Date: 2023-11-29 08:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fantasy
Description: Martin dug too deep, he uncovered secrets that the Masters wanted buried forever, and now he must face his punishment. Trapped inside the game that they once loved, Iron Riot are now faced with a slow death by dehydration as their bodies in the real world are left to rot. The Masters, enigmatic creators of Strata, are willing to let anyone die so long as it preserves their perfect imaginary world. But there was one thing that they haven’t accounted A rat with a plan. If Iron Riot can finish the game before the timer runs out, defeat the Archdukes, beat the system, and show everyone what they a
Publisher: Portal Books
Rights: Copyright 2023 G. D. Penman. All rights reserved.

HEART OF STRATA

Deepest Dungeon

Book 3

G. D. PENMAN

Thanks for checking out Heart of Strata (Deepest Dungeon #3).

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Contents

1. The Burning World

2. Wisdom of the Fallen

3. A Return to Bones

4. The Dark Star

5. The Lay of the Lies

6. Life of the Lightless

7. Wings of Smokeless Flame

8. The Martyr’s Requiem

9. Crusade’s End

10. The Deepest Darkness

11. The Heart of Strata

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ONE

The Burning World

Iron Riot were not speaking. Whether the madness of their circumstances had driven them to silence, or the simmering resentment that they all carried for one another, it was impossible to say. Some things were not visible when Martin blinked his eye shut to look at their respective statistics.

The only one of the group who still showed any hints of enjoyment at being in the vast underground world of the game was Speckles. Whether he was a sentient human being trapped in the body of a Frog-man or an elaborate piece of code work was anyone’s guess at this point. Martin was increasingly leaning toward believing that the deranged, pseudo-scientific ramblings of the creator of the game’s underlying technology involved varying planes of existence, the collective consciousness of humanity and ghosts, whom he had so far encountered once alive and once dead.

The latter meeting had done quite a bit to help convince him. Sadly, he had been the only one present, and as such the rest of Iron Riot were finding it harder to believe what he had told them about the mind living on past the body’s end. Indeed, they most likely would have attempted to have him carted off to a home for the mentally disturbed if it hadn’t been for the swift intervention of the Masters, who had so kindly shown up, freaked out, and trapped them all in the game.

The town where everything had gone wrong was long behind them now, an hour of their fleeting time already gone, the worked stone of that Deep giving away to more natural formations once more. It was different from the early Deeps, where it had felt like they had just wandered into a cave, and at any moment a breeze or sunlight might be around a corner. They were so far underground now that Martin doubted that anyone had gone much further out in the real world. He was not entirely up to date on the latest news in deep mining operations, but he was fairly certain that delving this far down into the core of the earth was less likely to find precious metals and more likely to find magma.

As if responding to his thoughts, the stone beneath his bare rodent feet began to warm. They were still descending, the further that they went from town. Jericho taking point, Julia staying at the back of the group beside Martin himself. If they were attacked from the rear, an Exorcist could serve as a tank in a pinch. At least until Jericho waded in.

Not that Jericho could serve as a tank right now, with his protective powers flipped to pure destruction by all of the bloodshed of his player and NPC killing. His destructive capabilities were unmatched so long as he didn’t flip back from Heretic to Martyr, but it unbalanced their capacity to fight as a group. Martin was not accustomed to being front and center when it came to combat, it interfered with his far more important task of directing the battle. Not for the first time, he regretted picking a melee class when their group was so desperately short on ranged damage, especially since so many of the enemies that they were facing off with seemed to have little of their own. Not that he could do anything about it now.

Logging out would have been the first step toward deleting his character and starting over, from scratch, the mad race to beat all of the other guilds and players to the bottom of the mega-dungeon, but he couldn’t.

Texture began to appear in the rock. No longer was it merely dark as night but bubbled too. Perforated with pockets of air that had been trapped as the stone settled into a solid form. Volcanic rock.

The narrow passages that they had come creeping down widened out into more erratic coils through the earth. They went on to create tiny holes through which wind whistled from higher in the dungeon, and sometimes into wide side tunnels that they had to scout out to ensure that they were still headed in the right direction and that they weren’t leaving enemies at their back.

While Martin had a glimpse of all this from outside the dungeon while they were clipped outside the game proper, his memorized map of Strata had faded dramatically. The combination of the Masters’ constant tinkering with the layouts, and the vast segments of it that had been blocked from his sight by the looming mass of nearer parts had him at a distinct disadvantage. As a result, he had now set that original map aside and was instead focusing on constructing a brand new one, accounting for all of these dead ends dwindling down to Swiss-cheese walls that even in his diminutive Murovan form he would not dare to attempt squeezing through.

“Holy crap.” Lindsay crowed from up ahead, sending the rest of them running.

It was a heap of stone, vaguely conical in shape. Not a particularly unexpected formation in the stone, given what they’d seen of the place. But there was certainly a distinctive swirl visible through the bubble-peppered slag. It looked like a child’s drawing of excrement, with holes in it. Martin groaned. Julia and Jericho groaned too, a moment later, when they finally got the awful joke.

“Is this the time for this kind of joke?” Jericho grumbled. If Lindsay was even capable of shame, she gave no indication of it. “Yes. Because who knows how long it is going to be before we see another good poop rock.”

“We’re… trapped in here and you’re…” Julia’s voice cracked as she was speaking. Emotional. Martin filed it away in his mind. She was more stricken than Jericho over their imprisonment, even though she had been a firsthand witness to the events that led to it. It should have been the other way around. He would have to adjust his modeling of their behavior with this new instability in mind.

“Making jokes? How surprising and out of character for me. Must be the shock.” Lindsay shrugged her feathered shoulders, then slung an arm around Martin. “So, what do you think, do you think there is a big lava monster laying logs down here for us to find? Are we going to have to dive for cover from volcanic diarrhea? Did this guy have curry for dinner last night?”

He crouched down beside the blob of volcanic rock, admiring its sheen.

“I believe it is merely an unfortunate rock formation.” As he tried to stand, she grabbed him by the chest plate and hauled him nose to beak with her.

“You trapped us all in this game, you believe in some crazy old dude’s story about this being wonderland, you won’t let me kill everyone, and you won’t make out with me for funsies. You could at least give me this. You could at least give me lava poop.” Martin held up his empty hands, exposing the scars on them to Lindsay inadvertently.

“I will not discount the possibility that it is lava poop, and that there will be some defecation-themed enemy at some point in the game. It is practically a tradition for game designers to include something fecal.”

“I’m sorry, are we all just going to pretend we didn’t see that?” Her beak was hanging open. Her diarrhea jokes abruptly dried up. She sounded shocked enough that Julia actually started listening again.

“See what?”

“Rat-Christ.” Lindsay pointed at him with her pinfeather. Jericho let his massive head sink into his massive paws with a groan.

“The lady has gone crazy. It was not far to go, but she has gone.”

“He’s got holes in his hands!” Lindsay crowed. “How did we not notice this before?” Julia ventured an answer.

“He doesn’t wave very much?”

“Think of all the jokes I’ve been missing out on?! I’ve got to work out some new material. Maybe something involving a hot dog. Not you, Jericho. You’re lukewarm at best.”

Martin’s hands had migrated up from his face to the top of his head, which he was now squeezing as though afraid it was going to burst.“I do not know how to respond to this.”

Martin needed to get away from this conversation. He pushed past Lindsay’s pointing finger, even as she tried to jam it into the hole through his hand. Brushed by Jericho, who seemed to be in the midst of his own crisis, and ended up face to face with Julia, who he was beginning to suspect was the only sane member of the entire Iron Riot guild. It was to her that he started fumbling out his explanation.

“You know that there is some sort of… glitch so that I show wounds. These were from the iron maiden boss.” From somewhere behind him, Martin could hear Lindsay loudly doubting him.

“Uh-huh.”

“They are!” He called back over his shoulder, still moving and trying to get them all moving forward. They did not have the time to chatter, and they certainly didn’t have the time to waste on standing still and rehashing events that could not be undone. Why couldn’t they all just be practical. “I got skewered climbing in.”

“Uh-huh.” Lindsay’s dubiousness was even louder the second time around.

Martin turned around to answer her and realized with a start that they were standing practically face to face. She’d come bounding after him, for whatever reason it was that Lindsay did anything. As such, when he spoke, it came out in a surprised and strangled squeak.

“What?”

“You’re going all Messiah on us, aren’t you?” She poked him in the chest, then tried to grab for his wrists again. Presumably so she could finger his holes. He was not having any of it. “Leading us to the promised land of the last Deep. Vanquishing the evil whatever.”

He had to hold his hands up above his head to keep them out of reach, but even doing so, the height difference between them meant that she would still be able to get them if he wasn’t constantly jerking out of reach.

“I am literally just trying to get through this game, so we don’t all die of dehydration.”

Up close, in his face, he could feel the weight of just how obnoxious her next ‘Uh-huh,’ truly was.

“Suspicious.” Julia couldn’t help but smirk at their Guildmaster’s antics.

Jericho was not amused. Not smiling, not laughing. Quite the opposite.

“I am thinking that if he could trap us in this game and force us to play, just like this, then he would have.”

“You think this is some sort of setup?” Julia looked up at him incredulously. “We saw the Masters too.”

“It is something you would do, if you could.” Jericho’s voice had a growl to it as he advanced on Martin, shouldering Lindsay aside. “You say you have been talking with the Masters. How do we know this isn’t you? That you didn’t arrange this? It is the sort of thing you’d think of.” Martin rolled his eye. It definitely didn’t have as profound an effect when he only had the one.

“Because I don’t want to die?”

When Jericho poked Martin in the chest, it was not the playful jab that Lindsay had used. It hurt. Or it would have hurt if they were capable of feeling pain in this place. Instead, there was a central point of numbness, spreading out from where his clawed finger had struck.

“How do we know that they won’t just pull us out when that’s about to happen? It’s a game, it must have some sort of fail-safes in place.”

The poke had sent Martin stumbling back. Or rather, he had allowed it to. Meeting Jericho’s aggression with defiance only exacerbated the situation. Like every alpha-male bully he’d had to deal with as a child, confrontation would only make the agitator escalate the situation. Redirection was the name of the game.

“It has already happened. Jessica Beldrum. She died in the game. We met her the day after.”

Julia was watching him, peering at Martin with an expression that was now becoming entirely too familiar. Concern. Worry. Not for herself. For Martin’s mental state.

“Are you telling us we spoke to a ghost?”

“No.” He shook his head carefully.

“It kind of sounds like that is exactly what you’re saying.” Lindsay met Julia’s eyes behind the bulky Wulvan’s back. Martin couldn’t read all of the expressions on their faces. There was concern there, confusion, doubt, too many different muscles moving on the face of an unfamiliar species. Reptiles were not known for conveying their moods through their expressions. Try as he might, he could not make proper sense of it, so he couldn’t judge what reply he was meant to give to settle her thoughts. Why couldn’t people just say what they were thinking? Why couldn’t they just make things simple for him. He knew how to deal with most feelings problems by now, but he couldn’t deploy any of his solutions if he didn’t know what the problem was, and he could not read these in between messes of contradictory expressions.

With no way to give the right answer to solve the problem, he resorted to his default state. Honesty.

“None of you spoke to her. She was away from the rest of the all-Sythvan party. Playing with the water. She spoke about… how the game looks. The way it looks too good to be running on our bad computers.”

“Excuse me, my rig is top of the line!” Lindsay was personally offended. Loudly personally offended, as only she could be. “She runs so quiet you wouldn’t even know she was on. She’s got so much processing power she could solve how fat your mother is. She’s got so much memory you could store all of human civilization on her and still have room for all my porn. She’s got so much ram you’d think she was a sheep breeder. She’s got so many fans that if I turned them sideways, I could get airborne. You want to talk specs? I’ll talk specsy to you baby! I’ll talk specsy all night long!”

Martin cut her off before she could invent any more descriptions for her computer. He had seen the specifications of her custom-built machine when she was asking his advice on the parts. He had been her consultant technician for longer than he could remember, diligently sifting through reviews and tech breakdowns to summarize the best options for her, even back when money was still an object for her.

“Mine isn’t. It barely scrapes the minimum specifications for the old VR games we used to play, there is no way it could render a world this detailed.”

Jericho shifted uncomfortably between the girls; all of his previous anger forgotten in those same confusing expressions. He looked at Martin like he was sorry for him. Like Martin was sick, and he was just realizing. His voice was still a bass rumble, but this time when he talked, it was like he was trying to be gentle. Martin hated it.

“Strata is different. It is projected in your brain, yes?”

“I don’t know.” Martin stuck to honesty. “Nobody knows how it works. I don’t even think the Masters understand it. The one guy that had some sort of clue what was up is dead.”

“Don’t think we aren’t going to circle back and talk about you being wanted for murder, by the way.” Lindsay piped up.

Martin felt exhaustion droop over him like an overcoat. All of this talking, it got to be too much for him. It took it out of him more than any amount of fighting or planning. He covered his remaining eye with a hand and rubbed it.

“I had assumed that would be a topic of conversation at some point.”

“He is what?” Jericho was back to angry again.

Lindsay crowed with excitement. Delighted to be the bearer of bad news. As usual.

“The Masters sicced the cops on ratty rebel without a cause here when their science guy lost his head.”

“Why are we having anything to do with him?” Jericho pushed away from them, threw his head back and bellowed. “Masters! Let us out. We quit. We do not want to play. We don’t want anything to do with little rat-bastard anymore. You can have him.”

There was a resounding silence in which Martin eventually felt obliged to answer for the absent Masters.

“Thank you for the vote of confidence, Jericho.”

“You think that they’d listen to us?” Lindsay rolled her eyes. “We’d say anything to get out of here.”

“I am telling the truth! I don’t even like him!” Jericho was yelling again. Good thing they weren’t creeping down into an unexplored section of dungeon that was potentially full of monsters. Martin finally uncovered his face.

“And once again, thanks Jericho.”

Lindsay had put herself in between the two of them and was shouting loud enough to drown any pithy commentary from Martin out.

“Dude, they aren’t listening. They don’t give a crap about us.”

“They can’t do this!” It seemed that the hysterics that Julia had been holding back until this moment were now pushing through. She looked to Martin as if he had any answers. Any solutions at all. “They can’t leave people trapped in here!”

He knew what he should have done, he should have calmed her down and de-escalated the situation. Made it so that they could all function for just a little longer but burying their heads in the sand was not going to save them. At some point they were all going to have to confront the situation they were facing head on if they meant to get through it.

“They can. They have. We need to deal with the reality of our situation.”

“What reality?!” Jericho roared, putting a fiercely protective arm around Julia as she descended into sobs. There were no tears. Snake-people couldn’t cry. But sobs heaved her scaly frame all the same. “There is no reality here. You are a talking rat! She is a bird! You have a pet Frog-man behind you. We fight giant monsters. None of this is real. Stop saying it is real!”

Martin took a deep breath. He stood silent for just a moment to listen for the distant sounds of any oncoming monsters, and finding none, he spoke.

“Whether we follow the Masters’ supposition that this is an alternate reality of some sort, or we do not, the reality of our situation is that we are stuck in here with nobody out there willing to help us. The faction that wants the heart of the dungeon protected will leave us in here forever to keep control over things. The crusader faction that wants it destroyed will see our performance of that task as an end to the whole matter and will ensure our release. We only gain the leverage we need to escape by getting to the end.”

Julia was the one to snap back at him this time. Usually, she was the soft one. The one who would cut him leeway. Some misplaced maternal instinct made her want to care for him, just because it was obvious nobody else was going to. When she was angry at him, it was generally a good sign that the guild’s morale was entirely broken.

“And how are we getting to the end?! How? We are barely into this game, and you think we can reach the final Deep of the dungeon in a few days?”

“There is no alternative.” Martin crossed his weedy little rat arms across his chest.

“So, you have no plan?” Jericho was beginning to get under his skin, so instead of continuing the confrontation, Martin stalked off down the corridor to where he could make out a dim and distant glow. The others probably couldn’t see it. Couldn’t see much of anything with their useless eyes, but to Murovan low-light vision, the distant warm light was like a beacon.

The rest of the guild trailed along behind him. All looking at one another. Exchanging thoughts and emotions through their expressions in a way that Martin just couldn’t. He hated them for that, ever so slightly. That exclusion of him that they perpetuated constantly. When he spoke, it was softly, as if to underline just how noisy the rest of them had been throughout this whole experience.

“I have several plans already in motion. However, loudly discussing those plans is liable to see them undone. So, I must ask you to trust me.”

“Trust you?!” Jericho grabbed him by the tail and hauled him back into the mass of them. In an instant, Martin’s mind switched from talking to fighting. His hand drifted down to the sword on his belt, his mind buzzing through the possible ways that this fight could go. Lindsay wouldn’t strike out at him first, but if he took down Jericho, then she’d probably step in to stop him. Julia would only ever heal, but that might mean she had to be the priority target to stop Jericho from grinding him down over time. Martin’s class was capable of short bursts of high damage, but over time the Heretic would win out. Removing his healing would negate his advantage. Jericho was the obvious main problem. Large, powerful both physically and magically, the best solution would be a blitz attack to take him out of the fight as quickly as possible before he could ramp up to his high damage attacks. Better still would be status effects that he had no defense against. Halo would blind him. That should be the opening move.

In the fraction of a second it took Martin to lay out his plans, Jericho had released him again. He had to switch his mind back to the social nonsense that preoccupied them all as the giant wolfman jabbed at him with a finger yet again.

“You are the one who got us into this mess. You are the one who ruined everything!”

Lindsay was a good guild leader because she could handle the social aspects of the job so well. She complemented Martin perfectly. That was why they had always been the core of the team.

“Guys, have you ever known Martin not to have a plan? Seriously? Dude schedules his toilet breaks down to the second. If he says that he’s worked out a way for us to make it, I believe him.”

“Being anally retentive doesn’t make you omniscient!” Julia again was the one shouting. It was entirely out of character, but she was under a lot of stress, so Martin did not take it personally. It did surprise him enough that he didn’t speak for a moment. Then he slipped back into the script.

“Which is why I have multiple plans in motion. Depending upon what we encounter as we proceed, and how the situation with the Masters develops, the range of predictable outcomes will narrow, until we are left with only one way to proceed. Until that time, I will continue to develop all of them.”

“Rat-boy, you are just a sad little gamer nerd with delusions of grandeur. You cannot out-think the impossible.” Jericho’s breath swept over Martin’s face, ruffling his fur.

“You can’t.” Martin met the glowering Wulvan’s stare with his one remaining eye. “I can.”

It was just about to escalate to violence between the two of them, the looming Heretic drawing back his fists, when a blur of rubbery flesh shot between them, ricocheting off Jericho’s chest and sending him stumbling back. Speckles. Martin had never seen the little Frog-man so incensed.

“You be leaving Martin alone. He be saving us, all times. He fix.”

Jericho laughed in the diminutive creature’s general direction, not even bothering to look at the Anurvan.

“I am not having an argument with a computer-generated frog.”

“He isn’t.” Martin didn’t mean to say it, it slipped out. But now that it was out there, he knew that there were going to be questions. That was good. He tried to convince himself that it was good. Because it meant that there were no more secrets or lies between him and his friends. Clarity was going to be vital, the more honesty he could give them, the more that they would offer him trust in regard to the things that he could not speak aloud. Or at least, that was his working theory.

“Isn’t what?” Jericho’s eyes narrowed.

