Destination: Thataway!

by Hawattie

Late to the Boss Fight

I stared sadly at the smoldering crater which used to be a snack table. A single tear rolled down my cheek as I mourned the wasted snacks.

With hindsight, I probably should have seen it coming: The Courier, being a naturally suspicious guy, didn't trust Ner' as far as he could throw him. He had kept an eye out for an opening and, when Ner' focused his attention on the sorceress's book-learning spell, the seasoned fighter saw an opportunity. He whipped out an explosive of some flavor and tried to blow the necromancer up. As I'd discovered earlier, Ner' is almost immune to surprise attacks and was easily able to deflect the explosive away from himself.

Unfortunately for the snack table, Ner' nailed it with the deflected explosive. "That went better in my head," the Courier remarked sheepishly. I leveled my angriest glare at the Courier. My glare was so fierce it nearly had an actual effect!

"I tried that already," I said. Ner' nodded in agreement. "It only worked once."

"Only the madman and the fool don't learn from their mistakes," Ner' quipped.

A sudden gunshot rang out. The Courier had a gun out and it was smoking; so no prizes for figuring out who the gunshot came from. Ner's hoof moved faster than my eye could follow and he caught the bullet, just like he had back at the train. "Didn't you already t-?" Ner' started to taunt.

The Courier cut Ner' off by rapidly firing the rest of his clip. The necromancer's eyes widened in surprise. He somehow dodged the first two bullets by the skin of his teeth, then fired a bolt from the Pawner straight into the ground. Upon impact, thick stone tendrils surged upwards and encased Ner'Ghalad in a protective cocoon which harmlessly deflected the rest of the Courier's bullets.

"Why the hell am I doing all the work?!" the Courier shouted as he reloaded. "Get off your asses and help me kill this bastard!"

My friends all jumped into action. The Sorceress assumed a stable stance and began charging a powerful spell. Fphant disappeared. Unique was handing bottles to Aquapony, who was dumping them all over the floor. I resolved to have a word with them later about wasting perfectly good drinks.

I remembered that I was apparently some sort of elemental weirdo with superpowers and started firing lasers at Ner's rocky shield. My attack had less of an effect than the Courier's had. "This isn't working!" I exclaimed.

"Get out of the way!" the Sorceress shouted. I looked behind myself and found that -somehow- I was directly in her line of fire. Her horn glowed like a bonfire, crackling sparks spat out and scorched the nearby floor, her teeth were grit with concentration as she struggled to contain her spell. I jumped out of the way a moment before she let loose. It probably looked epic.

A roiling pillar of brilliant arcane energy roared forth from the Sorceress's horn. The magical energy slammed into Ner's stone cocoon with tremendous force. The stone splintered and cracked before breaking altogether. The spell continued for a moment before abating.

The smoke cleared to reveal Ner' crouched in a defensive position, slightly charred but mostly unharmed, aiming his loaded crossbow straight at the Sorceress as she recovered.

Before he could fire, Fphant punched him in the face.

Ner' spun to face this new foe, but could not find him. The Courier took advantage of Ner's moment of distraction to shoot the Pawner out of his grip. The crossbow spun through the air in a high arc and landed with a clatter at Unique Blend's hooves.

The bartender picked up the magic crossbow and aimed it at the necromancer. "That worked out nicely," I commented.

Ner' glare was murderous. His horn blazed with dark grey fire and his eyes followed suit. The dark energy spread from Ner's horn and eyes to cover his head, and continued to envelop his entire body. A sound similar to tearing fabric accompanied Ner'Ghalad's sudden shift. The dark grey flames dripped from Ner's hide like honey, pooling about his hooves.

I blinked, so I missed what happened next.

The spot where Ner' had been standing was empty. Unique was cowering up against a wall, covering his head with his hooves and the Pawner. Mere feet away, a struggling Ner' was being held at bay by the pony who I had expected to be the least useful during this fight.

And damn, Aquapony looked badass right then. He'd formed the water from all the drinks he'd dumped earlier into a suit of armor which protected him from Ner's dark flames. Aquapony grunted, his watery armor rippled, and he threw Ner' clear across the room into the far wall.

The stone wall cracked when Ner's body struck it, giving everyone watching a visual clue as to how hard he'd been thrown. However, Aquapony wasn't done. His water armor melted and split, half of it flowed up into his hooves and coalesced into a mighty trident. Aquapony hefted the trident with confidence as the second half of his water coiled under his rear hooves like springs. With a splash and a jet of water Aquapony launched himself at Ner', trident held out menacingly.

"Enough!" Ner' shouted. The dark fire exploded away from him in an expanding bubble. The energy wave hit Aquapony and batted him away like a ball. I saw his watery armor evaporate from the fire's heat. By the time the dark fire reached the rest of us most of its power had dissipated, but it still staggered us. My eyebrows got singed and I glared an eyebrow-less glare at Ner'.

While we recovered Ner' cast a spell. Bones of all shapes and sizes flew out of nowhere and coalesced around him. I very swiftly lost sight of his body within the growing bone mass. Once enough bones had been gathered, the mass began to take shape. A half-dozen long, articulated legs erupted from the mass. Each leg was coated in spikes and ended in vicious rending claws. Jagged edges and points sprouted from the construct, and it gained a vaguely arachnid shape.

Faintly, his voice muffled by bone, I heard Ner' cry, "This isn't even my final form, yet!" With startling swiftness, the bone construct charged our motley crew. Dark fire blazed up in its wake, coating a swathe of the room.

We scattered. Ner's construct veered to follow Unique Blend, who still had the Pawner. I found myself running parallel to the construct with a wonderful opportunity to do something stupid.

