Tristan

From Tristan's current position, the Cinder Wyvern was like a hill of rising and falling, loudly snoring scales. He, Xanax, Cross, and Drannis had been careful, slow, and quiet in their sneaking around the outskirts of the egg-filled hatchery, and so hadn't seemed to wake it yet. They wanted to get closer to the boss--and farther from the other members of their raid--before engaging.

The tanks led the way, and despite their slow pace, their heavy armor still made enough sound that every few steps they had to stop and glance at the boss.

When they finally got into position, Drannis raised his mace and shield, sending the first message into raid chat.

Drannis: We're in position and ready.

It was just a few seconds' wait for the confirmation from the ranged and healers. Tristan could feel his fingers tightening around the handle of his greatsword. Then the countdown began.

Drannis: We pull in 3 Drannis: 2 Drannis: 1

And exactly on cue, the fight began. A [Taunt] and attack from Drannis locked the wyvern to him the moment its eyes opened.

Tristan had a moment of doubt, right as it all started, when he realized that he'd likely only seen a handful of things in his entire life that looked as ridiculously dangerous as the beast they were now attacking. But he'd managed to defeat several of those, and because of that he knew they could defeat this one too. We can do this, he repeated to himself.

Then his first strike landed, and the reflective damage coming up from the scales immediately cost him a chunk of hit points. He whipped his sword around again anyway, slicing into the wyvern's flank, causing more pain to course up his arms.

"I've got the melee," Kitara yelled out right as Tristan swung a third time, and small surges of healing began to lift his spirit as they trickled in over time.

Not twenty seconds in, the first time the Wyvern stretched out its wings, a blast of air sent Drannis flying backward. Thankfully, due to their preparations and planning, Cross was already there, and his [Taunt] was immediate. But Tristan was still filled with horror as the dwarf landed in the exact middle of a pile of eggs.

"Whelps!" he yelled. "Many whelps! Ranged, on me!"

Arrows, thunderbolts, and magical missiles arrived within seconds, so Tristan's focus returned to the huge death lizard in front of him. It had reared back on its hind legs and was flapping its wings, though clearly not in any attempt to lift off. Instead, a sickly-greenish mist was beginning to waft outward, spreading in an ever-increasing radius around them.

Suddenly every breath he took brought a new pain, and gods forbid he try to swallow! His whole throat burned like he had swallowed an ooze.

But as ridiculously unpleasant as the sensation was, Tristan noticed that he wasn't actually losing any health to it, no doubt thanks to his sword.

"I've gotta move it out of the poison," Cross said, coughing violently, as he quickly backpedaled out of the toxic mist.

Tristan followed, dodging under the wyvern's sweeping tail as it chased after the tank, and slashing whenever he could find an opening. Though his health yo-yoed with every strike, he never dipped below 80%. In fact, no one in the raid seemed to be particularly hurt yet.

Soon after, a volley of ranged attacks struck the boss, heralding Drannis's return to the fray. He barrelled through the winds to a position beside Cross. Things had gone according to plan so far.

With two more incredibly powerful flaps of its wings, the Cinder Wyvern lifted off, and the whole fight changed.

Tristan had no idea how much of the massive wyvern's flight was due to the equally massive, draconic wings and how much of it was simply magic. It was clearly at least a bit of both, as the immense bulk of that scaled beast flitted around in the air as though it weighed nothing.

It was also interesting to watch all the spells swerving mid-flight toward the now-rapidly-moving target. It kind of struck Tristan as unfair that Chessa's arrows didn't course correct like that. Though it clearly didn't take her long to adjust her aim, with her next barrage of arrows all striking true.

"Tristan!" Cross shouted, "You're with me."

Looking around as they ran, Tristan could see that Xanax was with Drannis, right where they were supposed to be, intercepting all the newly hatching whelps before they could get to the casters, who had all clustered up in the middle of the space.

Meanwhile Cross was just beginning to round up the whelps they were meant to control.

"Just let me know when to start," he replied.

"ANY TIME," Cross snarked.