“He isn’t an NPC. He was a player.” Reaching down, Martin helped the little Frog-man back to his feet, resisting the urge to wipe his paw on his fur to remove the cool damp slime. “Too much time in here messes with your memory, but as far as I can tell, the Anurvans and all the animal race people in the game, used to be play testers.”

“More ghosts?!” Jericho barked with laughter again, a little crueler than the last time. “Little Frog-boy is a ghost?”

It was Martin’s turn to step forward, to position himself between Jericho and the victim of his bullying. Speckles had done it for him, so it was an unspoken rule that he must do it in return, whether he wanted to or not.

“Speckles was a person. Still is, depending on how you choose to define it. He doesn’t remember much of his life, but there are parts he can still recall.”

“Is this right Frog-boy?” Jericho leaned around Martin to mug at the poor Anurvan. “You have little tadpole memories?”

“My remember…” How anyone could still be cruel to any Anurvan looking up at them with those big wet eyes was beyond Martin. He was like a sad puppy. If a puppy was bipedal and an amphibian. “The sun.”

Julia froze at the little Frog-man’s words. Confusion written all over her serpentine face.

“Hold on, hold on, how would something that lived all its life underground remember the sun?”

“It does not remember anything. It is a piece of code. Its memory; code. The sun; code. None of this is real. None of them are real. How can you believe any of this?” Jericho threw up his hands in despair.

“Shut up.” Martin’s ears twitched.

“Hah!” Jericho shoved his face right up close, next to Martin’s, even though he had to bend almost in half to do so. “You are an idiot, falling for some silly story, and now all you can say is shut up?”

“Shut up, Jericho.” Martin’s ears twitched again; it was a sound so low that he wasn’t sure any of the others could hear it. Some sort of subsonic rumble. Martin was trying to work out whether the Masters were shuffling components of the dungeon about with them inside it, or if there was something in the floor beneath them making enough noise to travel. He turned away from the looming Wulvan’s grin and closed his eyes. Trying to focus.

“I will not shut up. I will never shut up. You have fallen for some stupid story, and now we are all trapped in this stupid game, because you are stupid.” Martin’s twitching ears finally pin-pointed the sound.

“Jericho…”

“What?” The huge beast of a man snarled, cutting him off.

“Dodge.”

The stone floor beneath Iron Riot’s wild dog had started to glow a dull red in a circle beneath Jericho before he seemed to realize that Martin had just issued him an order. Recognition of his position, or perhaps old habit and understanding that no matter how they might squabble, Martin would not make demands without good reason, dawned on Jericho’s face and he threw himself to the side just as the monster broke through the crust.

It didn’t roar, which was something of a disappointment, but there was a distinct screaming sound as it emerged. The chitinous shell of its glowing red body scraping against the solid stone surrounding where it had melted through, and the air superheating on contact with it.

Martin assessed the situation as rapidly as possible. Face to face with the emergent beast. At least twelve foot long, segmented body, legs on each segment tucked in between the plates of armor when it was burrowing through solid stone. The head lolled down now that its initial charge up at them had failed and he got a good look at the massive mandibles. They were not unlike a Bobbit Worm’s, and the steady trickle of lava coming from between them from the blazing furnace it used as a mouth.

That was almost certainly going to be some sort of ranged attack, one that would not only kill them if it hit in a particularly gruesome way, but that would also limit their mobility in these tunnels even further wherever it landed. There was no good way to fight it in their current position, the tunnel in which they had been arguing was far too narrow to allow them the space to dodge around. Especially if this worm was about to start spewing lava.

“Move!” Martin bellowed, already running in the direction of the light at the end of the tunnel. He was gratified to see that despite all of their current interpersonal issues, the whole guild followed his lead without hesitation. Lindsay actually leaped clear over the top of his head, her feathered scalp brushing against the tunnel’s top, to take the lead on the charge. That was smart, as the visibility improved the further they moved along the corridor she’d be the best one to scout out the area ahead and rapidly respond to threats. Martin fell into line behind her but didn’t slow, he couldn’t with the steamroller of Jericho at his back and poor Julia and Speckles running for their lives between them.

There was a sound from behind them like a septic tank bursting, and then without even a glance back, Martin knew that lava was being spewed their way. He didn’t need to. The wash of heat swept over them was all the confirmation he needed. For an awful moment, he thought that they had been hit, that they had lined up neatly for its attack and now they were all going down in one spritz.

The lava fell short, splattering against the rock by Jericho’s heels and driving him forward even faster, if such a thing was possible. He scooped up Julia in his arms rather than trample her, and with a look of mild disgust, did the same for Speckles.

They burst out from the narrow tunnel into a wider cave, and almost carried on straight into the lava flows that covered the majority of the floorspace before Lindsay’s squawking brought them to a staggered halt. For a moment, Martin had thought the shouts of, “Fire bad! Fire bad!” were coming from Speckles, but no. It was her.

Vibrations shook the stone beneath them and using that sensation through the soles of his boots, Martin was able to track the passage of the Lava Worm as it proceeded right past their group and out into the pooling magma.

Here by the entrance to the scorching furnace of a cavern, they were still all bunched together. Easy prey for its area-of-effect attacks. They needed to spread out, and that meant traversing the cave. Though the majority of the ground may have been liquefied by the immense heat, there were still dark patches of solid stone scattered across it like stepping stones. As the flows drifted, some were submerged, and others rose from the flaming Deeps. It was passable. They would not have designed a dead end in the only viable path deeper. That would have been bad design.

“We’ve got to keep moving, we’ve got to jump.”

“Let’s hopscotch this bitch!” Lindsay hadn’t even lost her momentum.

For her, with her hollow bones and ridiculously high Agility, it was barely a challenge. Her race and class combo were basically designed for this kind of traversal. It was harder on Martin, because the combination of stunted little legs and armor weighing him down did not make for the best hopping.

Jericho had the worst of it though. Each of the stepping stones was barely big enough for him to plant a single foot before he had to start jumping to the next. He was built for standing still and handling oncoming charges, not doing the moving himself. And it showed within the first few jumps when he slightly overbalanced and his tail dipped too low, catching alight.

[Jericho has suffered 14 fire damage]

“Hot! Hot!”

Martin was glad that he was ahead of the man, because even though he was mentally counting down the points of damage that the fire was dealing, emotionally, he was not prepared to witness Jericho yelping along like a scorched piglet. Laughter was the mind killer. And it would likely be the Martin killer if Jericho heard any snickering.

Making it across the room to solid ground was already a challenge, the return of the Lava Worm made it into a nightmare. When it erupted out of the lava, a wave of it was thrown out that they all had to leap frantically to avoid. Just as they’d been getting used to the relatively regular shifts of the existing lava being pumped into the room, it was all thrown out the window.

Jericho, already at his limit, stumbled. Julia and Speckles were flung from his arms as he tried to regain his balance. Speckles, like Lindsay, had been built for this sort of thing. He kicked off Jericho’s flailing arm and bounced his way to safety, from one disappearing lily pad of smoldering stone to the next. Julia was not so ready. Martin spun on his heel and blasted her with Rebuke before she hit the surface of the lava. He silently thanked the gods below that game designers always forgot about heat convection, or she’d have already been baked to a cinder and he’d be down one healer.

The impact launched her back into Jericho, righting him before he could faceplant into a puddle of flaming death, and giving him the chance to grab onto her again. Martin didn’t expect thanks, and he wouldn’t have had time for them even if they were offered, not with the Lava Worm now towering over them, clacking its jaws, and taking aim. It still would have been polite.

More dangerous than the wild arc of lava that sprayed from the worm’s jaws were the splashes that it made when it hit the lava around them. Dodging the shot, while far from easy, was at least possible, but the splatter of tiny drips of lava flying everywhere were utterly impossible to avoid.

[Skaife has suffered 2 fire damage]

[Skaife has suffered 3 fire damage]

[Skaife has suffered 2 fire damage]

Martin hissed as it clung to his fur, searing into his flesh painlessly. Pain would have been better than the awful numbness that Strata gave him instead. Nothing but a loss of function and declining numbers when he closed his eyes. Moreover, in all the chaos of everything that had happened, Martin had not been running with full health since before the last Archduke fight and this was damage he could not afford to sustain.

He was on the verge of stopping, dropping, and rolling to try and get some off, when a soothing blue light enveloped him. Julia had finally gotten a chance to cast some healing on them. It would undo the damage that had been done, but it wouldn’t cut down on any more that was incoming.

[Skaife has recovered 12 health]

Healing had the far more important effect of making Lindsay insanely overconfident again. She rebounded off a molten stalagmite where it was poking up out of the lava and slammed, blades first, into the armored hide of the worm.

The noise it made was less of a scream, and more like a sudden release of pressurized gas. A hissing explosion, as she dug in between the plates of its armor, and pried them open. Almost at once, that same flaming glow that had crept up its throat started pouring out of the wound, but it hardly mattered to Lindsay, because she was already kicking off it, and soaring through the air toward a nice wide river of lava. The one that Martin had been on his way to crossing before the tides changed with the worm’s arrival. Of course, she assumed he’d catch her. Didn’t he always.

Rebuke was still on cooldown, no other ability at his disposal was going to help stop her from drowning in lava, so it was time to do something stupid.

He ran and leaped, intercepting Lindsay in mid-fall, flinging both of them over the river of fire to land in what turned out to be a sandbank of ashes rather than a stretch of exposed stone. On the one hand, it was a nice soft landing, on the other, it was now crumbling apart. Magma lapping in toward them. Lindsay cackled in the face of her impending death.

“I’m in the soup aisle.”

It was so bizarre a comment that it actually brought Martin up short. Shorting out the rising panic in his brain before it could influence his decision-making.

“Soup?”

“I’m at soup!” Using Martin as a springboard, and driving him deeper into the bank of ash, Lindsay made her leap to safety, clearing twice the distance Martin could have managed, to land gracefully on a jagged outcrop of stone from the wall.

He had to spit the ash out or risk being choked, all while readying himself for the horrific experience of the molten stone swallowing him whole. Scrabbling his way to his knees, he could see that her escape had been his rescue too. With only his weight on the ash bank, it was stable. With the two of them it had been collapsing.

If the lava and the room were all that they needed to contend with, then it might have been enough to ensure their survival. But the worm had not been idle through all of their flailing. It came at Jericho and Julia where they were clustered together on some distant shore, throwing up another massive displacement wave of magma as it went. Martin’s little island went under, and he would have been in for a bracing broiling too if it wasn’t for Speckle’s intervention. The little Frog-man caught him under the arms as he bounded by, springing them clean over the wave of molten death to land on a freshly exposed hunk of stone that was still hissing and cracking at being exposed to the air. Martin managed only a bare minimum of, “Thanks,” before events progressed once more.

Since they’d arrived in this scorching hell, Julia had been doling out healing nonstop. All of her attention on keeping them topped off and mobile despite the stray sprays of magma that were occasionally searing them to the bone. It was only now that she finally found an opportunity to start casting some blessings. Jericho got protection from fire first, then Lindsay, as she was already engaged in some ridiculous antics involving her swinging from one stalactite to the next in preparation for some fresh leaping attack.

Jericho made immediate use of his new protection, throwing himself between Julia and the oncoming worm. Catching those massive pincer jaws in his hands with a roar of effort. He skidded back a step or two, but then he found his footing and the worm’s charge suddenly became a flailing effort to escape.

“That’s it, big boy!” Lindsay cawed with delight. “Hold him still!”

When Julia finally hit Martin with a blessing of his own, it was like a weight lifting off him. He hadn’t realized how badly he was wilting in the unrelenting heat until it was taken away. He felt like he could think again.

“Target the joints in the chitin,” he managed to shout out, before heat enveloped him again.

[Skaife has suffered 21 fire damage]

The wave of magma washed over him as the worm flailed. The weight of the stone crushing him, the awful heat still potent enough that through the protection he bore, the fur sizzled off his body. Yet, he was still standing when the wave passed. Still alive. Though admittedly his health was so low it made him nervous enough to drop a Healing Touch on himself before thinking about their next play.

[Skaife has recovered 14 health]

“Raptor Strike!” Lindsay screamed at the top of her lungs, then she leaped. As usual.

She hit the great worm just behind the head-segment. Both of her daggers biting into that weak spot between armor plates. Pressurized steam came bursting out, coating her in shimmering red ichor, but she held on, blades hooked in. Prying the armor apart.

[Magma Worm has suffered 28 piercing damage]

Martin readied his blade. “All right Speckles, time to shine. I need you to get me up there.”

Only silence and the bubbling of magma answered him. Tearing his eyes from their vulnerable enemy, he looked around for the Frog-boy. When he saw him, he wished that he hadn’t.

Julia had not had time to cast her protection on Speckles yet.

The Anurvan lay on the same stone he had delivered Martin to just moments before, but he was barely recognizable as the same creature. The magma had rolled over him, just as it had Martin, but where the one of them was protected, the other was destroyed. His slimy skin was gone. His arms, burned to stubs. There was blackened bone showing through all his myriad burns, and when he drew breath, it was a sickly bubbling sound.

“No.”

Martin dropped to his knees beside the tiny creature. Invoking Healing Touch again and again to no effect. It was still on cooldown. Desperately searching through his inventory for some healing potion that might reverse this awful harm. He had nothing. He could cast healing magic, so he had ensured that the few healing items they carried were dispersed among those who lacked that facility.

“Speckles, stay with me. It’s going to be okay. Julia can fix this.” They both knew it was a lie.

Speckles tried to reach out to him, but his hands were just gone. He tried to speak, but the skin pouch beneath his chin was a blistered knot of scar that could not expand to take in air. Every sound he made was a wheeze of agony.

“Wish… could remember more for you.”

“You… you were perfect Speckles. Just… rest now.” Martin didn’t know how to comfort the little frog. Everything he’d learned about human interaction told him that touching him was the answer, holding him as he died. Only, to touch that burned ruin of flesh would be to cause Speckles even more pain, so Martin just knelt there and did nothing.

“My… am sorry.” Speckles must have been on his last point of health, still hanging on by a thread. Surviving as his blood turned to vapor despite everything because of the cruel mechanics of this world.

“Nothing to be sorry for.” Martin dropped to his knees beside him. His remaining eye stinging and watering from what he’d later tell himself was smoke. “I’ll see you again soon. The Heart will bring you back, we’ll meet you down there. You’re just taking the shortcut. Okay? It’s all going to be all right.”

“My tried… best.”

“You were the best.” Martin’s words caught in his throat.

The boiling kettle sound of the worm’s screams finally drew Martin’s attention up. Lindsay was halfway inside the thing, wedged into the gap that she’d made and slashing wildly as Jericho went on trying to hold it in place through its death throes. Despite the leaden weight in his stomach, Martin’s mind had never stopped spinning. He called out.

“Lindsay, pull back. Jericho needs to make the killing blow!” Up to her waist in viscera, Lindsay didn’t miss a beat.

“Nobody is stealing my kill!”

At least some things in life were still easy to predict. Martin already had the solution to this problem.

“We need his Sin reset. We need him as a Martyr to tank. Give him the kill!”

“Damn it, Rat-Jesus, why do you have to make so much sense!?” she bitched, hauling herself out of the writhing innards to find unsteady footing on the worm’s outer carapace.

Jericho meanwhile was struggling on, trying to hold the worm in place even as its furnace maw scorched him.

“How am I making this kill?”

Over the top of them Lindsay’s litany of complaints went on.

“Stupid logic. Stupid worm. Stupid flip flop classes.”

“Its head is barely attached.” Martin yelled over her. “Pull and twist.”

To his credit, Jericho tried. He was already at the limit of his not inconsiderable might, pulling for all that he was worth, but the head would not budge.

“Not strong enough!” he growled through gritted fangs.

Martin could have kicked himself. Throughout their whole journey down they had been reliant on Jericho’s Strength, but he was a Martyr, not a Knight. As he increased in level, his physical attributes were not increasing. His power was meant to be spiritual, and he was smart enough to assign those points he got into statistics that would enhance his abilities, his Willpower. They had been taking the high base-level of Strength that Wulvan started with for granted, forgetting that it was not scaling with the enemies that they faced.

“New plan, Lindsay and I are going to get its attention, you hit it with your best shot while it’s distracted.”

The worm’s body flailed, throwing out more waves of magma that Martin had to leap from his position on the ash bank to a new stepping stone to avoid it. Barely managing to keep out of harm’s way and feeling a pang of guilt as he consigned what remained of Speckles’ body to the flames.

“You want me to let go?” Jericho’s contempt for the order was dripping from every word.

Julia was casting her healing spells onto Jericho nonstop, and even with all of her focus, he was still looking worse for wear. Unless they could get him his defensive abilities back, eventually he was going to drop, and take all of them down with him. Martin’s decision was already made.

“We need a tank.”

When Jericho let the worm loose, it almost flipped over backward before it could right itself, all of the strength it had been straining against suddenly gone. Lindsay should, by all rights, have been flung bodily across the room and ended up as a wet splatter on the wall they’d passed under to enter the magma flow chamber, but she was ready, knives lancing down to hook under the next plate of chitin, holding her position with pure grit and spite.

“Yeehaw!”

Throughout all of this, Martin had not been idle. Even as he’d leaped about and left poor Speckles to his fate, he had been casting the first spell in his arsenal that took time to unleash. As he landed on an ash island by the writhing Magma Worm’s rear coils, he unleashed it. Triduum washed over them all in a golden wave, its power clinging to every member of the party like glitter after it had passed. A guaranteed critical hit for every single one of them.

He used his up quickly once the ability was cast, launching his Javelin of Faith at the back of the worm’s head, narrowly missing Lindsay where she was still riding it through the bucking.

[Magma Worm has suffered 27 light damage]

That must have hurt, even through all the other hurts that the worm had suffered. Its chattering face turned on Martin, its jaws spread wide and magma boiling up from its throat to spray him.

It never got the chance. Jericho unleashed his Vengeance upon the beast. Every scrape of damage that he had suffered since they arrived here turned back on the one that had dealt it. Every burn, every hit. All of it rushing out from the middle of his broad, burned chest in a column of rippling darkness that punched clear through the worm’s neck and took the head off clean.

[Magma Worm has suffered 59 dark damage]

Magma Worm has died.

Skaife gains 1334 experience.

Head and body fell in opposite directions. Lindsay leaped from the back of the thing to rebound off that falling head and land in Jericho’s waiting arms. Only Martin was going to suffer the brunt of its collapse, and with the cool glow of Julia’s Blessing still enveloping him he could deal with that. Holding up his free hand to touch the body just before it crushed him, he looted all of the items that it bore, sending them into his inventory before the worm corpse submerged in the magma once more.

[Skaife has suffered 18 fire damage]

He was knocked aside by the weight of it, skittering back so far that his heels touched magma and that awful numbness of damage could be felt right up the back of his legs. They didn’t seem to be working right after, so he ended up falling forward and scrambling on all fours along the length of the worm toward safety and back into the range of Julia’s healing.

Whatever interpersonal issues they may have all been having at that moment, Julia remained a consummate professional. He didn’t even need to beg for assistance before her healing magics swept over him, and the flesh reformed on his legs.

[Skaife has recovered 24 health]

With another scramble and leap, he made it to the same solid stone platform where the rest of them stood waiting. He took a moment to catch his breath, but only a moment, before blurting out to Jericho.

“Did you change back?”

