42: The Soul Flower: Nearly Dying by a Bad Dad Joke

Moisture descended, making everyone's skin feel clammy and sticky. Hair was plastered to the sides of cheeks.

"Here's the first black tomb." Wei pointed to a stone slab in the ground.

Black chains shot up from the ground and wrapped the stone, forming a fortification barrier around it. Holding it all together was a bronze sundial lock.

"How the heck are we to knock that down?" Bosnia yelped.

Everyone raised their weapons when smoking black skeletons formed before them. Their numbers matched their own.

"Annoying Imp, Vo Sisters: focus on them. You and I will work on that lock." Rat passed his orders.

"Mus, don't order me about!" Wei grumbled.

"We follow Rat." Annoying Imp impassively stated, giving his friend full support. The girls nodded.

"Let's go crack some skulls!" Bosnia crunched her fists and rushed to the fray, kicking back oncoming dragonling skeletons, which were trying to bite her legs and casting fireballs.

"At least the fire dried the air." She noted as her dagger was lodged into a ball socket to send a skeleton forearm flying off the body.

"Hurry!" Rat sat before the tombstone, careful not to touch the black magic.

He pictured the image of one of the scrolls Graysky gave him. "These give you attributes to suppress, transport or cast opposite elements." The bald head wizard had said.

A parchment scroll sealed with a padlock symbol dropped before Rat. He used his tail to break the wax seal to release the magic. As the scroll unraveled, silver light poured out to draw in the black misty magic and absorb it.

"That's unexpected, but okay." Wei blinked.

"Hurry up and work the code on that lock." Rat pointed to the sundial seal.

"Fine. Don't say I didn't play nice." The black rat approached the sundial and began to turn the pointer to a set of symbols. Naturally, he didn't mention that with every successful unlock, the skeleton horde would double in quantity and be reforged stronger. Those within the tombstone's lock barrier would be protected.

"They're reforging and stronger!" Clover gasped as she saw the ones she had cut down, stand back up. More entered the fray.

Rat cursed when he saw an oily barrier go up around Wei and the tombstone. "Scum!"

A skeleton hand burst from the soil and tried to grab him. Rat side stepped and did an evade roll. He used his air magic to make the bone formation shatter.

"Suprising. Mucus can fight." Wei chuckled and yelped when a skeleton dragonling slammed into his barrier.

Rat gave a smug chuckle. "If you don't get that seal down, I'll keep testing the barrier with skeletons."

Wei returned his focus on the sundial.

Clover dashed in and out of spaces to cut, strike and shatter bones. But the black magic would only regather the pieces to make stronger body parts. "We need to do something about this black magic!"

"I've got an idea." Annoying Imp called upon his Will of Protection spell, and held his shield tight. "Shatter them and I'll suck up the black lingxi like always."

"But there's too much and the magic is powerful, it will drain you fast." Clover wasn't liking the idea.

"I'm fine."

She groaned, seeing his determination. "Okay, but I'll stay close to you."

Clover told Bosnia to keep fighting hard, while she made openings for Annoying Imp to suck up the necromantic lingxi. As he was absorbing the energy, his shield was maintaining his own. Unexpectedly, the absorbed energy was being converted to pure lingxi via the shield spell.

"Okay." Clover nodded and danced about a skeleton group with her daggers cutting down bones.

With Annoying Imp draining their magic, the bones were more brittle and shattered.

Wei sweated as he managed to unlock the seal with the last sundial code. The chains receded back to the ground.

Annoying Imp kicked the tombstone to make it fall down. The remaining skeletons shattered.

Now that they had a way, they continued the process to knock down the five remaining tombstones. But the sixth one triggered the Air Sprite Guardian into motion.

A maddening shriek rippled the air with a mental attack, but a soothing melody calmed their minds and fended off the attack.

Clover nodded in Liran's direction. She returned her focus to the approaching alfaren soulless mage: pits for eyes, sinew limbs and ragged cloth over a waif body.

The air sprite opened its toothless mouth to release another spell. "Why did the mage get fired from the council? He kept dropping the fireballs."

Bosnia burst with laughter. "What kind of spell is that?" But she stopped when fireballs rained over her head and she had to dodge and evade them with rolls.

"Well ain't that peachy." Rat's left furry brow twitched with the irony of a joke trying to make their deaths look like one.

Nearby, at the head of a raised circular platform was Liran, Aiden and the other ratiss fending off the smoky skeletons rushing out of the smoky Soul Flower barrier. Xiao and Chen were running around a small, ground sundial made of thorns and stone .

"Oh, that's a funny joke." Liran made mental notes, as she strummed a sound attack to wipe out a horde of skeletons.

"It's not funny when it's bringing on fire magic to make us toast!" Rat snapped and yelped as he jumped and skidded about to avoid the flame rain.

The Air Sprite opened its mouth to release another bad joke. "What's a skeleton's favorite instrument? A trombone."

A wave of skeletons blowing horns entered, casting sound magic to disrupt everyone's focus.

"Ha! What's a bard's classic comeback? You got me hooked!" Liran laughed as she changed her playing to an upbeat and comical song, dispelling the mental attack and boosting the party's strengths.

Aiden groaned and shook his head. "You got me hooked? Seriously."

"Ugh! Liran-sai we're suffering enough with this sprite's bad jokes, we don't need you to add to them." Rat grumbled and let out a pleasant oh when he felt his stamina and lingxi boosted so he could perform at least one blood code.

He threw back a wave of skeletons with a whip of his tail wielding air magic. "Wei-git, hurry up with that tombstone code!"

Wei growled as his tiny claws were moving thorny lines around the last symbol he needed to decode. "If you shut up and stop throwing skeletons into my barrier, I can finish this faster." He yelped when three skeleton bodies slammed into the magic barrier to stir ripples.

"Why did the alfar gaze at the stone? He was looking for solid evidence." The Air Sprite wailed.

"Is it losing its edge? That's the worst joke of the lot." Bosnia commented and yelped when stone debris was flying into her direction. She ducked and rolled, landing next to Aiden.

They gasped when more stones began raining overhead and flying at them from all directions.

"Anytime now!" Bosnia shouted to Wei.

"I'm working hard here! Stupid kijen." Wei moved frantically on the last pattern within the symbol. It glowed silver and vanished, unlocking the chains on the last tombstone.

"NOW!" Clover, Bosnia, Rat and Wei shouted to Annoying Imp as they saw the juggernaut nigen sprint to the tombstone to kick it down.

The stone shattered upon impact, which nullified the approaching stone-throw attack.

"Phew." Bosnia sighed with relief when the skeletons stopped their movements.

Everyone gasped when all the tombstones fell down and the area was being filled with emerging skeletons: alfaren, dragonlings and humans.

"Whelp. Why did the moon miss its deadline? It couldn't find the space." Liran gulped.

"Liran-sai?" Aiden aloofly called out her name.

"Yes?"

"That was the worst joke of them all." He and all the others faced down a jam packed horde and the Air Sprite leading them.