Chapter Three Hundred and Nineteen - Nightie Knight

“Is everyone okay?” I asked once again.

It was pretty clear that not everyone was in the best of shapes. One of the knights knelt down and started to remove the plates over his leg. There was a bit of blood there, and I suspected that one of the sheep had stomped his foot hard enough that the armour didn’t protect him entirely.

Erin was sporting a nasty black eye, and Bron had a shallow cut through his gambeson right over his short ribs. The sheep did have horns, did one of them poke him in the chest?

“I’m out of mana,” Lucille said. She slumped back onto the ground and leaned against her still-upright wizard’s staff. There was a sheen of sweat across her face and she looked exhausted.

“We’ll take however much time we need,” lieutenant Petalwrought said. “At least we’ve reached the end of this floor. No combat for a while.”

I glanced ahead. I didn’t notice earlier, but the fence the sheep had knocked over was the final one. The room ended at a wall with a doorway in its middle. The end of the floor? I relaxed a bit. If that led back to the bedroom that connected every floor together, then we’d be safe for a little bit.

But then, we had the boss fight coming up.

It was a little selfish of me, but I still checked on my friends before anyone else. Awen was stifling a yawn while carefully recranking her crossbow. Amaryllis looked stern, but a bit dishevelled too. Her feathers were all tussled up and swept back.

“Are you guys okay?” I asked.

“We’re fine,” Amaryllis said. She waved me a bit closer, and I walked over, expecting a hug. Instead she bonked me on the helmet with the back of a talon. “What were you thinking? Bouncing ahead like that? I saw you flop over and thought you were about to be crushed. You dumb bun.”

“Hey! I made it out of there just fine,” I said.

“If you had been injured, then no one here would have been able to help you,” she said. “Think of what that would do to Awen.”

“Awa?”

“Exactly,” Amaryllis continued. “If you were hurt, or died because of some overgrown sheep, then she would be inconsolable. Then I’d have to deal with her crying and I’m the last person we want dealing with that kind of useless emotional outburst.” She took a deep, deep breath, then let out a big huff. It was the sort of huff that outright admitted that she was projecting her emotions onto someone else.

I hugged her. “Thanks for worrying about me,” I said.

She carefully returned the hug, with much grumbling and half-hearted attempts to say that she wasn’t. I opened the hug up a bit, making room for Awen who joined in as soon as she could hastily put down her crossbow.

Congratulations! Through repeated actions your hugging Proficiency skill has improved and is now eligible for rank up!

Rank D is a free rank!

“Oh, nice!” I cheered. “My Hugging Proficiency skill finally went up a rank.”

Amaryllis sniffed. “So, that’s why you kept hugging us so much. We’re just here to grind your skills, are we?”

I laughed. “Sure! Let me grind my hugging skills on you some more!” I squished my cheek against hers and wiggled until she squirmed out of my grip.

“Well, it’s good to see that your moods are difficult to bring down,” Lieutenant Petalwrought said.

I let go of my friends and all three of us stood up straighter. It was a bit embarrassing to be playing around while others were still hard at work. “What can we do to help?” I asked.

“There’s not much to do now,” he said. “Just relax, recoup your mana as best you can, and if you have any wounds, then now would be a good time to let others know. Every knight, myself included, has taken some courses on how to apply first aid in the field.”

I shook my head. I was fine. I might have lost a couple of points of health in that scuffle earlier, but I wasn’t hurting any. My mana was very low, but that would fix itself if we just waited a little while. “What’s our next step?” I asked.

“We’ll move on in just a minute. I think Aria is inspecting some things and taking notes. Once she’s done with that and everyone is able to move again, we’ll continue on to the next room. I’ll brief everyone on what to expect from the dungeon’s boss there.”

I nodded. “Okay then.”

Aria finished with her note-taking next to the sheeberus’ body, then rejoined the group just as one of the knights finished helping another back into his armour. He had a small gash that they’d bandaged up. The armour was dented, but it still looked usable.

I don’t think anyone expected to meet as much resistance as we found on this floor.

Once everyone was ready, we moved on.

The bedroom was... disgusting. The bed was a rotting mess, the walls were cakeed in mould, and the entire room stank of rot. Roots were poking through the walls and dark sludge was steadily dribbling from the ceiling and pooling in one corner. The floor was clearly uneven, with parts of it bowing upwards and a definite slant to it, as if the entire room was tilted just a little bit to one side.

The air reeked so badly that my stomach was roiling. The other party members didn't look much better, and even the Lieutenant seemed taken aback.

I instinctively sent out a flood of cleaning magic, then remembered I was trying to replenish my mana and forced myself to hold back. In seconds the air was once again nearly unbreathable.

We spread out across the room. Despite our exhaustion, no one sat down; we even gingerly avoided the walls.

“I'll make this quick; I believe some congratulations are in order,” Lieutenant Petalwrought said. “This dungeon is one of the more challenging ones, at least for its level. Few floors can be solved without violence, and those that can are no easier for it.”

“The next floor is the last?” Aria asked.

