Storming the Castle Part 5

*step step step step step*

The steps grew louder and more frequent; soon enough there was a barrage of steps. They came closer and closer before eventually coming to a stop.

They're here. It's a shame; I still need more time.

The large doors which led to the throne room opened, and the players came face-to-face with Shalene for the second time. The Demon Lord sat up from her throne and stood up before slowly walking down the steps toward the players. Her wings were retracted, but she didn't need them out to look menacing. Her sharp teeth, evil horns, light greyish skin, and yellowish eyes did that all by themselves.

"What is that!?"

There was a large pitch-black orb in the middle of the room floating at least fifteen feet in the air. After looking at it for long enough, you could occasionally see a few hands and faces the same color as the orb reach through before quickly retreating back into the orb. Just what is this? What is she doing?

Shalene reached the bottom of the stairs, and people began firing arrows and magic at her from the other side of the room. Most of them hit, but a message popped up saying [Immune]. That message usually only popped up when a character is doing something scripted and stays up until the fight actually starts.

"So… You defeated all of my soldiers?"

We looked at each other for a second and Mike stepped forward.

"Yes, that's right."

"hmm… is that so? Tell me, humans, have you heard of the great nation of Kilaria?"

A few murmurs could be heard, but no one answered. Shalene took this as a no and continued to speak.

"There was once a great nation to the north of Enjuhar and Wesphuy; in fact, you're standing in what remains of it now. Nearly a century ago, out of all the nations, they were the one that was leading in terms of magical power and knowledge. They believed they couldn't fall no matter what, and due to that they became complacent and didn't take the proper steps to defend themselves. Their own hubris did them in, but they're not over yet."

She reached her hand out, and a dark red scythe appeared in it. She spun it around menacingly before pointing it at us. It was at this point that her wings expanded.

"My name is Shalene Weu Philsbotho, and I am the last descendant of Kilaria royalty. You will pay for your ancestor's transgressions. Don't die too easy."

She took a step forward, then, she was gone. Where did she go? There was no chant, so it couldn't have been teleportation, where is she? That question was quickly answered by a loud shriek from the middle of our group. I don't know how, but she had reached the middle of our group and started slashing at people with her scythe. Due to how much movement she was making with the scythe, it was hard to anticipate just what she was going to do, and therefore extremely hard to block or parry. She hit a few people, but no one died from just one or two hits, and some people made distance while others rushed in to deal some damage. The injured took this moment to heal, and a few swordsmen and thieves rushed in but were all unable to predict where the scythe was going to hit; if they blocked it, it was out of sheer luck, so most people decided to forgo blocking and focus fully on dodging. The thieves were able to dodge most of her attacks, but due to her sporadic movement didn't dare get close enough to attack for fear of instantly dying. Arrows were shot at her, but she raised her wings to block them. The arrows still did damage, but it was so little that if all the attacks were like that they would run out of arrows long before getting close to defeating her. Next, they tried magic, and after much trial and error, it was determined that poison magic would be the best, so that's what people began using; but just like before, she took a step and completely vanished. When we had found her she already killed three of our top-level mages. The close combat players ran in and dealt some good damage, but she bested two swordsmen, a thief, and a tank. Only about an eighth of her health was gone, and she had already done so much damage.

Shalene had retreated to a good distance, then slammed her scythe into the ground, leaving it there. All of the cracks in the marble glowed a bright red, and demons began crawling out of the floor. The armor sets that adorned both sides of the room also started moving and walking toward us. Now that they were keeping us busy, Shalene raised her hands to the large black orb, and the longer she did it, the bigger it grew.

"Uhh, GUYS… the black ball is getting bigger!"

"That can't be good…"

"What's going to happen when she's done?"

"Who knows, but I'd rather not find out. It looks like we need to keep her busy so she can't cast her magic."

Arrows flew at her, but she paid it no mind, but she should have been more wary since the next attack was large and easily avoidable if she wasn't just standing completely still.

"MAGIC MISSLE!"

A prismatic stream of colors began being sucked into a small orb at the tip of the mage's wand, and after a few seconds, it stopped and released a beam of white light the height and width of a golf ball. Nearly none of the previous attacks even made her flinch, but this one sent her tumbling nearly ten feet before coming to a stop on the ground. As Shalene started getting up, she was hit back down by a heavy attack with a large hammer. While on the ground, the hammer started coming down again, but she rolled a bit to the side, dodging the attack, before swiftly getting up and grabbing the player on the throat. Her hand glowed red, and the player started freaking out. He tried breaking out of her grip by hitting her arm with his full strength, but that didn't work, so he tried hitting her wherever he could. He managed to do a little bit of damage, but it didn't matter since he couldn't break out. The red glow from her hand covered him and he instantly died.

A faint, "That's not fair" could be heard.

Without wasting any more time, Shalene raised her hands again and the ball grew more and more. This time she was keeping an eye out for long-range attacks, and due to the demons and living sets of armor, most of the players couldn't rush in to fight her, and those that could go in were worried that they would die like the other guy did if they went in alone, so instead tried fighting the demons off. The archers switched to explosive and poison arrows which did much more damage than before, but it still wasn't enough. In total Shalene had lost maybe 35% of her total health, and we lost nearly 20% of our total players. If something doesn't change, we will lose.

"YES! YES! It's done. It's finally done."