Chapter Eight: Boss Room

"Was that the signal?" Reginald whispered.

"No," Regina whispered back, peering through her spyglass. "It was just something from the Mage's Guild." The battle, or whatever was happening, at the Mage's Guild had largely died down, but every now and then a lightning bolt or wave of sick-looking fog flew out of an open window. Most of the upper storeys were on fire, and several load-bearing-looking walls lay in ruins. Knowing magic, though, the carnage would likely only take a few minutes to clear up, or, more likely, several months of work by poorly paid servants while the resident Wizards took the opportunity to do 'critical spell research' on a sunny island someplace.

"Why are we whispering?" Reginald asked. "We're halfway across the city from the action."

"How should I know?" Regina asked. "You started it."

"Was that it?"

"No, that was just the sun."

"How about—"

"No."

o—o—o—o

Lkoturo the Grand Vizier hadn't been wrong.

The aged darkwood doors didn't look particularly formidable. Tall, dark, and expensive, just like their previous owner. Sure, darkwood was pretty tough stuff, but it couldn't hold a candle even to steel, and the doors were clearly only using it because it looked pretty.

Nevertheless, they were nigh-indestructible. The grain was so laced with defensive spells and traps that Milo was almost surprised it didn't glow.

"I don't have enough Dispel Magics to put a dent in this door," Relkin said, almost in awe.

"All the Wizards in the world wouldn't have enough," Milo said. It was an exaggeration, but not by as much as one might hope.

"What's the big deal? I've never seen a door that stood up to this little adamantine master key," Gerard said, patting his sheathed greatsword.

"See those little light flecks in the wood?" Milo asked. "There's one there near the bottom, and another by the knocker."

"Sure," Gerard shrugged. "What are those, traps? A simple matter to avoid them."

"No," Milo said. "Those are the only areas not stained by the amber used to make a Sepia Snake Sigil."

"Well, actually," Relkin corrected, "it's an unrelated spell heavily based off of Sepia Snake Sigil that triggers off of the door opening, and probably damage, but not by reading-"

"Yes, yes," Milo said irritably. "Lies-to-Fighters, remember?"

"I think I can make a Reflex save," Gerard said defensively. "I have a Cloak of Protection."

"But can you make five thousand, six-hundred and seventy-seven?" Milo asked. "Besides, that's not even including the Symbol of Insanity scrawled in the doorjamb, there. Of course, it's only potent when clearly visible, and as such poses no threat—as long as the door remains closed."

"Hmm," Gerard said, backing away carefully from the door. "I begin to see your point."

"So..." Zook said. "If we can't get in through the door, what do we do?"

"Gerard?" Milo said. "Break that window."

Gerard shrugged and effortless kicked the window clean off of its pane, letting the rays of early-morning light shine in through the gap. How long did they have until Boccob's three days were up? Minutes? Seconds?

"I don't know what you have planned," Zook said, "but I am not climbing out the window on the top floor of a fifteen-storey palace."

"You'll see," Milo said. "But before we do this, we need to be absolutely clear on something. Everybody listening?"

Relkin, Zook, and Gerard shrugged, nodded, and grunted, respectively.

"In all likelihood, Bellatrix Lestrange is through this door," Milo said.

Gerard cracked his knuckles meaningfully.

"Two of you have seen her fight once before, and she killed both of you without breaking a sweat. You had what, two, three rounds before you went down? Right. I've been fighting people like her back in the other world for over a year now, and it's not like combat here. It's messy and chaotic and confused and if they so much as touch you with their magic, you're dead. No ifs, ands, buts, or saving throws."

"We understand," Relkin said impatiently.

"No," Milo said. "You don't. If we go in there, you will have no idea what you're dealing with. She doesn't have hit points. She doesn't have an armour class. She doesn't even really have a place in the initiative order. You're all used to encounters that are carefully tailored to your respective levels and abilities to be a balanced, fair challenge that might prove difficult but is nonetheless designed for you to win in under a minute." Milo paused to let that sink in. "Bellatrix won't be like that. She comes from a different world with different rules and we won't be able to defeat her unless we recognize that."

"We'll be careful," Gerard said.

"You'll be more than that," Milo said seriously. "You'll stay out of it. I'll handle Bellatrix."

"What?" Relkin said. "That's crazy! You'll fight the BBEG? Alone? Look at you! No magic items. No familiar. No decent spells. Basically no hit points. You don't stand a chance."