The grim expression on his face gave Martin all the answer that he needed. Switching rapidly to the next problem on his checklist, Martin turned to Julia, “Speckles. He got hit with the lava, he’s barely hanging on, we’ve got to…”

“Dead.” Martin’s head snapped back to Jericho.

“How do you know that?”

“Got experience for killing him when worm fell.” Jericho shifted uncomfortably under the stares of the girls. “Sin went down too.”

Martin opened and closed his mouth. He couldn’t exactly complain, given that he was about to suggest that Jericho put the Anurvan out of his misery if healing wasn’t going to work.

“At least he isn’t suffering anymore.” In a rare moment of humanity, Jericho laid a hand on Martin’s shoulder.

“I am sorry about your Frog-boy.”

Martin’s eye boggled out as he ground his teeth together. Then he swallowed all his feelings down.

“He’ll be back. Nothing really dies here.”

“Exactly. See him soon.” Jericho forced a smile. Neither of them believed it.

TWO

Wisdom of the Fallen

The first chamber was not the end of the insufferable heat. From one room to the next, they encountered more and more flows of lava. Some led through from further chambers, while others dropped down from above in great lava-falls that spattered all nearby with scorching stone. The chambers grew increasingly vast after the claustrophobic first few tunnels, but the heat continued to increase to the point that even under open skies they would have felt as though they were trapped inside of an oven.

What hair on Martin’s body had not been seared off in the first chamber became crisp, and the slightest contact would cause it to brush off as though it had never been attached. He was faintly relieved that there were no reflective surfaces, because he could not imagine any world in which a bald rat was an appealing sight.

The danger from the lava flows was greatly reduced now that they were away from the worm, and the extremely limited patches of bare stone in that first chamber, but the danger of monsters seemed to increase exponentially as they proceeded. After the worm, they had a single room without coming under attack, then it became a constant gauntlet of one creature after the next.

From the dark arching ceiling of one chamber, sparks began to rain, followed in short order by a flock of flaming bats. Jericho was able to pick them off gradually once they had hit him a few times, but it was an arduous grind without the assistance of the actual damage dealers. Their lack of ranged attacks was really starting to prove an impediment in these combats. Martin had flung a few of his own Javelin of Faith attacks into the mix, but he still wasn’t used to aiming them properly and the delay between attacks made them next to useless in a mass combat.

Lindsay’s contribution had mostly been jumping up and down and swearing. Extensively.

From that point forward there was very little to differentiate the various parts of the Deep beyond the different shapes and sizes of the chambers. Even the most talented of level designers could only do so much with volcanic rock and dust in various combinations. There were no hidden patterns and faces in the stonework, nothing to recommend it. They would have been lost without the mental map that Martin retained, detailing all that he could remember from his glimpse of the outside of the dungeon.

Now that they were deeper, the changes that the Masters had made to screw them over were less frequent, and so that original shape was beginning to reassert itself. They were too distracted with the alleged debate over what to do with Iron Riot. It was amorphous and strange, but it was becoming increasingly familiar, with Martin barely needing to look around as they entered each chamber to know which of the huge pockmarks in the walls would turn out to lead them on and which were dead ends.

If the others noticed his assurance, they made no comment on it. Even Lindsay’s incessant good mood seemed to be flagging in the face of their situation. So long as they were busy and fighting, they had no time to turn in on themselves and lose themselves to despair. It actually made Martin’s plan all the more effective, though he was loath to admit that any plan of his had a subheading for ‘benefits of reckless abandon.’

The flame bats recurred once or twice in the following chambers, as did an extended family of porcine blast furnaces that Lindsay was absolutely delighted to call ‘ready-made bacon.’ They were a lot easier to engage with than the fliers at least. With Martin and Lindsay playing an extended game of tag with them, scoring their hides with their blades to draw aggro while the mobs unleashed great gouts of flame that probably would have presented a serious problem were it not for Julia’s protections. In those fights, it was Jericho who got to stand around doing nothing. Gaining no Vengeance without being attacked so unable to unleash any of his Heretic powers.

It went for almost an hour, each room being methodically cleared of enemies, while presenting nothing like a challenge or a puzzle. Martin was fairly certain that they were out-leveled more than a little by the enemies that they were facing, but by this point his team was so used to fighting uphill battles that it felt like a walk in the park.

The only thing that really annoyed him about the whole Deep was his Oath. After all of the best loot going to the others, boss-battle after boss-battle, he had finally gotten his hands on something useful. A little book to hang off his belt and change some of the pure light damage that was all he was capable of churning out. Something that changed the bare bones of the mechanics his class used, finally letting him interact with the elemental systems in Strata in a meaningful way and then, immediately, they were dumped into a Deep where being able to convert his light damage into fire damage was worse than useless. It was either cruel fate, or one of the Masters had been fiddling with the loot tables behind the scenes and cackling when they saw Martin’s excitement.

From his memory of this Deep, Martin recalled two larger chambers. One spreading out horizontally, the other with more depth. Odds were that one would hold the gate to the next Deep and the other would hold the boss. They encountered the vertical one first.

It was like a twisted reflection of the Deep where they’d first encountered Skip Gates and the optional boss behind the waterfall. The one after they’d encountered the Anurvans in their swamp. This one was a vast round pit with lava tumbling down in great falls all around its rim. Down in the depths of it, Martin could make out a lake of shimmering orange. Across the walls, there were more than enough outcroppings to facilitate a platform gamer’s dream descent. Hopping and hoping that the particular rock you landed on hadn’t been melted away too much by the lava trickling over the side of it connected to the wall.

Sighing over the time it would take to descend, Martin gave it only a single glance before starting to edge his way around the caldera’s rim.

“You don’t think going down might be a good idea? Since the whole reason we’re here is to go down?” Lindsay called after him.

Jericho chuckled at that, only to be cut off short by Julia’s elbow before he could complete whatever obscene hand gesture he was beginning to make.

“We need the key before we can open the gate, the gate is going to be down there, otherwise that pit would be cutting into the next Deep. Therefore, the key is somewhere up here.”

“And you’re sure it wasn’t in the wiggly worm?”

Martin had sifted through all of the loot from the Magma Worm during their traversal of the many, many rooms of this Deep. There had been a pair of greaves for Jericho that let him walk on lava without sinking. A new cape for Lindsay, which at least saved him from having to hear about how mad she was that Speckles was wearing her old one when the magma consumed him. And an assortment of trade goods that Martin was sure would have been very helpful if he’d had any time to devote to crafting.

The plan had been for him to be the group’s craftsman, picking up all the potential professions in the game and using the time when he was available to play to develop gear and consumable items for the others while they had their day jobs. He had barely gotten started on that plan before they had been trapped inside the game, and the time limit on their ultimate success had gone from arbitrary to lethal. Still, he filed it all away neatly for examination later. Even though most items like the Charred Chitin required a trade skill to even understand, that didn’t mean that they were unusable. There had been mushrooms back in the early Deeps that combusted explosively when exposed to fire, whether you had the herbalism skills to understand them or not. Without the skills, Martin simply had to experiment and memorize their effects, and given who he was as a person, that was his idea of a good time.

“The worm gave us third degree burns and PTSD. That’s it.” Julia snapped.

Jericho looked to be having the worst time trying to work his way around the outer edge of the room, and so he kept his thoughts firmly behind his gritted teeth. Most of the lava-falls burst out through cracks deeper down into the pit, but there were a few trickles making their way over the top and impinging on their walkway that he had the misfortune of having to bridge for the rest of them. Standing atop the lava as one by one they scrambled across the top of his extended arms and broad shoulders.

Smoke plumed up around his feet, and he hissed almost as loudly. The greaves let him stand on the lava but did nothing to protect him from the damage that it dealt. That fell to Julia’s blessings, and the copious amount of healing she gave him in between each bridging attempt.

By the time they reached the other side of the chamber, none of them were looking terribly happy. Lindsay was not used to Julia’s newfound sass. Jericho had spent about half the time being cooked medium-rare. Julia seemed to have completely shut down, barely even responding to Jericho’s endless questioning of if she was ‘okay.’

None of them were okay. This was not the sort of situation any of them could have predicted ending up in. This was not the sort of situation that any sane world would have allowed them to end up in. Logically, Martin, who was the most beholden to pattern and routine, should have been the one who was struggling the most with their current situation, but the social aspect of their crisis meant that he could not show any doubt, weakness, or fear, lest the morale of the whole group fell apart.

The sad truth of the matter was, he liked it better this way. His real life, outside of Strata, had always been the part that felt surreal and wrong. Here in the game, there were rules governing everything. Hard work and ingenuity were rewarded. Growth wasn’t just possible, it was an expectation, a necessity. There could be none of the hopeless stagnation of his real life where no matter how well he worked, he could not progress to bigger and better things because the whole system was rigged. The system may have been rigged against him here in Strata too, but he had never felt that the challenge was anything less than fair. Playing against the Masters was just the same as playing against any game dev. The harder the challenge, the better it proved he was. He had never wanted to be anything less than the best. The first to reach the final Deep. So, he had accepted from the get-go that the road they would be facing would be unusually steep.

The caldera chamber opened out into more caves. These ones with floors, and more thoroughly flooded with lava than the previous chambers. It probably would have been nigh on impossible to proceed, were it not for the wires that were strung out from wall to wall. Martin had studied the first of them, found it to be less of a metal and more of a build-up of carbon, fused by heat directly into the stone.

At a first glance he couldn’t make any sense of it, but it seemed resilient enough to support Jericho’s weight when he had the Wulvan climb on top and bounce a bit, so he was considering them viable means of travel for now.

For Lindsay, it was an opportunity to show off that she wasn’t likely to pass up. She was tightrope walking back and forth across the threads of carbon, even when they weren’t headed in even vaguely the correct direction. Martin would have found it irritating if it didn’t serve the handy purpose of distracting her while the rest of them tried to make their own arduous progress. He did not want Lindsay to offer help. He had seen what her version of help looked like in situations similar to this in the past and he didn’t think he could stomach her bouncing the carbon-cords up and down while yelling about how if she could do that without falling, he could stand up and walk.

Despite his bulk, Jericho managed to make it across the ropes in a mostly upright position, but both Martin and Julia resorted to a crawl with four points of contact on the cord at all times. It grated on Martin that he couldn’t bound across as freely as Lindsay, but he was a creature of logic, and logic dictated that this was the safest way to traverse a thin line being suspended above a pool of lava.

When they moved on into the third room only accessible by the cords and the bottom of the chamber dropped away to reveal a vast pool of lava down at the bottom of a chasm, he was forced to confront himself once more and admit that perhaps it was not pure logic, but also entirely reasonable fear. Otherwise, the addition of the drop to the threat of burning alive would not have made his grip on the thread tighten up so vigorously of its own accord. The only small comfort he had was that Julia at his back was in exactly the same situation. He could feel her quaking through the tension of the line. Despite his own unease, he spoke.

“It’s going to be all right, we’re nearly there.”

“Really?” Julia’s view was obscured by his body.

“No, I’m terrible at lying, I can’t see where we get off this string.” Honesty had always been the best policy with Julia. “But it’s still going to be all right.”

“If it wasn’t, Jericho would be swearing by now,” she chuckled.

“Lindsay would have already died, twice.” Martin found himself smiling despite the situation. From somewhere overhead, far from the simmering magma, Lindsay called back.

“You know we can hear you slowpokes, right?”

Julia switched to a stage-whisper.

“Slowpokes? Is she doing a cowboy thing after riding the worm?”

“It’s hard to tell, she switches out her entire vocabulary so often.” Martin tried to shrug and immediately regretted the motion. It seemed Lindsay still had more to say.

“Riding the worm is what I do to your dad!” Julia made a little choked sound of dismay as Martin tried to keep his own laughter concealed.

“My father has been dead for seven years, Lindsay.”

“Explains why he didn’t move much last night!” Lindsay chirped back without a moment’s hesitation.

If Martin could have pried his hand free of the wire supporting him, he would have covered his face.

Thankfully Jericho chose this time to intervene, his voice coming from further ahead than Lindsay’s.

“Platform up here, good for us to regroup, let Stamina restore.”

They made a concerted effort to scramble faster, Julia now powered along by little disgruntled huffs, Martin just trying to stay ahead of her so she didn’t decide climbing over him would get her to safety any quicker. Switching from one line to the next was the only truly perilous moment now, even crawling along them had only a very minor ticking drain on Stamina. But as they straightened out and jumped, Martin imagined what would happen if they missed. If they made it and the cord that had supported Jericho’s mass without trouble gave away, or if one of them moved too slow or too fast, and their bodies collided, sending them both spiraling down to their burning death.

The moment that they were onto the platform Jericho had found, more of a stone shelf than anything so deliberate, Martin sank down to sit cross-legged and let his nerves recover. Julia went straight into the argument.

“I would prefer if you kept your necrophilia jokes away from my dead father.”

“And I’d prefer to keep your dad away from my fine ass, but you know men just cannot resist me. Except Martin, obviously, but I’m not sure if you file him under the ‘men’ category. He’s more like furniture.”

“I am sitting right here.” He sighed.

“And you’re doing it so well, sweetie.” She gave him a pat on the head, where the constant healing spells had restored his fur to its previous luster. “You just keep sitting there like a good ottoman.”

In a bizarre turn of events, Jericho tried to defuse the situation, though he was obviously fairly amused by the jokes, even when his girlfriend firmly wasn’t.

“Perhaps you can talk about sex with my father instead. If you need the daddy sex joking.”

Martin could not understand the change in Jericho. They were in company, rather than alone, so the worst of his usual hostility was subdued, but even so, he seemed to be in better humor now that they had a death sentence hanging over them than he had when they were merely playing a game. Was this gallows humor? Some degree of acceptance? He did not have the data points required to grasp it.

“Oh man, no thank you. I do not want to be your stepmom.” Lindsay hooted. “Can you imagine me telling you to clean your room while the kitchen is on fire after I tried to pour some cereal? Taking you to your soccer games or… whatever stepmoms do? I’ll be real with you, the only stepmoms I really know are the ones on the internet and what they mostly seem to be doing is…” Martin cut her off before the conversation became too pornographic for him to stomach.

“We’re making good progress, the Deep boss shouldn’t be far off. With any luck there will be some sort of shortcut back to the caldera after we beat it.” She took the bait and latched on.

“Any guesses what we’ll be up against?” dropping into a squat in front of him.

“Animals and fire seem to be the theme for this Deep. Given the significant challenge posed up front by the worm and its armor plating, I suspect something from the insect or arachnid side of things. Lava scorpions, shooting fire out the tail, are something of a tradition in-game design. Though they might go with a…” Martin trailed off, staring at the cords that they’d used to navigate. “Spider. It is going to be a giant lava spider.” Jericho snorted.

“Amazing prediction, psychic Rat-Jesus man. But why not big Stag Beetle? I think Stag Beetle would make good boss, charging us into lava pools.”

“Because we’ve been walking over its webs this whole way.”

They all turned to look down at the crisscrossing cords that they’d ascended. There was no question that it resembled a spider’s web viewed from this angle. Not a very densely constructed one, but since it wasn’t trying to catch them in the web, just lead them into the center where it dwelled, it was perfectly functional for the purpose.

“I don’t like spiders,” Julia mumbled to herself. Lindsay slung a wing around her shoulders.

“Then this is going to be super cathartic for you.”

They made the rest of the climb in tense silence, emerging through another hole in the wall to find exactly what Martin had predicted. A classic spider-web pattern of the soot-gray cords suspended over a dead drop to flowing magma down below. And in the roof of the chamber, an ominous dark hole big enough for a sedan-sized spider monster to come scuttling out of.

“Why did it have to be spiders?” Julia groaned. Jericho, ever valiant, put his own meaty arm around her.

“Just stay behind me, you don’t have to look if you don’t want to.” Martin couldn’t help but weigh in at that comment.

“I feel like that might be something of an impediment when the fighting starts.”

With a hissing sound like escaping steam from up above them, the fighting started.

Martin had expected the boss to emerge slowly and carefully to survey its prey, but it seemed that arachnid instincts had not been programmed into this particular scuttling terror. Instead, it dropped like a bomb from on high. Hitting the center of the web and sending all of them bouncing up and down.

Martin had found the courage to stand upright on this web, given how closely all the cords ran, but he regretted it instantly as he lost his footing and came down hard on his crotch. His own sense of propriety had prevented him from looking down the front of his trousers to see what the game had simulated down there, but judging from the roil of nausea that accompanied the spreading numbness, something had definitely just been crushed nastily.

The other three managed to keep their feet, but that just made them a more obvious target now that the Smoldering Solifugae had found its footing.

As it turned out, the Masters had not been content with simply throwing in a gigantic spider and calling it quits. They had decided to combine all the very worst elements of a titanic tarantula with a pair of scorpion tails that were already glowing white hot and ready to unleash the first attacks. To balance that extra weight on the back of the beast, two massive pincer claws grew out of the front. The sharpened ridge of chitin along the inside of them was already simmering hot and steam was rising. Where it wasn’t blazing with heat, the creature’s body was as deep a red as Martin had ever seen, almost black, if not for the shine it gave off by the lava-light below.

It was only when Martin clambered back to his feet, groaning all the way, that he finally saw the face of the thing. The dozens upon dozens of eyes, each one of them lit from within with the same scorching heat as everything else in this accursed Deep. If it had eyes, it was an improvement over the worm. He could work with eyes.

“Look away from me!” he bellowed, already casting Halo.

The dazzling light flared out from behind him. Illuminating the whole chamber in negative for a fraction of a second. Everyone that hadn’t already been turned away, managed to snap their heads around in time. Everyone except for the monster that was his target, which had already been surging forward toward Lindsay.

[MISS]

She leaped to one side as it scurried right through where she had been, massive claws chattering and snapping, trying to catch her, even as she made her escape. It was blinded by the Halo but that didn’t mean it wasn’t still dangerous. Even without the ability to aim when it unleashed the beam attacks from its twin tails, it nearly hit both Julia and Jericho, instead ripping two clean lines through the web that supported them all.

The fraction of the web where the two had been huddled before his Halo fell away, tumbling down the great height of the chamber to land with a sizzle. That could have been them. Both of them, dead, if not for the years of experience in combat just like this that had set them running the moment that the Solifugae had aimed its tails their way.

“Spread out more. Lindsay and I dodge-tank it. Jericho, take the ranged hits when Julia’s got the bandwidth to heal you. Standard tank and spank until we learn otherwise.” There would be more to this fight, because there always was in Strata, but until the various tricks and patterns of attacks emerged Martin was just trying to give them the best starting point to capitalize on them.

With its first blind charge thwarted, Martin had expected the monster to stop and try to locate them. Probably through vibrations in the web, like a real spider would. But as they’d already seen, its tactics were not going to be informed by spider behavior. Its charge continued, passed where Lindsay had been, swerving off to where its tail beams had struck. It ran right over the edge of that hole and Martin couldn’t decide if he was amused or disappointed that the Deep’s boss was committing suicide rather than face them blind.

The thorax of the beast did not branch into two at the back, but into three. Two parts hooked up into tails, one down into spinnerets. It was this third bit that dipped down to touch on the web, securing the bulk of the creature like a safety line before it dropped, using its own weight to pendulum swing back up and latch onto the underside of the web. Lindsay’s beak fell open.

“Oh crap.”

