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| Fire Wyrm - Reference image from "Gothic Dragon" by Anne Stokes - www.annestokes.com |
Robert goes into the next room with widened eyes, although
nothing can put surprise or shock on the sad-looking ranger here. No matter how
horrifying the situation is. The room is as vast as the rooms for the prime
guardians: giant wind elemental, giant rock golem, and ice elemental generator,
but it’s multiple times as dangerous. There’s a vast lava pit in there deep
down the floor, with only pillars of stone for anyone to walk on. The stone paths
are of various sizes and shapes like half-cut meteorites, floating above the
pit. and the large ones can be stepped by four or five people. It’s just like a
miniature of hell, just like Carolyn’s thought. There’s no choice but to defeat
the guardian and maybe the door to the exit will be revealed.
Robert thinks. If this is a guardian room, where is the guardian?
Robert sees Kyflynn and his team are
already there, also with Sheena, Baxter and Ellephar. They stand scattered on
the stone pillars, and it looks like they are waiting for something to come out
from the lava pit. Dar’gum and some hunters from Robert’s group are already
there, standing by on the stone pillars although they don’t know what or who they
are dealing with.
‘RRRRAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!’
And there
it is, coming out from the lava pit. A fiery red dragon comes up with its
abnormally long body (or just neck?), with menacing horns on its head and rows
of big yellow sharp teeth on its mouth. Seeing its targets, it blows fire from
its mouth to a pillar, and a hunter on it gets scorched and falls into the lava
pit.
Satisfied with the result, the dragon goes
down to the pit again, maybe to get a second helping of lava to recharge its
fire power. Kyflynn, the nearest champion to the dragon seizes this opportunity
and leaps to another stone pillar. He somersaults in mid-air and dives
vertically, thrusting his daggers to the dragon’s head with his Soul Splitting Drill move. The dagger
hits the head but cannot penetrate the hide yet. Maybe Kyflynn believes that
the thick hide on the top of the dragon’s head is its only weak spot.
The dragon
roars in pain. Its head is indeed its weak point, and there’s a crack on it. It
seems that it was hit two times with such a force, and it’s uncertain how many
times the head must be hit so the hide will be smashed and one more hit will
destroy its brain and kills the dragon. The dragon immediately darts itself up
again to bite Kyflynn as a counterattack, but Kyflynn ingeniously steps on the
dragon’s snout and leaps to the nearest stone pillar – to safety.
As it
leaps, we can see that the longest part of the red dragon is indeed its body,
with four legs to crawl on the pillars and to leap upwards. Its tail is like an
arrowhead. One can tell that this dragon is not originally from Aurelia – but
from the far eastern realms of Ashura and Wushu. One must have been there or
from Ashura or Wushu in order to summon it here. It’s called fire wyrm in Aurelia:
a cross-section between a dragon and a giant serpent that lives in lava pits.
The wyrm dives,
it chomps a huntress before she can do anything to resist or avoid it. The
cruel monster moves its head upwards, tosses the dying huntress upwards and
eats her whole. Then it dives quickly, directly into the lava pit. Carolyn
almost pukes on seeing this brutality, but before she can say or even think
about it, the fire wyrm comes up again and shoots fire at the hunters – this
time to Alexis.
Before the
fire reaches him, Alexis calmly but quickly connects the hilts of his twin
swords Im’colath the Black Sword and Im’htaloc the White Sword into a
double-edged sword Colathtaloc. Alexis
swings it rapidly like a rotating fan, creating a wind strong enough to blow
the fire away. The runes on the twin swords glow green, means that it uses wind
property to reinforce the Last Stand of
the Eagle skill.
And then
when the fire ceases and the wyrm comes down, Alexis splits his sword and
attacks the wyrm’s head with a concentrated Eagle
Fishing on the Lake double-thrust that utilizes water property. But before
the thrust lands on the dragon’s head, a second jet of fire hits Alexis on his
side, sending him falling into the lava pit.
The fire
came from a second wyrm, which came from the pit as the first one went in – the
wyrm with the cracked crust on its head.
Alexis is
now in a hopeless state, and he thinks. This
is it. I’m falling into my own doom… but, wait! What is this? I… I stopped! I’m
floating! I’m flying upwards! Someone’s levitating me!
The Crown Prince of Arcadia tries to see
his rescuer. It’s a sorcerer with shabby, torn robe like a Vadisian monk,
wearing a hood that hides his face completely. But the strange thing is, he’s
shorter than average humans, and has odd-looking long ears and long feet like
rabbit’s protruding from under his hood.
