Broken

Chapter 47

<Summon Greater Dragon>

What the actual Hell was that?! 

Just barely dodging a moderately sized boulder, I'm barely given even the common curtesy to be properly shocked at receiving such a outrageously named skill. Not to mention, what was with the silver lettering? I hadn't ever seen a color change in the skill window like that before. Heck, today was just chalked full of firsts, wasn't it? Because that oddly broken, red, Error window kept popping up as well. I'd never seen that before either, knowing that, as one climbed the towers, similar status or information windows were common. But never here, in the instances! Much less ones that made me think my own damn skill, aptly named <Broken>, had some how shattered all common sense within the system itself.

Still... <Summon Greater Dragon>? What was I supposed to do with that? Until just this second, dragons hadn't even been confirmed to exist at all! Some scholars liked to point out that there has never been anything, even remotely similar, to a dragon spotted in either the instances nor the towers themselves. Therefore, it is likely they didn't exist.

I was more on the side of the vast majority of people: we just haven't seen them yet. I mean, if everything else humans could imagine existed, then why not dragons too? Not that I had ever wanted to see one.

Still, if this skill existed, then I suppose that cleared up the debate, didn't it?

As I dodged rocks and friendly fire, knowing full well that every attack- even those from my allies- were going to be drawn to me- thanks to the clearly enormous bad karma that came with this stupid random skill- I tried to think.

I briefly contemplated using <Summon Greater Dragon>. Hell, a dragon should be able to beat a giant, right? And as scary and stupidly strong as this beast seemed to be, a dragon must be stronger...

Then reality hit. The skill was called <Summon Greater Dragon>, not <Control Greater Dragon> or <Make a Greater Dragon your Bestest Friend and Fighting Partner>... No way would I be able to command a massive fire breathing lizard. Especially not with <Broken> riding my ass in turbo mode as it was right now. With my luck, using the skill would only result in the giant, and the entire raid party, being eaten as a midnight snack.

No, summoning a dragon was out of the question.

"What the hell?!" Growled Liam as yet another of his arrows flew off course, and I found myself barely rolling out of the way. "What's going on!" the archer raged, nocking another arrow and glaring at me.

"Aoife! Look out!" Shouted Cat, and I had a mere instant to roll again. A bolt of red fire magic grazed my cheek, leaving a sizzling wound that stung awfully.

"Shit!" Alex spat, hands raised as similar bolts of flame rained down upon the giant. "Aoife, are you alright?" He asked, pale face smudged with dirt and blood.

"Fine." I stated, regaining my feet. I was starting to think that this was gonna be one of those fights that had me floundering around in the mud an awful lot. "Don't worry about me."

Another red boxed error message popped up before my eyes and I cursed.

The fight was not going well. Everyone was putting their all into tackling the giant. Alex and Jamie were raining skill after skill on the decrepit thing, and the melee fighters were focused on hacking and slashing as best as they could, while also dodging the massive hands and feet of the giant. At least it seemed to have given up on throwing rocks for the moment.

Still, despite everyone's efforts, a third of the blows were either deflected or just straight up missed altogether. <Broken> usually affected me directly, and rarely hurt others unless they were too close to me when bad things happened. However, this did not seem to be the case this time around. The raider's attacks flew astray, and the giant seemed to be gaining ground by the second.