Just as I stepped into the shallow end of the empty pool, the world around us went dark. A dozen red dots appeared on the map. The dots were pretty far away, two sets on either side of the street. They started to close in.
We’d left the inn at sunrise, and we hadn’t yet hit whatever this world’s version of noon was called. The virtual sun had blazed directly above us just moments before. We’d gone from day to night so quickly, I thought I’d been struck blind. I stepped back from the pool and put my back against the wall. The dots remained out there on the street. They crept slowly and cautiously, almost as if they thought they were sneaking up on us.
Donut immediately cast Torch, shooting the light high above the street. The bright light was like a star in the sky. The torch blazed, but it didn’t fill the darkness like it should, as if the murk was resisting it.
A moment later, a green bolt shot from one of the red dots, and it crashed right into the torch, snuffing it out.
“Well that was rude,” Donut said.
“Shit, they have an anti-magic attack,” I said. We needed to come up with a plan, and fast. I pulled two regular torches from my inventory, lit them, and tossed them ahead of me. They skittered out onto the street. The darkness did not budge. It pushed in on the twin torches, surrounding them like the very air was made of ink.
Down the street, something moaned. It sent chills through me. Mongo let out a half growl, half whimper.
Still, the darkness wasn’t absolute. I could make out shapes in the gloom. I couldn’t see the mobs, which were still a good hundred feet away, but I could sense the outlines of buildings. A wall of rubble blocked our exit through the gym and to the next street, and there was no passage across the other way. We were boxed in.
Even so, the monsters moved slowly. That made me nervous. Slow mobs were usually the type you didn’t want anywhere near you.
“Two of them are city elves,” Donut quickly said. “The furthest dot on each side. I don’t know what the rest are, but they’re big. Should we do Slime Time?”
Of all the predetermined plays we’d come up with so far, Slime Time was Donut’s favorite. And for good reason. It was fucking awesome. But now wasn’t the time. Plus, I wasn’t so sure it’d work. Not here.
“Negative,” I said. “Wait one second. Let’s see if this does anything.”
I stepped away from the wall and pulled a lit hob-lobber into my hand as I extended my xistera. I couldn’t see the mobs, but I could sense them there. Moaning and shuffling toward us. Were they zombies? Jesus. That was a terrifying thought. I spun and tossed the bomb as hard as I could directly at the far dot of the city elf, the one who had cast the anti-magic spell.
The sizzling bomb flew with satisfying speed, rocketing out of my xistera like a cannonball. It hit something fleshy, about twenty feet from the city elf. I’d aimed so it would fly over the slow-moving monsters, but apparently I hadn’t aimed high enough.
Bam! The presumed sound of raining gore slapped into the street.
One of the dots turned into an X. But only one. My bomb seemed to have sunk into the monster. I now had a clear line to the elf. I spun, hurling a second bomb at the fucker.
This one hit home, perfectly timed. I really wished I could see it. The hob-lobber blew just before it reached the elf, but the fragmenting explosion ripped through him. There wasn’t even an X left after that.
The other monsters groaned, now only forty feet away.
The darkness didn’t lift.
I could now hear the sound of shuffling, like feet on the floorboards. Holy shit, these were zombies. They had to be. Giant zombies.
No more screwing around. I retracted my xistera and pulled two sticks of goblin dynamite from my pack. “Run into the pool,” I called as I lit them both and tossed one in each direction.
The moment I tossed the second stick, the line of red dots surged forward, rushing at me. I watched, in horrified slow motion, as the flying stick of dynamite rebounded off a massive shape, at least twelve feet tall. The stick didn’t blow, but it bounced, hissing and spitting and rolling toward me, much too close.
“Oh fuck, oh fuck!” I hopped backward into the empty pool, not bothering to gauge exactly where I was standing. I had no time. I just jumped. I prepared to press my Protective Shell spell, but I wanted to be closer to Donut and Mongo before I did it.
Unfortunately, I stopped falling much sooner than I anticipated. I landed directly on the spongey, rotting corpse of the Divider.
And that was the last thing I remembered.
What happened next was later relayed to me by Donut, who was the only one of us to stay conscious for the remainder of the fight.
Both sticks blew, killing most of the remaining monsters and the remaining city elf. I’d fallen far enough to be protected from that blast. However, I was not protected from the bloating corpse of the boss monster, which in turn blew like a goddamn potato in the microwave, either from me falling into it, or from the shockwave of the dual explosions.
The moment the second elf died, the lights snapped back on. The first thing Donut saw was me sailing up in the air like I’d been ejected from a catapult, spinning like a pinwheel. I landed upon the roof of the building across the street.
The detonation of the Divider’s corpse did no damage to either Donut or Mongo, though it showered both of them with a blizzard of stinking, gooey gore. Donut grabbed the neighborhood map, leaped out of the pool, and she finished off the last three of the monsters, all of whom had barely survived. She hit two with magic missiles, and she set Mongo on the third. The dinosaur went about his task with practiced glee.
Donut then leaped to the roof of the building I’d landed on and used a heal scroll to bring my health back up. I remained unconscious for another three minutes, despite being healed.
I awakened, staring up at the sky. I’d gone up a level to 19. My brain took several moments to reboot. I’d landed on a pile of rocks, and they dug into my back. I groaned, rolling over, and I almost plummeted through a hole in the ceiling into the floor below. I had no idea where I was. What had happened?
I heard the thwump of Donut’s Magic Missile, and I abruptly looked up.
“Good morning, Carl. I haven’t seen any more of the elves, but the meat bags keep coming,” she said. She fired another missile. “They’re pretty easy to kill if you hit them in the right place. Mongo is having a field day. He’s already gone up to level 12.” She leaned over the edge and yelled. “Good boy, Mongo! Mommy is going to kill the next one, and you get the one behind him.” She fired once again.
“What is happening? How did I get up here? Whoa, Donut. What the hell happened to you?”
I’d seen Donut covered in gore before, but this was the next goddamned level. After we’d fought the Juicer on the first floor, she’d been caked in blood and guts. I’d thought we’d never get her clean. That was nothing compared to this. She had to have three inches of red, stinking viscera attached to her fur. She was covered like a piece of extra-crispy fried chicken.
“Later,” she said. “They keep coming from that direction. They’re really slow until they get close, but then they get fast. Watch Mongo kill this one.”
I was also covered in gore, but mostly on my back. I felt it slide off of me as I sat up. It was as thick as mud.
I peered over the edge and gaped at the sight. I swallowed. I’d never seen anything like it. I’d had porridge for breakfast, and I regretted it now.