The lieutenant nodded. “The boss floor. As soon as we cross that door, we’ll be facing the dungeon’s boss.” he gestured to the only other door in the room other than the one we’d come in from.

“What’s the boss like?” Aria asked.

“His name is the Nightie Knight. Same as the initial class you gain from the dungeon.”

I pressed a hand over my mouth to keep the giggles in. “That’s such a cute name,” I said.

“Yes, well, in any case,” Lieutenant Petalwrought went on while ignoring me. “The Nightie Knight will come out of a large building. He rides upon a steed and will charge across the floor in an attempt to hit anyone that might challenge him. His lance will stun anyone it hits, and his steed can easily trample you if you’re not careful to avoid it.”

“Is it alone?” Amaryllis asked.

“He is, yes. In all honesty, the Nightie Knight was never a great challenge. The previous floor is usually much more difficult, if only because facing many weaker foes can overwhelm you where a single stronger opponent can be kited and fought more directly.”

“So what’s the plan then, Lieutenant?” Erin asked.

“The knights and I will form a wide cordon near the centre of the room. I would suggest that everyone else split apart. Be ready to move aside when the Nightie Knight charges your way. His turning radius is relatively large, so it’s easy to avoid him if you start moving early. Magic is effective, as are most ranged attacks. Take out his steed and he’ll become a greater, though less mobile, threat. Dodging him when he’s charging around the room is less dangerous than fighting him one on one.”

“So we just pelt him with magic and win?” Amaryllis asked.

“Essentially, yes,” Lieutenant Petalwrought said.

“Sounds... easy?” I tried.

The lieutenant made a so-so gesture. “It’s not a difficult boss. I’ve fought him entirely on my own before. It’s a rite of passage within our order. It’s not an easy fight either. The boss moves quickly and hits hard. One blow from his lance and you will be knocked out, either from the hit itself or from the powerful sleeping magics he employs. Likewise from any strikes once he has been unsteeded.”

The lieutenant fielded a few more questions, about terrain and tactics we could use, but in the end we pretty much decided to fight the Nightie Knight in the safest way possible. bombard him from range and hit him when he got close to the knights.

After a good twenty minutes of breathing through my nose as little as possible, most of which were spent in quiet as we all just worked to refill our mana and stamina, the lieutenant stood taller and stretched his back out. “I think it’s time,” he said.

We filed in behind him, and I noticed that everyone was a lot more comfortable with being close to each other than we had been at the start. It was wonderful what a few hours of near-death could do for making friends.

Petalwrought had described the boss room as a big field surrounded by stone walls, but he had failed to mention the fact that the field was a farmer’s field.

Big stalks of what I think was wheat stood in neat rows to one side, and a beaten-dirt path led all the way up to a big stone windmill with motionless sails.

It would probably have looked like an idyllic scene if it wasn’t quite so dark and if the earth wasn’t broken up by invading roots the size of tree trunks.

At least it just smelled like earth, rather than an open landfill

The sky above twinkled full of stars, and a big crescent moon sat big and plump above, casting everything in pale blues so that even if it was dark, we could still see pretty well.

“The knight will come from the windmill,” Lieutenant Petalwrought said. “Avoid the crop field. The footing isn’t great, and the wheat will cut your visibility.”

The windmill creaked, and it looked like it wanted to turn, but it was held in place by a thick root that wound its way up the stone side of the building. That didn’t stop the double doors at the front from banging open.

Golden light spilled out onto the fields where the knights and the lieutenant were spreading out.

I hurried to find a place to stand away from anyone else, just like he’d asked, and I noticed that Amaryllis and Lucille were both preparing to cast some pretty big spells.

My breath caught as the boss moved out of the windmill with a heavy clop-clop of hooves on dirt.

The Nightie Knight was a short man on the back of a mule. He held a two-by-four tucked under one arm, and a garbage lid strapped to the other. His armour was a resplendent set of baby-blue pyjamas decorated with little teddy bears and sheep. He had a long, floppy nightcap.

Amaryllis snorted.

“Don’t underestimate him,” Petalwrought warned.

“Oh, no worries,” Amaryllis said. “I’m not underestimating him. I’m merely mocking his sense of fashion.”

I pouted. That looked pretty comfy, though.

The knight raised his wooden lance and his mule brayed into the night.

“Roots!” Aria said. “There’s roots all over him.”

I squinted into the dark, then flung a little lightball ahead to make things clearer. She was right. The Nightie Knight was covered in roots all around his body, like cords holding him tight. They kept his legs gripped to the side of the mule, and as the steed moved forwards, it became obvious that the roots were making it harder for it to move at all.

The knight charged... only it was more of a limping trot.

“Fire!” Lieutenant Petalwrought shouted.

Amaryllis and Lucille fired off twin blasts of lightning, followed soon after by Awen’s crossbow twanging into the night.

I joined in with a brace of sticky fireballs which splashed against the knight and its mule.

The fight was on!

And then it was over.

We all started as the boss flopped to the ground and started to turn to dust.

I blinked.

"Huh."

***