Boss Fight

“W-who was that?” Katie gripped her sword hilt like it’d do anything against something not of this pretend dungeon.

“Didn’t recognize the clothing… maybe an interloper from some other universe.” Percy haughtily speculated. “Don’t worry. I can handle him.”

“Hey, can we cut the role-playing for a sec?” Frankie looked around at the multiple dimly-lit hallways they could go down, and the one he’d disappeared into. “Not that I’m from here or anything, but I don’t think that’s part of the game.”

“You never know. Maybe there’s a twist somewhere down in these halls.” Serah took her seriously, but wasn’t the least bit worried. “Come on, Percy. I wanna see you fight him!” She decided to walk the exact path they’d seen the suited stranger go down.

The party followed. Frankie wanted to get to the bottom of this, everyone else just wanted to see more of the dungeon.

“Wait, isn’t this…” Rocco was distracted by the texture of the walls. It had become lighter- almost as if something had been rubbing against it over and over again for years.

“Hey, yeah…” Gregory caught on. “This must be the Boss Room!”

Serah and Percival’s jaws were stuck open as they paved the way forward. Once they turned one last corner, indeed, they saw it- the first floor boss, Henryk the Wall Dragon.

The limbless, snakelike animatronic had fire flickering off its mouth and red plated scales making up its slender body. It was more obviously robotic than the goblin, but it clung to the wall seemingly by magic, slithering around it as it noticed them.

“Gregory, ice!”

“Right!” Greg started waving his staff at Percy’s order, charging up a spell. Everyone prepared their weapons. This time they all had to take the offensive.

He was almost impossible to hit without a spear or ranged weapon, often scaling up to the ceiling if he ever felt endangered. Serah tried throwing her daggers now and then but that hardly ever worked. Henryk was weak to ice attacks, however, as they’d found in previous runs- after losing to him at least twelve times and being sent back up by the ride operators, of course.

He was quite the threat- not only was the holographic fire intimidating, it was impossible to dodge unless you had already seen it coming. Katie didn’t know this, once jumping up at the snake while he was up above to try and poke him with the very tip of her rapier. As Serah saw him shake and open his glowing mouth, she tackled the tourist, only barely saving the both of them from an early game over.

“Do it now!” Percy’s cry echoed in the dungeons, noticing the beast’s open maw. With great accuracy and power Gregory shot his staff forward, declaring—

“Froststar!” Sending a big blue missile into the creature’s mouth. It recoiled, doing more than enough damage to “kill” him- and stopped moving immediately, like a useless dead slug.

“We did it!” Serah cheered. “Nice going.”

A wall opened behind the dragon, revealing more stairs- the path to the second floor, the one they’d never crossed in all their attempts. Serah practically squeaked in excitement. She had a good feeling about this run.

Walking past the metal corpse, everyone stood in front of the open doorway.

“This is it.” Percy warned. “Now, before we go in, there’s a couple of things you should kn-“

Just as they were about to step down the stairs, they heard the sound of crackling embers and rattling behind them.

“That’s not supposed to-!”

Against all logic, the serpent shot back to life unprompted, chasing them all down the shadowy descent as it came with them to the second floor.