“I KNOW WHAT YOU TOLD ME, JACK! SHUT UP AND KEEP THE FUCKING MEGA-MURDER-SHRIMP OFF ERIN!” Layla screamed back at him.

Jack rolled to his feet, then suddenly leapt to the side as the colossal shrimp dashed forward, trying to place him in the path of its raptorial clubs. Instead, it got a face full of zombie crab as the titanic, and by now absolutely putrid, crustacean plowed into the mantis shrimp’s side, closing the giant stomatopod’s flippered tail in one of its monstrous claws. The mammoth shrimp turned and crawled up the crab’s other claw before delivering an ear-splitting explosive crack directly into the undead’s face, caving in its eye sockets, mouth, and a good portion of the top-front shell. The fetid crustacean, however, didn’t even pause in squeezing its claw shut on the shrimp’s tail, unleashing a sickening crack and a spurt of what passed for its blood.

Jack considered casting Galvanize Undead again, but the big crab was already on its last legs, and he doubted the spell would mend it enough to survive another of the shrimp’s devastating strikes. Instead, he pulled another new trick out of his bag and cast Tenebrous Gloom on the monstrous shrimp. The spell was the first of his tier two powers, gained at twenty, and conjured a writhing field of obscuring shadows, effectively reducing the shrimp’s visual range to a couple of yards.

With its field of view narrowed to the undead crab trying to scissor off its rear end, the mantis shrimp once again blasted the armored crustacean with its annihilating club. This time, the appendage ripped through the crab’s bottom shell, nearly cleaving it in half. Still the undead monster soldiered on, its left claw remaining firmly clamped on the shrimp’s tail and it’s right snapping blindly in the air as it tried to find purchase.

Layla finally reached Erin, where she heaved the dreadnought onto her back and pulled off her helmet. Erin’s face was a mask of blood and her chest plate had an ovoid dent that gave the impression she’d been struck by a cannonball. Layla took a deep breath and leaned down.

“Welp, here goes nothing,” she whispered.

A soft, delicious warmth exploded up Layla’s chest, past her throat, and burned on her lips as she pressed them against Erin’s. Layla had harangued each of the others to let her steal a bit of health with Mortal Appetites, then recover it with healing draughts they had purchased in Mistelein. Seconds passed as warmth continued to flow from her lips into Erin’s body. Finally, the dreadnought’s eyes snapped open, and she coughed what seemed like a lungful of blood into Layla’s face.

“Fuck,” the succubus spat.

“Shit, I thought I was dead,” Erin wiped her face, staring in shock at Layla’s gore-covered mug.

“Not how I wanted our first kiss to go, legs,” Layla wiped her face with the edge of her dress.

Another explosion sounded as the mantis shrimp delivered a final executing smash to the zombie crab, blasting it’s troublesome left claw apart in a shower of rotten meat and black ichor.

“Better get in there. Here, drink this down,” Layla pressed the most expensive of their healing potions into Erin’s hand.

The dreadnought took it wordlessly and quaffed the contents, then rose to her feet and donned her helmet. The giant shrimp, having finished with the crab and finally free of the cloying shadows of Jack’s spell, began scuttling across the rocky floor of the grotto, seeking the source of the repeated blasts of Night mana that had peppered its carapace throughout its fight with the crab.

Erin poured Stamina into Charge, driving herself forward like an arrow in flight, and planted her shoulder into the shrimp’s thorax. The shrimp wheeled on her immediately, and the great crushing hammer drew back slightly before blasting forward.

Before she had even finished recovering her feet from the assault, she began layering powers in preparation for the beast’s destructive attack, her Stamina plummeting as she dumped everything she could into a desperate gamble.

“Iron Tower. Behemoth Raid. Haymaker. Counter-Strike.”

Her gauntlet collided with the mantis shrimp’s pulverizing hammer, releasing a titanic shockwave that blasted her backwards again and knocked the shrimp to the ground. She had used Iron Tower and Armored Bulwark to protect her fist during the block, but her knuckles, wrist, and probably her forearm were broken anyway. She had dumped the maximum possible amount of Stamina into Behemoth Raid and used her Haymaker upgrade to trade defense for power, enhancing the Counter-Strike, which already relied on the force of the enemy’s attack, to inflict the most damage Erin had ever dealt. Had he seen her status panel, even Rory would have been proud of the massive number staring back at her. She glanced at the message, grinning savagely when she saw that both she and the monster had suffered crippling wounds from the exchange.

