doraemax: I already know who the last member of the party will be, and it's someone I generally am not kind to in my fics (which pretty much rules out Tonks and Luna). That's all I'll say on the subject. :)

Fast Frank: Stellis are more or less balanced gender-wise. There is a slight predominance of females, but we're talking no more than a 10% differential in the population (i.e., 55% female and 45% male). Practically unnoticeable.

Chapter 7
Eidolon

Now that they knew their true enemies were not simple animals but people, the need for stealth had become exponentially more important. Monsters could not make the kind of plans people could. If they were going to stop whoever was doing this – and more importantly, get out of this mine alive and intact – they needed to proceed cautiously.

Dudley moved slowly and as quietly as he could, his axe held in front of him to serve as a shield as much as a weapon. Right behind him followed Hermione, an arrow already strung and pulled halfway back. Now that they knew what to look for, they were not going to take any chances. Anything that was even vaguely similar to a vine panther was going to have an arrow put through it. Harry, meanwhile, was practically walking backwards. After the ambush that very nearly succeeded, he was not about to let anything try sneaking up on them again.

A soft twang came from Hermione's bow, and another vine panther fell out of the crevice where it had been hiding. Wisps of black smoke leaked from its eyes as it turned and twisted, its facial tentacles lashing out in an attempt to figure out where it was now that her magic had blinded it. Three more arrows found their homes in its side before it slumped to the ground.

"Are you going to chop off one of its tentacles, too?" asked Dudley.

Hermione shook her head and called her arrows back to her. "I don't need it. They make excellent bowstrings, and mine is getting to the point that I want to replace it anyway. Now that I have one, though, that's all I need."

"We can loot the monsters when they're all dead, anyway," Harry reminded them. "Burn, then pillage."

His cousin shrugged. "You know, I can't stop wondering why there aren't more. I mean, if this guy can tame monsters, you'd think they would be everywhere, not just a couple here and there. This is almost too easy."

A confused blink, and Harry turned around to stare at the Knight. Had Dudley really just gone there?

"Please don't tempt fate while I'm around," Hermione said with a wince. "That leads to bad things far too often to be simple coincidence. Anyway, I expect the reason is because he probably used most of his pet monsters to drive the miners out and convince the townspeople to seal off the mine, giving him unrestricted access. That or the other parties the mayor mentioned hiring were able to kill off what creatures they did find before they were overwhelmed. Our Conjurer either didn't know his guards were slowly being culled, or he decided replacing them just meant more mouths to feed. There's no way to know except to ask, and I don't plan on sitting down to tea with him."

Around another corner they crept, and an opening just a short distance down the short tunnel spilled out light. The three adventurers glanced at each other before walking closer. As soon as they poked their heads out, they stared at the enormous room, almost an arena, that waited for them. It looked like it was originally a natural cavern, but the people of Gimli had punched through the mountain on their search for riches. Someone had afterwards turned it into a base of some kind if the wooden tables and chairs he could see on the floor of the cavern were any indication, and considering that the townspeople all had homes up above, Harry doubted they were responsible. His coin was on a different party.

The trio abandoned the tunnel and made their way down a set of rough-hewn stairs towards a ledge lower down. These, at least, had probably be set up by the miners; he did not expect thieves would have much interest in erecting the rails that kept them from falling the several dozen feet to the floor. They did not provide much cover either, but fortunately the room was barren, the thieves who had taken control of the mines off somewhere else presumably to rip the mine's bounty out of the walls.

Silent as ghosts they walked, and Hermione grabbed both Harry's and Dudley's arms when they reached the opposite end of the ledge. They were not, in fact, completely alone. One man was still present, walking around a cluster of cooking pots at the far side of the cavern where he had been blocked from sight when they first entered. He made no moves to indicate that he had seen them; instead he seemed completely at ease as he tossed ingredients into the different pots.

"Should we go ahead and attack him, or try to avoid detection?" Harry asked in a whisper.

Their catgirl companion shook her head and drew her bow fully. A faint pinkish aura wrapped around the arrow she had nocked. "If we leave him standing, he'll see us eventually and alert the rest. Mute Shot should keep him from yelling for help until we can knock him out." Closing one eye, she let out a long breath and released the bowstring.

