Chapter 25: The Hound of Tears
The air on the stairwell to the twentieth floor tasted of ozone and old blood. No more dripping water, no fungal rot. Just a dry, anticipatory silence that pressed against their eardrums. Azazel flexed his gloved hands. Reginleif tested the balance of her moonstone dagger. A look passed between them—wordless, stark. They were as ready as they would ever be.
They stepped into the chamber.
It was vast, circular, and utterly bare. The walls and floor were made of the same seamless, dark stone, polished to a dull sheen. In the center of the ceiling, a single, massive tear-shaped crystal glowed, casting a sorrowful blue light over the empty arena.
The moment they cleared the threshold, the stone door behind them slid shut with a final, thunderous boom. The sound hadn't even finished echoing when the response came.
From the far wall, where shadow seemed to congeal into substance, it emerged. A low, primal growl that vibrated in their bones, rising into a deafening, two-toned ROAR that shook dust from the ceiling.
The Two-Headed Hound Boss was a monument of flesh, fury, and elemental hatred. It stood taller than a warhorse, its muscles coiled like river rock under a short, scarred pelt. Its left head was wreathed in a permanent, shimmering heat-haze, jaws lined with teeth like glowing coals, nostrils puffing smoke. Its right head was sleek and viper-like, with milky, poisonous eyes and fangs that dripped a viscous, greenish fluid that hissed where it hit the stone. Two tails, one tipped with a bony club, the other with a stinger, lashed the air behind it. It was the dungeon's final argument, its ultimate "NO."
Azazel didn't wait. He ran. Not away, but straight at the colossal beast, a suicidal charge to close the distance. The fire-head tracked him. A massive, burning paw the size of a shield slammed down where he'd been a fraction of a second before. The stone cracked. Azazel used the shockwave, letting it propel him into a low slide, his kukri flashing up to slice a shallow line across the monster's exposed belly as he passed beneath it. Thick, hot blood splattered.
From across the chamber, Reginleif acted. "Piercing Feather!" Two needles of condensed wind shot from her flicking wrists, aimed for the joints of the beast's rear legs. They struck with sharp thwips, drawing flinches and fresh snarls.
The fire-head swung towards her, ignoring the gnat at its feet. Its maw gaped, and a sphere of compacted orange flame the size of a human head rocketed across the room. Reginleif didn't dodge. She planted her feet, crossed her arms, and shoved the air in front of her. A Wind Barrier solidified—not a wall, but a focused lens. The fireball hit it and dispersed, shattering into a harmless shower of embers and hot air that swirled around her.
Now.
While the boss was distracted, Azazel reached into the violet shimmer at his belt. His hand emerged not with a weapon, but with a coiled rope tipped with a heavy iron grappling hook. Meant for a cliff, he thought, but you'll do.
He didn't aim for stone. He took two running steps, spun the hook once for momentum, and hurled it up. It sailed in a high arc and came down, biting deep into the thick muscle and hide of the Hound's broad back, just behind its shoulders.
The beast roared in fresh surprise and pain. Azazel pulled hard, testing the hold. It was solid. He wrapped the rope around his forearm and got ready.
The Hound spun, a violent, whipping turn to find this new source of annoyance. Azazel held on, becoming a human pendulum. He was whipped off his feet, swinging in a terrifying arc as the monster turned. At the apex of the swing, directly behind the beast, he let go. He flew through the air, tucking into a roll that absorbed the impact as he hit the ground, skidding to a stop.
Damn. Can't climb if it's thrashing like that.
He needed it still. Just for a moment. "You Shadow!" he commanded, focusing on the massive, distorted shadow the boss cast under the central crystal.
Dark tendrils erupted from the floor, wrapping around the Hound's legs. They strained, held for a second… and then began to smoke and dissolve. The poison head had turned, its milky eyes glowing. A wave of sickly green energy pulsed from it, a Mythic Dispel that ate away at the shadow-bind like acid.
But Reginleif was ready. Her hands were already moving, weaving the air. She didn't attack the dispel. She captured the burgeoning cloud of poisonous vapor the head was exhaling as it used its power. A localized tornado of her own making spun to life around the poison head, containing the green mist, pushing it back against its own muzzle. The head coughed and gagged, its dispel faltering.
"Azazel, now! Bait the fire!" she shouted, her voice strained with the effort of containment.
Azazel didn't need telling twice. He focused, drawing on the cold void within. Not a wave, not a sheet. A spear. "Black Ice: Lance." A jagged, foot-long shard of pitch-black ice coalesced in his hand. He threw it not to damage, but to provoke. It shattered against the fire-head's snout with a sizzle.
The fire-head's response was instantaneous, predictable rage. It inhaled, its chest swelling, and unleashed a continuous, roaring Flamethrower stream of pure fire straight at Azazel.
He was already diving aside. But that was the plan.
"Reginleif, NOW!"
As the jet of fire crossed the chamber, Reginleif, still maintaining the poison vortex with one mental hand, used the other to twist. She didn't block the fire. She vectored the contained poison cloud directly into its path.
POOMF.
