Mage Tank

Animate Object

Spiritual

Cost: 20 mana reserved

Cooldown: 1 minute

Requirements: CHA 20, Spiritual Magic 20

You extend your will into an inanimate object, causing it to spring to life and act according to your wishes. Animated Objects gain a flying speed equal to your CHA, and you can communicate with the Object telepathically so long as it is within a number of feet of you equal to your Spiritual Magic level. The Object has normal vision and hearing, even if it wouldn’t have the physiological capacity to do so normally, and can follow verbal or gestural instructions from you in lieu of telepathy if required.

Animated Objects can be directed to perform any task for which they were designed on their own, such as a frying pan cooking eggs or a pen writing on paper. If the Object would have to make an INT, CHA, or WIS check, it uses your scores to do so. Otherwise, it has a score of 0 in all attributes. If the Object would be used in a way it wasn’t intended, you must first teach it to perform that task.

If the Object is a weapon, it can make attacks with itself according to its design by using your CHA score as the governing attack attribute. However, if the weapon has a stat requirement that is higher than your CHA, or a skill requirement that is higher than your Spiritual Magic level, you cannot animate it.

I’d seen Grotto animate tools in the past, but it seemed the Delve Core had upgraded the ability into a full-blown active skill. Whatever had happened in his challenge with Xim, the little octo had come out of the other side with some improvements.

When the scepter struck Fly’s clone, the insect not only bled, but the cracks in its carapace shone with a dull blue light. It recoiled from the strike but didn’t lose focus on whatever spell was charging with its baton.

[Move close to me!] Grotto demanded of us.

I was halfway to following up Grotto’s attack with my own but flew back on my wings with my shield raised. The shadows behind me parted to reveal Nuralie, who was drawing another arrow. I prepared to throw Somncres, but Fly’s skill activated before I had the chance.

The dark energy around each baton collapsed into a tiny point at the end of the weapons, and the weight on our souls disappeared. Then, the specks of foul mana shot toward us.

The moment I got a taste of the skill, I immediately used Dispel. I no longer had a half-dozen enemies to distract me and I had a feeling this was going to be much worse than Raise Dead. The speck disappeared from in front of the original Fly, and her face twisted in fury while my mind recoiled from the cost of the Dispel. Whatever Fly was casting had at least 85 mana wrapped up in it. It was a massive amount for a spell she’d produced and fired off in under a second.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t Dispel again before the clone’s attack was upon us.

You have observed the Ego Splinter spell.

Ego Splinter

Spiritual

Cost: 25 mana plus 5 mana/ second

Requirements: INT 40, Spiritual Magic 40

Reach out and crush the mind of an enemy with your will alone. Make an INT Spiritual attack against an entity you can see, dealing Psychic damage if successful. If this damage exceeds the target’s WIS, they become Stunned for 6 seconds.

For every 6 seconds this spell was charged:

You deal an additional amount of Psychic damage equal to your INT;

You may target 1 additional entity with this spell; and

Affected entities are Stunned for 6 seconds longer.

The bead of psychic energy split in 3, each one streaking toward a member of the party. Based on the spell’s description, it made little sense. Fly hadn’t spent anywhere near an extra 12 seconds channeling the spell. Either the baton or some other ability had significantly empowered the ability, and I was terrified of what might have happened had we been hit by two of them.

Grotto alone had not been targeted, his sucker punch with the scepter apparently insufficient to deem him worthy of having his brain melted. Fly might have changed her mind about Grotto’s level of threat if she’d known how much he was about to royally fuck her over.

Of course, even I hadn’t known how much Grotto was about to royally fuck her over. I didn’t know Grotto could fuck her over as hard as he was about to.

As the foul specks fired toward us like high-caliber rifle rounds, Grotto pulled out another new spell.

Rebuke

Divine

Cost: 10 mana

Cooldown: 1 minute

Requirements: CHA 30, Divine 30

You instantly create a barrier of divine light that shields you from harm while striking back against your aggressors. You gain Shielding equal to your Divine Magic skill level + your CHA, which lasts for 1 minute. Within 6 seconds of activating this skill, whenever another entity deals damage to you, that entity takes the same amount as Holy damage up to a maximum equal to the Shielding this skill provided.

The spell alone would have been useless since it only applied to Grotto and Grotto wasn’t a target of the enemy’s spell. However, Grotto had been the first person to teach me anything about mana shaping, and he was fully capable of putting his lessons into practice.

Rebuke spread out to everyone within 10 feet of my familiar, blanketing me, Xim, and Nuralie in shields of holy retribution.

You have gained 64 Shielding!

I intercepted the speck with Gracorvus, my Spell Breaker evolution allowing me to block some of the otherwise ethereal spell damage. Gracorvus failed to stop the attack, and it passed through before piercing my bascinet. My helm’s spiritually resistant mana weaves further dampened the attack before it finally crashed into Grotto’s Shielding. The psychic energy tore through the divine protection and moved forward unabated, beginning to invade my mind.

