Chapter the ninth; The good, the bad, and the scaly.
So it has come to this, the last chapter in
The Vizard's adventure! As you may remember, while escaping the Norlac our hero was trapped in a whirlpool and dragged to a watery grave. Somehow, most probably by Mordamir's intervention, he survived such a fate, and instead wokes up in a room with a chest and a ladder going down. Also, there's a hole in the wall, and I kind of bet we got in that way.
Inside the chest there's fifty gold pieces and two more spells: A tome with six charges of
Blink, which allows us to be gone from reality for a short while, and a single use scroll of
Fire Protection. Between those spells and the ones Dunric gave us we are ready to face whatever the game has in store for us! Thus we climb down the ladder...
... and come to an empty room. There are no chests to loot, no cracks in the walls, and no ladders leading elsewhere, other than the one we climbed down just now. There's also no enemies of any kind, and neither any traps nor puzzles. If
The Wizard were not guided by a sagely and wise Neko familiar he would most surely be damned to an eternity of walking in circles, despairing, and walking in circles some more. Instead, and guided by the vision of a fluffy tail coming down the ceiling and pointing at the tile at the precise center of the room, he finds the exit.
Maybe there was a trap after all. And no matter how much he struggles against gravity he finally falls down the pit, where he meets a horrible and grizzly death.
Or almost, at the very least. Showing he is more fit than his age and character class would have one suspect he climbs himself out of such a predicament and into a new one, and not only did he lose his sword during the fall but he is now standing atop a quite small stone pillar in an apparently bottomless chasm. To make things worse, music switches to
a new tune as something rears its scaly head. Something
angry.
Meet
The Dragon, the first half of the final battle. He does what his kind does best, namely spewing fire so hot even turning in an statue would get us killed, and given we have no means of side strafing I say we are pretty much screwed.
Ouch. Our
Fire Protection spell only lasts for about three seconds and this guy will not get tired of spewing napalm any time soon, and as I just revealed to you the spell to turn ourselves into a statue would get us very killed. Our only chance, thus, lies in Fair Codexia's own store of memes and ancient knowledge, and lucky for us, though maybe not for her,
The Wizard's Kasha guide is well versed in such knowledge and resolves to use
blink to get out the kitchen, even if just for a little while.
Our scaly friend is not happy with this, however, and keeps trying to sanitize his lair, going so far as breaking the pattern here and there, staying his hand a second longer or spewing twice without a breather between, to make it harder for us to time it correctly. And after six bursts of fiery death we come across another problem: We are out of blinks and the dragons is charging his lazors for the mother of all breath weapons. We need to use the
Fire Protection spell, but timing it is hard: The attack goes just a couple of frames below the duration of the spell, so we need to wait for the very last moment before casting it. Otherwise it will finish with us still surrounded by flames.
Also, he will first appear to be about to spew fire, then he will recoil, and then he will actually spew fire, just because he's a jerk and really wants to kill us.
Having survived the seventh round we get a short rest, as he is kind of tired and, breathing heavily, needs to recover a bit of strenght before going back to trying to kill us. We, however, are out of both
blink and
fire protection charges, so we are actually in quite the Dai Pinchi and this little rest will be our last if we don't come up with something quite fast. Our remaining spells are all useless there and the dragon isn't interested in the gold we have been looting since the begining, so only one option remains to us: We raise the talisman we got at the begining of the game, but we still don't read the runes.
Dragon doesn't really care, however, and he prepares to burn us down where we stand when something happens, surprising both
The Wizard and the quite huge lizard he's facing off against.
A wild Mordamir appears! Given we already know he's actually a jerk this doesn't really means we are saved, but that we are royaly screwed if we can't come with a plan really fast.
Fool! Read the words! I've wanted a thousand years for this. Read the words!
Fine, then I'll just take back my amulet. I have other students who will come. Prepare to die.
He then steals our amulet with his magic and...
