Bufos Sanctus

  Time froze. This confused me for a moment, until I remembered my new contingency ability. That at least told me the intentions of the creature that my eyes were fixed upon in this still instant. It was in the process of attacking, me or the whole group at once. The HUD spell said:

  Heretical Bufos Sanctus Avatar

  Level 25

  Too high a level for me to see its health or mana, and much higher than anything we’d successfully defeated, aside from the Xem clone. It radiated this white light that was nauseating to me, and in frozen time I could neither close my eyes nor look away, though I was quite certain I wouldn’t take any physical damage from anything in this state. Adam was closest to the creature, having been within an arms reach of its priest. Furthermore, the priest had died instantly, which I had to hope had something to do with how devoted he was to the divine parody of a toad. Which made me worry about Adam even more.

  The rest of us were ready to leap in action, except that Sarah wouldn’t be doing any leaping any time soon. I just had to hope Adam wasn’t infected enough that the avatar would have significant influence over him.

  I had one more invisible barrier left in my staff, along with a greasefire and I thought I would unload both of those spells as soon as the time-stop wore off. Then there was nothing to do but to wait for the rising steam to start moving again.

  There.

  I swung my staff around, mentally unleashing first the barrier spell. A blade of wind and light exploded in a circle around the avatar creature just a split second after the barrier went up, a simple square between us and it. Then, I twirled my staff around once, and unloaded my other stored spell, spraying the monstrosity with grease first and then igniting it. Greasefire smoke rose through holy radiance and it screamed in a twisted mockery of both human voice and the croak of a toad, but I could tell it was far from defeated.

  It was only then that my friends managed to get their bearings. This time-stop contingency gave me a major advantage in response time, basically negating the first move advantage of my enemies, but they didn’t have such powers. Will drew his sword from his side and raised his shield- a classic knight’s kite shield with the same chrome polish as his armor. Anna began chanting. Sarahe took out her own shield and began retreating, her footwork still nowhere near recovered enough for anything but a desperate, cornered last stand.

  Then, the delayed damage from the attack hit me. Even at 8% strength, it bloodied my nose and pushed me back a foot. I looked at Adam, and he wasn’t doing great.

  “The tadpoles are responding to the creature’s presence. This might have been a mistake,” Adam said.

  The monster levitated up in the air, and the halo of eyes expanded, and it began incanting with three mouths at once. In a moment it somehow saw my shield and dispelled it, but it’d taken enough time that Will had made up the distance and leaped towards it in a shoulder tackle, reinforced by his shield. He hit with an impact that resonated as a loud slap as his shield hit the monster’s mid-section, but it didn’t even wobble mid air.

  It must have felt it though, or at least some danger from Will, as as soon as he impacted, the Bufos levitated up in the air out of his reach. It raised its sword of green flame, and slashed it towards Will. As an arc of the sword completed, a curved blade of fire burst out of it and it flew towards Will in a blink, followed by three, four more slashes. Will took the first straight to the chest, yelped, but managed to get his shield up for the rest of the shots.

  Then Anna was ready. She’d activated her flame fist ability, and sent a barrage of grapefruit sized fireballs in the direction of the angelic creature. I knew that these weren’t the highest damage spells that Anna had, but it had the advantage of requiring no incantation after the mode was activated, and so as a fireball after fireball hit the Bufos it was forced to turn its attention to her.

  Adam, meanwhile, dropped on his knees and bent over forwards. Bright light now shone from his back, where the tadpoles had recently been implanted. It was as difficult as ever to tell if he was in pain, but he was in distress.

  I knew I was on defensive duty however. As soon as the avatar turned its attention to Anna, I readied my Shield spell. I doubted I’d have the time for a full barrier, so I’d have to count on quick casting the much smaller and shorter lasting Shields. It was never reliable, and so as Anna kept blasting it with fireballs, and it swung its sword towards her I cast shield after shield, intercepting one, two, three slashes, but when the creature darted up and forward in a speed I hadn’t seen from it before and attacked from a fully different angle I didn’t have the time to readjust.

  “Anna!” I called instead, and she began to roll, but the flame caught her. It hit her on the back of her left shoulder-blade as she rolled, and instantly left behind a deep, charred scar with green flame playing along its edges.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  “Ffffuck,” she groaned, as she scrambled to re-set, but I could see her left arm hanging limply.

  “Will, towards it, jump as high as you can,” I called.

  “I can’t jump that high,” Will shouted back.

  “Just leap when you’re about ten feet away from it. High as you can,” I called, and began chanting instantly.

  I’d upgraded the invisible barrier spell to allow me to shape it, and it had many applications to create structures that had helped me time and again to bypass obstacles or ford gaps. The problem with the invisible barrier being used as portable fabricator was that, well, that it was invisible. So Will wouldn’t see how high it was, nor could he reliably grab onto it. But as the angelic figure roared in religious ecstasy at the sight of one of my friends nearly fallen, we had few better options.