The plan to keep its attention divided fell apart instantly, and they all began scrambling about with all the haste and chaos they could muster. The Solifugae may have been blind, but it had no trouble navigating the world upside down, and even if it couldn’t target any of them individually, that didn’t mean it couldn’t do horrific damage with the abilities that it had, and the situation they were in.

Even in those first few moments, Martin saw it snipping at threads where they vibrated, severing the carbon-webbing that they had stood upon only moments before. Dumping out those few charred bones leftover from previous intruders to go tumbling down into the magma pit below.

“Focus on mobility, don’t panic. It can’t take out the whole web without knocking itself down too.”

One of the scorpion tails shot up through a gap in the web and blasted white-hot flame in Martin’s direction; in the direction of his voice, and he had to dive aside to avoid it. Smaller than the others, he fit all too readily between the gaps in the web, and luck as much as reflexes were all that saved him from the hottest bath of his life.

[MISS]

As it was, a second blast from that tail probably would have been the end for him. If Lindsay hadn’t already pounced on the thing and hammered both blades through the chitin into the glowing heat below.

“Don’t worry Rat-Jesus! I got your back.”

[Smoldering Solifugae has suffered 28 piercing damage]

“Shut up!” he groaned as he scrambled to his feet.

“Rude!” Lindsay squawked in dismay. “I just saved your ass from…”

At a run, Martin only barely managed to clear the distance between them in time to tackle her down before the stream of superheated plasma lanced through where she’d been standing.

[MISS]

“It’s targeting our voices!”

“Oh, okay that’s fair then. I thought…” He had to physically clamp his hand around her beak to make her stop speaking and even then, he could still feel it moving.

The problem was not seeing where the Solifugae was going. It was perfectly visible in stark contrast to the blazing magma below. Its underside was a sooty black. The problem was getting his brain to understand what it was doing and predict its actions accordingly. It was a chittering mass of legs, stingers, and claws, constantly rotating and changing direction, and it was upside down to boot. He was barely able to parse its movements fast enough to get out of the way of its attacks, let alone launch some sort of counter.

When it was no longer blind, it would launch its own proper offensive, slicing up the web to limit their motion, picking them off with its ranged attacks. If it had enough sense, it would construct some sort of secondary structure beneath the web to support itself while it took its time slaughtering them. If it didn’t, well it could at least be certain of mutually assured destruction at worst, so long as it retained control over their battlefield.

“We need to take control.” Martin did not like unwinnable scenarios. They made his brain itch.

Jericho nearly caught a blast to the face when he guffawed in answer. It seemed the monster was cycling between the sources of sound instead of trying to track them one by one.

Igniting his sword with Celestial Strike, Martin swung, not for the monster but for one of the radial lines holding the structure up. Julia, further out on the same quadrant of the room as him, felt the ground sagging beneath her and let out a very Lindsay-like word that Martin was surprised she knew.

The moment that the tension levels of the web changed, the Solifugae responded, scuttling over, and launching out fresh lines from its backside to support itself, and the structure above. It was quite happy for the web to come down, but only on its terms. Just as Martin had suspected. He had a new plan.

“Head to the walls. Cut the support lines.”

“I may not be rat-genius or whatever, so maybe this is stupid question, but isn’t that going to dump us in lava?” Jericho groaned from across the room. Martin flashed him a smile. Lava-light glinting off his oversized incisors.

“No. The monster is going to save us.”

“Is this like Frog-boy?” Jericho covered his face with one oversized paw, even as the Solifugae spun around to follow the sound of his voice. Its vision would have been back by now, but its position upside down would have limited their visibility since the eyes were arrayed on the top of its head. It was still better off navigating by sound. “Spider is new imaginary friend?”

“It needs to be in control of the environment. It’s too high risk for it not to be. It’s going to prioritize control over fighting us.”

Jericho took off at a sprint even as the latest tail blast roared through where he’d been just a moment before. The Wulvan was targeting the bulkiest of the lines strung out from the center, the one that looked like it had been doubled back over more than once.

“You are crazy, you know this, right?”

“I love the way you say that while doing the thing he’s telling you to do.” Julia laughed in between her blessings with a manic edge to every giggle. “Which one of you is crazy again?”

Lindsay’s knives were a blur of motion as she hacked at the strings in her quadrant.

“Don’t have to be crazy to be in Iron Riot…”

“But it helps.” Julia echoed back with the first genuine laugh Martin had heard from her since the doors of the real world had slammed shut.

With sounds like snapping guitar strings, the various parts of the web came loose. The furious flurry of attacks that the Solifugae would likely have been unleashing upon them from below were nowhere to be seen as it scurried from one end of the room to the next, trying to repair the damage they were doing to its home. The lava below would kill it, clearly, but the thing surely had some resistance to fire. For the first time, Martin’s hand drifted down to the book hanging on a chain by his hip, and activated the Oath bound there.

When he raised his hand once more to launch a Javelin of Faith it shone not with dazzling light, but with sizzling flames along the length of its glowing core. It started to burn his paw-pads before he’d even launched it.

This time, the shot flew true, splashing sparks across the Solifugae’s belly and dealing a grand total of 0 damage. The armor plating could hold off the heat, which meant it feared the fall damage, not the flames. Where the sparks rained down on the webbing, they sizzled through until it snapped. It made a degree of sense, that the monster could use its own fire to easily undo any tangles it encountered.

The first pieces of a plan were starting to slot themselves into place, even as the netting beneath his feet bucked and rocked from side to side like they were at sea.

Iron Riot were always a few steps ahead of the Solifugae, but never so far ahead that they all went tumbling down. When Celestial Strike came off cooldown, Martin made sure to make his own contributions to the destabilization effort with his Purifier’s Oath still burning bright at his side. Lindsay was the first to pipe up.

“You know we can’t keep this up forever. Well, I mean, we could, but it would be really boring.”

“Gods below forbid that you ever get bored.” Martin grumbled under his breath before raising his voice to be heard over the hissing of the Solifugae. “I think the best play here is to cut loose and ride it down to the lava. Then use the boss as a boat; let the flow carry us back to the pit.”

“That is the most insane plan I’ve ever heard, and I am two hundred percent on board.” Lindsay’s cackling echoed around the chamber, louder than spider and flame. “Let’s go!” Julia’s steady flow of spells stuttered to a halt.

“Do we get to vote on this madness?”

“I vote no!” Jericho roared, pausing in the midst of trying to chew his way through the thick guy-line of carbon. “I vote no to all of that!”

Martin had long ago learned that raising his voice did not have the desired effect of conveying emphasis, so he spoke softly and clearly with no hint of emotion in his voice to invite reprisal.

“There is no other obvious shortcut to the Deep Gate, I believe that this is the designer’s intent.”

“Or… maybe there is no shortcut, and you are an insane person who wants to ride a giant spider monster into a pit of lava?” Jericho was very efficient in using his raised voice for emphasis. It typically made him sound angry, but from what Martin had been able to parse, that was also accurate. Lindsay couldn’t help but pipe up.

“No, that's me! I want that! I want that so bad it’s making me feel things. Sexy things.”

Jericho’s teeth finally met through the cord and the whole web drooped as the tension was lost. He bellowed back.

“We both vote no to crazy bug ride plan!”

“Shame this isn’t a democracy, bitches!” Lindsay’s crowfeet latched onto the webbing beneath her as the mezzanine floor gave way beneath them. “I’m top dog… uh bird… uh… Something about a pecking order? I don’t know. I’m the boss! You do what I say.”

The Solifugae saved them all once more, launching new lines to support the web, to keep it from falling entirely, though they were now lilting dangerously to one side. Martin continued to lay out the facts of the situation.

“The loss of time concerns me more than the danger that this monster poses.”

“Because you are an insane crazy person.” Jericho bellowed, stomping at the feet of the Solifugae as it scuttled below him. “We cover this. Giant flaming spider monster, very scary.”

Jericho stumbled as the strings beneath him twanged from the Solifugae’s passage. Martin’s eyes narrowed as he staggered closer.

“Come on, you’re the one who keeps telling me that it’s all just a game.”

“A game we’re trapped in.” Jericho rounded on him, teeth gnashing, eyes blazing bright. Martin saw through the fury in that moment, saw the fear beneath it. “Do you know what happens to us if we die in the game right now?”

“No. But I do know that if we don’t get out of here fast, we all die in real life. Which matters more?”

“Everyone shut up, you’re making this not fun again.” Lindsay bellowed over the top of them. “Just… focus on the fun parts, yeah? Is there bad stuff happening in the world outside? Of course, there is. There always is. Could we all die horribly for no good reason at any moment? Always could. Global warming, or nuclear kablooey, or big dinosaur splatting rock from outer space. And you know what we did? We all got together, and we played a game, and we had a good time. So, let’s just do that? Yeah? Let’s just do what we’re the best at in the whole damn world and beat this game and stop worrying about all the stuff outside of that.”

“Your wisdom… your leadership is, ‘completely ignore reality and withdraw into silly fantasy game?’ And you wonder why we vote rather than listen to you?” Jericho spat with disgust, and it sizzled away on contact with the Solifugae scuttling by.

Martin didn’t often listen to Lindsay. Which worked out fine, because Lindsay normally didn’t say anything important, or even vaguely logical. But what she had just said struck a chord with him.

“She’s right.”

“Of course, the little lap-rat agrees with his mistress…” Martin cut Jericho off, mid-bitch.

“We’re getting distracted, we’re letting this real-world problem interfere with how we play.”

The Solifugae provided a handy demonstration of that by lashing a tail through a gap in the web and nearly impaling Martin as he spoke. Instinct or luck saved him. He hated to rely on either.

“We’re all going to die!” Julia yelled from the far side of the web.

“Exactly, and that’s scary. That’s huge, and it's scary and it's a distraction that’s going to get us all killed. We aren’t fighting like ourselves, we aren’t thinking like we think, we’re thinking like scared, trapped animals, ready to chew off our own leg to escape.”

Lindsay made a leaping Raptor Strike at the Solifugae that missed, but still brought her crashing down next to the conversation.

“I’m more of a breast than thigh gal, myself.”

“So, what are you proposing? That we all just forget what’s happened? Forget that we’re trapped in here.” Martin had never seen Julia so incensed. “We’ve got a ticking clock until our bodies dehydrate past the point of no return! Less than…”

“We can’t forget it, but we can’t let it be the sole factor in all our decisions either.” Martin plunged a fresh Celestial Strike down into the web beneath him, using the fire damage from his still active Oath to tear and disrupt the web beneath them rather than strike at the fleeting shadow of the monster as it scuttled by. “Whatever else is going on, Strata is still a game that has consistently rewarded clever play and courage over conventional wisdom and caution. We need to be able to take risks.” Jericho’s jaw dropped open.

“Risks like dropping into giant pit of lava?”

“Now more than ever, we need to take shortcuts and accept that the danger is part of what we are navigating.” Martin turned to yell across at Jericho then, all the frustration that he’d been feeling with the giant wolfman finally working its way out. “You’re acting like this is the real world, and you’re scared little humans. Like you can’t absorb damage and turn it on our enemies, and Julia can’t heal us of anything short of death. We are more here than we ever were out there and acting like we aren’t, is what is going to get us killed.”

Jericho stared at him with the same gawking expression. Julia had fallen silent too. He had them. They knew he was right, and he’d won them over, and they wouldn’t have to keep having this same argument over and over.

The Solifugae sprayed lava at them from beneath, and they launched into fluid action, one hauling them both aside, one healing what wasn’t avoided, perfectly synchronized as they should be.

He had them right up until the moment Lindsay crowed.

“So can we please ride the spider-scorpion down into the lava pit now?!”

“You know, I was almost convinced until she said that.” Julia’s voice came out flat.

“We are dead either way.” Jericho sighed. “I think… I think we should have the fun?”

Rebounding off her latest attack, Lindsay slammed into him with a slap from behind.

“Attaboy, Big-dog!”

“Jericho, really?” It was as though someone had cut the strings holding Julia up. Her whole body sagged.

“If we can win, if winning saves you… saves us.” Jericho reached out and cupped her reptilian cheek. “It is worth some scary.”

“Three votes!” Lindsay cawed. “We win!” Martin’s head cocked to the side.

“I thought that this wasn’t a democracy, and you were our feathered dictator?”

“Just tell us the plan, ratty man.”

There were two main components: isolating the Solifugae and cutting the webbing loose. The former was so that it could be ridden down, and to prevent it from undoing the latter.

Martin already had a plan in place for bringing the web down, so it became a whole new game, trying to herd it into a position beneath them, while also keeping their feet attached. They stopped interrupting the Solifugae’s usual attack routine by leaving the web alone for now, and abruptly they had all the attention that they could have wanted and more.

Julia was nearly caught by its pincer claws several times, the bottoms of her robes and her tail being snipped repeatedly as she tried to dodge away. Lindsay, who spent half her time up in the air due to what Martin described generously as her energetic nature, was untroubled by the monster’s attacks. Leaving only Jericho and Martin himself to try and corral and control the Solifugae.

As usual, Jericho leaped immediately to brute force, dropping to his knees by Julia’s side and trying to grab onto the chitinous legs as they latched onto the webbing below. Once or twice he actually caught hold of one, but it was snatched away swiftly, and the sharp edges where the chitin plates met took their toll on his hands. The noise he made was less canine and more like a cat that had its tail trod upon. Julia’s healing washed over him immediately, but it proved the uselessness of his approach, and that left him in a foul mood all on its own, even without the copious bleeding.

“Cluster up!” Martin bellowed over the sound of the Wulvan’s growling.

They drew in close enough together that they were touching. Close enough that Martin could smell the sweat, the weird dry scent of Julia’s serpent skin, and the fresh burned blood on Jericho.

When the pincer claws came up and latched into Julia once more, they didn’t try to pull her free. She was the anchor point they needed, even as she cried out in horror at the pincers closed on bone and began to grind. On the far side of their group, the tails burst through the webbing, ready to douse them all in hot flaming death.

“Everybody, blink!”

Martin’s Halo had ticked off cooldown somewhere in the midst of the chaos, but the Oath was still active. When he closed his eyes and cast, he did not see the explosion of flame spreading out from behind him, but he felt it. The heat of it. The minute sting of damage as it passed over him. A tiny amount of harm to trade for something so very important.

Everywhere in the range of the Halo, the web sizzled away. A circle carved out all around the central point of them. Them and the monster.

It couldn’t be reinforced, it couldn’t be fixed, it was just gone. They fell, all together, monster and Iron Riot, none of them making contact yet. Gravity not quite catching them up in the short distance that they were falling.

When the Solifugae hit the magma below, the hissing sounds it had been making before became a deafening whistle. Steam escaping from every joint of its body.

As Iron Riot hit the soot blackened body they suffered fall damage as though they were hitting solid ground, the magma below had no give at all, but Julia was already healing them before the claws spasmodically ungripped from her shins.

It went on wailing and flailing, even as the tide of magma began to carry them along, slowly cooking inside its shell, struggling, but too badly sunk into the molten stone to do anything about its predicament. Jericho let out a gasp of breath first, then degenerated rapidly into laughter that could easily have been mistaken for sobbing.

“It worked!”

“Of course it worked: it was a Martin plan!” Lindsay cackled.

“Is it dead yet?” Julia looked less amused.

Already crouching for stability, Martin laid a palm on the surface of the beast. Its health points were ticking down rapidly.

“Any second now.”

If the circumstances were different then he would have recommended that Jericho unleash whatever damage he could onto the thing to maximize his chances of a killing blow and more cleansing of his Sin, but their situation was precarious enough on this living raft, that he didn’t want to run the risk of capsizing.

Following his lead, all of them stayed low through the final death throes of the Solifugae. He was keeping his hand on its hide to confirm that it had the Deep Key in its inventory as soon as it died and that this hadn’t all been a terrible mistake, but the others were simply maintaining balance. Or so he told himself.

The moment that it did die, he dumped its inventory out into his.

Smoldering Solifugae has died.

Skaife gains 1680 experience.

Again, there was a plethora of crafting materials that he might be able to sell for a fraction of their worth. There were a few items of equipment that he flicked right past, and there at the bottom of the list, the Deep Key.

If he let out a breath of relief, it would have suggested to the others that he had not known it was there all along, so he kept quiet and flicked back to the equipment.

Father’s Reach: a new pair of gloves for Julia that would boost her healing range. Penitent’s Chastener: a belt, more like a girdle, for Jericho that would convert a percentage of self-healing into a shielding buffer of temporary hit points, not that he could self-heal at the moment. Last but not least, there was a new pair of boots for Lindsay. Skybound Boots that would boost her jumping power by a half. As if she were not already bouncy enough.

He doled the new gear out silently, keeping his head ducked down as they passed under stalactites dripping with perspiration. All the water that would normally have been in the air was turned to steam, it rose, condensed, dripped back down the length of cool stone, and then evaporated away all over again. If there had been any of the flaming bats lurking up among these low-hanging stones, then they would have been steamed alive.

The river of magma was gaining speed as the incline of the stone below became steeper and steeper. Any worries that Martin had about the slow flow soon gave way to a genuine concern that they might not be able to stop when they got to the end of their journey.

As it turns out, his concerns were warranted. Their little river of magma burst out into the open chamber of the caldera not on the ground floor, where he’d expected it to, but about a quarter of the way up, in a vast lava-fall. He held on, not to the dead monster below him, but to the others, doing his damnedest to keep them all together as they screamed their way down.

He may have been screaming a little himself.

They had built up enough momentum that both they and the dead spider-scorpion that they rode in on were flung clear of the pool of magma around the outer curve of the pit’s bottom to smash apart instead on the island of volcanic stone that capped off whatever volcanic flue might have been here before.

Once more, Julia’s healing was washing over them before they even had time to realize how badly hurt they were. Jericho, as the heaviest and hardest for Martin to get a good grip on, had bounced free of the mess of them on landing. He was now lying over on a jagged heap of broken off stones, groaning loudly. Julia, Martin had caught by the tail. Lindsay, he had wrapped up in his own tail, stub-ended though it was. It had been uncomfortable, but there hadn’t been any of the expected numbness. Perhaps he was getting the hang of his new pseudo-limb. Perhaps he was simply becoming inured to it all.

Regardless, by the time that he’d untangled from them and made his way onto solid ground once more, he was feeling more than a little smug. They’d won, they’d survived, and it had all been done so swiftly it put their previous delving to shame.

He rose to his feet, looked around at his companions and was about to make an attempt at praising their efforts, when abruptly he was interrupted.

[ANNOUNCEMENT: Brotherhood in Exile have defeated Phalanx, Eighth Archduke of Strata]

THREE

A Return to Bones

All at once, Jericho, Julia, and Lindsay started yelling. Each one of them vying to be heard over the other, as they all said more or less the same thing. Martin clapped his paws over his little round ears and scampered away from them with all haste.

The Brotherhood gaining ground on them was bad news, it was obviously bad news, but it wasn’t quite the apocalyptic scenario that the others were acting like it was. He supposed that the Brotherhood provided a nice simple human enemy for the others to fixate on and loathe. The Masters, the dungeon, these things were too abstract, too distant.

On the other hand, Dante had a very punchable face.

While the ranting and screaming went on, Martin gave the bottom of the pit a tour, located a pockmark in the wall that was unmistakably the same size and shape as a Deep Gate, and pressed the key against its surface. A fresh plume of smoke came pouring through, completely enveloping him for a moment as he hacked and coughed.

Come to me.

