Dungeon in My Closet 2: A Reverse Portal Fantasy
Author: Logan Jacobs
Date: 2022-10-03 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fantasy
Description: Life has been pretty awesome since I found a portal to another world in my dorm room closet. Because once I step through the portal, I’m no longer just a freshman college student. No, I’m Sir James, monster hunter and protector of Hadden. And the job pays very handsomely. But gold isn’t all I’m after. I’ve discovered that there are a number of women who have been cursed and trapped inside weapons and armor, and I won’t rest until I find and help all of them. But until then, I’ll keep raking in the gold.

Hey you.

Yeah, you. You should join my Patreon page. When you join, you will get preview chapters of my future books to both read and listen to. You’ll also be able to see cover art sketches and get copies of sexier, NSFW versions of my already super sexy covers. If you are into audiobooks, I have a tier where you get 3-4 every month included for a crazy low price. Woah.

Click here, or search for my name on Patreon.com

If Patreon isn’t your jam, you can always join my Facebook
group to get updates there.

Chapter One

“Ohh-h-h-h-h, James!” Sid moaned softly as I pushed her legs apart with my hand.

“I know…” I murmured and ran my hands against her pale skin. “Do you feel good?”

“Yes…” The black-haired beauty let out a shuddering gasp as my index finger brushed against the already wet material covering her pussy. “You always make me feel good.”

“Just you wait…” Amber sighed as she appeared behind Sid and bent down to kiss her pale neck.

I watched as the redhead continued to kiss the side of Sid’s throat, and my eyes followed her hands as they ran over Sid’s shoulders, across her collarbones until they finally reached her breasts. Then I fixed my hungry gaze on the two gorgeous women as they lay in front of me on my bed.

Sid’s legs were still open to me, so I left Amber to focus on the upper half while I kissed my way down Sid’s stomach and across her hip bones. She bucked in surprise as my touch tickled her, but then my lips were pressed against the soft flesh of her inner thigh.

“Oh-h-h…” she groaned, and I hadn’t even really touched her yet.

I heard Amber’s huffed giggle and couldn’t stop my own smile as it made the corners of my mouth turn up.

I made sure to be gentle, because I knew neither one of them had ever been with anyone before me. But after the first time, both of my gorgeous otherworldly women had opened themselves up to me completely.

I knew I had complete access to both of their bodies, to every inch of their perfect skin, and the thought made my dick twitch in my pants.

“So beautiful…” I whispered into Sid’s skin as I kissed my way toward the warmth between her legs.

She was still wearing her lace panties, which were black like her hair and already wet with her desire for me, and I dragged a finger across the material again as I marveled at the way my touch made goosebumps erupt across her pale skin.

Amber was still kissing her way across Sid’s neck and collarbones, but Sid’s dark eyes were fixated on me as my mouth
slowly moved across her body. She caught my eyes and just nodded once, desperately, as her mouth subconsciously fell open.

I needed no more invitation.

I hooked her panties with one finger and shimmied them down past her hips and all the way down her legs. She eagerly spread them again for me the moment she was free of her underwear, and I looked up to see her hooded eyes fixed on me and dark with desire.

I kissed the inside of her thigh again, moving slowly until finally I ran my tongue once all the way up her soaking wet slit. Sid gasped and immediately curled her hands into the bed sheets as my tongue flicked over her soft wet folds, and I delved a little deeper as I used my tongue to push her open.

She was dripping already, and I lapped up her sweet juices as she mewled softly beneath me. As my mouth worked on her, I used my hands to push down on her thighs so I could keep them open.

Then I swirled my tongue upward and found her clitoris, which I immediately sucked and licked and tortured with my tongue.

“Oh-h-h, my god, James!” Sid gasped breathlessly as her legs quivered, and my hands pressed further into the flesh of her thighs to
stop them closing around my head. “Oh-h-h, that feels… That feels…”

“So good,” Amber murmured in a hoarse voice as she finished Sid’s sentence for her, and I could tell the redhead was watching me intently as I coaxed an orgasm from Sid.

Just as I thought the words, Sid’s back began to arch as I continued to roll and curl my tongue against her. Her words became a steady stream of gasps and shuddering breaths, and I knew that she was close.

I kept the same pace and held her legs apart as her thighs quivered, and as I started to apply more pressure with the same rhythm, Sid let out an almost surprised shout.

“Oh, you’re going to… I’m gonna… I’m so close, James, I--”

Sid suddenly found her words as my tongue lapped against her, and instead of clenching her fists into the bed sheets, her hands found my hair, and she held me there as her orgasm rocked through her.

I could taste her pleasure and lapped up every single drop as I brought Sid to the height of her climax, and eventually she squealed through a giggle and gave my hair a tug to finally get me to stop.

Her black hair was disheveled, and her eyes were huge and hooded as she pulled me up to immediately kiss her.

Amber just let out a chuckle from behind her.

“Does she taste that good?” the redhead asked coyly, and I pulled away from Sid’s kiss to shoot her a pointed gaze.

“Come and find out,” I commanded her.

Amber didn’t need telling twice, and she quickly slipped away from behind Sid so she could crawl over to me. I kissed her deeply, and she sighed into my lips.

“She does taste good,” Amber murmured as she ran her finger against my bottom lip.

“I didn’t mean like that,” I said in a low voice. “Taste her.”

“And what are you going to do?” Amber asked with her finger still on my mouth, and her blue eyes glinted with mischief as she purred the next word. “Masterrrr.”

After I rescued both Amber and Sid from the fantasy world that somehow existed in my closet, they had both called me their master.

It felt a little weird once we were back in my college dorm, especially when we were around my friends, so I told the women to just call me James.

But damn. I couldn’t deny hearing that word in bed turned me all the way on.

“I’m gonna fuck you,” I told her plainly as I kissed the tip of her thumb. “Now turn around.”

The redhead immediately obeyed my order, and I gently pushed against her back so it arched her ass toward me before I guided her face toward Sid’s still open legs.

“Ohh…” Amber hummed with understanding as her hands traveled over Sid’s thighs. “Okay.”

“I want to make us cum together,” I said with a smirk as I gave Amber’s pert ass a light smack. “You think you can do that?”

“I can do that,” Amber giggled as she kissed Sid’s leg. “Yes, we can definitely do that.”

“Definitely,” Sid gasped as she locked eyes with me, with Amber between us.

“Please, James…” the redhead sighed as she licked one long swipe against Sid’s pussy, which made the black-haired beauty gasp in surprise. “Please fuck me.”

Amber had already undressed while I’d made myself busy and licked and sucked Sid to her first orgasm, and she wiggled her naked
ass up at me as she started to mimic me and use her tongue on Sid herself.

I watched as my first girlfriend went down on my second, and then I grabbed two fistfuls of Amber’s tight ass, pulled her toward me a little, and made her back arch perfectly. I could see the wet, sticky flesh between her legs as she aimed herself at me, and I ran a finger along her soft folds until I felt her entrance give way to my fingertip.

Amber hummed in pleasure, and the vibration made Sid squirm beneath her. Then I fully pushed my finger inside of the redhead. I crooked it at an angle, so I could immediately find that magic spot inside of her, and Amber’s soft moan turned into a guttural whine as I stroked her.

“So beautiful…” I murmured as I watched the two beautiful women writhe together below me.

I could barely take it any longer, and I finally kicked my way out of my underwear so I could free my rock-hard erection. I was already leaking precum as my desire for the two of them took over every other thought in my head, and I gripped onto Amber’s hips as I guided myself toward her dripping opening.

“Fuck her, James,” Sid said in a tight, throaty voice.

Amber arched her back as she eagerly continued to lick, kiss, and suck at Sid’s pussy, and Sid herself locked eyes with me as she tried to focus through the intensity of her pleasure.

“Fuck her,” Sid repeated as her eyelids fluttered. “Please.”

“Yes, ma’am.” I grinned as my hands tightened on Amber’s hips, and I pushed the tip of myself past the soft wet folds of her labia.

Amber’s tunnel immediately and possessively constricted around me, as if she wanted to keep me there forever, and I was barely a quarter of the way inside of her. I let out a long groan as I slowly slid my length deeper into her, and when I eventually bottomed out, I rocked my hips upward a little, just to push the tip of myself against that secret spot deep inside of her.

Amber moaned, and her legs quivered as I held her there, and Sid gasped as the motion made Amber’s mouth clamp down against her.

“Together,” I reminded the two of them in a hoarse voice.

“Okay?”

Neither one of them answered with words, but Sid’s head rolled back against the pillow, and one of Amber’s hands snaked
behind her back to caress my leg.

That was all the answer I needed.

I gripped Amber’s arm and held her wrist inside my hand as I started to pull out of her pulsating pussy. Her fingers relaxed as I pulled my rock-hard cock almost all the way out of her, and then they immediately clenched into a shocked fist as I slammed my way back into her depths and made her groan loudly into Sid’s pussy.

I held the three of us there and kept an almost painfully slow rhythm. Amber moaned and sucked and licked at Sid and used her free hand to push two of her fingers inside of the black-haired woman, and I continued to slam in and out of Amber from behind.

Sid fought to keep eye contact with me, but as Amber’s tongue worked its magic, she started to lose all focus, and the black of her irises were almost completely hidden by how dilated her pupils became.

I could feel my own pleasure start to roil and twist in my stomach as I watched the two of them below me, and my grip on Amber’s wrist became tighter with each thrust.

I couldn’t help myself and picked up speed, and eventually I was plowing into Amber’s pussy with satisfyingly wet smacking
sounds, and Amber’s hands and mouth and tongue continued to coax Sid into another orgasm.

“Together,” I repeated, but this time it came out as a warning.

A time-sensitive warning, because I could feel my own pleasure as it reached its apex inside of me.

“Oh, I’m… I’m gonna… Please, Amber, oh!” Sid started to mewl desperately up at the ceiling as her head lolled back into the pillow again.

Amber brought her free hand away from Sid so she could fondle her own clitoris, and the sight of that sent me over the fucking edge.

“God, I’m gonna cum!” I growled as I slammed my rock-hard dick deep into Amber’s clenching pussy. “Now. Now!”

The moment the command left my lips, both of the women beneath me completely let go, and their gasps and moans of pleasure sent my own orgasm ricocheting like a damn firework. I pumped streams of hot cum out into Amber’s spasming tunnel, and Sid had a handful of Amber’s hair gripped into a fist as she rocked her hips in time with Amber’s tongue.

Time didn’t have any meaning as we stayed like that for the entire night.

The morning was spent in much the same way, but the three of us eventually ran out of steam and ended up sprawled naked across the rumpled bed sheets together. After the incomparable high of several orgasms, hours of fucking, and very little actual sleep, the only thing we had enough energy to actually do was talk.

“So, you don’t think the Baron has any clue about what the mage in the dungeon was up to?” Amber asked Sid from where she was pressed up against my side with her head on my chest.

Her long mess of red hair surrounded her face like a crimson waterfall, her skin was still flushed behind the light smattering of freckles, and her blue eyes glittered up at me when she caught me looking.

“No,” Sid answered behind a yawn, and she continued to trace patterns against my bicep as she shrugged. “Just because they bore his seal doesn’t mean he actually wrote the letters. That’d be far too beneath him.”

“Plus, you mentioned about being able to recognize his handwriting?” I let the end of the sentence turn up into a question as

I looked down at Sid.

My newest rescued maiden was a dark-haired beauty, with pale skin and big round eyes, and she remembered a little more about her life before being cursed and trapped inside a set of sleek black pauldrons. Amber, who took the form of a magical bow and arrow in the otherworld, struggled to put her memory together, and we figured it was due to the fact that she’d been stuck in her weapon form for far longer than Sid had.

“He always insisted upon scribing the place cards at every banquet he held at the castle,” Sid explained as her index finger continued to draw soft swirls into my skin. “It was always something he enjoyed doing, and I always put them into place once he was done. The penmanship on those letters doesn’t match his.”

“So, we need to figure out who wrote them,” I said. “It must be someone inside the castle, or someone who has direct access to the Baron. Otherwise, how else would they seal them with his mark?”

“They could have stolen the stamp?” Amber offered as she stretched her limbs out like a cat and then settled her head back down against my bare chest. “Which does then open up the pool of suspects.”

“I don’t know, but we’ll figure it out,” I said as I smiled up at the ceiling and gave them both a reassuring squeeze. “But for now, we have a whole bunch of gold that still needs to be pawned, and I’m starving hungry.”

“I don’t need telling twice,” Amber giggled as she pulled herself away from me and stretched her arms above her head.

I marveled at the way her pert breasts bounced as she lifted her arms, and she stuck her tongue out at me again when she realized I was looking.

Sid gave me a soft kiss on my cheek and slid away from me so she could find some clothes, and as the two of them dressed, I pulled the little pouch of gold out of the back of my closet and decided to count it.

I’d been sitting on potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars even before receiving my payment for killing the mage, so I added my most recent payment to the rest of it and let out a long whistle as I shook my head.

I’d never been rich before in my life, since my mom and I had tended to live paycheck to paycheck. But now I had close to half a million dollars’ worth of gold stashed in a dorm room closet, which
also housed a portal to another world, not to mention a huge diamond pendant that a merchant had gifted me once I’d rid his trading route of a rogue river troll.

“So, are we still rich?” Amber asked as she stood over me with a grin on her face.

I picked up the nuggets of raw gold, sifted them into their velvet drawstring pouch, and then shot a smile up to the gorgeous redhead.

“I’d say so.” I smirked. “But I told the pawnshop lady I’d found this in a storage unit, and if I’m gonna keep the IRS off my ass, I should probably go and buy one. At least then my lie checks out.”

“Who are these IRS people, and why do they care so much?”

Sid asked with a scrunched-up nose.

“They mainly deal with people who don’t pay tax,” I explained and found my own face scrunching up with distaste. “And tax is like-

-”

“The Baron taxes Hadden.” Sid nodded in understanding. “Say no more. I understand how annoying that is.”

“Right.” I sighed. “So I need to at least make sure my story checks out. Maybe we should go and buy a storage unit now, and
that way I can exchange this gold without getting thrown into jail for tax evasion or something.”

“Is it secure?” Sid asked as she gnawed on her bottom lip with worry.

“What even is a storage unit?” Amber asked curiously.

“It’s a place people can pay to keep their belongings safe,” I explained. “Sometimes the owners either die, or just disappear, and so the contents of the unit are put up for auction. I can say that I bought one of those auction units and found treasure when I was sifting through the stuff.”

“Sounds like a good plan to me, then,” Amber said as I stood.

“Storage unit shopping.”

“You just like shopping in general,” I chuckled as I stashed my cache back inside my closet, close to the swirling gold of the portal that illuminated the furniture whenever I opened the two doors.

I still had a good amount in the bank from the last time I pawned off some gold pieces, so the three of us headed out for the day in search of an old storage container.

I did a quick Google search and found a storage place buried in downtown Brooklyn, and after several fleetingly jealous looks from
the acne-covered teenage kid behind the desk and a swift hundred-dollar bank transfer, I was finally the proud owner of an auctioned storage unit.

We opened it to find a bunch of rickety looking old wooden furniture and several stacks of dusty books that looked like they hadn’t been opened in decades, but all in all it was a surprisingly good find. It looked exactly like a place that would’ve housed hidden treasures on an episode of Storage Wars, and therefore a perfect excuse for how much raw gold I was transferring into cold hard cash.

“So now we have a place to stash your treasures.” Amber smiled happily as she looped her arm through mine.

“Plus a perfect excuse for the tax people,” Sid added as she looked to me for confirmation.

“Yup. I just need some kind of paper trail in case the IRS asks, but ideally I get an accountant I can trust to help me sort through everything.”

“What is an accountant?” Sid asked.

“Someone who keeps track of all my money and what I owe in taxes, but there was another thing I wanted to look into first.” We
made a beeline for the mall and, more importantly, its expansive food court.

“What’s that?” Amber asked and cocked her head curiously.

“Well, first years are required to stay on campus,” I explained slowly as we made our way over to a Mexican stall that had really good beef tacos. “But, after my first year of college, I was thinking about maybe buying us a place to live. I could find a way to smuggle the closet out along with the rest of my stuff, and that way we get to have our own place where we can go on as many adventures as we like.”

“That sounds wonderful!” Sid gasped, and her dark eyes lit up.

“Since you told us we’re not technically allowed to be there, I’m always scared someone is going to catch us.”

“And we do tend to make a lot of noise…” Amber said with a suddenly wicked grin. “Especially during the nights.”

“Okay, okay.” I smirked and nudged Amber with my elbow as we lined up behind an elderly woman who shot the three of us an absolute death glare over one bony shoulder. “But Amber’s got a fair point. I’m surprised Aron and Honey haven’t made some super snide comments.”

“They’re your friends,” Amber said as her smile eventually softened. “You know they’d never actually be cruel.”

“Cruel, no.” I shrugged one shoulder. “Cutting, yes. They haven’t even met Sid yet.”

“Well, today they can,” Amber said decidedly as the old lady in front of us struggled to keep her mouth shut. “We can introduce her.”

“Oh, I mean…” Sid suddenly became flustered and looked up at me with her dark eyes huge and round. “You… You don’t have to, i-if you don’t want to, it’s okay, I--”

“Sid,” I chuckled quietly and looped my fingers through hers so I could give her hand a gentle squeeze. “I want you to meet them.

They’ll love you.”

“Honey especially,” Amber giggled from behind her hand.

“I don’t want to… intrude.” Sid sighed and shook her head so her poker-straight black hair fell into her eyes.

“They’ll love you,” I repeated firmly and hooked a finger beneath her chin so I could bring her face up.

Her round eyes glittered with nervous tears that hadn’t welled quite enough to fall, and I caressed the side of her face as I looked down at her.

“You think so?” she asked in a hoarse voice.

“I know so.” I smiled warmly and then bent down to give her a swift kiss on the mouth. “It’s just that… Having two girlfriends isn’t a day-to-day occurrence for most people in my world.”

“Nor ours,” Amber said with an offhanded shrug as we reached the counter, but then she frowned contemplatively. “At least, I do not believe it is the norm in our world.”

“N-Not from what I can remember.” Sid blushed.

The old lady took her tacos, huffed disapprovingly at us, and then shuffled off to find a table to herself.

“Prime example,” I snickered as the lady glared at us over her meal, and then I turned back to the girls. “But once they see how happy I am, it’ll be a moot point.”

“I hope so.” Sid shot me a small smile as I approached the counter and ordered us a whole bunch of different tacos, so the girls could sample as many as possible.

It was easy to forget the two gorgeous women on my arm were not from my world, and the whole concept of even a shopping mall, let alone a food court, must have completely weirded them out the very first time around.

But at the promise of food, they’d immediately opened up to the premise, and now it was one of their favorite places to be.

All I had to do was feed them, go figure.

We sat at our table and feasted on fresh tacos as I searched for apartments in Brooklyn on my cell phone. The ability to get my own place with the girls was probably a ways away, but it was a fun way to while away the rest of the afternoon.

We finished our food pretty quickly, especially since we’d really worked up an appetite the night before, and as I took the last bite of a particularly good grilled chicken taco and wiped my hands on a napkin, my cell phone buzzed with a message from Honey.

“She’s asking if we want to hang out on the quad,” I told the girls as I licked my pinky finger clean and scooped my phone up. “I’ll tell them we can bring coffee.”

“It still amazes me,” Amber said as she eyed my cell phone with a mixture of curiosity and trepidation. “The fact that tiny little black thing can communicate with people so easily, no matter the distance.”

“The wonders of modern technology.” I laughed as I shoved my cell back into my pocket and helped the girls to their feet. “Come
on, let’s get to Starbucks. If Aron doesn’t get his chai latte, there’ll be hell to pay.”

We made our way back to campus so we could deliver coffees to our friends, and both Honey and Aron had raised eyebrows but inquisitive smiles on their faces as we joined them on the grass of the quad.

“One tall, skinny chai latte with an extra shot, extra pump.” I handed Aron his drink, and he took it with a wide grin.

“Thank you, kind sir,” he said in a terrible British accent and then took a long sip of his coffee before he let out a theatrically loud sigh. “Shit, that’s good.”

“Glad we got it right,” Amber said with a giggle.

“One cold brew.” I handed the plastic cup to Honey with a joking eye roll, who took it with a smile as sweet as her coffee was bitter.

“Thank you,” she chirped, and I might have imagined it, but I thought her fingers lingered against mine for a moment too long.

But then I shook off the thought. Honey had told me she was into girls, and even though she seemed to flirt with me, I currently
had my hands full with Amber, Sid, and the hidden world in my closet.

“And what do I have?” Amber asked again as she sat beside Aron and crossed her legs. “A cappooch-eh-no.”

“Cappuccino,” I corrected as I handed her the white cardboard cup. “You said you liked it last time.”

“I did,” Amber assured me as she took a gentle sip of the hot drink and then nodded eagerly. “Yes, I still do.”

“Guys,” I addressed my friends with a wide grin once I’d finished handing out drinks, and I motioned to the black-haired beauty standing beside me and scuffing her feet nervously. “This is Sid.”

“Hey, Sid.” Aron smiled widely up at the two of us as he wedged a cigarette into the corner of his mouth. “Pleasure to meet you.”

“Sid?” Honey asked as she patted the patch of grass next to her, and Sid eagerly sat beside her. “Is that short for something?”

“Obsidian,” she immediately answered, and I bit my tongue against Aron’s raised eyebrow.

“That’s a really pretty name.” Honey smiled kindly. “Why’d you shorten it?”

“Amber suggested it,” Sid giggled. “I like it, though. I think it sounds good.”

“I agree.” I nodded encouragingly at her. “And we all know Amber’s full of good ideas, so it makes sense.”

“So you’re… all… uhh… Together?” Honey asked as she glanced between Sid, Amber, and me, and I could tell the curiosity was almost too much for her.

Aron seemed completely indifferent to the entire exchange and was far too preoccupied with his favorite combination of nicotine and caffeine, so I knew he wouldn’t really care all that much at the fact that I had two girlfriends.

If anything, he’d be jealous. Or entirely too supportive. Or both.

But Honey really was curious, and her hazel eyes flitted between Amber, Sid, and I with a growing excitement.

“Yeah,” I confirmed with a firm nod and reached out a hand to squeeze Sid’s knee. “We’re together.”

“The three of us,” Amber said as she took another sip of her cappuccino and then grinned widely.

“Polyamory, huh?” Honey asked in a smug voice and then winked across at me. “James, you sly dog.”

“It wasn’t particularly… Planned.” I smirked at the blonde. “But it fits.”

“Yeah, I mean…” Honey shrugged, and she leaned over far enough that she could put her chin in her hand and study me with a knowing gleam in her green-brown eyes. “I don’t find it too hard to believe that you have girls fawning over you, James.”

“Oh, and does that include you?” I asked with another crooked smile, and I thought I saw something flash through her hazel eyes, but then Honey scoffed.

As if a spell were broken, she leaned back and kicked me in the leg with her shoe.

“You wish,” she said, but her cheeks looked a little pinker than before. “I have plenty of girls fawning over me.”

“Yeah?” I goaded her playfully. “When do we get to meet them?”

“Shut up, Miller,” Honey groaned, and she leaned back on her elbows so she could twist her face toward the sun and close her
eyes, though I couldn’t help but think it was as an excuse to avoid eye contact with me.

Flirting with Honey was always super fun because despite what she’d told me about herself, she certainly didn’t talk to me in the way a lesbian would.

Amber and Sid eyed me with grins of their own as I teased Honey, and the five of us spent the next couple of hours playfully making fun of each other and hanging out on the quad, and before we knew it, the sun had started to fall in the sky.

I realized we’d been out most of the day, and I was itching to get back to my dorm room.

To either have my way with my girls all over again, or finally delve back into the otherworldly portal inside of my closet, and I wasn’t entirely sure which one would take precedence over the other.

We left Aron and Honey deep in an extensive argument over who was the better guitarist, Dave Mustaine versus James Hetfield, to which Aron’s hair had become increasingly frizzier in his indignance at Honey’s firm opinions on Megadeth.

The conversation had meant absolutely nothing to either Sid or Amber, but they’d been listening intently, and I made a mental note to properly show them some music from my world one day soon.

“Your friends are funny,” Sid commented as I finally shut the door to my dorm room behind me. “Do you think they liked me?”

“I think they loved you.” I smiled at her softly. “Like I knew they would.”

“Honey and Aron are wonderful,” Amber said with a happy sigh. “I like it here, in your world.”

“Me, too,” Sid agreed with a smile of her own.

“Well, that makes me happy,” I told the two of them. “But that’s not to say I don’t like being in your world. Speaking of…”

“You want to do some more exploring?” Amber asked with a knowing twinkle in her eyes.

“I want to see if Sid has any like, power-ups,” I explained eagerly. “We’ve already found a fire and an ice ability for your bow, Amber. It just made me wonder if there’s any boons for Sid’s pauldrons that we can find.”

“Ooooh, that’d be interesting!” Sid gasped. “You said Amber’s appearance here, in your world, it changed when you found the
gemstones, right?”

“Right,” Amber confirmed and held out her arm where a fiery tattoo spread up her wrist. “And my eyes, they turned extra blue with the ice power.”

“I wonder if my appearance will change.” Sid giggled as her hands subconsciously traveled over her face. “I wonder if--”

Our conversation was suddenly interrupted with a stern knock at the door.

“Who is it?” I called out as I placed a finger against my lips to signal for silence from the girls.

“Timothy Spring!” a snooty voice called back through the door.

“The RA?”

“Oh, shit,” I hissed and waved my hands at the girls. “You need to hide.”

“Hide?” Amber whispered back and was suddenly frantic.

“From who? What’s an RA?”

“He’s gonna come in to inspect the room, and you can’t be here,” I said in a hushed voice as I ushered the two of them toward my closet. “Quick, through the portal.”

“But, James--”

“I’ll meet you there,” I promised the two of them. “I swear. Just give me like, five minutes.”

“You’d better.” Amber shook a finger at me jokingly, though I could see her blue eyes were serious. “Please.”

“I promise,” I assured them, and then my door handle started to turn. “Shit, quickly, go!”

Just as the two women slipped through the swirling gold of the portal and the hinged door of the old closet swung lazily closed, my dorm room door flew open.

“Hi, Timothy.” I waved awkwardly at the RA by way of an overly casual greeting. “What can I do for you?”

Timothy was tall, scrawny, and long-limbed. I was well over six feet tall, but he stood a good few inches taller than me, and his hair was a wispy wash of blond straw. He had thick glasses and disconcertingly large front teeth which gave him a rattish appearance, but I kept my smile casual.

“I heard voices.” Timothy sniffed.

“I was, ahh, on FaceTime,” I explained as I waved my cell phone in my hand. “To my mom and my aunt.”

“Hmm…” Timothy’s watery eyes just skimmed around my room, though it was small and plain enough that there couldn’t possibly be anyone hiding here in secret…

Aside from the fact I had a portal to another world hidden in the back of my closet, but Timothy the RA didn’t know that.

“Just keep it down, okay?” the scrawny blond reminded me sternly. “You live with multiple other people, show them the same respect you expect, okay?”

“Yes, sir,” I assured him, though even calling someone as skinny as Timothy ‘sir’ seemed entirely wrong.

He nodded in almost reluctant acceptance and shut my door painfully slowly, and I finally let out the breath I’d held as I heard the latch click. I quickly locked the door and then hurried over to my closet so I could dive through the portal and find my girls.

I felt the now familiar tug at my lower abdomen as the magic of the swirling golden gate took hold, and as I opened my eyes, I found myself once again standing inside the dimly-lit dungeon chamber that held the otherworld’s mirror image of my dorm room closet.

I’d expected to find the girls’ weapon forms on the stone floor, but I was surprised to see how both Sid’s pauldrons and Amber’s
bow and arrow were actually fastened to the straw filled dummies that surrounded the stone chamber.

I quickly fixed Sid’s pauldrons to my shoulders and lifted Amber’s bow into my hand, and with a sudden loud burst of noise in my head, I could once again hear the two women’s voices in my mind.

James! Amber exclaimed immediately.

James, are you there? I heard Sid ask fretfully.

“Hi, girls,” I chuckled. “Don’t worry, I’m here. What happened when you fell through, how did you get fixed to the dummies?

I have no idea, Amber admitted. We fell through the portal, and then all I could tell was that I wasn’t on the floor.

“Well, at least we know.” I shrugged and then peered around the stone chamber with a wide grin forming on my face, and I felt the familiar buzz of excitement start to fizz in my veins at the prospect of doing some dungeon crawling. “Let’s go find an adventure, shall we?”

Chapter Two

What do you think we’ll find this time? Amber’s voice in my head was just as excited as I felt, and I chuckled lightly as I pushed deeper into the stone dungeon.

The underground labyrinth that I could access through my closet’s swirling golden portal was everchanging and seemed to literally go on forever, though it was always helpfully lit by magical torches wedged into rusty iron sconces on the stone wall every couple of feet.

When I’d discovered the alternate entrances to the dungeon dotted all over the town of Hadden, I’d realized the stone maze was probably bigger than I could even conceive. The winding passageways always seemed to twist and change, like the stone had a literal mind of its own, and I’d never stumbled across the same thing twice.

Which just added to both the intrigue and the fun of it. I’d never been one for adventuring, and the prospect of ziplines and rock climbing and everything else that the outdoorsy types seemed to love had always seemed really boring to me. Plus, they took far more energy than I was willing to expend.

But creeping through the otherworld dungeon, with my two beautiful warrior women in my head, was something I’d started to crave.

“I’m not sure,” I said to Amber with another chuckle. “But whatever we find, I’m sure we can handle it.”

Do you think we’ll find a gemstone for me? Sid asked wistfully.

I looked down at Sid’s pauldrons on my shoulders and realized both sides had a divot interrupting the smooth black metal, and I traced the outline of the left one with a raised eyebrow.

“I hope so,” I replied as I inspected the small hole within the armor. “It looks like your pauldrons can definitely hold some sort of boon, in the same way Amber’s bow does.”

I held the redhead’s weapon up to my face so I could inspect the deep ruby and sparkling blue sapphire on either side, just above the hand grip.

That’s exciting, Sid said happily. I want to know how my appearance will change.

“Whatever happens, I’m sure you’ll look beautiful,” I assured her as I pushed further through the dimly-lit stone tunnel.

Do you think so? Sid asked in the same breathy voice, and I smiled to myself at how her tone became so adorably meek and earnest.

“I know so,” I told the dark-haired beauty. “So, let’s see what we can find.”

The dungeon was cool and quiet, as always, but I pressed further into the stone maze and felt confident in the prospect of discovering something new. The dungeon always seemed to pull up exactly what I needed at the time, much like a video game would, and I instinctively glanced down at my left hand, where my in-world tattoo was far darker and way more obvious than when I was in the real world.

The moment I had stepped through the portal the very first time, on my first day at college, the back of my left hand had been marked by the otherworld. I now had a skill tree that adapted to whatever potions Harold, the Baron’s old quartermaster, decided to give me, and with every victory, or every gemstone that I found for my warrior women, the skill tree expanded and crawled its way further up my forearm.

I’d never considered getting a tattoo before, but now that I had it, I liked how it looked. It made me feel badass, which in this world, I
guess I was.

“This tunnel is going on forever,” I sighed as I walked past another iron sconce holding another magically-lit torch, on yet another look-alike portion of the same stone wall.

You’ve been walking for a while, it feels like, Amber agreed in my head. You don’t see anything up ahead?

“Nothing but the same damn tunnel,” I grumbled as I kicked a lone pebble and listened to it skitter and echo around the dungeon ahead of me.

Keep going, Sid said confidently. It’ll show you something soon.

“I hope so,” I replied with a raised eyebrow.

What’s that? Amber suddenly asked.

I looked up at her question and squinted my eyes into the gloominess in front of me. I couldn’t see much difference in the dungeon, it just looked like the same stretch of nondescript gray stone, until I saw a slight flicker.

“There’s a bend in the tunnel,” I commented in a low voice when I realized the shadow was cast from another of the lit torches, only around a slight corner.

Well, it’s something different at least. Amber chuckled.

Keep your wits about you, James, Sid warned in a worried tone.

“I always do.” I smiled, though I instinctively kept my stance a little lower and my feet a little lighter as I approached the curve in the stone.

The dungeon curved around to the left, and after another few seconds, it filtered out into a round antechamber, much like the one at the very beginning that housed my closet with the portal back home.

The antechamber only had one other exit, a brief portion of tunnel that eventually opened up into a huge stone cavern. It was about as big as the vampire nest I’d come across before, only this time it wasn’t filled with such monsters.

At first glance, at least.

The room was filled with weird, jagged-looking stone statues.

They wore rusted old helms and random bits of armor that were dusty and orange, and some of them even carried weapons, though the metal looked so damn old that they were likely to crumble into powder if I tried to remove them from the stone grips of the statues.

“Creepy,” I said under my breath as I peered at the closest one.

I bent down lower so I could get a look at the face of the statue, and I had to really crane my neck since the head was drooped sleepily down onto the chestplate.

I used the edge of Amber’s bow to see if I could lift the helm, but as soon as I did, the stone began to creak and groan like old bedsprings.

James… I heard Sid’s voice turn low and slow in my head, but I was already half a step away from the one I’d been inspecting.

“They look like--”

Draugrs, Amber hissed in my mind. I think they’re draugrs.

I rattled my brain for some video game or mythology knowledge and came back with ‘Army Of The Dead Out To Mindlessly Kill You’, which was about right.

The moment I’d touched the closest draugr, every single stone statue in the room had come to life. But achingly slowly, as if they’d been rudely awakened from a centuries-old slumber. Which was probably pretty accurate.

“I think you might be right,” I answered Amber in a low voice as I backed away from the zombified warriors.

Stony dust and powdered rust fell from each of them as they moved, and very real bones beneath the armor creaked and groaned as they fought to move forward.

As far as I could remember, draugrs were a Norse myth usually described as corporeal ghosts. Dead human corpses reanimated to torture the living, and normally created from particularly unsavory people. Or in more normal terms, gross zombie assholes hellbent on killing me.

“Amber, I’m gonna need your fire ability,” I said as I pulled her bow closer to me and unsheathed an arrow from the constantly full quiver on my back.

I think that’s a good idea, Amber replied in a strained voice.

“Any advice?” I asked her while I nocked the arrow against the bowstring and watched the army of draugrs wake up.

Aim for the head? If she’d been here in her human form, she’d have shrugged helplessly, and I just nodded grimly by way of reply.

It was fair advice, after all.

There were about ten of the reanimated corpses around me, as far as I could see, so I figured they shouldn’t be too tough to take out. They were slow, as zombies damn well should be, and their armor made them move in a cumbersome sort of way.

They shuffled and groaned, but they still had just enough scrap of humanity left to know they should reach for their weapons. The air inside the cavern filled with dull shrieks of old metal as they simultaneously drew their swords, and I pulled Amber’s bow up to my face as I took aim at the closest one.

Now! Amber hissed in my head.

I let the arrow fly, and it sang through the air before it easily pierced the rusted helm of the closest draugr. Not only did it perfectly pierce his head like a gruesome kebab, Amber’s fire ability caused a shower of sparks to cascade onto the necrotic being, and it was so old and so dry that the poor guy immediately burst into flames.

Well done, James! Sid exclaimed inside my mind.

The draugr let out a grotesque undead wail before it eventually clattered to the floor in a pile of bones and armor, but the triumph was short lived.

The next one! Amber quickly checked our early celebration and pulled my attention to where it was needed. To your left!

I spun on my heel and smoothly pulled another arrow from the quiver as I moved.

“Keep the fire ability on, Amber!” I commanded as I let an arrow loose and sent it screaming into the head of the next draugr. “It seems to kill them well enough!”

The second draugr’s head exploded on impact, and the flames ate hungrily at the dry bone and rusted metal of his armor. It took maybe only a second or two before he was nothing more than a heap of smoldering remains.

“These guys stink,” I grunted as I wrinkled my nose and pulled another arrow from over my shoulder.

Unsurprising, Sid commented wryly. They’re rotted human corpses, by the looks of it.

“Please don’t remind me,” I groaned as I let another arrow fly into the crusty helmet of the next.

They were relatively mindless, and therefore easy to pick off.

They saw me as a living, breathing human being with a heart still
pumping blood around my body, and their rage and jealousy turned into tunnel vision as they shambled toward me.

After I’d downed well over half of them, the dusty, dimly-lit cavern was alight with small fires on the ground where each draugr had once stood, and the stench of their smoldering bodies was almost overwhelming.

The best word I had in my head for it was old. The age of the draugrs’ bones and the few vestiges of skin and flesh that still clung to them, as well as the moldy rags beneath the rusted armor, all acted as perfect kindling for Amber’s fire ability. But as they burned, the air turned acrid and harsh and made my eyes sting.

Just one left! Sid told me, as if she could sense my discomfort.

To your right!

I yanked a final arrow from the quiver and almost blindly aimed as my eyes started to physically water from the smoke and the gross smell of burning rotted flesh.

The last draugr let out a groan as he crumpled to a heap on the ground, and I pulled my shirt up over my face as the ten or so piles of dead draugr continued to smolder and burn.

“God, this is gross!” I moaned through the material of my t-shirt. “And I wanted to loot them, see if these assholes had anything worth my damn while.

This smoke is intense, Sid agreed in a woeful voice. Get out of there if you need to, James.

I have an idea, Amber suddenly piped up. I’m switching to ice.

Put these fires out.

“Good idea.” I nodded in approval and reluctantly let my t-shirt fall back down around my neck so I could grab another arrow from the quiver. “Let’s make it quick, I don’t know how much more of this I can inhale without puking.”

The blue gemstone on the side of Amber’s bow glowed energetically as she swapped her abilities around, and I quickly shot an ice arrow into each of the flaming piles of bones that littered the dungeon cavern.

The ice arrows exploded all the same as they came into contact with their marks, but instead of flames it was frost that sprung from the arrowheads. It spiked across the embers like a spiderweb and snuffed out the fires as quickly as I’d started them, and once I’d iced the last one, the air finally started to clear.

I let out a cough and a grimace, and then a full-body shudder took over my limbs as I decided it was still best to breathe through my mouth in order to avoid the stench of decay.

“God damn.” I whistled as I cleared my throat again. “That was kind of an awesome fight, despite the smell.”

James, Amber suddenly said, but her tone of voice was not the lighthearted celebratory sound I was expecting to hear.

“What’s up?” I asked her as I wiped the stinging tears away from my eyes with the back of my hand.

I don’t think that was the last one… Amber said quietly. Do you hear that?

I focused my ears and immediately heard what the redhead was referring to.

Ragged, torn breathing was cut short by a rusted metal helm, footsteps that were far heavier than those I’d heard before, and the banshee-like shriek of metal on stone.

I looked up to see a gigantic draugr, three times the size of those I’d just destroyed and kitted in full black armor.

I hadn’t seen him until he’d started to move, and I realized he’d been almost petrified into the stone walls themselves. Now, as he
lumbered toward me, he rained down dust and chunks of stone.

“What is this, a damn boss battle?” I groaned half-rhetorically, and both Amber and Sid let out similar sounds of distaste in my head.

Same process, Sid assured me.

I’ve switched back to fire, Amber added determinedly. And Sid will protect you.

As best I can, my newest girlfriend replied. I can… Feel something from this one. I have no idea what it is, but…

“That probably means this brute’s got something worthwhile on him,” I concluded with a nod, and I felt a thrill of excitement beneath my grim determination to not get killed. “Okay, let’s do this.”

The giant draugr seemed to move with the same motive as his minions, and he shambled toward me with his right hand wrapped tightly around a massive broadsword that should’ve definitely taken two hands to wield.

I nocked an arrow on the bowstring and let fly, but the wood shattered against the chestplate of the giant’s already pockmarked black armor and let out just a few miserable sparks.

I realized I would need to really finesse my shot in order to fell this guy.

The armor itself was nothing special, and it bore the exact same telltale marks of time and rust as the rest of his undead gang, but it was far thicker and heavier than the rest, so my arrows couldn’t penetrate it, even with their added fire power.

“Shit,” I grumbled as I skittered around the giant zombie and repositioned myself.

The lumbering undead took a damn age to turn with me, but it was to my benefit because as he craned his neck around to follow me, like a damn bloodhound on the hunt, I noticed there was a gap in his armor just by his neck.

“I’ve got to thread the needle with this one,” I told the girls as I clambered up a small mountain of fallen rock. “I need to get him to look up.”

Just like that first river troll, Amber said proudly in my head.

You remembered.

“Of course.” I grinned as I pulled another arrow out of the quiver. “I’ll always remember everything you girls have done for me.”

And us you, Sid added with a smile in her voice. For everything.

“I just need to get him at the right angle,” I huffed as I kept moving.

I still held the arrow ready in my fingers, though, in case the hulking undead giant decided to accidentally give me the advantage I was looking for.

But he did no such thing, and as I danced around him and did a full one-eighty, the mighty brute let out a dusty huff into his helm and lifted the broadsword in his hand.

He swung it more out of frustration than anything else, but the metal blade clattered down against the side of the rock I’d been standing on just a few moments before. The sword was so heavy and slashed with such force the stone turned into rubble almost on impact, and my heart immediately jumped into my throat.

“Okay, that I need to avoid.” I sighed as I jumped a few feet back, out of range of the swinging blade. “If I get hit by that broadsword, it’s game over. Literally.”

How are you going to get him to look up? Sid asked in the usual fretful voice.

“I’ll give him a fireworks display,” I said and quickly nocked the arrow on the bowstring. “Amber, I need you to change it from fire to ice and back again, on repeat, okay?”

Okay, the redhead said determinedly. I understand.

“On my count!” I called as though the two women were beside me rather than inside my head. “Three, two… one, now!”

I aimed at the cavern’s jagged stone ceiling and fired, and the arrow exploded in a shower of sparks that immediately rained down on both me and the giant draugr. I shot another one up as I kept circling him, ice this time, and shards of frost danced in the air around us before they were immediately melted by the third arrow I sent upward.

I repeated my process as I circled the brute, until his entire attention was on the pretty sparkles above him.

“Amber, fire!” I commanded as I nocked another arrow on her bowstring, and the red gemstone inlaid into the wood gleamed with an inner heat as I took aim.

The boss draugr had looked up at just the right angle as a scattering of snowy frost fell from the ceiling from my last ice hit, and I could see the literal chink in his armor.

I knew Amber was helping me, more on instinct than anything else, and I let out a calm sigh as the arrow left my fingertips and soared through the air to meet its mark.

It sank right into the draugr’s neck, and Amber’s fire ability instantly took hold. The draugr burst into flames from within, and it started to wave its gigantic broadsword around even more dangerously than he had been before as he shrieked and groaned from behind his rusty old helm.

The flames had to find a way out, so they burst from the seams of his armor, until eventually he too was just another pile of ash and bones and smoldering metal.

Switching to ice, Amber said grimly. Put him out.

“With pleasure.” I lifted the bowstring to my cheek and let the ice arrow loose, and I watched with satisfaction as the pattern of frost spread across the chestplate of the tattered old armor.

I can still feel something, Sid said the moment she knew that the last draugr was down. Something like… A pull.

“Maybe he has something on his armor?” I suggested as I skipped over the piles of dusty old bones and headed for the
mangled corpse of the giant draugr. “Maybe the old guy actually had something of worth.”

I sure hope he did, Amber commented. You could have avoided choking to death on burning corpses.

“Again, please don’t remind me.” I chuckled as I bent down to inspect the now half-frozen chestplate.

With a grimace, I used my two forefingers to smear away the ash and frost, and I quickly realized that the draugr definitely had something of worth on him.

Sid let out a shallow gasp in my mind as my fingers brushed over something that definitely wasn’t metal. Inlaid into the draugr’s chestplate was a perfectly clear crystal.

Not quite a diamond, but it was still clear as water and shimmered with a colorless glow.

Yes, Sid breathed excitedly. I can feel it.

“Well, let’s see if I can get the damn thing out.” I grinned as I grabbed one of the smaller draugr’s blades and used the dull edge to try and pry the gemstone out of its place on the chestplate.

It popped out with relative ease once I’d found the right angle, and I held the crystal in the palm of my hand so the girls could see
exactly what I was looking at.

“Well, Sid?” I asked with a smirk. “What do you say?”

It feels… Good, Sid answered in the same breathy voice. Inlay it with my pauldrons. Please. I think… I think it’s something for me.

I did as I was told and quickly wedged the crystal into the slot on the right-hand shoulder of Sid’s armor, and it immediately fused with the sleek black metal, as if it were always meant to be there.

The gemstone shone brilliantly, with an almost white-hot glow, and I felt a sudden warmth and comfort rush over me from my head to my feet.

“Whoa,” I gasped and then chuckled as the feeling dissipated out of my fingertips and toes. “That was… Something.”

Check your skill tree, Amber said excitedly. What did it do?

I quickly glanced down at my left hand and saw to my delight that the clear gemstone in Sid’s armor had offered me an extension to the defense branch.

“More protection.” I grinned widely. “You gonna keep looking out for me, Sid?”

More than that, Sid replied. It feels like… Some sort of aura. If anything were to hit you, or fall on you, I feel like I’d be able to repel
them.

“Like a repellent,” I chuckled. “That’s so fucking cool. Thank you, Sid.”

Of course, master, Sid replied dutifully, and her voice sounded as though she’d have been blushing had she been in her human form.

My smirk widened at ‘master,’ and I let out another chuckle.

“I guess that wasn’t a waste of time after all, then.” I smiled happily. “And at least we’ve rid this part of the dungeon of draugrs. I don’t really feel like having them crawl up on me when I least expect it.”

At least we know how to deal with them now, Amber added.

Every battle is a lesson.

“Wise words indeed,” I said in my best medieval voice, which just earned derisive giggles from the two of them. “Let’s get back through the portal. I want to see what Sid looks like now that she has a boon, too.”

The three of us spent the rest of the trek through the dungeon wondering exactly what that physical alteration could be, and just as I was preparing to step back through the swirling golden portal in the
back of the closet, I heard a familiar musical toot coming from somewhere in the forest above the cabin.

“Great,” I grumbled. “One of the Baron’s messengers?”

More than likely. Sid sighed. The hour is late, and the Baron is like a damn owl. Up in the night, sleeping in the day.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said as I trudged my way up the tight spiral staircase and out the cabin’s door so I could go and find his messenger.

“Sir Miller!” The messenger himself was a weedy-looking thing, with a slicked ponytail of straw-like hair and the weakest excuse for a mustache I’d ever seen in my life. And that was including my fourteenth birthday, though I suppressed that particular memory the moment my brain brought it up again.

“Hello,” I greeted him with a curt nod. “What can I do for you at this hour?”

“The Baron has summoned you, sir,” the mousy messenger boy explained in a squeaky voice. “If it pleases you.”

“It does the damn opposite when I have my bed waiting for me, but… It’s another payday, and I just can’t resist.” I grinned widely at
the prospect of more gold and then extended a hand. “Lead the way.”

