Before the Fall

I got about ten seconds of elation before it all went to shit, of course. I rained icicles on the prone form of the Bone Abomination, and while each individually didn't seem to do much damage, each broke skin or broke a bone spike, blood gushing out of the monster in either eventuality. It clambered back onto its feet and roared at me, and it approached more carefully even under the assault of the icicle barrage. It slammed its fist into the invisible barrier and I had a second to realize where I'd fucked up, when the transferred 10% force of the impact felt like being hit by a spring-board mattress falling from the third floor, except sideways.

I slid back a few feet into the room, my rat-faced slippers providing little grip. Even reduced to 10% of its total force, and even distributed evenly across the body, the strike of the bone abomination was strong enough to push me around and, if the wetness around my nose was any indication, burst the more tender blood vessels. By the time I realized that the punch was not, in fact, the primary mode of attack of the abomination, with three loud popping noises, three pneumatically launched spikes sprung at the barrier. Time seemed to slow as I realized what had happened.

I hadn't blocked the monster from having any chance of hitting me, I had given it a nearly literal broad side of a barn to hit, and no matter how I hid, the damage would be transferred to me. It didn't matter if it was 1% or 90%, if it had the opportunity to simply go wild at the barrier, eventually the transferred damage would knock me unconscious. I had to get the barrier do-

And that was about as far as I got in my train of thought before the three cannonball force impacts hit the barrier at nearly the same time. If it had been the same time, I was sure I'd be dead instantly, instead, I flew across the room and crashed into the wall of cooking utensils and stainless steel kitchen worktops in three, bouncing, overwhelming hits.

Pain, of course, but I was pretty sure I'd spent more of the last 40 hours in pain than out of it, so it only fractured my focus briefly. I tried to mentally dismiss the barrier, but quickly realized that that wasn't actually a part of the spell. Shit, fuck, fucking fuckity shit. I thought fast. If the monster had any intelligence at all it would put one and one together and get two, and start throwing more spikes at the barrier in only a couple of seconds. I ran through the list of spells in my mind, thanking the Tower for giving me the mental attributes to do it quickly enough. When the next bone shard flew out of the monster, I screamed the incantation for the basic Shield spell.

It protected a much smaller area, had a much shorter duration, but- crucially- it didn't transfer any of the force to me. The launched projectile hit the dinner-plate sized barrier mid-air and bounced off it. It was one of the fastest incantations to shout as well, so I managed to intercept two more bone spikes, before a third knocked me back against the wall.

This was not sustainable. The invisible barrier would last nearly 10 minutes at my current Arcana attribute and spell tier, and if I could only catch around one third of the spikes, I'd run out of consciousness long before the spike monster would run out of spikes. I waited for a break into its firing rate and quickly cast the greasefire spell in its back. It wasn't the softest target, but I knew from its basic anatomy that it couldn't reach it with its hands, and so, I hoped that the pain would be distracting and the fire hard to deal with enough to give me a dozen seconds of distraction.

I ran towards the door. Breaking that barrier was a part of the spell, and so, with a touch, the door was unlocked again. As I dashed out into the open cafeteria, a perfectly natural fear came over me. Even if I was in deadly danger on the other side of the window, it just felt wrong to go out of the room where the monster wasn't and into the room where it was. I imagined walking into a tiger enclosure at a zoo might feel the same. For me it was the experience of a horror video game- scarier by far than a horror book or movie, in my opinion, because you have to open the door to the danger. Even if you know you have to, that threshold hurts.

So, like a fucking dumbass, I stood there and yelled at the enraged, pain-blinded monster that had already shown its willingness to hurt me. From the force of impact on the invisible barrier I knew that any one hit was likely to kill me. I could maybe take a through-and-through wound from one of the smaller spikes, if it didn't hit bone or vital organs, but that would suck to much that the distraction was likely to kill me in that case.

I dove for the limited, physical cover, as a new set of bone spikes flew towards me. As each spike was driven half-way through the metal tabletop I was hiding behind, I was starting to think that maybe taking the chance to overpower it behind the invisible wall was the right move after all. I was oddly finding myself with all sorts of time to think things through in this battle. I knew it was probably my boosted Mind attributes speeding up my thought processes, but at a 4, I should still be well within human levels. I supposed I was, as I sat terrified behind the shoddy barricade. I opened up my spellbook to a page I had seldom used, and chanted a second rank spell that was among the most situational of mine.

As I concluded the incantation, almost instantly the room filled with a thick, dense fog. In the low-light environment it was almost obstructive enough that I couldn't see the top of my staff in front of me. I just hoped that the monster used sight to aim. Most of my attacks were ranged as well as the abomination's, but I needed a fucking second. I heard its confused grunting and random expulsion of more spikes, and I had a moment of respite.

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I couldn't see fucking anything, so I focused on my hearing. Dripping noises were a constant background, and I knew there were many of the little baby spike gremlins crawling around. The behemoth itself wasn't hard to pin-point. Every few seconds I heard the noise of it expelling one of its spikes followed by an impact noise against wood, metal, or meat. It sounded like a mix of a pneumatic tube and a popping cyst. None of the impacts came very near to me, though my heart beat faster as there was every chance that a random spike flying towards me could hit me if I was out in the open without me ever seeing it. But I did have to get out into the open, because the other noise I heard was its heavy footsteps approaching my direction.