With the cloud clearing, he couldn’t be sure he’d heard anything at all. So, he chose to pay it no heed. He was under a frankly ridiculous amount of pressure with everything that was going on, so if he heard or saw things that the others didn’t occasionally then that was just his psyche cracking under that pressure. Nothing more. The strange scars that he’d been left with meant nothing. The way that his abilities from the game seemed to carry over into real life meant nothing. He was still just himself, just a person, playing a game. There was no need to attach any further significance to these changes he’d noticed in himself, even if the NPCs of Strata seemed to think that there was something profoundly important about it.

He interrupted Iron Riot mid-screaming-match to show them the open gate, and with that particular distraction in place they stopped their argument for long enough to head on through. They were once more in those curious underground tunnels known as lava tubes, coiling around and through each other where the stone had proven weaker than the pressure of rising magma.

After what felt like far too long given the distance they’d traveled, they emerged into a vast conical chamber. A spiral, leading down toward the lowest point from the broad top of the room where they had just entered.

Given the choice, Lindsay would have probably jumped directly down, damning the consequences and broken bones, but there were a great many people milling about at the bottom of the chamber, other players. And that was enough to give them all pause.

The roaring success of Iron Riot often painted a target on their backs, dimly visible in the distance as they left all of their competition in the dust behind them. In Strata this had manifested itself mostly in large groups of overleveled and violent players doing their best to grind them into a meat paste. Showing weakness, backing down, or skulking around to avoid such confrontations would have been like chum in the water, inviting further reprisals for their awful sin of success.

So, they walked at a very reasonable pace down the spiral around the outside of this chamber, smoothed basalt slippery under their feet. Not sliding down it while cackling. Not running to see what all the fuss was about. Just calmly and quietly proceeding into the next Deep.

As they came lower, there was a raucous atmosphere more akin to a celebration than a lynch mob. Though in Martin’s experience there could be little difference between the two of them. Different guilds were all gathered in their full numbers, waiting in line to pass through what was clearly another gate. Since it seemed unlikely that this Deep was exactly one room long, that meant that they were looking at the Skip Gate to the next Archduke.

“Perfect.” Jericho’s face split into a grin.

He picked up the pace and found a spot for them at the rear end of the queue. He was so excited about it that his tail began to wag. It broke Martin’s heart that he had to tell him the truth. “We can’t use the Skip Gate.”

“Of course we are, how are we getting through all those Deeps if we don’t use the skips?” Jericho snorted.

“My Rite of Passage is on cooldown. It won’t be ready to use until tomorrow. We cannot afford to wait a day. Not when we only have two.”

“So, you're telling me we walk past this easy way, go through the whole dungeon the hard way?” Jericho did not look enthused by the idea.

“Skipping a later section will be more beneficial anyway,” Martin said it as nonchalantly as he could, but the truth was that of course he would rather be skipping vast swathes of the dungeon now.

“We have two days, and we can skip only one set of Deeps?” Julia had caught up to the conversation considerably faster than he’d have hoped. “You think we can get through sixty-seven more Deeps? In what is now considerably less than two days?”

“Fifty-nine,” Martin corrected her. “If we account for those the Rite of Passage lets us skip.”

Julia had always been the quiet one. The calm one. The one who had none of the highs and lows of Jericho or Lindsay. Martin had considered her reliable, stable above all else. The one who could be relied on to pull the other two back from the brink. Now that she was untethered from her real life, it seemed that she was no longer any of those things. She had lost her anchor.

“You are mad. I know that Jericho says it all of the time, but truly, you have lost your mind. It can’t be done.”

“It can.” Martin crossed his arms.

“Not by us! If we were three times the level, with the best gear money can buy, maybe, but not us like this!?”

They were beginning to attract attention from those queuing around them, so Martin very pointedly stepped out of the line and walked away. The rest of them lingered for a long moment, staring longingly at the far end of the queue where other players were hopping through a gateway at the center of the spiral to face the next Archduke now.

If they had been paying attention, instead of being entirely focused on their own feelings at that moment, then they might have realized the significance of all these high-level players being here. This was the chokepoint that people were not getting past. The place in the dungeon where all of their hard-won power was no longer sufficient to brute force through the problems that they were facing.

This was the stopping point, where all progress through the dungeon halted. If they could get past this next Archduke they would be in entirely unexplored territory. Unbothered by any of the other players in the game. Free and clear with only the Masters and the dungeon itself between them and victory. For Martin at least, that was going to be easier. These were vast and powerful forces arrayed against them, obviously, but ones that could be predicted and understood. They were bound by the rules of this place, by the constraints of imagination and fairness. What human beings were capable of, which direction they were going to jump in any given situation, these were the things that Martin struggled to plan for.

Only once they were clear of the crowd, heading for the place where the perfect spiral of the chamber twisted out into an offshoot tunnel did Martin finally try to explain some part of this to them.

“Our level doesn’t matter.”

“Did you see how strong those people were? The ones heading down to fight the next boss? They were buff as hell, Martin. Their muscles had muscles. And little protein shakes that they held with all their muscles.” Lindsay bounded past him into the tunnel beyond. “Seriously, their levels were up higher than Jericho can count, and you’re telling me that it doesn’t matter?” From behind them, Jericho grumbled.

“I can count higher than thirty.”

“Of course you can, Big-dog.”

Martin brushed past it. Engaging with every bit of Lindsay’s chaotic energy would leave you too exhausted to function.

“The point you missed was that they were incredibly overpowered, and they were still losing to the next Archduke.”

“So, we need to get even more powerful than them!” Lindsay stopped to flex her wings. If she had biceps to speak of, they probably would have been standing out.

“We really do not have time to grind, not if we mean to get out of here in two days.” Julia’s dread trickled back into the conversation, poisoning everything it touched.

“They were overpowered and losing to the Archduke, because being overpowered doesn’t help you against them.” Martin pressed on, keeping both sides of the argument at bay by ignoring them entirely. “Every one of them has been a puzzle as much as a fight. Being strong in Strata isn’t enough.”

“So what, we just ignore leveling up?” Lindsay bounded back over to him, grabbing him by the front of his armor and pulling him close until her beak was poking into his cheek. “I want my sweet upgrades, Rat-Jesus. I need them. They make my brain happy.” He held up his hands and tried to lean away.

“Leveling up is still important, and we’re going to do it faster than everyone else because we are contending with higher-level enemies, but the real importance of it is that it's going to unlock new tools for us to deal with the challenges. At no point in Strata have we failed because we were not strong enough yet. Thinking laterally, playing well, these are the things that matter more.”

“As long as I get new and interesting ways to kick everyone’s ass, I’m happy.” Lindsay let him go with a shrug.

“All I care about is getting out of this place. If you think that this is the best way to do that, I’ll trust you.” Julia had not been particularly positive thus far, so this statement was something of a relief. Perhaps she was still usable. He gave her a smile.

“Thank you.”

“I trust the tiny rat-maniac as far as I can throw him,” Jericho’s growl turned into a fierce grin. “But I can throw him very far. He got us into this mess, he will get us out.”

That one genuinely surprised Martin. Jericho had consistently been his most vocal critic, even before they were pushed into this crisis. He wasn’t sure how to respond.

“Uh, thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“You think I am slow, but I understand what is happening here as well as anyone. You think that because I do not hide that I am angry about what is happening, I do not understand what is in front of me.” He leaned down to lay a hand on Martin’s shoulder. “I do understand. And as much as you make me angry, as much as your smug little rat face makes me want to hit you, I know what you are worth.”

“Awww. Now kiss!” Lindsay yelled, only to be punched immediately in the chest by Julia. “Ow.”

“No kissing.”

“But I’ve got the best ship name for them! Jer-Ratto.” Lindsay entreated her.

“Better than Jer-Tin I suppose.” Julia managed a smile.

Martin had to get them off this topic as swiftly as possible. As ambivalent as he may have been toward women, that did not mean that he wanted the girls to force him into awkward positions with Jericho. Nor did he want the big man to feel as though acting toward Martin with kindness for a change was some sort of impugnment on his masculinity. So he pressed on.

“The plan is to proceed through the following eight Deeps as rapidly as possible. The Brotherhood will be gaining on us, their poached high-level members have already been through these sections. Having them catch up to us before the Archduke is a worst-case scenario. While the game content can be circumvented with clever play, I suspect that player versus player interactions are going to be heavily reliant upon statistics and abilities. We are under-powered in comparison to them, and with no real way of knowing what death is going to do to us in our current circumstances, we cannot risk it.”

“Ugh, I don’t want to run away from Dante.” Lindsay groaned. “He’s such a little bitch.” Martin couldn’t really disagree with that.

“That… may be the case, but he has surrounded himself with very capable players. Both those who take exception to our success, and those who wish to mimic it and believe that some of our personal excellence has rubbed off on Dante.”

“Absolutely nobody has ever rubbed off on Dante.” Lindsay said in her usual jocular tone. Presumably there was some double-entendre there that Martin was refusing to engage with.

“He has seen how we conduct ourselves in our previous game, he has been privy to the way that I analyze scenarios. While he may not be capable of performing to our standards, or parsing information in the same way that I do, there may be others in his entourage who can learn from our example. That makes the Brotherhood a threat to our progress.”

Jericho ground his knuckles into the palm of the opposing hand. “So, what do you want to do, booby trap the gates?”

Tempting as it was, that was more likely to affect other players than the Brotherhood, and he didn’t want them to acquire Sin unnecessarily. It was hard enough to keep track of all their abilities without having them flipped on their head.

“I want for us to proceed with all haste so that we don’t have to waste time dealing with them.”

“That sounds a lot like running away.” Lindsay grumbled.

“This is a race, running ahead of the competition is how you win.”

“Are you just saying that to shut me up?” Her eyes narrowed.

“Don’t I say most things just to shut you up?”

“Touché.” she said, without any of the French lilt that the word needed. It came out sounding like douche, with a t.

As they made their way further into the Deep, the tunnel that they were following continued to spiral downward, just as the central chamber had, guiding them around and around as they descended. Martin had fully expected there to be a continuation of the lava theme from the previous Deep, but instead it seemed that this place was going to be more fully committed to darkness. The same shining basalt that they had slipped and slithered down from the Deep above appeared in patches on the otherwise matte volcanic rock around them, reflecting their torchlight back at them in the most unexpected moments. It was designed to prey on their nerves, and it was working.

Martin kept a close eye on his companions as they descended, knowing full-well that the purpose of this exercise was not to make them battle ready, but to lull them into a false sense of security. The moment that they stopped jumping at the glint was the moment that they would truly be entering the dangerous part of the Deep. When the repeated startling had finally lost its effect, they would be ambushed.

While they were still tense, the tunnel opened out into a larger chamber, with more tunnels branching out from it. At the center of that first chamber was a round indentation with the same spiral pattern that was recurring elsewhere throughout this Deep, but set into the stone, like a fossil of an ammonite. Martin would have bet that it was the Deep Gate, just judging by its size. Even though it lacked the metallic rim that had marked the others in the earlier Deeps. It was a good signal to the players that future gates might be disguised. Though those who’d been using Skip Gates before now were already like as not painfully aware of that fact.

Following their usual path-splitting procedure, they went down the leftmost of the tunnels first, and found themselves in yet another downward spiral with the same randomly sparkling polished stone that brought them to a queasy halt every minute or so.

It opened out into a dead end after only a short distance, but while the rest of the guild turned on their heels and started the hike back to where the path had branched, Martin lingered, using his Night Vision to see what they could not. The spirals in the walls here weren’t simply like fossils, they were fossils. Ammonites swirling, trilobites scuttling around between them, even some fish bones and the like. Out in the real world these things were probably in completely different geological layers, separated by millennia, but here all the different creatures of the past were buried and turned to rock.

There was something here, some significance that he wasn’t parsing yet. Nothing in this world was by accident, it was intelligently designed to convey some message or another. Something about the past? Something about failure to change leading to extinction? There were so many ways that these fossils could be interpreted and none of them helped him right now.

At a brisk jog he caught up to the rest of the guild before they could try the next turn. This one seemed more promising, the downward spiral that had marked their progress thus far was in full effect.

Martin was pondering that too, it was always counterclockwise, always at the same angle of descent, more or less. Something was being said in this design. If he had not been trapped in the game, he would have been out seeking context clues in the real world, studying places where spirals were introduced in architecture, where they occurred naturally, what their connection to the fossils was, beyond the obvious ammonite. Something about the Golden Ratio and the Fibonacci Sequence? Was the counterclockwise spin relevant? Something about the word widdershins? Was it unlucky to go counterclockwise? Did it have something to do with mythology, or was it a contemporary superstition? He couldn’t remember everything. Good as his memory was, he could not perfectly recall every detail of every piece of information that had passed in front of his eyes. He could retain enough to know where to look for more, certainly. With an internet connection he might very well have passed for a genius. Without access, all that he had was a stack of half-formed suppositions that led him nowhere.

If the others knew the state of confusion that he was in, they would turn on him. If he showed anything less than complete confidence - if he was anything less than perfect - then their tentative courage would crumble all over again. They needed to believe that he knew everything, for their own comfort. They needed to believe that his plan was infallible, and they would all survive if they followed it perfectly.

His plan was a gamble. All plans were, when it came down to it. Gambling on his ability to predict future events based on the knowledge he already had. This particular plan relied on one of his weak areas of knowledge however, his ability to understand and predict the behavior of other human beings.

“So, where’s all the monsters?” Lindsay stage-whispered to him. “I want to stabbity, stab, stab something.”

He was trying to concentrate on what was going on around them. Jericho had taken point, leading them down despite him being no more resilient than any of the rest of them. It made him more honest than he wanted to be.

“Do you ever not want to stab something?”

“Sometimes I’m sleeping.” She croaked with laughter. He cast a glance her way, turning his head so his one eye could narrow at her.

“I’m pretty sure you dream-stab.”

“You’ve got me there.”

They proceeded down another turn of the spiral. This definitely felt like it was the right way. Martin’s gaze was drawn back to the embedded fossils, trying to make out the various shapes of far larger creatures hidden in the volcanic stone.

“Pooping.” Martin almost jumped out of his skin when Lindsay abruptly whispered the word in his ear.

“I don’t want to stab things while I’m pooping.”

Jericho barked with laughter. Julia covered her face. Martin went for his sword. They were all too relaxed. They were making jokes. This was the moment he’d been waiting for.

As they rounded the next bend, and it opened out into another chamber one of the fossils embedded in the wall came unstuck. It was some sort of dinosaur, long in tooth and claw and snout, bones made of stone, but animated from within the fossil by a deep red glow. It stood as tall as Martin and would have torn his guts open if he didn’t already have his Oathblade halfway to a parry.

The impact of claws on metal sent him sliding back into Lindsay, knocking her off her feet just as a second of these pack hunters launched itself from a cubby on the wall. Its claws skittered across the back of Martin’s armor, right where Lindsay’s face had been.

Two of them would have been taken down in that initial ambush. That first rush would have taken both of the melee combatants down, leaving the other two as easy pickings. It was not an instinctual move, it was logical. A planned and orchestrated ambush.

“Focus on the first one,” Martin yelled over the sudden rumbling of stone echoing all around them. “And let Jericho make the kill if you can.”

“Oh, come on! I want to murder dinosaurs!” Lindsay rebounded off the wall and took a dive under the stone-coated skeleton’s legs. Raking across its ribs with both blades and showering herself in sparks.

Finding his footing, Martin now realized he was locked in a test of strength with the monster ahead of him. It was stronger than him. Just as most things were. But where usually he could use his lower center of gravity to his advantage, the bipedal dinosaur had tucked its head down and was pressing right against him. Driving him back as his feet scrabbled on the pumice stone surface below. Through gritted teeth he snarled out.

“I’m sure there will be ample opportunity to murder more of them later.”

Jericho had turned at last and caught hold of the fossil’s tail. Immediately the pressure on Martin eased and he was able to duck back out of reach of the beast’s claws. Deep inside its skull, that same magma red glow shone out through the eye sockets. Between the teeth. Even out of the nose hole. It was nothing like the green light that Martin had seen in the eyes of the Ravagers or those few rare creatures with a direct connection to the Heart. This burning was just blind malice without thought.

With distance put between them, it raked at him with its foreclaws once more, freeing up his Oathblade, but leaving him no real room to swing it. He activated Celestial Strike, filling the sword with light, and twisted it to intercept, severing a pair of the creature’s claws instead of suffering through their blow.

[Dallasite Deinonychus has suffered 12 slashing damage]

[Dallasite Deinonychus has suffered 12 light damage]

Jericho jerked on its tail again, but the beast had hooked its claws into the pocked floor and resisted. The second Dallasite Deinonychus behind Martin had recovered and was rounding on him too. He didn’t know why he was their particular focus, beyond being what Lindsay would describe as snack sized, but it freed up the others to focus on dealing damage, so he wasn’t going to complain.

He barked out “Blink!” just ahead of his Halo, but the rest of the guild were used to this routine by now and avoided the blinding flare of light. It wouldn’t do much to save him from the one in front of him, but the disorientation should have protected him from a stab in the back for a few moments at least.

Should have.

He felt the raking claws down his back mere moments after he’d unleashed the Halo. No pain, but the rattle of sharp claw-tips down the length of his ribcage on either side of the spine was enough to bring all thought to an abrupt halt. They didn’t have eyes. They barely had animal shapes. Thinking they could be blinded had been foolish. He’d been tricked by his natural inclination toward animism.

Driven to his knees by the blow, he was now at the perfect level for the Deinonychus in front of him to tear out his throat. He could see it happening as though in slow motion, like a nightmare, his every motion dragging like he was moving through molasses. Those jagged stone chips of teeth came lunging forward and Lindsay came down from her overhead leap, clawed foot first into the beast’s head.

Already off-balance thanks to its immobilized tail, the Deinonychus ate dirt when Lindsay’s full weight came down on its face. The teeth that had been about to lock into Martin’s flesh and tear him asunder instead hooking into the perforated stone beneath them. Trapping it there for the vital moment it took Julia’s healing spell to wash through him like a gentle breeze. Martin dragged in a breath.

“Stay on this one.”

Spinning, he caught the next attack from the rear Deinonychus on his Oathblade. Rebuke flared in his off-hand, sending it soaring back to hit the wall before it could use its strength to overpower him as its twin had. Given a moment, it would be up and pouncing again, they had amazing mobility for creatures made of stone, so he had to ensure that he did not give it that moment. His first wild swing after closing the distance deflected off its armored hide without leaving a mark, but he brought the Oathblade down again, and again. Not breaking through, but hammering the Deinonychus down, stopping it from regaining its feet. His Stamina was draining with each blow, but he only had to buy the others so much time to finish off the first one before his lack of Stamina became irrelevant.

When it came off cooldown, he hit the creature with Celestial Strike, bursting through its hardened exoskeleton of stone to the glowing red light within.

[Dallasite Deinonychus has suffered 9 slashing damage]

[Dallasite Deinonychus has suffered 15 light damage]

Heat leaked out from the wound, but there was no molten lava spraying around, just that radiating light and warmth. The Deinonychus did not scream as its upraised arm was severed, it did not have the soft tissues required to make such a noise, but it did thrash about as it tried to escape his relentless assault. The stone of its back did screech across the stone of the wall, as though it were trying to dig its way back into safety.

At last, Martin brought Trinity Strike down on the center of the Deinonychus’s skull, breaking through the stony covering cleanly and digging down through what lay beneath.

