Rune Seeker

The throne room appeared around Hiral in the next instant, but he didn’t have a chance to take it in before a notification sprang up in his face, a massive surge of bright light flashing somewhere beyond.

Overcharge attempt: Successful

Debuff applied: System Shock

System Shock: No class abilities can be used for one hour (60 minutes remaining)

Warmth ran from Hiral’s nose, gushing over his lips, and down the sides of his face and neck from his ears. He dropped to his knees, his legs weak. Darkness clawed at the edges of his vision, promising a sweet release just like when he’d failed his last Shaper test. Except he didn’t have somebody like Master Loan to carry him to bed this time.

Fighting against the pressure to pass out, Hiral dismissed the notification window and glanced down at his left arm. With a small sigh of relief, he noted the limb was still there, part of his brain expecting it to be nothing more than shriveled tissue—or worse—after the debuffs.

Wait, no tattoos on my coat? Left? Right?

Finally looking away from himself, Hiral took in the rest of the room. Withered bodies by the score littered the room, some of them still sparking with lightning, while Yanily and Right cut down all comers. Left was with them, too, the Banner of Courage nowhere to be seen, but by the sheer number of enemies, it made sense the others needed his help.

Others!

Facing as he was, Hiral spotted Seena first—or, at least, where he thought she was. The entire area within the root circle was a pillar of flame stretching to the ceiling. Almost on cue, the fire vanished, and bright, white energy raced through the roots towards the throne. A sharp flash erupted off to Hiral’s left, and a raspy scream echoed through the room. He turned his attention in that direction just in time to see another surge of white light rip along the roots.

Watching this time, Hiral saw the white light arrive at the circle of roots around the Urn, then completely rise to fill the blue column of light. The flash shredded the last vestiges of black mist within and enveloped Ur’Thul. The lich let out another scream of agonized pain, whole body smoking, and the blue curtain around him shattered like glass as he got thrown aside.

On the ground in front of the throne, Nivian pushed himself to his feet, black mist coiling all around his body like squeezing serpents, and took a step forward.

A quick look at Hiral’s Party Interface showed the tank at less than ten percent of his health—and he wasn’t the only one! Wule, likewise, sat on the cusp of death, his solar energy bar completely depleted and the lanterns usually floating by his shoulders completely missing.

“Li’l Ur, what happened?” Seena asked, though she also sat on her knees within her circle. She wasn’t in much better shape than Nivian or Wule.

“Wule used all of his solar energy keeping everybody alive,” Li’l Ur said. “When that ran out, he began using his own lifeforce in its place. I tried to convince him to let my apprentice go, but he wouldn’t listen. Wouldn’t let any of you go.”

“And Nivian?” Seena asked as the tank took another step forward and placed the bottom of his shield on the throne beside the Urn, sucking up every last drop of what little black mist it released.

“The death energy from the Urn,” Li’l Ur said. “There was too much for his shield until you three took control of the nodes.”

“You guys made it just in time,” Yanily said, whirling his spear around himself in a circle at shoulder-height to decapitate a trio of undead. At least the spearman was above half health—the only one in the party who could say that—and had a decent amount of solar energy left.

“Did we?” Hiral asked, looking at Nivian. What little he could see of the tank’s face looked like a corpse, and he could practically hear the man’s slow, labored breathing.

“Nivian, you don’t have to anymore!” Seena shouted.

“Said… I… would… protect you…” Nivian said, obviously struggling to put his other hand on the back of his shield. The dark metal of the skull glowed as the tank pushed the final remnants of his solar energy into it, completely bottoming himself out, but a great gasp sucked the last of the mist in.

With that, the top of the Urn stilled, and the seals around it glowed bright. Above it, the plate with the Ancestor’s seal finally ramped up to full power, visibly sucking energy from the Urn. Just a few seconds after that, the two human seals on both sides of the Urn flashed and sped up their rotation. Around and around they went, something growing between them.

Crystal.

Within seconds, the Urn and the Ancestor’s seal plate were completely entombed in a thick piece of crystal, the quality of it exquisite to Hiral’s eyes even at a distance.

“It’s done,” Odi said, his back against the throne and much of his body missing. His left arm was completely gone, the right ending at the elbow, while there was simply no sign of anything below the waist. “We’ve won. The curse is ended.”

“No, it isn’t,” Ur’Thul bellowed from the side of the room. “And you most certainly have not won.” With that declaration, the lich hovered away from the wall, his once noble robes now little more than charred fabric. He was also missing a hand, but the other cupped black energy that sent a shiver down Hiral’s spine. The blue health bar above the lich’s head showed him at only around forty percent health… but what could they do against that?

Other than Yanily, and maybe the doubles, everybody was running completely on empty. And even if Hiral had the solar energy, the System Shock debuff meant he couldn’t use any of his abilities anyway.