Her arrow left a faint trail behind as it flew straight and true through the air and into the thief's back. It was a solid hit, but that would not be enough to put down even the weakest of Marked adventurers. Harry had started tracing a design while Hermione was talking and incanted, "Heart of flame, scour evil—"

Before he could finish the spell, the man fell to the ground.

He turned to catch Dudley's eye, and then he looked at the Hunter who was staring perplexed at her target. "You sure you didn't put him to sleep by accident or something?"

"I'm sure. I don't even know the spell for Stun Shot in the first place!"

They moved down the path to the floor of the cavern and inched their way over to the thief, their weapons at the ready for when he inevitably jumped up and retaliated. Their caution, however, was for naught. The man was still facedown on the ground, the arrow sticking up in the air like a flag planted in virgin soil. Even more concerning was the large red stain that had spread around where the arrow entered his back.

"An adventurer shouldn't die from just that," Harry said. It was an inane comment, he supposed, but this still should not be possible. He had been gored by a boarbatusk once, and while it severely injured him he had still been able to recover fully with several healing tonics and Cure spells. Any adventurer, even one whose Mark was still fresh and tender, would be able to withstand a single arrow.

Hermione slowly pressed the end of her bow into his side, and when he still did not move she bent down to pull up his sleeves. Both his forearms were bare expanses of skin, with nary a hint of a Mark upon them.

"He… He isn't an adventurer like us. He's just… a regular person." She covered her mouth with her hand while her ears laid flat on her head. "Oh god. I killed him."

"You couldn't have known," Harry immediately told her. It was not escaping his notice that she was reacting worse to this than she had when her previous partners had died and she had narrowly escaped the same fate, but this was not the time for a breakdown. "The better question is why the hell is some nobody here in the first place? If you aren't even willing to fight your way up a Spire to be Marked, what makes you think going out in the wilds and working with a Conjurer thief is a good idea?"

The Stellis shook her head. "Maybe he thought it would be safe work. Maybe the Conjurer had blackmail or something on him. There is no way to know."

"Or maybe he was just an idiot," came Dudley's rebuttal. "Either way, he knew there were risks to doing this. There was always the chance was going to end with him being eaten by monsters or killed by adventurers who were brought in to save this town from what he and his pals were doing to it. You know, adventurers like us. We aren't responsible for his bad decisions or what they did to him."

Harry could not help but smile faintly as he shook his head. Dudley was not what anyone would ever call a grand orator, but from time to time he did know what to say.

The Knight glanced around the cooking area and used the butt of his axe to open a few bags sitting against the wall. "Hey, Hermione?" he asked after leaning closer to one of them. "What's foslyrite supposed to look like?"

Hermione sniffed and rubbed her eyes. When she spoke, her voice had a faint waver but quickly returned to normal. "It is a semimetallic mineral, silver in color with a blue glow. It won't be in large nuggets, however; it rarely gets larger than a grain of rice. Why?"

"Like this?" Sticking the axe handle inside, Dudley tipped the bag over and let several handfuls of glowing sand pour out. Hermione's eyes grew wide, and Dudley reached down to pick up the bag. "I think there's more than three grams—"

The instant his hand touched the bag, an ear-splitting wail filled the air.

"Dudley, what did you just do?!"

"In hindsight, I might have messed up."

The trio readied their weapons, and Harry's mind raced. In a normal situation, he would expect the rest of the thieves to come out with blades drawn, but this was anything but a normal job. Most of the people here in the mine were probably unmarked just like the man they had taken down. Instead, he could not help but imagine waves and waves of monsters under the Conjurer's control coming after them to rend them into pieces. He had no idea how many creatures had been tamed and brought here.

It was almost a relief when the only enemy that came after them was a single man in light robes.

"Great. More brats," the man said, his words drifting over to them in the quiet space. "That idiot mayor hire you to clear us out?"

"What if he did?" Dudley fired back.

"Then we have a problem. You kids have seen too much already. If you want to live, you join up with me."

