Eliona's War 2: Veiled Healer

Chapter 25

Even though they were minutes away from finishing the dungeon, the Ruins still had some fight left.

Stone rumbled from either side of the platform, warning of the next danger. Large square blocks pushed out of the walls, and two pairs of cannons poked through the new openings.

Severance looked from one side to the other. These cannons were new. And if that wasn't bad enough, familiar screeching and chattering came with the arrival of the cannons.

More monkeys. How many did this dungeon have?

Red light flashed across his vision. He blinked and raised a hand to shield his eyes. What was-?

"Watch out!" Awesome Dude lunged and shoved him aside. Orange light flashed. A wave of hot air collided with them, while a thunderclap of sound boomed. Severance staggered, the breath knocked out of him.

"What was that?!"

"The cannons!" Awesome Dude shouted. "Watch for the cannons!"

Red light spilled onto the platform like crimson spotlights, tracking across the floor. There were four, one for each cannon. Once Severance realized what was going on, it wasn't all that difficult to stay out of their path. The monkeys, however, made things a little challenging.

They split apart into three groups—one each heading for Awesome Dude and Severance, and the third making a beeline for Ironhide. Awesome Dude ran to intercept the last group.

Severance kited his parade of grimli along the edge of the platform—there were too many to fight at once, and the only two attack skills he could freely use were Pivot Cut and Skyfall. All the others had a cast time, which didn't exactly work very well when being mauled by naked monkeys.

One of the monkeys chasing him abruptly dropped, an arrow buried in its skull. It hadn't even made a sound. Severance didn't stop running, but he cast a glance upwards at Atrocity's pillar. The Wanderer was too high to be seen, yet somehow, he'd managed to snipe a monkey from that distance.

That kind of accuracy on a moving target from so far away was something else. Severance led his pack of monkeys around in a wide, angling path, avoiding the red targeting lights from the cannons. If he made them an easy target, surely Atrocity would be able to pick them off one at a time.

While he did so, Awesome Dude used a different method. He purposely ran through the cannons' targeting lights, leading his monkeys straight into the jaws of death. It took three cannon blasts to take out nearly all of them. And all he had to do was run around and get the timing right.

By then, Atrocity had sniped three more monkeys, which left Severance two to deal with. That was much more manageable, and he was able to stop and Pivot Cut to the other side of them, then use Skyfall to cut down one. The last monkey fell when an arrow punched through the back of its head.

"Mend," Severance muttered. He wiped the back of his gloved hand across his face to get some of the blood spatter off his face. A swirl of warmth restored some of his health. Though he'd managed to avoid most of the monkeys' crazed attacks, he still got clipped by a few.

A boom echoed across the platform, and he turned to see his friend run out of a cloud of thick smoke, cackling with glee. Awesome Dude's face was smeared in soot and ash. Four monkeys had survived the last blast, and so he steered right into the nearest targeting beam of light.

"Ward." Severance tossed the shield on the Shade, then followed it with a Mend. Surprisingly, Awesome Dude hadn't taken too much damage from his reckless cat-and-mouse game with cannon balls and monkeys.

But that changed in a blink of an eye.

As it turned out, even naked monkeys could learn a new trick.

Three ran around the red lightbeam of doom. The fourth leapt onto Awesome Dude's back like a wildcat, tackling him to the ground. In that moment where he was caught off guard and stunned, the red tracking light swept over them both. It stopped.