The Nest, Part II (Cradle Robbers, Part 1 of 2)

Black clouds of Storm Essence dust are kicked up into the air as we make our descent into the nesting area. My mind is buzzing with anxiety and focus, marrying and melding into some strange flow state. We're about to fight a fucking dragon!

Veronica's voice cuts through the static hum in my brain as we reach the floor of the nesting area. "I'm sharing my Health bar," she says, crisp and focused, like she's reading through the script of our game plan.

[Party Member Veronica (Iron Maiden) would like to share information.]

Accept?

I mentally provide my assent. A second red bar pops into my HUD, hovering right beside mine. Above it floats neat, white text.

[Veronica – 100% (425/425)]

Neat trick we learned while messing with the System's party functionality. We still haven't figured out if it's possible to have access to the entire party's stats at all times, but this was a good start. And honestly, it was nice to have a limit on the number of things floating in my HUD and requiring more of my mental bandwidth. Plus, if the party needed to keep an eye on one statistic, it was our tank's Health.

There's another soft ping and I receive another System request.

[Party Member Clyde (Big Game Hunter) would like to share information.]

Accept?

I accept. Clyde was going to share the notifications from his Soften Spell.

Clyde taps my arm and raises his left hand. A mote of light blossoms in his palm, replaced by a seemingly empty vial. I nod and do the same. We both pop our vials and down their contents. The liquid inside has almost no temperature, but fills my mouth with something I could only describe as dirty dish water (not that I actually know what that would taste like).

The world pops like a soap bubble. Sound dulls ever so slightly. A creeping, cold sensation crawls through my limbs. I watch Clyde as he's washed over in a shimmering light, every part of his body the light passes over simply vanishing. It's a little more than startling.

Ping!

[You have consumed an Invisibility Potion (Fair Quality)!]

[You are now invisible. Invisibility will last for 3 minutes. Taking damage will shorten the effective length of this potion.]

Once the crawling sensation prickles through my scalp, I turn to Veronica. "And?"

Veronica's holding Jelly Boy in her arms. The slime is vibrating with absolute excitement. She squints in my direction. "Yeah. You're gone. It worked."

"Sweet," I whisper. I look towards where Clyde is standing—or was standing. "You're invisible too."

"Nice," says his disembodied voice.

A timer appears in the upper corner of my HUD.

Status: Invisibility – 2:59

When I focus and try to examine the space his voice came from, I'm greeted by a soft pulsing sensation and a faint, violet outline appears in a roughly Clyde shape. System-generated text floats over the outline, which is faint—like someone sketched his general shape in pencil and then erased most of it.

[Invisible Ally: Clyde]

Jelly Boy, squelching contentedly in Veronica's arms, receives the last of our three invisibility potions. Veronica pops the cork and pours it over him like slime champagne. He blorps approvingly as his body shimmers and vanishes into gooey non-existence.

"Okay," I say. "Go time!"

We advance.

Veronica summons her floating shields. Three orbiting disks of shimmering silver light appear around her, spinning lazily like she's got her own personal galaxy before solidifying into solid steel. She peels off to the side, positioning herself near a rocky incline with a clear escape route. Because when things go bad, and they will, we'll need an exit faster than a teenager deleting browser history. Clyde and I, meanwhile, move to flank the nest.

We're so close now I can smell the wyrmling.

And yeah. I know that sounds weird.

Clyde's invisible outline moves with unnerving calm. One after another, silent spells weave into existence and fire off toward the nest. I'm met with a series of Spell notifications.

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Clyde has cast [Soften].

0.50 points of the Soften debuff has been applied to Baby Storm Dragon.

Again and again and again.

And the wyrmling—thank every god that's ever existed—doesn't stir at the stacking debuffs. It's curled in the middle of the nest like a lizard puppy the size of a giant tour bus, its scales humming with the sound of TV static.

I go ahead and cast Wizard's Fist, twice. Two puffs of silvery mist explode beside me. When the mist clears, Lefty and Right are floating at my flanks: two big, meaty fists of magical force and bad intentions. Lefty flexes. Right does a little bob and spin, the showoff. They're ready.

That makes two of us, I think.

"My Scan of the thing's complete," Clyde whispers. "Immune to lightning elemental damage. No surprise. Resistant to slashing and piercing non-magical attacks. Weak point confirmed to be it's entire underbelly."

Noted. "So, let's hit that thing's stomach as hard as we can."

"Strike fast, strike hard. And end this fight before it can even begin."

The wyrmling stirs in its nest. One leg kicks, like it's a dreaming dog. It's a little cute. And by 'cute,' I mean 'nightmare-fuel baby kaiju that will happily destroy us with lightning breath.'

And then Veronica opens her mouth and weaponizes sarcasm using her [Center of Attention] Skill.

"Hey, scaly! Your mom called—she wants her thunder thighs back!"

Okay, that's really bad. She's really bad at insults. Luckily, the System doesn't care about the quality of her Skill's trigger.

The sound echoes through the crater. The wyrmling's eyes snap open. Storm-colored, pale like lightning, crackling with sparks. It lifts its snout and lets out a snort—a rolling, puffing cloud of thunder and static bursts out of its nostrils.