Chapter Three

Night had fallen completely over the town of Hadden by the time we’d made it to the Baron’s castle.

The air was still and surprisingly quiet, though I supposed most of the market town’s inhabitants were currently shacked up in The Bleeding Hydra tavern while listening to traveling bards and getting drunk off sweet-tasting mead. The first boy the Baron ever sent to collect me had led me through the forest in a far quicker route, but this messenger took the correct route back into town that followed the winding stone road, so it took us a good thirty minutes to walk from my cabin in the forest.

I didn’t mind so much, though.

Hadden was beautiful, and even at night it was alight with the fiery colors of fall. A blanket of deep gold and dark red leaves coated the ground, and the trees that lined the cobblestone road were only half-bare, so they rustled and almost grumpily sighed in the breeze like we were disturbing them from their slumber as we passed.

The messenger seemed almost too nervous to speak to me on our travels, so I left him to his thoughts and let my own race around in my head.

I wanted to confront the Baron about the letters we’d found in the mage’s dungeon hideout, but I knew better than to play my entire hand all at once.

My dad had taught me that when we’d played poker together, and he’d always taken great pride in how he could spot my tells and call my bluffs every damn time.

So I was determined not to let it happen with the Baron.

Sid was convinced of his innocence, or I guess ignorance was probably the better term, and I trusted her judgment. She’d lived in this world far longer than I had, and I knew it was a good idea to listen to my warrior women when they had insights.

But that didn’t stop the worm of suspicion curling around the base of my head. The Baron I knew may well be ignorant of the goings-on in his realm, but I was far closer to figuring shit out than he knew, and I decided to keep my information to myself and my cards close to my chest.

I hoped my dad was proud, and I chuckled to myself as I kicked a small pile of orange and gold leaves.

“What’s funny, sir?” The messenger glanced over his bony shoulder at me with the beginning of fear in his watery eyes, and I
just chuckled again.

“Nothing,” I assured him with a smile. “Just thought of something that made me laugh, that’s all.”

“Okay…” The messenger peered at me again, shook his head, and pressed on with a little more speed.

We passed the gates and the marketplace and headed west, until eventually I could see the entirety of the Baron’s castle.

It was a huge mass of stone that leered over the town of Hadden, with two monolithic towers joined at their summits by a rickety-looking bridge. It was surrounded by a murky-looking moat, and we crossed over the dark waters, under the portcullis where the same two guards stood at the gate, and through the courtyard.

Even at the late hour, the outskirts of the castle bustled with life. Scullery maids went about their business, stable boys tended to the constantly neighing horses, and guards milled around with their armor and weapons clanking like a pocket full of spare change.

It was like stepping into a real life Game Of Thrones episode, and I found myself grinning again as I took it all in. I still couldn’t quite wrap my head around the fact that this otherworld was all mine to plunder, and it had already made me incredibly rich.

Not to mention I had two gorgeous women on my arm as well as a litany of new abilities and almost superhuman strength.

And a badass tattoo on my arm.

Life could be worse.

“Sir Miller!” the Baron greeted me with the same familiar level of fondness as the messenger guided me through the great hall.

The Baron’s flop of blond hair was swept to the side so he could inspect me with beady dark eyes as I approached him on his throne. He had one leg flung casually over the armrest and yet another goblet of wine in one hand, and a wide toothy smile stretched across his face as I reached him.

“Good evening, sire,” I said with a courteous smile, and I tilted my head toward him in the faintest excuse for a bow. “You sent for me?”

“Correct.” The Baron nodded eagerly and took a long sip of his wine. “I have another monster hunting venture for you.”

“Paid, I take it?” I raised an eyebrow and felt another grin pull at the corner of my mouth, because the Baron laughed heartily at the question.

“You need not confirm every time, Sir Miller,” the Baron assured me. “You shall always be paid for ridding our town of magical threats.”

“Well, then, in that case, what is it I can do for you?” I asked with a laugh of my own.

“There are reports of a goblin infestation at a neighboring village in the hills.” The Baron sighed heavily. “I didn’t even think goblins were real, more a fairytale told to children to scare them into behaving. I haven’t known there to be a goblin in my entire lifetime.”

“And suddenly there’s a so-called infestation of them?” I asked, and I felt my eyebrows raising on my forehead. “Why now?”

“Why now, indeed…” The Baron sniffed haughtily and then slapped his free hand against the armrest of his throne. “A conundrum that I must decipher. But for you, Sir Miller, I would be appreciative of your help in ridding our world of this particular scourge.”

“Of course.” I bent my back slightly in a half-bow again. “Is the quartermaster awake?”

“He should be.” The Baron shrugged listlessly. “You know where to find him. Go to his living quarters and have him prepare
you for your quest.”

“Yes, sire.” I nodded and smiled up at my otherworldly employer. “Have a good evening.”

The Baron just waved his hand by way of dismissal, and I turned on my heel and pressed further into the castle until I found myself outside Harold’s door.

Goblins? Amber sighed. The Baron’s right, I’ve never known them to be so close to the surface. Normally, they only dwell deep underground.

“So it’s a surprise they’ve been sighted?” I asked with a huff as I made my way through the castle. “That doesn’t bode well.”

I started to think about whether there was something nefarious controlling the magical population of Hadden. Everyone seemed not just surprised, but rightly fearful of the sudden influx of monsters in the land, but I couldn’t help but wonder whether the monsters were being controlled, or whether they were running from something themselves.

With everything we’ve seen so far, I suppose it’s not entirely unsurprising, but… Sid said inside my mind, and her voice quickly pulled me out of my deep thoughts. The fact Hadden has a goblin
infestation further proves that magical creatures and monsters are appearing at an alarming rate.

“There was never this many before?” I asked.

Not that I can recall, Sid said plainly. We had maybe the odd witch, or the toadies causing havoc, or grossly exaggerated sightings.

“So the fact I’ve gone against both trolls and wyverns, even outside of our dungeon, is worrying.” I nodded in understanding. “I mean, I can’t complain too much because it’s giving me a hefty payday.”

It does mean there’s a threat to the safety of Hadden, though, Amber reminded me in a sad tone. We need to work out where this sudden influx of magic is coming from.

“I don’t think it’s sudden,” I reasoned with her in a low voice as I passed two guards, who looked at me talking to myself and shook their heads. “I think you’re connected to it, actually. You guys being transfigured into weapons and such. It can’t be a coincidence.”

And I was stuck under the tree for years, Amber agreed in an even sadder tone. Thinking about it all makes my head hurt.

“We’ll figure it out,” I assured the two of them as I approached the nondescript stone corridor that housed the quartermaster’s living quarters. “I promise.”

It was late, and I wasn’t entirely sure whether he’d even be awake, but the moment I gently knocked on the wood, it swung open with a clatter, and I found myself staring eye to eye at an almost crazed Harold.

“Sir James!” he yelled and then proceeded to grab me by the collar and haul me over the threshold.

“Hello, Harold,” I choked out as I pulled my t-shirt back into place. “Are you okay?”

“Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, I’m quite alright, my boy.” Harold waved both his hands energetically over his head and then fixed me with a crazed smile that made his eyes bulge, and his pupils were so dilated I could barely see the color of his irises. “I was just sampling a new strain of tea I’d made.”

“How much caffeine was in this new tea of yours, Harold?” I asked with a chuckle as I watched him tinker with his glass beverage contraption.

“Caffeine?” The old man cocked his head.

“It’s, uh, a property of some beverages,” I said as I tried to think of the simplest explanation. “It’s a stimulant, so it makes you feel more awake and alert, but too much can make you jittery.”

“Oh, how delightful. But I do not believe this is ‘caffeine.’”

Harold wagged a finger at me with a rueful grin. “It’s a mushroom tea, and I believe the fungus holds some sort of power or, or, or, mind-altering properties, mayhaps…”

“Say no more,” I snorted and held up a hand. “I think I know what you’re talking about.”

“So, the Baron sent you, did he?” Harold asked as he fixed me with an intense stare that reminded me of my cat when he got the zoomies.

“Yes.” I nodded. “A goblin infestation in a village up in the hills.”

“Goblins?” Harold sniffed and shook his head so vigorously it made his white hair stick up on end like he’d been electrocuted.

“Goblins in Hadden… Never thought I’d see the day… Just fairytales…”

“What do you know of goblins, Harold?” I pressed him to keep his focus, and he looked up at me again with the same wide-eyed stare.

He wordlessly waved me over to the bookcases that lined the entire back wall of his living space, and he pulled an ancient dust-covered tome from one of the top shelves and slammed it down onto the wooden desk so everything on it rattled haphazardly.

The old quartermaster skimmed through the book until he found what he was looking for, and he slapped a finger down on the page triumphantly.

“Goblins!” he yelled happily. “Look, here. Just myths of creatures that dwell deep underground, but then aren’t myths and legends always born from truth? All stories are the truth, trussed up in a bow.”

“I guess that’s fair,” I agreed with him and pressed him to continue.

“So, goblins. Nasty little buggers.” Harold sniffed as he read from the crumpled page. “Apparently, they used to be children but were snatched by witches and transformed into these little bastards.

They’re thieves, makers of mischief, poltergeists, whatever you want to call them. They cause sheer havoc and have a penchant for bloodlust.”

“They sound fun,” I commented dryly. “Can they be killed normally? By a weapon?”

“Oh, yes.” Harold nodded and pressed his finger even harder into the crinkled parchment. “Since they were once human, they can die like one. But it’s getting them that’s the problem. They’re wicked fast and can shapeshift.”

“Infestation is starting to sound like the correct word.” I sighed heavily and ran a hand through my hair. “I think I’ll need to prepare and rest before I go after them.”

“I would suggest it,” Harold said, and when I looked up, I saw his pupils had finally begun to shrink in size.

“Do you have anything to help me?” I asked the old quartermaster as he came down from his mushroom-infused high.

“I just might, my boy.” Harold shuffled over to the opposing desk, the one that held the bubbling beakers of potions and magical concoctions, and I quickly followed him.

“Your tonics have always served me well.” I grinned down at the old man. “Any boons you can give me, you know I’ll be grateful.”

“Of course.” The white-haired man fixed me with a knowing smile and then eventually held out a small vial. “Here.”

I took the potion from him and stared curiously at the contents.

It was a pure emerald green and glittered just as much as the gemstone, and every time I slightly moved the bottle, the potion caught the light and shone brightly. It was completely opaque and was sealed securely with a light blue wax that covered the cork stopper entirely.

“I made this from the blueprints you had stolen for me,” Harold said as he puffed out his chest proudly. “That mage had some very interesting insights into the arcane.”

“What does it do?” I asked in a reverent voice as I watched the thick green liquid swirl behind the glass of the vial.

“It’s a time stopper, of a sort,” Harold explained, and he bounced on the balls of his feet with excitement. “Smash it against the ground, and it freezes everything in its radius in time for a few brief moments.”

“No way,” I gasped in surprise. “That’s so fucking cool.”

“It’s actually quite a warm, comforting feeling,” Harold replied offhandedly, and I snickered at his misunderstanding. “But it’s quite effective.”

“Won’t I be caught in the time loop, though?” I asked suddenly.

“If I were to smash it on the ground and it got on me, or something?”

“I already thought of this.” Harold smirked smugly. “The blue wax. Protection. Witchcraft and sorcery are two very closely related practices, and I may… Borrow things from time to time.”

“Harold, you old dog.” I nudged him with my shoulder and chuckled when a flush crept up to his cheeks.

“Get some rest, Sir Miller.” Harold gave me a shove in return, but a small smile was still present on his wrinkled old face. “It would be unwise to go after a goblin nest in the dark.”

“They’re nocturnal?” I confirmed.

“Yes.” The quartermaster nodded. “Like a child determined to stay up past its bedtime. They’ll be easier to pick off during the day.”

“The Baron mentioned they were raising hell in a village up in the hills,” I explained to the old quartermaster. “Do you know where I can find it?”

“He mentioned it to me, yes.” Harold nodded eagerly and pulled out an intricate map painted onto a large sheet of parchment.

“Here.”

The old man pointed a wrinkled finger at a point on the map, due northwest of Hadden, labeled Maniton.

“It’s a relatively small village,” Harold said. “They trade with Hadden regularly and mostly mine the mountains for iron ore.”

“So the goblins are in the mines, I’m guessing?” I surmised.

And the mines probably connected to the dungeon beneath the hills.

“I would imagine so.” Harold nodded approvingly at my astuteness.

“Thank you, Harold.” I raised the glass vial of green time potion and smiled. “As always, you’ve been a great help.”

“I am at your service, sir.” He bent his shoulders in a slight bow and then waved me off. “Now go, get some sleep.”

I did as told and headed back to the cabin in the forests above Hadden, and I discussed theories with the girls the entire way.

Amber seemed to think the presence of goblins must mean there was an entire coven of witches nearby, though I reasoned there would’ve been far more sightings, and far more mayhem, if that were true.

Sid was convinced the goblins’ presence was a terrifying omen, of more chaos and havoc to come, and though it seemed far-fetched, I couldn’t help but agree. More and more monsters meant more and more magic, and I was determined to get to the bottom of it all so I could help the girls return to their true forms.

Though I couldn’t help but feel a slight sadness at the prospect, because what if they wanted to resume their lives here in Hadden? I couldn’t force them to stay with me, but I desperately wanted them to.

I’d never ask that of them, though. It had to be their own decision.

I fell deep into thought as I finally reached my cabin, and I secured the trapdoors that led to the dungeon before I finally crossed through the swirling golden portal, stashed my new potion, and arrived back in my college dorm room.

Sid slid off my back, and Amber appeared at my side as their human forms materialized around them, and I smiled at the two women as they each kissed me and then made an immediate beeline for bed.

“Wait, Sid…” I grabbed hold of the dark-haired woman’s wrist so I could gently pull her back to me.

“Yes?” she asked as she turned back to me.

“Your eyes…” I murmured softly, and I caressed the side of her face with one of my fingers. “They’ve changed.”

“Because of my new ability?” Sid suddenly gasped with excitement. “Let me see!”

She skipped across my room to get to the bathroom, where there was a huge mirror that she could peer into, and I heard a whoop from behind the half-open door when she saw her reflection.

Amber and I quickly followed her, and Sid turned to face us with a wide smile.

The gemstone that activated her repellent ability had been completely clear, but it had shone with a white-hot glow when I’d brought it closer to her pauldrons. Sid’s eyes used to be just a deep dark brown, but now they were pale gray with darker speckles around the outer rim. It almost gave off the impression of an explosion, which I guess was fitting given her new ability.

“See, I told you,” I said as I scooped her up into a warm embrace. “Whatever happened, it’d be beautiful.”

After much inspection of her new appearance, Sid made a beeline for my bed, and the three of us slept through the rest of the night. I was thankful for the fact it was a weekend, so I didn’t have any classes to interrupt my monster slaying.

The three of us woke up relatively early, and I knew both Aron and Honey liked to sleep in until close to midday, so I was safe in the knowledge that I wasn’t going to be disturbed until at least the afternoon.

“Ready?” I asked both Sid and Amber as we stood in front of my open closet with the swirling golden portal in front of us.

The two girls looked up at me with sparkling eyes and slight grins and just nodded determinedly, so I took both their hands and stepped through the portal to emerge within the dungeon in my closet. A moment later, I had Sid’s pauldrons on my shoulders and Amber’s bow clutched tightly in my hand.

“You guys there?” I asked immediately, and though it was always the same outcome, I liked to check.

Hello, Sid said immediately.

We’re here, Amber giggled inside my mind. Let’s go kill some goblins.

I glanced down at the tattoo marking on my left arm and noticed the compass point on the back of my hand was already guiding me in my quest. I grabbed my new time stopper potion and made sure the entrance to the dungeon was secured, and then I set off through the forest on my way to the village of Maniton.

The forest was dense and mostly quiet, and my trek was only really disturbed by small creatures skittering in the undergrowth, birds of prey circling above the canopy of trees, and a small family of deer in the distance lapping at a babbling brook I figured filtered down into the river that split the town of Hadden in two.

It took me maybe an hour before I started to see proof of human habitation.

I followed the direction of the compass and eventually discovered a small stone pathway that was essentially just a scattering of pebbles, but the mud around me was well-trodden and clearly marked, so I followed the makeshift road until I finally reached the small mining village of Maniton.

It was eerily quiet, and I realized pretty quickly it felt almost abandoned.

There wasn’t a single person even walking through the village, and every single house I passed had shutters drawn over the windows. There was an ancient-looking tavern that was completely boarded up, and I felt the beginnings of concern start to fizzle in the base of my skull.

“It’s quiet,” I murmured, and my voice sounded as though I’d shouted the statement.

Everyone’s probably hiding, Sid said sadly. They’re afraid.

“During the day, too?” I asked in the same hushed voice. “It’s weird.”

We can’t blame them, Amber sighed. I’d be afraid, too.

“Hello?” I called out a little louder in the hope someone would answer me, but no one appeared from behind a door, and I was left completely alone as I walked through the small village of Maniton.

“You’re crazy, mister.”

I suddenly heard a light voice come from behind me, and I spun on my heel to find a young blonde girl with her hands on her hips looking at me with both amusement and disdain on her face.

“Hello.” I smiled down at her. “My name is Sir James Miller.”

“The monster hunter?” The child grinned up at me. “Good. You took your time.”

“Apologies,” I said with a courteous nod, though I matched her smile. “But I’m here now. I hear there’s a goblin infestation you could use help with.”

“That’s right,” the blonde girl said and leaned forward eagerly.

“In the mines. Everyone still hides, though.”

“And how come you’re not hiding?” I asked her with a raised eyebrow.

The little girl huffed and kicked at the floor.

“I’m not afraid,” she said eventually. “Even if my papa tells me I should be.”

“He’s probably right,” I reasoned with her. “Does your papa know you’re out right now?”

“Yes.” She shrugged. “He’s sick, so I care for him. I was about to go and milk one of old lady Sherry’s goats, he likes goat milk.”

“Well, you’re very brave,” I said. “What’s your name?”

“Lilly,” the blonde girl said and straightened up proudly.

“Pleasure to meet you, Lilly.” I bent my back slightly to bow down toward her. “Does your papa work in the mines?”

“He used to,” she sighed. “Until he hurt his leg. It was the goblins’ fault, though. They broke the footway, and he fell through.”

“Well. you’re a good girl, helping your dad,” I replied. “I’ll do my best to clear the mines, and your papa can get back to work once you’ve looked after him. Do you think you could help me?”

“Help a monster slayer?” Lilly asked, and her eyes eagerly lit up at the prospect. “Definitely.”

“Will you show me the mines?” I asked. “Then I can hurry up and rid Maniton of the goblins.”

“Sure!” she giggled and spun around excitedly. “This way!”

I followed the little blonde girl as she hurried her way through the village and headed toward the mines. It was still noticeably quiet as we made our way through Maniton, and I was determined to rid them of this infestation so they could get back to their day-to-day lives.

And I could get paid.

Lilly pointed to an entrance carved right into the side of the hill itself, held up with wooden beams and candle-filled lanterns, and she eagerly motioned for me to follow her into the mines.

“Thank you,” I muttered in the cool dark to the child who guided me. “For being willing to show me the way.”

“My pleasure, sir,” Lilly said with a toothy grin. “Just be sure to tell stories of how brave I was.”

“The whole realm will know.” I grinned down at her. “You’ll be hailed as a hero, and maybe your life in the mines will be over.”

“I hope so.” Lilly sighed and kicked at a stray pebble so it was sent skittering along the floor. “You’ve no idea how boring it gets down here.”

“Are you saying the presence of goblins made it fun?” I chuckled in disbelief.

“No!” Lilly suddenly said and looked up at me with round eyes.

“I’m sad for those who have died down here, and I’m sad for the families that lost their loved ones, but…”

“But a little bit of excitement makes for a better life.” I nodded sagely. “I understand.”

“You do?” Lilly asked as she led me through the mineshafts.

“Yes,” I said in a low voice. “Before I became Hadden’s monster slayer, my life was… Very normal.”

“Normal.” Lilly scrunched her nose up. “Yes. Normal is good, but it’s not exciting.”

“Exactly,” I chuckled. “See, you get it.”

“Through here,” the little girl said with her voice suddenly hushed. “This is our most recent mine site. We haven’t been able to go in for weeks.”

The tunnel suddenly gave way to a huge cavern, lit with flickering torches but decidedly quiet and empty.

“Thank you,” I told her again as we stopped at the entrance. “I can find my way. Now go, get back to your dad, okay?”

“Okay.” The blonde girl grinned up at me. “Good luck, Sir James!”

She was sweet. Amber sighed once Lilly was gone.

“She was,” I agreed as I peered into the sprawling mine cave.

“And brave. No one else wanted to come back down here.”

Maybe you could train her to be a monster slayer one day, Sid said with a slight chuckle. I feel like she’d be good at it.

“You’re probably right.” I smiled. “Maybe I should make a guild someday.”

I started to take a step into the mine cave, until a sudden rumbling made my feet freeze. It felt like the entire mountain was shaking, and I stumbled and tried to steady myself against the rock wall as the mine creaked and groaned around me.

“What the hell?” I gasped as the ground continued to shudder.

The goblins! Sid said. They’re trying to cause a cave-in.

They didn’t manage it, however, because the rumbling stopped almost as soon as it’d started.

Like a warning.

I instinctively put my free hand into my pocket and curled my fingers around the time grenade potion Harold had given me.

If his stories about goblins were true, they were quick and wily and a menace to go up against in a group, so my plan was to take them out in one fell swoop.

Picking them off one by one wasn’t going to work, and if I could coax them all into the cavern, I could freeze them in time and use Amber’s bow and arrows to kill them all.

That was my plan anyway, but in truth I didn’t really know what to expect.

But the goblins were just mischievous beings that used to be kids, so I didn’t think they’d be too much of an issue for me to handle.

Another rumble sounded inside the cave, but I steadied my feet and waited for it to end. Stones fell from the ceiling, skittered across the ground, and echoed loudly, but I just waited.

Still nothing.

I couldn’t hear the pitter-patter of feet, I couldn’t hear any hushed voices. I couldn’t hear a thing, nor could I see any evidence that I wasn’t completely alone inside the mine.

They won’t be able to resist for too long, Sid muttered inside my mind. I bet they can see the gemstones on Amber’s bow. They’ll want their prize.

“They can try,” I huffed quietly as I turned in a circle so I could see all sides. “In fact, I wish they’d hurry up.”

As if they’d heard my demand, all hell suddenly broke loose.

The jagged walls of the cavern came to life, and a group of small humanoid creatures appeared with skin the exact same color as the stone. They’d managed to camouflage themselves into the rock, because their skin was the exact same mottled shade of gray,
but now I could see rows of pointed little teeth and devilish yellow eyes as they skittered toward me.

“Okay, so they’re definitely not children anymore,” I said.

I’d been low-key worried I was expected to slaughter a group of kids, but these goblins were anything but.

They were dressed in dirty little loincloths that were almost the same disgusting shade of gray as their stony-colored skin, and their mouths were freakishly huge, almost too big for their faces.

They were skeletal and scrawny, with long fingers and toes with even longer nails that were sharpened into points and crusted with dirt. Their eyes shone in the gloominess of the mine, and as I continued to turn in a circle, I realized they had me surrounded.

I clenched my fingers around the time grenade potion in my pocket and took a long, steadying breath.

If I was lucky, I could deal with these little bastards in one blow.

I finished my turn and came face to face with what must have been the leader of the pack. He was slightly bigger, though only by a little. But he held a short staff made from a gnarled branch of wood, and the stick had some sort of glowing presence attached to the top end of it.

I squinted at the staff and realized the glowing ball of energy at the top was almost the exact same color as the gold of my closet portal, and I frowned at the sight of it.

“This one has some sort of magic wand,” I muttered in the quietest voice I could manage. “It looks like… It looks like the portal.”

It’s the same swirling gold magic, Amber breathed. But how does he have this?

Better yet, what does it do? Sid wondered in an equally hushed voice.

I was locked in a staring contest with the chief goblin, and he bared his pointed teeth at me in a grotesque smile as I stared into his yellow cat-like eyes. I kept my shoulders hunched and my stance low, but the moment I moved an inch, the goblin put his magical staff to good use.

He swished the stick through the air in a heavy swipe, and the golden magic followed the same path, but it left a stripe of gold in its path that the chief goblin immediately stepped through.

He disappeared the moment his body came into contact with the line of magic, and I jerked around in surprise as I tried to locate him.

All of a sudden he was behind me, a full one-eighty degrees away, and up on a ledge of rock. He let out a short screech that sounded like nails on a chalkboard and pointed his staff right at me.

The rest of his clan took heed of his command and immediately dive-bombed me.

I was suddenly covered by tiny grappling hands with long nails and pointed teeth that gnawed into the denim of my jeans and ripped through my t-shirt. I let out a surprised yell as they almost knocked me off my feet, but Sid’s new protective ability stopped them from being able to get a good handle on me. Their grimy little hands slipped across the sleek black metal of her pauldrons, and every time they tried to hang onto me, they ripped their hands back in surprise, as if they’d been burned.

The time potion! Amber called out.

James, smash it! Sid shouted. Do it now!

I managed to yank my hand out of my pocket as one of the goblins latched onto my arm, and as he opened his weirdly huge mouth to try and clamp down in a bite, I smashed the vial of green potion against the stony floor.

It erupted in an emerald cloud of smoke, and the cloud covered every single one of the goblins aside from the damn ringleader, who was still hopping from clawed foot to clawed foot in unbridled excitement up on his ledge.

As the green smoke dissipated, I realized I was still fully mobile, thanks to Harold’s blue wax stopper trick, but every single one of the goblins was frozen in place. They were like caricatures of themselves, and it looked like a game at a kid’s party, where everyone had to freeze when the music stopped.

Their limbs were poised in the same positions, their eyes were open but staring blindly into space, and not a single one of them could move.

I took my opportunity.

Not to kill the frozen ones, but to kill the ringleader.

He was equally still suddenly, but from shock rather than magic. He stared at his comrades and screeched angrily down at them, and when none of them moved, he stomped his little clawed feet in frustration.

“Ice,” I commanded Amber as I unsheathed an arrow from the quiver on my back.

Ready, Amber confirmed in a firm voice.

I yanked the bowstring back, took aim upward, and let loose.

The arrow soared through the air and pierced right through the mottled gray skin of the chief goblin. He let out a singular squeal as the arrow ripped through his chest, but the ice power froze him in place atop his ledge.

He’d dropped his magical transportation staff as soon as the ice had taken hold of him, and the wooden rod clattered to the ground and split in half with a loud crack, but I didn’t have the time to go after it right away.

I needed to clear the rest of the goblins while they were still suspended in time, and I quick-fired Amber’s bow until every single one of them was covered in a sparkling coating of ice and had an arrow through their hearts.

“Light work,” I scoffed in satisfaction as the emerald hue of the time bomb dissipated, but the goblins remained dead and frozen.

Good job, Amber giggled inside my mind.

You make it look easy, master. Sid sighed wistfully.

“Well, this’ll act as more than enough proof for the Baron,” I said as I hurried over to where I’d killed the chief goblin and picked
up his shattered wand.

The ball of swirling gold magic was still attached to the top, and I slid it into the arrow quiver on my back so the villagers of Maniton wouldn’t see such an obvious display of the arcane.

It definitely looks like the portal, Amber agreed upon closer inspection.

“They must be connected somehow,” I said as I began to exit the mine in the same way Lilly had shown me. “But how is the question. And why?”

We’ll figure it out, Sid assured me. But let’s get that staff back to the Baron.

“And then I can get paid.” I grinned widely at the idea of adding more gold nuggets to my fake storage container as I exited Maniton’s iron mine and started to head back to Hadden.

More shopping? Amber gasped.

“And I can get Harold to take a look at this staff,” I said pointedly and patted the end of the quiver on my back.

I was excited to see whether the old man had any clue as to where the gold magic came from, because it’d bring me at least one
step closer to figuring out how the hell I’d stumbled upon a dungeon in my closet in the first place.

Chapter Four

Midday was still a few hours away by the time I made it back onto the road that led into Hadden, though the sun was doing its damnedest to burn away the wispy morning clouds. The day was crisp, and the air was light and filled with autumnal scents like dried leaves and plump berries that clung to the brambles in round bunches.

As usual, a wide grin spread across my face as I took in the gorgeous otherworldly surroundings.

The forests surrounding Hadden reminded me of what Yellowstone National Park had looked like in my school books. The lush scenery seemed to stretch on forever, with rolling hills that were once green but were now covered in the fiery colors of fall. The trees stood tall and proud, and falcons spun in lazy circles above their canopies while waiting for a catch.

“Your world really is something,” I said to the girls as I watched a red squirrel with rust-colored fur scamper up a tree stump.

It’s beautiful, isn’t it? Amber sighed.

Your world is just as incredible, though, Sid said in a reverent voice. I could have never imagined anything like it, not even in my
wildest dreams.

“I wish I could show you more of it,” I said as I kicked a stone and watched it skitter toward the bank of the river. “There are places in my world that look almost exactly like Hadden.”

There are? Amber asked. I’d have thought your whole world was gray and metal and… And fast.

“The big cities certainly are,” I admitted. “But there are plenty of places like Hadden. Huge mountain ranges and national parks and stuff.”

That sounds amazing, Sid murmured. Maybe one day you could show us?

“I’d love to.” I grinned. “We can spend some of my hard-earned monster slaying money on some vacations.”

What do you mean, vacation? Amber asked in the same curious voice that she used whenever I mentioned something foreign.

I spent the rest of the walk beside the river explaining the concept of a holiday to the two beautiful women inside of my head, until I eventually ended up promising a trip to Yellowstone to show them my world’s version of natural beauty.

The guards at the Baron’s castle once again let me pass with looks of mild disdain, and I hurried my way into the keep and toward the great hall.

“Hello once more, Sir Miller!” The Baron greeted me with his usual air of pompous excitement, and I curved my head toward him in a half-bow.

I spotted his soothsayer, Florian, quickly hurrying out of the great hall by a side door behind the raised stone where the Baron’s throne sat, and I cocked an eyebrow at the quick swish of his cloak.

“Was I interrupting?” I asked.

“Not at all.” The Baron waved his hand listlessly. “My soothsayer was just giving me a report on the magical happenings around Hadden. I hear the goblin nest inside the mines has been taken care of?”

“Yes, sire.” I nodded and then shucked my quiver off my shoulders. “I have the proof here.”

I pulled out the shattered staff I’d taken from the ringleader, and the magical globule of gold continued to swirl calmly at the tip.

“What is that?” the Baron asked, and he even shuffled in his seat to peer down curiously and get a better look.

“The staff I managed to take from the chief goblin,” I explained as I gently swished the magical blob about. “It allowed him to…

Transport himself a short distance, but instantaneously.”

“Intriguing…” the Baron hummed and then suddenly clapped his hands together. “Deliver this boon to the quartermaster, Sir Miller.

I’m sure he can put the magic to good use, and he can also pay you in the meantime.”

“Thank you, sire.” I stooped low into a bow again, nodded once, and then turned on my heel to leave.

Harold eagerly offered me a drink of tea as I crossed the threshold into his living quarters, but I refused as I usually did and instead took a seat on one of the rickety old wooden chairs as the quartermaster busied himself with this intricate glass brewing contraption.

He poured himself a cup of steaming tea, thankfully devoid of any psychedelic mushrooms, and heaved himself into a seat beside me with a long groan.

“So,” he started with a heavy sigh. “Do you have something to show me?”

I pulled the goblin’s magic staff out of the arrow quiver again and reverently handed it off to the old quartermaster. Harold peered at the wood first, then the glob of golden magic that sat atop it, and he hummed in a low tone.

“It allowed the goblin ringleader to transport himself,” I said as he continued to peer at the magic that was so similar to my golden portal hidden in the back of my closet. “He disappeared and reappeared at will.”

“Interesting…” Harold murmured as he pinched a circular magnifying glass between the soft folds of skin around his eye socket. “Interesting, and concerning.”

“Do goblins not normally possess this sort of magic?” I asked with a frown.

“Not at all,” Harold explained as he continued to stare at the tangible magic attached to the long piece of gnarled wood. “They’re thieves mostly. This looks more like a witch’s staff.”

“Oh, yeah, the swamp witch in the dungeons, she had a staff similar to this,” I recalled. “Different magic, though.”

“Hmm…” Harold hummed, and then he gingerly set the staff down on the table between us. “My concern grows every day, in
fact.”

“Because magic and monsters are suddenly so rife?” I asked with a sigh.

“Precisely,” Harold said. “There has always been… A slight magical presence. Such as myself, for example. Or the soothsayer’s penchant for the future. But the arcane is ancient, long gone, and sorcerers, mages, and witches alike are almost unheard of nowadays.”

“Except I’ve gone up against several.” I shrugged. “And there’s more and more monsters and creatures that dwell within the dungeon in the hills.”

“Exactly.” Harold took a long sip of his steaming-hot tea and expelled another heavy sigh. “Hadden hasn’t had a magical presence like this in a very, very long time.”

“Do you know why there’s suddenly such a strong influx of magic?” I asked the old quartermaster. I noticed how his brow seemed even heavier, and his shoulders seemed even more slumped as we discussed the current state of affairs.

“I have theories, to be sure,” Harold murmured pensively. “But each is more far-fetched and unlikely than the last. We need to try
and find the source.”

“I agree.” I nodded.

Finding the reason behind Hadden’s sudden magical infestation would potentially lead to answers about the girls, so I was eager to take on the mission if it meant I could discover how and why my women were trapped inside their weapons.

And whether there really were more of them.

We’d found several sketches of other weapons inside the mage’s hideout, and Amber and I had found a map on a corpse inside the wyvern’s nest, so I figured there were at least a couple more women trapped inside of static objects dotted around Hadden.

Unfortunately, finding these trapped women hadn’t been as easy as following an ‘x’ that marked the spot. The wyvern’s nest map had shown the sword in the swamp, but when I’d battled the witch there, there hadn’t been a sword to be found.

The dungeon itself also kept changing paths, almost every single time I stepped into the stone labyrinth, so I figured most information on the maps we’d found would’ve been outdated. But it still proved that there were women and weapons to be found, and that was good enough for me.

Still, considering I didn’t have the faintest idea where to actually find them, slaying monsters and earning pouches of raw gold seemed as good a place to start as any. I’d been hoping to happen across another one of these mysterious weapons on my adventures, like I had with Amber and Sid, but it hadn’t happened yet. Given how this world possessed some gaming mechanics, I wondered if I had to ‘level up’ so to speak in order to find more powerful, magical artifacts.

But I was determined to find them eventually. I was thankful to have rescued Sid and Amber in the first place, and if there were others like them, then they certainly deserved to be freed, too.

“I will do some research,” Harold suddenly said, and his voice pulled me out of my thoughts. “In the meantime, continue to rid the town of as many monsters as possible. Your work is valued.”

“Thank you, Harold,” I said with a smile and then nudged him with an elbow. “And by valued, you mean gold, right?”

I made the old quartermaster chuckle, and I grinned wider at his laughter.

“Yes, of course.” Harold rolled his eyes and shuffled his way across the room to a locked drawer. Then he pulled out a small
cache of gold nuggets and handed it over to me with a wry smile.

“For your services. Spend it wisely.”

“Thanks, Harold.” I smirked and thought about all the awesome things I could do with this gold. “See you around.”

I left the quartermaster to his studies as I vacated his living quarters, hurried out of the Baron’s castle, and headed back to my cabin in the forest.

I was keen to get back into my own world, where I’d stashed the many letters I’d found in the mage’s hideout. The ones that bore the Baron’s wax seal. I wanted to pore over them in the hopes I could work out what the fuck was going on.

I explained all this to the girls as I trekked back through the forest, and I pushed myself through the swirling molten gold portal so its magic could transport me back into my college dorm room.

Amber and Sid materialized around me as I took a step back into my own world, and they both greeted me with a swift kiss to the cheek.

“Hello.” I grinned as I kissed them back. “Okay, time for research.”

I checked my cell phone and saw it was just after midday in New York, so my two friends who neighbored me were probably still tucked up in bed, and I had a good hour or so to investigate the letters with the girls before either Aron or Honey knocked on my door.

I put my newest payment of golden nuggets in the back of the closet, ready to pawn off right into my bank account, and then I pulled out the wedge of letters and scrolls I’d taken from the mage’s hideout.

The three of us sat cross-legged on the floor of my dorm room and unfurled each letter and sheet of parchment so we could try and decipher exactly what was going on in the town of Hadden.

“There’s a sketch here of a longsword,” Amber commented as she handed the yellowed sheet of paper to me. “Do you think that could be one of us?”

“I would think so,” I replied as I peered at the ink drawing.

“What makes you so sure?” Sid asked as she peered over my shoulder.

“Because there’s sketches of the two of you,” I answered with a sigh.

I held up the two drawings I’d found, one that perfectly depicted Amber’s hunter’s bow, and the other that showed the sleek black metal of Sid’s pauldrons.

“Wow…” Sid breathed in surprise. “Well, okay, so that makes sense.”

“So we’ve got a longsword, a dagger… And a helmet!” Amber said with sudden excitement, and she waved two more curled pages of parchment at me. “Look!”

I took the drawing from her and inspected it with a furrowed brow.

All three drawings looked to be done by the same hand, because the strokes of ink were in the exact same style, and the annotations were in the same sort of blotchy handwriting.

Which meant the longsword, the dagger, and the helmet almost definitely had women trapped inside of them.

“I wonder if that map we found in the wyvern’s nest shows anything about these two,” I muttered as I rifled through the mass of papers that littered my carpet.

I finally found it and spread it out on top of the rest of the scrolls so the three of us could inspect it.

It was stained, frayed at the edges, and a weird ashy-yellow color from where it’d been half-buried beneath burned bones and moss inside the wyverns’ nest, but it was still plain to see.

The map showed a very basic sketch of the dungeon inside the hills, but it also pinpointed the place where I’d found Amber beside the river.

“Yeah, we’ve definitely got at least three more of you,” I confirmed in a grim voice. “But it doesn’t really show where to find them. They’re marked somewhere to the north of Hadden, which points to the dungeons in the hills, but… Where, exactly?”

“We’ll just have to keep exploring,” Amber said with a firm nod.

“We have to rescue them.”

“I agree,” I said. “They don’t deserve that fate.”

“Nobody does,” Sid murmured, and her expression was a little haunted when she looked up at me. “I’m glad you found me, James.”

“Me, too.” I smiled across at the black-haired woman with the big dark eyes, and then I grinned even wider as I watched a pale flush creep up her neck.

Sid cleared her throat and shook her head so her dark hair fell across her eyes, and I suppressed the chuckle I felt rising in my
throat as she fought to keep her thoughts together.

She cleared her throat again and then quickly handed me another letter.

“Like I’ve already mentioned, this is definitely not the Baron’s handwriting,” Sid explained quickly. “But it does bear his wax seal.”

“So, what does that mean?” Amber pressed. “If it’s not from the Baron himself, it has to be someone in his household, right?

Someone who would have access to the castle enough to steal the stamp?”

“I’d have thought so,” I said as I nodded in agreement and inspected the letter Sid had handed to me. “It mentions something about… A guild? Hey, is there a soothsayer guild?”

“Doubtful,” Amber said with a shrug. “Soothsayers are supposedly rare finds. I wouldn’t have thought there’d be enough of them to form a guild.”

“Do you think it has something to do with Florian?” Sid asked, and I noticed her awkwardness dissipated the moment she caught onto my fledgling of a theory.

“Maybe.” I shrugged. “He didn’t exactly seem altogether kosher, and I like to think I’m a good judge of character. There was
just something off about him.”

“He’d certainly have the ability to steal the Baron’s seal.”

Amber frowned. “The Baron keeps him close, doesn’t he? Trusts him with a lot?”

“Yeah, I’d say so,” I replied in a grim voice as I looked down at the letter again. “And there’s a good amount of correspondence between the mage and whoever did write these letters. If they are between him and the soothsayer then… Maybe Florian hired the mage?”

“To do what?” Sid wondered.

“Act as like a… I don’t know, like a magical hit man.” I shrugged. “If Florian got the mage to open up the gate that might’ve held back the monsters and the magic, and then instructed the mage to inflict hell upon Hadden, then Florian himself wouldn’t be suspected.”

“That’s a fair theory,” Amber agreed with me as she tucked a stray strand of red hair behind her ear and nodded thoughtfully. “But there’s no mention of the women or the weapons, or us, between these letters.”

“Maybe that was just the mage,” Sid suggested. “Maybe Florian doesn’t know about us.”

“I wouldn’t rule him out just yet,” I warned in a grave voice.

“The Baron’s soothsayer seems to have a lot of fingers in a lot of pies, and it is his job to be all-knowing. I’d be willing to bet the gold in my closet that he at least has some inclination.”

Although there was no out-and-out mention of the girls in the letters to and from the mage, I was still wary of making assumptions.

It was better to expect the worse, and that way I wouldn’t be taken by surprise.

I wanted to protect the women at all costs, both Sid and Amber, and the ones we hadn’t found yet. They were my priority, and I’d made it my mission to help them.

“You’re probably right,” Sid groaned. “What if he knows where the longsword and the helmet are?”

“I’m hoping that isn’t the case,” I said. “But again, we can’t rule it out. We need to find them as soon as possible.”

“Then we need to explore the dungeon further,” Amber said decidedly. “They’re marked on the map, we just don’t know where.

And we have far better access to the dungeon than Florian.”

“Well,” I said as I shuffled the documents together and scooped them up off the floor. “I can think of far worse ways to spend a Sunday afternoon.”

I was eager to dive straight back through the golden portal and press deeper into the dungeon inside my closet, but just as I’d managed to stash the letters and scrolls in the back, I heard a sudden knock at my door.

I eyed the two girls, who quickly climbed to their feet and crossed the room until they were on the blind side of the doorway, and I tentatively opened the door.

“Hey, buddy,” Aron said with a wide grin as he ran a hand through the mass of curls on his head. “Me and Honey are grabbing coffee. Do you guys wanna come?”

“Sure.” I smiled back at my friend. “Give me just a minute, okay?”

“Don’t take too long!” I heard Honey’s voice from the room beside mine. “I need caffeine!”

“Yes, ma’am!” I shouted back and smirked when I heard Honey’s giggle.

I couldn’t think of a decent excuse quick enough to decline my friends’ offer, and besides, coffee suddenly sounded like the most perfect thing on the planet. I grabbed the small bag of gold that Harold had used to pay me for taking out the goblins and decided to bring it with me, though.

Both Amber and Sid eyed the bag of gold with curiosity in their eyes, and I just shrugged.

“If the storage container is a decent enough excuse for the IRS, then it is for my friends, too,” I explained with a smirk. “At least then they won’t start questioning why I’m suddenly rich as hell.”

“Good thinking,” Amber said with approval in her voice.

“You’re so clever, James,” Sid added with a shy smile of her own.

We got our things together and then finally headed out of the dorm room, where we met Honey and Aron in the corridor.

Aron was dressed much the same as always, with frayed black jeans, beat-up Converse sneakers, and a leather jacket that hid most of a metal band shirt. Honey looked far more effeminate than I’d ever seen her, and she’d ditched her standard flannel shirt for a skintight long-sleeved top that hugged every single curve of her lithe body.

She wore a long silver chain that curved over the swell of her breasts and dangled just above her stomach, but she also wore a choker necklace that accentuated her slender neck, and she’d pulled her hair to one side and even had lip gloss on.

For the first time, I really noticed how pretty a pink color her lips were, she just smirked back at me with a satisfied look in her hazel eyes.

She knew exactly what she was playing at, but it just made her more attractive. She could harp on about how gay she was to her heart’s content, but it seemed obvious she was dressing up for me.

The five of us headed down the block for our favorite coffee shop, and the crazy tall guy behind the counter recognized us immediately. He had a mop of thick black hair and even thicker rimmed eyeglasses, and his grin was wide and showed off his overly large teeth as he greeted us enthusiastically.

By this point, both Sid and Amber had their favorite drink orders, and it filled me with a sudden intense joy at how at home they seemed here. With me, in New York.

I just hoped they eventually chose to stay with me.

We took our usual booth, and as we sipped on our drinks, I pulled out the small pouch of gold nuggets to show my friends.

“You found this in a storage unit?” Aron asked as he poked at the three clumps of raw gold that I’d poured out onto the wooden table.

“I quite literally struck gold with it,” I chuckled at my own pun.

“We did it on a total whim, after watching a million reruns of Storage Wars.”

“You literally have the Midas touch.” Honey smirked across the table at me and fixed me with a steady gaze. “So, coffees are on you?”

“I guess that’s fair.” I grinned back at her and nudged her with the toe of my shoe beneath the table.

Both Amber and Sid waggled their eyebrows knowingly at each other, and I had to bite back against the laugh in my throat as Honey just rolled her eyes.

We spent a good hour or two with my friends before I finally made an excuse to leave, and before we headed back to my dorm room, to where the dungeon in my closet was waiting patiently for me, I made a detour to the pawnshop.

The same lady with the long acrylic nails was sitting behind the counter when we pushed the door open, and she looked up from her magazine as the bell above the door jingled cheerfully.

“I remember you.” She immediately pointed a finger, adorned with shimmery pink nail polish this time, and then her equally pink and shiny lips widened into a smile. “You’ve found more gold, I take it?”

“Yes!” Amber said as she shot the teller an equally huge smile.

“Boy, if I only had half your luck.” The manicured pawnshop teller shook her head with a wry chuckle as the three of us approached, and then she clapped her hands together. “Let’s see what you’ve got then, shall we?”

I fought against my own grin as I emptied the contents of the pouch onto the glass counter, and the pawn lady hummed in approval.

“They look as legitimate as the last, but my boss’ll kill me if I don’t test it.” She shuffled around beneath the counter before she pulled her testing kit out. “You don’t mind, do you?”

“Be my guest,” I said and lost the battle with the smirk on my face. “I’m sure it’s fine.”

The teller spent a few moments running her tests before she looked up at me with a smile.

“Well, turns out you’re right.” The blonde lady with the long nails nodded in approval. “Three nuggets at the same level of purity… So I’ll buy them for the same price.”

“Sounds good to me.” I grinned. “That’s nine thousand dollars?”

“I figured you’d remember that.” The lady chuckled. “Sure, honey. Cash or wire?”

“Wire would be great,” I said and shot her another smile. “And a receipt, please.”

Once I’d gotten confirmation of my transaction, the three of us headed back to my dorm room, and I had a constant grin on my face at the prospect of all the zeros that would soon appear in my bank account.

I’d have to take the girls on another shopping spree.

But first, the dungeon was calling me.

“So…” Amber said as she shut the door behind her. “Are we focusing on the longsword?”

“That’s right.” I nodded as I pulled the closet doors open and was greeted by the familiar pulsing glow of the gold portal. “So let’s see what we can find.”