"Hit points won't matter in this fight," Milo said. "And I won't be able to both fight her and worry about you."

"So, what do you want us to do?" Zook said. "Just sit around here and polish our Holy Symbols? You can't seriously expect us to agree to this."

"No," Milo said. "She'll probably have a trick up her sleeve. An ace in the hole. While I'm fighting her, I need you three to cover my back against surprises. I don't know about you guys, but I don't believe for a second that that Lorcko guy, or whatever his name was, told us everything."

"We'll see," Relkin said. "But if it's going to be as tumultuous as you're describing, the situation may change in ways you can't predict. I can't promise I might not step in if it comes to that."

Zook nodded. "Same here."

"Besides," Gerard said. "We can't let you get all the XP."

Milo nodded. That was probably the best he was going to be able to get out of them. "Dancing Lights." Four pinpoints of red light appeared floating over his head. "All right, gentlemen. And lady. Shields up."

With a wave of his hand, the lights flew out of the window.

There would be no backing out now.

o—o—o—o

"Was that it?"

"Yeah," Regina said, lowering the spyglass. "Yeah, I think that was it."

"Well," Reginald said. "Here goes."

He reached down and, without further drama, released the catch. The catapult kicked into the air as it released the enormous stored energy in its wound sinew springs.

From her vantage point, Regina couldn't see the eleven other teams positioned throughout the city. But she didn't need to—she could see their effects.

o—o—o—o

It is a common misconception that catapults throw ponderous projectiles in high, slow arcs with little finesse or accuracy. Your standard siege catapult is capable of launching a seventy-five kilogram projectile well over three hundred meters. Catapults are more than capable of stripping battlements from city walls, and could seriously damage or destroy even hardened military fortifications with sustained fire. Over the centuries, advancements in catapult technology necessitated thicker, stronger walls designed with, and to defend against, the (often literally) bleeding edge of military engineering and technology.

Of course, none of that actually mattered here. Force, mass, and acceleration were all merely flavour text, but 6d6 damage was 6d6 damage no matter now you looked at it, especially when a six inch masonry wall only has 45 hit points per 10 square feet.

Mortar dust rained over their heads as the exterior wall suddenly buckled inwards. A handful of bricks were knocked loose, but the wall held.

A moment later, the wall exploded inwards as another half-dozen head-sized stones collided with the civilian architecture almost simultaneously.

A chunk of baroque masonry slammed into Milo's tower shield, which was, through a strange quirk in the rules, the next best thing to indestructible.

Despite himself, Milo chuckled quietly in the dust. More like baroque-en masonry...

The dust cleared.

Lkoturo's door was still standing, apparently unscathed.

The wall around it, however, had gone to metamorphic heaven.

In the remains of what had once been a grandiose office, a woman sat behind a shattered desk, holding a steaming bone china teacup. Her hair was dark and wild beneath the white dust, and she wore a black dress with enough folds, lace, and patterns that Milo didn't doubt there were multiple places one could hide a knife without it showing. Over the dress, she had a leather bag slung over her shoulder.

"Ah," she said, setting down the cracked cup on the crooked table."Heroes." She stood up, idly brushing dust from her clothes. "I hadn't planned on killing any of you lot today, but eh," she shrugged, causing powdered stone to rain from her. "If life gives you lemons..."

Milo dropped his tower shield. He wasn't going to risk a fifty percent spell failure chance on the untested assumption that his exploit would work against her.

"Lestrange," he said, shaking his hands free of his sleeves. "You—"

"Will never get away with it?" Bellatrix asked.

"No, you—"

"Are going down? For justice? The good of mankind? For," she gestured vaguely, "Chester? Lucy?" She frowned. "Have I killed any Lucys lately?" she said, apparently to herself.

"What? No, you—"

"Fiend?" she suggested. "Ooh, how about, 'you may think you've won, but the real punishment will be your own conscience?' It's been years since I've heard that one."

"You don't belong in this world," Milo said.

"Pfft. I was hoping for something new. What did I do, kill your cat or mommy or something? Just once I'd like to kill a hero not out for vengeance. Or 'justice,' for that matter." she made little quotation marks in the air with her fingers. "How about... boredom. Hardly anybody tries to kill me out of boredom. Ooh, or for meringues. Nobody's tried that. And believe me, my meringues are to die for." She frowned. "No, that's my sister's meringues. Mine tended to scream, which always put people off for some reason." Bellatrix stared at Milo, as if noticing him for the first time. "So, what's your deal?"