It stands and crawls to the edge of its nest, which it mounts as those storm-filled eyes lock onto Veronica and the invisible Jelly Boy. Then, it roars. It's a choir of jet engines screaming bloody murder while gargling thunder. It rings in my ears. My bones rattle. I feel my organs vibrate like I'm a wind chime made of meat and bone.

I mentally command Lefty and Righty to attack the thing's underbelly while it's still exposed. The two spectral fists happily oblige my request. They zoom in, flitting around the dragon's legs like two glowing gadflies. Like fighter jets, they zip around the wyrmling's belly, unleashing a flurry of punches and karate chops.

SYSTEM NOTIFICATION:

[Critical Hit]

[Damage increased by Soften Debuff!]

Wham! Wham! Wham!

Lefty and Righty strike the soft, whitish scales of the dragon's belly with jet-like punch, after jet-like punch.

The wyrmling is pissed. It rears onto its back legs. Its wings beat once, twice, before it takes to the air. It writhes midair like a cat trying to scratch its own back, but doesn't get too high. The journal was right. Young dragons have underdeveloped wings, and are unable to get the proper amount of lift for flying at higher altitudes. Hence why they're bound to their nests, despite being quite dangerous in their own right. The Baby Storm Dragon scratches furiously at its stomach, but there's nothing it can do about my Wizard's Fist Spell. Even from my vantage point, I can see bloody bruises across its underbelly.

I channel a mental command to my Spell. Lefty! Righty! Don't stop now, boys. Keep pressing! Knee cap the motherfucker!

There wasn't time to waste and reserve resources. I grit my teeth and active my [No Pain, No Gain] Skill, pumping twenty-five percent of my Stamina into my active Spell. The Skill notification flashes in front of my vision in neat, silvery script as suddenly every muscle in my entire body goes tight. It's like my blood is instantly replaced by the hardest pre-workout imaginable. My skin prickles and itches, my arms bulge, my legs scream, and my whole torso decides this is the perfect time to try spontaneous combustion. Then, that pre-workout sensation is flooded out with fresh blood again and I have the most amazing pump I've ever experience.

Followed by pain. Everything hurts. Everything. Pure lactic acid just flowing through my veins with a vengeance.

Health: 112/130

Stamina: 196/265

[You have taken damage to your Health. The longevity of your invisibility potion has been shortened.]

[Status: Invisibility]

Time Remaining: 00:00:35

Lefty and Right expand, growing as they ascend through the air, following their target. They quadruple in size, each one expanding to Pop-eye styled spectral arms. They're vascular as fuck, the simulacrum of veins bulging from their glowing blue figures. It's like watching a Lovecraftian Mr. Olympia. And it's fucking beautiful.

Immediately, they begin to go to town. The fists pummel the wyrmling's underbelly. The sound is awful—wet, thudding smacks. Like a watermelon getting hit by a tire iron. The baby dragon flails, its wings spasming, legs kicking, claws swiping at the air. My Wizard's Fists are juggling the creature, keeping it airborne and trapped in their onslaught of punches.

"Don't get cocky," says Clyde from over my shoulder.

Bang!

A shot of his pistol cracks the air like a firecracker. The bullet zips through the chaos in the sky and punches into the dragon's wing joint with a sickening thwack.

He releases two more shots. Bang, bang! He doesn't let up. I get another notification.

Clyde has cast [Soften].

0.50 points of the Soften debuff has been applied to Baby Storm Dragon.

The wyrmling flaps its wings harder, but its already gradually descending towards the ground. It roars again, clearly pissed off and frustrated that it's getting swarmed. Lefty connects with another haymaker.

"Holy shit," I mutter. "We're gonna do this."

It's actually going well. Way better than it should. Perhaps I should be worried by that, but I'm not. The frantic, high-stress environment of battle washed that all away. Hadn't I spent enough time worrying? Our plan was going off without a hitch. The Baby Storm Dragon would fall any moment. We'd finish it off, extract its core and be long gone before its mother even returns with the groceries.

Then, the wyrmling opens its mouth and the world explodes in light.

I hear the attack before I see the beam. It's a high-pitched whistle, that turns into a deafening whine. The baby dragon's maw opens and a plasma ray spears from its throat, laced with arcing chains of lightning. The hair on my arms stand up.

The beam lances towards Veronica's position. Her shield shatters like spun glass with all the resistance of wax paper. The beam punches through where her and the still-invisible Jelly Boy are standing and they don't stand a chance. I hear the beam hit the ground, sending the floor of the nest up in clouds of black that obscure my vision.

We didn't know what the breath weapon from a Baby Storm Dragon would be like, but I sure as hell didn't expect this!

A raw scream tears from my throat as I dash towards their position. Clyde screams something, but I don't hear it through the blood pumping through my ear drums and the still ringing whine of the plasma blast echoing in my head.

I slice a path through the cloud of Storm Essence. I see the silhouette of Veronica, splayed across the ground, smoke drifting from her armor. Not far from her is a no-longer-invisible Jelly Boy, who looks like nothing more than a wet splat on the ground.

My eyes burn with a mix of tears, acrid smoke, and vaporized black glass.

"NO!"

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