Chapter Five

  A new box appeared as the portal erupted into blinding green light.

  PRIMARY QUEST FAILED:

  STOP THE CULT OF VISANTII FROM RESURRECTING VISANTII.

  NEW PRIMARY QUEST:

  DEFEAT VISANTII, MATRIARCH OF SERPENTS.

  Miranda was already moving. Summoning Eagle Feather and Midnight Frost, she leaped from the top of the stairs, cloak billowing behind her. She hit the floor running, her eyes locked onto the nearest cultist. Behind her, Aaron let out a roar that sent pebbles showering down on their heads, and the floor shook beneath her hooves as he leaped down to join the fray as well.

  The cultists didn’t seem to notice the intrusion. The portal thrummed with power, and as the hooded men’s voices rose one last time, four bolts of emerald lightning shot out of the swirling, cloudy depths. Each of them struck one of the cultists, and their cries of worship became screams of pain as they fell to their knees.

  Miranda ignored all of this. Whatever show the dungeon was trying to put on for them, she couldn’t have cared less. Instead, she raced across the arena to her chosen cultist, trusting her teammates to keep the others out of her hair while she worked.

  Closing the distance, she buried her daggers in the cultist’s spine with practiced ease. A life bar appeared over their head, exactly like in the video games she’d used to play before the Remaking, and plummeted until it was less than half full. The robed mobs may have been a higher level than her, but that meant surprisingly little when backstabs dealt double damage—or so she thought, until her daggers were nearly yanked out of her grip as the cultist rose to his full height.

  And rose, and rose, and rose.

  “Ashes!” she cursed, pulling the daggers free. The motion also tore the cultist’s robe off, revealing the forty foot long, bright green serpent beneath. It curled its neck around to look at her, hissing in rage and baring fangs that were longer than her fingers. Above its head, a new box appeared.

  LEVEL 23 ECCLESIASTIC VIPER

  STATUS: VISANTII’S BLESSING

  Green lightning was still zigzagging angrily up and down its body, and Miranda clenched her jaw when she saw the skin where she had stabbed it knitting itself back together. Its health bar was swiftly rising back toward the top. That must have been what Visantii’s Blessing meant, she guessed.

  The massive snake lunged for her.

  “Ashes and flame!” she cursed again, leaping nimbly into the air to perform a flip over the snake’s head. While she was upside down, she lashed out with both daggers again, scoring a pair of deep cuts into its back.

  That’s one good thing about this, I guess, she thought as she landed, skidding to a halt and whirling around. With a snake this big, there’s a lot of back for me to stab!

  The ecclesiastic viper recovered quickly, looping around to come at her again like a living roller coaster train. Its golden eyes glinted in the dim light, its tongue flicking rapidly up and down in a way that made Miranda’s skin crawl. She had brought it down to just an inch below half health for a second time, but its life bar was already nearly full again. In just a few seconds, it would be back to maximum HP.

  The snake lunged for her, and Miranda swung Midnight Frost out to counter it. The black dagger slammed against the incoming fang, throwing up a shower of sparks and bringing the viper to a dead stop.

  FAIL

  With a grunt, she shoved back against the snake, sending it reeling as if it had been slapped by a giant. Before it could recover, she tossed Eagle Feather up into the air in a lazy underhand throw. Flipping end over end, the silver dagger arced over the viper’s head, and the giant snake reflexively followed it with its eyes. While it was distracted, Miranda dashed in and sank Midnight Frost into its side all the way to its hilt.

  The viper swung its head back toward her with a furious hiss, and—

  “Silverwing!” Miranda shouted, vanishing in a flash of silver light and reappearing in midair behind it. With inhuman grace, she twisted around in midair, slamming Eagle Feather into the ecclesiastic viper, using her own weight to carve a deep gash into its back as she fell.

  The snake hissed in pain and anger, but the moment Miranda pulled her dagger free, more green lightning coursed across its body. Already, she could see the damage she’d just dealt to it disappearing as its health bar ticked back towards the top.

  The hair on the back of Miranda’s neck suddenly stood up, and she leaped into the air just as the viper’s enormous tail careened past her. She performed a nimble backflip, landing neatly on her hooves, and then spun around just in time to block another attack from the serpent’s fangs with Midnight Frost.

  FAIL

  For most people, parrying was too unpredictable of a strategy to even bother learning. In most cases, she would have agreed with them. When done correctly, it could leave your opponent off balance and completely unprotected for just long enough to get a fatal blow in. Do it wrong, however, and you likely wouldn’t get the chance to try again.

  It was a gamble. High risk, high reward. Miranda loved gambling almost as much as she loved stealing, but even she knew that some bets just weren’t worth taking.

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  When she had Midnight Frost in her hand, though, it was a different story entirely. One of its properties was that it extended the window for a successful parry by seventy five percent, meaning that it was actually harder to mess up a parry than it was to do it right. And if that wasn’t enough to make it a legendary weapon, with every parry she performed, it also had a one in ten chance to—

  The snake spat a glob of green acidic venom at her.

  “Ashes!” she grunted, leaping backwards out of the splash zone. Before she had even hit the floor, the ecclesiastic viper was rocketing toward her yet again, jaws open wide. “Eclipse Walk!”

  Shadows leaped up from the floor to spin around her like a tornado, and a moment later she vanished from sight. The snake, already committed to its attack, struck anyway. Even though it couldn’t see her, it moved so fast that Miranda barely had time to duck and roll out of the way before its jaws snapped closed.