I felt my identity under attack, a profound sense of dread overwhelming my thoughts. The spell’s remaining power assaulted me from within and tendrils of lashing pain scraped across the inside of my skull. My consciousness flickered as my Spiritual resistances were tested.

HP: 239 -> 215

You have resisted Ego Splinter’s Stun effect!

As I blinked and cleared my head of the mental assault, I saw shards of golden light surrounding the three of us who’d been targeted. They glinted with razor’s edges as though made from broken glass. There were hundreds of them, and they all blasted through the air at Fly, leaving brilliant streaks of light in their wake.

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However, every second fragment veered away from Fly, moving instead to assault the Arcane Goliath across the room. Fly had some kind of damage transfer active, which meant the Goliath was essentially a secondary health pool for the summoner. The Goliath’s back chipped and crumbled under the hits, but it looked like the summon had a lot of HP. The rest of the shards hit Fly like a machine gun, her body jerking under the impact, gouts of dark blood spraying out as each fragment exploded with Holy damage.

I took a moment to assess myself and my allies. If even a single layer of my defenses had been absent, that spell would have Stunned me for 18 seconds, leaving me immobile and unable to act. In a fight at this level, that may have well been a death sentence. But my allies didn’t have the same resilience that I did and Grotto’s Shielding had only been able to do so much.

Blood ran freely from Nuralie’s nose and mouth, her eyes rolled back into her head so that only the white of her sclera was visible. Her bow hung slack in her hand and she swayed absently, body spasming.

Xim, on the other hand, looked pissed. She continued to channel her Icon, keeping the rest of our enemies locked down with Fear, but I could tell she was barely managing to contain herself from violence as she spat some blood onto the ground. Behind her, the Wraith she’d ignited let out a final shrill scream, then collapsed into a pile of ash.

I turned back to Fly and her copy. The Holy damage had done work on the original, but the damage transfer had allowed her to weather it. The clone, on the other hand, hadn’t transferred any damage to the Goliath from Grotto’s scepter attack. That hit had also done some decent damage, despite being little more than a standard attack. I figured I should test out how fragile the copy was.

I hurled Somncres at the clone, creating 4 Void Hammers as I readied two of my normal throwing hammers with my tentacles. My abdomen screamed when I made the toss. I was still cut open enough for me to worry my guts might spill out. In fact, some of them may have. I hadn’t been willing to look down and check. Regardless, I was still able to put good force behind the throw.

Fly’s clone tried to dash away on her mount–which moved faster than anything I’d seen aside from Roach–but Homing Weapon kept the hammers on target. I went ahead and threw the two hammers I held in my feelers, using Hammerang to arc their trajectory and come at the clone from the opposite angle. She tried to a stop, mount rearing up as the hammers closed in, leaving her little room to dodge. She failed to react in time, struggling with her momentum and the hammers crashed into her in quick succession.

It turned out to have been overkill. The hammers crushed her carapace and blinked away chunks of both the clone and its undead mount. Only half of the hammers had landed before blue fissures bloomed from the wounds on Fly’s clone and her body shattered into a million motes of glimmering light.

With Cricket, Butterbie, the Wraith, and the clone down, we were finally back to facing down 4 enemies again. Thankfully, 3 of them were in abject terror of Xim, trying to dig their way out of the room with tooth and claw.

While I executed the clone, Grotto floated away from Xim and landed on my shoulder.

[May I borrow a pair of tentacles?] he asked.

“Absolutely,” I thought back to him.

When I’d first picked up Therianthropy, there’d been some concern that the cognitive load of having so many new limbs would make them unwieldy. While that hadn’t been the sort of roadblock Varrin had worried that it might be, using my tentacles in addition to my arms, legs, and wings required a lot of focus and concentration.

I could use the tentacles effectively, but I wasn’t using them to their full potential. I just had too many things to think about. Even with 40 Intelligence and Wisdom, managing 8 limbs in high-level combat while also keeping track of everything both the enemy and my allies were doing pushed me to my limit. I’d considered the potential problem before accepting the evolution and had already formed some ideas on how to deal with the issue before I’d even taken the evo for a test drive.

Grotto flooded me with his psychic presence, then tapped into the soul connection we shared. I used Reveal to deliver my understanding of my physical body to Grotto, and we created a less complex version of the body-mind fusion that had allowed for Arlottog. For this combination, we retained our individual identities, but I was able to hand off control of my feelers to the core. The recently unlocked effect for the Traveler’s Amulet allowed Grotto to share all of my intrinsic skills, making the fusion even deadlier.

Now Grotto could throw hammers just as well as I could.