Fire met concentrated poison gas in a catastrophic chemical reaction. Instead of a clean stream, the fire erupted into a billowing, opaque cloud of choking, acidic smoke, blinding the fire-head and filling the space between the heads.
In the sudden cover, Azazel was a ghost. He sprinted for the dangling rope, leaping to catch it. He climbed, hand over hand, a desperate race against the smoke clearing. He hauled himself onto the beast's heaving back, the heat from the fire-head radiating through his boots.
He had seconds. He formed another Black Ice Lance in his hand, this one longer, crueler. He drove it down like a stake between the Hound's shoulder blades.
The roar that shook the chamber was one of pure, agonized fury. The boss bucked and writhed, a titan trying to dislodge a flea. Azazel clung to the embedded ice-spear, riding the storm of muscle.
Reginleif saw her moment. She abandoned the dissipating poison cloud. She remembered Azazel's first, brutal lesson back in the guild alley—sometimes overwhelming force from an unexpected angle was the answer. She sheathed her dagger. She ran, not away, but around the chamber, building speed with each step, each footfall amplified by a gust of wind. She became a silver and green blur, a missile building kinetic energy.
The Hound, enraged by the thing on its back, finally spotted her. It turned, the fire-head unleashing a volley of fireballs, the club-tail swinging to crush her. It stomped, making the floor quake.
It forgot about Azazel.
Reginleif hit her peak velocity. She launched herself into a flying Drop Kick, her entire body encased in a spiraling sheath of compressed wind. She struck the Hound in its ribs, just behind the fire-head's shoulder, with the force of a battering ram.
CRACK.
The sound of breaking bone was sickeningly loud. The Hound staggered, its charge broken, a leg buckling. Its agro swung entirely to Reginleif, who landed and rolled, already drawing her dagger again.
Azazel seized the opening. He scrambled forward along the spine, over the heaving muscle, towards the two necks. He drew his kukri in his right hand. In his left, he formed a final, shorter Black Ice Spike.
Too big to decapitate. The bone's too thick. But the eyes… the eyes are soft.
He reached the base of the poison head's neck. It was thrashing, blind with rage and Reginleif's wind-borne assault. He steadied himself, took aim, and with a simultaneous, brutal thrust, drove the ice spike into one milky eye and his kukri into the other.
The scream from the poison head was a high, wet, gurgling shriek. The head whipped violently, knocking Azazel clean off his perch. He flew through the air and slammed into the chamber wall with a bone-jarring thud, sliding to the floor.
Reginleif was at his side in an instant, hauling him up. "Are you okay?!"
Azazel coughed, his vision swimming. "Yeah. Just hit the wall. Nothing's broken." He pushed her hand away, his eyes on the boss.
The Hound was stumbling, the poison head hanging limp, a ruined, leaking mess. But it wasn't dead. With a final, desperate act, the dying poison head convulsed and vomited a torrent of pure, concentrated toxin onto the floor in a spreading, hissing pool, trying to create a final, impassable moat of death.
"Oh no you don't," Azazel snarled.
He focused, not on the ocean of power, but on a single, controlled point. He envisioned a drain. A vortex. He raised both hands, palms facing the spreading poison.
A churning sphere of black water erupted from the stone in the center of the toxic pool. Its rotation was so violently inward it created a vacuum, dragging the effluence from the dying head, pulling the very fluid from its wounds, sucking it all towards the center. The poison head was wrenched downward, its neck stretching.
As the vortex peaked, the water didn't freeze. It compressed. Then, from the spinning mass, four massive lances of high-pressure black water shot upward like subterranean geysers. They struck the trapped, poisoned head from below with the force of depth-charges. The impacts were muffled, brutal thumps that crushed scale, flesh, and bone within the aqueous tomb. The head, already limp, was pulverized.
The vortex collapsed, depositing a slurry of black water, poison, and gore onto the floor.
Reginleif stared, wide-eyed. "What do you think you're doing?!"
"It's fine," Azazel panted, a trickle of blood from his lip. "I'm controlling it. Chaining it. One, two, three steps. Last time I was just… angry. I opened the floodgates. This was a faucet."
He understood now. The difference between drowning the world and directing a hydro-cutter.
The boss was not finished. With its poison head dead, a terrifying change came over it. Steam began to rise from its entire body—from its pores, its mouth, its wounds. The heat-haze around the fire-head intensified until it was wreathed in flickering flames. The blue light in the chamber seemed to dim as the Hound's own internal inferno grew, its remaining eye blazing with apocalyptic fury. The air crackled with released thermal energy. It was burning itself up for one final, all-consuming stand.
"Hey, Reginleif," Azazel said, wiping his mouth and raising his kukri, its edge notched and glowing faintly from the heat. "I think we're about to reach the climax."
Reginleif adjusted her grip on her moonstone dagger, its green glow defiant against the growing red light. "I can see that."
The Two-Headed Hound Boss, now a One-Headed Engine of Fire and Rage, let out a sound that was less a roar and more the scream of a volcano. And it charged.
They met it, not as prey, but as partners. The final battle had begun.