.

Kaldalis focused on the fight, though he was concerned about Haldir. The other vathon hadn’t rejoined the fray, even though Balrim had restored his health bar. He was concerned that something else had showed up, but Balrim’s healing was coming Kaldalis’s way now, and there were even a few arrows from the healer’s direction, which told him everything was fine. With four pairs of angry fists flailing at him, he was loath to split his focus.

He estimated that Myrin was about to send the second one running when one of the others stopped dead. Myrin moved past it, keeping her vision safely tunneled in on her target, but Kaldalis was so stunned by the sudden behavior change that he stopped himself.

The shimmering form started to convulse and pulsate, its semi-transparent arms wrapped around itself. It started to undulate, slow at first, and then suddenly ramping up.

Madly, all Kaldalis could think of was ‘a does this before throwing up.’

That’s when it exploded.

He expected a blast of fire, but these beings obviously weren’t fire elementals - they weren’t made of flames, after all.

The blast was a pulse of pitch blackness that radiated out in a twenty-foot radius. It felt like getting hit with a wall of sludge, though it left no physical residue.

It hit Kaldalis for one-hundred and seventy-one darkness damage. He didn’t even have time to process what had just happened before the explosive creature darted back in towards him, searing-hot hands lashing out at him and forcing him to scramble back. Kaldalis could see that Balrim and Haldir hadn’t taken the hit, but it had struck Myrin for nearly half her hit point bar. He was inwardly grateful for his expanded hit point bar from being a tank, which meant the blast only hit him for a bare fifth of his maximum.

But when two of the others stopped, pulsing and undulating, Kaldalis knew they were in trouble. And not just because he could hear Balrim cursing like a sailor who stepped on a LEGO. Two blasts would smash him into the danger zone, and leave Myrin dead on the ground. He thought about bolting, but that would only have worked if the delay on the blast was a second or two longer. He might be able to jump out if he did it right now, but Myrin’s mobility depended on running towards an enemy. She would never make it.

“Myrin!” Kaldalis snapped. “On my mark, we flicker!”

“Right!” she said, laying off her attack for a moment, presumably to be able to catch his timing. “Let’s i-frame this bitch!”

Kaldalis wanted to try and count, but he hadn’t been paying that close of attention to the first blast, and so he had no idea. All he could do was operate on instinct.

“Now!” he yelled.

Myrin vanished.

Kaldalis took a deep breath and followed suit.