I coated my front in a shaped shield of solid light, let out a dignified war-cry, and tackled the spiky construct. My impact knocked Ner' off course a split second before he eviscerated Unique and we both went tumbling to the ground. Several of Ner's spikes impaled me, but I was a hell of a lot more durable than Unique.

Slightly muffled, I heard Ner' cackling wildly. A violent glow welled up inside the construct. A noise similar to a scream rent the air.

All of the construct's bones exploded out in a deadly spray of shrapnel and eldritch fire. My friends took cover. The shards ripped right through me, cauterizing as they went. I dropped to the ground in a heap.

Hovering in the epicenter of the explosion, unscathed, was Ner'Ghalad. Unholy fire dripped from his hooves and mane. A manic gleam was in his eyes.

And then he broke the world.

Great fissures split the room. A howling gale stormed through the rents, knocking everyone to the ground. The stone walls crumbled away, leaving us stranded on a tiny, disintegrating platform.

For a heartbeat I felt as if we were surrounded by something enormous and powerful and chaotic beyond comprehension.

The next moment we found ourselves inside a box made of glass. Small mirrors drifted at random just beyond the glass, reflecting our bewildered faces. Outside, it was pitch black. There was nothing but glass under our feet.

At roughly the same time, we each individually became aware that Ner' was missing. Before anyone could panic, a dark laugh echoed menacingly from beyond the mirrors.

I saw something swish in my peripheral vision, but when I turned to look it was gone. The others appeared just as bewildered as I was.

A brilliant glow of unholy light to my left dazzled me. I raised a hoof up to shield my vision, and realized I had just blocked my view of one of the mirrors. I turned to look where the mirror had reflected just as Ner' fired a giant laser beam at my face. The laser passed through the glass box faster than a blink.

I didn't have time to react. I sort of cringed away and closed my eyes at the last moment. Not a very dignified way to die, I suppose.

Several seconds later, as the sounds of the laser was replaced with a dull ringing, I realized I wasn't dead. Warily, I cracked an eye open to find everyone staring at me in shock.

I tried to bluff it off. "Why are you all staring at me like that? You all know I'm way too great to die like that." Fphant face-palmed. The Sorceress rolled her eyes.

"It's not that," Aquapony said, "It's..." He trailed off, at a loss for words, and simply resorted to gesturing towards my body. I was glowing bright pink like a living neon sign.

"Oh."

Combat paused for a moment as I imagined my brightly glowing hoof. Ner' drifted past our glass box to get a closer look. I saw him reflected in half a dozen mirrors as he floated weightlessly past. It was rather disorienting, which I think was the whole point of this battlefield. "Remarkable," Ner' remarked. He casually lit up his horn and all the mirrors began darting about in a dizzying dance. I soon lost track of the real Ner' amid his reflected copies.

I tried to shoot a laser at the Ner' I thought was the real one, but something different happened. All of the pink light gathered into my hoof and infused my blast as it was fired. Basically, instead of the normal laser beam I fired a much bigger laser beam.

Ner'Ghalad cackled as my much bigger laser bounced off a mirror and towards a yelping Courier. It singed his coat as he dove out of the way. "Watch it!" the man shouted. It looked like he wanted to shoot Ner', but didn't want to break the floor.

The Sorceress had no such problems, as she fired off some kind of spell which passed right through the glass but made a large section of Ner's mirrors shatter. The necromancer was exposed and I fired a normal laser at him. He blocked it effortlessly and responded with a volley of lasers directed towards everyone but me.

My friends all scrambled for safety. Someone bumped into me and we both went sprawling. The smell of singed hair filled the air and I took stock of my friends. Miraculously, none of them took a direct hit. Several of them were grazed, but nobody was down for the count. I helped the Sorceress to her hooves and wondered at our luck.

Before Ner' could press his advantage, combat was interrupted yet again. A small hole in reality opened up near Ner's head and a reptilian hand clutching a letter poked through the hole. Ner' silently grabbed the letter and dropped a small wicker effigy into the waiting hand. The hand retreated and hole sealed with a pop as Ner' opened the letter. He retrieved a cue card from the envelope and, after reading a couple of lines, heaved a deep sigh.

"Enough. Foolish infidels," Ner' deadpanned off the cue card. He silently read a couple lines then, with an unenthusiastic swish of his horn, the world around us abruptly shifted.

The glass box and dancing mirrors were gone. We found ourselves in a dirt floored coliseum. A looming doorway barred by a massive gate was set in the coliseum wall just in front of us. The stands were empty except for the necromancer, who stood above the gate.

"It's from The League," Ner' grumbled. "I'm behind on my cliche quota, so they sent me a script." He cleared his throat and droned off the card, "Bwa ha ha, now you face my ultimate creation."

Ner's horn lit up, but nothing happened for several seconds. Gradually, we became aware of a rhythmic thumping noise, almost like very many heavy footsteps approaching from great distance.

We all turned to face the gate, which started to rattle in its hinges.

The rattling grew louder and the ground started to shake.

We shared a grim glance and readied ourselves for a fight.

The gate rattled right off its hinges and clattered to the arena floor, revealing an empty hallway. The ground continued to tremble violently. Comprehension dawned and our eyes were drawn to the ground just as something erupted from it in a violent explosion of dirt and rock, tossing us all like rag-dolls this way and thataway.

Author's Note:

Is this chapter a year and a half late?
...Yes.
Does anyone care about this story?
...
It's almost done.

Comments

[Legion222]

"It's from The League," Ner' grumbled. "I'm behind on my cliche quota, so they sent me a script."

The League Of Super Evil, by chance?

Man, I’ve missed this. Glad to have it back from the dead and not horribly zombified!