Chapter Five

“The dungeon’s changed again,” I muttered as I walked through the cool darkness. “It’s already breaking off into different routes.”

The dungeon hidden inside my closet acted almost like a sentient creature. Every time I went to explore the tunnels and caverns hidden deep within the mountains above the town of Hadden, the paths changed as if it was a Rogue-like video game.

As if the stone were alive, as if it were showing me certain things at certain times.

It had been a really odd experience the first time around, particularly when I’d come across an entire swamp hidden within the dungeon that housed a grisly witch I’d ended up defeating. Or the gruesome blood fly nest, with the stalactites and glowing red chrysalises. I’d even found an old library that dusty vampire creatures had converted into a coven of their own.

Do you think it does it on purpose? Sid asked.

“Does the dungeon change for me on purpose?” I clarified in an instinctively hushed voice. “I don’t know. Maybe. It does sort of feel that way.”

I think it does, Amber said inside my mind. I think it purposefully shows you what you need to see.

“Yeah,” I murmured. “Considering everything we’ve found in these tunnels, it does feel like it.”

The cabin in the forest above, the one that hid the entrance to the stone labyrinth, had looked decidedly abandoned when I’d first found it. It was nestled deep within the trees and was a good thirty-minute walk from the valley town of Hadden itself.

No one had lived there for an age, and so no one managed to get into the dungeon itself.

Until me.

Until I’d found an otherworldly portal in the back of my dorm room closet.

It felt like it was all for me, like it was my destiny to not just explore, but to help the town above the dungeon.

Before I lost myself in a deep reverie, I shook my head, cleared my throat, and pressed on deeper into the maze of rock tunnels and caverns. I’d been walking through the dungeon for what felt like a fair amount of time, though I wasn’t entirely sure how long.

It could’ve been five minutes or five hours, time just didn’t seem to hold weight when underground.

The dungeon was illuminated by the same magically-lit wooden torches that were housed in rusted iron sconces nailed to the walls every few feet, and the flickering light cast my shadow in all directions. They were all I physically had for company on my exploration, and the sound of my footsteps echoed loudly through the long stone tunnel as I pressed on.

This time, instead of the same long path, the dungeon had decided to add in several sudden bends and ninety-degree corners that made me feel like I was walking in one huge jagged circle. I couldn’t tell if that was true, though, because every wall, every torch, every stone looked completely identical to the ones before.

“How long have we been going?” I sighed out loud to the girls, just to hear something other than my own two lonely footsteps.

Forever, it feels like, Amber huffed.

Keep going, Sid said with confidence. The dungeon will show us what it needs to show us eventually.

“I hope you’re right,” I muttered with a raised eyebrow.

“Because I’m bored.”

I continued on in my exploration, until the sound of my sneakers echoing off the stone was enough to drive me mad. Just as I was about to give up and head back, even though I wasn’t even entirely sure which direction was ‘back,’ the dungeon finally decided to throw me a bone.

I turned a corner and suddenly found myself in a long rectangular hall. The walls still had iron sconces mounted onto the stone, and the torches were lit but they were far higher up than was necessary, so the flickering light they emitted was dim and low.

The shadows remained long and skeletal in the new hall, and the place looked completely empty. There were no stairways or bookshelves like the vampire nest, nor were there any jagged stalactites like the blood fly infestation.

It was a tall rectangle of stone, perfectly flat, with deep shadows that made it hard to see into the corners.

“I don’t like this,” I said in a low voice, and I instinctively lowered my stance and my center of gravity. “Something feels… Off.”

Like what? Sid asked.

As soon as she’d posed the question, I got my answer.

With a long steady groan, the shadows that had filled the central space of the room suddenly came to life and seemed to merge together.

Then the black mass stretched upward and thudded against the stone floor, and it was plain to see it definitely was not just a shadow. The thud made the bricks rumble as the sound echoed off the stone walls, and whatever the huge blob of blackness was in the center of the room, it was certainly made up of something thick and heavy.

“What even is that?” I hissed as I automatically backed away from its supposed reach.

Now that it had moved, I could see it quite clearly, even in the dimness of the hall. It was a huge faceless globule of blackness, but it had a shine to it like jelly. It was perfectly smooth but slimy, and I realized the sheen to it was thanks to how damp it was.

It smelled foul, with an odor like rotting meat and moldy bread and everything that was just ‘off’ in the world, and I didn’t want to think too much on what exactly this sentient black mass was made from.

Because judging by how clean and dust free the stone hall was, I figured it was quite literally made up of death and decay.

“Amber, choose fire.”

Fire, got it, Amber said, and as she confirmed it, the bow in my hands glowed with the redness of the fire gemstone that was inlaid in the wood.

I pulled an arrow from the quiver, nocked it on the bowstring as I pulled it tight, aimed briefly, and then sent the flaming arrow right at the black blob creature.

My heart sank as I watched the thin shaft of wood bury deep within the goo monster’s body and almost immediately disappear, with the fire element snuffed out on impact.

“Well, it’s definitely not flammable,” I said.

I think it might be angrier, Sid said in a low voice. Is it…

Growing?

Sid was right.

I watched in horror as the thick black substance pushed its way upward, like a grisly mozzarella cheese pull, and it stood at least ten feet tall in response to me shooting it with an arrow.

Shit.

I didn’t have time to think of a plan of action, though, because the black blob creature suddenly rippled like a balloon being emptied of air, and it fell back down to the ground with a disgusting slap. But the moment it hit the floor, it spread like an oil slick, and I had to scramble away from its path.

Unfortunately, there was nowhere for me to go, and as I stumbled backwards, the goo latched hungrily onto the sole of my sneaker.

It was stronger than I’d realized it would be, and it stuck to my shoe like quick drying cement as I let out a dismayed shout.

My ability doesn’t work on shoes, Sid said in a strained voice. I can feel it, I just can’t… Shift it.

I used the toe of my other foot to push my sneaker off, and the goo monster hurriedly wrapped around my shoe until it was entirely lost within the opaque folds of the gleaming black blob.

“I liked those sneakers,” I grumbled, and then I pulled another arrow from Amber’s quiver. “Ice it is, then.”

Ice, I got it, Amber said excitedly, and the blue gemstone glowed cold on the bow’s handle.

I had nowhere to aim, so I just pointed the arrowhead in the general direction of where my shoe had disappeared, mainly in the hopes the goo beast would spit it back out for me.

I let the arrow fly through the air, and it didn’t make a sound as it buried itself deep within the goo creature. The black mass had pulled a tendril away from itself when it suckered onto my sneaker, and because it was still pulled away from the main mass of the thing, the ice managed to take hold of it.

The arrow sank into the shiny black ribbon of goo, and Amber’s ice power immediately sent a coating of frost over it. The tendril hardened on impact, almost as if it were crystallizing, and I eagerly smashed my sneakered foot down onto it where it shattered into nothingness with a satisfying crunch.

“Okay, ice it is!” I grinned as I grabbed my sneaker, brushed the ice and powdery black shards off, and sank my foot back into it.

But we need to find a way to separate it! Amber said with a groan. It only worked because it was on a small portion of the creature, if you send an arrow into that huge glob, it’ll just eat it like it did the fire arrow.

“Let’s test that theory,” I said as I nocked another arrow. “Give me ice again!”

Amber’s bow glowed with the ice power once more, and I pulled the string back to send an arrow flying directly at the main mass of black goo in the middle of the room.

The arrow disappeared within its squishy center with a soft sigh, and though I heard the soft crackle of the ice power doing its damnedest to work, it was indeed snuffed out by the sheer mass of the thing.

“Great, I have to use myself as bait then,” I sighed as I shucked both sneakers off almost as soon as I’d retrieved my stolen one.

I figured if I could get enough tendrils out of the thing, it would naturally shrink some, and though it seemed arduous, it was obvious that it worked. I kicked one of my sneakers toward the undulating goo monster, and a length of its black gloop immediately snaked out from the main portion, as if it were a feeler of sorts.

It reminded me of a spiderweb almost, where if something vibrated on one of the strings, the spider would come.

If I could trick it into separating itself, I could portion it out nicely and freeze it into oblivion.

The black tendril snaked around my sneaker and absorbed it eagerly, and I quickly aimed an ice arrow at the exposed part of the gooey mass.

It froze and shattered immediately, and before the creature could regroup, I did the same thing with my other shoe.

I’d frozen off two tendrils before the thing even realized what was happening, and it thankfully spat my sneaker back out the moment it was frozen.

“I never thought I’d be using my sneakers to fend off a goo monster, and yet here I am,” I snorted as I repeated the process again.

With each frozen tentacle, the central blob of goo shrunk, until after a good ten minutes of skittering around, kicking my sneakers, and firing ice arrows, the ball of goo in the center of the room was no bigger than maybe a small horse.

The blob creature wasn’t exactly sentient, and if it was, it certainly wasn’t intelligent, but I’d seen how it absorbed my sneaker.

It was fine at a distance, but if it touched me, I was doomed.

I kicked my sneaker toward the weird life form in the center of the room just one last time, and I waited for a length of the mass to snake its way toward its prey.

But it didn’t.

Why hasn’t it moved? Sid asked in a fearfully low voice.

“I don’t know,” I said as I watched the goo monster intently. “It just doesn’t seem interested anymore.”

Maybe it’s figured out what you’re doing, Amber said. Maybe it knows.

The amorphous blob continued to stand in the center of the room while undulating softly like the head of an octopus below water, and I slowly circled it with my bow at the ready.

Still, it didn’t move.

I wiggled my other sneaker toward my toes and kicked it forward, and this time it almost touched the blob creature, but still the thing didn’t move.

“I don’t understand,” I grumbled in frustration.

Do you think one of my ice arrows could take this thing down now? Amber asked eagerly as I caught my breath.

“Only one way to find out,” I said as I pulled another arrow from the quiver on my back.

The blue gemstone inlaid into the wooden handle of Amber’s bow glowed brightly, with about as much eagerness as Amber herself had in her voice, and I nocked the ice arrow on the bowstring.

I took aim briefly and sent an icy arrow hurtling through the air straight for the now much smaller globule of black goo. The arrow sank deep into the folds of the creature, and I heard the steady crackle of frost appear from within.

The creature suddenly rippled furiously and spun itself around in a constant circle as the first fingers of frost started to crackle and form within its body.

“Oh, I got it now,” I said with a grin as I watched Amber’s ice ability fight for dominance.

Another one! Amber said. Shoot it again!

I did as suggested and nocked another arrow on the bowstring, and I quickly fired another two ice-fueled arrows at the pulsating black ball of goo in the center of the room.

As the ice started to freeze it from within, the tendrils reappeared, and this time they were furious. Snake-like arms of goo
flew from the creature, in all directions, and one of them very nearly managed to slap against my chest.

I fell to my knees on instinct, anything to get away from the rippling black tentacle, and I rolled onto my back so I could quickly nock another arrow.

The arm of black goo seemed to know where I was somehow, because it turned and hurtled back toward me again as the main body continued to try and fend off the ice power.

I pulled the bowstring back and fired with a yell before I immediately started to scramble away on the stone floor in an attempt to get out of its reach, and just as the black goo started to snake around my ankle, my arrow hit home.

It exploded on impact, just as the main body of the black blob creature succumbed to the ice within itself, and in the blink of an eye, the room was empty.

Black powder, cold with the last vestiges of Amber’s ice power, fluttered in the air like snow, and suddenly all I could hear again was my own haggard breathing.

“We won,” I chuckled.

That was somehow worse than any other monster we’ve gone against before, Amber agreed, and her voice gave away the grimace that her face would’ve shown.

What even was that thing? Sid asked with the same disgusted inflection in her voice.

“I don’t know,” I said as I clambered to my feet and fetched my sneakers. “But I’m glad we got rid of it, because a bloodthirsty goo monster being released into Hadden would’ve been complete hell to deal with.”

The shiny black goo had completely disintegrated when I’d fired the last ice arrow into it, and there was no proof of it even existing. There was no longer any residue to speak of, nothing dark and sticky and sentient, which I was entirely grateful for. The black powder had melted like snow on the sidewalk.

But I still wanted to explore the dark recesses of the hall, because other than the gloopy monster I’d just defeated, the place still seemed altogether empty.

What’s that in the corner? Amber suddenly asked, just as I’d had the idea to investigate the darkest points of the stone hall.

I peered into the corner closest to me and realized there was a skeletal shadow that actually didn’t belong to me.

I carefully inched toward the dimly-lit corner, and then I recoiled in sudden disgust when I realized what was casting the long shadow.

A perfectly preserved human skeleton was slumped against the wall, as if he’d sat down to just take a rest, and his legs were laid out casually in front of him while his skull leaned sleepily against the rock wall.

Oh! I heard Sid gasp with a sudden sadness.

Do you think he got eaten up by the goo monster? Amber asked in a grim voice.

“I’d hazard a guess at ‘yes.’” I said with a heavy sigh. “Poor guy.”

It looked as though the goo creature had completely dissolved every inch of human tissue from the body, because the skeleton’s bones were perfectly smooth and clear of debris. There wasn’t a scrap of material or a speck of skin left on his corpse, and it looked almost comically fake.

Like a cheap Halloween decoration.

“I wonder how long he’s been down here…” I muttered as I squinted at what used to be a living, breathing human being.

A while, it looks like, Amber said in a queasy voice.

“I think I can see something,” I said quietly, and I realized I had subconsciously lowered my voice.

Maybe out of respect for the dead, but it was actually more for the fact I didn’t want to risk him somehow waking up.

I still remembered the draugrs.

In my world, the skeleton waking up wouldn’t have been a thing at all. But the dungeons below Hadden had proved that magic was rife in this world, and I couldn’t entirely rule it out.

The skeleton remained still and thankfully dead, even as I got close enough to touch him, and I gingerly extended a hand toward the pile of perfectly preserved bones. There was something lying a few feet to the side of the corpse, and as I got closer, I realized it was a dinged and dented metal scroll case. The man must have dropped it before he was consumed and stripped clean by the goo monster.

I picked up the scroll case and opened it, and I used my forefinger and thumb to gently pinch the roll of parchment and wiggle
it out of the tube.

Then I let out a long breath, skittered quickly away from the human remains, and felt another full-body shudder take over as soon I was in the clear.

What is it? Amber asked.

I unfurled the roll of paper so I could see what was on it, and I let out a soft gasp.

“It’s a map!” I grinned. “It looks like the one we found in the wyverns’ nest, Amber.”

A map of what, though? Sid asked.

“Hadden,” I said. “But more importantly, these dungeons and the fact that it confirms the existence of the helmet and longsword.

Look.”

I pointed to the map of the dungeons beneath Hadden, where there was a tiny ink drawing of a sword as well as a gray helmet.

If we put this together with the wyverns’ nest map, we might be able to pinpoint a location, Amber said in a reverent voice. We might be able to actually find the next woman!

“Maybe,” I murmured as I stared down at the ancient piece of parchment. “This map doesn’t mention the dagger, so it might be
outdated. Or maybe the other maps are outdated, and someone’s already found the dagger. Also, since the tunnels in the dungeon seem to move around, all of these maps could be different and might just lead us to dead ends.”

Oh, Amber said, and she sounded disappointed. So we’re not any closer to finding another woman?

“I didn’t say that,” I quickly assured her. “I’m sorry, I was just thinking out loud. I don’t want you to lose hope, it might just take us a little longer to find real answers. But I promise you I will. In fact, I’ve already found another clue, because this map is signed.”

Someone signed it? Sid gasped. An actual name?

“Langford.” I glanced down at the parchment and read the name out loud, in the hopes it would spark some inspiration, but I didn’t recognize it.

Nor did the girls.

Who’s Langford? Amber asked, and I could almost envision how her face would scrunch up at the question.

“No idea,” I said with a sigh, and then I put the map back in the scroll case and pocketed it. “But I think it’s worth investigating. I think
we should go to the tavern and see if anyone knows anything about this Langford guy.”

May he rest in peace, Sid said. Poor guy.

“He definitely met an untimely end, by the looks of it.” I nodded to the skeleton still slumped in the corner. “But his efforts weren’t entirely in vain, it seems. He left us a trail of breadcrumbs to follow.”

Why would anyone follow breadcrumbs? Amber giggled.

“It’s a fairy tale from my world,” I said with a smile as I checked my tattoo compass and headed back into the belly of the dungeons to find my way out again. “Where these two siblings are captured by a witch in the forest who has a house made from gingerbread, but they leave a trail of breadcrumbs behind them so they can be rescued.”

Oh, but that’s clever. Sid chuckled. They were smart children.

“Not smart enough, because they loved the idea of a gingerbread house.” I said with a laugh.

Were they rescued? Sid asked, with a sudden sadness that made her voice soft.

“Depends what version you read.” I shrugged. “Sometimes, they’re able to trick the witch into the oven. But other times, the kids
just get eaten by the witch.”

That doesn’t sound like a fairy tale at all, Amber commented.

Children getting eaten? It sounds more like a warning of sorts.

“I guess that, too,” I said with a laugh as I hurried my way through the quiet stone tunnels of the dungeon.

I spent the rest of the trek back through the dungeon explaining the many brilliant works of the Brothers Grimm, and the two of them both seemed particularly enamored with Rapunzel, though I wasn’t entirely sure how accurate my storytelling abilities were.

“I’ll buy you a full collection of the Grimm fairy tales when we’re home,” I promised the two of them as they eagerly discussed the various benefits of ridiculously long hair. “Then you can decide which one you like the best.”

It was late afternoon by the time I finally made it topside again, and as I exited the dungeon and hid the entrance like I usually did, I figured it was probably at least heading toward early evening.

The sun was low in the sky and mostly hidden by the golden canopy of fall colored trees, and its low light filtered through the fiery leaves to wash the otherworld in a warm hue. Everything was
colored yellow and red and gold, and as I finally reached the market town of Hadden again, the sun had begun to dip low beneath the buildings.

The town itself was relatively quiet, and the market stalls were packed up for the day and empty. The winding streets were only occupied by little old hunchbacked ladies that carried baskets loaded far too heavily for their frail arms, or kids that played together when they almost definitely should’ve been in bed.

The Bleeding Hydra tavern was the place where life was still raucous and loud. There was a band of sorts somewhere inside, because jaunty music and semi-drunken singalongs filled the air long before I got to the front door, and I could just about make out the sound of a lute being plucked and a horn of some kind being blown as loud as possible.

The place was packed with people as I entered, and no one really seemed to pay me too much attention. I was still the odd one out, thanks to my obviously modern clothes. Although, Sid’s black pauldrons did a good job with hiding the top half, and I supposed dark jeans were relatively close to britches.

At least, they would be to the drunken stupor that most of the tavern’s patrons found themselves in.

I chose the quietest table I could find, to the left of the stage and close to the bar, and I nodded kindly at the barmaid as she waved and eventually approached me.

“What’ll it be, mister?” she asked through a toothy grin.

“Just a beer would be great, thank you.” I gave her another genial nod and then realized I didn’t have any means to pay her.

I’d hidden all of the recent gold I’d acquired from the Baron in the closet that was in my dorm room, but I did have a handful of quarters in my pocket, though. I figured as long as I was giving some sort of precious metal as payment, then they wouldn’t be questioned.

I knew Hadden minted silver coins as their main currency, and American quarters looked incredibly similar, even if they weren’t actually made of a precious metal.

Though when the tavern’s owner did the tally for the night I was sure they’d be incredibly confused with the face of George Washington on a handful of silver coins.

I sipped at the ridiculously strong but relatively sweet tankard of beer as I watched the band play, and I just enjoyed a moment to people watch. Hadden was such a brilliantly absurd place, and I
always found it entertaining to watch its inhabitants live their day-today lives.

It was like LARPing, but for real.

When the barmaid reappeared to refill my tankard, I tapped her on the wrist to get her attention enough to ask a question.

“Excuse me, miss.” I smiled up at her with my warmest eyes, and she immediately blushed. “I was wondering if I could just ask you a question?”

“Well, sure, honey.” She grinned down at me with her cheeks stained a rusty red, though I figured my basic flirting was only partly to blame for it because she seemed as drunk as her patrons. “What were you wonderin’?”

“Do you know anyone by the name of Langford?” I asked and quickly searched her face for evidence of recognition.

But she just shrugged and shook her head.

“I don’t know no Langford, sir,” she admitted with a sigh. “I can ask around, though. I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help.”

“No, that’s okay,” I said kindly. “Thank you, anyway.”

She pottered away to see to another table, and I let out a long sigh.

Then I realized that I could feel a pair of eyes boring right into my back.

I looked over my shoulder, and a withered old man with sunken black eyes and a scraggly beard was staring over his tankard of beer at me from the next table. I just nodded and went to turn my head back, but the old man suddenly grinned widely.

“I knew a Langford,” the old drunk said loudly, and then he let out a hearty laugh that showed off his missing teeth. “He was my boss.”

Chapter Six

“Langford was your boss?” I asked as I eagerly turned in my seat. “Who is he?”

“Come,” the old drunk said in a slurred murmur, and he motioned for me to approach his table so he could continue to talk in hushed tones.

I got up from my seat and brought my tankard of beer with me as I sat beside the old guy. He smelled like sweat, horses, and old leather mixed with a pungent aroma of alcohol, and I clenched my jaw shut as I tried to smile kindly at him.

The man’s eyes were hard and black and almost covered by countless folds of leathery skin, his nose had been broken in several places, and he had a long scar that slashed his already thin mouth in half. His hair was long and raggedy but pulled back into a tight ponytail that shone with oil, and his clothes looked, and smelled, as though they hadn’t been washed in years.

The band continued to fill the tavern with raucous, jaunty music and particularly loud singalongs, and I felt as though I were some international spy retrieving intel from an old espionage contact who had fallen on harder times.

It wasn’t difficult to shoehorn video game mechanics and storylines into the world of Hadden, and if anything, it made the entire experience way more fun because there wasn’t a dollar on Earth that could buy me this kind of virtual reality.

Because it wasn’t virtual, it was real. Especially judging by the assault on my nostrils, and I continued to smile through the stench as I motioned for the old drunk to continue his story.

“What’s your name, boy?” he asked me as I situated myself beside him.

“James Miller,” I said with a courteous nod. “And yours?”

“My name is Lonn,” he said listlessly and shrugged one shoulder. “Formally ‘sir,’ now… Not so much.”

“You used to be a sir?” I asked. “Is that how you knew Langford? Were you both knights of the realm?”

“Not quite so fancy,” Lonn said with a snort. “But Langford was my boss, aye.”

Lonn took a long swig of his beer and swallowed deeply as he wiped the foam from the tips of his unkempt mustache.

“Who was he?” I asked as I leaned instinctively forward in my seat, despite his putrid unwashed stench.

“He worked for the Baron,” the old guy said and then huffed out a singular laugh devoid of any real humor as he shook his head.

“The Baron?” I scrunched my nose up in confusion. “You mean, this current Baron?”

“Of course not,” Lonn said haughtily and then took another deep glug of his beer. “That damn dandy sitting on the throne now is the second of his line. The old Baron, his father I mean, he was bloody formidable, and he ruled over Hadden with an iron hand. His boy is soft. Green as grass, and more focused on expensive wine and courtesans than he is about ruling. That’s why we got this damn plague of monsters running amok.”

“So, Langford, he worked for the previous Baron?” I said with a whistle. “That’s… Very interesting. What did he do exactly? Or sorry, what did you both do?”

“We were mercenaries,” Lonn said with another lifeless laugh, and he stared into his tankard with glassy eyes as he swirled the dregs of beer around. “We made a heinous amount of coin, too, and we were famous ‘round these parts. Or infamous, should I say.”

“Why infamous?” I asked with a raised eyebrow.

The old drunk contemplated the bottom of his tankard before he emptied it down his throat and motioned for the barmaid to attend to a refill.

She quickly hurried over and made a point to squeeze her doughy breasts together as she smiled down at us.

“More beer, Lonnie?” she asked with a soft coo, and then she turned to me with the same tipsy but warm smile. “And you, love?”

“Sure,” I said with a smile up at the barmaid. “I’ll take another, thank you.”

Lonn ignored her advances completely and waited until the barmaid had filled both of our cups again, and he took another long drink that left his mustache dripping with foam once again before he fixed me with a steady stare.

“Infamous because people were scared of us,” he eventually answered my last question as he broke eye contact with me and then stared into his tankard once more. “We collected taxes, we took bounties, and we even took a stab at the hangman’s gallows as executioners for a time.”

“Sounds like a lovely bunch,” I said and then quickly cleared my throat when the old guy glared up at me. “So, I take it you’re not
still a mercenary?”

“What gave that away?” Lonn asked with a dark chuckle. “No, we ain’t. I’m not, I mean. When this young dandy of a Baron came into power, after his father’s untimely death, he destroyed the mercenaries guild. Called us barbaric.”

“And so what happened to Langford?” I asked again.

Both the girls had been silent inside my mind as I’d interacted with the old mercenary, but I could almost sense their eagerness inside my head, like a dull buzz at the base of my skull. This drunk guy seemed to have a whole bunch of information we didn’t realize we’d needed, and I was keen to get as many answers out of him as I possibly could.

The band continued to play behind us, and the patrons of The Bleeding Hydra tavern almost drowned the music out with their shouts and singing, but I remained in the quiet corner with the old merc and listened intently to every mildly slurred word that came from his rugged mouth.

“Langford grew bored,” Lonn said with a nondescript shrug.

“We all did, truth be told. Hadden was rid of any so-called ‘unsavory’

behavior… meaning no whores, no thieves, and no bounties for a
long, long time. It’s only thanks to the damn monsters plaguing the town now that the Baron even allowed the brothels to open back up.

For public morale is my guess.”

Lonn snorted into his beer and then shook his head as he took another long gulp, and I processed his words in silence before I chose to speak up again.

“You speak of him in… In the past tense,” I said as I tried to keep my voice level. “So, what happened to him exactly?”

I knew for sure what happened to him. I’d found Langford’s corpse deep within the dungeons, where that grisly black blob creature had picked his damn skeleton clean, but I wanted to know what Lonn knew, so I just played dumb and waited for his answer.

“He went on a fucking quest,” Lonn said with a careless wave of his hand, and he snorted disbelievingly again. “We told him it was stupid. A stupid fucking plan. He’d found some ancient map, he thought it’d lead him right to fame and fortune again, but the damn thing looked old as dirt and gave no inclination of any riches I could see.”

“He went after what was on the map?” I asked and motioned for Lonn to continue his tale.

But my brain buzzed, with both my own excitement and the two girls’ trapped inside my mind. Lonn spoke of a map, and we’d found a map on Langford’s corpse in the dungeon caverns.

“Aye, despite our advice not to bother,” the old mercenary said with his eyes still fixed on the deep amber liquid in his cup. “We weren’t welcome in the new world the new Baron had forged, so we had to learn to adapt. Langford didn’t wanna do that, though. He wanted the life he’d gotten used to, and he didn’t want to give none of that up.”

“Understandable,” I admitted. “So, he went and followed this map on his own?”

“Aye,” Lonn said with another nod. “Last I ever saw or heard of him was when I told him not to go. He said he was gonna find weapons that would give him all the power in the land, and wenches along with them.”

“Girls and weapons?” I clarified, and I could feel both Sid’s and Amber’s excitement fizzle with heat at the base of my neck. “Can’t blame him for that, really.”

“Oh, if he’d had any real proof, I’d have followed him like I always did.” Lonn laughed, though the sad sound was more like nails
on a chalkboard, and he eventually ended up coughing wetly into his tankard of beer. “I’m too old for all that adventuring now, though.

Back in the day, I’d have been all for it. But where was the proof? I wasn’t about to go excavating a damn mountain to find them, not with all these new laws in place that said we couldn’t even bloody convene together.”

“The mountains?” I asked and couldn’t help but lean forward with interest. “The map pointed to the mountains, did you say?”

“To some sprawling dungeons in the hills, aye.” Lonn shook his head with a sigh, and then a million and one words began to spill from his slash of a mouth. “If we’d have done it properly, we’d have needed tons of dynamite and a full crew. But we just couldn’t. And besides, Langford was fantastical. It suited him when we had the guild, but on his own it just felt… Sad. His wife died of a broken heart when they failed to find their daughters.”

“Daughters?” I asked with sudden interest, and I really had to fight to keep my voice casual.

“Aye,” Lonn said sadly and then shook his head again so his greasy ponytail swished from side to side against his rounded shoulders. “The mercenaries guild and the old Baron, they hated each other, and rightly so. They stood for completely different things.

But it was just the way it was, and we made do. Until our daughters started to go missing.”

“The Baron, he… Did he take them?” I asked in horror.

Lonn just nodded and took another long sip of his beer as he collected his thoughts.

“That was when we started to fight back, and we eventually killed the Baron,” Lonn said and let out a grim huff of a sigh into his tankard of beer. “But we never found our daughters, and the Baron’s son took charge and forced the mercenaries out. Whole families were lost. And for what?”

I didn’t answer, mostly to let Lonn have his moment of sadness, but also because my mind was damn well racing. Not just with my thoughts, but the girls’, too.

Do you think by daughters he means… Us? Amber asked in a soft voice.

I always wondered why I was an orphan, Sid said sadly. I always wanted to try and find my family, but if they were mercenaries… And the Baron got rid of them all…

But I’m a good deal older than you, Sid, Amber countered. I’ve been in this form for decades at least, so we can’t both be daughters
of these mercenaries… Unless daughters have been going missing for all of those decades.

By the sounds of it, Sid said in a somber tone, that might be exactly what’s been going on.

“The boy Baron, though…” Lonn said with a sniff and drew my attention back to him. “He doesn’t know much. He was only a child himself, when we killed off his daddy. I imagine that’s as good a reason as any to rid Hadden of us. I can’t blame him.”

“That’s very… Fair of you,” I said kindly.

“He was just a boy,” Lonn said with a shrug. “In the same way the girls were just girls. But several mercenary daughters went missing under the old Baron’s reign, never to be seen again. I always wondered whether that’s what Langford was going after. Not gold and riches necessarily, but… Family.”

Lonn fell into a momentary silence, and I let him mourn his kin for a moment. Langford had obviously been more to him than a boss, and I figured they must have run together for many years before the current Baron put a stop to their escapades. And as

‘unsavory’ as they were, I knew from the multitude of fantasy video
games I’d played in the real world that their kind were most of the times necessary to the environment.

Mercenaries and brutes added a level of fear, as well as an understanding of unspoken laws within townships, and I suddenly realized Hadden was lacking that particular grittiness I’d come to expect.

I’d been so focused on getting paid for monster slaying, I hadn’t realized the humans themselves were actually devoid of anything ‘bad.’ I’d wondered why Hadden had felt weird, and maybe that was the reason.

There were no bad guys.

Apart from Lonn, who apparently just kept himself to himself and drank himself into a stupor every night. I couldn’t really blame him, though.

“So, James Miller…” Lonn suddenly full-named me, and I looked up at him with a genial smile. “Why are you asking so many questions about Langford?”

“Uhh…” I faltered for a second and then widened my smile.

“I’m just new in town, and I was interested. I heard one of the, ahh, whores in the brothel in the market speak of him.”

Oh, you did, did you? I heard Amber murmur inside of my mind, and I had to bite my lip against the laugh that brewed in my throat.

Luckily, the old mercenary didn’t seem to notice because he was battling his own grin.

“Oh, aye, he was favored by the girls,” Lonn said with a dry chuckle, and it was the first time his laugh had sounded even close to genuine. “He was a looker, Langford. The whores loved him.”

“It sure sounded that way,” I said and made sure to corroborate his words with another smile. “I apologize if I caused offense, Lonn. I was just interested in the history of Hadden, and he seemed to have left quite a mark.”

“No offense taken, lad.” Lonn waved his hand. “It was nice to speak of him again.”

“It was nice to speak with you,” I told the old drunk in a kind voice. “Thank you, again.”

I left The Bleeding Hydra and Lonn the ex-mercenary to their band and their beers and decided to head home for the night.

It was late even in Hadden, so I knew Brooklyn was probably headed toward midnight. As I walked through the fantasy market
town, owls dipped and swooped above me, like ghostly specters that followed my path and called out to me with wailing hoots, and the night sky twinkled with a light scattering of stars that glittered like diamonds.

The moon was huge and full, and its reflection bounced off the river and dowsed the town in a wash of blue light. Once The Bleeding Hydra was far behind me, the place was quiet and serene, and there wasn’t a single sign of life all the way out of town.

There wasn’t one cloud in the sky, so the full moon lit my entire way home. I followed the stone road that crossed over the river, beside the place where I’d first found Amber’s bow and arrows, and then I pushed deeper into the forest to go and find my cabin.

The forest was alive with life despite the late hour, and the owls I’d heard over the town earlier seemed to have followed me all the way into the maze of trees, because their soft hoots followed me with every step I took. I spotted a huge stag with his deer family somewhere far out in the distance, and for a moment I’d thought his huge antlers were a fallen tree, until he turned his head and snorted at me when he realized I wasn’t a threat.

I could hear the steady continuous rustle of voles and other vermin underfoot beneath the fallen twigs and crinkled leaves, and
when I passed a sudden clearing in the trees, I could spot bats flitting around in the air and dancing in tandem with each other.

The girls had both been silent on the entire walk back, and I didn’t blame them. My own head was racing with thoughts about what Lonn the ex-merc told me, and it must have meant even more to them.

Sid only had her most recent memories, of working as a maid in the current Baron’s household, but poor Amber couldn’t remember much of her human life before she’d been magically imprisoned within a bow.

Our current Baron’s father seemed to be at the root of it all, though according to Lonn the mercs had killed him off when the current Baron was just a child. I doubted my otherworldly boss knew much about what had happened before him, other than the fact he’d eradicated the mercenary guild, so I decided not to question him too much on it.

I’d only open myself up for investigation, and I preferred to keep my cards close to my chest. I knew a great deal more than I ever had, and I made it my mission to keep digging until I could get to the bottom of it all.

And find more of the lost daughters along the way.

I trudged down into the dungeon once I’d closed the shutters and covered them from the outside, and then I pulled the closet doors open so I could step back through the swirling golden portal and emerge in my dorm room on the other side.

Sid appeared on my back and carefully slid off, and Amber materialized at my side and quickly gave me a swift kiss on the cheek.

“Can you believe this?” the gorgeous redhead immediately gushed. “We’re mercenary daughters!”

“I mean, that does kinda check out, considering how great you both are with helping me fight,” I said with a wry chuckle. “But do you think that’s actually the connection?”

“I hope so,” Sid said in a quiet voice. “It’s the best lead we’ve had so far.”

“Definitely,” I agreed with an eager nod. “Good ol’ Lonn gave us far more answers to questions I hadn’t even thought to ask. It looks like we need to do some digging into the Baron’s father, I guess.”

“I don’t remember anything about him,” Amber said with a sudden sigh. “I wish I did. I wish I remembered more.”

“It’s okay,” I assured her and ran a hand over her shoulder.

“We’ll figure it out together.”

“Together,” Amber repeated, and then she nodded decidedly.

“Yes, together.”

“Thank you, James,” Sid said in the same soft voice, and she appeared beside Amber and I with a small smile on her face. “I dread to think just how long we’d have been trapped without you rescuing us.”

“I was trapped for years before you, Sid,” Amber said as she gnawed on her bottom lip. “I had old masters, but none of them seemed fussed about getting me out. They were too excited about having a magical bow that could help them fight.”

“You two are my priority,” I said to them firmly. “And whoever else we find along the way. I promised you that I’d fix this, and I intend to fulfill my promise.”

“We trust you, James,” Sid said, and her already soft voice became feathery and raspy as she looked up at me with her big round eyes glittering.

I looked down at the dark-haired beauty and smiled. Her pale skin was already flushed, a light blush of pink that stained her round cheeks, and her plump lips were turned up in the same small smile.

Amber approached the two of us as she ran a hand through her mass of flame-colored hair, and she shook it out so it spilled over her left shoulder like a scarlet waterfall. The way she swooped it over to one side left her clavicle and neck exposed on the other, and her skin looked soft and inviting. I couldn’t help but run a finger over her throat, and I grinned as she in turn flushed at my touch.

“You are my priority,” I repeated to the two of them. “I want to look after you.”

“You already do,” Sid said. “You take care of us so well.”

“I can think of other ways you can take care of us,” Amber said with a knowing grin as she leaned into my touch. “I can think of several ways, actually.”

“Oh, really?” I asked as I scooped my hand behind her neck and pulled her closer to me with a chuckle. “Such as?”

The redhead looked up at me with her bright blue eyes shimmering mischievously, and she breathed out a long sigh as she pressed her lean body up against mine.

The sensation of her against me made my dick twitch in my pants, and despite everything, despite the late hour and despite the information we’d discovered, despite every world-saving point we’d made, I found myself suddenly lost in her ocean-blue eyes.

“Kiss me,” Amber said in a slow breathy voice. “And you can find out.”

Chapter Seven

I pulled my fiery-haired girlfriend even closer against me and leaned down so I could finally capture her smile in a kiss.

Amber gasped and then melted into me as she willingly opened her mouth, and my tongue wound its way around hers as she pressed her ample chest and smooth stomach up against me even harder. She tasted like cinnamon and autumn rain and everything that somehow was so intrinsically and intoxicatingly her, and I moaned softly into her welcoming lips.

Sid appeared at my side and gently wound her arms around me as I continued to kiss Amber. The black-haired beauty kissed at my neck and traced patterns on my skin beneath my shirt, until eventually the three of us clattered down onto my bed while still perfectly entwined with each other.

“I wanna watch,” Amber said against my kiss, and she giggled into my hungry mouth when I faltered for a moment.

“Me and Sid?” I asked with a smile of my own, and I finally pulled away from her enough to look down at the redhead.

“Yeeeeessss…” Her chaotically fiery hair was splayed around her face on the pillow, like a veil of flames, and her blue eyes
sparkled mischievously as she nodded in reply to my question.

I immediately collapsed back down beside Sid this time and quickly pulled her in for a kiss.

Sid sighed into me and wound her arms around my neck as she instinctively pressed her slim body up against me, and the feel of her pert breasts and rounded hips being pushed up against my own body was enough to make my cock twitch in my pants. Sid opened her mouth so I could get a taste of her this time, and she was like a thunderstorm in a kiss, so another long moan vibrated through my mouth and into hers as our tongues danced together.

“We’ve been asked to put on a show, Sid.” I mumbled into her kiss, and the black-haired woman giggled softly.

“Well, then,” Sid said with her lips still pressed against mine.

“We shouldn’t disappoint.”

Amber pushed herself into the mound of pillows and already had her legs splayed open enough for her to caress her own skin as she watched Sid and I kiss, and the sight was enough to make me groan.

The redhead had pulled every item of clothing off already apart from her lacy scrap of underwear that was a product of our last
shopping trip, and I could see how aroused she was. Her nipples were already hard and pink as she ran her hands over herself, and Amber locked eyes with me as her fingers began to slowly push past her underwear.

I let out a low rumble of a growl and pulled Sid closer to me as I watched Amber, and I shoved my hands up beneath Sid’s shirt so I could finally touch her pale skin. It was as smooth as porcelain but warm to the touch, and the black-haired woman automatically shuddered at the feel of my fingers against her body.

I gently pulled her shirt over her head so her breasts could spill free, and they bounced slightly as she collapsed back down against the bed.

“Gorgeous…” I said as I looked at the two women below me.

I hooked my thumbs into the waistband of Sid’s pants and slowly pulled them down her long legs so I could appreciate every inch of skin that they revealed, and eventually I had both women down to their underwear.

“You, now…” Amber said in an equally throaty voice, and I felt a grin form on my lips.

“Are you running this show, Amber?” I asked coyly.

Amber’s face flushed at how direct my question was, and her cheeks were stained a pretty shade of pink by the time she managed to answer me.

“No,” she admitted with her blue eyes sparkling. “I’m just being greedy.”

“That’s okay,” I replied. “I like it when you’re greedy.”

“I like it when you’re greedy, too,” Sid said from beneath me, and she raised a hand to wind her fingers around one side of my neck and pull me down for another kiss. “Be greedy with me.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said in a low voice against her hungry lips, and I pushed myself against her enough to make her gasp into my mouth.

Sid’s legs wrapped around my waist almost on instinct, and she pulled me down even lower in an attempt to push our bodies even closer together. Our kiss was needy and quick, and it got to the point where I just couldn’t wait any longer.

My dick was achingly hard and trapped inside the confines of my jeans, and I rolled my hips against Sid with a long groan.

“Oh!” she gasped into my kiss as she felt how hard I was.

I wound my hands up so I could take her face between them and roughly pull her in for an even deeper kiss. Sid’s plump lips eagerly opened, and her tongue danced around mine as she continued to softly gasp into my mouth. She pushed herself up against me with needy huffs, so I let my hands eventually wander from her face, across her throat, past her collarbones, and over the soft swell of her breasts until eventually my fingers curved around her pert nipples.

Sid gasped again at my touch, but the sound was more guttural this time, and I let my thumbs run across her nipples in slow, teasing circles and grinned as her breath started to hitch in her throat.

“Does that feel good?” I asked softly as I continued to caress her rock-hard nipples.

Sid couldn’t form words enough to answer, but she nodded desperately as she writhed beneath me. I finally moved from her nipples but gripped the soft flesh of her breasts tightly in my hand as I squeezed them, and she mewled in surprise. I let my hands travel down from her chest and across her perfectly flat stomach until my fingers skimmed lightly over the curve of her hip bones.

“Touch her everywhere, James…” I heard Amber’s voice somewhere beside me, and it was hoarse and breathless.

I looked up from where I’d had my face buried against Sid’s neck, and I saw Amber watching us with her legs wide open and her own fingers running lightly across the already soaking wet material of her lace panties.

I let out a long groan at the sight of her, and Sid’s hands pulled at my face so she could steal another breathless kiss from me. I moved my hands from the soft roundness of her hips until I could grab at the tightness of her ass, and I hooked my arms beneath her so she was angled perfectly for me to push my rock-hard erection against her.

“Oh!” Sid moaned again as she rubbed her wetness against the mound in my pants, and she shuddered at the feel of my dick between her legs. Her hands reluctantly left my face to start pulling desperately at my shirt, and I let her yank it over my head so we could finally press our chests together.

The feel of her warm skin against mine was enough to cause another soft groan to spill from my lips, and I kissed at Sid’s neck, nibbled one of her earlobes, and breathed in the scent of her until I felt almost drunk on my desire for her.

“James…” she moaned, and despite how hard my cock already was for her, the sound of my name in Sid’s throaty, needy voice was enough to make it throb inside the confines of my pants.

I snapped my hips against her mound, and Sid let out another long moan at the feel of me.

“Please,” she whimpered as I broke her kiss so I could taste her neck again. “James, I need you.”

Sid’s hips bucked up to meet mine as we moved together against the bed sheets, and I could hear Amber’s steady but haggard breathing as she watched us.

I carried on kissing Sid’s neck until my mouth instinctively moved down toward the shape of her collarbones, and I ran my tongue along one of them long enough to get her to whimper again. I continued to kiss downward, and her legs shuddered around me as my mouth traveled across her body. I couldn’t help but smirk as Sid bucked and moaned when my lips finally found one of her nipples.

“Does that feel good, too?” I asked again with my mouth still pressed against her breast, and the vibration of my words made Sid hiss in pleasure.

“Yes…” she breathed. “You feel so good…”

I swirled my tongue against her nipple again and then sucked on it hard enough to make Sid’s body shudder again.

I hadn’t even gotten to the good stuff yet.

“So ready for me…” I whispered against the skin of her chest, and I skimmed kisses across her torso until my mouth was at her belly button.

Sid could hardly speak, and I noticed how both of her hands were screwed up into fists on the bed sheets as I gently placed a hand on either one of her knees. I looked up at her while I slowly pushed her legs apart, and Sid’s head immediately fell back against the pillows as I stroked the flesh of her inner thighs. I watched as goosebumps prickled her skin wherever I touched her, and I grinned lightly when her breathing became more and more erratic.

I kissed lower and lower, until my mouth hovered over her, and her chest heaved with how heavy her breathing had become.

“James…” It was Amber’s voice that I heard this time, and I looked up from between Sid’s legs so I could lock eyes with Amber.

“Make her feel good.”

I didn’t need telling twice.

Amber already had a hand on herself, and I watched as her fingers worked her wetness slowly and deliberately. She was this turned on, this aroused, just by watching me kiss Sid, and it was so incredibly hot that I felt a growl form inside my throat.

I hooked my thumbs into the tiny scrap of material that Sid wore for underwear and pulled her lace panties all the way down her legs. Then I pushed them back open and used my fingers to spread her even wider, and Sid let out a long whimper.

“James…” she mewled with her head still pushed into the pillows and her eyes screwed shut. “Please… I’m so-- I need you…

Please… Master.”

My cock throbbed again, and with one fluid movement, I pushed my tongue inside of her.

Sid nearly screamed, and she had to push her hands against her mouth to stifle the sound of her pleasure, but I kept my fingers clamped firmly down on her inner thighs so her legs had to stay open for me. Her hips bucked up to meet me, and I continued to swirl my tongue inside of her sweetness as she writhed helplessly beneath me.

My newest warrior woman moaned and whimpered beneath my mouth, and I swirled my tongue again until I was licking at the outside of her this time. I traveled just a little upward until I finally found the swollen roundness of her clitoris, and her entire body shuddered as I wrapped my lips around it.

“O-O-Ohhh, James!” Sid cried out. “Oh, gods, t-that… Please, don’t stop, p-p-please, oh, pleaaaaase…”

I kept the same rhythm going, just increased the speed at which my tongue worked on her, and I lapped at her clitoris again and again until finally Sid’s hands released the fistfuls of bed sheets and wormed their way into my hair. Then she held my head in place and rolled her hips in time with my tongue.

That in itself was almost unfairly hot, and I groaned into her soaking wet pussy as she rubbed herself against my already working tongue.

“James.” She gasped my name once as her grip in my hair tightened. “T-that feels… Oh, James, I’m going to… I think… James, you’re gonna m-m-make me cum, ohh-h-h-h…”

I felt a hungry growl escape my mouth as I rolled my tongue against her, and the vibrations of the sound made her whine all over
again. Then Sid suddenly arched her back and desperately kept grinding herself against my mouth.

“James, I’m gonna cum!” she cried out helplessly. “Oh-h, god, please don’t stop, I’m so close, I’m so close, I’m so--”

“Make her,” Amber said throatily, and I could tell in her voice that her own hands were bringing her close to orgasm.

The thought of it made my stomach twist and flip.

I lapped and lapped at Sid’s pussy until eventually she let out another long whimper as her orgasm rippled through her body. I kept my hands gripped on either side of her thighs while my tongue kept moving, and she rolled against me as her pleasure rocked through her.

Eventually, her body collapsed back down onto the bed sheets, and I couldn’t resist one last long lick against her pink wetness and chuckled as the sensation caused her to shudder again.

