Chapter One Hundred and Fifty Seven - 157The Bishops of Hunger, each around the same size as a Knight, loped from the shadows. Their prehensile limbs, seemingly boneless appendages, arced behind them like a handful of scorpion stingers while they ran on all fours. Even their hands were strangely shaped, tipped with yellowed claws that tored into the stone tunnel without issue.
"Felix! On me!" Harn shouted.
Convergence!
Pit appeared in a flash of light nearby. "Pit! Stay out of their range and pummel them with everything you got!"
"Chirrrupp!"
"Felix!" Harn was already running.
Unfettered Volition!
The Bishops had halved the distance between their group, but they were ready for them. Sparkbolts blasted into the lead Bishop's mouth, causing it's to snap it closed in pain. A cobalt blast stabbed into the other, but it was deflected by the heavy scales along the creature's shoulders. The same was true of a series of Frost Spears, each of them shattering ineffectually on the Bishop's hide.
Stone Shaping!
Felix grunted as he lifted two ten foot tall slabs of stone from the ground fifteen feet ahead of the monstrosities. Three feet thick each, he figured it would at least give them a little extra time to attack. Yet the Bishops sped up, and with a snarling roar both of them crashed through the barriers, tearing them to pieces in the process.
And dropping right into the trench Felix had formed.
The first Bishop roared as it fell, impacting the earth forty feet below, but the second nimbly grabbed onto the sides with it's flexible stingers. The bone spurs punched into the stone and it leveraged it's wide bulk out of danger. Within moments, it's blind, gaping jaws were on the other side of the trench. Just in time to feel the hit of Harn's axes.
The man struck with the steady beat of a metronome, hit after hit, paced between the beast's furious counterattacks. Bloody lines appeared on the Bishop's scaled hide, though they began to heal before much damage could be inflicted.
Time to change that.
Influence of the Wisp!
Wrack and Ruin!
Wrack and Ruin!
A Bishop of Hunger is Enthralled for 2 Seconds!
Blue wisplight wreathed the Bishop in punitive flames and it came to a lurching stop. Two seconds was time enough for Felix to summon twin orbs of dark acid. He hurled them straight forward; with the enemy locked in place, aiming was far simpler. The orbs hit the Bishop with the crack of a baseball beaning a man at ninety miles and hour, while the smell of sizzling putrescence filled the air.
Influence of the Wisp is level 36!
Wrack and Ruin is level 35!
"That's disgustin'," Harn said. He pivoted and summoned silver flames onto his axes before bringing both of them down on the creature's shoulder. They bit deep, unleashing a fountain of dark ichor that splashed over the warrior. "BLECH!"
"Ha," Felix managed, sliding beneath the suddenly flailing limbs of the unfrozen Bishop. The creature wasn't so easy to fool; the eight stingers he counted all moved in opposing directions, striking almost randomly around itself as Felix attempted to dodge. But it wasn't random; each hit maneuvered Felix, positioning him for a final blow. Almost passed it, he faltered and two bone spurs struck him full on in the chest. He was slammed backward, only barely able to turn his headlong fall into a backwards tumble due to Unfettered Volition.
Still, the force of the blow sent him nearly forty feet away before he could fight back against the momentum. And in that time, everything went wrong.
A flurry of Sparkbolts and kinetic blasts hit the beast, but it simply waded through the attacks. Three of its tendrils warded off the furious Harn, taking the man's slashes without flinching. It's Tier Two resilience was in evidence as its wounds continuously healed. The Bishop, hurt but still fighting, had engaged with Harn, Vess, and Evie. The two women harried the beast with spear and chain, each taking on one of it's tendrils while the bulk of the creature fought against Harn. But the Bishop could use it's tendrils completely independently of each other, and they hadn't realized it yet.
Evie spun her chain about in a complicated series of whorls, each pass adding momentum to her deadly chain, and the Bishop's tendrils crept back under that onslaught. Felix started running. From his angle, he could see it. It wasn't retreating from her, it was luring her in.
"Watch out!"
The words had barely left his mouth when another tendril lashed out; coiled upon its tall back, it would have been all but invisible from up close. The strike hit true, smashing into Evie's left hip hard enough to be mistaken for a gunshot.
Evie screamed.
"No!" Vess was there as Evie collasped under the pain, the damaged joint no longer able to bear her weight. A spinning slash severed the tendril just behind the bone spur stinger, and the creature shrieked in pain. "Evie!"
Stone Shaping!
Shadow Whip!
"Pull her back!" Felix accelerated as much as he could, and his powerful stride ate up the distance in seconds. He threw his arm up, the Mana pattern coming instantly to mind, and ripped up a squared section of stone beneath the Bishop's right foreleg. Suddenly, the creature was off balance. So he conjured a dark whip of shadow and lashed it to the damn thing's hindleg.
Reign of Vellus!
"HUAAH!" With a mighty heave, Felix sent out a pulse of crackling kinetic Mana, picking up the monster's belly as he yanked upon its back leg. Like a felled tree, the Bishop teetered just a moment on the cusp while its tendrils went wild.
Influence of the Wisp!
A Bishop of Hunger is Enthralled for 2 Seconds!
Unable to move, it fell. Hard.
"Take it down!" Harn shouted moments before he carved into the immobile beast. "Everything you got!"
Fire, lightning, force, and a deluge of Frost Spears slammed into the Enthralled Bishop. Felix watched it's Health dwindle to near nothing, hovering just a hair above ten percent, when someone shouted.
"Pierce the Sky!"
Vess soared into the air, passing by a crowing Pit at her zenith, before she shouted again. Her hair whipped around her face like dark flame and six other spears manifested around her. "Dragon's Descent!"
Like a meteor, the future Dragoon dropped spear first upon the Primordial-Spawn, just moments before the Enthrall ended.
*KATHOOM!*
The sound was like thunder, and it shattered the stone beneath. Felix looked on in awe, all seven spears left embedded deep within the monster's side and a deep, dark ichor gushed from every wound.
You Have Killed A Bishop of Hunger!
XP Earned!
"Twin's t-teeth," Evie said. Felix belatedly noticed she had been propped up against a large boulder nearby. "Think sh-she's mad?"
Felix looked for someone to help, but Harn had moved toward the trench Felix had made earlier. "Evie, don't talk, save your strength," Felix began, but the girl gave him an annoyed look.
"Wh-what, you think this is--is your dumb wor-wor-- your dumb home?" She laboriously reached into her side pouch and pulled out a minor Health Potion. "I'll be ri-right as rain soon."