More ouch. We, however, still have the three spells Dunric gave us, and those we must use to face against Mordamir. Thus, we turn into a statue to survive those lightnings...
... but after three castings of such he decides to, instead, summon some really ugly noise that makes
The Wizard assplode.
So we use three charges of the spell that turns us into a statue, first, and then our
Sonic Protection scroll. Mordamir goes back to casting lightning strikes against us for two more rounds, and then...
... which is actually pretty easy to survive given we only need to turn into an statue once more.
You have no more defenses, my student.
What a pity I wasted so much time on you. You don't think you made it here on your own, do you? Look at me. Do I remind you of a merchant, perhaps? Who do you think left you those chests?
It's a better explanation than what we usually get about why we find what we need to solve each puzzle, open each barrier, and defeat each boss not more than a dungeon away of what it solves, opens, or kills. What I like of that little setup is that Mordamir's help ends with casting
Fire Protection to survive the Dragon's strongest attack, and the only reason you can face him even for a little while is because Dunric gave you the other spells precisely for that reason.
Do you even know why I summoned you? One thousand years ago, I created this amulet to kill the dragons that governed the Fountain of Youth. But this one escaped. He came back and destroyed my city. I was the sole survivor. Now I have returned to reclaim the fountain that gave me a thousand years to live.
You were to kill the dragon for me. You see, the power the amulet takes to kill a dragon will also kill the one using it. So I can't attack the dragon myself. But as long as I have this amulet, the dragon won't attack me.
And now that I think of it there was another spell Dunric gave us, wasn't there?
I have to say both Mordamir and Dunric are way beyond even Eldar Farseers on their knowledge and understanding of the time stream, being able to predict how everything would play out to the point of providing us with the exact amount of everything needed and not even one measly extra charge of anything. Now all my attempts at divination will leave me quite unfulfilled.
In any case the Dragon leaves without going
Om Nom Nom on us, and as
The Wizard is left there, contemplating jumping in the bottomless abyss or something similar a rope comes down from above, and Dunric's daughter get her moment to shine. If we had not helped her before it would be a goblin (
*SQUEEEEE*) rescuing us, and the ending text would have some different lines here and there.
The journey out of the dungeons takes two days, but with Ana by your side time seems unimportant.
You, sir, are a bloody perv.
The water invigorates you with new youth, and you discover a new spring to your walk.
That's no excuse, you could be her grandfather! Twice, probably.
As you travel, your thoughts return to Mordamir and the dragon.
Sure, you old geezer. Keep trying to pull a ninja topic change on me.
They were alike, in a way, each the only survivor of a civilization destroyed by the other more than a thousand years ago. They were an equal match also, and it seems strange that you would tilt the balance of a conflict forged so long ago.
And thus
The Immortal ends, ye of little faith who surely were thinking I had left it abandoned.
¬_¬U
I hope you enjoyed our many adventures in puzzle solving and general unfairness, and are now wondering why do we get a bunch of crap boring games instead of games like this with modern graphics. I surely am, for one.
And sorry about the delay at the end, I got swamped by my research and trying to have a life as the climate is back to how I like it. Now I will take some
long vacations from making Let's Play thingies, and from Codexia itself, while I finish my japanese studies and play real games like
Under The Moon...
... which more or less eats what scarce free time both having a boyfriend and trying to learn to cast fireballs and ride a broom leaves me with, which is about, like, none at all. Once I get some free time back I may return and give an official start to the new age of Codexia by going on a
quest for the Codex's new identity!
So pray I don't get free time ever again, I guess.
'til next time!
Now the dialogue wheel.
@ The Vizard
There's a band by the name of Orange Goblin and I did not knew of them? I'm such an apostate.
@ Crooked Bee
I always return, like a, uhm, bad memory or something similarly EMO sounding, yeah.
@ Jasede
It's good to see you both back and reading one of my little Let's Play thingies again. :3
@ Mrowak
Thank you for the kind words. :3