"On it!" he said. He began to sweep his [Oozebane Greatsword] through the whelps, activating [Cleaving Slash] whenever he could.

About that time, he heard the familiar melody of Manama's [Anthem of Mind] once again, reducing the cooldowns of their abilities. It was also somehow louder, deeper, and more developed this time. There was more resonance, or more harmony in it.

As Tristan activated both his [Cleaving Slash] and [Blade Flurry], he realized that his cooldowns were lowered more than ever before. Checking his buffs, he could see that there were actually two versions of the [Anthem of Mind], which he hadn't even known was possible! How was Manama doing that? How was he singing with himself?

Honestly, the how didn't really matter. The results did. And right then, all the melee--even split in half like this--were able to keep the two dozen or so whelps from ever reaching and overwhelming the others in the middle.

The Cinder Wyvern had not been idle in this time. It had flown toward the edge of the burnt forest and began flapping its wings with greater fervor. At first that just made it hard to stand upright, but then the trees started getting uprooted and tossed around. How the wind flung the trees around yet didn't manage to move him and his allies was beyond his understanding. Still, the trees came, two and three at a time, some driven straight like spears toward them, others more horizontal, like rounded walls of death. After it sent several barrages of trees their way, it soared over to a different position and repeated the process from a new angle--three more times.

Luckily, everyone was able to move out of the way of the bigger attacks. Part of that, Tristan suspected, was thanks to Manama switching one of his songs to [Melo's Accelerando], greatly boosting their movement speed. Had that buff been missing, he was pretty sure Laura might have been clipped at least twice, as she had the bad habit of holding still a little too long to finish her next spell cast before moving.

...Or at least that's what Opie was yelling. The man's voice was a constant storm of assessments and orders, like, "Kitara, as soon as this asshat lands, I've got the tanks and you take the melee again. Then, when that Wing Buffet hits, I'll help you out if you'll top off the victim with HoTs!"

It was all kind of slow to register with Tristan, who was more focused on his positioning. But he knew that was merely his inexperience and the words would make sense faster with time.

"Second set of whelps!" came a call from across the way, where Xanax and Drannis had begun shifting to the closer of the two spawn points.

Meanwhile, Tristan and Cross had to rush nearly a third of the way across the room to get to the other, thankfully receiving another speed boost from Manama's song. Almost in response, Opie issued another order. "Ranged, help us burn down these whelps, or the tanks won't be free to pick up the Wyvern when she drops!"

For Tristan, the run was only made more challenging by needing to avoid all the other eggs in between. There were still lots scattered around the rocky outskirts, and he had a sinking feeling that they'd be forced to deal with most of them before the fight was fully over.

"Hit Drannis's first!" came the call from Opie, clearly redirecting Laura who was casting at a whelp that had nearly reached them before Cross was able to pull it away.

Yet they were able to control them all. Drannis's pack dropped within seconds of the ranged switching over, with Cross's a few moments later--which had itself been just barely after he'd managed to wrangle them together.

There was a tremendous, crunching crash as the Cinder Wyvern dropped to the ground and began pulling herself toward the raid. Her mouth was snapping, razor-sharp teeth glittering with greenish saliva that sizzled as it hit the ground, and she was aimed directly at Opie.

Somehow, Drannis appeared in front of the beast, completely halting her advance. His shield was raised and had grown two or three times larger, while his whole body shone, now coated with pristine silver. The boss might as well have hit a wall. Her tail flared up into the air, her back bent, and her gaping mouth snapped shut.

Yet Drannis remained.

"Get behind the wyvern!" he yelled. "I've got her! At least until she--!"

The wyvern roared, rearing back onto her hind legs again, and flapped her mighty wings. Drannis flew back, just as easily as he had the first time, once again landing in a pile of eggs. Though that came as no surprise, as they were still practically everywhere.

This time Cross, despite using his [Taunt] with perfect timing, had not been standing as closely to Drannis prior to his rude dismissal. No, he'd been standing right beside Tristan.