Harry looked to his left and his right, finding the same refusal in his comrade's eyes as he felt. Hermione stepped behind him and drew her bow while Dudley tightened his grip on his axe.

The Conjurer smiled at them. "I gave you a chance. My conscience is clear."

"Shoot him!" Dudley ordered, sprinting towards the other adventurer.

Hermione loosed her arrow and pulled another one from her quiver so quickly and smoothly that it looked to be one motion, but for all that her strike was fast the Conjurer was faster. A glowing mandala appeared between his hands in front of him, and from it burst a blob of liquid green metal. As soon as the blob made its appearance, her arrow curved towards it as though attracted by a magnet. Two pits formed on the front before taking on an eerie glow, and below them was carved a jagged, lopsided mouth. The slimy monster tipped forward and abruptly lengthened to headbutt Dudley in the chest and drive him backwards.

Another arrow deviated from its course. "It has some kind of aura or something," Hermione snapped, the summon's interference with her aim clearly infuriating her. "I can't get a clean shot in."

"At least it's the only one," Harry said. He had never worked with Conjurers before, so he did not pretend to know just what they were capable of, but one thing he did know was that they could only have one pet out at a time. If he could get close and distract it, Dudley could get around it and go after its summoner—

Another diagram appeared before the Conjurer, this time unleashing a glowing orange glob that sprouted three pairs of stumpy legs before fully forming as a lizard-like blob of magma. It regarded Harry and Hermione with burning eyes before turning its attention to Dudley. With a sound like a cat hacking up a hairball, it spat out liquid fire.

"Dud!" His cousin dodged the attack and circled around the slimy creature, trying his best to keep it between him and the salamander. "How does he have two of those things?"

"I don't know!"

Harry shook his head. "Okay, new plan. Focus on the first one. Try to help Dudley take it down."

"I can use Feeble Shot to make it easier for him to hurt, but that doesn't help us with the other one," Hermione pointed out.

"Winter's chill covers the fields in frost." The incantation created a fog around his sword as ice magic flowed down to the point. "Leave that to me."

He ran at the salamander, cursing his luck in his mind even if he kept from saying it out loud. He really, really hoped that the creature using fire to attack meant it was weak to ice-based attacks. The salamander turned to him and launched another fireball that he had to duck to the side to avoid. It also would have been nice if he had been able to find the Megafrost spell somewhere before now. The spell itself probably would not have helped – not with the blob sucking ranged attacks towards itself – but just as the Megavolt spell he used on his blade before fighting the slaver a few days previously had added a paralytic aspect to his strikes, the higher tier ice magic would have let him slow the salamander down to make it easier to kill.

The screech it made when he stabbed it with his enchanted blade made him smile regardless.

Movement in the corner of his eye caught Harry's attention right after he dodged a gush of flame. The Conjurer was waving his hands through the air, each motion leaving trails of light behind to form yet another design. This one was different from those he used to summon his pets, not just in how he had to weave it into existence unlike the mandalas that appeared but also in the design itself. It gave Harry hope that the Conjurer was not going to summon a third pet, but at the same time he had no idea what their enemy was doing. What he did know was that all signs pointed to it being bad for them.

"Don't count me out just yet," the Conjurer said. The diagram burst into motes of light that swirled together into a glowing facsimile of yet another monster. "Have a taste of what else I can do."

"Bomb!" Harry shouted out in warning.

The creature flapped its wings and looked around like it was wondering whose day it was going to ruin. Bombs had always looked weird to Harry, as though an omen of death had decided to force itself upon something cutesy. Its body was a simple glob with goggly eyes, but from each side sprouted skeletal wings that had flames reaching out in parody of membrane. Those childish eyes settled on him and widened.

"…Ah, hell."

Three lines sketched out as if he planned to draw a snowflake, and he hurled a Frost spell at the monster. The only way to deal with bombs was to kill them quickly, because if they were simply injured, they'd would explode and really put the hurt on their unfortunate victim. This was no normal bomb, however; even with the metal goo monster dragging the shards of ice towards itself, a couple of them passed through where the bomb was as though it were not really there. The bomb came closer to Harry and quivered gently.