As he lands safely on the stone path,
Alexis says, ‘Thank you…’ to his rescuer.
The sorcerer only takes a semi-low bow as
response, and immediately treats Alexis’ burn wound with Viavitali – the Great Heal spell.
On the other hand, Iris is greatly alarmed
by the fact that there are two Fire Wyrms to deal with now, thinking, wyrms, like dragons, are immune to ordinary
magic. I must apply a greater force on this one! Iris summons Eshmyria, the Spirit of the
Wind again. And Agustina, who silently thinks of a way to block the fire and
assist the hunters, seeing Iris’ action, casts, ‘An Jokulion Aschi!’ She
moves her Frost Wand six ways.
Suddenly a portal, a round layer with a
shining hexagram appears in front of Agustina, exactly like what happened with
Iris when she summoned Eshmyria. The only difference is that from the portal comes
the Spirit of Ice, the Frost Knight, Jokulion. He looks like a man wearing and
wielding everything crystal: full armor, crystal sword, crystal shield, crystal
helm and mask. And he stands as tall as Eshmyria, and they stand side-by-side
to face the wyrm.
The wyrm shoots fire at Eshmyria, but the
shot is blocked by Jokulion with his crystal shield. Then Iris yells, ‘Now,
Eshmyria! Raduyev Eshmyriad!’ Eshmyria
sends huge bolts of Typhoon and
concentrates the attack on the wyrm’s cracked crust on its head. The cluster of
typhoons go drilling and slashing, no matter how hard the wyrm tries to avoid
them. And Jokulion adds the damage by thrusting and slashing his sword so many
times on the weakened spot, creating an effect like Tina’s Blizzard Blast spell. At last the crust cracks open, and the
attacks go on and destroy the wyrm’s brain and head. Only after that the
attacks cease, and the wyrm falls lifeless into the lava pit.
But then Jokulion’s spirit suddenly
vanishes. The second wyrm, who appears to be the dead wyrm’s mate, is now real
furious to see its male’s death. Being instinctly intelligent, it attacks
Jokulion’s summoner, Agustina with another jet of fire and breaks her concentration.
But thanks to the ice aura that covered her during the summoning, the fire
didn’t hurt Agustina much but a light burn. As Agustina is standing on a
one-man stone path, Desmond, her partner can’t jump there to protect her and he
just grits his teeth regretfully.
Iris immediately casts another Typhoon through her avatar, Eshmyria.
She obviously hopes that this attack can finish the female wyrm off as well.
But to her disappointment, the healthy wyrm can dodge most of her bolts – only
three bolts manage to drill cracks on the wyrm’s forehead.
Now it’s Hernan’s turn to spring into
action, as he is the nearest to the wyrm and he needs to deliver an attack
before the wyrm moves or attacks again. To his delight, the wyrm goes down to
recharge its fire power.
Suddenly Hernan feels a surge of power
within him, as he feels nimbler and quicker than his usual self. It’s the
result of Eidos Crydias’ Haste spell,
specially cast with his Chrono Chakram and
Tome of Time and Tide to assist
Hernan, a very handy spell as ‘the romancing fencer’ is not in his full health.
Feeling that no time should be wasted on thanks, Hernan leaps very high above
the wyrm’s head. And with a beautiful somersault, he attacks the wyrm’s
forehead with Shears of the Falling Rain,
a water-based, downward multiple-thrusts technique. The attack makes an open
crack on the wyrm’s head. A slash on its brain will send it to wyrms’ paradise
to meet its deceased spouse.
A stray arrow that was targeted to the wyrm
hits Hernan’s foot instead – another part of his body that is not protected by
the Mythril Armor of Eil’thanath. Hernan
roars in pain, and falls way down towards the lava pit. But thanks to his extra
speed from Eidos, Hernan manages to grab a thorn on the wyrm’s body and hangs
there.
Meanwhile, the wyrm is in pain. It changes
its mind, instead of going down, it leaps upwards to deliver a desperate final
attack and devour all its attackers. The wyrm tries not to fall into the lava
pit at the risk of burning its brain. It lands on a stone path, crushing two
hunters standing on it. Robert delivers an Air
Slash towards it but misses. The wyrm moves very quickly horizontally, and
leaps to another path with Paliades and Eidos on it. Paliades swings his great
hammer upwards, and hits the wyrm’s jaw with his Earthquake Epicenter hammer slam, a far more powerful and
concentrated skill than Megaton Impact. The
one hit alone sends the wyrm flinging backwards.
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