[Dallasite Deinonychus has suffered 28 light damage]

The sword warmed in Martin’s hand. The outrushing of heat from the wound sweeping the shaggy parts of his fur back from his face. From behind him, he could hear the benefits of his ability taking hold of his allies, granting them the increased chance at a critical hit that had often meant the difference between defeat and victory.

Mostly he heard it in Lindsay’s whooping.

The Deinonychus he’d carved up was still alive, still struggling back to its feet, but it must have been pretty apparent to even it that the fight was over. The other Deinonychus was on its last legs, and Martin alone had done enough damage to this one that there wouldn’t be much left for the others to mop up. The fight, which could have wiped them out, had been turned on its head so fast Martin still hadn’t taken it all in.

Only when Jericho bounded past the dead Deinonychus that they’d been handling to come and unleash a torrent of Vengeance into the one that Martin had pinned did he finally look up from the battle and take in his surroundings. All over these walls were whorls of reflective basalt. Between them, the fossils of more dinosaurs, just like the ones that they had just fought, were crammed in. Fused all together into one solid mass of stone. Every inch of the place was a potential enemy. A potential threat.

This was the pay-off for the game of nerves that the Masters had been playing. The next level of fear that they were amping up to, when literally every inch of the world around them could be an enemy just waiting to spring into motion.

It was a twisted kind of genius, but Martin had immense respect for it all the same. While he had to monitor the responses of his guildmates to perceive the patterns of behavior they were being manipulated into, the Masters had predicted it months or even years ago when this Deep was first constructed.

Dallasite Deinonychus has died.

Skaife gains 1405 experience.

The second Deinonychus died beneath Jericho’s mighty fists. By the time that everyone was halfway back to grasping what had happened, Martin had a plan.

“New formation going forward, Julia in the middle. Keep your eyes up, they can attack from any angle, not just the plane we’re on.”

“Standard ambush formation.” Jericho rolled his eyes.

“Does anybody have any area-of-effect attacks?” Martin brushed past the sarcasm. “We could sweep the areas as we enter.”

“Knaves are solo targets.” Lindsay shrugged her shoulders as she settled into position beside Julia. Some stray feathers drifting down around her. “I kick one ass at a time, but I do it well.”

Jericho at least had the good grace to look annoyed about his answer. “Nothing that works without Vengeance built up.”

“I’m a healer.” Julia shrugged.

Martin was going to let that pass, but some inkling of a memory in the back of his mind stopped him.

“You have got area-of-effect heals though?”

“You want me to heal the monsters?” Julia scoffed.

“If you try to heal them, they’ll show up on the UI? You’ll see how much you’ve healed them for, or see that they’re on full health?”

“I mean… yeah?”

“Congratulations, you just became our radar.” He grinned at her.

The corridors between the expanding chambers remained clear of ambushers. Martin presumed this was because it would have been considered too unfair by the designers to have one drop at random on an unarmored class and shred them before anyone could respond. Between the corridors however, every room from that point on had between two and five more Deinonychus hidden in the walls and roofs. The healing radar did the trick, flashing up signs of the 0 health that Julia had restored to their enemies before they could even think of springing into motion. In fact, the only time after that initial encounter when they ran any risk of surprise and defeat was when Jericho’s big foot was covering the whole head and upper body of the Deinonychus trying to get up and attack them from a hollowed-out lava tube in the floor.

Yet even with flat-footed Heretics and cunningly positioned ambushers, nothing managed to make a scratch on Iron Riot as they made their way deeper down the spiral and finally came upon what Martin considered to be unmistakably a boss-room. It was twice the size of the previous chambers, the Deinonychus fossils were all disjointed and broken in the walls, as if to affirm that none of them would be coming to life and attacking, and one whole wall was dominated by a reflective pane of mirrored basalt.

It gave them all a long look at themselves by the torchlight. The odd animal shapes that they had chosen for themselves. The mishmash of equipment that they’d cobbled together in their wild dash through the earlier Deeps. The adventurers that they’d passed earlier had all been geared out in matching outfits, every piece tweaked to maximize one stat or another. The kind of calculating, mechanical gameplay that Martin had always relished. Choosing out the best of the best for his team and then guiding them toward it.

They looked shabby. Bedraggled. Frightened and lost in a world that was fundamentally hostile to them. They looked like they were going to fail, going to lose, going to die. Here and in their own reality. These were not the brave heroes of fantasy tales; they were just people. Stupid people, arguing among themselves, picking fights with one another over nothing. All of them except Martin.

He looked worse.

Between the missing eye, the clipped tail, and the scars across the rest of him, he looked like some sort of undead monstrosity that had been dragged along rather than a player character. The rest may have looked like they were badly put together, but Martin looked like he’d been badly stitched together. It amazed him that there had not been more revulsion from those other players that they’d met. In the beginning, he could not understand why the NPCs had considered him to be bearing the blessing of Strata when his wounds would not fully heal. Why they had thought that the legacy of his ordeals written plain upon his body had some significance to it.

Now that he was covered in those wounds and looking monstrous, he understood. With every passing battle with the Archdukes of Strata, he looked more like one of them. Twisted and wounded, reshaped from a living thing into a vehicle for anguish. A living weapon that went on swinging long after it should have been buried and forgotten. The only thing that differentiated him from them, other than their size, was that his mind was still intact. He had not been created as an engine of war, nor transformed by the dungeon or the Masters into something so nightmarish that his mind broke. He was changed, but he was not transformed. They had not made him into a monster. Not yet.

The plane of smooth shining stone shattered from the other side.

Deinonychus had been classic dinosaur enemies. Bipedal and murderous. Like something out of an old movie. What emerged from its glassy cocoon from behind the stone was something else entirely. Standing twice the height of Jericho, four times the size of the Deinonychus, this massive, fossilized beast could have put any of the terrors of the prehistoric to shame.

The Bloodstone Baryonyx had jaws like a crocodile’s extending out from its face, long hooked claws on the end of one forearm, and something like a club made up of calcified stone on the other. Its tail had also picked up a club-like lump at its end, although it was less stony and more like a growth of pointed crystals, all saturated in a deep red hue. The only thing that really made it look like the Deinonychus at all was the dull red glow shining beneath its ancient bones. The fire of life shining in its center.

Lindsay managed to bellow, “Oh shi…” before the ballistic basalt knocked her from her feet. The beast’s explosive entrance sufficient to floor all four of them with flying rubble. They had broken formation at the sight of the plane of stone. All lined up like sitting ducks for the monster to come bounding through. Martin cursed his laxness, even as he forced himself back to his feet and flung himself between the Baryonyx and Julia’s prone form.

Its jaws snapped shut on him. Reacting to his sudden presence instead of carrying on through him to scoop both of them up in its mouth. That was what he’d been aiming for, his health pool was larger than Lindsay’s, and his mobility was less important, but as the jagged stone teeth met in the midst of his midsection, he couldn’t help but feel some twinge of regret.

[Skaife has suffered 51 piercing damage]

If it had been a living thing, it might have tried to chew him up and swallow him down, but its teeth, like its claws and tail, were merely weapons to dole out harm, not parts of a hunting animal. Not means for it to achieve survival, only to hurt and kill. With the damage of the one chomp achieved, the Baryonyx flicked its head to the side to launch Martin toward Jericho. The second of them to find their footing.

The two of them went down in a heap, even as Julia frantically cast a healing spell in Martin’s direction. She was completely open to attack now. Nothing between the fossil and her own reptilian flesh but air.

Faced with such an opportunity, it was inevitable that the Baryonyx would lunge for her once more. And faced with the opportunity of its long neck stretching out in front of her, it was also inevitable that Lindsay would launch herself across and slash at it.

[Bloodstone Baryonyx has suffered 31 slashing damage]

Her blades traced a scorching line across the boss’s throat, the same red glow that showed deep within its form. No blood or lava came pouring out, just that dim red light. But the damage was enough to foil the fossil’s attack once more.

Julia was up on her feet now, having spent the last few seconds switching between casting and a terrified crabwalk away from the snapping jaws of the beast. She was clear of its reach, at least for now. Lindsay, on the other hand, was less lucky. She might have ducked down under its chin and out of whatever line of sight it should have had, but like the previous fossil monsters, it was not reliant upon eyes to follow their motions. As she soared away from its slit throat, she met the descending club hand, beak first.

[Tesra has suffered 33 bludgeoning damage]

She hit the ground hard, but not hard enough to stop her squawking.

“My pecker!”

With a tectonic vibration, Jericho rumbled beneath Martin as they tried to untangle themselves. At first, he took it for a growl, until he realized that the Wulvan was laughing.

With their Martyr in a good mood, it seemed like an opportunity to ask a little favor.

“Fastball special?”

Jericho’s grin was pronounced as he scooped Martin up in his massive hands and threw him.

As he soared, he couldn’t help but wonder how much time Jericho spent fantasizing about bodily launching him into dangerous situations. Regardless, he had his sword lit up with Smite before he arrived and dealt a devastating blow to the Baryonyx as it turned to bite at him again. Velocity, Strength, and Willpower combined into an impact that knocked fossilized teeth from its mouth and sent up a puff of dust from all across its head.

[Bloodstone Baryonyx has suffered 21 slashing damage]

[Bloodstone Baryonyx has suffered 27 light damage]

It may not have had a brain to rattle around inside its skull, but something must have been knocked out of order, because as Martin fell back to earth, the sweep of its claws missed him entirely. He landed prone by its horned feet, but he did so in one piece.

Lindsay was still standing there, feathered hands clasped over her broken beak. Literally a sitting duck for the swiping attacks that were coming down on the pair of them now. Martin slapped a hand alight with Healing Touch into her face and knocked her off her feet. It took just a moment too long.

With the help of Martin’s well-placed push, Lindsay avoided the descending cudgel of calcified rock, but the hooked claws caught Martin on his still-extended arm.

He let out a yelp of surprise more than pain as the numbness spread throughout the limb. He deliberately did not look at it lying there on the ground. The memory of his ghoulish reflection still fresh in his mind, he deliberately did not think what it would have meant if that injury had been done by an Archduke instead of some random Deep boss. The rest of them, no matter what happened, could pick themselves up again and get back into the fight. Martin however, if the wrong thing happened at the wrong time; if the Heart of Strata decided it wanted him to be nothing but a mewling lump of blistered meat, then that was what he would become, and what he would remain.

There would be no leaving the game for him now. No restarting with a new character, or even slipping back into the boring shell of his old life outside the game. That door had been closed behind him. What happened to him here in Strata would last for the rest of his life. For the rest of eternity, if Klimpt’s suppositions about the place were somehow true.

[BLOCKED 31 bludgeoning damage]

He caught the sweep of the Baryonyx club hand on the flat of his blade, turning it aside, but knocking him off his balance once more. Not that he was particularly well balanced to start with, given that one arm was mostly missing.

“Could everybody else start fighting this thing, please?”

As the Baryonyx turned to bring the jagged claws down on him, a dark blur of feathers shot by, Lindsay hit it in the elbow joint with both of her daggers, trying less to injure, and more to wedge them into the gap in the stone there that allowed it mobility.

[Bloodstone Baryonyx has suffered 22 piercing damage]

Metal and stone screeched against each other. With the momentum of her leap, she swung her legs up so that she was hanging sideways off the side of the thing’s arm, arching her back to bring all the strength in her body to bear on that one point. The metal of her daggers creaked against the unrelenting stone.

Even if she couldn’t break the joint open. This delay was enough for Martin. He tossed his sword up into the air, cast Rebuke at the monster and then caught it again before it could hit the ground.

No matter the difference in their size, no matter the difference in their Strength, Rebuke reliably launched anything that it hit away from him, and when the thing being hit was top-heavy in the extreme, even before having an additional Knave attached to its arm, that impact was sufficient to put it on its ass. It went down like a ton of bricks, which was coincidentally what it sounded like when it hit the floor.

The tail, which it had been saving to attack anyone foolish enough to come up behind it, hit the ground. It should have stopped the fall, but the forces involved were not natural. What would have been a minor impact were the enemy smaller had become a massive wave of force to push something this heavy back by the distance that the Rebuke ability prescribed.

When the stone tail hit the ground with all that force driving it, it cracked in two. The weapon at the tail end shattered against the stone, the tail itself cracked neatly down its length. Huge chunks of living fossil splintered off in every direction.

[Bloodstone Baryonyx has suffered 36 bludgeoning damage]

Time was perpetually against them, and Martin had no intention of slowing the pace now. He could feel Julia’s healing spells taking hold of him. He could feel the stump of his arm begin to itch and writhe as the tendrils of muscle grew back, reaching out for bone that was slower to develop. But he could not allow it to be a distraction. He lit his Oathblade with Celestial Strike and hammered it down into the Baryonyx’s face, now that it had been conveniently lowered into reach.

[Bloodstone Baryonyx has suffered 12 slashing damage]

[Bloodstone Baryonyx has suffered 15 light damage]

Once more the stone split, but unlike the gruesome impact around the back of the Baryonyx this blow passed seamlessly through the bone to dig into whatever glowing force animated it from within, the light damage slipping by its natural armor as though it weren’t there at all.

Throughout all of this, Lindsay had hung on, still attached like a tick to the monster’s elbow. Keeping its lashing claws at bay. But now the Baryonyx finally found itself with a moment to rid itself of the annoyance. Hefting its club hand, it swung it for Lindsay with all its might.

Martin didn’t even have time to shout out a warning before he realized Lindsay knew exactly what she was doing, same as she always did. She abandoned her knives wedged like chisels into the joint and leaped away. Letting the weight of all that stone and power pound down into the place where she was but a moment ago. The place where she had left her weapons, just waiting for something heavy to hit them.

[Bloodstone Baryonyx has suffered 54 piercing damage]

The force of the blow drove the knives the rest of the way in, splaying out the plates of stone with an awful tectonic crunch and breaking the Baryonyx clawed arm clean off its body. Martin’s warning turned into a whoop of triumph as yet another of their enemy’s weapons was taken from it. All that it had left now was the club.

That and the teeth.

The Baryonyx lunged forward and bit onto his sword-arm like it was Jericho gulping another hotdog whole mid-raid. An almost careless lean forward, so casual that the danger didn’t even occur to Martin until the jaws were snapping shut.

[Skaife has suffered 34 piercing damage]

There should have been pain. There should always have been pain in Strata. Instead, there was a loss of feeling, as though everything inside the monster’s jaws had simply vanished out of existence. There was a sensation of wetness further up, where his blood gushed out to mat his fur. A grinding where bone and teeth met. Yet the pain that should have been overwhelming him was nowhere. All he had was numbers scrolling down when he closed his eyes.

When he blinked them open again, he was still trapped. Still pinned in place by the jaws piercing his flesh. His sword lost somewhere down this monster's stone gullet. The club hand was swinging for him, coming down to put him out of his misery. There was nothing he could do to stop it.

[BLOCKED 35 bludgeoning damage]

Jericho caught the swing. His clawed feet dragging lines into the volcanic rock below as it dragged him over the room.

Lindsay was by Martin’s side in a moment, her knives back where they belonged, taking in the mess that he’d gotten himself into with her quick darting eyes.

“Yo, snack-size! How many arms have you lost today?”

“Just two.” He managed to force a smile.

“That feels like too many arms.” She cut into him while he was distracted. Blades parting what was left of his flesh, nocking into the gap between the bones and prying his arm loose.

[Skaife has suffered 17 slashing damage]

They staggered back, with Lindsay half dragging him to keep him upright and in motion.

“It’s usually the right number.”

Jericho’s grip on the club hand was lost and it swung in to hit the space where Martin had been standing. The impact knocked yet more of the Baryonyx shark-like teeth loose, but as Martin had just discovered, there were more than enough teeth in there for it to be able to afford to lose a few.

He caught a brief glimpse of his arm and sword through the gaps that had been made. Weirdly, he didn’t miss the arm so much - his other one had almost entirely regrown throughout all this chaos - but the sword… without it he felt helpless.

“Just grow that back real quick, I’ll handle Mr. Snappy over there.”

True to her word, she turned on her heel and launched herself at the Baryonyx, even as it struggled back to its feet. One moment she was on its face, with one set of toes tucked into the indentation where its nostril should have been, the next she was up in an eye socket, stabbing into the packed dirt within, trying to reach the red glow.

[Bloodstone Baryonyx has suffered 23 piercing damage]

Even for a sightless, animated stone skeleton, Lindsay’s attempts at invasive brain surgery were enough of a distraction for everyone else to get into position. Jericho charged in under the chin of the Baryonyx, past the club hand and to the legs. Julia repositioned herself with a clear line of sight at the three of them and threw a Seed of the Sun spell at Martin, since he wasn’t going to need her immediate attention. He counted it down in his head, the seconds until the wash of healing would bring his other arm back and bring his overall health high enough that he could risk another approach on the boss.

Jericho was buffeted from side to side by the monster’s feet as it tried to shuffle around and get a clear shot at anyone. The damage was low, but it was enough, on top of everything else, to empower his Unrepentant Barrage. He threw out his arms, threw back his head, and roared as the burst of dark energy escaped him, hammering up between the stone legs of the Baryonyx into its core.

[Bloodstone Baryonyx has suffered 36 dark damage]

The damage from such a weakly empowered Vengeance ability wasn’t substantial enough to drop an enemy this strong on its own. Fortunately, all of the other damage that the thing had suffered added up, it was sufficient to push it past its limit.

There was a brief rumble as red glowing cracks spread across the living fossil’s body, and then it fell apart into a heap of broken stone.

Bloodstone Baryonyx has been defeated.

Skaife gains 2666 experience.

FOUR

The Dark Star

“Oh yeah, oh yeah, who leveled up? I leveled up! Who leveled up? I leveled up!” Lindsay’s bellowing was loud enough to drown out the system notifications. Martin used his newly regrown hands to cover his face with a sigh.

“We all leveled up, Lindsay.”

“Who? Me?” She gasped in surprise as she dug herself out of the heap of dead Baryonyx bits. “Why yes, I did level up.”

Martin touched on the corpse to retrieve the Deep Key, the loot, and his sword, which had been helpfully added to the monster’s inventory when it was swallowed. Perhaps this was why all the wolves in other games carried gold, an insatiable lust to consume inanimate shiny objects.

“Just try to pick something useful, something with a short cooldown so we can use it more than once.”

He dispensed the items to the others as quickly as he worked out what class they suited best. A coronet for their Hierophant. A set of skirts for their Martyr. Throwing knives for Lindsay, graven from dinosaur bones. She’d be into that, and it would provide them with some ranged options.

“Not like stupid door opening trick.” Jericho grumbled from beneath his own heap of rocks.

Martin closed his eyes to examine his options.

Skaife Murovan Exorcist

Strength: 14 Agility: 13

Endurance: 10 Willpower: 27

Health: 54 Stamina: 64

LEVEL 17

He rounded out his Willpower to 30, boosting the damage output of his newer attacks like Smite and Javelin of Faith, then moved on to selecting abilities.

The healing ability was fine, but they had a dedicated healer. Martin couldn’t help but feel that the other two were essentially the same. Cloister would provide protection against environmental damage, or damage from multiple sources at once, which could prove vital in traversal and multi-target battles. Chasten, on the other hand could prevent a powerful enemy from dealing massive area-of-effect damage to all of them, if timed right. Given that they were going to be fighting a great many Archdukes in the near future, he decided that was more valuable.