Then it blew up.

Harry could not hold back the scream as the wave of fire and force that hit him proved itself to be all too real. The sleeves of his coat were reduced to cinders, and the skin that was revealed was already red with white blotches that were quickly going numb. His right hand still burned even now, the metal of the guard glowing red and trapping his hand inside an oven. He fell to his knees, the motion tearing skin and releasing dribbles of clear fluid from his wounds. He was injured terribly, and still the salamander was preparing to unleash another attack to kill him here and now.

It was a herculean effort to force his left hand to move enough to trace a pentagram. "Holy starlight," he slurred, "wash away all wounds. Megacure."

Streamers of green light swirled around him for a moment as his magic was sucked away, and then his rapier was buried in the salamander's eye. The arm that held the blade was utterly unblemished. Harry's panting and grimace gave way to a furious snarl, both for the injury as well as the loss of mana.

In terms of mana, the most basic spells were actually more efficient than higher tier and "stronger" options. Whenever he had to patch himself and Dudley up, he preferred to find somewhere away from things that could attack them so he could just cast a string of basic Cure spells, along with incantation to squeeze every last drop of health out of each casting. He could conserve mana that way, mana he knew he would need later for fireballs and enchantments on his sword. Megacure healed more in one big burst, but it was at the expense of wasting an energy resource that was incredibly difficult to replenish in the field. Gigacure, which only experienced Clerics could cast, was probably even worse.

"Frost," he called out, touching his blade again to replace the enchantment the bomb's explosion had stripped away. He needed to kill this thing quickly, before the Conjurer could unleash any other spectral beasties. He stabbed the salamander again and again as fast as he could, taking a gout of flame to his left arm rather than pull away and dodge. "Just die you bastard!"

The rapier sank into the salamander's magmatic flesh, and yet another blow of steel and ice was too much for it. Its stumpy legs gave out, and then it began melting away.

Harry turned his eyes to find the Conjurer weaving another spell. "Not this time." His spells would not cross the distance, not with the ooze monster still around, but that did not mean he was helpless. He sprinted towards their enemy as fast as his feet would carry him and stabbed his sword into the Conjurer's hand. The man screamed; his disrupted working tried to coalesce, but the sabertooth cat it became roared once before fading into nothingness.

He was now incredibly glad he had made it here in time. If the ghost cat did the same the bomb did and unleashed its special ability, things would have gotten dire. A sabertooth's bite, if it got lucky, would leave an Adventurer on the brink of death regardless of how much armor they wore.

Mostly to reduce the threat the Conjurer posed and only the tiniest bit to get revenge for the bomb, Harry twisted his sword and swept it to the side rather than pull it back for another stab. The motion instead sliced the Conjurer's hand in half from wrist to fingers. He watched the other man clutch the ruined hand to his chest. "I hope you weren't right-handed," he drawled, "because otherwise you're going to have a hell of a time."

Something splattered to the side, and Dudley cheered in triumph. "Take that, you son of a bitch!"

"That's both your pets gone. I'd be surprised if you can hold anything in that hand anymore, let alone use it to cast spells." Harry rested his rapier on his shoulder. "Just give up before we have to cripple you any further."

People in the Conjurer's position could react in a variety of ways. Most would surrender, knowing that there was no way to win; some would try to escape; a small number would even try to keep fighting, deciding that death in battle was preferable to being sentenced to a work gang down in the fields or mines. Harry was ready for whatever the Conjurer did.

He was not expecting to be laughed at.

"You think you've won?" the Conjurer asked, his damnable smirk back in place. "That this is over?"

Harry waved at the space where the summoned monsters once stood and then at the man's injury. "All signs point to yes."

"Stupid child." Rust-colored light began to shine from his chest at the bottom of his breastbone. It grew into an emblem, a hammer hanging upside down from where two swords crossed. Branching lines the same color as the glow spread from the emblem, first over the rest of his chest and abdomen and then racing down his arms and legs. The Conjurer sneered as the lines crawled up his face. "Just because you beat me doesn't mean I've lost. I still have a couple of tricks up my sleeve."

