Wish upon the Stars chapter 125 (Patreon)

The first thing I did was cast Sucking Mud on the Wyverns back right  foot. Given how soft the ground already was and the weight of the thing  it just seemed like a solid plan. As that took effect I saw Cark rain  down blue flames at the Lich as Callie picled up my vibe and was trying  to chain down the Wyvern. Jessie was imbuing vines with life energy to  target the Lich, and Sarah was helping as best she could with her holy  hand. With them keeping him pinned I decided to engage the Wyvern with  Callie. I was just hoping the specters didn't swarm us.

I  activated Leaf on the Wind again and then Touch of Tears, turning my  already flaming tonfas into poison fire batons as I hurled myself at the  horned skull of the Wyvern. The thing snapped at me and I avoided with  Cloud Step. Slamming down on its head as I bounced off mid air I winced,  I was running low on charges for the day. I'd used a bunch or them on  the raid and I was going to need to minimize them in this fight. When I  landed I started wailing on the Wyverns skull, not bothering to speed up  my hits as it was distracted.

As I was doing that and  Callie was keeping it pinned down Benny made his move. Laying into the  thing with his tranq punch as he leapt around with his density shifting  leg. I wasn't sure the tranq would even work on the skeleton but hell,  at the very least it was some damage. I could see the impact of my  weapons on the skull as my blows landed, glowing green cracks smoldering  into existence as I struck. I saw Callie slip past the horns to join me  up top.

She slipped up next to me, not bothering to  attack with shadows. My poison fire was a debuff that would penetrate  deeply into the bone and spread, her shadows were blunt damage and we  needed to find that heart. "Benny is going to try to get inside to find  that core Sarah mentioned, but until then we need to stall the bastard.  Any ideas on what to do other than stand on its head and punch it a  bunch?" Callie seemed almost as lost as I was in this fight.

I  scowled. "Not really. Our best bet is the eye socket maybe? I have no  real idea how to fight one of these. This thing is fucking huge. You  ever fought an enemy this size? Also how is this thing not crushing us  into paste? It absolutely has to be Might heavy." I expected it to be  much stronger than the Dullahan given its size and how it was a almost a  dragon. This thing was fast and powerful, but not nearly as much as it  should be. I'd been expecting nine hundred Might or some shit, and this  was anything but.

Callie slammed a pair of shadow hooks  into the bone to remain upright as the thing thrashed around trying to  dislodge us. I grabbed onto her, and was close enough to hear her  snicker over the roar of the Wyvern. "Because you aren't thinking this  through. It's Might is probably close to mine. Fantasy would be a much  higher stat because it has to cheat so much with the flying and  interacting like a physically whole being." She paused. We need to get  inside the skeleton. We have zero reliable ways to coordinate which  means we have no way to establish a search pattern. Benny is in there  alone."

I nodded and we waited for a lull in the movement.  Since I was still using Leaf on the Wind I scooped up my girlfriend and  bolted across the surface of the skeleton dragon. The thing rocked and  jolted. The only thing that had been saving us was that it tended to  keep its head steady, probably just out of habit. I didn't think it  could actually feel us on the bone so it was just thrashing to try to  get rid of something it barely knew the location of. Still, once we  started moving even on the head it was tough to stay standing, and I  wasted another Cloud Step preventing us from being thrown clear.

Finally  after about five seconds of running we got to the eye socket and I  hurled us both into the gap, dropping into the abyss that was the  Wyverns skull. The whole thing was massive, even the socket was easily  about five feet, and the skull itself was even bigger. We landed on the  jaw, bolting forward towards the opening at the base of the throat that  would let us drop free and get out of the head. Once we were out we  bounce off another Cloud step and into the massive ribcage, which was  MUCH less well lit than I'd been expecting.

We did see  Benny scrambling around, hopping from bone to bone. I could see Callie's  point about the Fantasy stat, from inside and at this angle I could see  the bone itself wasn't the only part of this thing. There was an almost  tangible dark aura that seemed almost like flesh coating the bones,  isolating the light from outside and making it almost impossible to see  anything in here...for most people anyway. Luckily I wasn't most people.  "Hold on guys, I've got this! I can find the heart." I had to yell to  make myself heard in the weird stilted atmosphere in here. Even sound  was muffled.

I activated Seek Hidden, targeting the  Wyverns heart. We needed to locate the thing as soon as possible, and  despite the headache building from spamming skills I didn't think I was  actually out yet. I was pretty sure I could last the rest of this fight.  I scanned the inside of the darkened skeleton, and finally, after  looking around more than a few times, I spotted a faint red glow  overhead, obscured by a protective cover of bone. I'd never seen that,  but I assumed it was some kind of evolutionary device for beings with  chest cavities that could hold whole people.

