As Kaldalis charged across the courtyard, the creature raised its armored head again. The underside of it was nightmare fuel of twitching parts with a few too many legs. He didn’t want to look directly at it, but he knew it would be deadly to take his eyes off the beast.

The monster lined its head up with his charge, and Kaldalis got ready to anticipate an attack. It was going to whip its antennae down at him.

His goal, above all else, was to stall. Kaldalis knew he wasn’t possibly going to beat this thing. But he just needed to keep its attention. He wanted to poke some damage into it, but he wasn’t in a rush.

Ultimately, he wanted to protect the library, not slay the dragon.

Bug.

Thing.

Whatever.

As the beast lashed its head down, the movement of its giant head slow and ponderous, Kaldalis drew up short on his charge. He judged that he was just barely in range of the whipping antennae, and so he took a short hop back, just in case its reach was a little longer than he expected. The creature’s head slammed down to the ground, and he watched as the antennae descended, ready to dodge aside if he misjudged-

A geyser of stone exploded out of the ground beneath him. The attack wasn’t the antennae, it was from the crash of the monster’s head into the ground, causing a blast that erupted right under his feet. The blast hit him for a devastating two-hundred and forty-one physical damage and one-hundred and twelve earth damage.

That was almost a third of his maximum health just gone. And he had started the fight missing a hundred or so already.

He was in trouble.

The impact of the blast sent him tumbling backwards, and only the aid of his tail kept him from landing on his head.

As it was, though, he still landed flat on his back.

Kaldalis wanted to just lay there and groan after taking that huge hit, but he could hear the titanic arthropod’s legs slamming into the courtyard, moving in at him. He scrambled to his feet as fast as he could and prepared for the charge.

The creature was rushing right at him, and with the beast being nine feet wide, with an extra two feet of width from the giant ram-like horns curling out of the shell, he couldn’t lose a single second before hurling himself out of the way. In fact, he couldn’t hurl himself at all - he wouldn’t get far enough without popping his jump cooldown. He had to take four scrambling steps to get far enough to the left that the horn on that side passed just a hand’s breadth behind him. The wind of its passing alone nearly bowled him over, but he was able to whirl and slam his glaive against its side as it rushed by.

He dealt a paltry twenty-five physical damage, which felt extremely bad when compared to his output against the Chiraptor King. At least he had a stack of Gust to console himself.

The beast roared past him and slowly curved around to the left, turning through the courtyard to loop back around towards him. He braced himself, ready to leap clear again, hoping it wouldn’t have any more surprises for him.

He just had to survive.

Kaldalis hoped his friends weren’t too far out. Their health bars were still stationary, so they had to have been on their way.

Balrim, at the very least least, should have seen him get chunked out for over three-hundred damage at a stroke. The talsar was likely panicking. So they had to be on their way.

They had to know that now was the time to hurry.

The beast didn’t full-on charge him this time, but slowed down on its approach. Kaldalis held his ground as the boss raised its head ten feet off the ground before slamming it forward, striking like a cross between a bull and a snake. He dove out of the way, diving into a somersault as the attack smashed into the stone right where he stood. A rain of rock fragments scattered out from the blow and he scrambled back upright as soon as his feet were beneath him. He whirled and thrust his glaive in between two of the large armored plates over the creature, drawing another twenty-five damage, and sticking a second stack of gust on it.

The creature reared up and struck again, and its withdrawal tugged at his glaive just enough that it set him off-balance. When the creature came down he only got halfway clear. The blow sent him tumbling across the courtyard, but he managed to end the scramble rightside-up, on his knees. The strike didn’t do the same insane chunk of damage, but only clipped him for a meager one-hundred and seven physical damage and fifty-six earth damage.

“Oh, that’s much better,” he snarked. “Here I was thinking every blow was going to be a third of my hit points, but only a sixth? I can handle this, no problem.” He looked up to the sky, raising his voice. “No worries, Balrim! I’ve got this! I have two healing potions! That’s enough, right?”

Realistically, there was no way he was fighting this.

He was below half hit points already.

Kaldalis quickly checked his hit point total on his character sheet while he had a moments’ pause. Even with the dire situation, he was unable to stifle a giggle when he saw the number he’d landed at.

“Four-oh-four, hit points not found.”

There was a chattering roar from behind him and a rumble of insect feet on stone.

Rather than turn and fight, Kaldalis started to run.

He didn’t know if he could outrun the monster. It had so many legs to just his two. So instead, he paid attention to the approaching rumble of its charge and took a sharp turn when it started to feel loudest right behind him. Its passage behind him was so near and forceful that it almost threw him to the ground, but he managed to keep his feet and stay moving. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the creature’s path arcing around to make another pass. As it roared up towards him, he stopped dead and dove backwards, letting it hurtle past him, narrowly dodged yet again.

Reflexively, he jabbed at it with his glaive. Another twenty-five damage, but no Gust stack. The creature brought itself to a stop and whirled around, rearing up to attack him again.

This was another of those slow, ponderous movements, and Kaldalis anticipated another burst of rock from the ground.

That attack would wipe out nearly his entire hit point pool if it hit, and so he abandoned any attempt to strike back or even flee.

If he put his attention on anything besides avoiding this strike, it might be the death of him.

The creature’s head slammed down, and Kaldalis waited until the moment of impact to hurl himself to the left. The ground erupted where he had been standing, and he felt a rain of stones falling around him from the blast.