Lindsay waded over to help dig Jericho out but stopped to crow in dismay when she caught sight of trailing shadows that still followed him.

“How the hell has your class not reset to Martyr yet? You got the killing blow again!”

He shrugged, and slabs of fossilized bone slid from his shoulders to crash on the ground.

“I have a lot of Sin.”

“Well yeah, I made out with a nun once. That doesn’t mean I couldn’t shrug it off and get back to Knave.”

The only sound for a long moment was the sound of crumbling rock, and Martin prayed to whatever gods were down beneath them that nobody asked any follow-up questions.

“You made out with a nun?” Julia gasped.

“I mean, a trainee nun. We were sixteen.” Taking in the stares of her peers, Lindsay crossed her arms. “Don’t judge me, okay. Tequila is a hell of a drink.”

“You were drinking tequila when you were…”Martin cut Julia off before they could slip into another one of Lindsay’s theatrical and dubiously truthful stories.

“Can we just skip to the end where we all confirm that we already knew Lindsay was the coolest or most degenerate or whatever it is she’s trying to prove so that we can move on?”

Her head snapped around and despite the fixed line of her beak, Martin felt quite certain she was grinning.

“Aww, you think I’m the coolest.”

“That is not what I said.”

She flung herself bodily across the rocks, and he caught her before she could hurt herself, because that was what he always did. From an inch away, she crooned.

“You love me.”

“I definitely did not say that either.” He tried to untangle his newly regrown arms from about her, but every move he made seemed to end with her snuggled even closer into him.

“You love me more than that trainee nun loved me.” She batted her eyelashes at him. Strange that they’d given bird-people eyelashes.

“There is no tequila in Strata, so that hypothesis cannot be tested.”

Jericho slapped the side of his head, dislodging some sediment from his ear, then seemed to catch up to the conversation.

“A nun?”

“Can we please head back to the gate?” Martin shouted over the ensuing chatter. “We have a lot of dungeon still to clear.”

They all groaned but shook off the remnants of the fight and turned toward the cave entrance to begin their long trek back. It was only as Lindsay walked out of the room entirely that a cog seemed to turn in Martin’s head. “The mirror.”

“The mirror?” Julia cast a glance back at him.

“The broken basalt the boss came in through.” Martin made his way over to it. Jumping a little to see over the ledge. “The shortcut back to the gate might be through there.”

Hoisting himself up and over the jagged edge of the shattered mirror with only minor damage to his hands, the empty space where the dinosaur fossil had been waiting became visible. There was the obligatory cut-out section of the wall where it had supposedly been lodged, but there was a whole waiting room back there so that it had plenty of room to choose its route of egress. The sheet of stone that had stood between them was opaque but given that the Baryonyx did not seem to use its eyes, which had probably proved no impediment to it.

Beyond that antechamber, there were a pair of tunnels drilled out through the solid mass of fossils, one leading upward, back toward the entrance to the Deep, and almost invariably toward the Deep Gate, just as Martin had predicted. Then there was the other, spiraling downward.

A hidden path that was clearly leading the wrong way, it set Martin’s gamer sense tingling. There was some sort of secret there, some sort of prize, but it would cost them time. He immediately discounted it for that reason, then recognized the folly of his own actions just a moment later as Lindsay came bounding in. There would be no turning her away from that.

“Secret passage? Secret passage! We’ve got a secret passage!” She spotted Martin edging toward the path that would take them in the correct direction and her eyes narrowed. “Oh no you don’t. We’ve got a secret passage, so we’ve got to pass it, secretly. We’ve got to go do the thing!”

“We have a limited amount of time in which to…”She shouted him down.

“We’ve got to do the thing!”

“But, we have only got…”

She was beak to nose with him then, almost vibrating with the intensity of her emotion.

“The! Thing! Martin!”

He glanced past her nervously.

“Guys, can you…” Julia laughed in his face.

“You think we can convince her to do literally anything?”

Jericho was already lumbering over toward the downward spiral.

“If we could steer her, we wouldn’t keep you around.”

Martin opened and shut his mouth. Admitting defeat and pressing on was the most efficient way to proceed.

“So far, the only hidden content we’ve encountered has been an extra boss. Are we prepared to face another boss?”

“Aren’t we always?” Jericho snorted as he shouldered his way by.

“It could be anything!” Martin knew he’d lost, but he might as well go down swinging. “Last time it was a giant squid thing that nearly wiped the floor with us.” From down the dark spiral, Lindsay’s voice echoed back.

“Nearly doesn’t count.”

“If we had made one wrong move…”

“Then it would have ended the way every other fight would if we made one wrong move.” Julia sighed.

“The situation is somewhat different now.” Martin crossed his arms. As though his weedy little rat limbs were impressing anyone.

He trailed after Julia, despite his protestations, and he could see a smirk apparent on her face when she glanced back.

“Weren’t you the one saying that we couldn’t let that affect our decision-making?”

“That was when I was trying to get you to make good decisions. Not make bad ones more decisively,” he grumbled as he followed them all down into the dark, talking to himself more than anyone else.

Lindsay took point on this exploration, abandoning all of their previous caution in her relentless pursuit of adrenaline. She dashed down the slope until it became too steep, then slid down like she was skateboarding, rather than plummeting headlong into a pitch-black hole in the ground.

“Cowabunga!”

If he could have covered his face with his hands without losing his balance, then that probably would have been the moment that he did it. As it was, with hands at his sides, he got to see the spiraling slope abruptly reverse direction into an upturned lip, just before Lindsay went flying off it, screaming obscenities all the way.

Julia had enough time to throw out her hands and catch herself on the rough-hewn fossil walls. She hadn’t done the math in her head like Martin had, just looked and made her best guess. Because of that, she hadn’t accounted for the other factors. Like the bulk of Jericho roaring down the slope behind her. She hung there for a fraction of a second before his momentum tore her free and launched both of them off the edge. Once again, she exhibited some extremely Lindsay-like language that might have shocked Martin were he not otherwise engaged.

He did not have a Wulvan Heretic bearing down on him. He had a clear vision of everything that was going on up ahead and he had been practicing making use of all four of his limbs, and his tail for eventualities just like this. He caught hold of the walls, jumped up to jam his feet in too, and then dug his tail into a gap for good measure. It was uncomfortable, but it worked. He stopped.

The sounds of fighting had broken out beneath him. Lindsay’s tell-tale cry of, “Raptor Strike,” echoed up from the abyss. At least there was a bottom to the pit, even if it did have something murderous and monstrous in it. He would have been quite annoyed if his whole guild had died to the kind of trap usually found in a children’s playpark.

Lowering himself back down gently, he let gravity slowly carry him down to the slope and away from the wall toward to the central chasm. Then latching his paws over the top, he pulled himself up to see what was happening in the chamber below.

Predictably enough for something involving Iron Riot, it was carnage.

The heap of bones that they had fallen on for a particularly ungentle landing, were now animating. They swirled out and around the gathered heap of bodies in a cyclone of bones. Cracking off the walls of the chamber and getting knocked off course, spinning in so close to the gathered bodies in the center of the room that Jericho was already bruised and bleeding, hunched over the other two like a hairy umbrella in a storm. From beneath him Lindsay was already blindly lashing out at whatever fossilized femur passed her way.

Despite all this chaos, somehow, Lindsay still managed to poke her head out from underneath the bulk of Jericho.

“Martin, get your tail down here!” she bellowed.

His first instinct had been to throw himself into the melee, which was the preferred range for his class and skill setup, but then he recalled the old trouble he used to have in raids. When he was in the thick of the fighting and couldn’t see enough to adapt their strategy.

“I’m analyzing the situation.”

The bones’ circuits around the room were beginning to tighten. The floor beneath Iron Riot was pitted with the outlines of where they used to be, creating perilous footing for the fight that was about to come. Piece by piece, each fossilized length of bone came crashing together against the one beside it, not forming a skeleton of anything that had ever lived, but instead constructing from those raw materials a whole new creature.

Lindsay’s voice jumped up an octave.

“Martin you get down here or I’m going to cyberbully you in real life.”

In truth, he had been about to make the jump and land a hit using gravity as his ally, but that cry gave him pause and he had to ask.

“What does that even mean?”

“It means get down here!”

He did make the jump then, but not at her prompting. Because he could see the bones taking shape and saw the opportunity. Two huge slabs of interwoven bone were coming together to form the top of the hunched, tank-like monster that they faced. By leaping and striking now with Smite he could bypass that armor and deal the full damage to whatever that dull red glow inside it happened to be.

[Bellator has suffered 30 piercing damage]

[Bellator has suffered 30 light damage]

The blow struck home, and it struck home hard, but as the bones slammed shut above him, Martin realized that he had not considered what would happen if he didn’t manage a killing blow to the rosy glow.

“Martin?”

“In here!” The bones beneath his feet writhed and shifted, forming and reforming all around him.

“You’re in the monster?” Julia’s voice was a muffled squeal through the grinding layers of fossilized bone surrounding him. Martin had no idea what form the monster had finally taken. All that he could judge by was the hollow shape he currently occupied, which told him very little, and the title that appeared when he focused on it for too long. Bellator, Vanguard of the Heart, Ribcage of the Adversary.

He wet his lips, even as the heat within the cage of bones fought to dry them out again.

“Mistakes were made.”

The glow around him had been strong and steady before it lurched into motion, but now it pulsed, slowly at first, but more intensely the faster that the tank moved. Martin stumbled around, trying to keep his balance, flailing his sword around at the glowing nothingness that surrounded him to no effect. He could hear weapons cracking off the stony armor of the beast as the rest of Iron Riot went to work, but they were dull. Whatever they were trying did not seem to be working. When Bellator suddenly lunged, he was knocked off his feet entirely, rolling end over end across the writhing bones.

They were not a solid floor. Quite the opposite in fact, now that more of his surface area was spread over the interlocking pieces of fossil it became increasingly apparent that they were almost liquid. Rippling away from his touch, opening out and then rushing back in when they bounced back from the outer walls of the chamber he was contained in. Like a rat in a trap.

[Jericho has suffered 18 bludgeoning damage]

When the ripple came back, it closed in around him hard. It felt like it was trying to pinch through gear and flesh to find his own bones. To make him a part of the thing. To consume him. Fur tore as he pried himself free, but every move that he made was reflected in some new lurch of the shell around him. He hit off both walls in quick succession, turning his Healing Touch on himself just to keep going.

There was a thump from above him, followed by two smaller thumps as Lindsay hammered her blades home.

“Man, if I had a nickel for every time we had to fight some weird Strata boss with Martin inside it, I’d have two nickels.”

“That is not a lot of money.” Jericho’s voice was cut off with a grunt of pain. The impact of fossil on flesh was too distant for Martin to feel it in here, but he knew what had happened.

[Jericho has suffered 12 bludgeoning damage]

Above him, Lindsay hammered her knives down again and again trying to crack the shell, trying to set Martin free. It seemed that she was in good spirits as always.

“Still weird it happened twice.”

Martin was flattened onto the floor as Bellator launched itself up into the air. He was launched up to splatter on the roof before gravity took hold of the bone-beast and brought them crashing down again. Lindsay made a noise like she’d just tried to retrieve a particularly succulent piece of fruit from a blender that was turned on, and the stabbing stopped.

[Skaife has suffered 11 bludgeoning damage]

[Tesra has suffered 28 bludgeoning damage]

The landing cost him health, but it didn’t damage him as badly as the grappling bones that tried to hook into him when he stayed there too long.

From under the belly of the beast, he heard Lindsay groaning.

“I don’t suppose that there’s a nice big off-switch in there?”

“Glowing stuff.” Martin groaned as he pried himself free. “Bones. No controls.”

There was grunting as she pulled herself out from under the bone-plates. Creaks and whines as Lindsay worked her hollow bones out from the all-too-solid collection that made up the Bellator. She let out a groan as it lurched forward once more.

“That’s a shame because this thing is kind of kicking our asses.”

“We do not need Rat-boy!” Jericho roared from off to one side. The dull thrumming of his Vengeance rebounding off the solid plates of the monster’s shell.

“I am kicking it in the ass!”

Julia sounded like she was laughing out there.

“Then why is your arm off?” Another lurch and Jericho’s voice was coming from much further away.

“It is healing already!”

“Because I’m healing it!” She yelped as Bellator made another leap, this time toward her.

Another impact tossed Martin from wall to wall. A heavy blow dealt to the Bellator or a heavy blow that it had dealt. No death notifications had sprung up, so Martin didn’t jump to the worst conclusion, but there was a whole world between dead and healthy that he wouldn’t wish on any one of his friends.

His attention had been so focused on what was happening outside, coupled with escaping from the grasping fossils, that he had not noticed the changes in his surroundings. The pulsing of the light around him was now a strobe in the same hot glow as had animated every other fossil monster in this Deep. Now it was cooling in tone. Fading first to a washed out white, and then by the time that he noticed what was happening, toward green.

An all too familiar shade of green.

Panic took hold of him, and he started scrabbling at the walls as though he were truly a rat caught in a trap instead of a thinking, logical human being. He did not even realize in his terror that the pulsing of the light and the pounding of his heart had synchronized.

“Let me out. Let me out.” He wasn’t speaking loud enough for Lindsay and the rest to hear over the crunching and crashing of stone around him, and in his panic he had forgotten all about using the guild crest on his armor to speak directly, but his words weren’t for them anyway. They couldn’t save him. They couldn’t crack this thing open and let him go free. His litany was not pleading, it was a prayer. “Let me out. Please let me out.”

Come to me.

The voice wasn’t inside his head anymore. It wasn’t haunting his dreams. It was all around him. It was the light. Deafeningly loud. Pressing in on him from every side.

Come to me. Become me. Live through me. Live forever.

He screamed to try and drown it out, but it was fruitless. The sound was trapped in there with him, echoing back and forth from one wall to the other, from the bones that encased him to the bones he encased. They all thrummed in harmony. Even as he screamed, he could feel his teeth picking up the tune, vibrating in his gums.

“Let me out!”

Let me in.

He unleashed his Halo inside Bellator’s guts. He hammered his Celestial Strike-bathed Oathblade down into the mulch that had been made of his feet by the churning fossils and twisted himself free.

[Bellator has suffered 12 piercing damage]

[Bellator has suffered 14 light damage]

Everything that the light touched was stilled just for a moment until the shadows came creeping back in. A Javelin of Faith exploded off the top of the enclosure, showering down bright sparks that drove back the green.

[Bellator has suffered 30 light damage]

He hobbled to one side of the monster’s shell on feet now lacking the toes that helped him balance, and he brought his sword down on the shuddering wall of bone fragments with all his frantic strength.

Let me in. Let me in. Let me in.

The echoes hounded him, but just as his light could drive back the green, so too could the thunderous crashing of his blade against the walls. Outside he knew the others were still fighting, still battering helplessly off armor plates as thick as walls, and maybe what he was doing would help them with that, but it was not why he was doing it.

He was trying to tear his way out, because the only alternative was to listen to what the voice was trying to tell him. To think about its words. To wonder what it was offering him.

To do that, would be like opening the door and inviting it in. What the green light was offering him, what the heart was offering him, it was not the kind of thought that he could entertain without it taking root. He had seen what happened to the people that the corruption of this world took root in. Trapped without bodies for all of time inside of the world of the game. He was not going to succumb.

Let me in. Let me in. Let me in. Let me in.

Celestial Strike ignited his sword and as he brought it crashing down, the fossilized bones rippled away, just as they had when he had fallen. Parting before the blazing holy light instead of enduring its touch. With nothing to hit, Martin fell forward, toppling end over end and out of Bellator entirely.

When he landed on the floor that he’d been considering an uneven deathtrap just moments before, he could have kissed it. In an instant, Lindsay was by his side, hooking a wing under his arm and dragging him clear as the boney amalgam that he had been inside spun and swiped at him with vast cudgels of stone.

The interior surface had done Bellator no justice, it towered over them, as big as any one of the Archdukes they had faced before. Those vast boney cudgels it had swept at Martin served as forelimbs, propping the front half of the vast creature up like the arms of a gorilla, but that was where the resemblance to anything so natural or recognizable to the human mind ended.

Ribs protruded out like tusks from the central mass where Martin had been contained, not facing only forward, but jutting out at odd angles that his mind kept trying to make sense of. Some had been broken, and the fragmented parts had latched back onto the body of the monster lower down. Jagged ends poked out from between the solid slabs of shoulder blades and boulder-joints. The number of limbs supporting the central mass was in constant flux. The two hefty bones like knuckle-dragging arms stayed more or less constant, but the rest came and went, extruding out to make brief contact with the ground for only long enough to propel it forward or turn it around.

Martin looked for a head. It was only natural to seek out that most familiar of details but trying to make sense of the churning swirl of bones between the shoulder-like positions was like trying to cross his eyes and draw out a three-dimensional image from a chaotic pattern.

Just as it had rippled all around him when he was inside, so too did the outside shift to some unseen tide. When one of Jericho’s Vengeance blasts struck a careening blow off its side, there was a brief moment when the pattern in it could be discerned. Slabs of hulking fossil were hauled around to intercept the blow. Absorbing the worst of the hit before they went shuddering back into something more closely resembling its normal shape. It was responsive, even if it was otherwise chaotic, switching from target to target entirely at random. Picking victims based on whoever was closest, or had made a noise, sometimes no reason at all. It went after Lindsay as he watched, even though he was standing right there beside her.

Its attacks were almost as confusing to witness as its defense. Those forelimb bones were reserved for slow lumbering sweeps to drive people away as it moved more than the attacks it meant to strike home. Those came in the form of sudden outbursts, great jagged lengths of fossil shot out in straight lines, barbed hooks that had once been tooth or claw were now affixed to the length of those columns, meant to snag and snare anyone struck a glancing blow by the lances of broken stone bone. To drag them back into the mass of whirling fossils that Martin had so foolishly flung himself right into from the start.

His swipe at the protruding spire of bone did no damage but it knocked it off course far enough for Lindsay’s dodge to be a success rather than seeing her raked by the thorns of fossil. As the bone slipped back inside, he lit up his sword with a Trinity Strike.

“We make a pincer attack on three.”

“What?” Lindsay croaked, as Martin simultaneously called out, “One.”

She got the idea quickly; she was nothing if not adaptable. She took off in pursuit of both him and Bellator as the boss went scuttling off toward Jericho, where he stood guard over his girlfriend.

“Two.”

They were both closer together than Martin would have liked thanks to having given chase across the room, but it seemed that Lindsay had a solution to that problem. A leap into the air gave her momentum, and then she vanished down into her own shadow as though she had never been there at all.

Martin was so stunned by her sudden vanishing act that he almost forgot what he was meant to be doing, even as he said.

“Three.”

From a deep shadow in the crenulated walls of this pit, Lindsay came flying with all of her past momentum behind the Raptor Strike she was already screaming about. For his part, Martin was forced to make a wild jump of his own to hammer the Trinity Strike home in time to empower her to make a critical hit. As predicted, all the great slabs of bone and stone within Bellator swung around to meet his strike. The light damage carried through but anything else was lost.

Leaving the opposite side completely undefended when Lindsay hammered her daggers home.

The combined force of momentum, strength, and the power granted by her ability combined into an explosive combination. A critical hit so hard that the air around her shook.

