Chapter 58 -  The Stars Fall 

“I thought you said you couldn’t Counterspell those,” said Tri-blade, as the explosion faded.

“It isn’t a spell.  The spell is dragging a light out of the ceiling,” replied Grebthar.  He was going to have to drag down another one.  Even if Jim somehow blocked one, there was no way for him to block two.  It was doubly impossible.

He reached up and began pulling on two of the fake stars in the sky.  His body started to smoke at the strain as even a god possessed limits.  The ichor that made up his body began to boil and for a brief moment Grebthar thought he might have overdone it.  Then both broke free, and Grebthar directed them toward the Falconian princess.  

If killing her annoyed Jim a trifle, it was worth it at this point.  

The stars moved quickly enough that there was no way for Julia to clear the blast radius, so Charles pulled back his magical connection to both.  Now, they were really just massive chunks of explosive, falling debris.  There was no way to Counterspell.  Whatever Jim did wouldn’t be good enough.  

“COUNTERSPELL TIMES TWO,” bellowed the Mayor.  

“That asshole,” hissed Grebthar, as the first star exploded.  The night sky was lit up brighter than midday.  Moments later, the second star detonated.  As the strain of pulling the stars from the very ceiling of the game world weighed on him, Charles felt himself wilt.  It wasn’t possible.  They were physical objects.  Counterspelling them was impossible.

Best hang it up.

Charles wanted to scream.  He wanted to crawl into a ball and die.  If the Mayor was this powerful, he’d wasted his shot.  He’d never gather an army strong enough to break through.  

He was stuck here forever.

All these thoughts came crashing down at once.  As the sky began to dim from the explosions, he noticed a small pixel of darkness in the heavens.  “That shouldn’t be there.”  Suddenly, the object zipped back over the wall.  

“That asshole.”

***

“My poor ceiling,” whined Shart.  “He broke it.  I’m going to have to fix that manually.”

“I was not aware you could tear those light bulbs out,” I responded.

Shart was too upset to even correct me.  Clearly, they weren’t called light bulbs.  They were  something called illuminators.  I didn’t know how much work replacing one involved, but it must have been a lot given Shart’s whining and gnashing of teeth.  

“So, where did ya park it?” asked Badgelor.

“The orb of annihilation?  I left it hovering above the battlefield,” replied Shart.  “It was so bright, I doubt anyone could see a little dot absolute darkness in the middle of those explosions.”

“I saw it,” I said.

Shart paused, then looked up.  Another massive explosion wracked the sky.  That one was a mix of purple and green.  “Well, shit.”

“Did he just blow up the Orb of Annihilation?” I asked.

“No…” Shart lied.  

“It wasn’t totally destroyed, though I told ye blocking those stars with it would damage it,” said Badgelor.  ”I doubt anyone will be controlling it anytime soon.”

“Or ever again,” grumbled Shart.  

I was about to say something, but our entire battle plan literally revolved around breaking a crystal that was not supposed to be breakable.  It seemed kind of hypocritical to whine about it.  

Though, I really wanted to.  

“What if he tries again?” I asked, and Shart looked at me.  Then, all the stars faded.  

“Good luck finding it in all that blackness,” said Shart.  

I looked up at the barren night sky.  Well, it was almost barren.  There were odd flickering bits where the stars had been pulled down, and the moons still hovered overhead.  Those were suddenly a concern.    

“He can’t pull the moons down?” I asked.

“If he could do that, I wouldn’t be here,” said Shart, looking up at the night sky.

“Can you fight yet?” asked the demon.  I continued to sit, watching the battlefield. 

“Regenerating an eyeball is taking longer than I expected it would,” I answered, blinking several times.  The hazy effect of Ignore Injury was gone.  I was left with a newly made eyeball that couldn’t quite focus properly.  

I felt ridiculous, sitting and doing nothing while other people fought, but my eye wasn’t my only problem.  My Stamina and Mana were being massively overused.  In any normal situation, I didn’t have to worry about Mana or Stamina Crashes anymore, but this was hardly normal.  If I overtaxed myself too much, I’d find myself wanting when I fought Grebthar.  That would end everyone, so I forced myself to relax and heal.

Healing, at least to the extent I was doing it, was an extremely odd sensation.  Treatment let me block pain, but I could still feel the shifting of my body around as I transferred bits of bone to rebuild my hand and forearm.  The scar on my face, which had cost me the eye, was healed in moments, but the eyeball was tricky.  

I could do most of the healing automatically.  That left me watching the battlefield.  The undead had mostly reformed for another strike.  If they attempted to push through the tunnel, they’d have to clear it first.  However, I doubted that would take them as long as we’d like.  

Massive chunks of the wall had fallen in the last fight.  No one had expected this magnitude of combat.  The missing chunk on the southern half of the wall was matched by a massive chunk missing on the northern half of the wall.  Worse, the body of the dragon was acting like a ramp, making climbing the wall easier on that side.

The south side’s ramp didn’t even require climbing, being made of countless undead.  The ramp was so useful that Charles wasn’t even trying to reanimate the corpses.  I could blast all the bodies out of existence, but doing so would require tremendous Mana.  I was sure Charles would just love for me to give him that opening.  

I wouldn’t do it.  Instead, I stood at the top of the wall, looking very impressive and thoroughly useless.  

