Into the Shadow Swamp
Amity’s POV
With Lazura, Salix and Caesar at her side, Amity trudged through the muck of the Shadow Swamp. Their torches barely reached the edge of the path they were on and the eerie quiet was only ever interrupted by the occasional skittering of a creature just at the edge of the light.
Lazura had warned Amity that this was one of the more difficult missions before they’d attempted it for the first time Tuesday night. Unfortunately that was all Lazura really had to offer in terms of information since she wasn’t a wizard and therefore had never tried to get the Black Willow Staff on her own and naturally she refused to look up spoilers for the missions she hadn’t done yet. She and Amity had quickly realized that this mission was not for the weak. Amity died three times on the starting path alone, then five more times against the main boss causing her to throw her headphones down onto her desk in frustration the last time. The headphones had practically been broken already when her brother had gifted them to her, but thanks to that little outburst they became nearly unusable. Where before the sound had been scratchy at best and she sometimes needed to repeat herself for the others to understand her, now she basically had to decipher what the others were saying at all times and for a while she’d debated just using her cell phone to call Willow and talk to them that way.
After that first night though, Lazura and her had done some reevaluating of their resources and agreed that they would need the entire party for this.
Cue Friday night. The four of them were on their third run, the first one of them to die had been Caesar who hadn’t seen the ripple of shadows and got pulled into darkness by a shadow hand. Lazura had called the hand ‘Charlie’ in reference to some other game that Amity hadn’t played. The second of them to die was, once again, Amity. After Caesar got nabbed, they were able to make it all the way to the boss on their next try where Amity accidentally drew agro while she was way too close and got clobbered by a shadow abomination.
This time, they were sure to be more careful. Willow had created a bonfire to deter a shadow creature and Lazura was doing a good job of looking out for the ripples and letting the rest of them know when to get away from one of the edges before the hands popped out. Finally, after what felt like an eternity of playing chicken with shadows, the pathway opened up again and they were once again in the torchlit clearing that held the main boss.
“Alright,” Lazura’s voice came out a bit garbled through Amity’s headphones. “Remember your positions. Salix, you and I are on clearing control, Caesar, you and Witchling are on the boss. Witchling, don’t-”
“Don’t get too close, I got it.” Amity spoke a little bit more defined than usual to make sure that the others could understand her.
“Yep! That’s what I’m for!” Gus’ voice piped in. His avatar started doing a little dance and promptly got smacked as a tentacle sprung out the ground. “Ow! Oh, wait, no my health is still good guys!”
“Of course it is, you’re the tank!” Willow chimed in. Amity laughed a little as the four of them attacked the shadow tentacles and did what they could to avoid taking damage. This was the first wave, not difficult per say but it was easy to get cocky and take some unwanted HP reduction.
With the tentacles wiped out, the muck at the center of the clearing started to churn and suddenly the hand of the boss, made of glopping sentient shadow, sprung out of the ground and clawed the rest of itself to the surface. It appeared as a stationary torso with three glowing purple eyes before, right on schedule, it let out an ear piercing roar as more tentacles sprouted up around the clearing.
The tentacles weren’t Amity’s job however, all she needed to worry about was the abomination. She swiftly kited around the tentacles, making sure to stay out of their hit boxes, and positioned herself so that Caesar wasn’t in a position to take damage from her. She fired off a few ice spells, trying not to drain her mana too much in one sitting while Caesar charged in from another angle. They were doing well, Caesar was holding onto the Boss’s agro, taking hits that would have one-shotted Amity and delivering some heavy damage right back. Amity fired off spell after spell while dodging any new tentacles that the thing summoned, the ice spells from her basic staff doing a good job of slowing it down so that Caesar could get in more hits before he had to kite a swing.
During this time, Salix and Lazura were taking care of the tentacles wherever they popped up. Salix was using spells that had wide area-of-effects to take care of pockets of them that didn’t have any other players around to clear the area a bit so that they had room to move. Lazura on the other hand had the more difficult job of being precise. She was tasked with taking out the tentacles that sprouted up near Caesar and herself. Lazura had managed to figure out exactly how much HP the tentacles had and stocked up on some of the more high caliber arrows that she knew would be able to one-shot them. Thankfully, even though it takes a moment for the half-elf to aim at the wriggling shadows, after getting to this point for the sixth time, Lazura had the process down to a science. She was able to fire off arrow after arrow without even needing to stop moving. Tentacles sputtered and died around Amity and Caesar with a single arrow in every one of them in the same moment they shot up from the ground.
For the first time, the mission was going well, amazingly even. The shadow abomination was almost down to half its health, this was the first time they’d gotten this far and they were all still doing fine. Amity had a wide smile on her face as she saw the red bar at the top of the screen go down more and more. Then suddenly, the abomination started shuddering, and the tentacles fell back into the muck.
