Word Count: 1,876
TW: death, fighting (let me know if I need to add any)
+10 EXP
Evalyn smiled as the hot spring froze over. She stepped on it to test it, and motioned for the rest to follow once she had deemed it safe enough to cross. The group followed quickly and uneasily, cautious that the ice would melt very quickly.
They were almost across the water when Amber jolted and Joan froze. They had been walking into the Pyron territory since that morning, and though they had faced few challenges so far, they were on high alert.
"Someone's coming," Joan said quickly.
"Guys, hurry. We need to get away from here right now-" Amber warned, but it was too late.
Everyone looked up in unison at the sound of shrieking.
"Run!" Amber shouted. Evalyn made a run for solid ground, and the group followed suit. The last one, Alex, had barely gotten both feet off the ice before he was knocked back onto it by a strong gust of wind.
The dragon was massive and the gusts of wind each flap of its wings delivered were strong enough to push everyone down. Evalyn focused hard on keeping the ice strong so Alex wouldn't fall through it before he could get back up. As soon as he was in arms distance, Joan dragged him on land and Evalyn finally let the ice melt.
"Is that one of the Pyron dragons?" Elijah asked, to which Amber nodded gravely.
"This level only happens when we take too long. We...we may have to start over," Joan worried.
"Start over? I'm more worried about, I don't know, dying!" Elijah shouted over the beat of the dragon's wings as it got closer.
Finally, the dragon landed. It bowed its head, and something slid off its back.
Something humanoid and scaley crawled on all fours toward the group.
"What do we have here?" She asked with a thick accent that sounded like an odd mix between French and Jamaican. Everyone scrambled to their feet, preparing for some sort of fight.
"Come now, I knew I was scary, but now you are just flattering me," she laughed darkly.
"What do you want from us?" Joan asked firmly.
"That depends on what you're doing on my land, my friend," she replied, standing on only her legs now. When she stood, she leaned forward at an uncomfortable-looking angle. She hovered and swayed in a very traditional creature-like way.
"We're just trying to pass through. I promise we mean no harm," Joan said honestly.
"Is that so? Then why do you look ready to fight?" She asked with a smirk that showed her pointed teeth. When given no answer, she pointed at Amber, and the dragon flared its nostrils, blowing out smoke. Amber's hands immediately burst into flames. She was aware it would be extremely difficult to literally fight fire with fire, but she could at least try.
"See? This young lady here thinks she can harm us with her spark hands," The creature said, speaking about Amber in the same tone most use to talk about a child. She turned to Amber with a smile, "You can't hurt us with fire, sweetheart. I am queen of this fire realm."
Amber turned to look the creature in the eyes and regretted it immediately. The creature's eyes were reversed from normal eyes: what should have been the whites of her eyes were black, and her irises and pupils were white. Deeply disturbed and quite fearful, Amber made the fire in her hands flare.
"Do not try that with me," the creature said angrily, waving her hand in a circular motion. Quickly, the fires in Amber's hands were snuffed, much to everyone's astonishment.
"I own you, feisty one. You have no protective spells. You are no defense, you are all offense. You have nothing to protect you. The only thing you have against me is fire, but lucky for me, that is my element, too, so I would watch your actions before you get yourself hurt," the creature warned.
"Do not touch her," Evalyn snapped as the creature took a step toward Amber.
"Ooh, we have two feisty ones!" The creature sounded delighted, "And this one is even smaller. What makes you think you are match to me, child?"
"I don't know," Eva said sarcastically, and iced the ground beneath the creature, causing her to slip for a moment.
"What makes you think you can threaten my girlfriend and get away with it?" Eva asked, "She didn't hurt you, and she wasn't going to, until you started...doing whatever it is you're doing, with that attack dragon."
The creature looked extremely angry for all but two seconds before her expression softened, and she smiled.
"I like you. What is your name, child?" The creature asked. Eva looked to Joan as if to ask if she could say it, and Joan nodded hesitantly.
"My name is Evalyn," she said.
"Mmmhm. Evalyn," The creature drawled. She stalked toward Eva, grabbing Eva's chin with one, scaley hand. Her long claws rested just below Eva's eye, almost as a threat.
"Get off of her," Amber said urgently.
"Amber, be quiet," Joan hissed.
"Get off of her," Amber repeated, louder this time.
"Amber shut up!" Elijah shouted.
"Alright! I have had enough of you," the creature scolded, turning her head sharply to face Amber. Evalyn screamed, batting the hand off of her now-burnt face. There was a red hand-shaped mark where the creature had been grabbing her face.
