The white bear dashed across the space and reached the boss in a flurry of claws and teeth. The boss raised her upper pair of hands. She summoned a glowing shield between her and the enraged tank. Sam's attacks slammed against it, the shield flaring with bursts of light when each raking paw impacted. The boss staggered back two steps and then set herself. She brought up her upper right hand, kindling a blue glow.

  Gambit was there, sword flashing. The blue light in her hand vanished. She brought it down defensively, summoning another shield to block Gambit from that side. Daniel’s arrows arced in furiously, one after the next. One got past the shield and lodged in her shoulder, but the next deflected harmlessly away in a flash of light.

  Nia had lowered her staff and was stalking to the left, circling around the boss with a determined glare. Rick considered telling her to focus and start attacking, but it looked like she was flanking around the shield, so he let her go.

  Sam was taking only trace amounts of damage as her furious attacks glanced off the shield. Her health bar barely moved.

  "Such rude guests,” the boss laughed. She reached into thin air with her lower hands and pulled a long stringed instrument out of nowhere. She tucked the item, which Rick’s host’s knowledge told him was a Ley-Harp, close to her body, holding it with one lower hand and plucking the strings with the other. The tone she produced was rich and surprisingly loud, but more importantly, strands of Leyline energy drew toward her and swirled about, pulsing with each new note she played.

  A swirling cloud caught Rick’s eye. A cloud of birds appeared in a flutter of wings and a crackle of blue light above on the right side of the platform. The flock wheeled and turned, diving toward the fight.

  "It's more of the magpies!" Rick called. He was considering which DPS to redirect onto the adds when Nia raised her staff.

  CRACK! A beam of lightning shot across the platform and through the cloud of birds approaching. Several were obliterated in puffs of feathers, but the cloud contracted and stayed intact as the blinding afterimage of the beam faded from Rick's vision. The cloud of birds had a single health bar: the system was treating them as a unit. That would make them easier to fight. Had they been a dozen separate targets, they would have been both harder to hit and would have been able to split up and attack Rick and both of the ranged DPS all at once. He hoped this meant they would focus a single target at a time.

  "Hit them again," he called.

  "This thing's got a big cooldown," she said. "And I don't want to waste my Rapid Fire."

  He really needed to get details of their new gear and start figuring out strategies, but there was no time now.

  Rick jogged towards Daniel and closer to the cloud, which was headed generally in his direction. Daniel let loose an arrow at it that seemed to pass harmlessly through, but the health bar of the cloud twitched down as it passed.

  "Almost ready, stay clear.” Nia called.

  The cloud was close to Rick and Daniel now. "Wait," he shouted back and then unleashed a Force Wave. The damage to the cloud was negligible, but the swirling mass of birds was knocked back a yard, squawking angrily. "Now," he called and quickly backpedaled out of the way of Nia's shot. Daniel had already gotten clear.

  CRACK! The bolt passed straight through the cloud. Visually it looked like some of the birds had escaped, but the damage reduced the health bar of the swarm to nothing as the system treated the swarm as a single enemy.

  The remaining birds were instantly transformed into charred bodies, tumbling away in all directions.

  "You fool! I won't let you damage my precious collectors. Even now they're feeding on the Dark Canyon leyline."

  There was a rumble of energy and the ley machine to the right and closest to the party started to hum. A blue glow appeared around it and the conduits leading from it to the main shaft pulsed to life. At the same time, a health bar appeared over its square frame.

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  "Time to change targets," Rick called. "Sam, stay on the boss!"

  That kind of obvious statement would have annoyed most people, telling them something they already knew. But Sam had been a raider and knew the value of stating the plan during the fight, even when everyone already knew it. There was always that small chance in the heat of the moment someone would forget.

  Gambit turned and ran for the collector. The machine was a chest-high mass of tubes and pumps. It vibrated and hummed, and parts of it flickered with blue light as it operated.