The horrible toothy maw shot around, and even though she wasn't looking right at him, he could feel the panting of the beast's foul breath. He could smell the death and decay lingering in between its teeth. A few splotches of acidic spittle even flew onto him, immediately dropping his hit points by a dozen percent.

"TRISTAN, MOVE!" he heard Opie cry out.

And he wanted to. Honestly, he did. There was just something about being that close to one of the scariest things he'd ever seen, feeling like he could be literally eaten in a single bite, as if he were a piece of fresh garlic bread... He froze.

A blindingly white, magical force yanked him from behind, knocking the breath completely out of him. It almost felt like his father had put an arm around him and thrown him an impossible distance.

Gasping, struggling to refill his lungs with clean air, he found himself kneeling on the ground right before Opie, assailed by a much louder version of Manama's singing than he'd heard before. Looking up, he could actually see that there were two versions of Manama, one looking a bit more wispy and ethereal as it sang what Tristan now realized was the source of one of the two songs currently buffing him.

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"Tristan, get up!" Sophie was saying, her own hands full with Poof as she chain cast spell after spell.

"You better pray I don't need to [Lifegrip] one of the tanks later," Opie shouted at him, "or I'll never forgive you. I haven't lost anyone in any of my groups before, and I'll be gods-damned if I start with you, but--UGH!"

"What the fuck was that?!" Kitara cut him off. "Cross just took half his health in one--"

"Drannis, can you taunt it back?" Opie asked, clearly having moved on from whatever else he might have wanted to say to Tristan. Both of the healer's hands and his staff were now constantly glowing with golden-white light.

Chessa, in between firing arrows, moved closer to Tristan. "Get back up there. Quickly! We need to finish this thing off this rotation! Every time she goes into the air, once she lands again, she hits another 50% harder!"

"I've got her!" Drannis yelled back. "How much longer on her ground phase?"

"Thirty seconds!" Opie replied, clearly relaying what his raiding timers told him.

"All buffs on Laura then," Cross ordered. "We have to get her before she takes flight."

"Then I believe it would be more beneficial to buff me," Xanax said, but it must have been too late.

As Tristan ran back into the fray, catching up to where Drannis had just repositioned the wyvern outside of yet another cloud of poison, he could see an enormous thundercloud forming over the head of the Cinder Wyvern. It was bigger than any he'd ever seen before--and much bigger than the boss itself.

Daring to spare a glance over his shoulder, he could see that Laura's whole body was sparking, her hair pointing skyward, her toes literally lifting off the ground. The one hand she had raised was acting almost like a lightning rod, except Tristan realized that it was in reverse. She was not just calling the lightning: she was commanding it.

What followed was the biggest, brightest bolt of lightning Tristan had ever witnessed. It shot straight down from that massive thundercloud with all the caution of a charging bull, and it pierced straight through the Cinder Wyvern's head, scarring the very ground beneath it.

The sonic boom that followed carried a blast that both nearly knocked Tristan off his feet and made his ears ring. It blew dust and dirt backward in a billowing cloud that obscured anything more than ten paces from him.

Most important of all, though, was that the Cinder Wyvern, which had clearly been about to rear back and flap its wings to go airborne once again, instead barely managed to look upward. Its neck seemed to go limp, and the whole massive body crashed back down to the ground.

What followed were a few moments of stillness, in which Tristan was finally able to catch his breath, get his feet back under him, and read his notifications.

You have slain [Cinder Wyvern, level 21]

[Raid quest updated: A Cleansing Fire]

The Great Wave is approaching!

He recognized that the last one was a clear progression from after the first boss kills. But from what he'd been told, that was all a natural part of the raid. Before he could think about it any further, there was activity in raid chat.

Drannis: Everyone OK?

Why did he use raid chat? Tristan wondered. Then again, his ears were still ringing. In fact, he couldn't actually hear anything but the ringing. Perhaps the others were the same, which was why Kitara was the first to announce:

Kitara: Congrats, Sophie! Chessa: Grats, girl! Manama: Hey, grats, little summoner! Laura: Yeah... congratulations Opie: Congrats, and great timing! Sophie: Thank you! Yeah, level 13, here we go!

