"Gandalf! You had that kind of trick up your sleeve the whole time, and you let me gulp down all those potions for nothing?!"
Eric's voice echoed across the ancient stone corridor as the two dashed for their lives. His face was a mix of disbelief and frustration. "You could've used that escape magic ten minutes ago! I wouldn't have chugged half a brewery!"
The old wizard beside him chuckled awkwardly, staff in hand, legs surprisingly spry. "Ah... well, yes. That sort of thing isn't exactly something I can do too often. It's not without... consequences, you see."
"Consequences?" Eric shot him a side glance. "Like, your hair gets frizzier each time or what?"
Gandalf grunted, choosing not to dignify that with a response. Behind them, a roar thundered through the caverns, and the sound of hundreds of Orc boots filled the narrow corridors. Gandalf spun mid-run, slammed his staff against the stone floor, and the tower behind them gave a mighty crack. The topmost section shattered, raining down heavy rubble that flattened the first wave of pursuing Orcs and collapsed the tunnel entrance in one satisfying, booming crash.
"Nice shot," Eric muttered, just before the air in front of them twisted.
A tendril of black mist slithered through the cracked ceiling, pooling and thickening ahead. Then, without warning--
A colossal illusion burst into existence, a ghostly eye hovering over the stone floor like a watchful god. In its fiery iris stood a burning humanoid shape, wreathed in flame and shadow.
Eric stopped dead in his tracks.
Gandalf stopped breathing for a second.
There was no health bar over this one. No stats. Nothing to indicate its level, weakness, or even if it could be hit. Which could only mean one thing.
"Great," Eric muttered. "It's a ghost boss with admin rights."
He still had a few seconds left on his potion buffs, so naturally, his gamer instincts kicked in. He munched on a golden apple.
The shadow within the eye spoke, voice low and ancient, every word rippling through the air like a cold wind.
"There is no light that can outshine the darkness, wizard."
Then the mist surged forward like a tidal wave, targeting Eric rather than Gandalf, as if Sauron had already pegged him as the more annoying of the two.
Eric didn't think. He swung.
With a sharp clang, his elven-forged blade sliced through the mist, parting it like fabric. The tendrils scattered harmlessly into vapor.
"Huh," he blinked. "I did not expect that to work."
"...A mortal?" The eye flared slightly. "No... something else. But it matters not. You stay here."
The black fog erupted outward, engulfing the buildings and twisting their forms into rubble. Gandalf quickly raised his staff again, conjuring a dome of radiant light that held the darkness at bay.
Everything outside the barrier was instantly obliterated. Buildings turned to dust. Only the platform beneath their feet remained intact.
"Run! Get help!" Gandalf shouted, face strained as he poured more of his energy into the shield. "I'll hold him off!"
Eric looked at the wizard, then down at his sword, then back up at the swirling apocalyptic storm. His potion buffs were about to expire.
"Are you serious right now?" he muttered. "I didn't drink all those potions to just stand around like a spectator."
Before Gandalf could stop him, Eric leapt forward, locked eyes with the flaming silhouette inside the massive illusion, and swung his sword in a wild, arcing strike.
The impact jarred his arms to the bone. It felt like hitting bedrock with a butterknife. The blade that had never once dulled now had a visible dent in its edge. But the strike worked, Sauron flinched. Just a bit. The flames around the eye flickered, and the surrounding mist pulsed.
Sauron was not pleased.
With a roar of fury, the black fog expanded tenfold, consuming the skies. The entire world went dark. Visibility dropped to zero. Eric found himself staring into an endless sea of shadow.
Nine wraiths, cloaked in shadow, emerged from the burning eye.
Reforged by Sauron's power, their forms were far more solid than before, cloaked in swirling black energy that gave them an almost boss-like presence. Each one pulsed with corrupted might.
"Fantastic," Eric hissed. "We've triggered a raid."
Gandalf's shield faltered under the new pressure. The light dimmed. His staff cracked slightly under the weight of holding back the dark.
Eric panicked in the most rational way possible: he dropped a stack of TNT behind him, flicked out a flint, and started building a wall of cobblestone in front of them to absorb the blast.
The explosions lit up the shadows, blasting three Nazgûl apart temporarily and opening a gap in the mist.
The moment their forms dispersed, they began to reform, even stronger than before. It was like fighting off zombies next to a spawn cage you couldn't break.
"This is why I don't play on hardcore mode," Eric muttered through gritted teeth.
Gandalf, clearly out of magical gas, glanced at him with a raised brow, silently asking if he had any more bright ideas.
Eric raised an eyebrow in return. "Do I look like I brought a howitzer?"
Wait. Actually... he kind of had.
"Take this!" Eric dug into his inventory pouch and pulled out a shimmering, purple-black pearl. He handed it to the wizard.
"A stone?" Gandalf asked, blinking rapidly.
"Ender Pearl," Eric said. "You throw it, it teleports you to wherever it lands. Like a magical... uh... 'get the heck out of here' grenade."
Gandalf looked unconvinced, but before he could argue, the glow of his staff finally sputtered out. The shield dropped. The darkness pressed in instantly.
Sauron's presence now towered like a mountain over them, pressing down so hard Eric felt like his lungs were being stomped on.
The staff trembled under the strain. Cracks webbed through it. Somehow, it held.
"Alright, I'll make a door," Eric said, spinning around and stacking TNT again, this time with a purpose. He lit it up and began building another wall for protection. But Sauron had seen this trick before. A tendril of shadow shot forward and smacked the primed TNT far away before it could detonate.
But that was where Sauron made his mistake.
Eric had already swapped to a fishing rod.
He flicked his wrist. The line latched onto the flying TNT and yanked it back midair.
"Physics says no," Eric said smugly.
The explosion was much closer this time, tearing a hole through the fog and exposing the exit beyond. Gandalf didn't wait. He hurled the pearl. It vanished in a flash of purple particles.
Eric tossed his a second later.
The black mist surged one last time, colliding with them just as they vanished in a burst of teleportation magic.
But the escape wasn't clean.
Gandalf was thrown into a stone wall, coughing but otherwise intact.
Eric wasn't so lucky.
Sauron's fury zeroed in on him. The dark lord's will crashed into Eric like a siege weapon. One blow after another sent him smashing through walls, pillars, towers, each crash ripping chunks off his health bar.
He hadn't taken this kind of beating since he got mobbed by a horde of wither skeletons wearing thorns armor in the Nether.
Chugging golden apples like candy, he tossed back every healing item he had. Even broke out his last two Lembas bread rations, which were supposed to be emergency rations.
If not for his stash of recovery gear, he would've been paste on the floor by now.
Sauron prepared for one last, devastating strike, his form coalescing with shadowed fury--
And then Eric vanished in a sparkle of purple, his pearl finally taking effect.