Stupid. Never should’ve used Terminal.

“We’ve sealed your Urn,” Seena said. “Pretty sure that’s a win for us.”

“After you’re dead, I’ll find a way to break the seal. I have time, after all.” Ur’Thul the Undying turned his attention to Hiral. “You’re first. With my Second-Skin returned, the rest shall be trivial.”

Hiral couldn’t help but gulp as Ur’Thul lifted the hand encompassed in black energy. He couldn’t move. He was barely conscious; there was no way he was dodging whatever was coming. Motion off to his right told him his doubles were coming, but they wouldn’t arrive in time.

“Now, die,” Ur’Thul said, power building towards a climax.

But the crescendo didn’t come from the lich—no, it came from Hiral’s left, a pulse of energy so deep and final it threw Hiral to the side. Not even a heartbeat after the pulse, a second one followed, this one warm and reassuring. More than that, the type of release felt familiar. The same as when Yanily and Seena had…

Class evolutions!

Hiral’s head wasn’t the only one that went to the throne—Ur’Thul, too, turned on the new threat.

Two large shapes hung in the air beside the crystal-covered Urn: a sinister cracked skull, blue flames glowing in the eyes, and the shimmer of a towering body extending deep into the ground. Beside it was a four-sided lantern of the deepest crimson, the flame within the glass burning and building, throwing off light that eased Hiral’s wounds even as it touched him.

The front of the lantern opened first, and Wule stepped out with a pair of smaller crimson lanterns floating at his shoulders. Within him, the familiar root system also glowed red, though it faded as he walked out and dropped to the ground.

As soon as his feet touched down, the skull beside him suddenly opened its mouth in a titanic roar that sent out a pressure strong enough to push Ur’Thul back. A second later, the skull vanished, and Nivian was left standing in its place. Where Wule only looked a little different, Nivian was completely changed.

Gone was his bark armor, replaced by bleached bone from head to toe. The skull-shield remained, but the three-lashed whip in his right hand now looked to be made out of long spinal columns, Lizardman-like skulls at the end of each snapping in search of prey. Sinister as the new look was, that wasn’t what finally elicited gasps from the party.

Nivian’s eyes glowed with blue flame above his sunken, pallid white cheeks, lines of iridescent blue tears running across them.

(Undead) – Blight Warden – Nivian Tulak

And the man’s health bar was blue.

“Impossible,” Ur’Thul said, but then a smile cracked across his lizard-face. “Or not. The Urn consumed you. Go, then. Destroy your old friends, my new pawn.”

“No, thank you,” Nivian said, voice hollow like the wind blowing through a crypt.

Then he blurred as he activated his movement ability. Within his wake, grasping, skeletal hands erupted from the ground in a line, and he slammed shield-first into the lich. WHAM. The impact hurled Ur’Thul straight back to hit the wall hard enough to flatten roots and crack stone. Even as the lich shook his head to collect his wits, Nivian’s spinal-whip lashed across him, once, twice, three times.

Apparently already tired of the one-sided beating, Ur’Thul lifted his shadowed hand and released a blast of pure death.

The Aegis of Extinction sucked it up like an afternoon snack, and the tank blurred a second time to crunch into the lich, pinning the monster against the wall.

“You can have that back,” Nivian said, pulsing with energy, and there was a black flash between his shield and the trapped lich.

Ur’Thul screamed as Nivian cocked his vambrace-covered right hand back. Shifting and coiling together, the spine-whip took the shape of a large warhammer, the head of it capped with a grinning skull, and the tank swung it forward.

Wham. Wham. Wham. Wham. Wham. Wham. Wham. Wham. Wham. Nivian tirelessly pounded on the lich even as he lowered his shield and stepped back. Smash after smash drove Ur’Thul into the ground, shattered the arm he tried to use to protect himself, and then went on to destroy as much of the body as possible.

Still, even after all that, Ur’Thul’s eyes glowed blue in hate as they looked up at Nivian, almost as though he was saying he couldn’t be killed, no matter what the tank did.

“Wule,” Nivian said, and the twin lanterns hovering around Wule leapt forward to stop on each side of Nivian’s shoulders.

“Say when,” Wule said.

Nivian looked down to meet Ur’Thul’s eyes. “When.”

The paired lanterns released wide cones of the strange crimson energy held within… and Ur’Thul screamed. Oh, how the lich howled under the lanterns’ light. On and on the onslaught went, and Nivian lifted the hammer above his head.

Another pulse of energy from Wule, and the cones of light from the lanterns ceased, though streamers of energy roped out to connect with the head of Nivian’s hammer, encompassing it in a sphere of red light. Then, without another word, he swung.

And the whole castle shook.

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