Amber immediately scrambled over to join us and eagerly pulled my face up to kiss me.

“You taste like Sid,” she said with a soft moan.

“She tastes great,” I replied as I kissed Amber wetly.

“Fuck her,” Sid suddenly said from beneath me as I kissed Amber. “Fill her up, James…”

“Oh, shit…” I muttered hoarsely as Amber pulled away from me slightly.

The redhead shook her long hair out and pressed herself against me.

“Yes,” she said with her blue eyes wide and shining. “Take me, James.”

I pushed Amber back down onto the mountain of pillows she’d made for herself, and Sid automatically slipped in beside her so she could kiss Amber’s neck and chest as I hovered above the redhead.

Amber’s pussy was shining and wet from where she’d already been playing with herself, and I pulled my pants away from me so my rock-hard cock could finally spring free.

“Oh…” Amber moaned at the sight of it. “Take me, James.

Please. I’m yours.”

Her words were like a shot of adrenaline, and I lined myself up with her and pushed the head of my dick past her soft folds until I was straining at her entrance. Then I inched myself inside of her,
slowly at first, and she eventually took my entire length with a guttural moan.

I held her there for a second and marveled at the feel of her around me before I leaned down to press my mouth up against hers in a quick messy kiss. Then I started to move inside of her. We rocked back and forth against the pillows together, and neither one of us wanted to stop kissing the other, so we whimpered and gasped into each other’s hungry mouths as we fucked.

Sid continued to kiss and touch every inch of skin she could reach, whether mine or Amber’s, and I started to lose myself in the both of them.

I began to shove a little deeper into Amber’s quivering pussy, and I quickened the pace as the redhead mewled in time beneath me. I could feel her tunnel constrict around me as I fucked her, and her nails scrabbled at my back as I slid in and out of her.

I could sense my own breath start to quicken as the pleasure began to take over, and the pit of my stomach started to twist and roil with the familiar feeling of an orgasm.

“Oh, fuck…” I moaned hoarsely. “Shit, Amber, you feel so good. So tight and wet for me.”

“Yes, James…” Amber purred as she arched her back to press her hips against mine. “All for you. I’m all yours… master.”

“God, Amber…” I gasped her name, and the sound made her shudder with pleasure.

I ground my hips and arched my own back, and the movement suddenly had me hitting that sweet spot inside of her, so the redhead bucked and gasped beneath me.

“Oh-h-h…” Amber had to grip into the bed sheets this time, and every muscle in her body started to tighten. “Oh, James… oh, right there! Oh!”

“God, that’s so hot,” I told her in a gruff voice as my own pleasure started to reach the breaking point.

“Fill her up, James,” Sid moaned breathily.

“James!” Amber suddenly half-screamed. “James, I’m gonna…

You’re gonna make me, I’m… I’m… Oh, fuck!”

Amber tightened around me, harder than ever before, and her sweet juices spilled over my cock as I felt my own orgasm reach its climax.

I let out a long shuddering moan as I fired white-hot spurts of my sperm deep inside of Amber’s still quivering pussy, and her
hands clawed at my back with sweet desperation.

“Fuck, Amber!” I growled as the last vestige of my orgasm racked through my body, and I shoved myself deep into her one last time as I came.

I kept myself buried inside of her, with the tip of my cock rolling against that magical spot inside her pussy, and eventually Amber’s body relaxed around me as she rode out her orgasm.

“Wow…” she muttered breathlessly as she brought her hands up to pull my face down into a messy kiss.

“That was…” Sid shook her head with a breathless chuckle.

“You two are…”

“Not just us two,” I growled as I slid out of Amber’s pussy and then immediately pulled Sid toward me. “Don’t think I’m done with you.”

By the time I made it to classes the next morning, I was yawning in the face of anyone who dared try and talk to me.

Which was mainly just Aron, and he had a constant shit-eating grin on his face at the sight of my exhaustion.

“Don’t say a damn word,” I said by way of warning, but I couldn’t help the smirk that pulled at my mouth when he let out a
huge laugh.

“I’m not saying a damn thing,” my best friend said as he held up his hands in the common ‘I come in peace’ pose. “All I’m saying is, I need to buy earplugs”

“Oh, shit,” I said and huffed out a laugh as I ran a hand through my hair. “Sorry, dude.”

“Oh, don’t apologize,” Aron said quickly. “I can’t say I’m not entirely jealous of the two gorgeous women polyamorous situation you’ve got going on.”

“Yeah, I’m not sure how I managed that one to be honest,” I snorted.

I’d left the two gorgeous women curled up together in my bed, and since I wasn’t planning on leaving campus all day I figured they wouldn’t get struck down with whatever illness Amber suffered with when I’d tried to walk through the gates without her.

The girls needed to be in constant proximity to me since I’d become their master, and my college campus was about as far a radius as I could risk.

Aron and I had just come from a musical theory class that we shared, and our next class was way across on the other side of
campus, but it meant we passed the coffee truck on the way, which I was incredibly thankful for.

Despite crawling through an otherworldly dungeon, and despite all the monster slaying, and despite the world-class three-way sex I was having on a regular basis, I was still acing all my college classes. I was exhausted, but in a good way.

In a ‘my life is fucking awesome’ sort of way.

There was always a lot going on, but after the mediocrity I’d become accustomed to, it was a welcome change.

I needed coffee at every opportunity I could get, though, so I steered the two of us toward the on-campus coffee truck.

“Yeah, yeah, my treat,” I said before Aron could pipe up. “I’m the one with the literal storage container gold mine.”

“Right.” Aron grinned in reply. “I’ll have my usual. Thanks, buddy.”

Aron’s usual was a fancy double foam extra shot chai syrup kind of deal, but I just opted for the biggest cold brew I could order. I needed the caffeine hit, and I needed it immediate and as strong as possible. The first sip of iced black coffee made me sigh gratefully into the plastic lid as it slid down my throat.

“Yeah, you definitely needed that,” Aron snickered as he slapped me on the back. “Get that energy in you, bro.”

“I’m gonna need a caffeine drip at this point,” I said as we headed to our usual spot beneath a particularly large ash tree on the west side of the quad.

Fall had taken Brooklyn by storm at this point, and the leaves were starting to resemble the warm fiery colors of Hadden. There was already a light carpet of crisp fallen leaves on the ground, but the trees that decorated the quad still held onto most of their canopies, they’d just changed from deep greens to autumnal shades of red and gold.

The sky was full of thick fluffy clouds that drifted slowly through the air along the path of a cool breeze, but the sun was still high and warm, so the shade our ash tree provided was still welcome. I sat with my friend against the thick trunk and let out a long yawn as I took another sip of my cold brew coffee.

“So,” Aron said as he wedged a white-tipped cigarette into the corner of his mouth and held his lighter up to the tip. “What’s new?”

“Nothing much,” I said quickly with a grin.

“Aside from having two girlfriends and pissing Brad off with how well you’re doing in class?” Aron asked pointedly as he exhaled a pale blue cloud of smoke.

“Aside from the obvious,” I said and chuckled. “What about you, though? What happened with the girl in the Slipknot shirt?”

“Jess,” Aron said with a wistful sigh, and he let his head fall back against the trunk of the tree. “We made out a whole bunch, somehow managed to persuade the jock DJ to play an Iron Maiden track, and then she disappeared into the night, never to be seen again.”

“She doesn’t go here?” I asked curiously as I took another sip of my coffee.

“Okay, maybe that last part was melodramatic flair,” Aron laughed, and then he shrugged listlessly as he took another long pull of his cigarette. “I don’t know, dude. I’ve seen her around, but she hasn’t texted me or anything.”

“Are you sure you even swapped numbers?” I asked. “You were pretty damn drunk at that frat party.”

“We definitely did,” Aron insisted, and he wrestled his cell phone out of his pocket to show me the proof.

He’d sent her two messages, one ridiculously drunk one confirming who he was, which I figured was the night of, and then another saying how much fun he’d had with her.

Which had been read and definitely not replied to.

“Harsh,” I said with a low whistle. “Maybe she’s just busy?”

“Maybe,” Aron said as he clamped the cigarette between his teeth so he could put his cell back into the pocket of his signature leather jacket. “Or maybe she just doesn’t like me in the cold light of day.”

“I’d find that hard to believe,” I countered immediately. “You’re a damn catch.”

“Oh, you think so?” Aron asked, and he batted his eyelashes at me theatrically until I laughed and shoved him in the shoulder. “I don’t know, maybe I’ll just have to go to every frat party of the year and see if I can find her again.”

“You’re a regular Cinderella, you know that?” I said with a laugh.

We joked about girls and gold until we eventually had to pull ourselves away from our tree and head to our next class, and I left my friend at one end of campus as I made my way to the other side.

I had another Production 101 class before I was finally free for the rest of the afternoon, and I was eager to get back to my girls.

I couldn’t wait for my first year of college to be over with, just because of the fact I got to move out with Sid and Amber. I had a stockpile of gold ready to use as a down payment, and though I was keen to get it exchanged, I’d decided to keep at least an apartment’s worth aside for exactly that reason.

I did have a few more nuggets I could transfer into cold hard cash at the pawnshop, though, and I decided to take the girls out to dinner once I’d finished my classes for the day.

The thought of it had me grinning from ear to ear as I finally made it to my Production class, and Brad the frat boy dickhead studied me with a furrowed brow and hard eyes as I approached.

He pushed himself away from the door he’d been leaning against and immediately puffed out his chest as he folded his arms across it, but I just smiled even wider in response to his obvious peacocking.

“What’s got you smiling so much, Miller?” he asked the moment I was in earshot.

“Just the memory of punching your stupid face,” I said casually as I breezed quickly past him, and Brad couldn’t come up with a retort quick enough before the door closed and our professor appeared.

My Production class flew by, and before I knew it the bell had started to ring, so I hustled my way back to Dalton Hall to find my two gorgeous women waiting for me just as eagerly.

“We missed you,” Amber said with a pout as she leaned up to kiss me on the cheek.

“But we always miss you,” Sid added as she did the same on the other side.

“Well, I missed the both of you,” I said as I wound my arms around their waists. “So, there.”

“Did you have a good day?” Amber asked with her lips still close to my face.

“Hung out with Aron for a little while, drank too much coffee…”

I shrugged and made a beeline for my closet. “I mainly just wanted to get back to you two and take you out for dinner.”

“Dinner?” Sid asked with immediate interest.

“We’ll go someplace nice,” I said with another grin as I kissed her on the forehead. “Pick something pretty to wear.”

“Oh, fun!” Amber clapped her hands together and hurried over to join me at my closet.

The otherworldly golden portal swirled behind our clothes, and it was such a ridiculously fantastical thing to be staring us in the face as we pulled outfits out that it made me chuckle to myself.

I still couldn’t quite wrap my head around how this was my life now, but I wasn’t going to complain about it.

Amber chose a slim-fitting black dress that accentuated every curve of her body, and she pulled her long red hair to one side so it fell over her shoulder like a waterfall of molten lava. Sid picked out a shimmery blouse that reminded me of the color inside a seashell, and she paired it with a deep maroon-colored skirt that fluttered around her smooth thighs whenever she moved. I wrestled myself into a light gray button-up and a pair of black jeans, and then I grabbed a few more nuggets of raw gold from my stash to exchange at the pawnshop.

I wanted to steadily build my bank account up until I could eventually sell the full amount of gold and put a down payment on an
apartment for the girls and I to live in during my second year of college, and I figured it was slightly less suspect to just keep changing up small amounts of gold until I miraculously ‘discovered’

the full nest egg in my storage container.

It was late afternoon by the time we made it out of my dorm room, and Honey had her bedroom door open as usual as we stepped out into the corridor.

“Fancy!” she called out from where she was sprawled on her bed reading a book.

She had one leg up and the other one splayed out against the comforter, and the way she leaned up on her shoulders looked far too inviting to be accidental.

Honey grinned up at me as I locked gazes with her, and I just rolled my eyes with a light chuckle.

“We’re going out for dinner tonight!” Amber said excitedly.

“Ooh, date night is it?” Honey asked and chucked her book onto the bed beside her. “I might be almost jealous.”

“Just almost?” I asked as my grin widened.

“Depends,” Honey said with a shrug.

“On what?” Sid asked as she stifled a giggle.

“On where you’re going to eat,” Honey answered casually, but she locked eyes with me again, and I couldn’t help but laugh.

I pulled the girls away from Honey’s doorway and quickly smuggled them out of campus, and I made sure to go the back way around Dalton Hall so any RAs that might’ve been snooping around wouldn’t immediately notice us.

“I still can’t believe how tall your buildings are…” Sid said in an awestruck voice as we made it out onto the streets of Brooklyn.

“Wait ‘til you see Manhattan,” I laughed.

“Manhattan is your neighboring settlement, isn’t it?” Amber clarified eagerly. “Sorry, ‘borough,’ I mean.”

“Yes, borough,” I said with an appreciative grin. “Well remembered. I’ll take you there soon. You can get some real good shopping done in Manhattan, I’ll have to be wary of you girls clearing out my bank account before I know it.”

“We’ll try not to spend all of your gold,” Sid said as she looped her arm through mine. “But you can always go and slay more monsters to earn more.”

“That’s true,” I agreed and leaned down to kiss her on the cheek. “Can you believe I was worried about having to get a job
during college?”

“Now you’re the best monster slayer in all of Hadden!” Amber gushed.

There was a really good sushi restaurant just a few blocks away, so I walked through the streets of downtown Brooklyn with the girls as the city bustled around us.

It was such a stark difference to the rural feel of Hadden, and I was still so impressed with how well the two women had become accustomed to the craziness of my homeworld. New York City was a culture shock for most people in general, but Amber and Sid had spent their lives in a world that didn’t even have electricity yet, so I was particularly surprised with how well they’d acclimated to it.

But then again, Brooklyn did also have that effect on people.

It automatically felt like home.

The sun had just started to hang a little lower in the sky as we made it to the sushi restaurant, and both of the girls had wide eyes and slightly open mouths as we entered the establishment.

The decor was all black leather, spotlights, and red thread, and Amber and Sid stared openly at the sushi belt as it trafficked plates around the place.

“Whoa…” Amber said in a soft gasp as she took it all in.

“I promise you’ll love sushi,” I told them confidently as the maitre d’ appeared.

“Welcome,” he said in a gravelly voice. “Do you have a reservation?”

“Yes,” I replied with a genial smile. “A table for three, under the name of Miller?”

“Ah, yes. Mr. Miller, welcome.” The maitre d’ checked my name from his list and fixed me with a slight smile. “Let me show you to your table.”

We slid into a black leather booth with low lighting, and the maitre d’ motioned for a waitress to come over, and she appeared as if by magic.

“Hi there, my name is Charlotte, and I’ll be your server for this evening,” she said as her ponytail bounced with enthusiasm. “Can I get you started with some drinks?”

I ordered water for the table, as well as a pot of some jasmine tea, and then we set to devouring the entire damn menu.

I had two tuna rolls, salmon sashimi, probably too much miso soup and some soft shell crab legs, and I could’ve eaten way more
but decided to reign it in for the sake of my waistband.

Amber thoroughly enjoyed her yellowfin sushi rolls, and Sid completely fell in love with her teriyaki style salmon. The three of us could have definitely cleared the sushi belt without a second thought.

We eventually called it after our second pot of aromatic jasmine tea, and the sun had fallen completely by the time we settled the check and headed back toward campus.

Not before we took a pit stop at the pawnshop, though. I’d had three particularly choice nuggets of raw gold burning a hole in my pocket, and I was pleased to see the same acrylic-nailed shop teller greet us as we walked through the doorway.

“Not you three again,” the teller said with a hearty chuckle. “My boss loves you, so I mustn’t complain too much.”

“We found more gold,” Amber said with a knowing giggle.

“Well, aren’t you the lucky ones?” the teller said, and I noticed she’d already pulled her gold testing kit out from beneath the counter. “Let’s see what you’ve got then, shall we?”

I left the pawnshop with a receipt for another twelve thousand dollars, and I felt giddy from the rush of it. My bank account was five figures already, with a whole cache of raw gold still hidden within my
closet, not to mention the huge diamond pendant I’d been gifted by the traveling merchant.

I was legitimately, honest-to-god, getting rich, and the thought made me laugh as we walked back toward campus.

“What’s so funny?” Sid asked as she looked up at me curiously.

“I just can’t believe my luck,” I told her with a smirk. “I’m becoming rich as fuck, I’ve got more muscles than I’ve ever had in my life, I have a crazy portal in the back of my closet, and best of all… I have you two.”

“Oh, we’re the best thing?” Amber asked, and she waggled her eyebrows at me as she skipped ahead. “I should hope so.”

“And it’s still pretty early…” I said pointedly as my dorm room door shut behind the three of us. “And I don’t have to get up for classes tomorrow morning, I don’t have any ‘til the afternoon.”

“Sooooo…” Sid looped her arm through mine and leaned herself against my side as she smiled up at me. “More adventures?”

“More adventures,” I said with a nod, and I headed toward the closet that kept the golden portal a secret. “Let’s see what else we can find in the dungeon.”

Chapter Eight

I stepped into the swirling gold of the portal in the back of my closet, and I felt the same inner body tug somewhere within my abdomen as the magic claimed me. On my next step, I sensed the cold stone of the dungeon beneath my feet, and I blinked as the otherworld materialized around me.

Amber’s bow was safe in my right hand, where she’d held it in my dorm room in the real world, and Sid’s sleek black pauldrons were already fastened to my shoulders.

“Testing, testing…” I said quietly into the darkness, and I heard both girls giggle inside of my head.

We’re here, Amber assured me.

We can hear you, Sid said with another light laugh.

“Just checking,” I said with a grin of my own, and I glanced down at the flickering compass on my wrist. “Let’s explore some more, shall we?”

The girls both made sounds of excitement inside of my mind and so, instead of heading upward on the spiral staircase that led to the cabin in the forest, I immediately pressed further into the dungeon itself.

It was early evening in Brooklyn, so the sun had probably set upon the town of Hadden itself. I’d worked out that the otherworld was maybe an hour or two ahead of New York as far as cross dimensional time zones went, and I figured I had a good couple of hours to crawl through the dungeon and see what I could find.

Every time I’d stepped through the labyrinthine stone tunnels, the routes had changed at will, but it never felt devious. It was like the dungeon wanted to show me certain things at certain times, and it always seemed to steer me in the right direction. I felt confident I’d never get lost within its winding tunnels, but even if I did, I had my skill tree and compass tattoos that flickered against the back of my wrist at will.

What do you think we’ll find this time? Amber asked excitedly as I followed the already lit wooden torches that were nailed right into the stone walls in rusted iron sconces.

“I’d settle for more monsters and therefore more gold,” I said with a smirk. “But maybe we’ll find something on the longsword, dagger, and the helmet. I’d be willing to bet the money in my account that there were other women, like you two, trapped inside of them.”

We should definitely try to find and rescue them, Sid said firmly. No one deserves this fate.

“I agree,” I said as my footsteps echoed against the smooth stone of the dungeon walls. “I’m hoping they have more of a memory, because maybe they can help us as much as I can help them.”

I pressed further into the stone maze in the hopes of finding something, but for a long while it just remained as a long stretch of tunnel, with nothing to see aside from the flickering flames that came from the magical torches.

I walked through the dungeon for what felt like at least fifteen minutes before any sort of change happened. I was following a slight bend in the dungeon when I suddenly found myself in a circular antechamber that looked slightly familiar to one I’d seen before.

But instead of just two or three different entrances to choose from, this huge room had at least five. And I apparently had a time-sensitive decision to make.

I felt my left foot suddenly sink into the stone a few inches, and the slab beneath my shoe dipped into the ground as if I’d hit a trip button.

Which was exactly what had happened, because the moment I lifted my foot up from the sunken stone, the ceiling above me
suddenly groaned and shrieked as the huge slab of rock started to drag against itself.

“Oh, shit…” I said as I slowly looked up in dismay.

Is the… Is the ceiling coming down? Amber asked in an equally fearful voice.

“That’s exactly what it’s doing,” I answered with a groan. “I have to go through one of these tunnels to escape it.”

I quickly looked down at my left hand, where the compass tattoo flickered. I stood in the center of the room and turned slowly while I kept my eyes fixed on the tattoo, in the hopes it would steer me in the right direction.

It needed to hurry up, too, because the stone ceiling was about to flatten me like a pancake.

I crouched down as I continued to turn in a circle, and finally the needle of the tattoo flickered and then held its point toward the far left exit.

“This one!” I let out a thankful gasp and quickly shuffled across to the archway furthest on the left.

The ceiling was so low by now that I had to basically crawl my way toward the tunnel, and my hands and knees grappled with the
smooth stone floor as I tried to find enough grip to yank myself toward the correct exit. The stone ceiling rumbled menacingly and showered me with a bunch of stones and dust as it continued to fall, and I shook my hair out with a desperate yell as I flung myself toward the exit.

I had about two feet of space to work with at this point, and then my sleek black pauldrons suddenly glowed around me with a high shine.

I can feel it! Sid grunted with sudden exertion. Move quicker, James, I can’t hold it for long!

I realized she was using her newest protective ability to hold the heavy slab of stone away from me, but I could still feel the pressure building.

“I’m trying!” I said with a gasp as I pushed forward with my feet and then eventually gave up trying to crawl and bodily flung myself at the tunnel entrance.

I rolled on my back, full Indiana Jones style, and somehow made it through the gap just as the stone ceiling smacked down against the floor of the antechamber.

I just didn’t have a hat to grab, which was a mighty shame because that would’ve looked so awesome.

I splayed my arms and legs out against the cool stone and stared upward with my chest heaving, and I let out a long groan of gratitude when I realized the tunnel that my compass had directed me toward didn’t start trying to squish me like a bug.

“Jesus Christ…” I gasped as I squeezed my eyes shut.

Are you okay? Sid asked in a desperate voice.

“I’m fine,” I said before I clambered my way to my feet and shook myself free of the dust and stone. “Thanks to you.”

I was really trying, Sid said with a laugh, though the sound was more desperate than it was humorous.

You did great, Amber said confidently. But how did that even happen?

“I stepped on a booby trap,” I sighed. “I didn’t realize what it was until it was too late.”

Okay, well, now we know, Amber said firmly. This dungeon really likes to put you through your paces, doesn’t it?

“I’ll say…” I muttered. “Okay, let’s keep going, before something else happens.”

The tunnel my compass had directed me to was long and straight, but thankfully still lit with magical torches so I could at least still see where I was stepping.

I was wary of any stone that looked like it was a slightly different shade of gray, or any slightly raised slab that could set off another trap, but for the entire length of the dungeon tunnel I found myself in, it was as quiet as the grave.

The girls were also quiet in my mind, and I was thankful for it. I figured they could tell how hard I was concentrating on where I was putting my feet, and after the surprise of the antechamber’s ceiling, I wasn’t about to make the same mistake twice.

Can you hear that? Sid suddenly whispered inside of my head after a few minutes of my mildly panicked walking.

I stopped in my tracks at her words and strained my ears.

“I can definitely hear something…” I said in a quiet voice, and I slowly inched myself forward.

It was a dull rumble, almost like machinery but more… Fluid, and I realized with a jolt that it was water I could hear.

Water, beneath a magical dungeon? Well, I guess it was no stranger than an underground swamp.

I shook my head and realized it was probably an extension of the river that ran through the town of Hadden. All rivers started in the mountains, and the dungeon itself was hidden within them, too, so it made sense to come across an underground section of water.

It didn’t sound like a babbling brook, though. It sounded like literal tons of river water flowing at an alarmingly fast rate. It was so loud it sounded like Niagara Falls, and I kept my feet flush against the ground as I inched closer to the now catastrophically huge sound of rushing water.

I followed a slight bend in the dungeon tunnel, and then suddenly I was on the precipice of a damn waterfall.

“Holy shit…” I let out a choked gasp as I took in my surroundings.

The tunnel opened up into the side of the waterfall almost like a sewage pipe in a dam wall, and I extended a hand to press against the stone to steady myself as wind and water whipped through the air in front of me.

It was like nothing I’d ever seen before in my entire life, and that was including my experiences in the otherworld.

The dungeon was naturally underground, so I’d already experienced tight stone tunnels and nefarious booby traps, and I’d even found a swamp as well as other entrances dotted around the hills. But the waterfall was just something else.

It was huge, and the roiling pool at the bottom had been whipped into a thick white foam, thanks to the speed at which the water fell from its precipice. It was at least fifty feet to the bottom, and as I peered downward, I felt the sway of vertigo start to take hold.

I took a step back, further into the safety of the dungeon tunnel, and tried to catch my breath.

Does it want you to jump? Amber asked in a soft voice.

“You think the dungeon itself planned this?” I asked and tried to hide the nervousness in my voice.

It’s always changed and directed you to where you need to go, Amber replied reasonably. So it must be showing you this waterfall for a reason. We have no other way forward. The dungeon wants you to jump.

I think that’s exactly what it wants us to do, Sid said in an equally hushed tone. James?

“Shit, that’s some waterfall,” I said in a tight voice. “I mean, I’m a fair swimmer, but… I’ve never done something like this before.”

I glanced down at my skill tree tattoo and saw my compass was helpfully pointing directly forward, directly past the lip of the stone tunnel and down into the foaming waters at the bottom of the waterfall.

It’ll be okay, Amber assured me. The dungeon has always put us where we needed to be.

“I mean, this might be the direction, sure, but it’s probably counting on me being an Olympic level swimmer, too…” I muttered as I peered over the edge once more.

The air was damp around me, and my hair was already half-soaked just from the spray that came up from the bottom. I watched the sheets of water cascade over the edge and past me into the pool below, and I felt my heart crawl up into my throat.

I had no way of knowing how deep the pool was, and I knew Amber’s ice arrows were going to have little to no effect on the sheer amount of water that raged continuously downward.

I just needed to not think about it. I needed to tell myself it would be just like jumping into a pool back home.

Nothing to it.

It was just water, anyway.

I shook my shoulders out, swiveled my head around to warm my neck up, and jumped from toe to toe as I tried to psyche myself up for the absolutely insane thing I was about to do.

But I had no other choice.

The antechamber was now blocked, and the only way back was through the water. I had to go down. I had to jump in.

“Okay,” I said with a shudder as I continued to limber up in the way I’d seen professional swimmers do. “Okay, yeah, I can do this.

It’ll be fine. I’ll just jump in. Nothing to it.”

It’ll be okay, Sid assured me. Any rocks at the bottom, or anything like that, I can protect you from them.

“That actually does make me feel better,” I said with a lightheaded laugh, and I shook my arms out one last time. “Alright, fine, let’s do this.”

Before I could talk myself out of it, I took off at a sprint.

I planted my right foot on the edge of the tunnel and then used it to propel myself out from the hole in the stone, and I hung in the air for a brief moment like a Looney Tunes character before gravity took
hold and sent me barreling toward the bottom. I crossed my arms over my chest, as much as I could around Sid’s pauldrons, and I kept my legs together and as straight as possible, in the hopes that they’d pierce the surface of the water enough for me to sink through in a relatively painless fashion.

Before I had a chance to even let out a panicked shout, my feet came into contact with the foaming waters at the bottom of the waterfall. I sank feet first, and the chill of the water took hold almost immediately. I let out a stream of bubbles in what I wanted to be a shout, and my limbs suddenly broke free of their rigidness and flailed about as I tried to find the surface.

I was spun in all directions as though I were a lone sock left in the washer, and I couldn’t help but let out panicked shouts that expelled my lungs’ oxygen stores pretty damn quickly.

One of my extended legs suddenly came into contact with a rock, which I was thankful for, because I immediately planted both of my feet against it and pushed upwards.

After a moment that felt like a damn hour, I broke free of the water’s surface with a splutter.

I’d floated a ways past the foam right at the bottom of the falls, and I floated there for a second as I tried to catch my breath. The underground river calmed almost as soon as it was out of the way of the main waterfall, though droplets still splashed around me like a hazy rain as I continued to let the gentle current take me.

I found myself in shallow waters pretty quickly, and the magical dungeon reappeared around me as I pulled myself out of the river and back onto hard stone. It was covered in murky green algae, but it was still solid ground, and I was immediately thankful for it.

The river continued on into the darkness, but to my right was another stone tunnel lit with magically flaming torches, so I quickly followed its path.

After a moment, I glanced down at my wrist, and I raised an eyebrow at what I could see.

“My compass is going crazy…” I said quietly, though my voice still gently reverberated against the tight stone walls. “But this is the only path forward.”

Keep going, Amber urged. We can’t turn back, and maybe if we keep following this tunnel we’ll find out why the compass is spinning around so much.

“Maybe it’s an electromagnet?” I offered and then shook my head when both the women inside my mind made sounds of confusion. “Okay, yeah, no electromagnet, and don’t ask me to explain it because I honestly don’t know for sure.”

The tattoo on the back of my wrist still continued to spin and jitter erratically as I pushed further into the tight stone tunnel, and I felt the first hint of trepidation creep up my spine as I wondered what the reason for the malfunction could be.

Normally, the compass part of my tattoo steered me straight and true, and I’d never seen it act so broken before. I mean, it wasn’t even a real compass. It was a literal tattoo come alive, so there was naturally room for a magical culprit, but that was something still totally unfathomable to me.

I had no idea what to expect, but my only choice was to push forward, so I continued to put one foot in front of the other with my still wet hair getting in my eyes.

The stone tunnel went on for what seemed like forever, and the whole time the compass spun and twisted in confusion.

After maybe fifteen minutes of silent walking, though, I saw something at the end of the tunnel.

A door.

How can there be a door? Sid asked in confusion.

I thought the dungeon was just home to monsters… Amber said in an equally baffled voice. Last I checked, I’m sure monsters don’t build doors.

Maybe a monster did not build it, Sid said in a grim tone.

“We have nowhere else to go,” I replied to the girls in a low voice. “But I’m wary of just walking through a door completely uninvited.”

I pulled an arrow out of the leather quiver attached to my back and nocked it on the string of Amber’s bow.

“Ice,” I commanded as I aimed the arrowhead, and the blue gemstone glowed brightly in response to Amber’s powers.

I let the arrow fly through the air so it smacked into the wood with a satisfying thunk, and almost immediately spirals of delicate frost covered the door.

I wanted to see if anything came through that door when they realized I was on the other side, but the tunnel remained empty and quiet.

The wood looked old and worn as I approached it, but there was no knocker, no sign, nothing to allude as to what was behind it.

But, as I reached up to touch the wood with my left hand, I noticed my tattoo.

The compass had stilled, and it pointed dead straight, directly through the door.

“Well, this is definitely our route,” I said with a sigh, and I pushed at the heavy wooden door until it eventually started to creak open.

The rusted hinges let out long, aggravated sighs as I opened the door, and I tentatively peered past it into the room in front of me.

It was huge, more of a hall than just a room. The space had tall ceilings and more sconces filled with magically-lit torches that sent long shadows flickering around the place, and as my eyes adjusted from the darkness of the stone tunnel, I realized the place looked like some sort of base.

An abandoned one, but definitely a man-made base.

A bunch of old cots made from raw leather and wood, with lumpy-looking pillows and fur blankets, were neatly organized in the western side of the base in an almost military formation, and on the
opposing side of the huge hall was a training area that resembled the back room in Harold’s quarters. It was full of straw-stuffed dummies with several stab wounds and hacked-off limbs.

But most intriguingly, in the center of the room were several tables and bookshelves covered in not just dust, but scrolls, ancient-looking books, and plans that looked similar to modern-day blueprints, so I hurried over to the first table and was eager to see if I could find anything related to the girls.

What is this place? Amber asked.

“I have no idea,” I said as I shifted through the dusty, age worn paperwork on the table in front of me. “But check out what I’ve just found.”

I held up several sheets of yellowed parchment and shook off the thick layer of gray dust, and I heard the girls gasp inside of my mind when they realized what was drawn on them in messy black ink.

I’d found another set of ink sketches that perfectly depicted Amber’s bow, Sid’s pauldrons, as well as the longsword, dagger, and helmet we’d seen before on the maps we’d found.

Oh, my… But that’s us! Sid gasped with excitement. Do you think, whoever lived in these dungeons… They were trying to find us, too?

“It would make sense as to why there are a bunch of dungeon maps scattered around Hadden,” I said with a fervent nod. “Whoever used to live in this base, they knew exactly what was going on.”

I wonder who they were… Amber said with a sigh.

“Rebels,” I replied immediately, and then I held up the biggest sheet of parchment I’d found.

It was old, frayed at the edges, and covered in the same thick layer of dust, but it clearly showed several signatures at the bottom of a rebels’ manifesto.

“They were planning to destroy the Baron’s line…” I muttered as I read. “Not this current Baron, his father before him. Like Lonn said. Apparently, they had reason to believe the previous Baron had sought to control all of the magic in Hadden.”

He wanted to control magic? Sid repeated, but she posed it as a question. Why?

“No idea,” I said with a shrug. “Money, fame… Most likely power.”

Power-hungry sounds about right, Amber said grimly. Thank god the current Baron isn’t on the same path.

Lonn said he was just a boy when his father was killed by the mercenaries, Sid reminded us. So he wanted to get rid of the mercs, but he wouldn’t have known the reasoning behind it all.

“Look here,” I said quickly and stabbed a finger at the manifesto. “It says that in order to protect their daughters, who held the most magic of them all, the rebels transformed them into weapons and armor to be used in battle.”

Wait, is that talking about us? Amber suddenly gasped. Are we magic?

“To be fair, how else do you explain the fact you can talk to me in my mind once I’ve wielded you?” I said with increasing excitement.

“You’ve had a curse put on you that transformed you into a bow and arrow, and a set of pauldrons, sure… But how are you talking to me?

How are you able to channel the gemstones to get the enhanced abilities?”

Oh, my god… Sid’s voice was low and full of awe. So, we come from magical people? The rebels, the ones who wanted to stop the Baron?

“The mercenaries must have been hired by the magical folk,” I reasoned. “Maybe Langford was magical himself.”

It’s like we get one answer and another thousand questions.

Amber sighed.

“But look further down.” I pointed at the manifesto again. “The spell on the daughters became stuck, when the Baron’s soothsayers and mages forced the magic into permanence. Fucking soothsayers!

I knew Florian was shady as hell.”

Maybe the soothsayers are the ones who have been puppeteering the Baron’s family for generations? Amber offered.

Maybe the Baron isn’t the bad guy at all.

“I don’t think our current Baron has a damn clue about any of this,” I said with a nod. “It has to come from Florian, his soothsayer.

We need to investigate him and everything he’s been up to.”

So what happened to the rebels, when their daughters became permanently changed? Amber suddenly asked.

The rebels surrendered, once they realized the lives of their daughters were at stake, Sid said with sadness in her voice as we finished reading the old manifesto. And it seems we’ve been stuck
ever since, and I’m guessing the reason for our memory loss is due to not being in our rightful bodies.

I was just about to answer when I suddenly heard something within the old rebel base that certainly hadn’t come from me.

I could hear some sort of footsteps, though they sounded slow and shuffled, and I whipped my head around toward the source of the sound.

I came almost immediately face to face with a wrinkled old woman who stood a good foot and a half shorter than me, and she had long white hair bundled up into a messy braid, though half of it had fallen out and fell about her face in soft waves. She looked up at me with hard green eyes as she nodded to the manifesto still in my hands.

“You’d be right about the soothsayers, boy,” the old lady said gruffly, and then she nodded at Amber’s bow where I’d laid it against the table. “But I’m more interested as to where exactly you got that bow and arrows, and where you found those pauldrons.”

Chapter Nine

“I found them.” My reply was immediate, and I slowly held my hands up in a universal ‘I come in peace’ sign when I realized the old lady in front of me was wielding a razor-sharp dagger in her right hand.

“You found them?” She repeated my words back to me with a huff of humorless laughter. “That’s a likely story. Are you with the Baron?”

“I mean, yes, technically, but it’s not what you think-- hey!” I raised my arms higher when the old lady took two huge steps toward me and held the point of her dagger up to my neck.

“If you’re with the Baron, tell me why I shouldn’t spill your blood all over my floor right now,” the white-haired lady said in a terrifyingly calm voice.

Please don’t let an old lady with a kitchen knife be the one to beat us, Amber groaned softly in my head.

Despite the fact I had a dagger pointed to my throat, a faint smile flickered across my lips, but the old lady didn’t seem to take too kindly to that.

“You think this is funny, boy?” she asked with a low hiss.

“No, not at all, ma’am,” I said as I forced my face back into a serious expression. “It’s just… Do you know what the bow is? And the pauldrons?”

“Aye, probably more than you do,” the woman growled.

“Well,” I said with a slow shrug. “If you knew what they were, you’d know I had someone in my head making a funny comment.”

The lady’s grip on her dagger loosened at my words, and her green eyes suddenly had a wash of sadness pass over them.

“You can’t fool me, boy,” she said as she furiously blinked the melancholy away.

“I’m not trying to,” I assured her gently, and I slowly moved my hands toward hers, where the tip of the dagger had started to shake.

“It’s okay.”

I eventually managed to coax the blade out of her hands, and I set it gently down on the table beside Amber’s bow. The old woman looked at where her weapon was now laid beside the beautiful wooden hunter’s bow, and her shoulders suddenly sagged. The gray-haired lady looked up at me with a mixture of confusion and distrust, but she was no longer pointing a deadly weapon at me, so I figured I was relatively safe.

For now, at least.

Without the hard expression she’d worn upon first meeting me, her face was round and kind. Her green eyes were soft, and they sparkled with almost the same level of mischievousness as Amber’s did. She had almost pure-white hair, braided in an intricate bun at the crown of her head, and it looked as soft as cotton candy and about as wispy. Her skin was pale and slightly wrinkled but constantly flushed a ruddy shade of red that made it look like she was wearing far too much rouge on her cheeks.

She must have been in the dungeons for a long while, because she was dressed in a moth-eaten floor-length dress that had most certainly seen better days, and I couldn’t really tell what color the fabric was trying to be. It was a nondescript shade of beige, with a heavy brown outer layer to keep her warm.

“What’s your name?” I asked her as she sank into one of the uncomfortable-looking wooden chairs lined up around the table.

“Maggie,” she said with a heavy sigh, and she scratched at her cotton candy hair. “My name is Maggie.”

“I’m James,” I told her with a small smile. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“I haven’t quite decided if that’s the case yet,” she said with a raised eyebrow, but I spotted the faintest hint of a smile in the way her thin lips twitched.

She’d made a joke with me, but I still kept an eye on the dagger on the table.

Just in case.

Maggie folded her hands studiously against her knee, and she looked up at me with an intense expression that clouded her green eyes and deepened them to a dark emerald color.

“You can hear them?” she asked slowly and nodded to the bow still on the table.

I heard both Amber and Sid gasp softly inside of my mind, and I smiled again as I just nodded in reply to Maggie’s question. Then I instinctively ran a hand over the sleek black metal of Sid’s pauldrons as I listened to the two girls whisper excitedly in my mind.

“Good,” Maggie said with a huff. “There’s still hope then, at least.”

“Who are you?” I asked as I quickly pulled up a chair and leaned eagerly forward. “Do you live in this dungeon? How do you
know about the women, and the weapons? I have so many questions for you.”

“Yes, I can see that,” Maggie said, and she already sounded exhausted, though her face still betrayed her with the light smile that toyed around her lips.

Which wasn’t altogether unsurprising. It looked as though she’d lived alone in this underground rebel base for what must’ve been years, so even a nefarious intruder would’ve given her some form of human interaction.

Maggie scratched at her head again before she let out an incredibly long sigh, and then she fixed me with a steady stare that made me feel like I was being X-rayed.

“I am the last living descendant of true magic,” Maggie explained in a slow, purposeful voice. “Hadden used to be rife with magical creatures. Most good, some a nuisance, only one or two truly bad apples. We lived in harmony with the humans. There was no discourse between us, just an understanding. We understood we were different, but it meant we could help each other in different ways.”

“That sounds pretty ideal.” I nodded.

“Until the Baron.” Maggie’s green eyes turned dark at the mention of him, and I pressed my lips together in a grimace.

“Not this current Baron, though. Right?”

“No,” Maggie admitted, though she eyed me curiously before she eventually continued. “The young buck currently on the throne doesn’t seem to have any clue as to what’s going on. His daddy before him, and all of the previous Barons, they were the ones who ruined everything.”

How does she know this current Baron isn’t a bad guy? Amber suddenly asked in my head.

I repeated the question back to Maggie in my own voice, and she let out a dark chuckle.

“I may have lived here all these years in solitude, but I am no prisoner,” she said in a dark tone. “I make sure to tread the roads of Hadden every now and then, to keep my ear to the ground.”

“Smart,” I told her with a smirk. “So I’m guessing you know exactly who I am?”

“You certainly didn’t need to introduce yourself,” Maggie said in a dry voice, and I saw another ghost of a smile making her lips
twitch. “Sir James Miller of Brooklyn, infamous monster slayer of Hadden.”

“At your service.” I doffed an imaginary cap in her direction and then grinned even wider. “That’s all I meant, when I said I was with the Baron technically. He pays me a hefty amount of gold, and I figure if I’m ridding the land of monsters at the same time, then where’s the harm?”

“A fair assumption,” Maggie admitted with a shrug. “For an outsider. But I take from your hundred and one questions, you’re distrusting?”

“Maybe,” I said and lifted a shoulder in a shrug of my own. “I guess it depends upon what information I can find. So the Barons of old, they were the ones who drove you underground?”

“Yes,” Maggie sighed. “As I said, we used to live in harmony, until we were forced to create another home for ourselves.”

“This place?” I asked and motioned with a hand at the dungeon around us.

“This dungeon was my people’s home. We purposefully enchanted it to make it almost impossible for humans to trespass.”

Maggie fixed me with another piercing stare. “Most humans, that is.”

“I found a mage hiding out in these dungeons,” I quickly told her. “Another magical person. I killed him.”

I suddenly realized the mage was probably of Maggie’s kin, and I braced myself for her fury.

“And good riddance.” The old lady just sniffed. “The Barons previously corrupted a few of our own. Filled their heads with propaganda, with promises of fame and riches. It drove the rest of us out.”

“But not you?” I asked.

“This is my home,” she said stoically, and then eventually she continued. “The previous Barons, they wanted to enslave us.

Wanted to use our magic for their own gain. But the current Baron, this boy who sits on the throne, I don’t think he has much between the ears. I fear his soothsayer may well be to blame for such a high volume of monsters coming out of this dungeon, though.”

“I had my own suspicions about the Baron’s soothsayer,” I said grimly.

“I think he’s trying to draw the remaining magical people out of hiding,” Maggie admitted in a suddenly sad voice. “That’s why
they’re working so hard to bring the monsters out. It’s in our nature to help. But there’s only me left, and I can’t go up against them alone.”

“Well, you’ve got me,” I said with a smile. “And I’m pretty good at it, at this point.”

“So I’ve heard.” Maggie smiled back, and then she nodded to Amber’s bow. “Though I can’t help but think you’ve had some magical help of your own.”

“You’d be right.” I nodded slowly before I leaned forward again.

“I intend to find a way to release them from their curse. The girls who are trapped. The magical daughters.”

“Well, you have two already,” Maggie said. “You are their Master now.”

“Yeah, they’ve tried to tell me.” I chuckled.

See? Amber said with a smile in her voice. I tried to tell you.

It’s true, Sid said. You are our Master.

“They’re agreeing with you,” I told Maggie with a chuckle.

“As I knew they would.” The old lady smiled wryly, and then she nodded at my armor. “The pauldrons. They belonged to a wonderful boy called Harper. I’m afraid I don’t have much information on that bow of yours, other than the knowledge of its existence.”

“Harper,” I repeated with a nod. “I’ll check it out. Thank you.”

Harper… Sid suddenly breathed in shock. I recognize that name.

“She says she recognizes the name.” I ran a hand over the sleek black metal of the pauldrons, and I could feel Sid’s excitement buzz through my head. “So you’ve given us more of a lead than we could’ve hoped for.”

“Good,” Maggie said and then heaved herself suddenly to her feet with a long sigh. “Would you like a cup of tea?”

“No, thank you.” I smiled at her offer. “I should probably be getting back, actually.”

“Yes, the hour is late,” Maggie said with a wave of her hands.

“Though I rarely keep track of the time down here.”

“I’m here to help,” I told her as I stood. “Whatever it takes. The girls are my priority, and if they’re in any way connected to you, then that means you’re included under that umbrella.”

“Thank you, Sir James,” Maggie said in a solemn voice. “I had hoped for someone’s help, but I certainly didn’t think it would come from a human.”

“But see, I’m not just any old human.” I smirked down at her.

“So it would seem.” Maggie huffed thoughtfully and then looked up at me again with her green eyes glinting. “Your path here should be… Slightly easier, next time.”

“I don’t have to go diving off a waterfall to find you again?” I let out a long breath. “Thank god, because I didn’t really want to do that again.”

“The dungeon will always steer you to where you need to go.”

Maggie smiled sadly. “We designed it as an extension of ourselves.”

“Wait,” I said as an idea occurred to me. “I’ve found several maps that indicate some other lost girls might be in the dungeon.

The longsword, the dagger, and the helmet. Could you tell me where they are more precisely, or at least confirm that they’re in the dungeon?”

“Back when there were more of us, I might have been able,”

Maggie said with a frown. “But alone, I’m not powerful enough. The dungeon is too vast, containing too many things. If the other girls are truly lost within the endless tunnels and caverns, you’ll have to find them for yourself. I’m sorry I can’t be of more help.”

“Actually, you’ve been a tremendous help,” I assured her, and I put a kind hand on her rounded shoulder. “I will search for the girls
on my own, and as soon as I find out what the hell is going on, you’ll be the first to know. But just stay safe until I come back, okay?”

The old lady nodded and waved me out of her almost abandoned rebel base, and as I opened the heavy wooden door and headed back out into the cool stone corridor, the girls’ voices erupted excitedly in my head.

She knows who my pauldrons belonged to! Sid almost squealed, her tone was so high-pitched. You’re right, James, that gives us more of a lead than I could have ever even hoped for. Who do you think Harper is? I remember the name, but only vaguely, and whenever I try to focus my thoughts on it they just seem to…

Disappear.

“I have a theory,” I admitted as I hurried through the stone dungeon.

Instead of coming to the bottom of the raging waterfall, the corridor led me straight and true and right back into the chamber below my wood cabin. I’d wondered right from the beginning just how the sprawling dungeon seemed to change at will and always appeared to guide me to exactly where it wanted me to go.

I at least had my answer now.

The dungeons hidden in the hills surrounding Hadden were the home of the land’s magical people, or they once were. Not so much since the old Barons drove them out and forced them into hiding, but I couldn’t help but wonder where.

If they were already living in the dungeons, which were pretty damn well hidden, then where could they have fled to?

