The metallic clatter of the poisoned dagger against the stone floor echoed a hundred times in the Whispering Gallery. To the Cleric, the sound was a death knell. She fell to her knees, her glowing holy aura flickering wildly as she stared at the amber-stained blade.
"Bram..." she whispered, her voice trembling. "He's... he's gone."
"Get back here! Now!" Bram bellowed, his heavy boots pounding against the flagstones as he rushed forward to cover her. The Mage, visibly sweating as the hallucinogenic spores began to blur his peripheral vision, raised his staff, a sphere of crackling fire illuminating the dark vault.
But gravity is always faster than a heavily armored human.
High above, Kaelen detached himself from the shadows of the weeping angel statue. He didn't hiss. He didn't flare his mana core. He simply let himself fall, a four-foot javelin of solid, copper-threaded muscle dropping through the gloom.
He plummeted directly toward the Cleric's exposed back.
As he fell, Kaelen analyzed her defenses. The glowing sun-pendant around her neck projected a faint, shimmering barrier of holy magic—a ward against undead and demonic entities.
But I am neither, Kaelen thought coldly. I am nature. I am physics.
He crashed into her shoulders with the full force of his Level 8 mass. The impact was devastating. The Cleric let out a breathless gasp as Kaelen's heavy coils immediately wrapped around her throat and chest, pinning her arms to her sides before she could even raise her hands to cast.
"Get it off her!" the Mage screamed, his voice distorted and panicky as the spore mist warped his senses. He aimed his fireball, but his hands shook. If he fired, he would incinerate the Cleric along with the snake.
Bram swung his broadsword in a desperate horizontal arc, aiming to cleave Kaelen off his teammate's back.
Kaelen saw the blade coming. He didn't uncoil. Instead, he violently shifted his weight to the right, using his powerful core muscles to throw the Cleric off balance. She tumbled hard onto the stone floor, pulling Kaelen with her. Bram's heavy blade whistled harmlessly through the empty air where they had just been, the momentum throwing the massive Warrior off balance.
In the chaotic scramble on the floor, the Cleric managed to free one hand. She grasped her sun-pendant, her eyes wide with terror as she stared into Kaelen's slit, reptilian pupils. "Smite—!" she choked out.
Kaelen didn't give her the chance to finish the incantation.
He drove his fangs deep into the junction of her neck and shoulder, right above her collarbone. The cold ember in his chest flared, and he pumped an agonizingly concentrated dose of [Basic Venom Synthesis Lvl 1] straight into her carotid artery.
The Cleric's eyes rolled back almost instantly. The holy light of her pendant sputtered and died out, plunging that section of the chamber back into the eerie, spore-choked twilight. Her body went completely limp, her breathing shallow and ragged as the paralytic seized her nervous system.
Kaelen released his bite and immediately slithered off her, using the momentum of his strike to launch himself into the thicket of weeping angel statues lining the perimeter.
A fiery explosion rocked the chamber a millisecond later. The Mage, no longer caring about friendly fire in his panic, had unleashed his spell at the spot Kaelen had just vacated. The blast scorched the stone and sent a shockwave of heat through the room, but Kaelen was already safely coiled behind a marble wing, completely camouflaged.
[Enemy Incapacitated: Human Cleric (Level 11)] [Target is paralyzed and rapidly losing HP. Defeat is imminent.] [Experience Gained: 650 EXP] [Level Up! You are now Level 9.] [Mana Capacity Increased.]
Kaelen's scales rippled as the warm surge of leveling up washed over him. His copper veins glowed slightly brighter, and his fangs elongated by a fraction of an inch.
In the center of the room, Bram dropped his shield and fell to his knees beside the motionless Cleric. He desperately fumbled for a potion, but his hands were trembling too violently.
"Show yourself, you coward!" the Warrior roared into the echoing vault, his voice cracking with a mixture of rage and profound despair. "Face me!"
Face you? Kaelen mused from the shadows, his tongue tasting the fear and ozone in the air. Kings do not duel on the terms of trespassers. They dictate the battlefield.
The Mage, coughing as the hallucinogenic spores filled his lungs, backed up until he hit a wall. He was swiping wildly at the air, his eyes dilated. The illusions were taking hold. "Bram... the statues... they're moving! They're looking at us!"
The shield wall was shattered. The healer was down. The Mage was losing his mind.
It was a flawless execution of psychological warfare.