I stepped off the stairs and looked around at the new area of the Labyrinth. Mountains, sky, and some nasty looking cliffs in the distance. In fact, it looked like there was a pretty steep drop off not far away.
“I’m am SO glad to get out of that damn maze,” Bunny exclaimed. “This looks a lot better.”
“Until the monsters show up,” Ace reminded her with a shake of his head. “Because, you know there are going to be monsters.”
“There are always monsters,” Bunny admitted.
“As long as it isn’t one of those giant porcubombs,” Turtle added with a forced chuckle. “I would be more than happy to never see another one of those things for as long as I live.”
Ace snorted at that. “You’re telling me.”
I looked over at my friends, all of whom were in a good mood now that we’d not only reunited but had also beaten the rogue players. Since we’d beaten them once, we were all much more confident of our chances when we ran into them again.
Ace seemed to be doing all right, in spite of still being a bit roughed up. The fact that he had two scepters hanging from his belt probably had something to do with that. We’d found the one that the rogues had taken from him, and he’d picked up another one that Mad Mike had dropped during all the chaos.
Then I looked to Maya and I smiled faintly, remembering the kiss that we’d shared. I would have liked to focus on that a bit more but knew that this wasn’t the time. Not when we were still on mission.
“So, your second ability is a teleport,” I said, more as an excuse to talk to her than because I was curious about the ability.
“It’s called shadow step,” Maya answered, looking quite pleased with herself. “Short range teleportation, but I don’t have a lot of control over where I teleport too just yet. Apparently, upping my focus will improve my control.”
“That’s true with most abilities,” Olivia said. “People tend to think that focus is only for mage types, but it can help improve control over most abilities.”
Olivia glanced at Ace and the two of them shared a shy smile. Their own reunion had been just as relationship changing as mine and Maya’s, but the two of them were more open to expressing things.
“And you’ve got that bird thing now?” Olivia asked me, smiling faintly as she did so.
I nodded at that. “Yeah. The spectral crow. I made a deal with a ghost for it.” I chuckled at the memory of our ‘negotiation’. “I think I got my point across.”
“Good thing you’ve got that bird,” Bunny said. “If we hadn’t spotted that weird ghost crow, we never would have found our way to you in time.”
“I had a feeling the thing was important,” Olivia agreed. “It didn’t attack us like a monster would have, nor did it fit in with anything else we’d seen in the maze.”
“You know,” Ace told me with a chuckle. “You shoot blasts like an arcanist, have that weird aura that looks like it should belong to a bulwark, and now you’ve got an ability like a summoner.”
“Don’t forget the illusions,” Turtle added with a chuckle. “That’s like an illusionist. Your abilities are all over the place.”
I considered that for a moment before shrugging. “True. I’m a bit more spread out than most classes would be. Its both an advantage and a disadvantage to being an invoker.”
“Let me know if you get any artifact abilities,” Ace teased.
I stared at him for a moment, then pointed out, “Actually, I briefly had the ability to see traps in the maze, if that counts.”
“Now THAT would have been useful to have,” Turtle said with a sigh.
“It was pretty useful,” I agreed pleasantly. “Courtesy of some god who apparently appreciated a bit of politeness.”
“Being polite to gods is probably a smart move,” Maya told me with a nod of approval. “Especially for an invoker who specializes in divine magic.”
I nodded at that. “That policy has paid off so far.”
“Hey,” Bunny abruptly blurted out. “Look…”
Bunny pointed off to the side, and when I stepped closer, I could see that it was a severed arm. A sword was on the ground just a few feet away from the arm, along with a lot of blood.
“Holy shit,” Ace exclaimed. “There’s blood all over here…”
“No wonder,” I said, still looking at the arm. I took a deep breath before saying, “Wolf. He was the only one of them with a sword, and that looks like his arm.”
“Blood all over the ground,” Maya commented. “A severed arm.” Then she moved towards the nearby drop off, gesturing to both the blood and scuff marks all over the ground. “It looks like he probably went over the edge.”
