The two transformed cores gave off an ominous humming sound, which became louder and louder. The cores lit up from their positions in the sword and shield, clearly preparing for an attack.

Cerion and I exchanged a short glance at each other, before dashing away in opposite directions. I jumped through the rubble, using my healthy foot as support while my other foot slowly regrew, bone and all. Sometimes, the value of a healing skill really couldn’t be overstated. Dark form didn’t just heal me if I made a mistake, it also allowed me to take large risks somewhat safely, for great benefit. Cerion didn’t get wounded nearly as much as I did, but that was mostly because he didn’t dare to take those risks, and rightfully so.

I discarded that line of thought to focus on the fight again. Now that we had entered phase two, all preconceived notions we had of the golem we were fighting would have to be evaluated. That meant a slow and steady approach, drawing out attacks and skills from the two floating giants. Luckily, Cerion and I had done a lot of damage to both cores in the first phase, they were barely holding themselves together as it was. On top of that, they didn’t seem to be capable of healing their actual cores themselves, so we had all the time in the world to slowly test this second phase. Well, preferably we would finish this within the next dozen or so minutes, but we had the time if we needed it.

At that point, the bosses finished charging up their skills. Both cores lit up and shot out a beam of concentrated mana, one focussing on each of us. In a flash, the beam was upon us. I dashed out of the way handily, because I had been expecting something similar. Unfortunately, the attack wasn’t just a one-off thing. It crashed into the ground, tearing anything in its way apart, before the beam of power started to move, following me quite quickly. I ran around and took cover behind buildings, but each time the skill core lost sight of me, it refocussed its attack once I was forced to run out into the open again.

Looking over at Cerion, I found him experiencing much the same process.

This back and forth wasn’t without purpose, however. The core’s behaviour told me that it actually had to ‘see’ me by relying on sightlines. You could never know with things that didn’t have any ‘actual’ eyes, some monsters could sense their surroundings in different ways. I was somewhat thankful the golem’s vision was still the same as it had been in the previous phase, so I decided to capitalise by apparating above the shield’s centrepiece, a stone archway that kind of looked like an eyelid that hung above the power core. As my apparition succeeded and I disappeared from my previous position, the sword’s beam attack that had been focussed on me cut out.

I decided to follow through with my attack anyway and dove down sword first, slashing at the power core, intending to break another chunk off of it to weaken it further. Instead, the archway I was leaning on shifted, diving down and nearly throwing me off of the shield-like golem as it shook violently. Before my attack connected a stone eyelid had closed, shielding the power core behind it. Even my overloaded sword just bounced off, and I didn’t have time to charge up an overloaded orb to blow the stone apart. At the very least my efforts had forced the core I was assaulting to relent in its attack as well, freeing Cerion from having to move evasively.

Frustrated that my attack had failed in achieving its main purpose, I called out to Cerion.

“Let’s destroy the sword first!”

Cerion shouted back in the affirmative, before launching himself into the sky with a blast of water and throwing several small self-sustaining whirlpools through the air, right at the skill core resting on top of the giant sword’s pommel.

Again, I felt the shield I was clinging to shift violently, as it swung itself through the air to block Cerion’s ranged attacks, creating a wild gust of wind and throwing me off of itself as it did so.

As I fell to the ground, I noticed that my foot had mostly finished regrowing by now, as had my other wounds, so I used the mana I had passively been charging the air with to launch myself back into the air. In several blasts, I had arrived on the other side of the sword and created my own ranged attacks to launch at the unprotected core up high.

Right when my sword arcs were about to reach it, however, the shield shifted again, blocking them. This even though my improvised assault could have been easily dodged by the nimble sword itself. In fact, the pommel had moved in such a way that my attack would have flown right past it anyway, so evidently, this shield was a little overprotective.

I also noticed that the power core had opened up its eyelid, revealing its position in the middle of said shield again, probably to keep up with us.

Again, a torrent of air appeared, as Cerion renewed his own attack, causing the protector to shift again.

Before a stalemate could appear, the sword decided to resume its attack. It lifted itself into the air as if it was about to be swung by an imaginary giant, before crashing down to the ground wildly, creating a massive torrent of wind along its path.

Cerion had to interrupt his attack and dodged just barely in time, while I used my aura step’s explosive nature to launch myself out of the way. Despite these evasive manoeuvres, we were still affected by the attack, as the aftershocks of the wind blast continued like a wave, creating cuts and tears on my newly healed foot and drawing blood from Cerion, despite his top-notch armour.