-10 HP
"And we've had enough of you!" Amber yelled back, taking charge at the creature. Amber practically mauled the creature, throwing her over her shoulder. The dragon flapped its wings and flared its nostrils. The creature then grabbed Amber's ankles, yanking her to the ground. She crawled over Amber, holding her down.
"Get the little one," the creature called out. With one easy movement, the dragon lurched forward and, with its massive head, shoved Evalyn backward.
"No!" Amber yelled, as the scene played in her head and then before her eyes. Evalyn practically went flying backward, landing in the lava with a blood curdling scream. She tried to surround herself in ice, but the ice just melted into water, and the water just solidified the lava.
A health bar appeared above (what everyone else saw as) the spot of rock in the lava, and it rapidly went down. Joan tried to think of something to do about the dragon, Alex rushed to where Evalyn's health bar was fading, and Elijah fell to the ground with a crippling pain in his chest that he couldn't figure out the source of. Penny flew worriedly from Eli's shoulder and around his head, then nudging his arms, trying to get him to respond.
Amber had no words for the red hot anger that flooded her. Swiftly, she threw the creature off of her and threw every punch and shove she could as the creature's health bar went down. The creature didn't even have the chance to fight back. Amber was pulling every hands-on combat move she could remember. When the creature's health bar ran out, her being flashed into nothing but red light a few times and then she disappeared.
+550 EXP
As soon as the creature was gone, Amber stood up and rushed to the edge of the lava pool. The health bar above the patch of rock was extremely low, but not gone.
"She's still alive! She's still alive, we have to do something!" Amber shouted.
The dragon was still. The hot spring went still. The steam in the air seemed to float in slow motion. The queen of the fire realm was dead.
Joan rushed to Amber and Alejandro's side, looking frantically at the lava as if there was something they could do.
"How is she still alive?" Joan asked, breath picking up pace considerably.
"The lava isn't burning her. She's trapped in rock. She's suffocating," Alex provided.
"Well then get her out!" Amber yelled.
"We can't! She-"
The three of them turned around when Elijah screamed. He was on the ground, hunched over, on his knees, hands clutching his chest. Tears poured down his face. He heaved for breaths as if he was being choked.
"She's gone. She's gone. She's gone," he repeated softly, hysterically, over and over again. Just then, a small ding sounded. Evalyn's health bar flashed and disappeared. Then Amber screamed, too.
The world started to fade to white. Alex looked between Amber and Elijah, who were both crying, unable to figure out who to go to. Joan's expression was unreadable.
When they could see again, they were in Joan's house. Alex and Joan sat on the floor of the living room.
"We're...alive?" Alex asked slowly, opening and closing his fists, looking around carefully.
"The game re-set. We started over," Joan said grimly.
"Like from the beginning?" Alex panicked.
"Well...kind of. You'll still have your experience points. But we start the journey over," Joan sighed deeply.
"Where is she?!" Amber asked, bounding out of her room.
"I don't know-"
"You can't die for real unless you are killed directly by a being. Dying by result of surroundings and natural disasters just means you start over. She suffocated. So where is she?" Amber demanded.
"I don't know! There's a chance she got erased when the game started over, there's no way of telling until we find her," Joan replied.
"She has to be here!" Amber shouted.
Not but two seconds later, the front door opened and Evalyn came stumbling in.
"Eva!" Amber laughed through her tears, rushing over to her. Easily, she picked Evalyn up and swung her around before setting her down and kissing her.
"You're here. You're alive. Are you okay? Is there anything I can do for you? You're shaking," Amber asked, kissing her cheek and then her nose and then her other cheek and then her forehead and then her lips again.
"I mean..." Evalyn began weakly, "I just died. And it was...traumatizing, to say the least." She turned to look around the room and make sure everyone else was there.
"Elijah, are you alright?" Evalyn asked. Elijah was crumpled on the ground, crying. Perhaps she wasn't the only one who died? She wasn't sure if anything else happened after she fell in the lava, and it only took one player dying to make everyone else start over, so she couldn't tell.
"I'm so sorry you had to go through that," came Elijah's reply. He was shaking. Badly.
"What do you mean?" Evalyn asked. Elijah got up on weak legs, and Amber stepped aside so he could hug Eva.
"I felt it. I felt when you fell in. I felt suffocated. I felt when you died. I'm so sorry you had to go through that. I can't even imagine being in the actual rocks and lava and I—" Elijah's voice broke off into another sob, and he hugged Evalyn tighter. Evalyn hugged back.
"It was terrible. I'm sorry that you had to feel that when you weren't even the one dying," Eva mumbled.
Amber and Joan exchanged horrified expressions.
"Elijah, we're going to need you to tell us everything," Joan said.
"Once you're calm and feeling better," Alex was quick to add.