I stood and walked as quietly as I could. With my goblin boots and newly upgraded stealth skill and, presumably, my improved agility, I could be quieter than I had ever been in life, but from my perspective, the swooshing of my silkish robes and the beating of my heart was so loud that it overpowered every other noise in the cafeteria. I had to be careful too, as if I tripped and fell or made a noise, the monster would surely be upon me in an instant.

So I kept my ears open as I sneaked quietly away from my original cover to a far corner closer to the entrance to the cafeteria. I didn't think my fog spell had a large enough radius to cover the entire cafeteria, and I hoped that I could maybe see the giant shape moving from the outside. I was moving slowly, sweeping the edges of my vision with the bottom of my staff, and managed to avoid making any loud noises when plop-khshunk a spike flew and I ducked. I could feel the fog moving just above me. I froze, hoping that it was just random chance and heard the strange groaning expulsions of air that passed for speech coming from the creature. I breathed as slowly and shallowly as I could, almost growing dizzy, but didn't hear footsteps approaching, as the creature kept running into and crashing over the tables and chairs tossed about the cafeteria.

I started moving again and, finally, the fog grew less dense and I could see the outlines of the furniture outside its radius. I left the fog cloud and its border was unnaturally distinct, a perfect section of a sphere filling up the room floor to ceiling behind me. Just as I was starting to squint to see if I could see the behemoth's shape inside the fog, I heard a "SKREEEEEEEEE" from behind me, as one of the newly spawned little spike gremlins latched onto my leg and began pushing its porcupine-like spikes into it.

I shouted in shock, even as I jammed the bottom of my staff into its body, crushing it and pushing it off my leg, defeating it quickly. I didn't even wait for the scratching in my notebook to start before I ducked and rolled away from where I stood, just in time as a series of spikes were embedded in the wall behind where I had just stood. The abomination screamed its flatulent scream louder then ever before, and began lumbering loudly in my direction, randomly expelling spikes towards the general area. My hunch about visibility had, at least, been right. As it lumbered past a light fixture, I could briefly see its shadow and thus predict its trajectory.

It wasn't coming quite at me, which was good enough for me, though I would have to chant words of power to cast spells at it and I would not see the spikes coming until it was too late to cast shield, so I had to trust in the curse of misfortune to reduce its luck so that it couldn't hit me while firing randomly in my direction. I guess it had worked so far. Barely.

I didn't have to think about which spell I was going to use- I unleashed a conjured icicle a second directly towards the monster's center of gravity, casting as quickly as I could, unconcerned about mana or defense. Cold terror came down my spine as the spikes of bone, keratin and metal flew closer and closer to me, but I kept attacking, just until the moment when I could start making out its distinct features approaching the edge of the fog-bank. It was hard to tell with its lumbering movements, but I thought I could see its movements becoming a little bit slower and more erratic, but as a spike came close enough to rip at my magic shirt, jerking my right arm back forcefully, bad enough that it turned me around almost all the way, I wasn't going to wait any longer and ran quietly back into the fog, avoiding the coming creature.

I checked my robe and found that the spike hadn't actually managed to tear through it, all of its force instead ripping me backwards and spinning me in a bit of a pirouette. I had, of course, noticed before that magical items were quite resilient, but were they actually indestructible? Maybe I should make some sort of a shield with the shirt pulled taut on a magic item frame, instead of wearing it. Definitely not the time to be thinking about that, as I quietly, breathlessly passed the monster as it walked out of the fog to see that I was no longer there and screamed again. Okay. Okay. It wasn't going to be quite as easy as I had thought initially, but I could work with this. I could-

Zzt-crack. All the lights in the cafeteria went out with a short-circuit noise and the smell of plastic smoke. Shit and fuck. We were back on an even playing field, sort of. Except the monster could just keep sweeping for me, as far as I knew it was no blinder than before, and it could keep hunting for me, while I could only make out the vague direction of its stomping from a distance. I could make light with the fire spell, but that'd only attract attention to both my chanting voice and the source of light. I had no idea how much light a grease-fire would produce, but I could cast it quite far away from me. If I had a line of sight to it, and in the near pitch-black, foggy darkness, I could not see the back of my hands. In fact, almost all of my spells were useless if I couldn't see, and it would be just the sort of game logic bullshit to have that monster be able to see in the dark somehow, even if it couldn't see through the fog. I heard its lumbering movements stop, and it even ceased launching the spikes at me.

I hadn't really thought much of how intelligent the creature was. Its inability to speak, and lumbering motions had prejudiced me to think that it was dumb, but it had clearly taken the lights out intentionally somehow. That suggested an awareness of the fact that it was in a losing position and had to change the circumstances, which suggested at least a rudimentary intelligence.

Shit, I had only one choice, and that was to get the door to the hallway open in order to let light inside, so that I could cast the greasefire spell and light up the room in the smoky orange flames. And, judging from the wet, farting laughter coming from the direction of the entrance, the behemoth was smart enough to know that too.

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