"Harry, run!" screamed Hermione, true fear filling her voice for the first time since he had met her.

He took a hasty swing at the Conjurer, but he was thrown back the instant his blade made contact. From his new perspective on the ground he could only watch in horror as the Conjurer grew taller. Flesh and clothing morphed into gleaming bronze armor. Both shoulders ballooned out, holes opening up so a dozen additional arms could reach out from within. Thrice the height of a man this thing finally stood, its many arms hanging down past its gangly torso to reach its knees. The cylindrical helmet bent forwards so the three pairs of eyes stacked on top of each other could all stare at Harry with undisguised malice.

Hecatoncheir, the planet whispered, as if he needed the hint to know he was screwed.

"Harry!"

A familiar ululating war cry filled the air, and Dudley came charging in. "Chew on this! Stomp!" He pulled back his axe, already wreathed in visible power, and swung it at Hecatoncheir's thigh. It promised to be a powerful blow; Harry had seen Dudley's Stomp attack fling monsters away and cleave boulders in two.

The edge of the axe hit the armor and stopped dead.

"Well, shite," Dudley said into the silence that followed the failed blow.

For all that it did no injury, the armored giant still noticed. Hecatoncheir leaned over and slapped Dudley with three of the arms on that side. It held none of the violence of Dudley's strike, but nonetheless it sent the Knight flying. With the pest dealt with, it reached down towards Harry.

"Blind Shot!" A pitch black streak slammed into the giant's head and smeared it with shadow. It roared its fury, the sound echoing in its chest. "What are you bloody waiting for?!" Hermione shouted. "Get up and run, damn it!"

Harry scrambled to his hands and knees and shoved himself forwards so he could get to his feet already running. His shadow slowly appeared before him, and he chanced a glance backwards. Hecatoncheir was surrounded by red light, not rust this time but an angrier hue. It tilted its helmet, and even with its sight removed it still started walking towards Harry.

His feet picked up even more desperate speed as he ran to Dudley. "Didn't you hear her?! Get your fat arse up and move!" he said, grabbing hold of his cousin's outstretched arm and yanking him upright.

"We can't leave this thing down here. It's just as bad as the monsters. We need to kill it."

He could not help but scoff as they followed Hermione, who had wasted no time in fleeing down a tunnel once both boys were out of immediate danger. Unlike in the manor, Harry could not blame her in the slightest. He was honestly just glad one of them appeared to know what was going on. "With the way it's chasing us, I think you'll get the chance anyway. But let's not try that right here!"

The tunnel Hermione ran into was not a regular mining tunnel. It might have been one once upon a time, but the miners had carved rooms coming off of it to use for storage. A faint whistle grabbed their attention, and he looked over to find the catgirl waving for them to join her at the back of one of the larger rooms.

He squeezed between two columns of large clay jars and then behind the stack of wide crates she had chosen for cover. "What the hell is this guy?" he asked. "I'm no expert on Conjurers, but that's insane!"

"That isn't the Conjurer." Hermione's voice was soft, and Harry looked closer. She was legitimately terrified of whatever had just happened. "Not anymore. That's something else. Something a lot worse.

"It's an Eidolon."

Harry turned to Dudley and spotted the same look of confusion he knew was plastered on his own face. "What's an Eidolon?"

She laughed bitterly. "It is a god, a god forged of steel and spirit. They can't be killed. At best you can drive them away."

"Okay…" Dudley said slowly, "so how do we drive it off?"

"I don't know."

"Don't lie to us," Harry warned her, causing her eyes to flick back to him. "You know more about this than you're telling. Everyone deserves to have secrets, but not when they are about how we stay alive." She turned away with hunched shoulders. "You've fought one before, haven't you?"

She stiffened at the obvious guess, which gave him all the answer he needed.

"How'd you beat that one?" Dudley all but demanded.

"We didn't beat it," she said, refusing to look at them. "We got lucky. It's not something that's going to happen again."