“Okay everybody?” Lazura’s garbled voice came over her headphones. “That’s gotta be its half-health animation, be prepared for it to change up its strategy.”
“Gotcha!” The other party members spoke up and prepared themselves for whatever was to come.
Then, naturally, the abomination started to spin. It turned into a tornado of shadow muck and some kind of projectile started firing out from within it.
Amity was barely able to dodge out of the way as a glob of shadow sludge arched in her direction only for her to hear a sizzle from somewhere behind her. She turned around in time to see a shadow hand emerging from from the gap in light where the sludge had put out the torch. Amity’s eyes widened as she retreated from the hand. “Lazura! The torches!” she called out to the ranger.
“Huh?” of course Lazura couldn’t hear her properly through her messed up microphone and was more focused on the fact that Caesar couldn’t get close enough to hit the abomination in this form.
“The torches! It’s putting them out!”
Lazura’s avatar finally turned to face her and Amity was pretty sure she could make out the half-elf saying “Oh. Oh no.” Amity could practically hear the gears turning in the other girl’s head only for her hesitation to lead to another torch being put out and more hands emerging as the darkness spread.
Salix and Caesar finally realized what was going on and Gus started to run away from the hands while Salix readied a spell. “I’ll light the torches back up with a minor fire spell!” the fairy offered.
“No!” Lazura shouted loud enough to make Amity jump. “The torches are wooden, that’ll just destroy them for good.” Amity could hear some static that sounded a lot like a frustrated groan. “Okay! Okay, I have a plan. Caesar, I need you to stand in front of me. You need to be my shield cuz I’m not gonna be able to move.” The paladin got into position without question and readied his shield to dampen some of the damage that he was bound to take. Lazura kept talking as her avatar rifled through its bag. “Salix and Witchling, keep giving that thing everything you’ve got, just make sure Witchling is the one who gets the final shot or else we won’t get the right loot.”
With that, the ranger-artificer stood up brandishing some weird rope thing that Amity had never seen before.
“A sling? Really? That’s the worst weapon in the game, why do you even have that?” Willow sounded nearly disgusted at the idea of using the item.
“What makes it so bad?” Amity asked as she kited another glob of sludge and threw another spell out at the monster.
Lazura didn’t respond, but her avatar started swinging the sling in a circle, it looked like whatever was in the leather strap was smoking but it may have been too dark to see at this point.
“It’s bad because you can’t move while using it and it does, like, two damage at…” Caesar’s voice died off as Lazura launched the smoking bundle at one of the dead torches and it suddenly burst back to life, the hands disappearing in the new light. “Most…” Caesar continued, his voice low with shock. “Welp, we have our instructions.” He brandished the shield once again as Salx and Amity started going after the boss hard.
Amity was pretty sure she could make out Lazura chuckling into her microphone as she relit as many torches as she could. The process was taking longer than Amity felt comfortable with, it took several seconds for Lazura to relight each torch and the abomination kept putting them out. She and Salix kept firing spells at the monster before them, Amity even using a larger chunk oof her mana to make some basic shield abominations to give them a little extra cover. The spells were doing some good damage, but the plant magic that Salix specialized in was practically useless against swamp creatures and Amity’s mana could only regenerate so quickly. Even the two of them together couldn’t match what Caesar could do with a single swing of his sword.
Amity watched as the red meter at the top of her screen slowly and steadily went down.
“Guys I’m getting low!” Gus’ voice squeaked out. He’d been holding his position but even with all of his HP, there was only so much damage he could take.
“Just keep holding on, we’re almost there!” Lazura lit up another torch, she was getting better at it but it wasn’t making the boss lose any more health. “I am kind of running out of ignifers here though.”
Gus suddenly cursed as his avatar collapsed and Lazura immediately got hit by a glob of abomination goo and had to run to dodge another.
“Oh, that did a lot of damage.” Lazura hissed, taking a precious second to swap weapons back to her bow and launching a few ice arrows in rapid succession while ducking around the flying goo. The abomination took this opportunity to snuff out two more torches. Shadow hands were starting to creep in, pushing the remaining members of the party inward.
“Lazura here!” Salix called and started doing a spell. A wall of thorns erupted from the area in front of Lazura forming a barrier for her to hide behind.
“Perfect!” The half-elf called out, crouching down behind the cover and taking a few more seconds to switch back to her sling.
Then, all at once, Salix was struck with abomination goo, and since she didn’t have the weight factor of Caesar’s heavy armor, she was sent backwards just far enough for one of the creeping hands to make a grab and pull her into the darkness. “Oh come on! That’s not fair!” Amity heard Willow groan into the microphone as her character’s HP drained immediately to nothing.