Unfortunately,  it was further than expected. I was betting something about the massive  amount of Fantasy this thing had had altered it's internal structure.  This cavern seemed way too big to be the inside of even the massive best  we saw outside. It was a bit like the spatial expansions on buildings,  though it seemed less...stable. The world around us was a dark shifting  abyss of uncertainty. Regardless, I could see the heart, so we could  head for it. I was still holding Callie and I dashed forward heading for  the glow.

Benny  had locked in on my voice and was heading our way, though the glow of  my tonfas probably helped. He caught up to us within a minute or two,  and we made our way steadily toward the heart, hopping between ribs,  which the Wyvern had a shockingly large number of. Finally we made it to  the spot under the heart, and were able to jump up and catch the bone  plate surrounding the thing, which in itself ended up being the size of a  small room. At the center of the room was a pulsing black mass of  concentrated darkness with an eerie blue glow lighting up veins across  its exterior.

That  brought me up short. "Huh. That's...weird. We should take care of this  fast, without anyone out there to distract the thing it might go after  the others. Anyone have any clue how to break this? Because I kind of  want to just smash it with my tonfas but that feels like it might  backfire." I set Callie down and gave her a shrug. "This one is on you  boss, you're the one who makes the calls." She stood up easily, the  inside of this thing somehow not being jostled by what I'm sure was a  madly thrashing Wyvern.

Callie  looked mildly annoyed, which made sense since we had zero guarantee  that destroying this thing would be as simple as hitting it, or that  there wouldn't be side effects. Sadly we didn't have time to cautious,  and after a second or two of thinking she groaned. "Sure, put the  completely random decision on me in case it goes wrong. Fine. Do it. We  need to get out of here, this thing isn't our main threat and the others  are fighting the Lich without us." She gave a resolved nod for me to  proceed.

I  chuckled a bit. "That's what you get for being the boss. You get credit  for the successes and blamed for all the fuckups too." I stepped forward  and slammed down one of my tonfas on the heart, and it bounced right  off. I frowned. "Ok. That's not...ideal." I tried again, setting my feet  and swinging hard at the pulsing object. This time it didn't bounce off  so much as kind of sink in, but still no visible sign of damage or even  impact aside from a slight flare in the blue glow of the veins when my  attack my contact.

I  studied the veins, and was able to tell that the glow had shifted  slightly. There were small amounts of green mixed into the blue. I could  also see minute cracks on the surface, with the telltale green glow of  poison fire, but they were so small it wasn't readily apparent damage  had been done. Still, that was a good sign, so I hauled back and started  wailing on the thing. I tried to focus hard enough to make the blows  sink in, since that seemed to be what had done the most damage.

Instead  of trying to use DS mastery I decided to get in some time on my Balam  training. I had the others step back and started trying to work up my  rotation, slamming my tonfas into the surface of the heart from  different angles and positions to try to make my blows land with as much  force and momentum as possible. The forms of Balam were pretty  adaptable, so I was able to slowly get a grasp on what the best  movements and attacks were to use with my weapons.

Blunt  weapons worked similar to the strikes I'd been using, with the main  difference being the reach. I had to change up my rhythm and adjust my  grip a few times before I got the hand of it, but before I knew it I  could see that telltale green glow beginning to spread, interrupting the  blue. I was having a blast, the bounciness made this thing feel like a  punching bag, and I couldn't get enough of wailing on the dark surface.

Sadly,  nothing could last forever, because after a minute or two of blurringly  fast blows the thing started to shudder. The cracks began to grow on  their own without any help from impacts, and Callie and Benny grabbed my  shoulders to drag me back. My girlfriend seemed sad to cut me off but  she did it anyway. "Whoa there babe, that's enough. We need to get out  of here. That thing is shaking and while I don't KNOW it's going to  explode it kind of seems like it would be likely." I flushed a bit and  scooped her back up.

We  bolted for the edge of the platform, hurling ourselves off and into the  cavity inside the Wyvern. The space was shifting even more, and I could  even see gaps starting to form in the darkness coating the bones as we  drifted down. We touched down on a rib and then waited for a gap and  slipped through, falling a much shorter distance to the ground than we  had to get to the gap we left through. As soon as we hit the grass we  started running, bolting at top speed to get out of range, and it was a  good thing we did. The entire thing went up in a huge wave of blue green  poison flame throwing us from our feet.