The theory I mentioned to Sid was bubbling on the tip of my tongue, but I wanted to get back home, with the girls in their human bodies, so we could discuss everything we’d learned in person.

And preferably over a beer and some food.

I made it back to my main dungeon chamber in record time, and I hustled over to the closet where the swirling golden portal back to my world was waiting for me. I pushed my way into the roiling light, and I felt the same tug somewhere within my abdomen as the magic took hold of my body and transported me straight back into my college dorm room.

I landed on both feet, as I’d learned how to, and Sid and Amber appeared at my side in their gorgeous human forms.

“Can you believe this?” Sid asked as she wrapped her arms through mine and leaned against me with an ear-to-ear smile on her
face.

“I’m just glad Maggie didn’t stab me in the neck,” I chuckled as I leaned down to give the beautiful dark-haired woman a quick kiss.

“She was definitely considering it,” Amber giggled, and she stood on her tiptoes to give me a welcoming kiss on my cheek. “So James, what’s your theory?”

“Let’s get some food, and I’ll tell you,” I promised them. “Are you girls hungry?”

They both made sudden wistful sounds at the mention of a meal, and I quickly pulled up DoorDash on my cell phone so we could get something delivered. I figured burgers and fries was probably the easiest decision, and within twenty minutes I had forty dollars’ worth of Shake Shack being handed to me by a weedy guy on a bicycle.

“I can smell cheeseburgers.” I suddenly heard my best friend’s voice, and I came face to face with Aron half-hanging out of his bedroom door.

“Yeah, I decided to really break the bank tonight.” I chuckled as I held up my Shake Shack bag.

“Got anything to spare?” Aron asked hopefully.

I snorted at his puppy dog eyes, and his plump lips even slipped into a pout.

“Afraid not,” I said. “Date night with the girls.”

“It’s a date night, and you order Shake Shack?” I suddenly heard Honey’s voice behind me, and I whirled around in surprise to find her leaning against her door frame with a raised eyebrow. “Way to woo them, James.”

“Hey, don’t hate on Shake Shack.” I stuck my tongue out at my hot neighbor. “I like their burgers.”

“Now I know why we didn’t get an invite, Aron.” Honey let out a dramatic sigh and gave me huge doe eyes. “He doesn’t want us crashing date night.”

I rolled my eyes at my two friends, but I couldn’t help the smirk that pulled at my mouth when I made eye contact with Honey.

She had her blonde hair completely pushed back and her usual tank top and flannel shirt combo on, except the white material of her tank top was straining against her ridiculously good cleavage, and one shoulder of her black and gray flannel had fallen to reveal the smooth skin of her collarbone.

She crossed her arms so her breasts were squished even further together, and then shot me a smirk of her own when she caught me looking.

“I don’t mind you guys crashing a thing,” I said as I tore my eyes away from my very hot, supposedly very gay neighbor. “But I’ve got two drop-dead gorgeous girls sitting in my dorm room waiting for food right now, aaaand…”

“Yeah, yeah, we get it.” Aron huffed jokingly. “I’ll make sure I wear my earplugs again tonight. Hey, you want some beers?”

“That would actually be awesome,” I said with a grin. “Thanks dude.”

I left my two friends to their evenings as I took the six-pack from Aron and headed back into my own room.

“Food’s up!” I called out as I hustled my way back through my dorm room door, and the girls looked up at me from where they’d been sprawled on the carpet with hunger in their eyes.

I’d gone for a double stack with extra bacon and cheese, Amber had wanted a smaller version of my cheeseburger, and Sid went for a plain burger but with extra mustard. We had a miniature
picnic in the middle of my dorm room, and once Sid was halfway through her meal, she looked around at me expectantly.

“So,” she started as she took a huge bite of her cheeseburger.

“What’s your theory, James?”

I chewed my mouthful of food thoughtfully and then took a long swig from the bottle of beer.

“I think the magical people ran here,” I finally said with a shrug.

“I think that’s why I have a portal to another world hidden in the back of my closet. I think they fled to my world, to New York.”

“Oh…” Amber let out an understanding sigh.

“That… Actually makes perfect sense,” Sid said with a surprised chuckle.

“It would make sense the magic that traps you doesn’t work here, and it would also make sense the magical beings who did flee Hadden no longer have use of their powers here in my world,” I explained as I took another massive bite of my double stacked cheeseburger. “It would explain why they haven’t made it back to Maggie.”

“So, you think they’re still here?” Amber asked as she licked a stray trail of ketchup as it slid slowly down her pinky finger.

“Yeah, I think so.” I nodded in reply.

“Do you think Harper is here?” Sid suddenly asked. “The old owner of my pauldrons. Do you think he’s trapped here, too?”

“I think that’d be a fair assumption to make,” I answered, though I didn’t want to completely get her hopes up.

“Is there a way we can check?” Amber asked as she nibbled at a lone French fry.

“Actually, yes.” I quickly wiped my hands on a napkin and scooped my cell phone up. “I can just Google it.”

“What the hell is a Google?” Sid asked with increasing curiosity.

“It’s like, ahh… Like a virtual library.” I waved my cell phone about in desperation. “It’s hard to explain. But I can search for literally anything, at the click of a button.”

“And you say your world doesn’t have magic.” Amber shook her head in disbelief but then grinned widely and shuffled over to me so she could peer over my shoulder. “Okay, show me your magic library.”

I quickly searched for ‘Harper’ and ‘New York’ and then sighed heavily at the thousands of hits.

“Too many to narrow it down at all,” I sighed as I motioned to the search engine results. “How are we ever gonna find out who this Harper guy is?”

“Can you add things to the search?” Amber asked suddenly.

“Yeah, of course,” I said. “I mean, I should’ve known that searching for a name in New York wouldn’t really get me very far.”

“How about you search for Sid’s name?” Amber suggested.

“With Harper. And New York. Search all of it together, will that narrow it down?”

“Maybe,” I said with a shrug as I quickly typed the word

‘obsidian’ into the Google search bar, along with ‘Harper’ and ‘New York.’

My cell phone loaded for a moment, and then I let out a low whistle at the first hit.

There was a man called Harper, who supposedly came from New York, and he was rich as fuck. He lived and worked in Manhattan, where he owned a massive property development company, and it was his company that made me think we were onto something.

“The company name,” I said with a disbelieving chuckle.

“Guess what he called his company?”

“What?” the two girls asked in unison.

“‘Obsidian Properties Ltd.’”

Chapter Ten

“The company is called ‘Obsidian’?” Sid asked with the first spark of hope in her round eyes.

“It sounds like far too much of a coincidence,” I replied as I tried to keep my eagerness in check. “But this guy ticks all the boxes. He’s old enough to be related to you in some way, he has the exact name that Maggie mentioned, he’s called his company by your name… I definitely think we should go and check him out.”

“I agree,” Amber said with an excited clap of her hands. “Who do you think he is? Brother? Or your father, maybe?”

“I… I honestly don’t know,” Sid said in a quiet voice. “I never gave much thought to having… A family. From what I can remember of my time working in the Baron’s castle, I thought I was an orphan.

It hurt too much to daydream about anything more. But if what Maggie says is true, and this man, this… Harper, if he’s connected to me in some way then, well, I’d like to say hello to him, at least.”

I pulled myself to my feet, took Sid’s hands as I helped her stand, and wrapped her up in a tight embrace. She instantly sighed into me and rested her head on my chest while her own arms wound
themselves around my waist, and I kissed the top of her head as she snuggled against me.

“Whatever happens, we’ll be right there with you,” I assured her.

“If you don’t want to go… We don’t have to,” Amber said in a much more subdued voice as she joined us and put a gentle hand on Sid’s shoulder.

“No, we need to,” Sid said determinedly, though her words were muffled slightly since she was still smushed against one of my pectorals.

“We do kinda need to,” I agreed with a huff of laughter, and I gave Sid another firm squeeze. “He’s our only lead so far, but I’m hoping this guy can actually give us some answers.”

I only had the one class the following day, and it was already getting real late in the day, so the three of us finished our beers and headed for bed. I slept deeply but was interrupted by increasingly realistic dreams of river trolls, witches, soothsayers, and mages. I had to constantly defeat them no matter how many waves came for me. It was like a never-ending boss level.

When I woke up late the next morning, both Sid and Amber were curled against me on either side, and so I stared up the ceiling with sleepy eyes and a mind that was already running wild.

I was excited to take the girls into the city, not just because it was Manhattan and therefore probably an even crazier experience for them, but because I was keen to hopefully get some real answers to the conundrum that had faced me since my first day of college.

I’d found a magical gateway that led to another world, where magic was rife and things played out like a damn video game, and I’d managed to sneak two gorgeous otherworldly women back into my college dorm room. I’d had so many questions about my situation, and no one to really aim them at, and I hoped this Harper guy would be able to answer some of these lingering mysteries.

I gently pulled myself out of the tangle of limbs and left Amber and Sid to cuddle each other as I tiptoed toward the shower. They were still completely out cold, but I didn’t think I could sleep any more.

My brain was spinning far too quickly, and I hoped the constant stream of close to boiling hot water would burn away some of the mind fog. It didn’t, but the shower was still nice, and when I stepped back into my dorm room with a towel wrapped around my waist and
my hair sopping wet, the two girls had woken up enough to shoot me sleepy smiles from the depths of the rumpled bed sheets.

“Good morning, sleepyheads.” I smiled.

“We missed you,” Amber said through a long yawn, and I watched appreciatively as she stretched her arms above her head.

The movement pulled her already pert breasts up, and I could see her nipples through the shirt as the material was purposefully dragged across them.

Sid caught me looking and smirked before she positioned herself with her back to me, on her knees, so when she stretched, I got a perfect view of her amazing ass.

“No fair,” I sighed as I started to towel dry my damp hair. “What am I gonna do with you two?”

“Hopefully, a lot of what you’ve already shown us,” Sid said, and she immediately covered her mouth to try and stifle the giggle that bubbled up her throat.

Amber gave Sid’s ass a light smack and then fell about into fits of laughter herself, and I just shook my head as I very, very reluctantly got dressed and ready to head to my only class of the day.

I left the girls semi-naked in my bed, which was hard enough as it was, and then I had to head toward my Production class where Brad the frat guy was waiting for me with a smarmy look on his pointed face.

“Hey, Miller.” Brad folded his arms against his purposefully puffed out chest as I approached the lecture hall. “Where’s your girlfriend? I’m starting to think I hallucinated her. Did she ditch you that quickly?”

“She’s lying naked in my bed, dickhead,” I retorted with a smirk. “What’s up your ass? Vibrator? Butt plug?”

Brad pushed himself away from the red brick wall as if he was planning on squaring up to me, but our professor appeared just at the right moment, so I snorted under my breath as Brad faltered.

I mouthed the words ‘butt plug’ at him again as we followed our lecturer into the hall, and I had to hide my laughter a second time when I saw an angry red flush stain the frat guy’s neck.

My Production class took what felt like forever, even though it was only an hour-long lecture, and I found myself doodling idly on my notepad and not really paying a great deal of attention to what the professor was talking about.

My mind couldn’t help but wander, and I started to question whether college would even be worth completing. I had a method of making money in the town of Hadden, and it wasn’t just a one-off paycheck.

It was already hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the number would only keep growing with the more beasties that I successfully slayed, and as I carried on doodling I started to let my daydreams completely take over as I zoned out of my class. I could pay off my mom’s mortgage on our old apartment, I could put a down payment on a place for the girls and myself, hell, I could even get a sports car, even if driving was impractical in the city.

I could live a life of damn luxury.

Plus, I got to slay monsters, get real buff in the process, and maybe find even more gorgeous women that needed saving.

“That’ll be it for today, class!” My professor’s voice pulled me out of my reverie, and I blinked and looked up to find most of my classmates already halfway out of the door. “Have a good weekend!”

I ignored Brad, who was already trying to make his way over to me because after a full hour he’d finally thought of a retort to my ‘butt
plug’ comment, but I dipped out of the doors and hurried straight back to my dorm before he could reach me.

Both Sid and Amber were already dressed and waiting for me, and their eyes lit up excitedly as I hurried through the door.

Amber had chosen a pair of skintight jeans in a dark stormy-gray color, paired with an equally tight white vest that showed off her perfect cleavage. Sid had pushed her shoulder-length black hair behind her ears and chosen a light blue dress that skimmed across her thighs, but she’d put on a pair of knee-high white socks and a knit sweater that was already half-falling off one of her slim shoulders.

“James!” Amber said as she bounced off the bed and basically ran full throttle at me so she could wrap her arms around my neck in a hug.

“We missed you,” Sid said as she approached with far more decorum, though she still leaned up on her tiptoes to quickly kiss me on the cheek.

“I did not wanna be in that class,” I said to them with a laugh of my own. “I missed you, too.”

“So, what’s the plan?” Amber asked as she slipped down my chest to eventually land back on her feet, and she looked up at me with a glimmer in her bright blue eyes.

“I don’t have any more classes today, and it’s barely even two in the afternoon,” I said as I checked my watch. “I think we should head into the city and see if we can find this Harper guy in his office.

And if we can’t, his secretary should know where we can find him.”

“I’m nervous,” Sid admitted as she gnawed on her plump bottom lip, and she crossed her arms over her chest almost protectively. “What if he doesn’t remember me? Or what if he wants nothing to do with me?”

“I can’t imagine either one of those scenarios being true,” I assured her with a warm smile. “I’ve got a good feeling about it. I think he’ll be able to give us far more answers than questions.”

“I hope so,” Amber said. “It feels like every single time we make a discovery, it poses more questions than answers.”

“We’ll piece it together,” I promised. “Come on, let’s get going. I wanna meet this Harper.”

We left campus, and I hailed a yellow cab to take us into the city, because I figured Manhattan was going to be quite the culture
shock to the two girls anyway, and so I didn’t want to overwhelm them with having to navigate the chaos of the damn subway. The cab driver almost immediately refused the journey over the river until I persuaded him with a rather hefty tip, and with a disgruntled sigh he gave up, took the small wad of cash I offered to him, and nodded for us to pile into the back of his car.

Both Amber’s and Sid’s eyes grew wide as we headed toward the island of Manhattan, and as we crossed the Brooklyn Bridge, I could see their mouths were hanging open at the sheer insanity of it all.

In fairness, Manhattan had that effect on most people, but for them it must’ve been another stark reminder at just how different my world really was in comparison to theirs.

“This is incredible…” Sid breathed as she stared out of the window. “Everything is just so… Tall.”

“Welcome to New York, sweetheart.” The cab driver let out a knowing chuckle as we entered the city proper.

Obsidian Properties Ltd. was housed in a huge skyscraper right in the center of the financial district, and I suddenly felt incredibly underdressed as we clambered out of the yellow cab and
stood on the sidewalk. We were surrounded by bustling men in suits of varying different shades of navy and gray. All of them had almost the same hairstyle, and most of them were on their cellphones talking in quick, unnecessarily loud voices about stocks, shares, numbers, or things that needed crunching.

“This is… Something,” Amber commented as she looked around at the chaos.

“This is different to Brooklyn,” Sid agreed in a small voice as her eyes went skyward. “Everything is so… Big. And I thought Brooklyn was big, but this place…”

“Concrete jungle,” I reminded them with a dry chuckle. “It’s okay, just stick with me. Alright?”

I waited until both girls nodded with confirmation before I motioned for them to follow me into the foyer of the high-rise.

It was huge, so big in fact, everyone’s footsteps echoed loudly around the place, though that might have also been the fault of the sprawling marble floor that was polished to a purposefully high sheen. There was a coffee station on the west side, and I felt for the two baristas because the line seemed never-ending. There was also an open-plan communal meeting area, with plush leather armchairs
and couches to the eastern side of the foyer, but I motioned for the girls to keep following me as I headed right toward the reception desk in the very center and smiled warmly at the girl behind the counter.

Her hair was red, though it was the bottle kind and nothing like Amber’s naturally fiery locks, and she had perfectly groomed eyebrows, murky green eyes with too much mascara on the lashes, and a pointed chin that made her look disgruntled even when she wore a tired smile.

“Hi there,” she greeted me with a curt nod. “What can I do for you today?”

“We’ve got an appointment with Harper Properties,” I quickly explained. “Could you tell us which floor the office is on?”

“Sure thing,” the bottle-dyed redhead said and then typed with just the tips of her pointed acrylic nails against her keyboard. “You can find Harper Properties on the thirty-fifth floor. Elevators are just down there, to the right.”

“Thank you so much,” I said and tapped the desk as I turned back to the girls. “This way.”

Amber and Sid quickly hurried after me as I crossed the marble foyer and headed toward the elevators.

The huge skyscraper was obviously home to several businesses, because unlike outside, the foyer bustled with more than just people in suits.

Several receptionists and personal assistants dressed in tight pencil skirts and stilettos skittered around like worker bees, with their arms full of folders or coffee orders and their high heels clacking against the polished floor, and I spotted a tiny white-haired older lady who was dressed in a huge fur coat, with two burly bodyguards on either side of her and a small dog under one arm, and the poor animal was almost lost in the fluffy folds of her jacket.

The elevators were busy and very crowded, so I guided Amber and Sid toward the back of the row where it was slightly less chaotic.

I hit the button on the sleek chrome panel screwed to the wall and waited for one of the doors to slide open, and it took a good minute for its occupants to empty themselves out into the foyer. Once the elevator was empty, I guided my girls inside and hit the button with the number ‘35’ embossed in the chrome.

“Whoa!” Amber hissed and stuck her hands out as the elevator whirred to life and started to lift us upward.

“It’s okay,” I assured her. “It’s just a way for us to reach the higher floors without having to walk up thirty-plus flights of stairs.”

“This metal box is… It’s flying us upward?” Sid asked in a low, slightly afraid voice as she wrapped her fingers tightly around the handrail.

“Yes,” I said with a reassuring smile. “But there’s nothing to worry about, I promise. This is a standard thing for us here.”

“This world definitely has its own magic,” Amber said as she shook her head. “Whatever you try to tell me.”

“I guess that’s true,” I said and turned my smile to the redhead.

“Magic is something unexplainable, and I guess… Well, I guess an elevator is sort of unexplainable to you guys.”

“I’d say,” Sid muttered as she held onto the polished railing with white knuckles. “This is crazy…”

The elevator eventually slowed, and the doors slid open with a soft futuristic whoosh as we stepped out onto the thirty-fifth floor.

The reception area was colored in various shades of gray and silver. There was a small area to the right with a double couch, a huge leather armchair, and a low table gathered beside floor-length
windows, and Amber gasped as she hurried over and peered out at the view with her nose pressed right up against the glass.

“Wow…” she murmured, and her breath fogged the window.

“We’re so high up.”

“Hello there.” The receptionist behind the desk caught my attention, and her narrow-eyed gaze flitted between Amber at the windows and where me and Sid were still standing at the elevator.

“Hi,” I said with a wide smile as I approached the sleek gray marble counter.

The receptionist for Harper Properties was as thin as a rake with a pointed face and pale blonde hair that was yanked back into one of the tightest ponytails I’d ever seen. Not a single hair was out of place, and it gave her a slightly alien look in the way that her eyes and cheekbones were pulled back, and she had to really work her facial muscles to get across her distaste for us as we approached her.

“I’m wondering if you could help us,” I started with another purposefully warm smile. “We’re here to see Harper, we think he might--”

“Do you have an appointment?” the receptionist immediately interrupted me and blinked slowly, as if the exchange was physically tiring.

“Ahh… No, but we--”

“Mr. Harper doesn’t see anyone without an appointment,” the blonde receptionist said coolly. “Particularly those who are clearly not in the property business.”

“What if we’re potential clients?” I shot back at her.

“Are you?” she asked with the same icy air as she just about managed to arch an eyebrow, and I faltered.

“Well, no… But still, I really think--”

“Mr. Harper has back-to-back meetings today, anyway,” the receptionist interrupted me again and steered her gaze back to her computer screen by way of dismissing us.

“Can we at least wait here in case any openings come up?” I asked even though I didn’t plan on waiting all day. I just needed an opportunity to come along.

The receptionist flicked her narrowed eyes toward me again, considered me for a long moment, and finally sighed.

“Fine,” she relented. “You may wait here, but like I’ve already said, Mr. Harper has a full schedule today.”

“That’s fine.” I plastered on my most polite smile. “Thank you so much for your help.”

The receptionist didn’t respond, she merely turned back to her computer and pretended like I wasn’t there.

“She’s a real bundle of laughs, she is…” I muttered to Amber and Sid as we headed for the couches by the window.

The girls stifled giggles behind their hands, and I sat down on the couch with an air of belonging. Then I shot the receptionist another warm, passive-aggressive smile as I settled in to wait.

We weren’t there long until we got lucky, much to the unbridled fury of the blonde receptionist. Within about ten minutes, the door behind her suddenly opened, and a man with slick dark hair suddenly poked his head from around the frame.

“Natasha, could you…” His words trailed off into silence as he suddenly noticed the three of us in the waiting area. “Wha-- How?”

When he locked eyes with Sid, I noticed how his shock diffused into sheer glee at just the sight of her.

“Natasha, cancel my meetings,” he said quickly and then interrupted his receptionist when she started to pose a question. “I don’t care, just do it. All of them. I’m busy this afternoon.”

The businessman waved us over, and I winked at the blonde as we hurried past her and into Mr. Harper’s office, where the dark-haired man immediately scooped Sid up into a spine-crushing hug.

“I don’t believe it!” He laughed as he twirled her around and squeezed her even tighter. “Gods, I never thought I’d see you again!”

He eventually set Sid back down on her feet but kept his hands on her shoulders so that he could inspect her at arm’s length, and Sid just let out a peel of laughter as he smiled across at her.

The man was tall and broad, and he had his thick dark hair slicked back with effortless style. He looked as though he were in his mid-forties, with slight crow’s feet around his eyes and a forehead that crinkled up with every expression, and I noticed how his eyes were almost the exact same shade of pale gray that Sid’s had become when I’d found her gemstone enhancement.

“Mr. Harper…” I extended a hand to him, and he eventually pulled his gaze away from Sid to face me. “My name is James Miller.”

“A pleasure, Mr. Miller.” He shook my hand eagerly and then slapped me on the shoulder. “I suppose I have you to thank for rescuing my daughter?”

“Daughter?” Sid gasped from behind her fingers. “Are you…

Am I…?”

“Yes,” Mr. Harper said with another laugh, and he scooped her up into a tight embrace again. “My daughter. By all the gods, I thought I’d lost you forever. How are you here? How did you escape Hadden? I have so many questions.”

“So do we,” I said, and I couldn’t help but raise my eyebrows at the mention of Hadden.

“I can only imagine,” Mr. Harper said and shook his head with a grin as he let out a low whistle. “Let’s get some coffee, then I can explain everything to you.”

Mr. Harper hurried behind his desk so he could hit an intercom button, and I recognized the blonde receptionist’s voice when she begrudgingly answered.

“Could you bring us some coffee, Natasha? And make sure you have actually canceled all of my meetings, okay? Thanks.” Mr.

Harper motioned for us to sit in the plush leather armchairs across
from him, and he folded his arms against the polished chrome of the desk as he studied the three of us.

“Mr. Harper,” I began, but he quickly waved a hand.

“Please, call me Richard.”

“Richard,” I said with a smile. “We only came here on a hunch, we never thought we’d actually find Sid’s father--”

“Sid?” he asked and then frowned at his supposed daughter.

“Obsidian,” she said shyly. “The only thing I could remember was my name. The orphanage kept it the same.”

“And you shortened it to Sid?” Richard chuckled heartily.

“It was my idea,” Amber said and smiled proudly. “To fit into James’ world.”

“Very good thinking,” Richard said with an approving nod. “I have equally had to make changes to fit in here.”

Natasha the receptionist suddenly interrupted us with a tray of coffee, and she sniffed disapprovingly at me as she placed the drinks down on Mr. Harper’s desk. I just smiled widely at her as she took her leave, and then I looked across at Sid’s father as he fixed himself a coffee and motioned for us to do the same.

“If you wouldn’t mind, Mr. Harper… Richard,” I corrected myself when he waved his hand again while he took a sip of his drink. “Could you just… Explain what you know? You mentioned Hadden, and…”

“Yes.” Sid’s father let out a long sigh. “I suppose I owe you that much. You must think poorly of me, Sid. For leaving you. But we had no choice.”

“You were being hunted,” Sid said in a soothing voice. “I don’t think badly of you at all.”

“I recognized you immediately,” Richard said as he took another sip of coffee and studied her over the rim of the cup. “It was your eyes. You have your family’s eyes.”

“My eyes weren’t always this color,” Sid said with a quick, secret smile toward me.

“No,” Richard said understandingly. “You earned them. Didn’t you?”

“We found something that gave Sid an… Ability, or an affinity for protection. It altered her eye color.” I quickly studied Richard’s face for signs of recognition, and I let out a breath when the suited businessman with gray eyes nodded with approval.

“Our family were protectors,” Richard started as he stirred some more creamer into his coffee, and he watched the color of the drink change with an intense expression on his face as he dredged up old memories. “Our family had always had that role within the community, it was always our job to protect the magical people who lived within Hadden. We imbued our power into gemstones we placed all around the dungeon, in the hopes they would stop any further attacks. But the majority of our people still wanted to flee despite that precaution.”

“We heard how the old Barons wanted to control your people and your magic,” Amber said in a quiet voice. “So is that why you fled Hadden?”

“Yes.” Richard nodded sadly. “We knew our magic would be darkened, spoiled, ruined in the hands of the wrong people. We would be enslaved and forced to become something we never wanted to be. We couldn’t allow it to happen, so we created a portal to a different world. This world.”

Richard held his arms up and gestured at the swanky high-rise office, and then he let out a sad laugh before he eventually continued.

“But we only ended up stranding ourselves. Our magic holds no weight here, so we were stuck with no way of getting back home.

We had planned to regroup somewhere safe and figure out a way of rescuing our daughters, but… The moment we stepped through into this world, we were simply powerless.”

“So, you know about the women being stolen and cursed into weapons and armor?” I asked.

“Yes,” Richard said with the same sadness in his voice. “We were the ones who turned them into weapons, and armor, into things that could help us in a potential battle. Our daughters held the most magic out of all of us. We did it for their protection, and to utilize their magic in a way that could help us. But they were stolen, and therefore stuck.”

Richard couldn’t bring himself to look at Sid, and I could tell he still felt the intensity of his guilt. He felt like it was his fault his daughter was imprisoned within a set of sleek black armor, and I couldn’t help but feel for him.

“The mercenaries were always on our side, we had some of our own in their guild, but there was nothing they could do, either, especially when the Baron disbanded them,” Sid’s father continued in the same quiet voice. “We’d lost all hope, so all we could think to
do was regroup and come back stronger, but again… The portal led us to a world that had no magic.”

“Could you not just go back through the portal?” Amber asked as she held her coffee in both hands.

“We lost that, too,” Richard admitted sheepishly. “When I say we were on the run, we really were. The Baron’s soothsayers and mages created wave after wave of monsters to come after us, so when we crossed over, we just kept running. This was years ago, mind you. When you were just a baby, Obsidian. We only just about managed to hide the entrance, but other than that, we took off and eventually the portal itself was lost, so we couldn’t return to rescue the girls.”

“Well, I just so happen to know exactly where the portal is,” I said with a smirk. “It’s in my college dorm room’s wardrobe closet.”

Richard’s mouth just hung open for a second, and he blinked twice before he let out a long loud guffaw of a laugh that Natasha the receptionist could probably hear from her desk outside.

“No kidding!” Richard laughed almost deliriously and then shook his head slowly from side to side. “A piece of furniture in the
closet of a college kid’s dorm room, holding a gateway to another world.”

“You can imagine my surprise falling through it for the first time,” I said dryly, and Richard burst into laughter again, and eventually all four of us were chuckling giddily at the sheer ridiculousness of the situation.

“You didn’t tell anyone?” Richard asked as his laughter eventually died out to a low giggle. “You didn’t try to profit from it, you didn’t want to sell it on?”

“No.” I shook my head firmly with a smile still on my face, and I glanced across at my redheaded girlfriend with an even wider grin.

“I’d found Amber on my first trip into Hadden. She became far more important to me than any fame or fortune. Although, the Baron does pay handsomely for my services, which absolutely doesn’t hurt.”

“The Baron?” Richard immediately raised an eyebrow.

“The son of the last apparent evil one,” Amber said in a quickly placating tone. “He doesn’t know anything and doesn’t care enough to go digging. He’s happy with a goblet of wine and people fawning at his ankles.”

“And so he hired you to slay the monsters left over?” Richard snorted as he nodded at me. “He sounds like an idiot.”

“He’s certainly that,” Sid said with a shrug of agreement. “But the deal works. We get to explore Hadden, explore the dungeon for answers, but we get paid for our work.”

“It’s the best of both worlds,” I said with a grin. “Quite literally.”

“And on our last trip through the dungeon, we met someone,”

Sid said eagerly. “She was the one who told us your name.”

“Who?” Richard immediately asked, and his gray eyes became wide and full of sudden hope.

“Her name was Maggie,” I replied. “She was much older than you and looked as though she’d been in that dungeon forever.”

“Maggie.” Richard let out another huge raucous laugh at the mention of her name. “Oh, wonderful, stubborn, ridiculous Maggie.”

“You know her?” Amber asked as she cocked her head.

“Oh, yes.” Richard nodded and set his coffee cup down. “She refused to leave that dungeon, despite all the monsters coming after us. It was her home. She wouldn’t budge. Boy, am I glad to hear she’s still alive and kicking, though.”

“Who is she?” I asked curiously. “How exactly do you know her?”

“She was married to my older brother,” Richard Harper explained. “He also elected to stay behind.”

“So your brother is still in Hadden, then?” Amber’s voice suddenly became excited and then almost immediately petered out.

“But Maggie was alone in the dungeon, though. She didn’t have anyone with her.”

“That doesn’t surprise me at all.” Richard sighed and crossed his arms over the desk once more. “My brother was determined to speak some damn sense to the Baron. He left the dungeon awhile before the purge, and we didn’t hear from him again.”

“What was his name?” I asked slowly, and my brain had already started to whir to put the pieces together. “Your brother, who left to go to the Baron?”

“His name was Harold,” Richard said, and then he looked at the three of us curiously as we all gasped in unison. “Why? Do you know him?”

Chapter Eleven

“Yes, we know him!” Amber said as she clapped her hands together with excitement. “He’s the Baron’s quartermaster!”

“The quartermaster?” Richard chuckled loudly and then shook his head as his laugh petered out. “Oh, Harold, you wily old dog. He gets given an inch, and he’ll take a mile.”

“It doesn’t concern you?” Sid asked her newfound father. “That he works for the Baron?”

“I have my doubts Harold is truly working in favor of the Baron,” Mr. Harper assured us. “He’ll be doing exactly the same as you. Keeping his enemies close enough to keep his ear to the ground.”

“I wonder why Harold never recognized my pauldrons,” Sid said in a quiet, thoughtful voice. “Or your bow, Amber. Surely he’d have known what we were?”

“He didn’t know I was aware of your presence, though,” I countered Amber’s fair point. “He was probably fretting, thinking two magical daughters were being carted around by a total stranger.”

“I just wish I could remember more…” Sid sighed heavily. “I have no memory of you or any family, so I guess I must have been
taken from you when I was young. I had no idea I was magical, even while I was working at the Baron’s castle. And then… Then I just remember waking up trapped inside the pauldrons, deep inside the dungeons somewhere.”

Richard extended his arm over the polished chrome of his desk and took his daughter’s hand.

“I will never be able to apologize enough,” the dark-haired man said seriously. “I wanted to come back for you. We all did. I haven’t heard from the others since we crossed over and ran. I thought all hope was lost.”

“You didn’t know…” Sid murmured as she squeezed his hand.

“It’s okay.”

“Still, I apologize,” Richard said. “And I will continue to apologize. And I will help to the best of my ability, though I’m not sure I even have any of those abilities anymore. It’s been so long.”

“So were our memories erased on purpose?” Amber suddenly asked. “I was stuck in my bow form for what must have been decades. I had a number of Masters before James.”

“We crossed over at least twenty years ago,” Richard said with another deep sigh. “It’s possible you were one of the first girls to be
changed, or one of the first to be stolen. Which would have been years before Obsidian.”

“So that’s what solidified their curse?” I asked quickly. “They were stolen, so they became stuck?”

“I wish I had the answers you seek. But my magic was always wrought in protection, I was never part of the offensive group, so I can’t say for sure.” Richard frowned and fixed me with his pale-eyed stare. “But it would make sense that somewhere in the magic that changed the women, there was a kill switch, something to wipe their memories in order to try and protect the power they hold.”

“Wow…” Amber breathed. “I… I mean, it makes sense. I just wish I could remember something from my human life.”

“You were never human, sweet one,” Richard said in a sad tone, though he smiled across the desk at the two beautiful women I’d rescued from the otherworld. “You are magic born, and you will always be magic born.”

“So all of the girls who were magic born, they were transformed into weaponry and armor to aid you in a war against the Barons and soothsayers?” I asked just to make sure I had things straight.

“Yes,” he said with a nod. “Even the babies. Even Obsidian.”

“I was just a baby?” Sid asked, and her gray eyes were suddenly sparkling with moisture.

“The most beautiful baby girl I’d ever seen in my life,” Richard said, and his similarly pale eyes glimmered as he smiled across the desk at his formerly lost daughter. “But we had to try.”

“So we have no idea when Amber was stolen, but Sid used to work in the Baron’s castle. A couple years ago, right?” I turned to my dark-haired girlfriend, and she nodded wordlessly as if waiting for me to continue my train of thought. “So someone in the castle must’ve realized who you were. There must have been someone who stole you, which is what activated the curse, and that’s why you were trapped inside the pauldrons. My guess is, whoever activated it had no idea what to do with you, so they hid you in the dungeons until they could work it out.”

“How many nuggets of gold do we want to wager that it was Florian the soothsayer?” Amber muttered darkly.

“If your current Baron has a soothsayer in his employ, then I’d hazard a guess that yes, it was him,” Richard said in an equally disgusted tone. “Thank all the gods James found you when he did.”

“I just wish I could remember more than the orphanage and then being put to work as soon as I was old enough,” Sid muttered with a frown. “Something that could help us.”

“I’m sorry,” Richard said again, and his face grew sad as he stared at Sid. “That’s no life for my daughter.”

“It was okay.” Sid shrugged and played with her fingers in her lap.

“I wish I could have shown you the Hadden I grew up in,”

Richard said with a wistful sigh. “It was a beautiful place…”

“Can you tell me about it?” my dark-haired lover asked as she looked up with a shy, hopeful smile.

“Of course.” Richard smiled back, and then we spent most of the afternoon in his swanky high-rise office drinking copious amounts of coffee and letting both him and Sid catch up with each other.

I never banked on finding one of the girls’ parents. I’d figured all of them would’ve been orphaned or abandoned or forgotten about, like poor Amber, but it turned out my assumptions couldn’t have been further from the truth. The parents of the magical women actually transformed their own daughters, to use in a battle against the past Barons, but they in turn had to flee Hadden when their
underground dungeon home was overrun with evil magic and monsters.

It meant they had to leave their girls behind, and that was also the reason why there was a swirling golden portal to another world hidden in my dorm room closet.

“Thank you for your hospitality, Richard,” Amber said as I watched the older guy climb to his feet and button his probably really expensive suit jacket.

“The pleasure has well and truly been all mine,” Mr. Harper said with a wide grin, and he scooped Sid up into another tight embrace. “If you three ever need anything, you know where to find me.”

I suddenly wondered if Richard could help us find an apartment to move to, but I thought that was a little much to ask during a first meeting, so I decided to file the idea away for later.

“Thank you, sir,” I said and nodded across the polished chrome desk at him. “Thank you for telling your story. A lot more things make a lot more sense now.”

“I can imagine.” Richard chuckled heartily, and then he pulled out a sleek white business card, which he pressed firmly into Sid’s
hand. “This is my private number. You call me if you ever need anything, okay? Please don’t be a stranger.”

“I won’t,” Sid said in a reverent voice. “I promise.”

I managed to persuade another yellow cab to take us back to Brooklyn after another hefty tip, which I didn’t mind paying so much now that I had an equally hefty bank account and a nest egg of gold.

The three of us were buzzing with excitement when we finally made it back to Dalton Hall.

“Where were you guys today?” Honey asked from her open door as we passed her bedroom.

My hot lesbian neighbor was splayed out on her bed with one leg crooked upward and a half-read book in her hand. She had an arm behind her head on the mountain of squishy-looking pillows, and the casual way she was sprawled against her white bed sheets almost made me blush.

“We went into the city,” Amber said excitedly. “It was incredible!”

“I’ve been meaning to do the same,” Honey said, and she caught my eyes as she spoke. “There’s a whole bunch of gay bars I
want to go to, although with you girls here, maybe I don’t need to.

You’re enough eye candy.”

“Just the girls?” I couldn’t help my voice as it immediately fell into flirting mode. “Not me?”

Honey fixed me with a long stare until she fell about into peals of laughter.

“Alright, pretty boy.” She rolled her eyes and stuck her tongue out at me, with a grin still plastered on her face. “You can officially be classified as eye candy, too.”

“I knew it,” I said and smugly ran a hand through my hair, and I couldn’t help but laugh as I headed for my own bedroom.

“So, Harold is your uncle?” Amber asked the moment I shut the door behind us.

“So it would seem.” Sid shook her head with an almost disbelieving laugh.

“I just can’t believe we found your dad,” I said to her as I sat beside her on the edge of my bed. “Let alone discovering who Harold really was.”

“It feels like a giant puzzle,” Amber sighed and flopped down onto the still rumpled bed sheets. “But we’re getting more and more
pieces to put it all together, at least.”

“It’s starting to slowly make sense,” I agreed. “But we still need to find the longsword and the helmet. If there are more girls like you trapped inside of them, we need to rescue them as soon as possible.”

“I agree,” Sid said with a determined nod, and then she placed a hand gently against my arm. “But we should get some rest. You have classes in the morning, and I know you’re going to want to head straight back to Hadden when you’re done.”

“Damn right.” I grinned across at Sid. “I’ve only got one or two morning lectures, and then we’re gonna go have a word with ol’

quartermaster Harold.”

The three of us ate some dinner with Aron and Honey and then got an early night, but my mind was constantly swirling with possibilities as I tried to drop off into the realm of unconsciousness.

I just found myself mostly staring at the ceiling, and my brain was whirring with all the new information we’d found that day. We’d discovered Sid’s aunt, Maggie, still in the dungeons beneath Hadden, and then we’d found her father, who had explained that

Harold, the Baron’s quartermaster, had in fact been Maggie’s husband.

It was like a particularly crazy episode of Maury.

I must’ve eventually fallen into some sort of sleep because I woke up to the annoying chirp of my cell phone’s alarm clock, and I left the two gorgeous women snoozing in my bed together as I reluctantly got up, dressed, and headed to my lectures.

I met Aron at the coffee stand once again, got another strong as hell cold brew for my first class, and then paid little to no attention to whatever the professor was trying to explain to us all that morning.

I only had two to get through, though, and so I was back in my bedroom before midday much to the girls’ excitement.

“Are we going now?” Amber asked with a wide grin.

“Absolutely,” I said with an equally huge smile of my own. “I can’t wait to tell Harold we met his estranged dungeon dwelling wife, his face is going to be a picture.”

I made sure my bedroom door was sufficiently locked, and then I held both Sid’s and Amber’s hands as we crossed through the molten gold of the portal in the back of my closet. There was a strong tug somewhere by my stomach, and the magic sucked me
through into the otherworld. In the next breath my feet were on solid stone, and I had Sid’s pauldrons fixed to my shoulders and Amber’s bow in my left hand.

“You there?” My voice echoed in the dimly-lit stone chamber, but I heard them both almost immediately in my mind.

Hello, Sid said in reply.

We’re here. Amber’s voice was jovial with the elated giggle I knew she was holding in, and her excitement was infectious.

It was the closest the three of us had been to ironclad answers since I’d first found Amber’s bow down by the river, so I hurriedly grabbed the remaining blink and strength potions that Harold had made for me and then quickly exited the dungeon. I climbed out of the stone spiral staircase until I was standing in the forest above, and I covered the cabin entrance with the heavy wooden storm shutters, which I then in turn covered with broken tree branches and bunches of fallen leaves, so no one could stumble across my dungeon entrance.

Since I’d made the trek too many times to count at this point, I didn’t need my compass tattoo anymore as I started to head toward the market town of Hadden. It was just past midday in the
otherworld, a little further ahead of New York, and the sun had only just started to fall a little in the sky. Thick white curls of cloud sometimes covered the light and cast chilly shadows through the forest, and a steady breeze rustled through the tree branches and coaxed the red and gold-colored leaves out of the canopies and onto the ground.

I passed through the bustling streets of Hadden and headed straight toward the Baron’s castle, which stood tall on the western side of the town. I could see the two huge towers looming over the skyline, and I spotted a number of merchants and farmers traversing the same road as me as they went about their business at the castle.

No one paid a bit of attention to the stranger dressed in black jeans with pauldrons fixed to his shoulders, but maybe they’d finally come to expect their resident monster slayer to look and dress a little bit weird.

Although, I did want to take myself shopping in the otherworld one day. I’d already taken the girls clothes shopping in New York, but I wanted to see how I compared in their world, though maybe I’d wait until I actually managed to get them back into their own bodies before we hit Hadden’s version of Fifth Avenue.

I didn’t see the need to bother the Baron, so once I nodded to the same two guards who were always stationed at the gate, and then I headed straight for Harold’s living quarters.

But when I arrived and started to knock at the door, no one answered.

It was unlike Harold to not be in his lab, and so I had no choice but to make a beeline for the Baron’s throne room in the hopes that he could point me in the right direction.

“Sir Miller!” The Baron’s voice was loud and elated, and I noticed he had a goblet of wine held loosely in one hand, as usual.

“Sire,” I said with a curt nod of my head, once I’d crossed the length of the hall and come to a stop beneath his throne.

“To what do I owe the pleasure, sir?” the Baron asked as he took a slightly tipsy sip of red wine from the jewel-encrusted goblet.

“I wanted to see your quartermaster,” I explained as I looked up at the Baron with a half-smile.

I was confident Maggie would’ve figured out if this current Baron was a threat, and judging by his penchant for wine and not much else, I didn’t see him as one, either. But still, his daddy was
one of the last ones in power who ruined the lives of Hadden’s magical folk, so I felt just a little touch of trepidation around him.

“Harold?” The Baron stifled a yawn and then casually threw one of his legs over the arm of his throne, so that his foot dangled over the side. “My quartermaster is unavailable this afternoon, I’m afraid. I believe he’s with my soothsayer, discussing very important matters my monster slayer need not worry himself with.”

“Of course, sire.” I bent my back again, just slightly, in the smallest of bows. “Sorry to have been a nuisance, I’m sure you have an exceptionally busy day.”

“On the contrary,” the Baron said with a snicker, and then he waved another careless hand in my general direction. “I certainly shan’t be climbing all of those stairs in the south tower to join them. I shall send for you if I receive any sightings of monsters.”

“Yes, sire.” I nodded again and spun on my heel.

Harold’s with the soothsayer? Sid asked in my head as I exited the throne room.

That can’t be good, Amber said.

“No, it probably isn’t,” I muttered in a low voice, so no one around me could tell I was talking to myself. “But the Baron said the
south tower. How about we test out Harold’s potions again and see what they’re up to?”

I love it when the Baron’s a little drunk, Amber giggled. He gives information so willingly.

“Another reason I’m confident that he’s not actually a bad guy,”

I said with a wry smile as I walked out into the castle’s back courtyard.

It was teeming with people, maybe even busier than the market in the town’s square, and no one seemed to pay me any attention for which I was glad.

Scullery maids and washerwomen went about their business with ruddy flushed cheeks and stained aprons, guards patrolled the courtyard with lazy eyes, and merchants and farmers’ boys haggled for the best prices between themselves. Horses and sheep and a number of other barn animals wandered freely around the place, and I figured they were probably the main reason for so much hay and mud underfoot.

I kept to the edges but made my way around the courtyard quickly, until I was on the south side and could then dip back into the castle in order to climb up the south tower. It was a surprisingly wide
staircase, and I’d always thought that castle stairs were purposefully tight to make it easier to fend off attackers from below, but apparently the Baron’s soothsayer didn’t require such uncomfortable formalities.

Rich tapestries were fastened to the walls, with gold fringe and intricate needlework, and every so often there was a torch burning in a sconce to light the way. The windows were still slits in the stone, used for archers to fire arrows at oncoming attackers, so the light from the torches was welcome.

I finally made it to the top of the tower, where there was a small landing, a door, and a surprisingly large window in comparison to the archer’s slits. Just when I thought Hadden’s architects were playing by the rules, my assumptions were squashed.

The window was glassless, so it was just a square of open air that caused quite a breeze to come through. It was easily big enough for someone to climb through, and I peered out of it to see the town below. My hair whipped around my face, and I automatically found myself extending a hand to push against the wall as a means of steadying myself.

I was just about to say something to the girls, when I heard a pair of voices from behind the single wooden door across the
landing.

I hurried across and pressed my ear up to the door, but thanks to the strong breeze and thick wood, I couldn’t make out exactly what they were saying.

“Well, time to put Harold’s potions to the test again,” I muttered, half to myself, and I quickly crossed the landing again to peer out of the empty window.

My curiosity was at its peak, and I desperately wanted to hear what the damn soothsayer could be saying to Harold behind literal closed doors, so I pulled the blink potion out of my pocket and quickly worked the wax seal off the stopper. I let a couple of droplets fall onto the tip of my tongue and excitedly checked my skill tree tattoo as it morphed beneath my skin to show my new power.

“So cool…” I muttered to myself as I flexed my fingers and watched the ink ripple below my skin.

You’re planning on scaling the outside of the castle? Amber asked with a grimace in her voice.

“Maybe,” I said quietly. “Maybe I won’t have to put my rock climbing skills to the test. Look.”

I poked my head out of the large window and pointed at my goal. It was a stretch of wood, sort of like an ancient form of scaffolding or some sort of makeshift balcony, that was nailed right into the stone just outside the soothsayer’s window.

Is that gonna hold your weight? Sid asked.

“Hey, now.” I pouted, even though they couldn’t see me, but they could hear it in my voice enough to giggle. “Are you trying to tell me I need to lose a few pounds?”

Not at all, Sid said, but I could still hear the smile in her voice. I just don’t want you tumbling to your death below trying to stand on that thing. I don’t think even my powers would save you from this height.

“It looks sturdy enough,” I said as I squinted my eyes at the scaffolding. “And besides, if it breaks, I have Harold’s blink ability. I can break my fall pretty easily.”

That’s true, Amber mused. Plus, I want to hear what the soothsayer is saying.

“Me, too,” I said in a quiet voice. “Let’s do this.”

