Chương 152: Chapter 149: The House of Bats

I drew Spriggan's Will in the dark and felt the familiar weight settling against my palm. Lune went still on my shoulder. I exhaled, let go of the bowstring, splitting the arrow using Wild Hunt. I heard the platform break as the physical arrow found no target to bite into, but the spectral shaft of the Wild Hunt Arrow curved, looking for Camazotz. I closed my eyes; I could feel the trajectory of the shot, going through the shadows as it was calibrating itself.

Wild Hunt had a will of its own, and it knew where it needed to go. For half a second more, nothing happened, but then the shot curved even more, now flying in a completely different direction than my initial aim. It bent through the dark, following a trail we couldn't see, and then it struck something far above with a hard crack. Camazotz screamed. The sound slammed into the roost, but this time, the floor held strong.

The walls swallowed the sound, and lines of copper-red light flared across the cavern in veins, running from pillar to pillar, up the walls, across the ceiling, and through hanging stalactites that had been invisible a moment before. The House of Bats woke around us as the light spread across the roost in pulses. It was the color of ember, enough to form the darkness into shape. The platform beneath us was a broad shelf of black stone again, although it ws cracked at the edges, missing pieces from the collapse.

Around it, the chamber opened into a vast cavern of hanging ledges, curved pillars, and roosting shelves layered above one another like some kind of a cathedral. We saw it all now, unlike with the red lightning before. And Camazotz hung above it all. The arrow had struck the membrane of one wing, barely doing any damage, but that was not the point anyway. Quest Updated: Subdue the wrathful Aspect of Camazotz. Survive its wrath, and force it to yield.

"It worked!" Alysanna shouted, and everyone seemed to echo her cheerfulness. That is, until Camazotz opened its wings. The full span of it filled the upper roost, copper fur and black leather stretched across its vast body, its sheer scale seemingly even bigger than before. The pillars were perches, the ledges were places for its claws. The entire chamber was a home, and we had just shot the owner.

"Move!" Alice shouted as Camazotz dropped. Its wings came down like a collapsing roof, and the airr in front of it became a weapon. It hit the raid before the actual boss did, scattering us backward across the platform. Denxy planted his shield and slid three meters, Rafael's slammed into the stone hard enough to throw sparks. Corral barely moved, but even his health bar dipped from the pressure alone.

The wingtip carved through the tanks, and a red line appeared on Rafael's arm and across Denxy's shield, and they got pushed back even further, losing a chunk of their HP bars.

"Heals!" Rafael grunted. Camazotz climbed again with one beat of its wings, and the force of that motion almost knocked Leona off her feet. Diego caught her by the shoulder and dragged her back before she stumbled too close to one of the broken edges.

"Careful!" Verdugo said.

"Steady legs! And don't go near the edge!"

"Spread wide enough to handle the sweeps!" Cyrus called.

"Don't go too far from the healers!" Camazotz vanished into the upper dark. The health bar remained, but that did not tell us where the real body was. I contemplated using Wild Hunt again, to find the bat, but it didn't come to that. Three echoes came from different directions, followed by a clicking sound.

"Where is it?" Alysanna asked. The answer came a second later when all three echoes converged into a line of force that tore across the platform. It was barely visible, a line of distorted air, but the stone in its path cracked open in a straight cut, rapidly moving toward us.

"Down!" Alice yelled, and most of us dropped, but Scale got caught up in the attack. The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. The echo-blade cut him across the back and flung him forward, his health crashing from full to twelve percent before he hit the ground. Carmen got a heal onto him before Talion could cast a spell, but the number barely climbed.

"It's a heal debuff!" Scale called. We kept throwing our skills at the boss, but despite its size, it was hard to hit it, even for me. The others had an even worse time. It circled above us, claws gripping a pillar from time to time, wings folding, head turning, eyes burning red through the half-light. It wasn't attacking constantly, and honestly, that was the only reason we were alive. It struck, then moved and waited before striking again, each attack chosen with the patience of a predator on home turf.

Cyrus threw a Flame Lance when the wing crossed one of the lit veins. Leona followed with Windcutter, and Somnus's Shadow Bolts went next. Each of them hit, along with two Piercing Shots from Alysanna and me, but the damage was pitiful. It was at 99. 1%.