But he avoided the damage, and that was enough for him.

He moved in to get another strike on the beast. Kaldalis was absolutely sure he wanted to get away from it, but a third strike of Gust was going to give him more of a head start, and considering how fast its charge was, he needed all the lead he could get.

The monster, naturally, had other ideas.

It shook itself, and Kaldalis hesitated for just a second. The creature gave another clicking roar, and the sound mingled with the clatter of its segmented armored plates, unnerving him.

He grimaced when he saw what it was doing.

Purple venom dribbled from the cracks in its armored shell, forming a puddle beneath it.

Not only did it have its own mechanics with the charge and the big rocky tankbuster, but it had mechanics from previous bosses. He was going to have to keep an eye out for the Chiraptor King’s pulsing globes of ‘fuck you’.

Joy.

The poison pool forced him to back up rather than land the attack he wanted, and so he tried to lure it back out. Instead, though, the beast raised its head again.

“Shit,” Kaldalis cursed, setting his stance and preparing to dive out of the way again. “Shit fuck ass.”

He wasn’t sure how much targeting efficiency the thing had, but his only choice was to do what had worked before. As the head crashed down, he hurled himself out of the way again right after it hit the ground, getting clear with a little more leeway this time. The attack had some travel time between hitting the ground and hitting him, and he was starting to figure it out.

As it raised its head again, preparing another blast instead of getting out of its protective poison puddle, Kaldalis realized he was going to have quite a bit of time to get accustomed to the timing.

He swigged down one of his two remaining potions, healing himself for two-hundred and thirteen hit points to prepare for the inevitability of some attack catching him off-guard.

The creature slammed down again, and another geyser of earth erupted beneath him. He managed to get clear, and this time it was a little smoother. He braced himself for the next leap, but the monster lowered its head as the purple puddle it was standing in finally evaporated away.

It broke into a charge again. Kaldalis scrambled. He’d set his feet to leap, and wasn’t prepared to have to run, but the beast’s width meant that a single hop wouldn’t take him far enough out of the way.

The giant horned silverfish rumbled past him, the left horn passing barely a foot away from him. It curved around, and Kaldalis started running again, trying to get some distance on the oncoming horns.

It roared up behind him, and he turned at a sharp angle right before it overtook him. He turned a little early, and the subway-sized bug turned with him, but he kept running until he felt the creature pass behind him. In the past, these charges had only gone by twice, so he whirled on the creature, lashing out with his glaive before it could pass out of reach.

The strike landed, breaking up a chunk of the segmented carapace and dealing his twenty-five damage. His panic broke slightly and he found a smile cracking across his face as he got his third stack of Gust.

The blast did only six damage, but the disproportionate hit of the explosive detonation diverted the charging beast’s course. He hoped it might flip the creature over so that he could run up and bash it, but it only slid sideways across the courtyard a dozen feet.

The altered course of its charge made it slam into a pile of rubble that had once been a building. The rubble was dense and the beast didn’t smash through it, but instead impacted with so much force that the ground shook hard enough that Kaldalis staggered. The aid of his tail helped him keep his feet, but it was a near thing.

The creature emerged from the rubble with a clicking roar, and before Kaldalis’s eyes, a red glowing orb appeared next to the rubble, right between him and the monster’s rear end. He glanced around quickly, and was slightly relieved to see that there were no others.

“Alright, copied mechanic from the chiraptor, check,” Kaldalis said, breaking into a run towards the red orb. “I just have to hope it doesn’t have a mechanic from every secondary boss in the whole damned place, because I didn’t see any of them.”

He slapped his hand through the red orb right as the giant silverfish raised its head and struck down at him.

Kaldalis was faced with the choice between hitting the red orb and dodging the strike. He didn’t know how much time he had before the red orb burst, or if the monster might step up and cover it with its body. The chiraptor king’s orb AoE had been more damaging than its regular attacks, and as such, accepting the skull bash attack seemed the more prudent of the two.

The horns came down on his back right as he slapped his hand through the orb. The red light dissolved under his touch, though he had to accept the one-hundred and sixty-two total damage from the creature’s smashing strike.

Kaldalis was grateful for the potion he’d quaffed a few moments earlier. He wouldn’t have died without it, but there was a big difference in mentality between one hit from death and three. Or only one, if that explosive ball thing was proportionally sized compared to the chiraptor king’s blast.

“Okay, back to your regularly scheduled chase sequence,” Kaldalis muttered as he scrambled away from the giant bug. He ran blindly, picking a direction, and found himself running out of the courtyard, between two mostly-intact buildings. “So, there’s no magic gate here? Nothing to block me from leaving after the boss is aggroed?”

He kept running about a dozen feet down the road before he stopped. Was the boss going to chase him? Was it going to stand in the courtyard and glare at him? Maybe it would spam its earth blast attack at range? He watched it rumble up to the entry to the roadway and lift its head. The road was too narrow for it to pass, but it didn’t appear to be dropping aggro.

Perhaps he could protect the library and his skin if he just stood here and-

Of course, every time he thought he had things under control, the game had to find a curveball to throw at him.

The giant bug pressed its armored head into the gap. Stone screamed alongside the clicking sounds of the beast’s roar as it charged, heedless of the solid buildings to either side of it. The front sides of the buildings on either side of the street crumbled before it, and Kaldalis found himself screaming as he broke into a run again.