I hopped up onto the window ledge as the breeze rippled around me, and I held out both hands on either side so they could
grip onto the edge of the stone. I planted my feet and then slowly extended a hand to the scaffolding slightly beneath the soothsayer’s window.

Within a literal blink of an eye, I’d been transported from the edge of the window onto the planks of weather-hardened wood, and I took a sharp inhale of breath as the wind continued to whip around me. I had to swallow the shout that bubbled up my throat, and I quickly planted my feet again and bent my knees, Spider-Man style, until I was crouched on the scaffolding and could finally peer through the window.

It was glassless also, and more or less a square hole cut right into the stone, and my vantage point on the makeshift scaffolding was slightly to the right of the window. I had to peer cautiously around the frame, but I was level enough that I could see the entirety of the soothsayer’s living quarters.

It was just as plush as the staircase leading up to it, and the stone floor was mostly covered by a huge burgundy-red carpet with the same intricate golden threading as the tapestries that hung on the walls. A huge four-poster bed was half-hidden behind a heavy velvet curtain, and there was a gigantic oil painting depicting Hadden’s landscape nailed to the stone beside it.

I sent up a wordless prayer at the fact that the soothsayer had his back to me, and I couldn’t really see Harold fully, but I could just see his profile slightly to the right.

And thanks to the direction of the wind, I could almost perfectly hear the conversation between the quartermaster and the soothsayer.

“ … never seen anything like it.”

“No,” I heard the soothsayer’s syrupy voice reply to Harold as though he were placating a child. “It is certainly a cause for concern.

I’ve never known the town to have such an influx of monsters.”

“But where are all of these monsters coming from?” Harold asked desperately. “Hadden has been relatively free of beasts for quite some years, and now all of a sudden there’s a veritable plague of them.”

“I’m afraid I do not know,” Florian the soothsayer said in the same sickly-sweet voice. “I am not omnipotent, Harold. You know this.”

“I know, I don’t expect you to know everything.” Harold sighed heavily.

I adjusted myself on the wooden scaffolding so I could peer into the room, and I could finally watch the two of them as they conversed.

Harold looked stressed beyond belief, but that might’ve been because he was in the presence of a known dickhead. I didn’t know if Harold himself was a magical being, and I’d always assumed he was some sort of alchemist, more of a scientist than a magician. He was able to concoct a multitude of potions and harness some sort of arcane knowledge, but he’d never displayed any actual magical ability himself.

Though that might’ve been a case of self-preservation.

However, I knew he’d definitely been married to a magical being, so he was fully aware of what the past Barons, and past soothsayers, had done to his wife’s kin.

Having to work so closely with a soothsayer must’ve been hard, and it was no wonder Maggie had refused to come with him.

“Perhaps we should think about employing more hunters?”

Harold suggested as he wrung his hands together. “We have just the one.”

“Sir Miller?” Florian’s voice wrapped around my name like a snake around its prey, and I shuddered. “Hmm. Well, his aptitude for monster slaying has become incredibly useful. I doubt there are many of Hadden’s residents who would be so willing to go right into the belly of the beast, as it were.”

“James does have a natural aptitude for it,” Harold admitted.

“Not just for monster slaying, but magic in general. My potions have only ever been prototypes, but he was able to use them with ease, even on the first try.”

“Was he now?” Florian the soothsayer hummed again and nodded approvingly. “Well, that’s very interesting.”

“Way to rat me out, Harold…” I whispered to the girls, and they hummed inside of my mind.

“You are right, of course.” Harold waved his hand dismissively.

“Even if we were to employ more hunters, we would need to train them, and that could take years. James is all we have right now.”

“The protector of Hadden. He’s doing a stand-up job.” An oily smile spread across Florian’s smarmy face. “Really quite impressive.

No matter what is thrown at him, he seems to always succeed. And all he carries is a bow and arrow, you say?”

I stiffened at the mention of Amber, and my ears pricked up as I strained to listen to their conversation from outside the window.

“Yes,” Harold said. “A bow and arrow, and he wears pauldrons, but… I am not sure whether James himself holds magic, Florian. I think he has an aptitude, a natural understanding for it, yes. But innately magical? I do not think so.”

I’d been listening so intently that my eyes had almost glazed over with how much focus I was putting on my hearing, so I almost damn well fell off the scaffolding in surprise when Florian’s face suddenly appeared at the window.

He had a very warm, obviously very fake, smile plastered across his face, and he looked at me as if I’d just casually knocked on his door, instead of the fact I was many stories up, clinging to a piece of weather-hardened wood, and eavesdropping at his bedroom window.

“Sir Miller,” Florian said with an almost excited flourish. “The man himself. Please, do come in.”

The Baron’s soothsayer quickly extended an arm and with a surprising amount of strength, he grabbed a handful of my shirt so he could bodily yank me through his window and into his living
quarters. I ended up sprawled on the plush red carpet, and I quickly scrambled to my feet, brushed myself off, and tried to plaster a look of mild embarrassment on my face.

Harold looked beyond distraught, and his hands were clasped together in front of him and completely white-knuckled.

“So, Sir Miller,” Florian said now that I was standing in the middle of his private chambers. “We were just talking about you.”

Chapter Twelve

“Apologies for the intrusion, gentlemen.” I nodded to both Florian and Harold, though the latter continued to wear a fearful look on his face at my interruption.

“No intrusion at all,” the Baron’s soothsayer said with another careless wave of his hand, and he crossed over to the opposite side of the room, where a dainty tea set was set on a ridiculously tiny table. “I’m not sure I’ve had the pleasure of an official introduction yet, Sir Miller. My name is Florian. Would you care for a cup of tea?”

“No, thank you.” I plastered as genuine a smile as I could muster on my face while the soothsayer busied himself with the teapot.

“What were you doing at the top of the tower, James?” Harold asked in a strained voice that was tight with forced breeziness. “You could have fallen.”

“I had your blink potion to aid me, quartermaster,” I said as I avoided his questions, and I quickly held my hands behind my back so that Florian couldn’t see my tattoo. “I couldn’t have fallen. I apologize again, though, I had no intention of interrupting what seemed to be a very important conversation.”

“Harold and I were just discussing the current state of affairs,”

Florian said as he dropped two crystallized brown sugar cubes into his cup of tea and then picked it up with his pinky fingers extended, saucer and all. “And how you are sadly the only one to truly protect Hadden. It must have become quite tiresome for you, being the only monster slayer in the land capable of traversing those dungeons.”

“Not at all,” I replied with another slightly forced smile, and I couldn’t help but think of Maggie, Harold’s estranged wife, who still happened to live in said dungeons. “I very much enjoy my role as Hadden’s protector.”

“Hmm,” Florian hummed thoughtfully as he stirred his tea with a stupidly small silver spoon. “And you have taken to it with quite some grace.”

“As anyone would,” I said with a curt nod. “It’s an honor.”

“Harold was just saying how you have such an aptitude for magic.” Florian took a tiny sip of his tea, but his sharp eyes were glued on me. “Proven by your ability to scale the south tower with such ease.”

“I was just practicing my blink ability,” I said and kept my tone nonchalant. “I saw the balcony high up on the tower, and I wanted to
test how precisely I could teleport. I honestly had no intention of being pulled into your living quarters, and so I apologize again.”

“James doesn’t pry,” Harold said quickly. “He couldn’t have known he’d be interrupting us.”

I shared a quick look with the old quartermaster as Florian busied himself with another sugar cube, and I could see in Harold’s wrinkled old eyes how scared he was at my being caught.

“Not at all,” I agreed with Harold and kept a smile on my face.

“I just wanted to test how accurate my blink ability was, that’s all. As it turns out, it was quite accurate.”

“Well, I’m very glad my potions are working out for you,” Harold said with a pained smile. “I was just explaining to Florian how not many people were able to naturally harness those magical abilities.”

“Yes, you are quite impressive, Sir Miller,” Florian said, and he locked eyes with me with such intensity, it made me feel as though I were being X-rayed.

“Thank you,” I said as I fought to keep my expression genial.

“Have you always been able to absorb magic with such ease?”

Florian asked me casually as he took another sip of his tea from the tiny China cup.

I felt Harold stiffen beside me, and I didn’t need the quartermaster’s reaction to tell me Florian was digging for answers that were never going to be a good outcome for me.

But I already knew Florian wasn’t to be trusted, and he was only prying into something that was already common knowledge.

I’d appeared out of nowhere, wielding a magical weapon, and I’d proven my affinity for monster slaying so quickly that the Baron had almost immediately started to pay me for my services.

I’d have been more surprised if Florian didn’t question me.

“I’m not sure what length of time I should apply to ‘always,’” I said with a one-shouldered shrug. “Where I come from, magic is mostly just a fairy tale. So it was equally a shock to me that I was able to control it and utilize it with such ease.”

“That’s very interesting,” Florian said slowly as he studied me.

“I wonder then, why do you have such a natural talent for it? I wonder, indeed…”

“I don’t think it’s me at all,” I said quickly. “This is all Harold’s doing. He’s truly a master of his craft, I’m just a conduit.”

“Thank you, Sir Miller,” the old quartermaster said with a solemn half-bow that made his wispy white hair flutter like cotton
candy. “That’s very kind of you.”

Silence fell in the soothsayer’s living chambers, and the three of us awkwardly looked at our feet as the conversation died. I could feel Harold buzzing with a heady mixture of panic and nerves, so I looked across the room to shoot him a brief smile.

He didn’t return it. Instead, he just wrung his hands together again so his knuckles turned white once more, and then he cleared his throat.

The sound made Florian look up from whatever deep thought he was lost in, and he spread his arms as well as his smile as he looked at the two of us.

“Well, gentlemen,” he said in the same syrupy voice. “I’m afraid I must ask you to take your leave.”

“Of course,” Harold said without giving Florian a chance to explain why he was dismissing us. “We shall leave you to your day, Florian.”

The quartermaster wanted to get out of the tower as quickly as he could, and I didn’t blame him. Florian was a sticky customer, and would’ve been anyway, but he was also the Baron’s soothsayer, and so nothing good could come from talking with him so damn much.

I nodded respectfully at the soothsayer as I passed him, and Florian just smiled warmly at me as I headed out of the door with Harold close on my tail. I started to talk just as Florian shut the heavy wooden door behind us, but Harold made a squeak and grabbed me by the sleeve so he could hustle me down the stairs.

I clamped my mouth shut and dutifully followed the old quartermaster, who despite his age, was fueled by his panic and able to walk with almost superhuman speed back toward his own quarters.

The moment the door to his far more modest living chambers was shut behind us, he rounded on me with his face reddened by a ruddy flush.

“What were you thinking, James?” he demanded in a surprisingly thunderous voice that had me automatically taking a step back.

I’d never heard Harold’s voice get so loud and so powerful, and I instinctively held my hands up in my defense.

“I’m sorry, Harold,” I said. “I really didn’t mean to put you in a precarious situation like that.”

“No, I’m sure you damn well didn’t!” Harold said with a huff, and then he ran a hand through his wispy white hair. “For one, you scaled the damn south tower with no backup in case your magic failed, and for two you were caught eavesdropping on the Baron’s soothsayer, and if that were to get back to His Highness, well, I…”

“Relax, Harold.” I extended a hand and patted the old guy on the shoulder before he could give himself a heart attack.

“I can’t!” Harold said as he shrugged me off and pottered over to the tangled nest of glass tubes that made up his tea making contraption. “You have no idea what could’ve happened, what Florian could’ve done to you… He is not to be trifled with, James, not at all.”

I didn’t answer him, just watched him turn a few valves on the mess of transparent pipes and followed the trail of the homebrewed tea as it eventually filtered through into Harold’s waiting clay mug.

“You know what, Harold?” I sighed. “I think I will have a cup of tea, if your offer still stands.”

“You will?” The old quartermaster looked up at me with momentary joy in his eyes, and then he blinked and quickly set about finding a second mug. “Well, of course, of course…”

I took a seat on one of the rickety wooden chairs at the desk beside his tea making station and waited for the quartermaster to deliver me a cup. It was strong and steaming hot, but still quite mild and just about sweet enough to drink.

The old man heaved himself into the seat opposite me and then fixed me with a stare as he wrapped his withered fingers around the warm clay cup.

“Quit looking at me like that, Harold, I feel like I’m in the principal’s office,” I muttered as I took a sip of my drink.

“What do you mean, principal?” The quartermaster frowned at me. “The principle is you do not sneak around and eavesdrop on arguably the most dangerous man in Hadden!”

“I know, I’m sorry,” I said with a sigh. “I really didn’t mean to put you in that position.”

“My own fault,” Harold muttered and shook his head. “I perhaps shouldn’t have entrusted that amount of magic to you.”

“Your potions have saved my ass more times than I can even remember,” I replied. “I shouldn’t have abused them.”

“What were you doing up there, anyway?” Harold asked as he took another long sip of his drink.

“Well… I technically was eavesdropping,” I admitted. “The Baron had said you were up there with the soothsayer, and I now have it on good authority that the Baron’s soothsayers have always been assholes, so I wanted to get some information on this Florian character.”

“You need only ask, my boy.” Harold said in a dark voice. “I am certainly not a fan of our current regal soothsayer.”

I decided to keep my cards close to my chest one last time and prompted Harold to continue, in the hopes he would admit to who he really was and corroborate his wife’s tale.

“Why not?” I asked innocently.

“Because,” Harold said with another long, tired sigh. “I know for a fact the soothsayer is not a fan of me, though I’m sure Florian doesn’t truly know what I am. He just thinks I’m a crackpot, cobbling together whatever information I can find in order to produce half-baked magic, but… That couldn’t be further from the truth.”

“You’re magical,” I said in a matter-of-fact tone. “Like, you’re actually magical, you have true magic. Right?”

Harold glanced up at me and fixed me with a steady stare, but he eventually let out a breath that sounded as though he’d been
holding it in for decades.

“Yes,” he said with a slow nod. “I am.”

“Well, that makes sense,” I replied. “Given how well your potions work.”

“Florian isn’t to know that,” Harold said, and he ran a finger along the rim of his clay teacup. “You appearing at the window hopefully didn’t give too much away.”

“I’m sorry,” I repeated my apology again.

I hadn’t realized that by showing off my borrowed magic, I was putting Harold himself at risk, and I gnawed at my bottom lip as I waited for the old quartermaster to continue.

“Again, my own fault.” Harold waved his hand. “Not to worry, my boy. You weren’t to know.”

“Well, tell me now,” I pressed him. “What’s going on with the soothsayer and the Baron?”

I had a half-baked idea myself thanks to Maggie, but I still wanted to see whether Harold would explain any further, and of his own accord.

“Magical people…” Harold took a deep, shuddering breath, and he wrapped his fingers even tighter around his clay mug as he
cleared his throat and began to speak again. “Magical people used to live freely in Hadden. In complete harmony with the rest of the population. For many, many years. Decades even. Until something close to a war broke out. The magical people fled this world, they left it to the soothsayers and the evil mages, because their greatest weapons had been stolen from them.”

“Weapons like my bow?” I asked in a soft voice.

Harold’s eyes immediately shot up to meet mine, and I could see the surprise on his face.

“Yes,” the old quartermaster said slowly. “Just like your bow, in fact. And those pauldrons. And I’m sure there’s many more choice pieces of armor and weapons to be found around Hadden that hold just the very same power.”

“I hope so,” I said, and I shot the old guy a wide grin. “I intend to find them.”

“I’m sure you do,” Harold said with a dry chuckle. “Though I’m also sure they’re unable to reach their, ahh, full potential.”

“You’d be surprised…” I murmured as I took another sip of my hot tea.

“How so?” Harold immediately asked.

We’d reached a stalemate in our conversation, with the both of us trying to get the other to admit what they knew, so I took one last opportunity to dodge the question by finishing the dregs of my tea and holding the small clay cup in both hands.

When I didn’t answer, Harold let out a small huff of a laugh and shook his head.

“I think, dear boy, it is quite obvious how so,” Harold murmured.

He knows you can hear us, Amber said in a quiet voice inside my head.

I don’t think it’s a bad thing, Sid said. Harold is my uncle. He’ll know my pauldrons were owned by Richard Harper. He’ll know everything already.

I listened to the girls and ended up nodding my head slightly, just out of habit, and I noticed Harold’s eyes on me.

“I recognized those pauldrons of yours, James,” the quartermaster said when he caught my gaze. “They once belonged to my brother.”

“Richard Harper.” I said the name slowly and just nodded in understanding. “Obsidian’s father.”

“So, you truly can hear my niece?” Harold asked, and I could see the hope as it flickered behind his eyes. “It’s been so long, I wondered… Is… is she still in there?”

“Yes,” I answered. “I can hear her.”

Harold clapped his hands together, and for the first time I saw genuine joy on his withered old face.

“Then there is still hope for us yet!” Harold let out a gasp, and he battled to keep his excited voice low. “Is she okay?”

“Sid’s fine,” I said with a smile. “Sorry, Obsidian. We decided to shorten her name.”

“We?” Harold asked curiously, and then his eyes darted to the first weapon I’d found. “The bow?”

“Amber,” I clarified. “Her name is Amber.”

“You can hear them both?” Harold asked, and this time his eyes glimmered as though he were about to start crying with happiness.

“Better than that,” I said slowly. “I’ve seen them. In the flesh.”

“You need to tell me everything,” Harold said firmly. “And we’ll need something stronger than tea. Hold on for just a second.”

The old quartermaster heaved himself to his feet, pottered off behind his rows of bookshelves, and eventually reappeared holding a corked bottle covered in dust and half-filled with a rich amber-colored liquid.

“Whiskey!” he said triumphantly as he set the bottle down on the table between us with a grand flourish. “There, now we can really get down to the nitty-gritty.”

I spent the next thirty minutes discussing everything with Harold, over several servings of his thick smoky whiskey which tasted far better than any Jack Daniel’s I’d ever had in New York.

Richard had explained to me how his brother was also a magical being, but Harold elected to leave the safety of the dungeons to work closer with the Baron. Harold wanted the position of quartermaster because it meant he could keep his magic fresh, relatively freely, without raising too much suspicion.

It also meant he’d been able to keep tabs on the Baron himself, and Harold confirmed that the young ruler of Hadden had little to no clue about what happened with his lineage in the past.

But Harold had wanted to keep his supposed enemies close, particularly the soothsayers who were always so quick to leech from
the Barons, and so it’d worked out for him for the most part. Aside from being completely estranged from his wife, though that was a cost he’d been willing to pay.

“How is she?” Harold asked as he poured out another measure of whiskey for the two of us. “My doting wife?”

“She seemed fine.” I shrugged. “Angry. But fine.”

“Angry,” Harold said with a wry chuckle. “Yes, that sounds like my wife. She was like fire in human form.”

“Yeah, that’s a pretty good metaphor for her.” I smirked. “She scared me half to death when I found her base in the dungeons.”

“Did she still have that damned waterfall up?” Harold asked as he stifled a hiccup, and the sound turned into a laugh in his throat when he saw my grim expression.

“Yes,” I said and shook my head with a chuckle of my own.

“That was no joke, it was the scariest thing I’ve come up against in the dungeon.”

“Well, I’m glad she’s doing okay.” Harold sighed, and his expression grew wistful. “I haven’t seen her in years.”

“You don’t ever wanna go into the dungeons to see her?” I asked.

“I’m not entirely sure she’d welcome me,” the old quartermaster said as he swirled the whiskey around the bottom of his clay cup, and his jovial tone gave way to a sudden sadness. “She felt it was a betrayal, when I decided to leave the dungeons. I could’ve gone through the portal with the rest of our people, or back into Hadden, but I didn’t want to stay underground anymore. Not on the cusp of a war.”

“Why didn’t you cross through the portal?” I asked.

“I wasn’t one hundred percent sure where it led,” Harold explained. “And I work in absolutes. I didn’t want to chance my existence on magic that was forged so quickly.”

“What if I told you I knew where the portal went?” I asked, and I watched as Harold’s bushy white eyebrows raised on his forehead.

“How could you possibly know that?” he asked.

“Because I found the other side of it,” I said. “You know I don’t come from Hadden, but there is no such settlement called Brooklyn.

Not here, anyway. I come from the other side.”

“You come from the other side?” Harold asked in a stern voice.

“You’re not… you’re not from this world at all?”

“Not one bit,” I said with a huff of humorless laughter. “The portal was in the back of my closet, I found it on my first day of college.”

“I have no idea what a closet or a college is, but your choice of clothing now makes far more sense,” Harold said as he shook his head disbelievingly. “So… Have you met any of my people? On the other side? Are they okay?”

“I only met your brother, on the other side,” I said. “Richard Harper.”

“Ahh, so that’s how you know his name.” Harold nodded quickly. “And how you know of my niece, trapped in those pauldrons, I suspect. Did my brother explain how we lost the girls?”

“Well, the girls were the ones who did the majority of explaining, long before I met Richard Harper,” I said. “But your brother certainly helped to fit more pieces into the puzzle.”

Just look at his face, Sid giggled inside of my head.

“H-How?” Harold asked, and his eyes grew suddenly wide as he leaned forward in his seat and repeated the word. “How did you come to meet my niece?”

“When I cross back through the portal,” I explained slowly.

“Back into my own world, I take the bow, and the pauldrons, with me.

But when I reappear in my dimension… So do the women in their human bodies.”

Harold was silent for a long moment, and then he suddenly let out a huge guffaw of a laugh that was very similar to his brother’s.

He smacked his hand so hard against the wooden table that our clay cups rattled and sloshed whiskey around, and the old quartermaster had to wipe at his eyes as his laugh eventually quieted to a continuous chuckle.

“Is it because of the magic?” Harold asked while still chuckling.

“I assume the magic that binds them doesn’t hold in your world?”

“That’s our theory,” I said with a grin. “So yes, I’ve met them.”

“Oh, tell them I say hello!” Harold exclaimed. “I can’t believe this!”

“No need, they can hear you,” I said as I tapped the side of my head. “They’re listening right now.”

Tell him we say hello, Sid said eagerly.

Yes, tell him! Amber giggled.

“They say hello back,” I laughed.

“Oh, that’s incredible!” Harold sighed.

When Harold clutched at his chest, and his eyes welled up again with tears, I could hear the girls chuckle again inside my head.

“Hello,” Harold repeated tipsily. “Yes, hello. Gods, I thought they were lost. But how can you hear them, how is, how… How--”

“I’ve been asking myself the same thing since my first day at college, Harold,” I said as I clapped him on the shoulder. “I’ve just learned to take each day as it comes and try and find out as much information as humanly possible.”

“Well, you’ve done a great job so far, my boy,” Harold said as he poured out yet another measure of whiskey, and I could see the dusty old bottle had become significantly less full the more time we’d spent discussing everything together.

I felt completely fine and had maybe just a slight buzz, but I figured Harold probably wasn’t used to drinking a quart of whiskey in the middle of the day.

“This is fantastic news,” the quartermaster said as he clasped his hands around his drink again and fixed me with a lopsided smile.

“Perhaps we can finally pick up where my people left off, and work to stop the soothsayers for good.”

“That’s certainly my plan,” I agreed. “I know this current Baron doesn’t seem to have any idea as to what both his soothsayer and his quartermaster are really up to, but maybe that’s for the best.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” Harold giggled as he upended the whiskey bottle in the general direction of his cup and drained the thing completely, though he got a good portion of it on the table, too.

“For now, we should focus on finding every single magic born that’s still trapped in this world.”

“That’s exactly what I’ve focused on,” I said as I took my last drink from him. “I know there’s a longsword, as well as a helmet, out there somewhere. I found ink drawings of them in Maggie’s base.”

“I’ll let you know if I hear of their whereabouts,” Harold said, and then he raised his cup with a flourish. “To the daughters.”

“To the daughters,” I said, and I clinked my drink against the rim of his before we both emptied the contents into our mouths.

I took my leave of Harold’s living quarters as soon as he started to hiccup continuously, and I hoped he would put himself to sleep soon because there was no way he’d been that drunk for probably decades.

Your uncle is a sweetheart, Sid, Amber said as I started to head out of Hadden itself and back toward the forest.

He really is, Sid giggled, and then I heard her sigh inside my head. I can’t believe the amount of new information we’ve found in such a short span of time.

“We were bound to soon enough,” I said with a grunt as I heaved myself past a fallen tree in the middle of the forest. “I had so many damn questions, I was hellbent on getting some of them answered.”

You’ve already done so much for us, James. Amber’s voice was soft and flirtatious, and I couldn’t help the grin on my face as she spoke to me inside of my head.

We quite literally owe you our lives, Master, Sid said in the same fluttery voice, and her use of the word ‘Master’ made my pulse quicken.

“You girls will be the death of me…” I shook my head, though I couldn’t help but laugh as they cooed at me the entire trek back to the cabin in the woods.

I made sure I covered the dungeon entrance as I climbed down the tight spiral staircase that led into the small stone chamber,
and I stashed Harold’s potions back into the mirror image of my dorm room’s closet before I pulled the doors wide open and was greeted with the swirling golden portal.

I stepped into the rippling sheet of magic and felt the same tug in my abdomen as the magic grabbed at me, and within the next second, I was standing in my college dorm room with a gorgeous woman on either side of me.

The moment their bodies materialized, both Amber and Sid pressed themselves against me and started to kiss me wherever they could reach, and I let out a low chuckle as I wrapped my arms around their waists and pulled them even closer.

I’d had several whiskies, there was a lock on my bedroom door, and I had two otherworldly warrior women calling me ‘Master,’

so I knew exactly how I wanted to spend my evening.

Chapter Thirteen

“I feel sorry for Aron and Honey,” Amber said with a slight smirk as my closet door shut behind her with a resounding click.

“And why’s that?” I asked as I turned and locked eyes with the gorgeous redhead.

“Judging by the look in your eyes, we’re not immediately headed for a peaceful, entirely innocent night of sleep,” Amber purred, and the smirk pulled at her plump lips until she had a full-blown grin on her face.

“The look in my eyes?” I smirked back at the first warrior woman that I’d pulled from the otherworld. “Do you wanna know exactly what’s going through my head right now?”

“I can hazard a guess,” Sid said as she flopped down onto my unmade bed and fixed the two of us with a hungry stare.

Amber and I were still standing in the middle of the room, and I crooked a finger at the redhead as Sid watched us from the bed.

“Come here, then,” I commanded, and Amber immediately sauntered forward so she could close the gap between us.

My first girlfriend had let her fiery-red hair fall freely over one shoulder, and it swayed with her shapely hips as she approached me. I inhaled sharply through my nose as she stopped and looked up at me. She smelled like coconut shampoo and leather, and I looked down at her as the carnal hunger rumbled in my lower stomach. Her big blue eyes were hooded with thick lashes, and her plump lips were crooked with a knowing half-grin.

The moment she was within touching distance, I took her face in my hands without saying another word and guided her mouth toward mine. She opened her soft lips eagerly as I kissed her, and she pressed her tight body up against me with a soft sigh as she wrapped her tongue around mine. I let my hands slip from Amber’s face and down her smooth neck, further down past her arms and toward her shapely hips, and I pulled her in closer to me so she could feel my growing erection press hard against her. My redheaded girlfriend whimpered against me, and I let my hands skim across her hips and around to the roundness of her ass.

I dug my hands through the fabric of her clothing and into her soft skin, and a moan escaped her lips as she continued to kiss me with a growing hunger. Amber started to yank needily at the hem of my shirt, and I let out a sudden gasp as her fingers finally found my
skin. Then I let her quickly yank the shirt up over my torso until we had to reluctantly break free of each other’s kiss so she could pull it over my head.

Amber gently ran her hands over my wide shoulders and then across my chest, and she sighed happily.

“You’re so beautiful, James,” she whispered in awe as she licked her kiss-swollen lips.

“She’s right,” Sid said from the bed behind us, and she kept her icy-gray eyes firmly fixed on the two of us as her long legs almost instinctively opened.

“You two definitely are…” I growled softly as I held Amber’s face in one hand again.

I scooped a finger under her chin so I could make her look up at me, and the way she so easily succumbed to my touch and extended her neck was enough to make my dick twitch in my pants.

I pulled Amber in for another kiss and grabbed at her round ass again, and I decided to test just how easily she obeyed me, especially with her mind overcome with desire. I let one hand drop to her thigh, and I wrapped an arm around her leg, just behind her knee, so I could wrap it around my waist. I barely had to coax her
before Amber immediately hopped up to wrap both legs around me, and I chuckled as she continued to kiss me.

The smile on my face almost instantly melted into a long moan as Amber’s tongue danced inside my mouth, and I could immediately feel the heat from between her legs as she pressed herself against me.

I wanted more.

I moved the two of us around so I could press her back up against the door of my dorm room, and she took a sharp intake of breath as I pressed my now rock-hard erection up against the warmth between her legs.

“I need…” Amber’s breath hitched in her throat again as I rolled my hips up against her. “I need y-you… I can feel you, oh, James, please…”

She gasped into my kiss as I rolled my hips again, and my lower stomach flipped in somersaults with how good her desire tasted on my tongue.

“Good, because I can’t wait any longer,” I muttered into Amber’s hungry mouth, and I kept one hand firmly gripped onto her ass as I dropped the other hand and quickly unbuttoned my pants.

My cock finally sprang free as I shoved my pants and underwear down, and I could see how I was already leaking with my desire as I ran the length of myself up against Amber. She was still covered with the thin lace of her own underwear, but she was already wet herself, and the fabric between her legs was soaked.

I let out a long groan at the sensation of it riding against the underside of my dick, and Amber’s legs almost immediately began to quiver.

“Please…” she whispered desperately.

“Fuck her,” Sid said in a throaty voice somewhere behind us.

“Show me…”

“God.” I let out a choked laugh. “You girls will be the death of me.”

“We’re only just starting,” Amber sighed as she rolled her hips against the stiffness of my erection. “Take me.”

I didn’t need telling twice.

I hooked a finger around the wet fabric of Amber’s underwear and moved it to the side so I could slide another finger deep inside of her. The gorgeous redhead bodily shuddered, and then she let out a whimper as I used the pad of my thumb to rub at her swollen clitoris.

“You feel so good…” I told her as I crooked my finger inside of her. “So perfect.”

“P-Please…” Amber gasped. “O-Oh, please, James, please…”

I pulled my fingers away from her wetness and ran them along the length of my cock. Then I finally pushed myself between Amber’s open legs, and she dutifully held her dripping panties aside so I could slide into her glistening pussy. Our kiss faltered for a brief moment as I pushed into her entrance, and she gasped into my mouth when I eventually bottomed out inside of her.

“Ohhhh, that feels good, James,” she whispered in a throaty voice, and the moment she spoke, the hunger took over.

“God, so do you,” I growled, and I pulled out almost all of the way just so I could slam myself back into her.

Amber had to slap a hand to her mouth to stop the scream of pleasure. Her warmth wrapped around me as though she were made for me, and she squeezed her legs around my waist like she was trying to get even closer and even deeper.

“Fuck me…” she moaned as she threw her head back.

“Please, James, please, please...”

I let out a low rumble in my chest by way of a reply and then picked up the pace, and my redheaded girlfriend shuddered and gasped in sheer ecstasy as I held her against the door and continued to slide in and out of her dripping tunnel.

“You look so good…” I heard Sid’s low moan from where she was sprawled on the bed behind us, and I listened to the breathless noises she made and knew she also had a hand on herself while she watched me fuck Amber.

The thought of that made my stomach twist into knots. I pressed my lips against Amber’s neck and kissed at her soft skin as I continued to fuck her right there against my dorm room door, and Amber’s hands scratched against my back as she angled her hips in time to my thrusts.

I felt her fingers dig into my skin as her back arched suddenly, but I kept my rhythm.

“Are you getting close for me already, love?” I muttered against her slick skin, and I ran my tongue over her so I could taste how sweet she was. “Are you gonna cum for me?”

“Oh, g-god!” Amber’s head lolled back against the door, and her hands gripped harder onto my shoulders as the pleasure started
to take over. “Oh, my god, James, that feels… it feels…”

“Does that feel good?” I asked with my face still buried in her neck, and I started to slam into her a little quicker as my own pleasure began to build deep within me.

“You feel so good, James,” she said around a broken gasp, and her nails started to dig into my skin as I held her up and continued to slam the length of my cock into her. “Oh, my god, yeah, I… I’m gonna cum…”

“Show me,” I commanded, and I gripped the soft flesh of her ass even tighter as I pushed my rock-hard cock as deep into her soaking wet pussy as I could. “Cum for me right now.”

“Oh, gods!” Amber moaned, and her back arched again as her head slammed against the door.

Her pussy clenched around me as her orgasm reached its peak, and I watched as the muscles in her neck tightened. Her blue eyes were screwed shut against the intensity of her pleasure, and her entire body shuddered as I continued to slip in and out of her wetness.

“More,” I demanded as the wet heat of her convulsing tunnel wrapped tightly, almost possessively, around my dick. “Give me
more.”

“O-Oh, James--” Amber’s hands were still gripped into my bare shoulders as her breasts jiggled with every one of my thrusts, and her legs were tight around my waist as her orgasm continued to rock through her.

“Oh, you feel so good, Amber, you’re doing so good, being so good for me…” I muttered my hungry words of encouragement as the pleasure inside of me started to head toward the edge. “You can give me one more, I know you can…”

“Please, James!” Amber cried as her legs started to spasm, and her wetness leaked onto my shaft as I pounded in and out of her. “Please cum inside of me!”

“Fuck… ” Her words were the green light I needed, and I felt my dick explode inside of her as I fired white-hot rivers of my cum inside of Amber’s wet pussy. I slammed into her one last time as my orgasm set every one of my nerve endings on fire, and I held her there as we both shuddered.

“You did so good, Amber…” I murmured as I kissed the tip of her nose and finally slid my cock fully out of her velvety tunnel.

“My legs are shaking…” the redhead giggled, and she wrapped her arms around my neck so she could stay upright as I finally let go of her thighs.

“Then I did my job right.” I grinned as I scooped her back up into my arms and walked over to the bed.

Sid had undressed herself as she’d watched me fuck Amber, and she had a hand lazily running across the front of her underwear as she watched us approach with hunger in her eyes.

“That was so hot…” Sid groaned as she let her fingers skim against the fabric of her underwear, and I could see where her wetness had darkened the material.

“Did you enjoy the show?” I asked as I softly placed Amber on the bed beside her.

The redhead immediately leaned across to kiss Sid’s neck, and I sat up on my knees so I could watch the two of them. Amber ran a hand over the pale skin of Sid’s stomach, and the dark-haired beauty angled her hips up toward the trail that Amber’s soft fingers left.

“Now, it’s my turn to watch…” Amber said in a quiet voice as she flopped back into the rumpled bed sheets with a giggle.

“What do you say, Sid?” I asked, and I suddenly wrapped my hand around her ankle and pulled her toward me.

She squealed and giggled as I pulled her toward me by the one leg, and without giving her a second to reply, I leaned down to capture her lips in a kiss. My dark-haired girlfriend moaned into my mouth as she wrapped her arms around my neck and pressed her chest up against mine, and I gently pushed her legs open as we made out.

“Oh!” Sid moaned raspily when she felt my still hard, still wet cock push up against her underwear, and she wrapped her hand up in my hair as she arched her back up to meet me.

I groaned into her kiss, and Sid squirmed helplessly beneath me. I could feel the wetness of her even through her underwear, and I pulled away from her eager kiss so I could hook both of my thumbs around the flimsy material and pull it slowly down past her thighs.

She locked eyes with me as I removed her panties and flung them unceremoniously somewhere on the floor behind me, and I used both hands to push her legs even further apart. I gripped into the pale flesh of her inner thighs so she couldn’t move away, and slowly, deliberately, I lowered my head until my mouth hovered over the sweetness of her pussy.

I stayed there for a moment, barely an inch away from her, and I knew she could feel every one of my breaths against her.

“You’re so ready for me…” I murmured, and just by the movement of me speaking, my lips brushed against her.

Sid shuddered at the lightness of my touch, and I felt a grin form on my mouth as her legs began to quiver already, even without me touching her.

“P-Please…” Sid whispered hoarsely.

She could hardly get another coherent word out, so in one quick fluid movement, I ran my tongue over her labia. Her taste was warm and sweet, and I moaned into her as my mouth moved.

“O-Oh!” Sid’s hands wound themselves up into the bed sheets, and her pale thighs shuddered again, but I kept my grip on them firm so I could keep them open for me.

“Does that feel good?” I asked, and the vibration of my words against her made Sid buck in surprise.

“Yes!” she gasped desperately. “It feels so good!”

I swirled my tongue around her until I eventually found the soft mound of her clitoris, and this time Sid let out a shout as I rolled my tongue against it. I wrapped my lips around her clit and sucked
gently before I let my tongue lap and move against it, and as Sid’s hands tightened on the bed sheets, I kept up the same rhythm.

I moaned into her dripping pussy as I continued to lap at her sweetness, until I could suddenly taste the difference in her juices on my tongue. She was close, and her back arched up to press her pussy into my mouth, so I picked up the pace but kept the same pressure until Sid started to let out soft, strangled gasps.

“Master!” Sid groaned loudly as the tension in her hips reached the high point, and her sudden orgasm rocked through her body.

She exploded against my mouth, and I greedily sucked and licked as my black-haired girlfriend squirmed beneath me. I didn’t stop, even when her legs stopped shaking, and she eventually grabbed my head with a breathless giggle as she pulled me up to kiss her.

“That was…” she groaned into my mouth. “Wow, I…”

“You taste good,” I said with a smirk as she wrapped her legs around my hips, and I rubbed the tip of my rock-hard cock against her. “And I know you feel good…”

“Oh, please…” she whispered when she felt me push against her opening. “I need to feel you inside of me, James.”

My dick was still fully hard and covered in Amber’s juices, and as I pushed against Sid’s tight entrance, I let out a long moan.

“You feel so good already…” I muttered with an almost disbelieving shake of the head, and Sid just sighed with pleasure again.

“So do you,” she murmured in a hoarse voice and pushed her hands up into my hair. “Please, James, I need you.”

With a groan, I slowly slid my entire length into her still quivering tunnel, and I bucked my hips downward so she had to take every single inch of me. Sid’s breath shuddered into my hungry kiss, and as I bottomed out inside of her pussy, I hit that magical spot.

She convulsed beneath me, and I broke away from our kiss so I could listen to the filthy, innocent sounds that came out of her mouth.

“Fuck…” she whispered, and then she gasped again as I started to build up a rhythm inside of her.

I angled myself so I hit that special spot inside of her with every single thrust, and eventually she couldn’t even form words.

“God, Sid…” I groaned and kissed her neck, and she kept her hands tightly wound in my hair and her legs around my waist but was still unable to speak properly.

Sid’s shuddering gasps and long moans kept in time with me, along with the satisfyingly wet sound of our skin, and even with her inability to speak coherently I could tell she was close to another orgasm.

“Give it to me,” I commanded in a strained voice, and I licked at the slick skin of her neck as Sid’s tunnel spasmed around the length of my cock. “I know you’re close.”

Sid’s gasps fluttered as her legs tightened around me, and I angled my hips downward again so she had every inch of my thick cock buried inside of her.

“James!” Sid found her voice enough to shout my name, and her head flew back into the pillow as she tightened around me. Then she held my face with both of her hands so she could let out a long, guttural moan right into my waiting mouth.

“Oh, god you feel so good when you cum…” I whispered into her parted lips, and she just whimpered helplessly as her orgasm finally reached its height. “But give me more, make me feel it, make me cum with you…”

“Oh, James!” Sid fully found her voice again as I commanded her, and I knew it was our Master bond that had her obeying my
every demand.

It was ridiculously hot.

I felt her juices spill around me at my command, and the hot wetness caused my dick to explode like a damn rocket inside of her.

My second orgasm spread through my body like wildfire and I shot strong ripples of my seed inside of her as Sid’s own pleasure finally petered out.

I rocked into her for several more thrusts, because she just felt that good, and then I finally let my head collapse onto her heaving chest. We collapsed into a sweaty, breathless heap on the bed, and I grinned widely as she slowly pulled my dick out of her pussy with a satisfyingly wet sound.

Amber shuffled over to us and wrapped herself around Sid and me, and the three of us stayed like that, naked and warm and satisfied, for the rest of the evening.

“James?” Amber eventually asked, and I looked around at her with a sleepy smile.

“Yes, love?” I answered her as I brushed a stray tendril of red hair away from her face.

“Your mind hasn’t stopped since you were on top of that tower,”

Amber said as she softly brushed my own hair off my forehead and cradled my face in her hand. “Are you okay?”

“What do you mean?” I asked with a light laugh.

“You need to rest,” Sid suddenly piped up in agreement, and she looked up at me from where she was cuddled up against my side. “You’re living a double life, and I don’t want you to get burned out.”

“I’ll be fine,” I said with another chuckle as I wrapped my arms around the two naked women in my bed. “I promise.”

The three of us remained tangled up in my bed sheets until the two girls eventually fell into a peaceful sleep beside me, but my mind struggled to turn itself off.

I had thoughts running away from themselves inside of my head, with winding tangents that had a million possibilities, that then broke off into yet another branch, and it soon felt like my mind was full of a thorny bramble bush made up from all the different theories.

The main question that kept cropping up inside my mind was

‘why me?’

Why did my college dorm room have the old British style standalone wardrobe, with a portal of roiling gold magic that transported me to the otherworld? Why did I find it?

Was it meant for me? Or was it just dumb luck?

Was there a possibility I came from some ancient magical line, which was why the portal, the girls, Harold’s potions, they all seemed to work for me?

That particular theory seemed way too far-fetched, even for my racing mind, and it was probably the influence of the girls inside of my head that allowed me to even harness magic at all. We’d learned they were in fact the most powerful of the magic folk, the daughters of those who’d fled Hadden through the portal and into New York, so it made sense their power had filtered through to me.

We were bound, I was their Master, so perhaps even without realizing, they’d gifted me an aptitude for magic in their world.

I eventually managed to fall into a light sleep, though my broken dreams all held the exact same burning questions as my waking mind did, and when the morning eventually came around, I felt just as tired as I had been when I first closed my eyes.

“Ugh, is it morning already?” Sid’s voice was muffled from where her face was pressed against my chest, and she wound an arm over my stomach to pull herself closer into me.

“That can’t be right,” Amber replied as she stifled a yawn. “We only got into bed a few hours ago.”

“It’s definitely been more than a few hours,” I said with a sleepy smile. “Though I don’t feel like I’ve slept at all, my mind hasn’t stopped going.”

“You didn’t get any sleep at all?” Sid asked, and she pulled her head up so she could fix me with a worried look.

“I slept a little,” I said and gave her shoulder an assuring squeeze. “My brain just refused to turn itself off, that’s all.”

“Well, I guess you’ve got a lot going on in there,” Sid said, and she gently pressed her finger against my forehead before letting her hand slide down to cradle my face.

“Maybe we should do something to take your mind off it,”

Amber suggested as she shuffled up beside me and put her chin on my chest so she could fix me with a smile. “Something fun.”

“Oh, yeah?” I kissed the top of Amber’s head, where her fiery hair was tangled and chaotic from where she’d slept, and she
giggled into my torso. “What did you have in mind?”

“I don’t know,” she said with another laugh as she attempted to run a hand through her messy bed hair. “What do you do for fun in Brooklyn?”

“I’m not sure I’d have considered it ‘fun’ before, but I’ve been tempted to test out my abilities in the real world.” I reluctantly disentangled myself from the two gorgeous women and scooped up my cell phone from the bedside table. “I want to see if things like my strength, and my athletic abilities, carry over to here. So I was thinking we could do an obstacle course, or something like that?”

“Is that considered fun for you now?” Sid asked as she sat up and stretched like a cat, with her arms extending to the ceiling and her breasts bouncing with the movement.

It was an innocent question, and an even more innocent movement, but I felt my stomach twist at the sight of her. She just grinned down at me and nodded at the cell phone that was half-forgotten in my hand.

“Well, it could be,” I said and stifled a smirk as I went back to inspecting the Google page I’d pulled up. “I think you two might have fun there, too.”

“What is it?” Amber asked curiously, and she pushed herself up into a half-sitting position so she could see what I was looking at.

I’d pulled up the page for a Ninja Warrior style obstacle course somewhere on the outskirts of Brooklyn in what looked like an old warehouse, and they also had an archery arena which had piqued my interest.

“It’s a place where people pay to exercise,” I said with an offhanded shrug, because I wasn’t sure how else to describe it. “But it’s a fun kind of exercise. There’s an obstacle course, an archery arena, knife and ax throwing… A whole bunch of stuff.”

“If it helps take your mind off things for a little while,” Sid said, and she snuggled herself up against me with a soft smile. “Then I’m all for it.”

“I’d like to give the archery a go,” Amber added excitedly. “I wonder if I’m just naturally good at it, all things considered.”

“I’d be really surprised if you sucked at it,” I said to her with a chuckle.

Considering the fact that the redhead transformed into an ornate hunting bow in the otherworld, I couldn’t imagine she’d be too bad at using a bow and arrow in my world.

Though the irony would be hilarious.

Chapter Fourteen

We quickly showered and then dressed for the day, and the two girls fired question after question at me as we got ready. Their eagerness for anything new, despite how unfathomably different my world was in comparison to theirs, was incredibly endearing, and I loved how even the simplest of things brought them such excitement.

The three of us got ready for the day, and I had to stifle a laugh when I explained to Sid that her admittedly beautiful green dress was probably not the best choice of clothing for an obstacle course.

Amber had settled on a pair of soft black leggings and one of my faded old band t-shirts, and even though I’d bought her an entirely new wardrobe, she still insisted on occasionally stealing my clothes.

“They smell like you,” she pouted, and then she wrapped her arms around herself with a sudden smile. “It’s nice.”

“You can have whatever you want,” I assured her. “I don’t mind really.”

“Good, because this shirt is my favorite,” Amber said with a giggle.

“Hey, do you think we should invite Aron and Honey?” I suddenly asked. “That could be fun.”

“Oh, that does sound like fun!” Sid called out from where she was still rifling through the back of the closet for a change of clothes.

“I’ll help Sid pick out a new outfit,” Amber told me with an even wider smile. “Go ask your friends if they want to come with us!”

I ducked out of my dorm room just as Sid was pulling half a dozen new outfits out of the closet, and I made sure to shut my bedroom door because she’d pulled so many clothes out that the golden portal was swirling happily in the back of the piece of furniture, and I couldn’t risk someone seeing it.

The snooty RA would have had a fit.

Aron’s door was surprisingly shut when I stepped out into the hall, but my neighbor’s was still open. I knocked on the door frame, and Honey looked up from where she was sprawled on her bed reading a book.

She was laying stomach down, with her feet up and locked at the ankles, and the tank top she was wearing did absolutely nothing to hide the softness of her cleavage, which was perfectly on show thanks to how she was propped up on her elbows.

“Hey, James,” Honey groaned and pushed herself up into a sitting position, and I had to fight to ignore how she arched her back to do so.