I moved to the edge and looked down, seeing a steep cliff with a raging river down below. I seriously doubted that anyone could have survived that fall, and considering the arm and blood loss…
“It looks like they decided Wolf was expendable,” I stated. “Not surprising, considering how little he helped them during that fight.”
“Poor bastard,” Turtle commented. “He didn’t deserve that. He was a good guy.”
“A good guy who got caught up with a bad crowd,” I agreed, remembering how he’d helped us during the earlier fight. Sure, he’d thrown me into a pile of monsters, but he’d saved our lives in the process.
“And it looks like Wolf isn’t the only one having problems,” Maya said.
Maya gestured to the large hammer that was sitting off to the side, apparently abandoned. That was the same hammer that Jace had been using during our last fight. I didn’t see any signs of her body, but… My eyes went to the cliff again.
“Do you think Raze killed her too?” Bunny asked.
“Who knows,” Ace responded with a shrug. “For all we know, she found a better weapon instead.”
“Either way,” Maya pointed out. “Our enemies are down one…maybe even two members.”
“That’s good for us,” Turtle said with a chuckle. “It will make things easier.”
“Maybe,” I responded, looking around for anything else we might have missed. “But, we don’t have a magic compass leading us to them anymore, so we’re back to tracking them the hard way.”
Ace just shrugged dismissively at that. “I’m sure we’ll find a trail of dead monsters before long. I don’t think Raze can help himself.”
I gave a short chuckle at that. “You might be right.”
We began walking down the path ahead of us, confident that it was the right direction, because for now, it was the only path available. It didn’t take long before Ace’s prediction was proven to be correct. We found the first dead monster.
The monster was humanoid in shape and reminded me of a minotaur, except instead of having a bull’s head, it had a ram’s head instead, with those big curving horns that they were known for. The whole body was covered with short but thick grey fur.
“At least we know what type of monsters are around here,” Turtle said.
“One of them,” Bunny quickly added. “There may be more than one type.”
“And at least we have proof that they went this way,” Maya added. “Hopefully, they’ll continue to be this accommodating.”
“I just hope we don’t get jumped by any of these ramotaurs,” Turtle said with a sigh. “We don’t have time to waste it fighting monsters. Not if we want to catch up to those guys.”
It was another ten minutes before the first living ramotaur appeared. Three of them leapt down from the top of a ridge that ran above us, landing just a short distance away. All three of them resembled the body that we’d already seen, though each one had slightly different fur colors.
“Well, this is inconvenient,” Turtle announced as he stepped forward and braced himself with his shield at the ready.
Olivia held up her staff with one hand while gesturing with the other. A moment later, she unleashed one of her shockwaves, catching the ramotaurs and knocking them all back. One of them actually tumbled back off the edge of the cliff and fell down below.
“Good shot,” Ace announced as he opened fire with both of his scepters.
One of Ace’s scepters was familiar, while the new one that he’d acquired from Mike had a somewhat different effect. A blue beam of energy shot out and hit one of the ramotaurs in the chest, leaving a thick patch of ice where it struck.
The ramotaur that Ace hit moved forward, though rather slowly. Bunny fired her scepter at the other ramotaur, but it leapt over the attack and came right at us. Turtle jumped at the thing, hitting it with his shield and shoving it back toward the drop off cliff. I blasted it with an ‘Invocation of Spite’ to speed it on its way.
Mere seconds after the fight started, only one of the ramotaurs remained. It charged towards Olivia, but a swarm of aggressive rabbits all pounced on it at once. And as soon as it swung at them, trying to shake them loose, Maya rushed in from the side and drove her spear straight into it’s chest.
The ramotaur collapsed to its knees and tried to pull the spear loose, but it was clear that it was already too late. Then, just to make sure, Sir Flufff drove his own rapier right into the monster’s throat. It gurgled something, then collapsed forward, no longer moving at all.
“Well, that was a nice bit of exercise,” Turtle commented. “But if there are a lot of these things around, then I think we can almost count on finding a trail of bodies to follow.”
“As long we get to them fast enough,” Olivia reminded us. “Bodies don’t last forever.”
“Then we’d better get moving,” Maya said. “We can’t risk them getting too far ahead.”
“Same old story,” Turtle said with a sigh. “Same old story.”