“What do you think, north, south, passage or all?” asked Shart.

“All,” replied Badgelor.  “They are getting some sort of shield made of barriers and solid earth ready, so they can dig out the passage.  The rest of them are going to run up the ramps, and we are going to be in the thick of it again.”

Suddenly, there was a loud cracking noise, and the wall swayed uncomfortably.  I say uncomfortably because, if you are on a forty-log tall stone structure and it wobbles at all, it is uncomfortable.  After several tense moments, the wall stopped teetering.  

“I think the structure is generally sound,” said Shart finally.

“Seriously?” I asked.

“Well, more like it is designed to stand upright, even with everything below us broken.  That’s what it wants to do.  There is some living rock in there trying to heal the place, too.  It is not going to fall down for anything less than…”

“The Dark Overlord,” I finished.

“Yeah,” Shart confirmed uncomfortably.  

“Any chance we could collapse the wall toward them?” I asked.  Forty logs wasn’t a lot when it came to long-distance running.  However, it could be a lot if you dropped something heavy onto a horde of undead.  That was especially true if you had a second wall behind it.  

“Maybe, if I got on the other side and pushed really hard,” said Badgelor.  “That kind of effort would be a lot, even for me.”

I could imagine.  Everyone was exhausted, and we’d lost a lot of equipment.  The high-level adventurers armed with weapons worthy of the gods were currently amassing giant piles of rocks to toss down upon their foes.  The elves were having a great deal of fun with that.  Apparently, the LOOKOUT! wasn’t good for stone mining, so they seldom got a chance to use their stone shattering strikes.  

“Are ye done ruminating?” asked Badgelor.  The words were innocuous, but I understood the meaning.

“Yeah, I can’t do it without you,” I said, finally.  

“And you aren’t going to stop me?” asked Badgelor.

“No, but I expected you’d want to live now that you’ve found more badgers,” I replied.

Badgelor stood silently for a moment.  “They need a world to live in, Jim.  No matter what, I’m still a relic.  I’d like to see them grow up, if only to show them who’s boss, but you need to destroy the amulet.”

“I could drain it,” I offered.

“I got a good look from your memories earlier.  Now that you have the skills to really analyze the amulet, I stand by what I said earlier.  If you try to drain it, you are probably going to blow out your Mana Network.  That’s if you’re lucky,” said Shart.

“What happens in the worst case?” I asked.

“The Dark Overlord totally overpowers you and kills you while you’re trying it,” replied Shart.

“I don’t mind that,” I said.

“Dum Dum, you’d die without draining the amulet,” said Shart, shaking his head.  “I don’t know much about how the amulet was made, but it looks like Grebthar tried to merge a piece of <system> architecture into the amulet.  I don’t know if it can be drained.  Best to smash it.”

“So, that’s the plan,” I said, blinking rapidly as my eye finally matured enough to see properly.  “I smash the amulet, and Badgelor eats the crystal.”  

“Wish I could just eat both,” said Badgelor, “But my stomach can’t digest anything <system> built.”

“Fecking Dark Overlord,” said Shart.  “It looks like Grebthar’s improvements were built specifically to defeat Badgelor’s perk.”

“Funny that,” I said,  “But he couldn’t do the crystal?”

“Not as far as the <system> is concerned.  It’s a natural object,” explained Shart.  “More simply, if Grebthar could fix a crystal, there wouldn’t be much he couldn’t do.”

“Surprised you didn’t take that perk earlier, Badgelor,” I said.

“Do you honestly think Charles would let me near his person if I had a perk that could just end him?” asked Badgelor.  I remembered the perks Badgelor had that rendered him all but immune to my magic.  I considered those useful, because I could just fire and forget.  Badgelor was never in danger, even when he was standing right on an enemy that I was blasting.  

Charles thought I was insane.  Of course, he wouldn’t let Badgelor pick a perk that could actually protect him from all of Grebthar’s spells.  

My relationship with the badger was more akin to a true partnership, with Badgelor taking the lead in certain areas he specialized in and me leading in others.  The badger’s relationship with Charles was quite a bit different, with Badgelor operating in more of a sidekick role.  

The ancient stories had the mighty Badgelor uttering phrases such as ‘Golly, Gee, Grebthar’ and ‘Badger’s promise!’ quite often.  Basically, I had the Nightwing version of Badgelor, while Grebthar had Dick in his earlier, Robin role.  

I glanced over at Twinkle.  He smirked.

“Finished wool gathering?” asked the King of the Elves. 

“Yeah, I’m just waiting for Grebthar to show again.  When he does, Badgelor and I will go down and finish this.”

“We’ll come help you,” said Julia, determination crossing her face.  She had her hair done in the cinnamon-bun style that appeared to be the default battle configuration for Falconian women.  Somehow, it looked fierce on her.  

“I have Badgelor.  That will be enough,” I said.

Julia stood quietly for a moment.  “Toomen and Grebthar talked in Filly.  Grebthar said the reason Toomen lost was that he didn’t bring a raid group to kill the Dark Overlord.”

“I’ll have Badgelor.  He didn’t,” I said, seeing a flicker of disappointment in her eyes.  “Seriously, if you see an opportunity to get a few shots in, feel free.  However, this is going to boil down to Badgelor and me.  Anyone else who gets too close is going to die.”