She ended up cross-legged on her bed, and then she folded a page down in her book and flung it aside as I stood half in the doorway.

“What’s up?” she asked as she pushed a hand through her short, dark blonde hair.

“I’m taking the girls to an obstacle course type… Thing this afternoon,” I explained as I folded my arms, and I tried to appear as casual as possible while I continued to lean against Honey’s door frame. “I just wondered if you wanted to come?”

“Well, the only thing I had planned for this afternoon was a hot date with Sylvia Plath here,” Honey said with a dramatic sigh and nodded to her now forgotten book. “So count me in.”

“Awesome.” I grinned. “Do you know if Aron’s free?”

“Aron has an actual hot date,” Honey said with a knowing smirk.

“No way,” I said and couldn’t help but lean a little further in.

“Hot Slipknot Shirt Girl, from that frat party?”

“The one and only,” Honey snickered. “Man knows his type and sticks with it.”

“And what about your type?” I asked and matched her smirk.

“Everchanging,” Honey answered with a teasing, raised eyebrow.

“That mean I have a chance?” My smirk widened.

“Shut up,” Honey said with a mocking groan, but she couldn’t help the smile that was making the corners of her mouth twitch up.

“Get out of my damn room so I can find some obstacle course appropriate clothes.”

“I booked an Uber for ten minutes,” I told her. “I’ll knock for you.”

I closed Honey’s bedroom door for her and then pushed back through mine with a wide grin on my face from our blatant, if not over-the-top, flirting.

It could definitely become one of my favorite pastimes in the real world and was probably almost as deadly as fighting off monsters in the otherworld.

“How’s this?” Sid suddenly asked when she noticed I’d reappeared, and she did a half-twirl for me to show off her new outfit.

She’d traded in the floaty mint-green summer dress for a fitted romper style one-piece in a deep rusty color. It cinched in at her waist and accentuated her perfect hourglass figure, and it had a zipper going all the way down the front, which was only half-fastened so I could see the soft mound of her cleavage between the folds of material. She’d left her long legs bare and smiled shyly up at me as she wedged her feet into a pair of white sneakers.

“You look perfect,” I said with a smile. “Both of you do.”

“Are Honey and Aron coming?” Amber asked as she bounced up to my side and latched onto my arm.

“Just Honey,” I explained. “Aron has a date.”

“Ooooh, that’s exciting!” Sid said with a wide smile. “Good for Aron.”

“And for us.” Amber flashed me a wink but refused to elaborate any further, so I dropped it for now.

Soon enough, the four of us piled into the Uber ride that I’d booked, and within a twenty-minute drive, we were gathered outside what looked like a dilapidated warehouse. If it hadn’t been for the strategically placed graffiti and the moody-looking goth girl at the door, I’d have thought we weren’t in the right place.

Though I guess finding real estate big enough in New York to house an obstacle course was quite literally a feat in itself, so it actually made perfect sense that ‘Brooklyn’s Best Urban Obstacle Course’ was slap bang in the middle of an abandoned factory complex.

Rusted scrap cars littered the surrounding parking lots, and there was also some sort of crane that looked like it hadn’t been used in a decade, and I could see a bunch of rotted old wooden pallets gathered around a steel bin with what looked suspiciously like bullet holes in the sides.

“Charming scenery,” Honey said in a voice that gave away her true feelings.

“It’s… Certainly different,” Sid murmured as her pale eyes took everything in and then flicked to me. “Are we at the right place, James?”

“Looks like it,” I said as I nodded confidently toward the goth girl manning the door. “Come on, let’s go.”

The teenager at the door looked like she would have rather been literally anywhere else in the world as she greeted us, and I couldn’t help but grin at how she’d customized her uniform. She
wore an offensively neon pink polo shirt, with ‘Brooklyn’s Best Urban Obstacle Course’ embroidered into the chest pocket, and a pair of tight-fitting black trousers, but she also had black lipstick on her thin lips, several silver pieces of jewelry in her face, and crazy high platform leather boots on her feet.

“Welcome to B.B.U.O.C,” she said in a voice that sounded as flat as a drone when she spotted the four of us approaching. “Have you booked?”

“On your website,” I said with a grin. “For four, under James Miller.”

“Hit the desk inside,” the goth girl said in the same monotone voice, and she shrugged her shoulder at the door behind her. “Ryan will talk you through the safety procedures and waivers.”

“Waivers?” Honey nudged me with her elbow as we walked through the door and into the complex. “Are we sure this thing is legit?”

“Hey, you think I don’t check Yelp reviews?” I huffed as I held the door open for the three of them, and then I laughed as Honey rolled her eyes at me. “Don’t worry, this one apparently had the best reviews in the whole state.”

“If we get carted away in body bags, I’m blaming you,” my dorm room neighbor quipped at me.

I just steered the four of us toward the welcome desk, where an equally goth guy with a black mohawk and two thick silver lip rings greeted us with a curt nod.

“Welcome to B.B.U.O.C,” he said in the same droning tone as his colleague out front. “Booking name?”

“James Miller,” I answered him with a confident smile.

Ryan the goth receptionist talked us through what to expect, got us to sign waivers that said we couldn’t sue them if we broke a leg or suffered any other grievous bodily injury, and then he gave us a general safety warning and instructions on how to use the majority of the equipment.

Another worker in a bright pink polo shirt greeted us as we walked into what looked like an old airplane hangar, where the walls were corrugated steel and heavily graffitied with bright neon anime-looking characters and punk symbols outlined with dripping white lines.

The most surprising thing, though, was the fact the entire place was immersed in a strong black light. There were a couple of regular
spotlights that highlighted certain sections of the obstacle course, but for the most part, the inside of the huge warehouse was lit with an odd blue-purple glow.

The equipment was also covered in UV reactive paint, and it looked like we’d stepped into some sort of cyberpunk fantasy world.

“Oh, this is gonna be fun.” I couldn’t help the childish, excitable smile that formed on my face as I took in our surroundings.

“Whoa…” Amber muttered and nudged Sid with her elbow.

“This is…”

“How is it lit up like this?” Sid asked me in an awestruck voice.

“You girls have clearly never been to a rave, huh?” Honey grinned at my two warrior women, and her perfect teeth were like a shockingly bright Cheshire cat grin in the ghostly blue glow. “Remind me to take you to one someday.”

“A rave?” Amber asked and cocked her head. “That sound’s fun! I’ve no idea what to expect from that, but you’ve got yourself a deal.”

“It’s a date,” Honey shot back, and then she winked up at me as we headed toward the first part of the course.

I could see a huge rock climbing wall on the far side of the warehouse. There was a nest of squishy-looking beams jutting out from the floor at various angles, and a huge pit of jagged foam shapes was below the aerial section in case anyone fell from the hanging rings, monkey bars, or whatever else they could find to cling on to.

The normal-colored spotlights acted as a guide for the way around the course, and I could see there were also various different paths along the same route so anyone who might’ve struggled with the main obstacle could take a slightly easier turn.

I wasn’t planning on it, though.

The four of us stood at our starting point, and I instinctively lowered my center of gravity and steadied my feet against the plastic-covered foam floor.

“Okay,” I said with an eager grin. “Let’s do this.”

I immediately sprang into action and took off at a sprint. The first obstacle was an incredibly tall wall, with hand and foot handles painted in UV reactive light so they glowed in bright neon pinks and greens. But I made a beeline for the thick length of rope that dangled over the center of the wall.

I skidded to a halt, wrapped my hands around the rope, and started to haul myself upward. Once I’d found my grip, I could lean back to give myself a little leverage, and I planted my feet against the wall and basically walked my way up it as I pulled the length of rope through my hands.

When I was in high school, I’d never managed to even get more than two feet off the ground while attempting the rope climb, but since I’d stepped into the otherworld and gained several different powers, this was almost a damn cakewalk.

I reached the summit of the wall and kicked my leg over, and I couldn’t help but let out a triumphant whoop at my success. All three of the girls were still crawling their way up the side of the wall by using the pink and green rock climbing handles, and I heard Honey’s snicker at my excited shout.

I swung my other leg over and dropped down to the other side, where the gymnastics style springboard floor broke most of the fall for me. I immediately rounded on the next obstacle, which was the classic angled stepping stone from the original Ninja Warrior course.

They were covered in the same PVC type plastic, and the shallow pit beneath them had crazy paint splatters that came to life beneath the black light, so it looked like some sort of neon lava pit.

“Easy,” I scoffed just as I heard the girls clambering down the other side of the first wall behind me.

I hopped from one foot to the other, paused a moment to mentally calculate the angles, and took off at a run again. I leaped from the edge and landed on one foot on the first angled stepping stone. I didn’t wait for gravity to take its hold, though, and I propelled myself forward again so I could use my other foot to hit the next step.

Within ten seconds, I was at the other side.

“That looked so cool, James!” Amber called out to me.

“Don’t say that, his head won’t fit back through the door!”

Honey laughed.

Sid burst into breathless laughter as she hopped down from the first rock climbing wall, and I just waved at the three of them as I excitedly skipped over to the next obstacle.

My heart was pumping, and I could feel adrenaline rushing through my veins, but I didn’t feel worn out or tired from the excursion. If anything, I felt more alive than I ever had done.

“This is so cool,” I muttered under my breath as I studied my next obstacle.

I was faced with a forest of thick plastic columns, all covered in a rigging of painted rope. The columns weren’t stationary, though.

They were hanging from a metal scaffolding above, so I knew the moment I leaped onto one of them, they would swing erratically, which would only make it harder to jump from column to column.

Still, I’d make light work of them.

I swung my arms in quick circles in order to get the blood circulating even more, and then I took off at a run once again. I kept my arms outstretched as I jumped across and scrambled with the rope netting that covered the shiny plastic, but I managed to get a good hold on the first one. As predicted, the heavy cylinder of plastic swung slowly in place, so I quickly used the rigging to shuffle around to the opposing side, and then, without thinking about it all that much, I leapt away from it.

I’d jumped with my back to the next column, but I quickly twisted my torso in midair so I could grab onto the next one. I grunted as I slammed into the hard plastic, but I had to keep the momentum up, so I repeated the process until I could finally hop onto solid ground on the other side.

I peered around the obstacle to wave at Honey, Sid, and Amber who had only just started to approach the rope-covered
columns, and I just laughed when the three of them, in almost comedic unison, stuck their tongues out at me.

“See you on the other side!” I called out to them, and then I chuckled to myself when all three of them went silent with determination.

I hopped, skipped, and jumped my way around ‘Brooklyn’s Best Urban Obstacle Course,’ and I eventually came to the very last obstacle on the neon-lit course.

In classic Ninja Warrior style, I was standing in front of a warped wall that was curved at the base and then eventually went completely vertical, and it must’ve reached at least ten feet into the air at its highest point. The warped wall was painted a solid black, but someone had spray painted arrows along the edges that pointed helpfully upward, and the paint reacted in the black light so the arrows glowed in the same neon pinks and greens as the rest of the highlighted course.

I paused to size up my final obstacle, and the girls started to catch up to me one by one.

The three of them were flushed in the face and still attempting to catch their breath, but they all wore exhausted smiles that were
infectious.

“Having fun?” I asked them with a wide grin of my own.

“No way in all the hells am I scaling that.” Amber nodded at the warped wall.

“What, are you meant to just… Run up it?” Sid asked in confusion as she put her hands on her hips in an attempt to catch her breath quicker. “How the hell can anyone do that? There’s nothing to even run up, it’s just a wall.”

“If anyone can do it, James can,” Amber said, and she turned to me with a confident smile on her face.

“There’d better be a bell or something up there.” Honey nodded to the top of the wall. “But this one’s all you, James. Make it ring.”

“Yes, ma’am.” I kicked my knees up and then lifted my arms above my head to stretch my limbs out, and I couldn’t help but snicker when I felt my bicep muscles brush against my face.

I’d never had noticeable biceps my entire life, and now I felt like I could outlift most dudebros in the gym.

“Okay,” I said as I shook my arms out and stretched my neck from side to side. “I got this. Warped wall, easy. Nothing to it…

Okay.”

I’d taken a few steps back as I talked myself up to it, and I suddenly realized I had a slight audience other than the three girls I’d already come with.

Two preteen boys were muttering to each other under their breath as they fixed me with disbelieving eyes, there was a gaggle of high school girls whispering excitedly to each other behind their hands, and I spotted several pink polo shirt employees who had stopped whatever they were doing to watch my attempt.

I planted my left foot behind me, lowered my center of gravity again, and then pushed off in the fastest sprint I could muster. I ran full speed at the warped wall, and the moment I felt my toes hit the curve, I bent my knee and launched myself skyward. I extended both of my hands with so much force I felt like my shoulders might’ve popped out of their sockets, but my right hand came into contact with the lip of the platform above, and I gripped on as tightly as I could.

“You can do it, James!” I heard Amber’s excited yell from somewhere below me.

I felt my fingers slip ever so slightly, but I pushed my left arm up even further so I could get my other hand on the edge. I let out a
frustrated, energized yell as I tightened my grip, and instead of hanging there and letting gravity win, I planted my toes against the face of the black wall and used all four of my limbs to push and pull myself up.

The moment I did, the spectators below erupted into elated cheers, and as I scrambled to my feet, I saw a thin metal podium with a delightfully enticing big red button fixed on top of it. I slammed both hands down against the button, and a loud alarm went off as the lighting turned into a jittering strobe and the entire warehouse was suddenly booming with Led Zeppelin’s classic ‘Immigrant Song’

being blasted through the loudspeakers.

I raised my hands above my head and let out a guttural, triumphant shout that eventually descended into adrenaline-fueled laughter as I nodded along to Zeppelin, and I doffed an imaginary cap to the girls below as they clapped in celebration.

“Brooklyn’s finest, baby!” I yelled down at them all and then punched the air again just as the riff kicked back in.

All in all, it was an awesome way to spend an afternoon.

“That was so much fun,” I sighed happily when Amber, Sid, and I eventually made it back to my dorm room, though not before
we’d all gone out for some well-earned food.

My treat, as the victor.

“Well, your powers definitely translate in your world,” Amber said with a giggle as she closed the door to my dorm room behind her.

“I’d say so,” I said and couldn’t help but flex my arm muscles.

“Before all of this, I don’t even think I could do a pull-up. I freakin’

hated the gym. Now I can make a Ninja Warrior course my absolute bitch.”

“You certainly did,” Amber said. “Honey seemed almost as impressed as us.”

Amber just waggled her eyebrows at the mention of my neighbor, who’d thanked us for such a fun afternoon and then taken her leave to go and quote ‘stand in her shower forever.’

I couldn’t hide the laugh that bubbled its way out of my mouth.

“She was just pissed I did better than her.” I smirked.

“You did great,” Sid said with a warm smile as she leaned against me and kissed my cheek.

“Thanks,” I said and grinned down at the gorgeous dark-haired woman at my side. “Shall we see if the dungeon decides to grant us
any more favors? I feel fired up now, I want to go exploring.”

The girls made various sounds of encouragement, and I could still feel the adrenaline of the obstacle course pumping through my veins, so I pulled the doors of my closet open to find the swirling golden portal lighting the way from the inside.

I took both of my girlfriends’ hands and gripped them tightly, and the three of us crossed through the magical veil to see what the world of Hadden could offer us this time around.

Chapter Fifteen

“Are you there?”

My voice echoed around the empty stone chamber, and I waited a moment until both Sid and Amber said hello to me inside my head.

I asked the same question every single time I crossed through the portal and into the dungeon that was hidden in the back of my closet, even though I always appeared through the other side of the magical gateway wielding Amber’s bow and wearing Sid’s pauldrons.

We’re here, Amber said in an already excited voice.

Hello, Sid said.

“Well, let’s see what we can find in this dungeon today, then.” I felt the familiar excitable grin spread across my face at the prospect of dungeon crawling and coming across more beasties to test my powers on.

The obstacle course I’d taken the girls to had lit a literal fire under my ass, and now that I knew my strength and agility transferred over into my world, I was eager to quite literally flex every single one of my now far stronger muscles.

I couldn’t help but wonder why I seemed to be the only one to transfer magical ability through the portal.

I’d seen how the girls’ curses lifted the moment we stepped into my dorm room, and Sid’s father had explained how the magic born of Hadden had lost the portal as soon as they’d made the crossing.

So how come I got to keep the physical powers I earned through monster slaying?

I’d purposefully left my ability potions on the Hadden side of my closet, out of fear that making the cross would render them completely useless, but I made a mental note to take one back to my dorm room sometime and really test the theory.

As my thoughts wandered, I turned left and headed down the long stretch of stone corridor that was waiting patiently for me. The dungeon often seemed to change at will, or at the very least it happened whenever I personally stepped into its labyrinthine stone tunnels, and this time around I found myself in a dead straight stretch of stone that seemed to just go on forever.

It was illuminated by the same magically-lit torches that were wedged into rusted iron sconces every couple of feet on the walls,
and the tunnel was so claustrophobic and tight, I could feel the heat coming from the flickering flames as I passed them.

The tiny fires swirled and sighed as I disrupted the air around them, and the only sound in the dungeon aside from my own breathing was the soft crackle of the flames as they slowly ate through the fuel-soaked cloth and wood.

How long have we been walking for? Amber suddenly sighed inside my head.

“It feels like a damn age,” I said as I pressed further into the dungeon, even though it was more like twenty minutes. “It all just looks the same.”

I peered ahead of me as I kept putting one foot in front of the other, but all I could see was quite literally tunnel vision, and I even glanced down at my wrist in the hope my tattoo would show me something interesting.

But the ink needle on my wrist was just pointing forward.

I started to feel like I was in an old episode of Scooby-Doo, where the gang ran through a haunted house somewhere, but the illustrators couldn’t be bothered with coming up with anything new,
so they used the same copied and pasted backdrop for the whole escapade.

“This has to be the longest tunnel I’ve walked through so far,” I said. “And that’s including the path to Maggie’s base. It’s damn claustrophobic in here, too… Was the ceiling always this low?”

Maybe you’ve grown, Amber giggled.

“I’d have thought at the ripe old age of nearly twenty-one, I’d have stopped with the growth spurts,” I snorted.

But maybe with the magical powers you’ve been using, you’ve gotten taller as well as more muscular, Sid said in a soft voice. You said so yourself, that at the end of the obstacle course you felt stronger than ever.

“Well, hey, maybe you’re right,” I said as I raised an eyebrow in sudden realization. “Or maybe this damn dungeon is really just trying to get on my nerves today.”

I wouldn’t put it past Maggie, Amber giggled inside my mind. It seems like something she’d do.

“It does seem like something she’d do,” I admitted with a dry laugh. “But she said she only has control over her base right now,
she’d need every magical person to come back in order to fully hold control over the dungeon.”

So it’s just being annoying, then, Amber said, and I could sense the disembodied roll of her eyes in her voice.

“It’d seem that way, yeah.” I nodded. “I can’t see anything up ahead, can you?”

Nothing, Sid admitted. It all looks the same to me.

I persevered and kept pushing forward, but after another ten minutes, the cabin fever started to take hold.

“This is ridiculous,” I said with a huff, and I ran a hand through my hair which was a force of habit whenever I got annoyed.

Maybe try your blink potion? Amber suggested. Maybe the dungeon needs magic or something?

“It’s worth a shot,” I sighed as I pulled the little glass vial out of my pocket.

I worked the wax seal off the top and pulled the glass tube out so I could hover it over my open mouth, and I let two droplets of the black potion fall onto the tip of my tongue. It didn’t taste of anything, but I swirled the substance around my mouth before I swallowed
heavily, and I immediately looked down at my wrist to see my tattoo morph and change as the magic coursed through my body.

The ink beneath my skin was the same familiar blue on the magical branch of the skill tree, and I flexed the tendons in my wrist with satisfaction. I knew I only had the power for a finite amount of time, so I quickly extended my hand down the dungeon tunnel and focused on the point far ahead but directly in front of me.

My eyelids slipped down into a blink, and when I opened my eyes again, the tight claustrophobic tunnel had suddenly opened up into a huge cavern somewhere deep within the hills of Hadden.

“Whoa…” I let out a breath as I steadied myself and took in my surroundings.

Good thinking, Amber! Sid said in an excited voice. It worked!

“Yeah, and thank god…” I muttered. “I don’t see anything in this cave, though.”

I was still standing at the opening of the dungeon tunnel, and I found myself reluctant to step into the underground cave. It looked similar to the blood fly nest that I’d cleared from the dungeon before, except there were no gruesome infestations of bugs skittering
around the place. It was entirely empty, as far as I could tell at first glance.

The cave was huge and tall enough to comfortably fit my old apartment complex inside it. The ceiling and the walls were made of the same dark gray stone as the dungeon itself, but it was jagged and rough and naturally formed. Gigantic stalagmite towers rose up from the rocky ground, so massive that they were almost as thick as old tree trunks, and everything just seemed to be magnified by a hundred.

I started to feel really damn small inside the monstrously big cave, and as I gingerly began to explore, I couldn’t help but feel a little tight-chested at just how huge everything was.

The rock formations, the height of the place, and the deep dark shadows all added to a wary feeling I couldn’t seem to shake, and where I’d felt claustrophobic in the tight tunnel before, this place brought out a megalophobia I hadn’t realized I’d had.

Feeling small was definitely not something I was used to anymore, and I did not like it one bit.

“This place feels weird…” I murmured, and I let out a small huff when I realized I was subconsciously speaking in a very quiet,
purposefully calm voice. “I need some light.”

It was oppressively dark inside the giant cavern, so I turned back to the opening of the stone tunnel I’d just come through, stuck my hand back inside, and grabbed at the closest torch on the wall.

I yanked the torch out of its rusted iron sconce and held the torch high above my head in an attempt to light my way, but the small fire only really gave me a circle of light that barely stretched three feet ahead of me.

It wasn’t completely and totally dark, but the deep shadows between the towering stalagmites and piles of rock still filled me with unease, and I felt far better having a light source of my own in my hands.

Let’s investigate, Sid said in her usual placating voice.

We can take whatever this place throws at us, Amber added confidently. I’m with Sid, let’s see what we can find.

I didn’t answer the girls with words, I simply continued to put one foot in front of the other, but I couldn’t seem to shake the feeling that I was waiting for something catastrophic to happen.

It was eerily quiet inside the huge cavern, and my purposefully gentle footsteps still echoed loudly around the place with every slow
step I took.

I slowly dipped around a particularly huge stalagmite and peered around the column of raw rock, but I still couldn’t see much. It was still pitch black and dark, and though my little torch tried its damnedest to light my way, I just couldn’t see much ahead.

It was still quiet as the grave, too, and the instinctive feeling of unease started to really take hold as I tiptoed my way around the apparently empty stone cavern.

I’d become accustomed to the dungeon throwing whatever it could at me, and the intense quiet and stillness of this giant place was making me more and more nervous.

But maybe that was by design.

I took a steadying breath and gripped the flickering torch in my hand a little tighter. I could feel my expression naturally start to slide into an intense frown as I tried to focus my eyes in the darkness, and I kept the torch raised as high as possible as I purposefully kept the unease at the back of my mind.

Maybe this giant cavern worked to make any intruders go mad, so I kept myself focused on putting one foot in front of the other. The
girls were quiet inside my head, and I figured they knew how much I was trying to keep my focus.

But the silence around me was deafening, almost maddening.

I passed another ginormous stalagmite and brushed my hand against the jagged stone in an effort to keep myself quite literally grounded. I lowered the torch ever so slightly so I could inspect my skill tree tattoo, and the compass on the back of my wrist flickered helpfully with each step.

I followed its path with slow, purposeful movements, and when I passed another towering column of stone that was raised right from the cave floor, I suddenly saw a flicker of light ahead of me.

I froze in my tracks, and I could hear my heartbeat in my ears.

What was that? Amber whispered in a tiny voice.

“I don’t know…” I muttered slowly. “Something… I saw something suddenly flash.”

That’s what I thought I saw, Amber said.

I saw it, too, Sid added.

I remained as still as I could and focused my gaze intently on where I’d seen the sudden flash of light somewhere deep in the cavern ahead of me. Nothing moved, the stone around me remained
as silent as the grave, and no matter how hard I stared, I didn’t see the flash again.

Until I moved.

My right arm was aching from where I’d been holding the wooden torch up, so I transferred it to my left hand as I kept my gaze dead ahead, and my breath caught in my throat when I saw the flash of light again.

I was hit with a sudden burst of realization, and I waved my left arm slightly so the firelight from the torch moved in the air.

Something flashed ahead of me again when I waved the torch, and my theory was proved right. The light I’d seen in the darkness ahead of me was actually just a reflection of the flames.

What in the hells is doing that? Amber asked.

“I don’t know, but I have a feeling we should go and find out,” I murmured, and I picked up the pace of my footsteps as whatever was in the cave ahead of me continued to reflect the gentle flickering of the torch flames.

I had to maneuver around another gargantuan stalagmite, and then through a surprisingly tight slit in the rock that I could barely fit
my pauldron-covered shoulders through, and as I pulled myself around the bend, I felt my jaw drop of its own accord.

Where the cavern had been nothing but dark gray stone shrouded in shadows, the section I’d stumbled upon practically shone. Huge shards of pure white crystal jutted out of the stone walls like spears made from light itself, and they caught the brightness of my torch fire and reflected back against each other until the entire place sparkled in an ethereal light.

“Whoa…” I breathed as I took it all in. “This is… Wow.”

It’s beautiful, Amber gasped in an awestruck voice.

I’ve never seen anything like this, Sid said in the same reverent tone.

The astronomically large shards of raw crystal seemed to hum with an unknown power as I stood there transfixed by them, and I had to blink my eyes several times to try and bring my mind back to itself. The shards were hypnotic, never-ending, and otherworldly in their sheer beauty, and I started to feel my brain fog up the more I had eyes on them.

“Geez,” I muttered and rubbed sleepily at my eyes. “This is…

I… What are we doing here, again?”

Focus, James. I could hear that Sid’s voice was strained inside my mind, but much to my surprise, I wasn’t worried by it.

James? Amber’s voice seemed almost comically far away, as if she was trying to speak to me from within the deepest recesses of my subconscious.

I let out an almost drunken chuckle and blinked again as I stared up at the monoliths of ghostly white crystal. They continued to vibrate with a celestial hum, as if they were singing and purposefully calling out to me, and I felt myself become more and more drawn to the ginormous shafts of quartz.

Each spear was at least shoulder-width, perfectly flat and smooth on each side, and it was impossible to work out where each one ended and began.

I hadn’t even realized I’d taken a few steps forward until I blinked and suddenly found myself slap bang in the middle of the jagged nest of ghostly mineral shards. Their hum had grown louder, more insistent, and the rhythmic shudder started to rumble through my mind.

James! I barely made out the sound of Sid’s voice inside of my head, and I let out another intoxicated huff of laughter.

I hadn’t heard Amber’s voice since she’d last spoken, and I forgot I was meant to care about that.

Sid’s voice was only ever so slightly stronger, and I glanced down at my shoulders to see her black pauldrons suddenly glowing with protection.

“Aww…” I muttered, and then I looked up and completely forgot about it.

I looked around in dumbstruck awe at the natural beauty. The shimmering crystalline shards now surrounded me completely, and they seemed to emanate a form of physically tangible sound. I could almost see how they made the airwaves shimmer with their otherworldly vibrations, and now that I was deep within the impossibly gigantic nest of quartz, my mind seemed to empty itself of any real thought.

I still held the flickering torch in one hand and continued to marvel at how the fire reflected off the smooth surface of the crystals, and I still had the wooden bow in my other hand, but the cognitive reasoning for that was starting to become lost on me.

My grip on the bow began to loosen, and my fingers grew slack around the polished wood.

James!

I heard a voice somewhere, soft and barely there, and I wondered why it was calling.

Who was it calling?

It didn’t matter, anyway.

My eyes were heavy as I stared up at the cloudy diamond shards, and I felt the bow in my hand eventually slip out of my fingers and clatter to the floor at my feet.

I needed a free hand, so why did I need a bow?

I left it lying at my feet and then took a step toward the closest shard of quartz. The hum vibrated around me, even faster now as if it were growing excited, and I slowly extended my now empty hand toward the enticingly smooth giant crystal.

It was calmer now that I was closer.

My mind was softer… Serene.

I didn’t need my body anymore, when my mind was so clear.

My body belonged to the crystals, and I pressed my fingers against the cool surface of the mineral and let out a shudder of a breath at the contact.

I didn’t have any needs at all.

Who was I?

Did it matter?

I pressed the palm of my hand flush against the diamond-like surface, because I had no other need than to do exactly that.

My eyes immediately clouded over, as if I’d been blinded, and my mind became just as blank and white as my vision. The crystals hummed excitedly as I finally touched them, and I felt the spiritual connection soar through my subconscious.

It was so peaceful.

This all happened in the blink of an eye, or maybe a millennium, until suddenly I was back in my body, and power surged from my chest and out into my extremities.

My pauldrons glowed white hot, and I ripped my hand away with a strangled gasp for breath.

I blinked furiously and shook my head, and then I glanced down at my feet where Amber’s bow lay in the dirt.

“Oh!” I breathed.

James! I heard Sid’s voice inside my head, clear as a bell.

“Shit,” I whispered hoarsely.

James, can you hear me? Sid shouted, and I’d never heard her raise her voice that way before.

“Sid?”

Get away from the crystals! she yelled inside of my head. Now!

I blinked again, scooped up Amber’s bow, and did exactly as I was told.

“What the hell was that?” I asked in the same ragged voice as I stumbled out of the nest of shoulder-width crystal shards and toward the comfort of cold stone.

The massive splinters of quartz continued to vibrate, this time with sheer unbridled anger, and I gulped as I watched power start to boil furiously inside of them. Where they were cloudy before, the minerals started to become translucent, and I could finally see what the shards held.

Apparently sentient balls of pure electricity crackled and roiled inside of their crystal prisons, and since Sid had successfully protected me from their siren song, they’d grown utterly enraged.

The song was painful in my ears now, and it shrieked and screamed and whistled from inside the crystals.

We need to burn them up! Sid yelled inside of my head again.

James, are you there?

“I’m here!” I gasped and rubbed at my eyes again with the back of my hand. “Sid, you saved me.”

I thought I wouldn’t be able to. Sid’s voice sounded scared to death. It wasn’t physical protection, it was inside of your mind, and I could feel it, and I didn’t know what to do, and I thought… I thought…

“It’s okay,” I assured my protector. “Amber?”

Oh, my god, I’ve been screaming all this time! I finally heard Amber’s panicked voice again, and I let out a breath of relief.

“I don’t know what the hell we’re dealing with here, but I don’t intend on finding out,” I grunted as I reached up and whipped an arrow out of the quiver on my back. “Amber, let’s fire these things up.”

Absolutely. Amber’s voice was dark with determination, maybe even anger, and I figured it was because she didn’t like the fact that she’d been pushed deep into the recesses of my mind where she couldn’t be heard.

She’d spent the better part of several decades without being heard, and I felt a pang in my heart at how that must’ve made her feel.

I nocked one of her arrows on the taut bowstring and pulled the weapon up to my face. The shards of crystal were almost entirely translucent now, and I could see right through them. The white-hot balls of electricity continued to jitter and vibrate and bash themselves angrily against the glassy walls of their prisons, like caged animals feral with the desire to hunt.

“Sid, are we sure lighting them up is the best way to get rid of them?” I asked as I steadied the arrow.

Definitely, Sid said with determination. I could feel them. When I pushed them away from you. They’re sheer power. If we can overload them, we can destroy them.

“Quite literally fighting fire with fire,” I said with a nod of understanding. “Okay, let’s do this. I’m aiming straight for the middle, and I’m gonna pull another arrow as soon as I’ve fired this first one, okay?

Both women made sounds of understanding inside of my head, so I took a long, steadying breath as I took aim, and then I
fired a flaming arrow directly into the cluster of clear crystal.

The mineral shards fractured the moment Amber’s arrow came into contact with the closest one. It was like a literal chain reaction, and the fire pierced through the glassy quartz and eagerly ate up the air pockets within. The snaking tendrils of fire sped through the crystal until it came into contact with the first ball of electricity, and then the place quite literally exploded.

It was like a damn atomic bomb had gone off, and I was sent hurtling back into the cool darkness of the stone cavern. Sid’s protective ability glowed again, and my fall was broken by her forcefield, but it didn’t stop me from getting the absolute breath knocked out of me.

I laid on my back and tried to catch my breath, but it felt like I’d been tackled by a professional football player. For a moment, I couldn’t suck in any oxygen at all, and I clutched at my chest in shock as I fought to get my lungs working again.

I eventually managed to gasp enough air into my chest to let out a long, pained groan, and as I sat up, I noticed a particularly large, jagged fragment of white crystal sticking out of my knee.

“Ow…” I muttered as I inspected the cut with a grimace.

It had sunk maybe only an inch or two into my flesh, but it was enough to send a shockwave of pain up and down my leg as I nudged it with my thumb.

Oh, your leg! Sid gasped in horror. James, I’m so sorry!

“You have nothing to apologize for,” I assured her. “I don’t doubt you just saved my life, my chest should be concave right now.”

That was some blast, Amber sighed. Did it work?

“Well, I don’t feel like a zombie anymore,” I commented and then eventually hobbled to my feet with a long groan. “Okay, that has to come out of my knee.”

I gingerly wrapped both hands around the edge of the crystal dagger while making sure I didn’t cut myself even further on its razorblade edges, and then I gently pulled the point out of my knee.

It was quite literally just a flesh wound, but I couldn’t help the second groan that came out of me as I finally pulled the damn thing out of my skin.

“That’s gonna hurt tomorrow…” I said with a sigh.

Are you okay? Sid asked desperately.

“Honestly, I’m fine,” I said. “I promise. I’m more concerned about those little electrical sprites.”

I think they’re all gone, Amber said. I don’t hear their humming anymore.

“Yeah, you’re right.” I hobbled over to the tight entrance to the crystal cave and peered through.

It was about as dark as the rest of the huge cavern now, and the monoliths of crystal were scattered into broken shards along the rocky floor. The balls of electricity had harnessed the raw power of the fire and exploded in on themselves, and once they’d gone up, they’d dissipated into nothingness live television static.

“They were assholes,” I said with another grimace as I put a little too much weight onto my injured leg.

They… Wait, I think they had something, Sid suddenly said. I can feel something.

“Oh, god, it isn’t the humming, is it?” I asked. “Because I can’t hear anything.”

No, no… Sid’s voice trailed off into silence as she focused. I can just… Feel something.

Do you think it’s a gemstone? Amber suddenly asked in an overly excited voice. Hey, maybe that’s where the crystals got their power from!

“From a gemstone?” I raised an eyebrow and then nodded.

“That makes some sense, actually.”

I awkwardly slithered through the gap in the rock to get back to where the shards of crystal were scattered, and I heard Sid’s gasp inside my mind.

Definitely! she breathed. It’s close, it’s… I can feel it… There!

James, please, I…

“I’ve got it,” I said and suddenly crouched down to where my eyes had spotted a slightly brighter gleam amongst the shimmering rubble.

I ignored the sharp pain in my knee as I bent down, and I brushed my hands carefully through the razor-sharp slivers of crystal until I found what I was looking for.

It was a gemstone, cut exactly the same as all the others I’d found before, but it was a cool yellow color that caught the light from my torch and sparkled just like the filament inside a light bulb.

“Wow, that’s cool…” I murmured as I inspected the magical gemstone. “Okay, Sid, here goes nothing.”

I’d already affixed a protection gem onto the right side of her pauldrons, but there was a corresponding slot for another gemstone
on the left shoulder, so I carefully lined the yellow gem up against the setting.

The pauldrons pulled at the gemstone as if it were magnetic, and I released it from my fingers so it slotted perfectly into the black metal.

Oh… Wow! Sid let out an almost delirious giggle. It’s…

Offensive.

The surface of my pauldrons suddenly crackled with heat, and when I jumped, a shower of sparks glittered across the black metal.

“Offensive?” I clarified warily. “I thought you were all about the protection, Sid.”

I am, she said with a giggle. This is like an offensive defense.

What does it do? Amber asked excitedly.

It’s sheer power, Sid said. If my protection is activated, it feels like an added layer. A lightning sort of force that repels things even further.

“Just like the electrical explosion we just saw.” I let out a satisfied laugh of my own. “Okay, yeah, that sounds pretty damn useful. It means I’m basically untouchable.”

In essence, yes. I could hear the grin in Sid’s voice.

“Well, that’s definitely worth a nasty cut on the knee,” I said and inspected the bloodied denim of my jeans with a grimace. “I need to get this cleaned up, though. Let’s head back home, I want to see what’s different with you, Sid.”

Oh, that’s right! The black-haired woman inside of my head let out a peal of laughter. I get another makeover, too!

I wonder what it’ll be, Amber said as I headed back toward the stone tunnel I’d originally come through. How would a lightning storm show on you?

Oooh, I can’t wait to see what I get. Sid’s voice was excited at the prospect of another body modification.

I listened to the two girls talk animatedly in my head about how Sid’s new ability might manifest itself as I made my way back to the portal below my cabin in the woods.

Just as I was about to pull the closet doors open and reveal the portal back to the real world, I heard a sudden chirp behind me.

I whirled around and scoured the stone chamber for signs of intruders.

“Hello?” I asked tentatively.

There was another chirp, and this time I realized the sound wasn’t human.

It also wasn’t a monster, so I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. Then, at the top of the tight spiral staircase, I spotted a fat pigeon with bulging eyes and dirty gray feathers.

It shook its head, chirped again, and hopped from foot to foot as it waited for me to do something.

What’s wrong, James? Amber asked.

“There’s a bird shouting at me,” I said and then snorted at how stupid my answer sounded.

That’s not just any bird… Sid murmured. I recognize it from the castle!

Chapter Sixteen

“What?” I asked. “What do you mean?”

That’s a messenger pigeon, Sid said in awe.

“Do you think it’s lost?” I wondered.

Definitely not, Sid said confidently. I’d be willing to bet he has something for you.

I watched the bird intently and raised an eyebrow.

Birds had always sort of freaked me out, simply because NYC
pigeons were so damn unpredictable and annoyingly skittish, so I didn’t trust this fat little thing not to go crazy and try and peck my eyeballs right out of my head.

Instead, it just stood there on one of the top steps of the stone staircase and chirped at me with an air of importance. When I didn’t move, it dragged one of its little feet against the stone and then suddenly took flight, and it eventually fluttered down to the ground in front of me. It trilled up at me again and shook its tail feathers out, and I noticed a tiny scroll of parchment fastened to one of its legs with red twine.

“Okay, so it’s definitely not lost,” I said as I slowly crouched down to inspect it. “Look, there’s a scroll on its leg.”

I gingerly extended a hand, but instead of pecking at me with unbridled bloodlust, the little pigeon dutifully lifted its leg up and waited for me to untie the red string from around its ankle. Once it had successfully delivered its message, it chirped again, shook its wings for a moment, and then took flight again.

I watched it circle above my head for a moment before it eventually landed at the top of the spiral stone staircase and wormed its way through a tiny little hole in the stone, without looking back down at me once. The little guy certainly wouldn’t have been able to lift the heavy storm shutters that guarded the entrance to my dungeon outside the cabin, so it had found another way to deliver its message to me by burrowing through a gap in the stone.

What does the message say? Amber asked excitedly.

The tightly-rolled little scroll was sealed with a miniscule drop of black wax, but I popped it open and unfurled the wafer-thin parchment paper so the three of us could read the message that had been hastily written in splotchy black ink.

Sir Miller,

I had to bring my own trusted bird out of retirement to deliver this message, so I apologize if he seemed disgruntled in any way.

But I couldn’t risk sending an official castle messenger, in case this message was intercepted.

I have it on good authority that the soothsayer plans to attack the dungeon tonight. The villagers of Maniton reported the dungeon entrance to the castle, the moment you had cleared it of goblins.

So they have found a way in.

You must help Maggie.

Go now.

H.

“Shit…” I muttered as I crumpled the message into a little ball and then immediately threw the thin ball of paper into the nearest sconce.

I watched as the magically-lit torch instantly extended its flames to destroy the message, and within a few seconds, the wad of parchment paper was nothing more than glimmering embers.

Florian has found a way into the dungeon? Sid asked in a pained voice.

Sounds like Harold wanted to warn you as quickly as he could, Amber said, and I could tell her voice was strained. We need to get to Maggie as soon as possible.

“I agree,” I said as I stuck my hand in my pocket and felt the vials of the blink and strength potions. I didn’t have a lot remaining of either. “I wish I had a whole store of different magic, but I’m taking what I’ve got.”

I hadn’t managed to inquire about replenishing my time freeze potion with Harold, but there was no time for it now, so I immediately headed into the dungeon proper.

I could feel worry bubbling in my chest like acid as I hurried through the stone tunnel, and I just hoped Harold’s carrier pigeon wasn’t too late. While I’d been exploring in the crystal cave, Florian and his lackeys were probably already on their way to the mining village of Maniton.

The miners there had accidentally stumbled upon one of the furthest points of the dungeon, and as far as I could tell, the labyrinth of stone tunnels filled the entirety of the hills that surrounded Hadden and its neighboring villages. I’d cleared the outermost part of the dungeons from a goblin infestation, but it apparently hadn’t been the presence of such creatures that Florian had found interesting.

If he’d discovered a way to get into the dungeons through the mines, then he’d found a way to get to Maggie. But worse still, he’d have found a way to get to the portal and in turn through to my world, where the rest of the magical folk had taken up hiding.

I doubted Florian actually knew that, and I was sure he was mostly just keen to get into the dungeon itself and clear house. But I couldn’t risk him finding the portal in the back of the closet, nor could I risk him harming Maggie in any way.

The compass on my tattoo guided me through the maze of stone tunnels, and I felt as though the dungeon was keen for me to reach my destination as quickly as I wanted to make it there. It only took me about five or ten minutes until the dungeon suddenly opened up, and to my dismay, I was met with the thundering waterfall once again.

The dungeon walls just suddenly stopped and opened up into empty air, and the spray from the waterfall splattered my face with moisture as I steadied my feet and looked over the edge at the large pool far below.

The underground section of Hadden’s river raged through a jagged gap in the rough stone, and the roar of the rushing water filled my ears until I could hardly hear myself think.

“I thought Maggie said I wouldn’t have to do this again!” I shouted, and my words eventually petered off with a long groan as I peered over the precipice at the foaming waters below.

Maybe Harold got word to her, too, Sid suggested. And that’s why she’s put all of the defenses back up, if she knows something’s coming.

“That makes perfect sense,” I said as I started to back away from the edge of the tunnel opening. “But I’m not happy about it, I hated it the first time around. Wait, do you think I could blink past the waterfall?”

Possibly, Amber said. It’s worth a try!

“Well, here goes nothing,” I muttered as I pulled out the blink potion and swallowed a couple drops.

Then I tried to focus past the waterfall and teleport, but it felt like I just vibrated in place for a moment. I tried again, but still I didn’t move.

“Damn,” I sighed. “It’s not working. Maybe Maggie put up even more defenses?”

That makes sense, Sid agreed.

“So it looks like I’m going swimming either way,” I said as I stared at the rushing river.

It’s just water, remember? Amber said in a placating voice.

You’ll be okay, you can do this.

“Yeah, I know.” I continued to back up into the stone tunnel so I had enough space to run up to the lip of the cliff. “I just don’t want to.”

The girls laughed lightly inside of my head, but in a mostly understanding sort of way, and I started to limber up as I mentally prepared myself for the task at hand. I stretched my neck out and lifted my arms above my head, and then I let out a long breath as I hopped lightly from one foot to the other.

“Okay,” I said as I finally took up my position. “Let’s do this.”

I suddenly took off at a sprint before I could talk myself out of it, and I ran full speed at the dungeon tunnel opening. I kept my ironclad grip on Amber’s bow in my left hand, and once I reached the edge of the stone floor, I applied as much pressure as I could to my right foot so I could catapult myself into the air.

For a brief moment, I was suspended, and then gravity claimed me as I started to plummet downward. The spray of water around
me had me half-soaked before I was even halfway to the foaming pool at the bottom, and I kept my legs together and my arms close to my chest so I could enter the water in as streamlined a position as I could muster.

The bubbling waters at the bottom were surprisingly cold as I finally splashed down, and I sank a good ten feet below the surface just thanks to the sheer force in which I fell. The chill made a surprised stream of bubbles leave my mouth, and I immediately spread my limbs wide to stop my descent in the water.

I exhaled again, pushed my arms up, and then dragged them down as I kicked my feet and clawed my way back to the surface again.

When my head finally broke the water, I took a long ragged gasp of a breath, and I found myself already being swayed toward the much calmer swell of the river, away from the bottom of the waterfall. As I caught my breath, I was ferried by the current toward the damp stone floor of the dungeon, and I pulled myself up with my hair completely over my face and goosebumps all over my body from the chill.

“God!” I let out a gasp as I sat on the edge, with my legs still dangling in the water.

I felt a full-body shiver ripple through me, and I pulled my legs out so I could stand and shake myself off like a dog.

Good job, Amber said, and I could hear the grin in her voice.

“When I finally work out how to get you back in your bodies,” I started as I pushed my sopping wet hair out of my eyes. “I’m gonna make you come back and do this.”

Bring it on, Sid said with the same smile in her words.

“Alright, don’t think I’ll forget, though,” I chuckled, and I shivered once more before I left the huge waterfall behind and headed for the corridor with Maggie’s door at the end of it.

I rapped my knuckles against the old wood three times, and after a beat, I heard a shuffle from the room on the other side. There was no answer however, so I knocked again and pressed my ear up to the door.

“Maggie?” I called through. “It’s me, James.”

The door immediately swung open with a clatter, and I almost fell headfirst into the old woman who was standing with a crossbow raised and aimed at my head.

“Whoa, easy!” I held my arms up as Maggie glared up at me.

“It’s just me. Harold sent me.”

“Get in,” Maggie said in a hard voice, and she grabbed at my arm and yanked me through the threshold with a surprising amount of strength.

The old woman slammed the heavy wooden door shut behind me, kept the crossbow aimed at me with one hand, and then brushed her other hand through the air in the direction of the door.

The surprisingly elegant motion made a thick beam of iron appear out of nowhere, and it clattered down into its waiting brackets until it eventually had the door good and barred.

Maggie rounded on me again and heaved the crossbow up so it was aimed right at the point between my eyes.

“A pleasure, as always,” I said with a grave nod. “Easy on the crossbow, though.”

Maggie eventually lowered the weapon with a heavy sigh, and then she motioned for me to follow her over to one of the tables on the west side of her base, where it was littered with a mess of parchment and scrolls and half-opened books. She hoisted the crossbow up onto the table and unceremoniously chucked it on top of what looked like a bunch of important notes, and she leaned against it with both hands as her head lowered with a sigh.

“If my dear doting husband sent you, then that proves my theory.” Maggie’s voice was gruff and tired, and she eventually lifted her head to look at me. “That bastard of a soothsayer’s found a way in, hasn’t he?”