I activated my new and hitherto unused skill Aura of Perseverance, granting my allies 32 Shielding that regenerated over time. Grotto still had his Shielding granted from Rebuke and Shielding did not stack, sadly, but it would help ensure that Nuralie stayed safe while she was Stunned. Xim was moving to cover the loson, raising her Clockwork Gear shield and placing herself between Fly and our vulnerable ally while she channeled the Icon. Aura of Perseverance would also immediately pick up the slack if Grotto’s own Shielding failed. The little octo needed to stay close to me while we shared body parts, and he wasn’t nearly as bulletproof as I was. The extra layer of defense was a necessary part of the combo.

I also detached Gracorvus from my armguard, then handed control off to Grotto. Again, the core gained the benefit of my Shields skill, so he was just as effective at using the shield as I was. Surrendering control to the core allowed him to use Gracorvus in flight mode to protect himself if he were targeted. He could whip the shield around telepathically and draw upon his own mana pool to do so.

Another advantage of melding together this way was that Grotto traveled with me when I used Shortcut. Our soul bond extended the spell to include the core, and it also gave me some idea of how to mana-shape the spell to target more allies.

I teleported behind Fly and Grotto threw two hammers into her back. At the same time, the scepter he’d animated gave Fly a taste of what it had given her clone and smacked her in the face.

Grotto couldn’t use my active skills or stat evolutions–yet–so the hammers didn’t have Homing Weapon or Oblivion Orb attached. They still hurt. The hammers drilled into Fly’s kidneys and a sickening crunch could be heard as her carapace shattered beneath her wispy robes. The hammers clattered to the ground, but Grotto was already pulling two more from my inventory. I licked my lips as I considered the Giant Spiked Mace of the Bloody Jubilee we’d found earlier and the quickest way to get it into Grotto’s maniacal feelers.

Fly’s dashed away on her mount and spun, pointing the baton toward us and preparing a new spell. I steeled myself for something as broken as everything else she’d pulled out so far, ready for the tables to get flipped yet again.

It was a basic Psychic Bolt.

After Gracorvus, my bascinet, and my natural resistance, it didn’t even deal damage. In fact, I was pretty sure it was a wand charge. Summons weren’t cheap, and neither was that Ego Splinter spell. I kept an eye out for tricks, but Fly seemed to be well and truly juiced. Without the creatures she’d spent so much mana to summon backing her up, she was much easier to deal with.

She still lived up to the insect of her namesake, proving obnoxiously difficult to pin down even after her mana was dry. Half of all the damage we dealt was shunted to her Arcane Goliath, which was tanky as hell. She also turned herself and her steed incorporeal for an entire minute. That meant that all Physical damage didn’t do shit to her. Well, for the most part. We’d gotten an achievement after killing the specter of Orexis that allowed us to ignore 25% of incorporeal DR against Physical, but still! It was annoying.

Then… THEN! Once we’d actually managed to kill Fly, she came BACK to life with full health after 6 seconds! Seriously! She was harder to put down for good than I was! Fortunately, her Jesus ticket didn’t restore her mana and was only valid for one use. When Fly finally passed on, all of her summons went with her.

While Grotto and I took our new fusion skills for a test drive by beating Fly senseless over a very painful minute, Xim had eventually been forced to drop her Icon for mana reasons. Nuralie had recovered from being Stunned and Xim made sure to toss the loson a Heal. Our two teams juggled Fly’s minions between us, rotating aggro and control effects while we dealt with the real threats, but the pair mostly went to town on Roach.

While Roach was quick and deadly, her mental and magical defenses were pretty bad. Xim was able to Ignite and Fear the insectoid woman into oblivion while Nuralie landed arrows at weak points across the warrior’s body and poisoned the crap out of her.

Roach was nearly as difficult to kill for good as Fly, but in the end, only one true cockroach build was left standing.

And that was me, baby!

By the end of the fight, the room was a scorched and broken battlefield of shattered walls, exploded barriers, and mangled insect corpses. Xim and I looked over the bodies while mentally recovering. Eventually, Xim put a hand on her hip and frowned.

“We should probably have interrogated one of them.”

“None of them felt like talking earlier,” I said. “This was the fourth round of this shit, by the way.”

“Grotto could have probably gotten Roach to talk.”

I glanced back at my familiar, who gave me the octo equivalent of a shrug.

“Ah, I see,” I said. “You could have suggested it.”

“Eh, I was pissed.” She brushed some hair from her face and looked me over, her eyes lingering on my abdomen. “You know, some of your intestines are–”

“I don’t wanna hear about it,” I said, holding up a hand to stop her. I was still floating on my wings, unable to use the lower half of my body and steadfastly refusing to look down. “Just, please give me another Heal or two. You have no idea how much this hurts.”

“No problem,” she said. “But we should take off your armor first. I need to stuff them back in before I cast.” She moved to start undoing the straps on my cuirass. “Wouldn’t want them to get stuck on the outside.”

“Right,” I said with a groan.

I really hoped the others showed up before the next wave.

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