  Springing back to her hooves, she dashed lengthwise along the snake’s body. Eclipse Walk would give her one minute of invisibility for every ten points she had in her Spirit stat, which meant she could stay safely out of view for five minutes. She had no intention of sitting out of the fight for that long, and the spell would break the moment she attacked anything, but it still gave her time to survey the scene and plan out her next move.

  On the other side of the room, Aaron was taking on all three of the other vipers at once. As soon as she looked, his character box blinked into existence. His maximum health had nearly tripled, and a list of buffs a mile long trailed after his name.

  ONDARRA’S BLESSING

  RESTORATION

  INDOMITABLE SPIRIT

  IRON FLESH

  AVENGING FURY

  HOLY EDGE

  IMMOVABLE

  CHALLENGE

  Derrick had done his job well, but Miranda knew the knife edge he and Aaron walked. The vipers were a higher level than anyone in the party. That was practically business as usual for the Grave Mistakes, but it meant that Derrick and Aaron's relationship was essentially symbiotic. Aaron acted as a wall between his teammates and those who wished to harm them, and Derrick ensured that wall didn't break. If either of them slipped up for even a moment, it would spell doom for them both—and likely Miranda, too.

  One of the snakes was writhing angrily on the floor, held in place by Aaron’s foot. He swung Troll Splitter at another, almost cleaving its head off in one strike. The snake hissed in pain and retreated, its nearly empty health bar already ticking upwards again.

  Then the third snake struck, and he cried out in pain when its fangs sank into his arm. Exactly one second later, the word POISONED appeared over his head. His health bar began to plummet.

  Before it could go down more than a few points, though, what looked like a snowball shot across the room, hitting him square in the back and bursting into glittering white powder. The POISONED notification vanished, and a moment later his health was back at maximum.

  Across the room, Derrick held up his hand, and a black orb appeared in it. He quickly loaded it into his slingshot and, with a sharp thwap, sent it flying across the chamber to strike the side of the second viper’s head, exploding in a cloud of ashy dust.

  The giant snake hissed in outrage as the word PETRIFIED appeared above its head. Its scales where the orb had struck began to turn gray, transforming into stone before their eyes. The effect spread outwards from the point of impact, and the viper’s movements grew slower as more and more of it was consumed by the curse.

  With a growl, Aaron dropped his axe and ripped the snake that had bitten him off his arm. Derrick’s antidote had done its job so well that there weren’t even any marks where its fangs had pierced his skin. It furiously tried to bite him again, but his iron grip kept it immobile.

  Pulling his arm back, he turned toward the nearest wall and slammed its skull into the ancient stone. Once, twice, three times, shaking the entire chamber with each blow. The snake’s health fell into the red. With a roar of fury, Aaron charged, using his full body weight to crush the viper’s head against the wall…

  “No, stop!” Derrick shouted.

  …and in doing so, freed the snake that was trapped beneath his foot.

  LEVEL 28 ECCLESIASTIC VIPER

  STATUS: VISANTII’S BLESSING, BROODMOTHER

  Before the transformation, this snake had been the high priest, and unlike the others, it had a line of wicked looking spines jutting up from its back. It wasted no time in avenging its fallen brother, leaping up off the floor and wrapping itself around Aaron’s neck. The Neanderite cried out in pain again as the spines were driven into his skin. A second passed, and the POISONED notification reappeared.

  Miranda didn’t have time to worry about her friend, though. The snake she was fighting turned around to give chase, and now its eyes were glowing. A pit formed in her stomach.

  Oh, don’t tell me…

  Sure enough, it lunged right at her. Using her inhuman Dexterity, Miranda leaped into the air and held out her arms, becoming a whirlwind of blades. The viper passed beneath her, earning itself another handful of cuts. She landed, then dashed for a nearby pillar.

  Heat vision. Because of course these slurs would have heat vision.

  Miranda’s role in the group was different from Derrick or Aaron’s. She could hold her own in head to head combat, but she was an absolute nightmare if you didn’t see her coming. Because of that, Derrick didn't waste his buffs on her unless he had to, and Miranda was left to fend for herself.

  That was exactly how she liked it. Nothing set her blood aflame like going up against a stronger opponent, knowing that one or two attacks were all it would take to send her to whatever afterlife this godforsaken world had waiting for her.

  The ecclesiastic viper curled around, easily spotting her heat signature behind the pillar. Miranda grinned. The higher her level got, the harder it became to find a real challenge. It had been months since she'd felt like this, almost giddy with the thrill of the contest, and she relished every second of it.

  “Silverwing!”

  The viper came for her again, rounding the pillar with its fangs bared—but Miranda was already gone. There was a flash of light above the scaled monstrosity, and then she dropped down from the chamber’s ceiling, plunging Eagle Feather into the snake’s back. It threw its head back, hissing in agony, and its health bar dropped down into the red again. She couldn’t help but laugh as she landed on the floor beside it, as graceful as any cat, and bent her knees again to leap awa—

  The serpent struck her from behind—not with its fangs, but with its entire body. Miranda grunted as flesh as strong as iron wrapped itself around her faster than even she could react. Her arms were suddenly pinned to her sides, and the ecclesiastic viper curled its head down to look at her in cruel satisfaction.

  Ashes! Miranda thought, furiously trying to slip free.

  Then the snake began to squeeze.