That was when the melee realized what was happening and responded, with Tristan even walking over to give Sophie a high five and his own congratulations.

Cross: Oh, that's awesome, girl. Congrats! Also, is anyone else, like, super pumped right now? Drannis: Congratulations are most assuredly in order! Xanax: Congrats! Truly another boon for our future success! Sophie: Thank you all! And yes, Cross, I'm feeling really good! I think I like this raiding thing!

As the green light of one of Kitara's healing spells began to slowly warm Tristan's body, he could feel his hearing return once again. Though the conversation continued in the raid chat a little longer.

Laura: Anyway, sorry for the big blast everyone. I, uh... that was a big crit. Xanax: Do not apologize. You succeeded in slaying the beast before she could lift off again. That was best for all. Who would be offended by a shockwave that slayed such a beast? Kitara: Yeah, thank the gods for that. I was running out of mana. Opie: You and me both, Kit. Laura, that bolt was freaking brilliant! Don't apologize on account of a few measly eardrums! They'll heal. Manama: I certainly hope so. Without your ears, you'd miss out on my beautiful voice.

As the banter continued, more and more shifted to verbal communication. It just felt more natural, less stifling, to hear each other's voices.

Similarly, everyone was gathering together, smiles on all their faces as they formed a ring around the scorched spot of earth where the bolt had struck. Where the wyvern's head had been. Now, there was nothing left of the ridged brow, the piercing eyes, and the toothy maw that had been so terrifying earlier. The neck merely ended in a gooey, cauterized lump.

"Huh," Opie said, kicking the dead body with one foot. "Well, I guess I now officially know what happens to a wyvern when it's struck by lightning." He looked around, no doubt waiting a beat to make sure that everyone could hear him. "The same thing that happens to everything else."

As the others groaned, Chessa walked up beside him and hugged him with one arm as she thwapped him with the other. "You're lucky I love you, because that was awful."

"But also true!" Opie said with a crooked grin.

Drannis, sensing that their banter was done, knelt down beside the body. "Are we ready to see how this monster's strength shall be converted to our own?"

Kitara floated over to Sophie's shoulder, where she sat cross-legged, looking a little bedraggled but not really any worse for the experience. "If by that you mean loot, then by all means!"

Poof looked up at the fairy with uncertainty at first. "Meep meeeeeeep?"

Kitara smiled down at her. "Why yes, I would love to be your friend, fluffy one! I saw the way your magic smote that evil beasty!"

Poof nodded agreeably. "Me-meep, meep meep, meeeep me-meep meep!"

Kitara laughed, and Sophie just shook her head.

Tristan looked on a little enviously. I am definitely going to learn her language, he vowed, since it was now clear not only Sophie was capable of it. Maybe with more time and practice...

"Right," Drannis said with a little sigh. "Only two pieces of loot this time, but that is the expected result."

He made a show of digging around in the neck for a few seconds--which made Manama cringe--before pulling out a small, glimmering circle of glass with a silver string attached to it.

"Is that a monocle?" Opie asked, eyes going extremely wide. Had Tristan not been standing right beside him, he might not have heard the healer whisper into Chessa's ear. "Oh my gods, I never realized how much I absolutely need to have a monocle!"

"What? Why?" Chessa whispered back. "Is it even for healers?"

Tristan used [Identify] on the item.

[Eye of Reframing (rare)]: [Healthsight], [Intelligence Boost II]

A stylish monocle that can be worn in place of a hat. Its lens sees beyond the physical limitations of the realm...

At first glance, thanks to the bonus stats, Tristan was pretty sure that Opie would at least be considered for the item. Since he wasn't exactly sure what the monocle could do, he pulled up the property, which he thought all but guaranteed Opie should have it.

[Healthsight] While looking through this item, you gain the ability to see the exact maximum and remaining hit point values of non-hostile creatures and allies instead of the percent remaining, as well as the percentage of maximum hit points remaining on any hostile target.

"It's freaking perfect!" Opie cried.

On Sophie's shoulder, Kitara sighed. "Yeah, I've gotta admit, that is pretty amazing. But... I already got one piece of loot..."

