With the introduction of Will-o-Wisps, we had decided to make sure we could easily handle them before pushing deeper towards the center. Partially because we gained a lot of EXP, partially because Lenore munched on them as if they were tasty afternoon snacks, partially because each Will-o-Wisp was counted as four Shambling Crawlers by the System and partially because we wanted to make sure that there were no surprises hidden, if whatever was deeper forced us to retreat. Over the course of a day and a half, we roamed the swamp, roughly as deep as the first Will-o-Wisp had appeared, destroying Shambling Crawlers while letting Lenore do her thing with the wisps, while I held them down.

Their abundance was a lot lower than the amount of shambling crawlers we had hunted in the outer layer, we only killed some forty of them over the course of two days, bringing my level up by two, but it was still good experience.

We were on our last push for the day when we heard something strange, causing everyone to freeze, trying to make out what it was.

“It sounds like someone screaming for help?” Rai said, sounding as confused as I felt.

“It’s got to be a trap.” Adra said, but she looked insecure and part of me felt strange, as if something was tugging at me, to safe whoever was screaming there.

“Let’s go, but careful.” Sigmir said, turning towards the direction the sound was coming from. I followed, still feeling strange but knowing that I needed to stay with the group.

“Lenore, what’s going on?” I asked, pushing back the strange compulsion I felt to investigate.

I felt her sight blink on and there was a gossamer thin net around the others, thin traces of magic focused on their head, especially their ears. Before I could manage to gather my will and magic to do something, anything, about it, Sigmir broke through some brush, ending up on the shore of a large pond. I followed behind and another scream came from the pond, causing my focus to break and Lenore’s sight to fade.

The pond looked larger and deeper than anything we had seen in the swamp and, for some inexplicable reason, there was a person sitting on a giant water-lily, a young girl, wearing a white dress and looking towards us, her face filled with hope, even as she continued to cry. Just looking towards her made it hard to think about anything but helping her and her cries made my heart weep.

“We have to help her!” Sigmir said, her voice urgent, while Rai and Adra were already walking towards the shore, as if planning to dive into the water, hoping to rescue the being.

Lenore’s sight blinked on again and my vision changed, gone was the placid pond of water, replaced with a fetid pool, filled with magic. Even the air was thick with weaves, like a spider-web, centered around the thing on the lily. Looking at it now filled me with revulsion instead of a desire to help, where before, a young girl had sat was now a strange, pale creature with long, white limbs and a bloated body. Gone was the pristine, white dress, replaced with streamers of algae running down her body, not concealing nearly enough of it.

“No!” I managed to grind out, despite the pressure around my head intensifying and with the words, some of it broke, giving me room to mentally breathe. It was room I desperately needed, if I wanted to help the others. Sigmir seemed to stop for a moment, looking back at me, but Adra and Rai continued forward without concern. My first impulse was to reach out with the Eisblumen, simply wrapping around them to stall, only to watch as Rai vanished, leaving a shadow behind, only to reappear at the shore. .

I felt my eyes alight as a cold anger gripped me, Rai was my disciple, these were my people. Whatever it was, it was messing with their minds and that, I just couldn’t condone. They were MINE!

Channelling my anger into magic, I instantly projected a set of five runes, a combination of Devour, Twilight and Magic, trying to use my skill in Darkness-Magic to redirect it into the strands I could see. It had to be Mind-Magic, of that I was convinced but sadly, I lacked the ability to meet whatever it was on its turf, which limited my reaction a little.

The Darkness gushed out of the formation and I felt it join with the dim light all around us, above me, I could feel the moon, nothing but the faintest glimmer in the sky, lending me strength. The thin threads snapped, devoured by my magic, even as I tried to direct any backlash caused by the sudden destruction of the magic affecting everyone's mind towards the creature on the lily.

“Too bad, it would have been so much less painful if you had just accepted it. You would just have wandered into the water and joined me, forever.” the figure on the lily said, her voice changing from a friendly, childish tone in the beginning to a dark, malevolent cackle by the end. I saw Rai and Adra shake their heads, as if trying to clear cobwebs from their mind, while stumbling back from the water.

I managed to focus on her, using Observe in the process.

Bolotnitsa, Level 110

Unless I was very, very wrong about things, we were facing a boss, maybe the boss of this outdoor dungeon.

“Watch out, everyone!” I called out, starting to draw a magical formation to chuck a few Icicle Javelins at her. She had to have some form of attack, other than her Mind Magic and I wasn’t quite sure if I wanted to experience what it was. The Mind Magic alone had been bad enough, the compulsion to follow her voice and help her nearly overwhelming. I had a feeling that it wouldn’t work as well if she tried it again, but I couldn’t be sure.

She was crowing something that I ignored, as I let my Icicles fly, causing her to screech in anger, interrupting whatever she had been saying. A wave of brackish water surged up, powerful enough to stop my Icicles but when I detonated them, a few shards got through, giving her some shallow cuts.

“Crawlers incoming!” Sigmir warned, stepping between me and the water, with Rai at her side, as a few Shambling Crawlers came out of the water, larger and even more grotesk looking than the ones we had fought before. I considered what I knew about boss-fights in games, hoping not to make an ass out of myself by assuming too much.

Generally, adds were either used as waves on a timer that needed to be destroyed before they overwhelmed your party, they simply respawned and needed to be handled while the boss was killed or they were spawned depending on the boss’s health. Those were the most common ways of dealing with such a fight and I could see this one being any of those ways. Looking at the Crawlers, I was reasonably certain that Sigmir and Rai could at least stall them, allowing Adra and me to focus on the boss. If it looked like the crawlers would overwhelm Sigmir and Rai, I was reasonably certain that I would be able to destroy a larger group, especially if I combined overflow with a small shard of Eternal Ice.

I relayed our tactic to the others, watching Adra turn her spear into a bow and launch an arrow at the freaky creature on the lily. Watching as another wall of water shot up to block it, I decided to instantly project a beam of cold, hoping to get a serious blow in, by shattering the frozen wave.

My idea sort-of worked, the arrow was stopped and some of the ice was frozen but I felt it resist my power, trying to remain liquid. What little ice I had been able to create was shattered and lacerated more of her, but it was far from good enough to actually kill her.

Meanwhile Sigmir and Rai had managed to dispatch three of the four shambling crawlers that had attacked, taking only minor scratches in the process. This first round of combat seemed to have been mostly a draw, at least that was what I thought until I noticed a disturbance in the lake and a dense jet of water lanced out, forcing me to leap aside. I still took a glancing blow, not penetrating my armour but causing me to painfully tumble through the air. I wasn’t sure if it had broken my ribs but there certainly would be a bruise on the next day.

For a moment, I was down, just trying to get fresh air into my lungs only to feel a sensation similar to the one I had felt earlier, when that thing had tried its mind magic on us. Forcing myself to my knees, despite the pain in my side, I saw that Sigmir had grabbed Rai’s shoulder, holding him back from running towards the water. Without time, I used a brute-force method, similar to the one I had used earlier, glad that the levels I had made over the last days gave me a much larger pool of Astral Power than I had before. Instantly projecting runes took a lot of power, but at times, it seemed to be the only way to go.