She dragged herself upright and spit out a mouthful of blood, “Fuck you, Mr. Pinchy.”

The giant shrimp flipped its tail and rolled onto its many feet, flashing back toward the kneeling dreadnought. It reared and brought its remaining undamaged arm, a barbed scythe, down in a lightning-quick flash.

“Convulsion!” Layla shouted, attempting to use her first tier two spell to stop the creature’s attack. To her horror, the panel message rolled across, telling her the shrimp had resisted the spell. The bladed limb slammed into the vambrace of Erin’s good arm, reflexively raised in a block, and though she instinctively activated Iron Tower, the scything edge ripped open her armor and savaged the flesh within.

As the giant shrimp recovered and folded its cutting appendage, preparing for a second blow, Rory appeared next to it and drove his quillion, layered with half a dozen enhancements, into the soft joint tissue of the boss’s one good arm, then dragged the blade downward with all his weight, ripping open the vulnerable carapace and spattering fluid in a pressurized spray. The cutting arm hitched in mid-strike, but the giant shrimp wheeled and batted Rory away with its club appendage. The strike lacked its previous devastating force, but the blow still sent the salesman tumbling halfway across the grotto.

The boss scuttled forward again, seemingly intent on flattening Layla and Erin with its massive body, but then suddenly spasmed and rounded, where the girls saw Jack drawing his longsword, aflame with black mana, from the shrimp’s already savaged tail. The great shrimp charged forward, swinging it’s mauled club toward Jack at a fraction of its former speed. The nightbringer swung his blade in a crushing parry, then returned to riposte against the boss’s damaged club arm, leaving a rapidly rotting slash in his wake.

With the mantis shrimp’s weapons ruined, Layla and Jack set to whittling it down, blasting its damaged flesh with one Firebolt after another and covering the beast in an ever-growing patchwork of putrid gashes. They would eventually learn that every bonded creature fights to the death in defense of the Heart, but that was little consolation as the fight dragged on.

Erin managed to crawl her way across the grotto to Rory’s unconscious form as Jack and Layla carved and roasted away at the monstrous shrimp. When she reached him, she fumbled through the pain of her broken knuckles to uncork their last healing potion and dump it down his throat, holding his nose in the hopes that he would swallow. Finally, he bolted upright, coughing and choking on the thick fluid.

“What the fuck?!” he snapped.

“Help them,” she croaked, then fell back with a grunt of pain.

“Oh, shit,” he jumped to his feet and ran toward the two Chosen, still locked in battle.

Jack parried another monstrous strike from the damaged club and quickly cast Tenebrous Gloom again, depleting the rest of his mana. He instantly realized that had been a terrible idea, as the drumbeat thump of his heart suddenly stilled and a bone-chilling weariness began to descend on him. He swayed on his feet and the massive club struck him in the chest plate, flinging him a few yards away into the dirt, where he laid unmoving.

The remaining two heard Erin shout from where she watched as Jack was clobbered away from the fight, but Rory burst forward and leapt in a rush of speed, taking advantage of the mantis’ momentary distraction to ram his dagger between the creature’s eyestalks. It froze momentarily, twitching and shaking, then flung its upper body backward, tossing Rory off to tumble across the rocky ground yet again.

He rolled to a stop just in time to see Layla punch something on her panel, then swipe her hand across to dismiss it. She stood, directly in the mantis shrimp’s path.

“LESSER DRAGON’S BREATH!”

A torrent of flame poured from Layla’s mouth across the shrimp, boiling its flesh inside its carapace, heat washing across the other three where they lay. The stream of fire continued to pour out, second after second, as Layla emptied her immense mana pool into her newest tier two spell. Finally, the flames guttered and died, and she coughed up a puff of smoke.

“Fuck you indeed, Mr. Pinchy!”