Like this, the battle continued for a few more minutes, forming a pseudo-stalemate. The skill core would create wind slashed while the shield would defend against any attack from our side. When we tried to anticipate its movement and aimed for its core, its ‘eyelid’ would close before we dealt any damage, while the swords attacks continued to deal marginal damage to us and threw us out of the air several times.

No particularly new attacks or tactics were used from the bosses’ side, but they didn’t need to, because they had us beat when it came to teamwork. In the second phase, neither the raw power the golems displayed nor the variety of skills they used could be called impressive for a final boss. This made sense, as both cores were at the brink of breaking in half and therefore didn’t display the quality they represented as well as they had before. Instead, they had started to work together, showing us that it was stronger than the sum of its parts. There was a lesson to be learned there, I just knew it.

Eventually, though, Cerion and I got the upper hand again. We both knew that only destructive attacks could leave a scratch on the stone weapons themselves, so we planned ahead.

I called out to Cerion to discuss it.

“I still have that curse mark! How about you throw some fast attacks at the shield when my projectiles are already halfway there! Then it won’t be able to react in time!” I shouted to my partner, who was surfing through the air a little distance away.

I could see him breathing heavily.

“Alright! I’m warning you, though, I’m almost out of mana!” he replied. I believed it, too. He looked like he had been put through the wringer.

If it came down to it, I would have to retreat and carry Cerion away, though hopefully, that wouldn’t be necessary.

A moment later, we both jumped into action.

I went to one side of the sword, that was charging up another swing, while Cerion went to the other side.

We were both out of the way as another wind arc came flying at us, before recovering. I charged up some overloaded orbs, one in each hand, before throwing them at the sword. In actuality, they would automatically home in on the curse mark, even if I didn’t want them to. If I wanted to get free aim again, I would need to let go of the curse mark entirely, which made it a rather rigid skill, lacking in versatility. The thing was, the power core didn’t know any of this. As far as it was concerned, two slow projectiles were flying to the charge it was trying to protect.

The shield swung around, ready to receive my attack, but had to go to the other side as Cerion launched a fast-moving water spear at the sword as well. It spun around in a semi-circle to block the spear, but was now facing a dilemma. Cerion was charging up another spear while my projectiles were still approaching on the other side.

Whatever intelligence the boss had dictated it to time its block so that it would block my attacks first and then swing around to meet Cerion’s.

Successfully, it swung around with a closed eyelid and blocked the two overloaded orbs, which only left some cracks in the stone. Then, it swung around again to block another spear. What the shield hadn’t accounted for, however, was that I had charged right through the shockwave of my overloaded orbs’ explosion, charging up another volley all the while.

By the time it noticed the danger, it would already be too late. I swung around again wildly, in a panic, only to be met by me, grinning as I chucked another two black orbs at its wide-open eye.

As the blast threw me back, blue shards of what looked like glass followed me to the ground. As my landing made another crater, the giant stone shield slowly fell apart, losing its ability to float and turning into a pile of rubble before it even hit the ground.

With a maniacal laugh, I reappeared from the hole, pulling myself out by holding onto some nearby rocks.

I looked up at the sky, seeing only the remaining skill core fly around in sword form. Unfortunately, it didn’t want to give up quite yet. With the death of its brother, the skill core turned a deep red, like the enraged butcher had, revealing that it wasn’t helpless without its mana source.

Even from the ground, I could see it wouldn’t live for much longer though. Small cracks and pieces started to fall off of the core by themselves, the strain of the core’s new state too much to bear. A few minutes was all it would take to win this fight.

As I flew back into the air, I got cold sweat on my back as I saw the sword start to morph again. This time, it had no set form, instead just turning into a twisting mess of stone remnants, randomly forming spikes, tendrils, and hands out of stone. In the end, only a writhing mass of stone was left. It somewhat looked like a star, with the skill core in the middle. It slowly started to hum again, shining brighter and brighter, eclipsing even its previous beam attack. Clearly, it was preparing to take us down with it.

As I prepared for this final fight, Cerion appeared out of nowhere, falling from the sky elegantly, right in front of the stone mass. With a downward slash, he passed the centre of the star, cutting the red core right in half as if he had been born for this moment.

The stone mass fell to the ground, causing the area to shake one final time, as both cores laid destroyed.

Cerion joined me to watch the spectacle.

As we witnessed the destroyed golems turn into rubble, I couldn’t help but tease Cerion, even though the anticlimactic ending had saved me a lot of trouble.

“You certainly have a flair for the dramatics, huh?”