"Damage is terrible!" Verdugo shouted. Our melee players could do nothing but stand and watch. Then it came with fire. Its mouth opened, and for a moment I saw the glow building behind its teeth, dark copper and black, as if the flames had been born from the shadows themselves. It swept its head across the platform, and a line of dark fire rolled toward us. Cyrus decided to meet it head on. He used Black Flames of Xibalba to mimic the bat's attack, and the two beams of dark fire clashed right at the middle.

To my surprise, they mostly canceled each other out. Cyrus was standing amidst the black flames, his palm held up, and suddenly I remembered what I'd thought at character creation. This is what a good Arcanist looks like while casting spells, I thought. It was straight out of a movie. The skill, however, only held for a moment before the boss's power overwhelmed the mage, and he had to end channeling.

"Grand Bulwark!" The tree tanks shouted in unison, and a massive barrier was erected, stopping the sea of fire, but Camazotz was moving again. We were adjusting fast, though. It was a raid boss, and it came with raid mechanics. And raid mechanics had patterns behind them. The sound always came first. Clicks meant echo-blade, a low inhale meant fire, double wingbeats meant either sweeps or retreating.

The light veins pulsed brighter whenever the boss started descending, and when it landed on a pillar, we knew we had to brace twice as hard to counter the wind pressure.

"Clicking!" I called.

"Move to the side!" Everyone did without asking, and the echo-blade carved through the middle of the platform. It hit no one this time. We fired into the sound, and our attacks struck true. 97. 4% Its health moved slow enough that I started questioning whether we really had the level requirement for this expedition down. For the next minute, I called everything on top of keeping up with the DPS. There was no time to explain every read, but thankfully everyone was talented enough to understand half-words.

Once, I was a second late, and Talion didn't move fast enough. A claw came down where he had been, and the only reason it didn't flatten him outright was Alice. She hit him with a shoulder charge, sending him sprawling out of the impact zone, taking the edge of the swipe across her blade, but even then, her health dropped to thirty percent. Cyrus used Flame Hydra then, the basic version, and the flaming heads chased Camazotz as it ascended again.

Two missed when the boss folded around a pillar, but the third landed across its chest. Camazotz screamed, and turned back toward us. Somnus barely got a shadow barrier up before a narrow cone of sound struck at his position. The defensive spell shattered instantly. He staggered back, one hand pressed to his head. And the bat then dove forward. Lune leapt from my shoulder.

"Lune!" She hit the ground and ran. I had no idea what she thought she was doing, but whatever the reason, she sprinted across the platform toward the nearest pillar just as Camazotz dropped low. The fox got the bat's attention, and every part of me went cold.

"Lune, back!" She did not stop, and Camazotz's claws came down. It looked like Lune had expected something else, because she stopped abruptly, looking straight into death's eye.

"Gravity Pull!" The ability yanked her backward, causing the claw to hit the stone where she had been a heartbeat earlier. The impact cracked the platform. Lune tumbled across the ground in a bundle of fur and golden sparks, landing near Denxy's boots. He grabbed her by the scruff and practically threw her toward me before turning to block a swipe from the boss. I caught her.

"What were you thinking?" She just growled at Camazotz's direction, not bothering to explain herself. I thanked Denxy and then turned back to her.

"Do not do that again," I told her, and she climbed back on my shoulder. The boss's health was dropping slowly, but it was dropping. And we were learning, too, although it was an expensive lesson. Potions were used, defensive cooldowns were burned, pieces of the platform crumbled sometimes, but we held. Cyrus and Leona took turns timing casts after my callouts. Alysanna fired when I fired.

Alice had the melee players rotating between us, offering support whenever they could, dragging people out of danger, feeding potions to anyone the healers couldn't reach in time, and staying ready for the moment the boss came low enough. It did. Camazotz swept along the platform in a long dive, and for the first time, Verdugo got his axe into it. The blade struck the side of its leg as it passed, biting through fur and hide. He laughed.

"Now we are taĺking!" Camazotz twisted midair. Its tail whipped across the platform and caught the berserker in the chest. Verdugo flew backward. Rafael caught him with his shield, and dumped him down with two percent health.

"Less talking," Scale scolded with a tired grin. Verdugo coughed, drank a potion, and raised a thumb. At 70%, the roost changed. The light-veins went out, dimming from the far walls inward, line by line. The light then retreated up the pillars, across the ceiling, into the six largest hanging stones above us, and then vanished entirely. Camazotz landed, the impact throwing us all off our feet.

Then the notification appeared: Phase Shift: Grounded Wrath The House of Bats returns to darkness We were back where we started, with nothing to see, and having no way to locate ourselves. And now, the bat was on the ground with us.