There was no other good word for the being; it was obviously meant to be an angel. Bright white robes buckled with golden straps covered most of its sky-blue skin. A pair of wings, fully unfurled, hung motionlessly as the angel slowly bobbed in place. It’s eyes were golden, pupilless orbs. In its hands, it held a large sword, tip pointed straight downward.

Dvorak was on the ground with his hand raised wardingly in front of him. Kyle took an unconscious step back. The angel’s sword held a clear message: they were going to have to fight this thing.

“Dvorak!” the angel bellowed, pronouncing it the Czechoslovakian way instead of the butchered anglicised way that Dvorak did. “For what purpose hast thou come seeking my power?”

“Oh, well, uh…” Dvorak stammered, getting to his feet. “I was just… was just curious, see? No harm meant. I’ll just, uh…” he trailed off and began creeping away.

“Avina! Step forward!” the angel roared, causing Dvorak to freeze up. Avina, shaking visibly, stepped onto the triangular platform. “For what purpose hast thou come seeking my power?”

Avina trembled, but held her position. “I… I was hoping that having spells would keep me safe. Is that… okay?”

“Raphael!” the angel said. “Step forward!”

Eyes high, chest out, and breastplate gleaming, Raphael strode onto the white platform. “Yes, holy one?”

“For what purpose hast thou come seeking my power?”

“To right that which is wrong!” Raphael declared. “To shine light to darkness! To bring truth to lies. That is why I have come seeking thy power!”

Tobugus hollered and clapped. Dvorak shook his head. “Damn,” he said. “Good showmanship. Wish I‘d have thought of something like that.”

“Kyle!” the angel shouted. “Dost thou stand with these acolytes?”

Kyle had started readying a response to the “power” question, and was taken by surprise. He realized there was an unspoken subtext to the question. “This is not your fight. You don’t need to do this. The acolytes are fighting for their spells; you can stay out of it.”

Kyle looked at Dvorak’s pleading face. He looked at Avina’s trembling frame. He looked at Raphael, who was smiling at him, eyes daring him to make the right decision. The pompous bastard.

Kyle sighed. “Yes,” he said. “Whatever they have to fight, I’ll fight too.”

“Then step forward with your companions!” The angel boomed. Kyle eyed the sword, and wondered if he should have thought a little more before reflexively doing the “right thing”. He stepped onto the platform anyway.

“Very well,” the angel said. “Ye who seek curiosity, safety, and heroism. I require of thee a test. Wilt thou prove thy bravery by combat?”

“It’s always combat, though. Aren’t there other options?” Dvorak asked, “Because I think a short interview might suffice. Or even a long interview. I’m down with whatever, actually.”

“Yes!” said Raphael, dropping into a combat stance. “We will! Come at me, and taste my heart and my steel!”

The angel flapped its wings once, lifting it several feet higher into the air, then swooped towards the group. A spear formed in Raphael’s hand as he charged to meet it. The angel veered to avoid impaling itself on the polearm, but the spear ripped through its wings, and the angel fell and rolled on the floor.

Kyle wondered how much damage that dealt. He mentally kicked himself for not having the foresight to Examine the angel before combat began. He pulled up his menu and pressed the appropriate buttons. The bar started filling up as the angel rose to its feet. Kyle opened the menu again, hovered his finger over a spell, and readied himself to fire it off.

Kyle heard Dvorak wail off to his left, and glanced over. Dvorak was pawing at a shimmering yellow barrier that materialized in front of him at the edge of the marble platform. Though Kyle couldn’t see it, he was sure the barrier encompassed the whole platform; it would probably become visible only if somebody neared it.

Kyle glanced back at the angel, and cursed. The bar had disappeared because he had averted his gaze while it was filling. He hit examine again as he watched Raphael fight the angel.

The angel was nearly nine feet tall, so his massive sword had a roughly even reach with Raphael’s long spear. The two combatants circled each other; the angel wouldn’t charge a foe holding a spear, and Raphael didn’t seem to be willing to make the first move. Finally, the angel swung his sword at the spear itself, knocking it aside. Raphael barely held onto it, gripping it in one hand. The angel stepped forward to press the attack. Raphael blocked the angel’s sword swings with a small shield strapped to his left arm, but with his arm and concentration devoted to blocking the attacks, Raphael couldn’t ready his spear again.

Raphael might be brave, but he was no gamejacker.

The bar in Kyle’s vision finished filling up. The angel’s information popped up, along with its health bar, which was still nearly full. Kyle hardly glanced at the information and instead turned his attention to his skills menu. He summoned a ball of flame and then opened his skills menu again, leaving a finger hovered over one of the buttons.

“Hey ugly!” Kyle shouted to the statuesque being, “Over here!” He threw the ball of fire, which bounced off the angel’s back, dealing pitifully little damage.