  I conjured the barrier six feet off the ground, in an incline that was sharp, but manageable by someone with Will’s boosted physical stats. The monster, at the same time, shifted its tactics, even as it really looked like it could have finished off Anna, it must have heard us discuss some new plan, and so it opened up its hands and the sickening radiance first intensified and then exploded, washing over us like a wave of guilt and a flashlight in the face on a bad hangover.

  But Will was already mid-air when the blast went off, and when my vision cleared, I saw that he’d landed on the platform, started running, and was now about to leap right on top of the batrachian angel. The monster turned to intercept him, but with his sword held high and coming down in a heavy, overhead strike, there was nothing the creature could do, but move its blade awkwardly in the path of Will’s. The steel sword pushed aside the fire with a skillful flick of the wrist, and it followed a slightly adjusted path down, into the monster’s shoulder. It bit in, cutting through skin and muscle, but what should have bisected the creature only jammed a few inches in. Will was now hanging off the monster, gauntlets grasping at the hilt and blade, as it was readying to pierce him with its flaming sword.

  I cast the shield spell, just in time. The sword stopped an inch away from Will’s face and the creature screamed in frustration. Then Will let go with his left hand, hanging on with his right, and grabbed the avatar’s sword-hand with his own. It did seem like a smart move for a second, but then the angelic figure grabbed Will’s hand and yanked with such force that Will had his sword ripped from his hand, and then thrown across the cavern, impacting the wall with a loud, metallic clang, and then another as he hit the ground. He was already groaning and getting on his feet, but the Bufos now dashed towards us the casters, over the writhing Adam, flame sword extended and pointed at Anna. It moved too quickly for me to cast a spell with verbal components, so I did the only thing I could think of, took the rod off my belt, and encased Anna in a sphere of water, to stop the flame blade from doing its work.

  It impacted with a flash-steam hiss, and indeed did go out, but the angel had too much inertia, and it flew directly into the sphere. In there, its amphibian nature allowed it for vision and full range of movement, while my fire sorceress friend was defenseless. It went for her throat with two clawed, webbed hands and air escaped from Anna’s lips as it began to squeeze. But it wasn’t focusing on me, so I let loose a barrage of razor-sharp icicles at its back, appearing directly inside the water sphere, inches above the creature. The icicles hit, puffs of blood sprayed into the water, and the creature was forced to release Anna, who then kicked off away from its body, and onto the floor, gasping and holding on to her neck.

  The Bufos dismissed the water spell with a flick of the wrist, somehow casting a high level dispel without incantation, and turned to me- just about the last man standing. And I said “Fuck.”

  It held out its hand and its blade of fire reappeared in its hand, and it flew towards me at speed. I had my mage armor on, but that was the only protection I had, and I didn’t have the time to cast any spell above the first tier. I cast the icicle spell, directly in front of me, in the shape of a block of ice. When going for the larger, chunkier conjurations of ice, my increased arcana attribute and a smattering of other bonuses made the block a solid three by three foot block, launched at terminal velocity directly at the monster. It should have thrown it back across the room, or at least slowed it, but what happened instead was that it caught it with both hands, and then threw it at me. I could have sworn it came back at a faster speed than I had launched it, and when it hit me a split second after I saw it coming, it shattered my invisible armor and threw me back a dozen feet, onto my back, with all the air knocked out of me, and leaving me breathing in heavy, painful gasps.

  The Bofus ascended then and raised its hands to its sides, and began chanting. The room shook, and white, radiant smoke came seeping out of its cracks I felt dizzy, even as the room began feeling hotter and hotter. Chum screamed without stop somewhere I couldn’t see him. Who was still up? Was there anyone. No. I had to move. I had to-

  There came a sound of popping, like a dozen zits or grapes or bubble wrap, but loud enough to overwhelm the chanting, and a redish black smoke rose and intermingled with the pure white. I heard Adam’s voice.

  “Not- Not so difficult to reverse engineer. Your divinity is a fraud, so-called Bofus Sanctus,” he said, and though whatever spell translated all the words in the Tower still worked, I knew he now spoke in a new language. The avatar stopped chanting. I managed to get my head up. And I saw Adam, now covered in a layer of freshly birthed, slimy toads as if it was a coat, move towards the avatar and raise his finger towards it.

  “Restrain it!” he called in this new language, and the tiny toads leaped off his body, each carrying a strand of enchanted bandage, and leaping on top of the avatar. At first it seemed dismissive of it, ignoring the toads. But when it saw that it couldn’t rip the bandages apart, it began to panic. When it was fully restrained in a kneeling position and Adam was covered only by a loincloth of bandages, it screamed in a new chant that made my ears bleed.

  A limping, stumbling Will walked up to it, took a knife out of his belt and stabbed it in the eye until it stopped screaming.