Surviving Arkadia

Amris started to say “What?” but the word turned into a series of coughs, and then the coughs brought forth flames.

“What the fuck?” I said, right as the bullets started flying.

Sarah grabbed Amris under the armpits and hauled him to his feet. “Cure wounds is crimson,” she said. “Flame potions, like Dragon Breath for example, are scarlet.”

I got on Amris’s other side and helped turn him towards the soldiers and drag him closer. We tried to be gentle but it was clear that he was in a lot of pain as the REGENERATION AURA effect slowly knitted his lungs back together.

He let out a cry of pain and with it a cone of flame that rolled out across the roof of the train.

We were still too far away for it to do much damage to the soldiers but they stopped advancing towards us. They didn’t stop shooting though, and they were inside most of the shield spells.

Fortunately everything missed Amris. Sarah took a couple of hits that I saw but just seemed to shrug them off. I was hit in the shoulder. It went right through the outer edge of my deltoid. I absolutely did not shrug it off. I yelped like a kicked dog.

Blood poured down my arm and the wound burned like hell. I heard a familiar ding but I was not going to check what the achievement was while they were still shooting at me.

Amris wrenched free of Sarah’s grip and then shook me off as if I was barely there. Blood still flowed from the slowly closing exit wounds on his back. He almost stumbled, but instead threw himself onto his hands and then bounded up like the cat he was, and roared.

He moved his head from side to side, hosing the soldiers with white hot flame. The nearest two had dropped to one knee, the better to aim, and they didn’t stand a chance. The full heat of the flames blasted them in their faces. I don’t want to think about what it must have felt like but at least they weren’t feeling it for long. I am confident that they were both dead before their bodies rolled off the roof of the train.

The man behind them dropped his rifle and raised a shield spell. It was strong enough to save him from damage but the flames washed off it and caught the two men behind him, setting their uniform jackets on fire.

I hoped the two burning men would panic but they were made of sterner stuff. They beat the flames out with their hands. One of them squealed like a child and sucked his fingers before pulling a red potion vial from a pouch on his belt. I paid close attention to the exact colour of the potion as he downed it.

A man behind him with a fancier uniform, so probably an officer, told him off for wasting cures.

The burned man snapped back that he couldn’t shoot with burned fingers.

Amris coughed out the last of the flames. I had hoped that the potion effect would last longer but he seemed done. Amris backed up a few steps and squinted at the second red potion.

I clamped my hand over his and dragged him away from the soldiers saying, “Let me work out what it is first. Haven’t you ever heard of multi-potion toxicity?”

The soldier who’d raised a shield dropped it and looked like he was winding up to cast something nasty at us but Sarah walked past us, now wreathed in a shimmering purple aura. She punched him before he finished and knocked him a good fifteen feet backwards.

I turned my attention back to the potion vial in Amris’s hand. It looked the same as the potion the soldier had drunk to cure his burns. I compared it to the other red potions on Amris’s belt. Most of them were the same shade but I found two that were a brighter, more orangey red. The one in his hand was a darker, colder red. I did my best to re-calibrate my mental versions of scarlet and crimson to fit these two shades.

“This is Cure Wounds,” I said, tapping the potion in his hand. “These two are some kind of flame.”

“I want the healing,” said Amris and opened the vial.

“Wait!” I said. “Are you sure your mouth is back to normal?”

He ran his tongue over his teeth and swallowed a couple of times. “I’m sure,” he said, and drank the potion.

I was gambling that the dragon breath potion worked the way I thought it did. I thought it was a transmogrification potion. Those can rewrite the morphic field to make people bigger, or stronger or to disguise them. I was betting that dragon breath turned Amris’ mouth into a dragon’s mouth. Transmogrification potions can be nasty if you try to combine them but they’re extremely short acting.

Cure potions are about the least toxic of all instant potions. It’s kind of their thing. So I was fairly sure that Amris wouldn’t be shivering, aching and throwing up for at least a couple of hours. And we might all be dead by then if he didn’t drink it.

I looked back up in time to see Sarah “Sparta” kick the final soldier from the roof of the train. She whooped in savage joy. The other soldiers were already gone and I had an additional 4 stacks of REGENERATION AURA. She jogged back towards us. The purple shimmering aura was still in effect but I knew that if she didn’t hit someone soon it would drop.

The purple aura was the IRRESISTIBLE FORCE skill in action. It’s one of the two skills unique to the Juggernaut class. While it’s in effect her blows can’t be blocked, are harder to dodge, and will damage anything that parries them. Yes, that includes if you parry a punch with a sword. It multiplies the REGENERATION AURA stacks by the level of the IRRESISTIBLE FORCE skill, though only for the Juggernaut. It also adds that level to STRENGTH, AGILITY and all melee skills.

It has two downsides. Once it’s activated, it can only continue as long as she keeps moving and has enemies to fight. And it has a long cooldown.

So it seemed fortunate when the riders returned with more passengers and dropped one right between us.

Less fortunate that he then shot her in the chest while standing inside Amris’s dispel shield,

Sarah laughed. She looked awful. I’ve seen corpses with better colour in their faces. Still she laughed. “Oh it is all over for you bitches now,” she said.