"I was killed by a book and my god returned me to life to find you."

"Wow, that is new. Avada kedavra." She said it like one might say 'Well, whatever,' or, 'That's public transit for you.' She didn't quick-draw like a gunslinger, or scream like a barbarian, or even shrug. She just said it, as if the words were ordinary conversation. Maybe to her, they were.

But Milo had been ready for it—literally. His Readied spell sprung into action almost before he was really aware that the combat had started.

"Summon Skeletal Troll." A great skeleton of a lanky beast with far too much arm and too little leg appeared directly in the path of the Unforgivable Curse, which burst harmlessly against its chest.

Bellatrix cocked her head sideways. It was a curiously bird-like gesture. Her wand, however, remained perfectly still. "I see you know a thing or two."

Milo shrugged. "You're not the first Death Eater I've fought." This was good. Undead were immune to, near as Milo could tell, all three of the Unforgivable Curses. Death Eaters never seemed to cast anything else, so as long as he could keep the Troll between him and Bellatrix, he'd have this.

Bellatrix grinned. It was a terrifying expression in that it was absolutely genuine. She was, if his ranks in Sense Motive were to be believed, completely thrilled to be fighting.

"Fascinating!" she said. "I'll have to have somebody here magic the answer to that little riddle out of your corpse," she said. "But first—Diffindo!" Bellatrix swiped her wand in a horizontal arc in front of her.

At first, nothing seemed to happen. A moment later, the skeleton seemed to waver slightly, as if unsteady. Then it collapsed, the top half of its skull sliding from its head, severed by a single, unimaginably sharp cut. The skeleton vanished before it hit the ground.

"Oh," Milo said. "Crap."

After that whole lecture to his party, he couldn't believe he'd simply assumed that Bellatrix Lestrange—Bellatrix Lestrange—would simply follow the patterns set by other Death Eaters. The witches and wizards of magical Britain had been terrified of this woman, and with good reason—not only was she, from what he'd heard, completely psychotic, but she evidently possessed a far more frightening trait: she could change her tactics.

"Glitterdust!" A familiar burst of golden light flew out of Milo's outstretched hand at the witch.

"Scourgify," Bellatrix cast casually, wiping the dust away. Oh, Hell... Milo knew what was coming next, and dived behind a convenient pile of rubble. "Oppugno!" she cast in the same breath.

I guess she and Draco are blood, after all...

Milo's golden dust formed into a wispy line and flew back at him, avoiding the rubble with ease. For once, he was glad that he no longer had his spell-enhancing equipment, as its lack was the only reason he as able to evade the spell.

He was dimly aware of the noise of fighting coming from the hallway outside, and heard Zook's voice shout out "Don't kill them! They don't know what they're doing!"

Milo resolved to stop messing around and aim for her obvious weak spot. He popped out over the rubble and targeted her wand.

"Shatter!"

Bellatrix's wand exploded in her hand, sending splinters flying across the room. The witch blinked in surprise at her bleeding hand.

"My mother gave me that wand," she said in a hushed voice.

Milo heaved a sigh of relief. He'd half-expected her to have some devious countermeasure. Now, it would only be a simple matter of subduing her, maybe with Evard's Black Tentacles, or perhaps a summoned monster.

Abruptly, she smiled. "Oh, no, I forgot. That was this wand," she said, producing a seemingly-identical wand from behind her back. With a shrug, she tossed it away behind her back. "Or maybe this one," she said, drawing yet another from up her sleeve. "With the Geminio Charm, it's easy to lose track. Incarcerous."

Dozens of ropes sprung out of the oak wall behind Milo, grabbing him by the arms, legs, and neck and pinning him to the wall. He struggled, but it was futile. What kind of self-respecting Wizard would put ranks in Escape Artist, anyway?

Bellatrix clapped her hands together. "Bravo!" she said, apparently genuinely thrilled. "That was, what, twenty, thirty seconds? That's more entertainment than I get out of most. You should be proud! I'd cut you down for an encore performance, but, well, I think I'll just kill you instead."

Behind Bellatrix, Milo saw Relkin stalking silently across the room, sword in hand. She gave him a wink.

Milo's mind raced. He had to keep Bellatrix talking.