Harry was not the person anyone turned to for pep talks, but this time he sighed. "Then we'll just have to make our own luck," he told her, echoing a line he was sure Dudley had uttered at some point or another.

Dudley poked his head around the edge of a crate and immediately pulled it back. "You made us luck, all right. Bad luck."

Something shattered within the room, and Harry and Hermione looked at each other before peeking around their own box. Somehow, impossibly, Hecatoncheir had tracked them through the tunnels and into this room. Its face was still blackened, but that did little to hinder it beyond making it move more slowly. Several of its hands hit the jars and destroyed them, and oil splashed on the ground.

Harry looked down at the lantern still hanging from his waist. The former miners had mentioned a store room, now that he thought about it; they said there would be lamp oil there that could be used to refill the lanterns. "Hermione." The catgirl turned back to him. "If that thing gets to us, we're going to die. No second chances, no getting away. We're done for. That's what you were saying, right?"

"Essentially," she whispered sadly.

"So guaranteed death or just a high chance of death." His left hand traced a symbol, and Hermione's eyes widened in horror. He shot her a lopsided grin that was braver than he really felt. "I'm willing to play those odds."

"Harry, don't you dare—"

"Flare!"

A fireball flew from his hand. It missed Hecatoncheir entirely, which in any other situation would be abysmal aim, but he was not trying to hit the Eidolon itself. The spell landed exactly where he wanted it: the puddle of lamp oil on the ground. A gout of flame appeared, and immediately after that the floor became an inferno.

Again the Eidolon roared, and for all that Harry had no previous experience with Hecatoncheir he could not help but think this time the brassy sound was tinged not with anger but rather pain. They could hurt it. It would just take some work.

"Think you can keep that thing pinned down?" he asked a shocked Hermione. "There is plenty more oil where that came from. Dud, throw some more jugs on that. I'm going to test out how that armor holds up against lightning."

Several jars flew at their enemy, and each one resulted in an explosion. After the third, Harry could see the bronze plates of the metal warping from the heat. An arrow tinged in purple flew past him and into a gap revealed by the melting armor, and it was followed by another and another. "I'll do what I can to get rid of its magical resistance," Hermione told him, "but I don't know if I can get any status conditions to stick. I'm surprised I was able to blind it in the first place, though it might have been because it didn't exactly help us much."

"Just do what you can." His left hand traced a stylized lightning bolt, and a spoken command flung a bolt of lightning. Hecatoncheir screamed again, which only urged Harry on even more. Metal sizzled and sparked; flames reached for the ceiling. The Eidolon tried to push itself back to its feet, and they increased the speed and fury of their attacks. They had to kill it quickly, or it would kill them before they could get away—

Hecatoncheir screamed, and the force of its voice blew away all the flames that surrounded it. Harry was in the middle of tracing another rune when its form began to glow the same deep red as when the Conjurer transformed into this monstrosity. Glowing armor flaked away into a swarm of sparks, and its form shrank as it continued to dissolve.

The last sparks vanished to reveal the Conjurer lying unmoving on the ground.

"Is he dead?" Dudley asked after a moment's hesitation.

Hermione shook her head and walked towards the Conjurer. "He shouldn't be. When people summon Eidolons, they are supposed to fall unconscious after the fight is over. Normally they are the winners, though…" She poked the Conjurer in the side with the end of her bow, and when he did not respond she knelt next to him. "He's breathing, at least, which is a good sign."

"Then let's tie him up and get him out of here," Harry decided. "Dud, find whatever hole they carved for themselves to get into the mine and rip it down. I'm sure the townspeople don't want anyone or anything sneaking inside. Hermione?" The Stellis looked at him, and he waved back towards the cavern. "Want to go through what these thieves managed to collect? Finders keepers and all that, and I figure you can collect our fee in foslyrite without needing any kind of middleman."

He smiled. "Besides, this way we can gouge an outrageous sum from people who deserve it."

Want to know one of the great things about this world being a video game brought forth into reality? I don't need justifications for stuff like how there could be a natural cavern that makes for a perfect setting in which to have a boss fight. That's just the life of a Hero of Light; don't question it.

Silently Watches out.