"So I can have it, right?" Opie asked, glancing quickly between all the other members of the raid as they agreed.

"You're quite lucky that it's an Intelligence and not Endurance item," Drannis said, handing the item over with a sigh. "This is precisely the kind of information I wish I had access to as a raid leader. But I shall not take such an upgrade from so potent a healer. The betterment of the raid overrules my petty desires."

"A MONOCLE IS MIIIIIIIIIIIINE!" Opie said, starting to cackle as he clipped the string to his shirt and slid the glass over his left eye. "I AM THE MOST HANDSOME MAN IN THE... Wait a second. Tristan, why do you have so much health, man?"

Feeling called out, Tristan crossed his arms. "What do you mean? I've always had--"

"You've got almost as much as Drannis and Cross!" Opie said, cutting him off.

Tristan looked side to side, as all the other eyes turned his way. "I, uh, I just have a lot of Endurance, OK? It's one of the best stats for my Primary Class!"

"Yeah, sure," Opie said, turning toward Kitara and whispering (but loudly enough that everyone could hear him). "We really don't need to worry about him unless he's in the critical range."

"Hey!" Tristan said, jutting his chin out.

Drannis saved him from further embarrassment by clearing his throat and kneeling back down. "There's only one more piece of loot left." Then he withdrew a pair of metal bracers that glowed bright red as if fresh from the forge.

Even before Tristan had gotten a chance to [Identify] them, Xanax had turned to him immediately and held his hand out, palm up. "You bested me in our duel, so even though they are well-suited to me, I will grant you the right of first refusal."

Well, now Tristan was super curious, so he scanned the bracers.

[Arm Guards of Molten Fury (rare)]: [Molten Fury], [Strength Boost II]

Tapping into the rage of an angry volcano, these arm guards can allow for tremendous feats of strength... for a price.

Tristan immediately saw the absence of the Soulbound property, and so knew that these would never be for him. He was still curious about what made Xanax want them so badly, so expanded the one new property it did have:

[Molten Fury] You take 10% increased damage. For 12 seconds after taking damage, you deal 20% increased damage as fire.

That explained a lot. Trading damage taken for increased damage output was exactly what Xanax wanted to do, thanks to his sword. For him, the buff would always be 'on,' and so it would help him immensely.

Tristan smiled at the scaleborn. "Thanks, Xanax, but you can have them. We're in this together, and I believe they'll suit you far better than me."

The scaleborn's eyes widened. "Truly?" He bowed his head at Tristan's nod, then deciding that might not be enough, went into a full bow. "I thank you, Tristan Hammerson, from the depths of my being. These will allow me to bring much greater pain to those we face!"

"Hey, none of that, now," Tristan said. "Just promise me another duel sometime in the future, and I'll definitely be glad to give you these, alright?"

For a moment, the scaleborn paused. "I know not what to say, other than that I would make such a promise in my sleep. How else am I to test myself and my growth if not against worthy opponents?"

"He makes a really freaking good point, though I doubt his judgment if he thinks you're worthy," Opie joked, inserting himself into their conversation. "But that wasn't half bad, other than the excessive damage people were taking. I kind of wouldn't mind getting to more of it. What do you guys say we just keep on keepin' on, eh? We've got a lot of this raid still to clear out. Not the least of which is our next enemy, which I'm sure has even more loot for Xanax!"

The scaleborn was made visibly uncomfortable by that remark. "I shall not apologize that two pieces of loot have been best fitted to my hands."

"I'm only kidding, Xanax. But seriously, there's our next enemy," the healer said, pointing his staff, and Tristan's gaze followed. Now that the Cinder Wyvern was gone, the hazy smoke of the Barren Grove was gone, just as all of the remaining eggs had seemingly vanished. What lay beyond the thin line of burnt trees was a land picked absolutely clean. No grass. No shrubs. Not even any sizable rocks. Nothing but dirt for hundreds of paces in all directions.

And then, in the middle of that void of life, lay a huge, green, multi-headed monster.

A hydra.

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