"I wouldn't kill me, if I were you," he said.

"Of course!" Bellatrix said. "I wouldn't kill me if I were me, either. It goes without saying, really. Flagrate." Milo smelled faint wood smoke as the tip of her wand lit up into a bright white ember.

"No, I mean, really," Milo stammered. Bellatrix playfully traced her wand against the wood panelling Milo was pinned against, leaving a scored black mark. "Aren't you the least bit curious about how I previously encountered Death Eaters?"

"Honestly? Not really," Bellatrix said, hovering her smoking wand tip just in front of Milo's left eye.

Just as Relkin approached within the reach of her weapon, Bellatrix snapped her fingers. A shadowy figure dropped silently from the ceiling, swords poised to strike.

Before Milo could cry out, the stranger stranger's weapons flashed. Relkin whirled about and deftly parried the first with her crystal sword, but was a hair too slow to catch the second. She screamed and clutched at her shoulder, blood leaking between her fingers.

"Where was I?" Bellatrix asked. "Oh, of course." Slowly, deliberately, she moved her smoking wand towards his eye.

Milo wished he could say that he stared her down coolly, but, in truth, he began to crack. He didn't want to die again, or for his sister to die. He was more terrified of this strange, quicksilver witch than he had been of almost anyone before—perhaps more so, even, than of Tom Riddle.

The wand was so close that he could feel his face starting to burn.

I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I DON'T WANT TO DIE.

"What was that?" Bellatrix asked sweetly.

"I don't want to die!" Milo screamed. He struggled against the ropes and the wooden wall in vain.

Wait.

The wooden wall.

Milo slammed his palm against the oak behind him. Abruptly he began to slide as the wall collapsed into dozens upon dozens of narrow wooden quarterstaves, just like he had with the ship's mast. It wasn't even magic; anyone could do it. He collided with Bellatrix's shins, and they both tumbled to the ground, sliding across the floor in a great wave of walking sticks.

"And people say Craft is underpowered!" Milo said, climbing to his feet. He'd stopped sliding just next to the huge open dropoff where the external wall had once been.

Milo looked at the small figure fighting Relkin. At the hooded cloak, the twin swords...

"Wellby?"

"Avada Kedavra!" A green bolt of light grazed Milo's face, colliding with the wall behind him. Milo whirled around, Readying another Summon Undead III. He was fighting too defensively, he knew, but what else was he going to do? If he tried to take her out and missed, he'd be wide open to a Killing Curse.

Bellatrix was back on her feet, yet another wand in her hand. Her previous one was lying among the pile of wooden weaponry, still smoking.

"Oh, you're fun," she laughed. "Nobody from this mad, fake world has put up even half the fight you have! Look—Expecto Patronum!" A wispy, translucent white snake slithered out of her wand, and wrapped itself around her legs. "I'm having a great time!"

"I know the feeling," Milo muttered. He'd fought whole rooms full of Death Eaters before with less difficulty than this. Of course, he'd had Mordenkainen then, and his belt full of tricks, but his primary weapon had always been his spells. Bellatrix seemed to have an answer to all of them—and she could cast much, much faster than he could.

"Avada Kedavra!"

"Summon Zombie Kobolds," Milo cast, aiming for quantity over quality. Four small, rotting reptilian creatures appeared in a line between him and Bellatrix. The Killing Curse burst harmlessly against the first one's decaying torso, and the four disgusting little creatures rushed the witch. With her distracted, Milo glanced at Relkin, who was losing ground—and hit points—to Wellby's superior, non-caster combat abilities. She hadn't seemed to have clued in to his identity, yet—maybe because, technically, she hadn't actually met him before.

"Benign Transposition," he muttered. Suddenly, he was facing his old party mate, and Relkin was standing by the open wall. "Look, Wellby—" Milo was interrupted by Wellby slashing him across the chest with one of his blades. "Gods dammit," Milo cursed. Not for the last time, he wished he'd taken the penalty to Charisma rather than Constitution. "Fine, be that way. Protection from Good."

Wellby blinked his eyes repeatedly, as if he'd just woken up from a long dream.

"Milo?" he asked.

"Later," Milo said. "We'll deal with Lestrange first."

Wellby's eyes hardened. "Yes," he said. "Yes, we will."

The three of them and the two kobolds still standing surrounded Bellatrix.

"Well," she laughed. "Win some, lose some."