“I think so,” I replied after a beat, and I suppressed a wince.

“I’d cleared a mine of goblins not too long ago, in this little village called Maniton. I figure the miners discovered where the goblins had actually come from and immediately reported the location of the dungeon entrance to the castle.”

“Shit,” Maggie sighed, and then she suddenly slammed both of her hands back down against the table, enough to make me jump and make the notes and paperwork scatter. “Shit!”

“It’s okay,” I assured her as I hurried over to help gather up the scrolls that had fluttered to the floor. “I’m here to help. What do we need to do?”

“The dungeon will be putting up its own natural defenses,”

Maggie said in the same hard voice as she took the papers from my hands. “But that will only hold them for so long. They’ll most likely see past the illusion of the waterfall, so it won’t keep them at bay, either.”

“Wait, the waterfall is an illusion?” I asked in sudden surprise.

“It’s odd how quickly you dry off down here, isn’t it?” Maggie raised her eyebrows at me, and the expression made the small tufts of wiry silver hair disappear completely into her hairline.

“I… Actually, I hadn’t noticed that before,” I admitted, and I ran my hand through my suddenly now bone-dry hair. “But do you think they’ll be able to see through it, as easy as that? And hold on, what do you mean ‘they’? I thought it was just Florian?”

“Florian’s the ringleader,” Maggie said as she pulled up a rickety wooden chair and flopped ungracefully into it with a soft grunt. “But he has his disciples, those he can teach the most basic forms of magic detection to. They’re not as well versed in it as he’d like, I’m sure, but they’re certainly enough to be a threat if they’ve got in.”

“Shit sounds about right, then…” I murmured gravely. “Okay, so what do we do?”

“We need to booby trap this place,” Maggie said with determination. “They’ll be expecting magic, so the best thing to do is to implement something that’ll physically take them out without us having to lift a metaphorical finger.”

“I like the sound of that,” I said with a grin forming on my face.

“What did you have in mind?”

Maggie immediately put me to work on all possible entrances to her once forgotten base.

The main door already had the heavy iron bar across it, but Maggie had insisted that although it seemed real, it was still magical, easy to detect, and therefore easy to get past.

She gave me bunches of kindling trussed up with twine and taught me an intricate knot that would act almost like a rabbit’s snare. I got to work and fixed them to the ceiling above the doorway, and I would be ready to shoot a fire arrow into it as soon as the door was breached.

“But will the fire stop them?” I asked from between where I had a knot of twine rope held in my mouth as my hands worked. “It’s magical.”

“The fire arrow is magical,” Maggie corrected me in a blunt voice. “The fire it creates is not. That’s all natural. Magic is nature, really, it all stems from being able to manipulate the elements around us.”

“So the first strike of the match is the magical thing,” I said with a nod of understanding. “But whatever flames come after that, it’s just nature taking its redirected course?”

“Exactly,” Maggie said, and she fixed me with a steady stare before she let out a singular grunt I’d come to realize was her form of a chuckle. “I can see why my husband likes you.”

“I like him, too,” I told her. “He’s a good man.”

“Yes, he is,” Maggie said, but she averted her stare and busied herself with her own knot. “Here, that should do it. There are some hooks on the ceiling, you’re taller, fix them by the knot like I showed you.”

“Yes, ma’am.” I quickly gathered together the bunches of kindling and got to affixing them to the old iron hooks she’d pointed out to me.

“Good,” Maggie said with a nod. “Now here, the fireplace.”

“What, they’re gonna come down the chimney like Santa Claus?” I asked with a humorless laugh as I hopped off the dangerously rickety chair I’d been standing on.

“There is no chimney,” Maggie replied flatly.

“What, really?” I raised an eyebrow and joined her at the mantel. “This isn’t real?”

“It’s as real as I intend for you to see it,” Maggie said in the same emotionless voice, and she frowned up at me as if she were frustrated I hadn’t realized this for myself.

I shook my head and ran a hand through my hair.

“You’ll have to forgive me,” I said with a chuckle. “Magic is still an entirely new concept to me.”

“That much I can tell,” Maggie huffed, though her thin lips twitched slightly. “But you’ll learn, in time. You see the shimmer here?”

I frowned at the point on the mantel that she was pointing to.

The fireplace looked real enough. I could see where the flames from old fires had stained the uppermost portion a sooty black where it angled upward, and I could see the dregs of ash forgotten in the bottom of the hearth. The stone around it was perfectly carved, and the mantel itself was finished with a stained type of knotted wood.

“Here,” Maggie repeated and jabbed her finger again. “Do you see it?”

Right on the corner, where the wood joined to the stone of the wall, I could see the faintest of shimmers, as if I were looking at an asphalt road on a blisteringly hot day.

“I see it,” I said with a nod. “So… the fireplace isn’t real at all?”

“Not really,” Maggie said as she dropped her hand. “An illusion, made up of very real elements around us.”

“Wood and stone,” I muttered. “Right.”

We fixed the wooden mantelpiece with a grisly wreath of bent and rusty nails, and then we set to work removing every single book from the wooden bookshelves on the eastern side of Maggie’s base.

“Every single one?” I groaned.

“Yes, every single one,” the old lady replied gruffly. “Knowledge is power, boy. You should know that by now. The books will be saved. Now hurry up, we’re working on borrowed time already.”

Maggie instructed me to pile the books up in the northernmost corner, as far away from any breach point as possible, in the hopes they’d be saved.

“We’re going to put the cots up against the shelves,” Maggie said and groaned as she stretched her arms over her head.

She ran a hand through her already scraggly gray hair and put her hands against her rounded hips as she watched me work.

“Yes, stack them right up like that, and grab some of that spare tinder, just dot it around the shelves,” she said with a stern, approving nod.

The cots were made of wood and raw leather, and as I placed the last one right up against the bookshelves, I turned to look back at Maggie with a raised eyebrow.

“You’re planning on getting me to set this entire place on fire if things go south, aren’t you?” I asked her.

“Yes.” Her voice was flat and emotionless, but her watery eyes betrayed her.

She blinked several times before she waved her hands and turned away from me.

“I can create another base, if I need to,” she eventually said.

“But Florian’s men aren’t leaving here alive.”

“I understand,” I said to her and quickly crossed the distance between us so I could put a gentle hand on her shoulder. “You don’t have to be so stoic about it. This is your home.”

“The dungeon itself is my home,” Maggie said stiffly, and she shrugged my hand off her shoulder. “Like I told you. This place is mostly an illusion.”

Eventually, Maggie ran out of ideas on how to fortify the place, and the two of us were forced to sit at the table in mostly silence as we waited.

I didn’t know what to say to her, and if I was to say anything, it would only turn into an eventual apology that she’d shrug off. So I kept my mouth shut instead and listened intently for any sounds of something other than the two of us breathing.

I didn’t hear a damn thing, but Maggie suddenly slapped her hand down against the tabletop, and the sound almost made me jump out of my damn skin.

“They’re here,” she said in the same gruff, emotionless voice.

“Be ready.”

I just nodded, because what else could I say?

I pulled an arrow from the quiver on my back, and Maggie just pointed at the doorway entrance to her hidden base.

“Have fire ready,” I murmured as I nocked the arrow and drew the string up toward my face.

Way ahead of you, I heard Amber reply inside of my mind.

“The bow girl?” Maggie asked out of the corner of her mouth.

“Yes,” I answered quietly. “They’re just as ready as I am.”

“Good,” the old lady said as she climbed to her feet. “We’ll need all the help we can get.”

Maggie shifted her footing until she’d comfortably readjusted her center of gravity, and she kept her hands ready in front of her. I breathed against the bowstring where I held it against my cheek, and my ears strained for something I knew was there but couldn’t yet hear.

After a moment, though, there was a sudden crash against the wooden door.

“Hold,” Maggie hissed beside me.

There was an almighty crash again, far harder this time, and the iron bar that covered the doorway suddenly shuddered.

I kept my grip on the bow as firm as I possibly could and waited.

Something slammed into the door again, and the iron bar shimmered and then disappeared completely from where it was pressed up against the wood.

“Now!” Maggie yelled and clapped her hands together.

At her clap, the door itself also disappeared like sand in the wind, and I let Amber’s fire arrow fly right at the kindling traps we’d fastened to the ceiling.

The fire took hold immediately, and the flames licked at the thin twine string we’d tied the knots with. As the bundles of tinder caught alight, the twine snapped and sent the fireballs hurtling down and directly into the doorway.

There were two figures standing in the stone corridor outside of Maggie’s base, and before they realized the door had even disappeared, they were smacked in the face by two huge balls of very hot, very real balls of fire.

One of them let out a strangled yell and instinctively tried to bat the ball of kindling away from his face, but in doing so, the flames licked at the stupidly long sleeves of his dark red cloak.

They were both dressed in Florian’s colors, burgundy red and fine gold stitching, and the robes the intruders wore were long and hooded which made it impossible to see who we were actually dealing with. The first one suffered with a flaming sleeve, and within a matter of seconds, his entire robe was set alight.

The scream he let out was almost feral, crazed, and panicked, and as he burned alive, his strangled yells filled the dungeon base.

His companion had enough foresight to actually dodge out of the way since his unfortunate buddy had taken most of the fireball, and he stepped over the writhing figure at his feet and headed straight for where Maggie and I stood in the center of the room.

“Behind!” Maggie suddenly shouted, and she twirled on the tips of her toes with surprising grace.

I pulled another arrow out of the quiver on my back as I whirled around in a full one-eighty turn, to where Maggie was already holding her hands up in preparation.

Two of Florian’s lackeys had already breached the fireplace, so Maggie whipped both of her hands down with a flourish, as if she were waving an imaginary red sheet at an equally imaginary bull, and the nails we’d fixed to the mantle suddenly darted into action at her command.

The unfortunate firstcomer took the brunt of the attack, and most of the projectiles hit home with satisfyingly wet thunks. He still had his hood up over his face, though that was probably thanks to the amount of metal nails sticking out of his head and neck, and I
grimaced as thick rivers of deep red, almost black blood began to travel down his chest. He stood there for a moment looking like a medieval version of Pinhead from the Hellraiser movies, but he eventually crumpled to a heap on the ground.

Like the last, his partner simply stepped over the body and carried on toward the center of the room where Maggie and I still stood.

“Stop!” I yelled at them as Maggie and I ended up back to back and circling.

“You don’t get to make any demands here, boy.” The robed figure in the doorway was closer, but I noticed how they were all taking very careful, calculated steps.

They didn’t know what to expect, and they were far warier of us than we needed to be of them, so I took the opportunity to pepper them with questions instead of arrows.

Ask questions, then shoot, and purposefully go against every badass hero trope I’d ever come across in popular culture.

“Why are you here?” I demanded as I held my bow high, with an arrow nocked regardless.

“Not for you, monster slayer,” the robed man in the fireplace growled.

“Though I’m sure the royal soothsayer will be interested in our report,” the figure in the doorway said. “You’re lookin’ mighty suspicious, Sir Miller, what with you being particularly cozy with magical scum like this one.”

“Careful who you call scum, lad,” Maggie said in a devastatingly calm voice. “You’ll be holding your innards in your hands before you know it.”

The man in the doorway didn’t reply, he just raised both hands to slowly drop the cowl of his burgundy robe, and the very first thing he did was sneer at the two of us in the center of the room.

He was an older man, at least in his fifties, with a balding head and dark age spots by his temples. His eyebrows were thick tufts of black and gray hair sitting above eyes that were watery and cold, and his hook of a nose looked as though it’d been broken several times in his youth. I noticed how a number of his teeth were missing while his neck wobbled like a Thanksgiving turkey, and I glared at him with an air of disgust that he matched in kind.

“I’d listen to her, if I were you,” I warned him. “She very likely means that threat.”

“I’d love to see her try,” the man said with venom in his voice.

“She can’t touch us with that dirty hoodoo of hers anyway.”

“And why’s that?” I demanded, and I quickly glanced over my shoulder to keep eyes on the second man behind us.

He’d also lowered his hood, and he just let out a derisive laugh at my question.

The second man was shorter than the first and more round in the face, though he didn’t look any better off for it. His cheeks were a ruddy red, probably a product of far too much red meat and alcohol over the years, and the splotchy flush went all the way down his neck until it blended with the dark red of his cloak. He had tiny little black eyes that darted around the room like some sort of rat or possum, and his lips were so thin and pale they disappeared into his face and made his teeth look far too big for his mouth, which only added to his rodent-like features.

“Florian made sure we were prepared,” the rat man said with a childish giggle, and he dug beneath the folds of his dark red cloak and pulled out a long golden chain from around his neck.

Dangling on the end was a shard of what looked like crystalized mold, and I heard Maggie scoff in distaste.

“Moldavite,” she said flatly. “You think a little chunk of moldavite is going to throw me off my game?”

“From how I hear it,” the turkey-necked man in the doorway said. “You’ve been off your game for years. Your magic’s all but depleted anyway.”

“Oh, is that how you’ve heard it?” Maggie chuckled humorlessly. “Do you want to test that theory?”

“Careful,” I murmured to the old woman as we carried on circling each other with our backs pressed together. “What does moldavite do?”

“This little rock here, it heightens awareness and does a stand-up job of uncovering the truth,” the man in the doorway said, and he pulled his own chain out from beneath his robes and dangled the chunk of moldavite at me. “It’s an anti-magic crystal, idiot.”

“I find it hard to believe you’d put such blind trust into a pebble,” I shot back at him, and I pulled the bowstring a little tighter as I kept the arrow nocked on it. “Shall we see how well it fares?”

“I have a better idea,” the turkey-necked man said as he dangled his pendant against the neck of his clothing. “Something that yields a far more satisfying result.”

With a surprising amount of grace, the older man shrugged fluidly out of the heavy red robe, and in the same motion he unsheathed a shimmering longsword from the scabbard I hadn’t seen around his waist.

My breath hitched in my throat the moment I laid eyes on the sword. The scabbard was made of pure white ivory, with a gold overlay of winding vines and leaves, and the leafy decoration wound upward toward a solid gold hilt that gleamed in the light.

I felt a sudden pull, a desire deep within my bones, to claim the longsword from him.

Before the henchman could move any more, I immediately fired my arrow in his direction, but to my dismay the wooden shaft did a sudden ninety degree angle change and clattered against the ceiling as soon as it came within touching distance of the soothsayer’s henchman.

“Moldavite,” he snickered. “Told you.”

“Amber, turn off your power,” I muttered in as quiet a voice as I could muster as I pulled another arrow from the quiver behind my shoulder.

Yes, Amber replied, though I noticed immediately how her voice was suddenly strained inside my mind.

The moldavite the men wore apparently affected all forms of magic, and I became instantly more furious when I realized their stupid little gemstones were causing my girls any sort of discomfort.

Both the red and the blue gemstones that were inlaid on either side of the bow handle flickered once, as though they’d caught the light, and then grew dim as Amber deactivated her powers. I hadn’t practiced my archery skills without Amber inside my mind helping to guide the arrows, but I hoped my muscle memory would be enough to at least distract the guy enough for me to get close to him.

“Go for the moldavite,” I whispered to Maggie behind me.

She just grunted, and I took that as a form of agreement.

The two of us wordlessly broke apart, and as Maggie went for the stout man beside the fireplace, I let loose another arrow at the taller of the two intruders. My arrow sailed in the right direction this time, and I grinned with satisfaction as the guy with the sword tried to
stumble out of the way when he realized the arrow was going to hit him. He wasn’t fast enough, though, and the projectile grazed his arm and drew blood.

I took my opportunity and quickly lunged forward enough to close the gap between us. I kept my momentum up and barreled into the soothsayer’s man before he could come up with some half-baked quip, and though I might not have had any of the girls’ magic on my side, I had brute force and heavy black metal armor on my shoulders.

I’d never played football in my life, but I’d been to enough pep rallies and high school games to mimic how they lunged at their opponents, so I kept my stance low and forced the man to the ground.

He let out a whoosh of air through his lips as though he were made from a party balloon, and while he still had the breath knocked out of him, I grappled at the chain around his neck. I managed to curl my finger between the golden links and immediately rolled away from the guy, so I could use the same momentum to break it away from his neck altogether.

The pendant came free with ease, and I scrambled back to my feet while the soothsayer’s man laid breathless and dazed on the
floor. I dropped the moldavite pendant onto the cobblestones and quickly smashed my foot down against the moldy-looking gemstone.

It shattered beneath my boot, and I suddenly heard both Sid and Amber talking animatedly inside of my head.

Go, James! Amber’s voice was loudest inside my head, and she sounded like she was spectating at the Super Bowl with how eagerly she cheered me on.

Remind me to destroy every bit of moldavite I ever see, Sid said with a long groan.

I let out a breath of relief when I heard their voices once more, but I didn’t have the time to celebrate, so I spun on my heel to see how Maggie was faring. Then I couldn’t help the huff of surprised laughter that escaped me when I saw what the old woman was up to.

She’d seemed worn out and tired when we’d been preparing the base for an attack, but now that she was in the fray, she was acting like a damn teenager looking for a fight behind the bleachers.

She was a good foot shorter than the possum-eyed man, but that didn’t stop her from landing jab after jab right into his stomach,
and when she dealt him a devastating uppercut that put his ass on the floor, I couldn’t resist whooping in support.

The old woman rounded on me with a disgruntled look, and I just shot her a thumbs up, to which she rolled her eyes, but I figured that was Maggie’s version of a high five. Then she reached down, grabbed the moldavite pendant from around the guy’s neck, and followed suit by smashing it beneath her boot, so that the crystal shattered almost to a fine powder.

“Even with magic,” the wobbly-necked man said in a strangled voice as he stood up. “I have a sword, you have a bow and arrow.

Try your damn luck, boy.”

“Yeah, I’ve been meaning to ask you about that sword,” I said as I caught my breath. “Have you noticed anything special about it?

Anything magical? Well, no, of course not. Not with that stupid rock hanging around your ugly-ass neck.”

“I do not wield magic!” he spat angrily. “It’s damn well treacherous, unnatural, disgusting--”

“Got any more choice adjectives, or are you all out?” I interrupted him with an impatient wave of the hand. “You know, it’s funny… I’d bet all the gold your Baron has so kindly paid me for my
services, I’d bet every single piece of it, that the sword you’ve got in your hands there is more magical than you can even fathom.”

“Lies!” the man hissed and narrowed his eyes at me.

“Blasphemy!”

“Enough!” Maggie suddenly roared, and she extended her hands out to the man lying crumpled at her feet.

She used her magic to pick him up into the air and fling him unceremoniously into the bookcases we’d filled with tinder and kindling before.

“Light it, James!” Maggie growled. “Do it now!”

I didn’t have the time, nor inclination to question her, so I just did exactly as told and nocked an arrow on the bowstring.

“Amber!” I called out. “Fire!”

Oh, it’s already on! Amber’s voice was loud and excited inside of my head, and the gemstone on the side of her bow glowed a warm red as I sent a fire-headed arrow straight into the bookshelves.

They went up in flames almost immediately, and the soothsayer’s lackey began to scream in agony as the blaze engulfed him in an angry ball of fire.

James! I suddenly heard Sid’s voice in my head. Look out!

I whirled on the spot and suddenly found the sword-wielding man rushing at me with the weapon held high in both his hands. I barely had the time to even turn to face him before he was upon me, and I did my best to try and dodge out of the way of the blade.

I could’ve just stood still as a statue, though.

Sid’s newest shockwave ability kicked in the moment the soothsayer’s lackey was close enough. The poor guy didn’t even manage to swing the blade down against the pauldrons before the kinetic energy that pulsed protectively around the metal sent him catapulting into the stone wall.

He fell to the floor in a heap, with his robe smoking and his eyes staring upward.

“He’s dead.” I whistled. “Sid, was that all you?”

“The pauldrons?” Maggie asked quickly, and for the first time I saw an actual genuine smile tug at the corners of her wrinkled old mouth.

“Hell yes, the pauldrons!” I whooped in celebration.

“The sword, boy,” Maggie said as she busied herself with heaving bodies around her base, and she waved an impatient hand.

“Take it and get out of here. Get it somewhere safe.”

“Will you be okay?” I asked her as I watched her put out the bookshelf fire with just a flick of her wrist.

“Of course I’ll be okay,” Maggie snorted. “You tell my husb--”

“You tell him yourself,” I countered, and I refused to flinch when the old lady rounded on me. “I’m serious. He sent me to look out for you. You ask about him. Just… Do me a favor, and get into contact with him. I know you know how.”

Maggie just fixed me with a steady stare and then turned back to her one-woman cleanup crew.

“Fine,” she said in her usual flat voice. “But get that sword somewhere safe.”

I didn’t need telling twice, because from the moment I’d seen it, I’d been positive the sword was one of the magic born girls.

I could call it a hunch, or an educated guess, or maybe a mixture of the two. But I was also sure the bond I had with the other magic born daughters of Hadden would be much the same for every single one I found.

And I could feel the pull of it already.

I quickly unhooked the sword belt and scabbard from around the lackey’s still smoking dead body, and I fastened it around my
own waist as I finally picked up the ornate golden longsword.

The blade was a perfectly polished and razor-sharp double edge, and the hilt was made entirely from gold with a beautifully intricate wreath carved right into the metal itself.

It felt… right in my hands, in much the same way that Amber’s bow had felt right. It felt like it was mine.

The sword itself seemed to agree, because although I couldn’t really make out anything, I got a very sudden sense of another voice inside my head.

It was wordless, and more of a sensation than anything coherent to listen to, but I quickly bade my goodbye to Maggie and took off at a damn near sprint toward the chamber that housed my portal.

Amber and Sid didn’t say a word as I trekked my way back to the portal, and I figured they were trying to keep quiet in case the voice in the deepest recesses of my subconscious managed to come forward.

I knew she was there, though.

I hurried through the tunnels until I was back in the cool antechamber that housed the mirror image of my dorm room closet,
and I eagerly stepped through the swirling golden gateway until I felt the usual tug within my abdomen as the magic transported me back to my college dorm room.

When I stepped through the portal, Amber appeared at my side, and Sid quickly slid off my back as she usually did, but most excitingly, the golden longsword I’d held in my left hand had suddenly transformed into the most beautiful blonde woman I’d ever seen in my life.

Chapter Seventeen

“Oh!” The blonde woman let out a squeak of surprise and then almost immediately after that crumpled onto the carpet in a timid heap, as if she’d forgotten how to use her legs.

I instantly crouched down beside her and put a steadying hand on her slim shoulder.

“Hey,” I said in a soothing voice. “Are you okay?”

“I…” the blonde stuttered and then clapped a hand to her mouth in surprise.

She was beautiful, though I’d expected her to be given how enchanting both Amber and Sid were. This new woman’s hair was an artful mess of curls that fell about her shoulders like a foaming waterfall, and it was a warm honey blonde and reflected the light from my dorm room overhead as if it were spun from gold. She had a heart-shaped face with lightly tanned, freckled skin, and her eyes were big and dark blue, like the night sky.

She was dressed in a raw leather dress similar to what Amber had worn when she’d first materialized in my world. She also had a delicate golden chain around her neck with a flat disc on the end of
the pendant, and I immediately recognized it from the hilt of her longsword.

“It’s alright,” Amber said as she curled down to the ground like a cat and sat cross-legged beside the newest addition to our little gang. “It’s a lot to take in at first.”

“Amber’s right,” Sid said and knelt on the other side of the newcomer. “But we promise, you’re safe.”

“What… What happened?” the blonde asked through her fingers in the same hoarse voice. “Where am I? W-Who are you?”

“That’s a lot of questions,” I said with a chuckle. “How about we start with the basics. My name’s James. Do you know yours?”

“Lapis,” the blonde whispered. “My name is Lapis.”

I smiled when I realized the blonde’s dark-blue eyes matched the color of lapis lazuli, which was what I assumed she was named after. Once again, I found it interesting that the women were named after gemstones, and I wondered how intentional that was.

But that was a question for later.

“Nice to meet you, Lapis,” I said and gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “This is Amber and Sid.”

“We were like you once,” Amber said in a gentle voice, and she put her hand on Lapis’ knee. “We were trapped, too, and James rescued us.”

“My Master?” Lapis asked and looked around at me with huge eyes.

“In a manner of words, but not like most.” I shot a grin at Amber and Sid as I spoke, and both girls had to stifle their giggles.

“You rescued me,” Lapis said, and then she cleared her throat daintily before she blinked up at me. “Thank you, Master.”

“Just James is fine,” I said quickly, and this time Amber couldn’t bite down on her giggle quickly enough.

I just winked at her and then turned my attention back to Lapis.

“Are you okay?” I asked the gorgeous blonde. “Do you feel okay, you don’t feel sick or anything? I know it’s a lot to take in at first.”

“I feel…” Lapis sighed softly, as if she were taking her first breath, and then she blinked at me slowly. “Oh, I feel free.”

“Pretty cool, huh?” Amber said with a grin and nudged Lapis with her shoulder.

The blonde just looked around at the redhead and smiled shyly, and I took that as a win.

I couldn’t begin to imagine how disconcerting it must have felt, to be trapped in something inanimate for god knows how long, and then suddenly you’re back in your own skin again. I wasn’t surprised Lapis had immediately crumpled to the floor, and I wasn’t surprised her voice was soft and throaty.

“Do you know how long you were trapped within the sword?” I asked her gently.

“I… I’m not sure,” Lapis admitted with a furrowed brow. “It’s all a kind of… Blur. I only remember the one Master, though. Jeffrey.”

Her button nose scrunched up as she said the name, as though it left a bad taste in her mouth, and I felt a smile tug at the corners of my mouth.

“I’m assuming that’s the guy I who previously wielded your sword,” I said with a smirk. “No love lost there, then?”

“Certainly not,” Lapis said stiffly. “I tried for so long to communicate with him. I just wanted to be heard. I wanted to know what had happened to me. He shut me out every single time. I was
just trapped inside his head… Either that, or trapped inside the sword.”

“Do you remember anything from before?” Sid asked as she leaned forward eagerly. “Before you were trapped inside your sword?”

“No,” Lapis said, and she shook her head so her soft blonde curls fell over her eyes. “I’m sorry, I feel like I spent so long inside that thing that I can’t remember if I even had a life before.”

“Maybe you didn’t…” Amber murmured.

“What do you mean?” I asked the redhead.

“I barely remember a thing from my life before,” Amber said with a sudden sadness making her voice almost as hoarse as Lapis’.

“It’s only Sid who remembers her life in the Baron’s castle, and that’s only because she was trapped inside her pauldron form relatively recently in comparison to me. So maybe Lapis is like me. Maybe she’s been trapped for years… Decades, even.”

“It’s certainly a possibility,” I said, and then I fixed the blonde with a warm smile. “I know it’s hard, trying to remember these things.

Do you remember anyone before Jeffrey?”

“No,” Lapis answered me in the same soft, fluttery voice. “Just him.”

“Then I’m willing to bet Jeffrey has been one of Florian’s lackeys for years, and I’m willing to bet they stole you pretty early on,” I said with a long sigh. “Which would explain why you’ve been trapped for so long, too.”

“I don’t understand.” Lapis frowned sadly. “And I’m… Really tired. Exhausted, actually.”

“You need to get some rest,” Sid said with a sympathetic smile.

“Come.”

Sid took Lapis’ hands and gently coaxed the blonde back to her feet, where she was still a little wobbly and unsure of her corporeal movements. I felt the same protectiveness for the gorgeous blonde that I’d felt for both Amber and Sid when they’d crossed through the portal and stepped into my world for the first time, and my heart ached as I watched my first two otherworldly women help the new one over to my bed.

I couldn’t even begin to imagine what it felt like, even though I’d experienced something similar on my first day of college. I’d found another world, sure, but I’d always been myself in both realms.

I’d always had complete control over my own body, and that was a luxury all three of them had been stripped of until I’d rescued them.

I felt an intense desire to care for them all, which I was sure I’d have felt anyway, but the so-called ‘Master’ bond deepened that want until it was almost impossible to feel anything else.

I’d struggled to hear Lapis when she was trapped inside of her weapon, in the same way I’d struggled to hear Sid when I’d donned her black pauldrons for the first time, and I knew that meant we had to bond for real at some point soon.

But that would always be left up to each of the girls, to decide how and when, and it was never something I’d force upon them. As much as they called me Master, deep down, they ran the show.

“I’ll stay with her,” Sid suddenly said, and I was pulled out of my racing thoughts when I heard her voice.

I looked over to see Sid sitting on my bed with Lapis’ head in her lap, and the dark-haired woman was gently stroking the blonde’s hair and soothing her into a much-needed sleep. I opened my mouth, but my response got derailed when I abruptly noticed something.

“Hey,” I said in an excited hiss. “Your hair, Sid.”

Sid continued to stroke Lapis’ curly blonde hair, and for a moment I’d almost forgotten we’d found another gemstone to affix to her pauldrons in the otherworld.

“Oh!” Sid gasped softly and shook her hair in front of her face to inspect it. “That’s so pretty!”

When we’d found the red gemstone that gave Amber her fire power, she’d ended up with a faint pink kind of tattoo on her wrist in the real world, like an intricate scar or brand. With Sid’s new electrical power, her jet-black hair was now highlighted with lightning streaks of white and pale yellow, so she looked like the human personification of a thunderstorm.

“That’s awesome,” I said with a grin.

“It really suits you, Sid!” Amber said happily, and then she clamped a hand over her mouth as Lapis stirred slightly in Sid’s lap.

“Yeah, that bed isn’t gonna hold all four of us…” I said in a hushed voice as I frowned at my predicament.

“Where are we going to sleep?” Amber asked me in an equally quiet voice.

“Sid will have to stay with Lapis,” I said. “I don’t want to wake her. If you’re okay with that, Sid?”

“Of course.” Sid nodded. “I’ll look after her.”

“I’ve got an idea,” I said as I turned to Amber. “It relies on Aron having more game than I gave him credit for, though.”

“What do you mean?” Amber asked in confusion, though she wore a slight smile on her face as she looked up at me.

“Well, he had his hot date with that punk girl,” I said quickly.

“I’m hoping he managed to score with her, because that’ll mean there’s a spare room across the hall.”

“Do you think Aron would mind?” Amber asked.

“I don’t see why,” I said, and then I quickly pulled my cell phone out of my pocket. “Let me message him, hopefully he’s not too busy sticking his tongue down that poor girl’s throat.”

“Don’t be mean,” Amber giggled and nudged me with her elbow.

“Just realistic,” I said with a smirk.

I quickly fired a text message to Aron and explained that Amber felt a little ill and could we pretty please just crash in his room for the night.

To my surprise, Aron replied almost immediately.

Have at it, brother. Apologize to Amber for me, though, there’s a reason why I didn’t bring anyone back to my room. Will you show me how to work the washer/ dryers tomorrow?

I snorted out a huff of laughter, shook my head at Amber’s confused smile, and then replied to him with thanks.

“Aron said we can crash in his room,” I told the redhead. “Let’s get some sleep, I feel like I could pass out forever. Grab one of our blankets, though, for the love of god.”

I reached down to give Sid a quick kiss goodnight, and I told her to just call for me if she needed anything since I’d be right across the hall with Amber.

I stripped Aron’s bedding almost completely and tossed my own comforter over the mattress, and then Amber and I curled up into a tightly tangled embrace as we waited for sleep to take hold.

We laid there together for a little while, and I traced mindless patterns into her waist and quietly marveled at how smooth her skin was, but sleep continued to elude me.

My mind was far too preoccupied with… Everything.

“Do you think Lapis will be okay?” Amber asked me softly with her face pressed up against my chest.

“Can’t sleep, either, huh?” I murmured, and I rolled over so we could face each other.

I pushed a messy strand of her red hair behind her ear, and she smiled and leaned her face into my touch.

“I hope Lapis will be okay,” I answered her eventually. “Three of you I’ve found now, and I still don’t know how to explain my world.”

“It’s definitely a shock.” Amber smiled ruefully. “A good one, though. We’re naturally drawn to you, just by virtue of you being our Master. I can’t speak for Sid, but for me, the Master bond was almost secondary. You saved me, completely, and not for your own gain.

Out of empathy. That’s stronger than any magical bond.”

“I sincerely hope so…” I muttered.

“I know your world is different,” Amber whispered and put her hand against the side of my face in a gentle touch. “But anything is better than being cursed. This is more than I could have ever dreamed of.”

“Lapis seemed particularly disoriented.” I let out a heavy sigh.

“I’m worried it’ll take her longer to acclimate.”

“Maybe it will,” Amber said. “But she will, eventually. I promise it’ll be okay. Plus, you have me and Sid to back you up.”

“What would I do without you both?” I asked and was only half-joking.

“Go mad from boredom, most likely.” Amber stifled a giggle by burying her face in my chest, and I tightened my grip around her waist so I could pull her closer for a cuddle.

“Isn’t that the truth?” I chuckled and kissed the top of her head.

“We need to figure out this living arrangement, though.”

“We certainly can’t steal Aron’s bedroom every night, that’s for sure,” Amber agreed. “What did you have in mind?”

“Well, I have money now.” My mind focused on the zeroes in my bank account and the cache of gold nuggets still hidden in the back of my closet. “I think it’s time I find my own place. Maybe I can even ask Richard for help, since he seems to have made a name for himself here. I’m also sure I can explain to the college why I need to move off campus, and if I offer to buy and replace it, I don’t see why they wouldn’t let me have the closet, too.”

“We should try moving it tomorrow,” Amber suggested. “Not far, just across the room perhaps. Just to make sure the portal moves with it.”

“That’s a good idea,” I said with a sleepy nod, and then I shrugged. “I don’t see why it wouldn’t work, though. Sid’s father explained how they lost the portal in the first place, so it’d make sense that it could be moved.”

“And would we be able to find somewhere else to live?” Amber asked, and despite being exhausted, the excitement was still obvious in her voice.

“Now that money isn’t really an issue?” I answered.

“Absolutely. I can’t buy anything yet, not until I get everything above board, but I could certainly rent somewhere cool.”

“Rent?” Amber asked as she stifled a yawn.

“Where someone else actually owns the building, and you pay them to live in it,” I explained.

“That’s stupid,” she immediately replied.

“Incredibly so,” I couldn’t help but laugh. “But a far quicker, far easier fix for our current issue.”

“So, where?” Amber asked as she lifted her head up and propped it against a hand. “Do you have anywhere in mind?”

“Let’s look,” I said as I leaned over her to grab my cell phone from the bedside table.

I bent down to give her a swift kiss, which she immediately sighed happily into, and she snuggled back up against my chest as I rolled onto my back and propped myself up on Aron’s lumpy pillows.

Then I pulled up a bunch of property search engines and looked for places to rent in Brooklyn.

Most of them were the usual extortionate price, and despite having money in the bank, I couldn’t help but filter from lowest price to highest. I found myself quickly flicking past the questionable properties, and definitely past the pokey studio apartment directly above a shawarma restaurant, until we eventually found the middle ground.

“A loft?” Amber suddenly asked and poked the screen of my cell phone with her forefinger.

She let out a quiet squeal of excitement as her touch made the device load up the page she’d spotted, and I knew I’d never get bored of her almost childlike eagerness at technological things that I for sure had taken for granted in the past.

Who knew how incredulous someone could be at the prospect of touch screen technology?

It was adorable.

“Look at those windows!” Amber gasped. “That’s like Richard Harper’s office!”

The loft she’d selected actually turned out to be quite a good pick. It had floor-to-ceiling windows in the living space that drenched the place in natural light, the whole place was open plan, and it was completely furnished.

“Thirty-five hundred a month isn’t actually that bad, either,” I said as we continued to look at the listing. “Available immediately, in Williamsburg, views of the city… Not bad, Amber.”

“I chose a good one?” she asked with a satisfied smile.

“Yes, you chose a good one,” I said and kissed the top of her messy red hair with a grin. “I’ll email the realtor, and just hope they check their messages first thing. But for now, we should probably get some sleep.”

“I agree,” Amber said and stifled a sudden yawn. “I think we need it.”

The two of us eventually fell into unconsciousness, tangled up together in Aron’s messy bed, and though I slept deeply, I was plagued with hyper-realistic dreams.

I dreamed of Maggie in her dungeon pointing out the most mundane of things as magical illusions, including my hair and then eventually my clothes. That particular hellscape thankfully gave way pretty quickly to a hundred Florians walking toward me from all angles, and all of them were smiling the same sickly sweet smile that seemed to grow wider and inhumanly large on their identical faces the closer they got to me.

I then dreamed of Richard Harper sitting across from me behind his polished chrome desk, and he was threatening me with everything he could think of if I were to somehow hurt his daughter.

But despite the fact I kept insisting how I wanted nothing more than to protect Sid, he just kept reprimanding me for getting her name wrong.

Finally, I dreamed of Lapis, the newest warrior woman I’d pulled from the curse of the magic born daughters of Hadden, and that particular situation was far more entertaining than the rest had been. She was naked in my arms, with her mass of curly blonde hair tickling my face, and she was thanking me over and over and over again.

I could’ve gotten used to that.

I eventually woke up the next morning to Aron’s damn alarm clock beeping on the bedside table, and with a disgruntled groan, I leaned across a still fully unconscious Amber to turn the damn thing off.

In this day and age, who still had a manual alarm clock? I made a mental note to question this insanity the moment I saw him again.

It was eight o’clock in the morning, I desperately needed caffeine, and I wasn’t entirely sure when Aron would finally come crawling back to his own room.

But when I looked down at where Amber was still curled up against my side, I sighed happily at the sight of her.

Her bed hair was one of my favorite things about her because it was just sheer chaos. She had the longest hair out of all three of the women I’d pulled from Hadden’s curse, and the mess of red waves in the morning was like a sweet-smelling stream of lava. It was just never-ending and everywhere all at once, and I loved it.

I woke her very reluctantly and eventually persuaded her to throw her clothes haphazardly back on so we could cross the hall and tiptoe back into my dorm room. Sid was awake when we
gingerly shut the door behind us, but Lapis was still sleeping soundly in her arms.

“Is she okay?” I whispered to Sid.

“She hasn’t stirred since she passed out last night,” Sid said.

“But no bad dreams, as far as I can tell.”

“Well, that’s a good sign at least.” I stretched my arms over my head with a long groan and then rubbed at my eyes. “I hate to wake her, but I need coffee badly, and I’m sure she’s hungry.”

As if she’d somehow heard me in her subconsciousness, Lapis’ eyelids fluttered, and she blinked up at me with her big dark-blue eyes still groggy with sleep.

“Oh…” she breathed slowly. “It wasn’t a dream.”

“‘Fraid not,” I said with a warm smile. “Are you hungry?”

“Starving, actually,” Lapis said as she pushed herself up on my bed and leaned gratefully against Sid with a shy smile.

“Then we’ll go and get breakfast.” I nodded firmly. “Off campus, though. I’m not sure how I’d explain the three of you now, even to Aron and Honey.”

Sid loaned Lapis a fresh change of clothes, and the blonde opted for a pair of soft cotton pants dyed a pretty lilac color and a
cream-colored blouse. I dutifully turned and averted my eyes as she changed, though I could feel a sudden spike in my blood pressure at just the knowledge that it was happening.

I turned back around with Amber and Sid trying to stifle their giggles, and I thanked every god I could think of that Lapis was far too preoccupied with her new futuristic clothes to notice my sudden awkwardness.

I shot my first two girlfriends jokingly stern looks, and then the four of us hustled out of Dalton Hall and across campus. The girls had already given Lapis a brief rundown of what to expect when leaving my college, but the sight of downtown Brooklyn still made her dark-blue eyes grow comically wide.

“It’s so… gray,” she whispered and then looked around at me with the first instance of fear starting to seep through into her expression. “And fast. Everything is moving fast. The metal carriages are… Wow, they are really fast.”

Her eyes followed the path of a limo that was practically mowing down everything in front of it. I figured it was probably some businessman running late into the city, and I just laughed as we all watched it basically run a red light and honk its horn.

The sound made Lapis jump, but then she let out a breathless giggle when she realized it was harmless.

“You’ll get used to it,” Amber said with a giggle, and she looped her arm through our new blonde companion’s. “It’s a lot, but honestly, it’s easier to just… Take it all in.”

“My world is entirely different to yours,” I told Lapis as we walked the couple of blocks to my favorite coffee shop. “There are some things I really struggle to explain, because it’s just… Normal for me, I’ve never had to like, try and break it down for someone.”

“I’ll just… Pretend I’m a world-weary traveler,” Lapis said with a determined nod. “I’ll just pretend this is exactly what I expected.”

“That’s a good ‘fake it ‘til you make it’ sort of attitude,” I said with an approving chuckle. “Just stay close to me, though, okay?”

“I wouldn’t dream of going off on my own,” Lapis said in a serious voice.

“We’ve worked out that, because you’re, ahh… Connected to me in some way…” I faltered a little and let out a suddenly nervous chuckle.

“It’s because he’s our Master,” Sid said matter-of-factly.

“Yes, well…” I cleared my throat and shrugged. “Because of that bond, and because this is my world, you’d end up feeling really, really unwell if you’re too far away from me.”

“You really are my protector, then?” Lapis looked up at me with her big dark eyes framed with equally dark lashes, and a small smile started to form on her face.

“Apparently so.” I smiled down at the blonde. “Well, Sid and Amber would probably agree.”

“We tease him, but…” Sid grabbed my hand so she could press herself up to me, even as we walked, and planted a quick kiss on my cheek. “We owe him our lives.”

“I understand,” Lapis said shyly, and I could see the faint hint of a blush warm her cheeks as she looked away.

We eventually made it to the coffee shop, and Lapis’ eyes grew as wide as saucers all over again as we pushed through the door.

I was positive there were bakeries and the like in the market town of Hadden, but these girls had been trapped inside inanimate objects for an undetermined amount of time, so it was highly unlikely they remembered a great deal of their own world.

So entirely new things like cars, and skyscrapers, and cell phones, and the likes of boujee coffee shops that probably charge too much for their coffee, but I don’t care because it’s easily the best in Brooklyn, were all things that took the Hadden girls completely by surprise.

Lapis was definitely the best so far at keeping a poker face, though, and I gently took her hand and walked up to the counter with her to order.

Amber and Sid were entirely preoccupied with the pastries, so I looked down at Lapis with a reassuring smile.

“Do you have a sweet tooth?” I asked her.

“Oh, yes!” Lapis said immediately. “That much I remember! I’d rather have a whole plate of desserts than a four-course meal.”

“You’re a girl after my own heart,” Amber sighed and reappeared beside us. “Coffee is really good when it’s sweet, and you can flavor it with all of these different types of syrups, and--”

“What about chocolate?” Lapis asked with a wistful expression.

“I haven’t had chocolate in, well… Too long.”

“She’ll have a mocha,” I said to the barista with a placating smile.

I placed the rest of our order and grabbed a whole bunch of different pastries for Lapis to try, and then we nestled into a corner booth by the window so our blonde addition could stare out of the window as she took timid, grateful sips of her coffee.

“This really is very good,” she muttered as she swirled her cup around. “Really, really good.”

I let the girls dig through the selection of pastries and baked goods I’d bought for them, but my cell phone suddenly chirped with the email notification.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d actually received an honest-to-god email, and I unlocked the device with a curious half-smile on my face.

“Oh!” I nudged Amber with my elbow. “The loft you found!”

“Did they reply?” the redhead asked around an enthusiastic bite of a croissant.

“I think you hit the jackpot with this one,” I said. “Someone just pulled out, and the realtor wants to know whether we’d like to see it this afternoon.”

Amber just clapped her hands together as both Lapis and Sid looked at our exchange with curious looks on their faces.

“Well, we’ve been clothes shopping,” I said with a grin. “Now we get to go home shopping.”

The girls all made various sounds of excitement, and I took a long sip of my coffee and leaned back against the worn leather of the booth with a strongly forged sense of belonging.

If I’d have been told my first year of college would result in me renting a loft in Williamsburg with three gorgeous women, I’d have scoffed so hard that my eyes would’ve rolled right out of my head.

Yet, here I was.

We still had at least a helmet and a dagger, and therefore two more magic born women, to find trapped in the mystical town of Hadden. I had the strong potential of permanently bonding with Lapis, and I had a steady cash flow of raw gold to make my fortune.

And it would just keep getting better and better.

End of Book 2

End Notes

Thanks for reading Dungeon in My Closet 2! I’ll start writing the
next book when this gets 100 reviews, so please leave a review right
here. Thank you!

Do you know I have a Patreon? It’s true, and it’s amazing.

When you join, you’ll get advanced chapters of my books to read and listen to BEFORE they come out. You’ll also get advanced sketches of covers, super sexy versions of my covers, and I even have an audiobook tier where you get 3-4 audiobooks a month at a
steep discount. Everyone is joining, so you should too. Click on this
link right here, or search for my name on Patreon.com

So here is the deal: Amazon doesn’t update readers when an author comes out with a new book… UNLESS you follow that author
on the store. Click here to go to my author page, and then click on
the “FOLLOW” button on the left side.

You should also join my Facebook Fan page or follow my

Facebook Author page. If you don’t follow me on Amazon or join my

Facebook page, you’ll never get alerted when my next book is out.

So do it now!

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 2022 by Logan Jacobs

--

Patreon

Do you know I have a Patreon? It’s true, and it’s amazing.

When you join, you’ll get advanced chapters of my books to read and listen to BEFORE they come out. You’ll also get advanced sketches of covers, super sexy versions of my covers, and I even have an audiobook tier where you get 3-4 audiobooks a month at a
steep discount. Everyone is joining, so you should too. Click on this
link right here, or search for my name on Patreon.com

So here is the deal: Amazon doesn’t update readers when an author comes out with a new book… UNLESS you follow that author
on the store. Click here to go to my author page, and then click on
the “FOLLOW” button on the left side.

You should also join my Facebook Fan page or follow my

Facebook Author page. If you don’t follow me on Amazon or join my

Facebook page, you’ll never get alerted when my next book is out.

So do it now!

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s
imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 2022 by Logan Jacobs

Haremlit

Want to find other authors like me?

Check out the Haremlit Facebook group!

Document Outline

- Chapter One
- Chapter Two
- Chapter Three
- Chapter Four
- Chapter Five
- Chapter Six
- Chapter Seven
- Chapter Eight
- Chapter Nine
- Chapter Ten
- Chapter Eleven
- Chapter Twelve
- Chapter Thirteen
- Chapter Fourteen
- Chapter Fifteen
- Chapter Sixteen
- Chapter Seventeen

Table of Contents

- Chapter One
- Chapter Two
- Chapter Three
- Chapter Four
- Chapter Five
- Chapter Six
- Chapter Seven
- Chapter Eight
- Chapter Nine
- Chapter Ten
- Chapter Eleven
- Chapter Twelve
- Chapter Thirteen
- Chapter Fourteen
- Chapter Fifteen
- Chapter Sixteen
- Chapter Seventeen