The three of us ran in different directions. Theo made his way to the right towards a collapsed walkway leading up to the next level. Tala ran to the left where a short staircase was still intact. For me, I ran straight for the boss. There was a fallen column I could make my way up which would put me within melee range of the Blightwing. The Blightwing’s attention was directed at me first. It opened its beak, took a deep breath, and released another light flare. This time I was ready for it. I brought the shadow blades before my face and shaded my eyes from the attack. I could still see through the semi-transparent weapons like a pair of sunglasses.

  During the boss’s flare ability, Tala fell behind a broken half-wall and spun her orb above her hand. Once the light faded, she stood and launched the orb near the boss. The glowing blue weapon stopped short of the Blightwing’s head and began to rapidly spin. Thin shards of ice started firing from the floating rings of frost that swirled around the glass orb. They pierced into the Blightwing’s eyes. The attack caused it to shriek, snap its head back, and sink away. The Blightwing slashed its wings into the air to try and stop the attack. It would have knocked the orb out of the sky if Tala hadn’t been quick enough to call it back.

  Her attack gave me the time I needed to reach the fallen column. I leaped up in a single step, landed in a sprint, and started my way up the stone block. Theo reached the toppled landing and was almost to the next level. Once I reached the halfway point I decided I was close enough to start my attack. Holding my blades to the side, I arched my arm and flung my first shadow blade at the creature’s chest. The pointed shadow blade pierced the boss where its long neck met its stony body. When the blade hit, it created a crack that broke down the center of the boss’s torso. I followed it up immediately with my other weapon, firing it into the same breaking point. The second attack didn’t hit the mark and rebounded off the side of its neck.

  By the time I had reached the level where the Boss was hiding, I had dismissed my shadow weapons and resummoned them. The Blightwing was thrashing around in pain. Smashing its head into the ceiling, walls, and flooring. The floor trembled beneath my feet and I had to hold my arms out to keep my balance. If the boss continued to thrash about he could create another implosion of the building. We got lucky with the first collapse but feeling my strength starting to give out with each forging of a shadow weapon made me think we wouldn’t be so lucky next time.

  “Out of my way,” Theo yelled as he rushed past me. He held his spear out to the side and let the sharp point drag on the ground creating a long line of crimson in the tiled floor. He jumped over a gap in the stone, slid under a fallen steel beam, and then sprinted under a wide attack from the boss. He pulled himself up under the Blightwing’s jaws and sank his spear right inside the creature’s beak. The speak pierced up and through the top part of the beak. The red tip broke through the metallic plating sending splintered iron into the air. The Blightwing stood high, head smashing through the ceiling, and started clawing at his face with its taloned wings. Theo was able to release his control on the spear, took off to his left, and jumped down to the lower level.

  Not wanting to be shown up by Theo, I pressed my will into the shadow weapons to make them grow longer. I forged them to be almost three feet long and since they were made of shadow they weighed nothing. I turned them in my hand so the blades pointed behind me and rushed for the boss myself. I took a different path than Theo, heading to an old office couch, bounding up to a tumbled wall and finally pulling myself back to the top of the Crumbling Tower. To my right was a long steel beam that led over the spot where the Blightwing was still thrashing about. I turned heel and ran over the beam coming to a stop near its center. Looking down I peered directly into a whirlwind of concrete, rebar, and bent road signage.

  I focused my breath, steadied my stance, and waited for an opening. My chance came when the Blightwing finally stopped moving and instead started twisting its head back and forth trying to listen to where we had gone. From this height, I could see that the boss’s eyes were covered in a layer of ice. Tala’s attack had managed to blind it. This gave me the idea to check on its condition. The Blightwing wasn’t marked as being [Blinded] but it had received a good amount of damage from the three of us so far to drop it down from [Injured] to [Crippled]. Two more stages of damage and the thing would be dead. We were close to finishing the fight.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  I took my shot and jumped down from the steel beam. I held the shadow blades out and aimed for the Blightwing’s eyes. I landed on top of the broken beak, hitting my right knee hard but was able to catch my footing with my left foot. The Blightwing was caught off guard by my sudden appearance. To it, I must have looked like a dark blur through the layer of ice covering its eyes. There was a hiccup in the creature’s movement as it tried to step away from me but was stopped by the outer wall of the tower. I steadied myself as best I could, lifted my blades, and drove them deep into the wide-set eyes.

  A major notification popped into my view. A [Critical Hit] sign notified me that my attack had struck true causing serious enough damage on its own to drop the boss another level in its condition. One more major hit like that and it was dead. Then I received another notification one that sent a heap of anxiety up my back.

  [Boss Battle: Stage 2 Initiated]

  Stage two? It has a second stage?

  The Blightwing began to quake beneath my body. Its body shuddered in a strange vibration as if it was about to explode. The trembling caused me to slip from its beak and fall hard to the ground. My shoulder caught most of the impact and reminded me that my arm was close to breaking again.

  The Boss lifted its head, cranked its neck, and let out another scream. This time it was different. It wasn’t a howl of pain or of anger. It was stronger. Deeper. It shook the very world. Caused loose rubble to fall all around me and shattered the remaining windows of the building. As the creature screamed a deep crimson light bubbled from its throat. It looked like an ancient lava lamp like the one Makena had brought back from a scavenging run with the Outriders. She had turned it on in the center of the food hall and let its light swirl through the dark air. It only lasted two minutes before the bulb burned out but those two minutes were beautiful. This was not that light. This was dark and menacing.

  I watched the light grow taller and wider, the bubble-like membrane strained to hold it. Then it broke. I half expected an explosion to rock out and kill everything in a fifty-foot radius. Instead, it popped like a too-stretched balloon and started to leak out a mesmerizing liquid light that seeped from the boss’s mouth. The light ran down through the many crevices that cut through the Blightwings body. The liquid flowed like honey, pouring down long lines of crack stones and seeping over the metal plating creating waves of red and purple light until at last the entire Blightwing was encased in the shimmering water.

  The boss rested inside the casing of swirling liquid. I could see the dark silhouette of its body squirming inside like a trapped moth ready to be reborn. In the moment of peace, I regained my stance and stood before the monolith that was the boss reaching its second stage. I had heard rumors from the other survivors about certain creatures becoming more powerful through the course of a fight but I assumed it was more of an animalistic instinct driving them to be more aggressive not literally becoming something else.

  The light casing broke at the top of the cocoon. It ziplined down the side and let a curtain of light break free. I materialized my blades and held them in front of me waiting for an explosion that never came. Instead, the light cracked in zigzag patterns out from the central line. Then when the whole thing looked to burst the outer light grew fainter as it was drawn inward like water being absorbed by a sponge. The cocoon sank into the body of the Blightwing. Pulled deep into its center until the entire boss now glowed with fierce cracks of crimson light. Its chest illuminated from within showing all of its internal parts of bent rebar, shattered stones, and stacked plaster.

  The Blightwing had finished its transformation into a brilliant, phoenix-like creature of rubble. It burned with a fierce light and an even fiercer rage. Its once black, burning dark eyes were now ablaze in a swirling red light. Its gaze shone across the dark world like a lighthouse searching for wandering ships, only instead of a welcoming beacon, it was an omen of death. Then the gaze fell upon me. I stood alone in the gaze of the Blightwing. It’s focused entirely on me. Though fear gripped me once again, its burning claw tearing into my heart, I stayed strong. I held my shadow weapons free, my eyes connected to the Blightwing. I let my [Codex] flare to life.

  Radiant Blightwing - Level 5 (Epic)

  Condition: Crippled

  Applied Buff: Final Radiance