It got the angel’s attention, though. It turned around and ran at Kyle. Just as the angel closed with Kyle and began swinging its sword, Kyle tapped the button in his skills menu to cast his newest spell.

With a roar, a gout of flames appeared around Kyle, filling a roughly circular area that stretched out several yards. Kyle stood unharmed, immune to his own fire. The angel, on the other hand, halted its swing and growled in pain. When the fire vanished, a thick cloud of cinders remained, hissing slightly. Kyle was pleased; the “mist” delivery rune interacted with the “fire” rune as he suspected it would.

The angel flapped its damaged wings, propelling itself backwards and blowing some of the cinders away from itself.

Then, it turned towards Avina.

“No! No, you stupid mob!” Kyle said as the angel charged towards the girl. “Stay here in the AoE like you’re supposed to!” Kyle ran forwards a few steps, but the cloud of cinders didn’t follow him. Kyle stood at the edge of the cloud, trying to decide if he should move further. He glanced up at the mana bar he put up there earlier. That flame spell took nearly half of his mana. The initial blast took a respectable chunk of HP from the angel, but nowhere near enough to be worth nearly depleting his mana entirely. While Kyle could fuel the spell using HP instead of mana, that seemed… unwise. And painful. The flame mist seemed to be meant for area denial, not offense.

Avina evidently thought the same thing. After narrowly dodging the angel’s swing, she started running towards Kyle’s fire cloud.

“No!” Kyle shouted. “It’ll burn you! Only I’m immune to it!”

Avina’s eyes went wide, and she nodded, changing direction to veer around the cloud, angel closely in pursuit.

Kyle heard a clicking sound near his feet and looked down. A small rock rolled to a stop next to his foot. He turned to look behind him.

Aubrey was near the side of the platform, grinning. “Looks like the barrier only goes in one direction,” she said, tapping buttons in her menu. A bow appeared in her hands, and a quiver on her back. “Let’s cheese it,” she said, nocking an arrow.

As Avina ran, Raphael barrelled in from the side, crashing into the angel with his shoulder, knocking it over. The angel climbed back onto his feet, and was hit by an arrow in the side from Aubrey.

Then the angel’s sword lit on fire.

“Um, Aubrey?” Kyle said and the angel squared off with Raphael again. “Aubrey, is this…”

Aubrey fired another arrow, and Kyle cringed as it hit the angel in the shoulder. Luckily, nothing more seemed to happen. But then an arrow from Tobungus ricocheted off the angel’s breastplate. A helm grew to cover the angel’s head and face, and a pair of thick armored bracers unfolded to cover its arms.

Kyle looked back to see the other acolytes drawing their bows. “Guys, stop! Stop! Its difficulty is scaling to the number of players! Don’t shoot!”

They paused, processing Kyle’s warning. Then, Tobungus shook his head in frustration. “Fine. Looks like we’re in on this too, then.” He stowed his bow, pulled out his axe, and leapt into the arena on his powerful Jakarna legs.

The angel, now faster than before, laid into Raphael with swift, powerful strikes. Raphael backed up under the assault, his spear knocked aside once more, his shield taking blows hard enough to knock him off balance. The flaming sword scored a shallow cut on Raphael’s shield arm, and he cried out, dropped his spear, and fled to the far corner of the arena. Guess role-playing could only get him so far, Kyle thought grimly. The angel let Raphael flee, looking around warily.

Tobunbus and Dvorak slowly circled the angel, neither willing to commit to an attack. Avina cowered in a corner. Aubrey, still outside the arena, fired another arrow at the angel, which struck its helmet and bounced off, taking a negligible amount of the angel’s HP.

The angel turned to Aubrey and raised an arm. Thin green lines started spiraling around it. Though you couldn’t see air itself, Kyle recognized that effect as the bog-standard RPG signal for wind magic.

And with a whoosh, Aurey was thrown by unseen forces into the arena. She landed on her hands and knees, the yellow barrier shimmering behind her.

“Figures,” Aubrey said as she looked up at the angel charging her.

“No!” Tobunbus cried, following the angel’s charge. His long Jakarna legs let him catch up to the angel – barely – and he swung his axe at the angel’s back in an overhand chop. The angel’s charge didn’t stop, but the blow threw off the angel’s aim enough for Aubrey to roll out of the way and climb to her feet. The angel whirled around, flaming sword out, and hit Tobungus square in the chest. Tobungus’ metal chestplate bent under the force of the blow, and he was thrown several feet back. The angel followed up, and Tobungus, on the ground, frantically hit invisible buttons, pulling out a window-sized wooden tower shield just in time to stop another blow. Flames danced on the shield where the sword struck, and the wood blackened.

They needed something. Something to give them an edge. They weren’t gamejackers. They couldn’t fight this thing though sheer skill. Kyle, in a panic, thought hard about what they could do. What tools did they have? Shields? Spears? Spells?

Invisible barriers?

