The impact knocked the breath from him and sent his vision fuzzy.  He lay on the ground at the base of the wall, struggling to take a breath.  His vision faded even more as he heard gunfire and the roar of the beast.   Trying to focus on the big red blob in front of him, he cast Mind Spike once more and passed out.

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Seventeen

Victory And Death!

Allistor woke to the sensation of a bear cub tongue licking his face.  And the stench of whatever Fuzzy had been snacking on.

“Gah! What the hell, Fuzzy?” He was trying to push the bear away from his face when he remembered the drake.  Adrenaline rushed through his system and he sprang to his feet, frantically searching for the boss monster. His head pounded, and he lost his balance, leaning against the wall for support.

What he saw was most of his group standing around smiling at him, some laughing.  “Way to fall asleep on the job there, hero.” Helen winked at him.   Notifications flooded across his interface, but he swiped them away.

“What happened?” He looked behind them at the inert form of the fire drake. “Did we win?”

Bjurstrom smirked at him. “Nope.  We wiped.  We’re all dead.  This is hell.”

His wits still slightly scattered from the blow to the head, Allistor didn’t get the joke right away.  He opened his mouth, then closed it again a few times, unable to form a coherent thought.  Helen stepped forward and grabbed his head in both hands, staring into his eyes.

“You got slammed pretty hard.  We weren’t sure you were going to wake up.  You gotta teach some of us that healing spell.  It sucked, just sitting here watching you drool.  And Weiss isn’t doing all that much better.”

“Heals.  Yeah.” He cast a heal on himself, immediately feeling a little better. “Where’s Weiss?”

Helen took his arm and supported him as she led him back out to the corridor, where Weiss sat with her back against the wall. The empty health potion vial sat on the floor next to her.  She looked up, obviously still in pain.  “It’s getting better.  But if you could speed things up?” she spoke with her jaw clenched.

He cast another heal on her, feeling a bit woozy still, and she sighed with relief.   Hoping for some of the same, he cast another heal on himself.

“What happened?” he asked, taking a seat next to Weiss.  His health bar was up to eighty percent, but his equilibrium was still off.

“You tell us.” Andrea squatted down in front of him so that they were face to face.  “You shouted at us to stop firing, then dove in there like you were friggin’ Jenkins.” Several of the group chuckled and poked at Jenkins.  “We saw you charge the thing, then stab it. Then you went flying up out of sight, and we heard a thud that I’m guessing was you hitting the wall.  Hard.  We started firing at the thing’s belly, cuz that’s all we could see.  A few seconds later it fell over twitching, then died.”