The abomination’s health bar was nearly diminished but they weren’t done yet. Amity kept firing spells, doing everything she could to make sure her mana didn’t get too low. She glanced back at Lazura who was trying to keep the torches lit but so many of them were out, then, finally, the wall of thorns collapsed as a projectile took out the last of its HP.
Panic raced through Amity’s mind and without even thinking, she cast a shield abomination in the exact location that the wall of thorns had been in and dove behind it next to Lazura.
“How’s your mana doing?” Lazura asked, lighting up another torch. She wasn’t worrying about the torches on the other side of the clearing any more, just the ones that kept away the hands closest to them.
“Zero.” Amity winced as the word left her mouth. The more mana you used the longer it took for it to regenerate. The abomination took a lot of mana to create and it was dying fast from all the hits it was taking.
Lazura was quiet for a moment, just focusing on lighting as many torches as possible while the shadow abomination kept snuffing them out. “Okay,” finally came the response. “You’re not going to have a lot of time, the tiniest window actually, but I believe in you. That thing is on its last legs.
“Are you sure about this?”
There was a moment of hesitation, then “Positive.” Suddenly, Amity’s abomination died and Lazura rushed forward, taking a hit that was meant for Amity and then collapsing as her own HP reached zero.
Amity squeaked and started to run. She looked at the blue meter on her screen. Zero mana. More torches were being snuffed out and Lazura wasn’t here to relight them anymore. Zero Mana. The hands were creeping forward, pushing her closer and closer to the vortex of an abomination. Zero mana. They’d worked so hard to get here, just for her, and she’d let them down.
One mana.
Amity didn’t hesitate. The hands were right on her heels but she took the precious moment to fire the spell. The single mana Ice Knife spell that glowed a brilliant blue as it laced through the air and right as the hand behind her started to reach its fingers around her, the knife struck the abomination with a critical hit.
The abomination ceased spinning and shuddered in place. It’s three purple eyes staring into nothing as it started to expand and sputter out some dying garble of a noise. Then it exploded, coating everything in the clearing with purple goo, including Amity’s avatar, and in its place was a staff made of twisting black and purple willow wood that radiated a soft lavender light as it floated in place where the shadow abomination had stood.
Amity took the staff in her hands, turning it over, then thrust it towards the sky. The violet light shot upward and struck the clouds above like lightning. Suddenly the darkness started dissipating and the swamp was cast with yellow sunlight from a bright blue sky.
The second, Amity brought the staff back down, the Bullywog child who had greeted them at the entrance of the swamp as the quest giver, came running out from the path that had led them to the clearing. “Thank you so much hero! You have banished the evil from the land and now my family can home just in time for the harvest. Here’s the gold that I promised you and you can keep the staff for your troubles and as a token for our appreciation!” Of course it was the most canned RPG character speech ever but Amity felt a swell of joy in her chest nonetheless.
Amity could hear the voices of her friends talking through her headset but she was too busy to decipher what they were saying as the notification box appeared on her screen. Achievement Unlocked: Witchling has acquired the Black Shadow Staff.
Smiling from ear to ear, Amity clicked the button to complete the quest and the screen faded into white until she reappeared back at the start of the entrance of the swamp, Black Willow Staff in hand.
Lazura was the first to notice her. “You did it! I knew you could do it!” She shouted and rushed over to where Amity appeared. She could hear the smile in the girl’s voice and just knowing that Lazura was happy for her was enough to drown out the rest of the world for that moment.
Caesar and Salix both came up to congratulate her as well but all she could think about was the way that Lazura had been so sure that she would be able to do it. The way that she had rushed forward and taken the hit just to give Amity those precious few seconds to get her mana up.
She couldn’t have done this without her, without any of them really, but especially not without her.
Together, they went back to Town Square, divided up the gold, got some healing potions and hung out in the tavern talking about the mission. One by one Gus and Willow logged off, leaving just Amity and Lazura sitting in the digital tavern, drinking mead made of ones and zeroes while they talked about anything and everything.
I knew you could do it.
Amity felt her heart pound heavily in her chest, her face was heating up and for a second she thought she was having a panic attack for the first time since she’d started playing the game. Then Lazura laughed and Amity’s breath caught in her throat. 'Oh,' she realized. 'So that’s what it is.'
All too soon, Lazura had to go. It was two-forty five in the morning and apparently something happened that made her need to go immediately but that’s always what happened.
“Hey, I’ll talk to you tomorrow okay? Happy Saturday!”
“Talk to you tomorrow.” Amity could barely get the words out before the bling sound from discord indicated that Lazura had logged off. Amity’s face was still hot, and it felt like her heart was stuck in her throat.
Slowly and steadily, she took a deep breath, closed her laptop, removed her headphones from over her ears, and promptly threw them against the wall as hard as she could.