“Toby!” Kyle shouted. “Kite him to the far corner!” Shield still out, Tobungus scrambled to his feet. “Bows guys! Take out bows!” Without checking to see if anybody followed his instructions, Kyle dashed towards the angel, following it and Tobungus as they moved towards the corner.

“What’s your plan? Because it sounds like you’ve got a plan,” Tobungus said.

Kyle didn’t distract himself by responding. He opened his skills menu. “All the way against the corner!” he shouted, still running towards them. “Put your back against the barrier!”

“I don’t like this plan! This sounds like a really bad plan!” Tobungus said. Kyle was relieved to see he did it anyway. The yellow barriers sprung into visibility, and Tobungus crouched in the corner with his shield at an upward angle. Being crammed in the corner of the triangular arena meant he could completely cover himself with the shield. But it also meant the angel had him trapped. It threw blow after blow against the shield. The wood started started to crack, and its metal framing bent.

Kyle stopped. He carefully moved forward another three steps, reconsidered, then took one step back. He took a deep breath.

Praying he’d estimated the distance correctly, he activated his flame mist spell.

Once again, a torrent of flames filled the air. The fires spilled out of the arena on both sides of the corner, unaffected by the barriers, blackening the grass on either side. They spread out to encompass the angel. Tobungus’ shield caught fire and he dropped it, standing and pushing himself as far into the corner as he could. The flames were inches from his face.

But they didn’t quite reach him.

The angel tried to press itself into the corner too, but there was simply no room left.

As the flames abated and thick, scorching cinders took their place, Kyle barked out a short laugh. “We can’t leave the arena,” he gloated at the NPC. “Can you?”

It seemed the angel couldn’t. Its HP bar was rapidly depleting as it stood in the fiery mist, frantically looking around. It squinted against the pain.

Kyle flinched as an arrow whizzed by his head, narrowly missing the angel as well. He went to one knee to get out of the way, and turned to see Dvorak, Aubrey, Raphael, and even little Avina all firing their bows with varying degrees of competency. Kyle looked back at the angel. Each arrow that managed to hit claimed another little sliver of HP. The angel’s bar turned red; it was down to less than a quarter HP.

Unable to back away from Kyle, the angel did what, in retrospect, was the only logical thing to do.

It charged towards Kyle.

“Aw, crap,” Kyle said as the angel launched itself at him.

Without time to pull out a shield, and lacking faith in his own ability to dodge, he threw his hands over his head, crouched, and cowered. The angel’s blow hit him where his arms covered the side of his head, and the impact slammed Kyle’s face into the ground. Kyle felt searing pain across his arms and face. He waited for the next blow. He was going to die. He just knew it.

The blow never came.

Kyle looked up and behind him. The angel had left the fiery cloud to assault the archers instead. The orderly line of archers had scattered, leaving bows and spears on the ground where they once stood. The angel threatened multiple people at once with wide, sweeping strikes. Aubrey got caught by a sword swing, and fell to the ground still. The poor woman.

Trying to ignore the pain, Kyle pulled a bow from his inventory even though he knew his aim was terrible. Dvorak and Raphael rushed the angel simultaneously. The angel only had time to respond to one of them, and swatted Dvorak away. As Dvorak bounced off the invisible arena wall, Raphael’s spear grazed the angel’s side. The angel’s HP bar was now down to a sliver. Had that blow been more solid, they might have won.

Instead, the angel knocked Raphael’s spear aside a third time, then stepped towards Raphael, inside the spear’s reach.

Kyle was panicked. They needed just a little more damage! Kyle fired an arrow, but it went wide. Dvorak was groaning on the ground helplessly. Raphael was awkwardly trying to fight with the butt of his spear. Kyle’s spell was still active, trapping Tobungus in the corner. Avina was near the fiery cloud, trying not to be noticed, her bow and spear somewhere in the middle of the arena. Kyle was out of mana. Their group was scattered. Each was out of the fight. There was no damage to be had.

Or was there?

“Guys!” he shouted to the remaining acolytes outside the arena. “Shoot him! Shoot him!”

The acolytes raised their bows and fired at the angel. One arrow struck the angel in the leg, and another hit the side of the angel’s face.

The angel grew another pair of wings. A flaming halo appeared over its head.

And then, health depleted, the angel exploded into hundreds of motes of soft, yellow light.

Avina stood. Raphael set his spear again and looked around warily.

“Did… did we win?” Dvorak asked, getting to his feet.

“Well done,” the angel’s voice echoed through the clearing. “Your bravery has truly made you worthy of my power.”

The motes of glowing light drifted towards Dvorak, Avina, and Raphael. The acolytes seemed to absorb the light, and started glowing slightly. As the glow faded, they started excitedly looking through their menus.

“Yes!” Dvorak cried. “Spells! Finally!”

Kyle fell to his knees, panting, surrounded by his circle of embers.