  Even as Rick took note of it, the information about how it worked bubbled up inside his brain. It was a machine for sucking residual ley energy up from the surface of the planet below. It was not very efficient because of how high above the ley line they were, and it was directional. Whichever of the four ley collectors was facing the nearest local ley line would be used to siphon residual energy off of it. If the city’s reserves ran low, it could reduce its altitude and hover near a ley line to refill them.

  An arrow from Daniel sizzled in and smacked into a set of tubes, quivering. The health of the machine ticked down slightly as a sharp hiss sounded. A spray of blue smoke shot into the air where the arrow had landed.

  Another arrow slammed into the machine, and then half of it exploded as a lightning bolt from Nia tore through it. Over the sound of the exploding machine, Rick heard Sam roar in pain and fury. Even as he turned back to look at her, he saw the health bar on the side of his interface. She had taken a third of her health in damage.

  Gambit reached the machine a moment later and slammed his razor sword down on it. Its health bar dipped deep into the red.

  The boss was still fending Sam off with one upper hand held out projecting a shield of glowing energy. Her lower hands were moving back and forth incessantly, fingers plucking the strings of her instrument. Ley line energy coalesced from the air in flickering shapes and tendrils that swirled with each note played.

  She held her other upper hand aloft; streams of blue ley line energy gathered there.

  Rick targeted Sam and started casting Restore. The spell would heal much more than Healing Cloud all in one burst, but its cast time was two seconds. Rick extended his right hand and felt the healing power gathering there. It was a race between his cast and the boss's.

  In the second he had to consider, he checked Sam's health bar and compared it against the heal he was about to throw. It was slightly more than enough to fill her health up completely. His cast completed just before the boss's spell went off. Rick instinctively willed his spell to hold. If he could just wait a half second, then his heal would be more effective after Sam had taken this next hit.

  The boss's hand crashed down and the streams of ley energy crackled across Sam's hide. She roared in pain and her health dropped, dipping into the yellow just below half.

  Rick’s spell, perfectly timed, rocketed across the room and splashed across Sam's hindquarters. Her health bar shot up as the burn marks and cuts left by the boss's attack were wiped away. Her health went back above three quarters.

  Rick immediately threw Healing Cloud as he waited for Restore's cooldown to complete. The boss raised her hand again, starting another ley energy attack. Gambit charged across the room in a blur and slammed into the boss on her exposed left side. She twisted, trying to get the shield summoned by her left hand to block Gambit as she brought her right down to hold off Sam.

  In the instant as she moved the shield away from in front of Sam, the frost bear pounced. Her claws flashed in a rapid pattern, leaving afterimages trailing behind them. Her attacks were so close together that Rick couldn't tell one from the other. At least four, maybe more than six attacks flickered at once. The boss howled, staggering back. Blood sprayed from beneath her torn garments.

  As she raised her upper left hand towards Sam, a glowing shield appeared, blocking the bear's attack. The ley line energy summoned by her instrument swirled up and gathered into the form of that shield. Her lower hands continued plucking at the threads of energy and manipulating them.

  There was a burst of blue light that momentarily blinded Rick and knocked Sam and Gambit back. Healing Cloud came ready, and with his left hand he cast it, targeting Sam. Gambit was in range of its area effect, and the heal over time topped him off. Rick instantly started casting Restore. Before the bear and warrior could move in again, the boss brought her upper hands together and launched another attack at Sam. Rick threw his Restore at the same moment. An instant later, her health bar dipped and then came back up almost to where it had been before.

  "You won't stop me so easily. The Red Cliff Line will provide even more power!"

  New strands of blue energy streamed from Rick's left over to the boss as the collector roared to life. The music the witch played with her lower hands summed energy to her again and she had both upper hands ready. Her arms and torso were still laced with bleeding cuts, but they didn't seem to be slowing her down yet.

  Sam rushed in again, but the boss was ready with a shield and held her off. Gambit held back a moment as if trying to decide whether he should attack or not. But the boss raised her left hand and started summoning a Ley Bolt, which decided the issue. He jumped forward, swinging his sword, and she let go of the spell to summon a shield to defend that side.

  Rick was still focused on the boss and the two melee party members, but he heard the pounding feet rush behind him as Nia and Daniel repositioned.