[CRITICAL HIT]

[Bellator has suffered 56 piercing damage]

The outer shell was broken. Fragments of fossil scattering beneath the bulk of Bellator as it struggled to reform legs and find its footing. Falling dead and inert back into the holes that they’d been hauled out of. The loss of that small portion of its being created gaps. Gaps through which the shimmering green light of Strata’s Heart shone through once more. The Deep lights that dwelled so far beneath the surface of the earth that they no longer bore any resemblance to the produce of the sun or stars. Rich and liquid, the patches of green danced across the bare stone. The monster was now a broken disco-ball.

As the light strobed over his face, he could hear the voice echoing in his mind once more.

Come back to me.

“Double hits from now on. It can only defend one direction. Slow and steady, make sure you’re together. Call out the times if you need to.” They regrouped as Martin barked out his commands.

Jericho’s freshly regrown arm was still mostly bald. Now that Martin could see all the muscles underneath the surface that the fur usually hid, he felt even less inclined to arm-wrestle with the hulking Heretic. He clapped him heavily on the back.

“Nice of you to join in.”

“Well, I couldn’t just stay inside and leave all the fun and amputations to you, could I?” Martin tried for lighthearted banter, but in truth, he was already worried that his feet were not going to fully regrow after this battle was through. The rule seemed to have been that only injuries dealt by the Archdukes themselves, fragments, or direct creations of the Heart, remained on his flesh when the fighting was done, but Bellator shone as green as any of them had.

The other wounds, they had been markings on him, nuisances more than anything else, with the exception of his lost eye, but how was he meant to finish the dungeon if he couldn’t even walk properly? Jericho would carry him for a time, but when things got difficult, he’d be the most acceptable sacrifice. Then the rest of Iron Riot would be on their own and they’d fail.

Bellator had already recovered its senses after the heavy blow, scuttling in a wide curve to come at them from the side, rather than head on. Once again, Martin was struck with the idea that there was something like an intelligence behind that glowing green light. That these monsters obeyed their instincts second and the booming voice he kept hearing in his head first.

Lindsay was staring at him with enough irritation that he could feel the fur on the back of his neck prickling.

“Seriously?”

“What?” He couldn’t take his eyes off Bellator now, not when he was trying to read the next move of something amorphous and protean, that could change shape as easily as he could turn his cheek.

“You aren’t going to ask how I did that?” She prodded at him with a dagger. “The teleporty drop-stab thing? You’re just… not interested?”

“I’d assume it was the new ability you unlocked during level up.” He shrugged his shoulders. The monster was still on the move, looping out even further and scuttling up the side of the wall, hooking its protruding bones into the holes left behind in the walls by their original collection.

Lindsay only had eyes for Martin. Narrowed eyes. Scowling daggers at him.

“And you aren’t excited about it.”

He hit her in the chest with Rebuke to get her clear of the falling monster’s double-armed blow to where they’d been clustered. He leaped back himself, somewhat clumsily. Fortunately, Jericho and Julia had already realized what was coming when Bellator started gaining height and had cleared some space.

As it landed, all the bones compressed together for a moment, snatching away the green light that had been bathing the room, but as it recoiled and spun to face him, the bones spread apart once more, and the green hit him.

Come inside and you will live forever. Stay with me.

Martin shook his head, calling over to Lindsay. Trying to stay focused.

“It works between individual shadows in your line of sight?”

She had rolled back to her feet, but she looked a little worse for wear after being tumbled over the pumice stone texture of the ground. Many feathers were out of place.

“Yes?”

“I’m very excited about it. It has a lot of potential.” While this may have sounded entirely sarcastic, in truth, Martin’s mind was already spinning with all of the potential applications for the ability. “Can we focus on the task at hand?” Celestial Strike ignited his sword, and he held it up at the level of his eyes to block the Deep lights shining from inside of Bellator.

“Strike on three.”

He ducked under a sweep of the forearm bones. Moving in closer instead of shying away, getting inside Bellator’s reach. For other enemies, it might have been a good position. For this one, it put him in easy striking distance of the writhing bones of the body.

“One.”

[BLOCKED]

[Jericho has suffered 21 bludgeoning damage]

A shudder ran through Bellator as one of its hits struck home. Jericho had taken the full weight of one of the arm-blows to the chest. He’d done it deliberately, judging by how he’d braced for it, but even with Julia frantically healing him, it had taken a toll on him. Blood bubbled from his muzzle as he struggled to stay upright.

“Two!” Lindsay called out from the far side of Bellator.

Whether Jericho could make the attack or not, they had to press in. Ducking by a sudden jagged ended sprout of stone, Martin was suddenly there. Suddenly in position. He opened his mouth to shout and was surprised to hear Jericho’s wet roar.

“Three!”

Once again Martin swung first to draw the armor to his side, well aware that what he lacked in damage dealing he made up for in utility. The fossils slammed together to shield Bellator, the great plates of bone swiveling around from all sides. Leaving every other part of it open to the combined assault of Lindsay and Jericho.

Her daggers struck home, and she was so focused on dodging through the fossil spikes that she didn’t even bother to call out her attack, anime style. Jericho’s Vengeance was unleashed in not a single blow, but a sudden torrent of them. Shadows leaping out from his body to pummel at the boss from all sides. Every time it managed to get a bone into place to shield itself, his next strike would come in from the other side. A Barrage of Vengeance turning all the damage it had done to Jericho back on its originator.

[Bellator has suffered 31 piercing damage]

[Bellator has suffered 8 dark damage]

[Bellator has suffered 9 dark damage]

[Bellator has suffered 7 dark damage]

[Bellator has suffered 8 dark damage]

[Bellator has suffered 8 dark damage]

[Bellator has suffered 9 dark damage]

[Bellator has suffered 8 dark damage]

Martin’s own blow produced nothing but an ache in his arms, but the others more than made up for it.

The first time that they had landed a palpable hit on Bellator, none of them had known how it would respond. This time around was a different matter. As the monster shuddered and shook, dropping a rain of little pieces of bone and fossil, Martin pressed the advantage. He called to the others to close their eyes and unleashed another Halo as it came off cooldown. The light of his ability washed out the green that was trying to protrude, and while it may not have blinded a monster with no eyes, there was no doubt that having its internal light driven back had added to Bellator’s confusion.

When bones lashed out this time, they were not in straight spurs, but an explosive flailing of pieces heading out in every direction. Some flopped by as though the fossils were tentacles, others detached entirely to clatter across the room without making contact. None of them came close to Iron Riot.

“What’s next?” Julia still kept her distance.

Martin’s head was still spinning. The mental assault of the green light had confused him, despite all of his attempts to keep his head clear. It had such clarity compared to the constant buzz of his own thoughts, that it was almost tempting to submit just for the quiet it would bring. That lack of focus meant that he was only now able to inform the others how to use the opportunity that had been served up to them with this optional boss. Not for special gear or any such nonsense, but for help. Help from people who might actually listen instead of dismissing them on the basis of the level number hovering over their heads.

“You’re all about to be bombarded with messages from other players. Your instincts will tell you to scream for help, but our situation is too unbelievable. If we tell the truth, it will be ignored.”

“What are you talking about?” Lindsay rolled her eyes. Hard to perceive when they were jet black, and the feathers surrounding them were just as dark. Martin could hear the roll in her voice more than he could see it. “How do we beat the…”

“Bellator’s fate is sealed.” Martin didn’t mean to cut her off, didn’t mean for his voice to take on that strange echo. But it did. “Ours is changeable.”

Jericho leaped between Martin and the latest lash of bones. The more that the fossils came loose, the more extravagant each sweeping strike became. The dimming green light stretching out to connect them even as they extended out past touching. He took the blow across his back, roaring.

“I like your confidence, but I hate your stupid face.”

Martin only had eyes for Lindsay. The one that he knew was the best at communication, and the worst at restraint. Julia and Jericho would obey him, because they were desperate for any hope, but Lindsay was less predictable.

“When they message you, share whatever information you like about the fight. We don’t need any advantage here; we need their trust and appreciation. Then we tell them about the funny little problem we’re having.”

Jericho’s body glowed with freshly harvested Vengeance as he scoffed.

“Nobody is going to believe…”

“Some kind of bug that’s stopping us from logging out. We can’t contact a Master in-game. Could they file a report about it, ask on the forums if anyone has a fix, tell people that we’re stuck?”

The only sound for a moment was the shifting and chattering of the fossils as it lined up for another attack. Julia was the only one to muster an argument at all.

“But the Masters…”

Martin had been ready for that one.

“Won’t shut down a watered-down rumor.”

“Dude. The monster?” Jericho was bracing for another attack, but it wasn’t immediately clear if he could actually endure it. Whatever else Bellator was, it was brutally strong. The Vengeance that swirled around Jericho like a second shadow could not protect him, only harm others, and for all that Julia poured constant healing out into her boyfriend’s body, he clearly hadn’t recovered from the last strike by the time that this next one was coming.

Martin’s attention was dragged back to the task at hand. But even as he ran forward to help deflect the blow his mouth still ran faster.

“Don’t give in to panic. Practice what you need to say.”

“The monster!?” Julia yelped.

Rebuke was still on cooldown, but Javelin of Faith was not. It couldn’t produce the direct force required to make the monster miss. Particularly given its fragmented nature. But when he struck the sweeping arm bone in the joint, it caused a spasm as the green light binding it was disrupted.

[Bellator has suffered 8 light damage]

Lindsay’s leaping strike took it on the opposite side, striking solidly into the fossil itself and knocking it even further awry.

[Bellator has suffered 14 piercing damage]

“Teamwork makes the dream work!” She cackled even as she fell.

[Jericho has suffered 18 bludgeoning damage]

The crushing strike became a glancing blow, and Jericho’s death became more Vengeance for him to unleash.

“Right, focus.” Martin chided himself. “Spread out, ready your attacks. We’ll stick to the three count. Once you’re in position, shout.”

Bellator was coming apart at the seams. The broken fragments of its body held together by the same green pulse that had kept it going from the very beginning. That same light leaking out through the places where it had been cracked. Where fossils had dropped out to shatter on the floor. Where the bones themselves were cracked through.

It was becoming more and more dangerous as it lost cohesion, both in terms of its attacks and the corrupting influence of the light spilling from it. Every time that light touched on Martin’s skin, he could feel the voice gnawing at the edge of his senses.

As Smite ticked off cooldown he readied his sword to attack.

It didn’t matter if he suffered some small injuries. His feet were starting to reform without issue, so he believed that he’d recover from whatever else happened too.

“One!”

“Two!” Lindsay echoed back a moment later.

That was when Bellator struck. It had learned what the noises that they were making meant, it wasn’t going to hang around waiting for the pain to arrive.

A fresh jagged lance of bone fragments shot out from its mass, impaling Martin through and through. Under his ribs and out his back. With enough force to lift him off the ground.

[Skaife has suffered 43 piercing damage]

All the thinning bones of its body were thrust out into that attack. Dedicated to his destruction over protecting itself. Though he couldn’t breathe, there was enough air left in his unpunctured lung to cry out.

“Three.”

He brought his own sword down clumsily on the extended tendril, even as he heard the others unleashing their assaults on the undefended planes of the monster. It was just enough to draw in a little more of the remaining bone-cover. Enough to weaken its flanks.

[Bellator has suffered 30 light damage]

The spear running through him lost cohesion with the impact of Iron Riot’s assault. The fragments coming loose inside him. Having bits of the monster left inside him was less than ideal, but at least the pressure eased, and he could drop back down to land on his feet. Albeit with some wobbling.

Come to me. Live for me. Become me.

The green light now came like solar flares, tearing out from the central mass. Picking up bits and pieces of the bone still in its orbit and flinging it out. Bellator had barely looked like anything human to begin with, and now as it lost the last of its cohesion, it also lost all semblance of anything living at all. The heavy bones that had been its front legs were torn apart into shards as the flares of green ripped through them. The fragments of fossil peppered the ground and the walls as they were fired explosively out at Iron Riot, but there was no deliberate aim to them, and the pieces that didn’t fall short barely had the momentum to break the skin.

Numbness was spreading out from where Martin had been impaled. The cold sensation that Strata supplied instead of pain. He didn’t know how bad the damage was, but he did know that he could still feel pieces of Bellator inside him. They shifted and writhed, grinding against his organs, like they were still being puppeteered when the green light bathed him.

There was something uniquely unpleasant about the sensation of something living, moving inside him. His stomach turned over, even though it was, as far as he could tell, uninjured.

“Martin!” Julia cried out to him as the next destabilizing wave swept out from the collapsing star at Bellator’s heart. Her healing spell caught him at the same time the green washed over his vision and…

Be me. Be mine. Be all that you were born to be. You are mine. I have marked you. Prove your worth. Prove that you can. Prove all of them wrong. Come to me. Live for me. Live forever.

By the time that he came back to himself, he had been flung across the room, and the wound on his side was closed up. The fossil fragments still inside of him shifted, wriggling as though they were giggling. Twitching and crawling inside him.

“No.” His voice shuddered as something moved against his lungs. Panic seized him then. “Need to get them out.”

Fumbling with his armor, her pried it apart to look at the bare expanse of fur where a scar should have been, perfectly resealed by Julia’s holy magic. He could swear that he saw the pieces moving beneath the surface, surging and shifting under the skin. Leaving the numbness that should have been agony in their wake.

He turned his grip on the Oathblade, hands shaking with effort to overcome the stillness spreading like ice from the sealed wound. He had to get them out. He needed to open himself and let them out, or they’d be stuck in there forever, doing untold damage. Poisoning him with the green light still clinging to them. Whispering to him.

As the sharpened flat-top of the blade pressed into his flesh, Martin closed his eyes against the sight of his blood being spilled. He could feel the sharpness of it still, the hollow feeling where the pain should have been. And within all that nothingness, he could feel the fragments of fossilized bone scurrying between bones and organs to escape the intrusion. He had to dig deeper. Cut further. Spread the lips of the wound wide and force his hand inside, squeezing past ribs and slippery, rubbery parts of himself to reach the hard fragments.

They cut into his fingers when he caught them, like they were trying to get back inside him another way before they were even extracted. He let them hook into his fingertips if it meant they’d release liver and gallbladder. He sloshed them around, mangling himself as he went, gathering all three pieces that were inside him before he tried to drag them out. The shards fought him. The blood slicking his hands made them slip and slide, his own body turned against him, trying to help the enemy maintain its foothold on him. With all of his attention turned to his own personal crisis, he was only vaguely aware of the cataclysm unfolding behind him.

Lindsay and Jericho had tried to press their advantage after landing their powerful blows, but they could not have accounted for Bellator’s abrupt collapse. Lindsay, making one of her usual acrobatic leaps, rebounded off the cave wall and drove for the heart of the beast, slipping cleanly between two of the remaining armored plates and into the light within. Jericho had mustered what little was left of his Vengeance to unleash another massive blow, only to realize that he could hit Lindsay in the process. And through it all, poor Julia was frozen in horror and disgust at the sight of Martin impaling himself on his own sword and then thrusting an arm up to the elbow in his own body cavity.

Yet through all of this Bellator did not stand idle. The power that animated it, the green light of the Heart, no longer pulsed. Instead, it throbbed and strobed, so bright that Lindsay seemed no more than a silhouette within. With each strobe of the light, her movements were illuminated for only an instant, then the swirling orbit of stone would hide her once more. From the screaming, it would seem she was in pain, but given that pain did not truly exist here, perhaps it was simply disorientation.

“Get out!” Martin screamed, from where he knelt in a pool of his own blood.

All form now lost, the sphere of glowing light that contained Lindsay was the only thing that gave Bellator any semblance of shape at all. The grit and bones that spun about that central point moved in chaotic jolts, battering off everyone that they touched with no more malice than the falling of rain. That did not mean that they were harmless by any means. They tore at Jericho’s unwarded flesh with ferocity, and his blood joined the swirling orbits in thin red bands. Bands that turned to black when the green light washed over them.

Martin’s blood shimmered from red to black on his own hands. Shifting from the pulsing brightness that had always meant life to the dull oily color found on the hides of the Night Ravagers. Only the sound of the concussion coming from behind him was enough to draw him out of his reverie and back into the actions.

The green sphere at the center of it all had contracted until it was so small Lindsay fell right out of the light to be tumbled amid the swirl all around it instead. Her blood joined the interlocking rings surrounding the central shape for just a moment, then they all started collapsing inwards, just as the objects that had made it up began to be drawn in closer and closer.

As the blood coated the green sphere, now no bigger than a tennis ball, it changed in color, from green to black, just as their blood had appeared. The light that had been shining so blinding bright from within it now stuttered out. The room plunged into darkness, and Martin was probably the only one of them to see that the sphere remained. It hung there above them black and ominous, sucking in every fragment of bone, stone, or scrap of dust from the chamber. He felt himself beginning to skid toward it himself, and Lindsay, with her hollow bones, was already being lifted off the ground.

He let the pull carry him forward, leaping to intercept her before she could touch the dark event horizon hanging over them. Their combined weight and his own momentum just barely enough to resist the pull, and they rolled end over end to the other side of the room.

A glance around brought Martin back to reality. The pieces that had been inside him were now long gone. Sucked away, along with anything else that wasn’t strapped down. Julia and Jericho clung to one another, but they were blind and lost in the sudden darkness, stumbling toward the baby black hole without even knowing it.

“Stop moving!”

Jericho did try, but they were too close. The gravity of the situation had taken hold.

Dazed from her time in the green light, and her roll across the room, Lindsay pawed at his bleeding side.

“Are you a puppet now. If I shove my arm in there, can I steer you. Can I make you do a goofy voice?”

“Please don’t.”

“Oh, I’m totally going to make you drink a glass of water while I do your voice.”

There were no exits from the chamber. Iron Riot had fallen from above, but they had not even a moment to think before getting dragged into the fighting. Now Martin’s eyes scraped over every cranny, desperately hunting for any way out.

The orb was still shrinking, growing denser and denser. Collapsing in on itself, under its own weight. A dying star. Martin knew very little about astrophysics, except the little that he’d absorbed from popular culture, but he seemed to recall that there were two directions in which a dying star could go. It would either explode out into a supernova, or it would implode in further and become a black hole in truth. Both options would kill them all if they didn’t get the hell out of the room.

“We need to get out.” There was a hitch in Martin’s voice that he had not meant to be there. “Look for an exit, it’s going to blow.”

“Explosion?!” Julia’s voice sounded more high-pitched than usual, like she was a scared little girl in the dark.

Martin hauled the punch-drunk Guildmaster to her feet and flung her in the direction of a promising gap in the stone where it looked like one of Bellator’s big forelegs had come from.

“Or an implosion. Either way. An exit. Now.”

Julia, furthest out from the epicenter was able to move to the walls the fastest. She called out from her crevasse.

“Nothing.”

There was a plaintive wail in the room now, as even the air that filled the chamber was sucked inside of the collapsing Bellator. Still, the black sphere grew smaller and denser. The rock of the chamber walls began to shake now it had been stripped of all dust and debris. The pull exerted across its whole surface, trying to pull it free of the stratum that it was a part of.

“Nothing here.” Lindsay squeezed her way back out of the hole she’d been slithering into.

Jericho was down on his knees peering down into the gaps in the floor and shoving his hand into those that were wide enough to feel for a bottom.

“We are trapped like rats.”

It brought a terse smile to Martin’s face. Rats were never trapped. They’d never stop fighting to escape, chewing through everything shy of solid steel to make their way out. He just needed some bigger teeth. What luck that the dungeon always provided.

“I need a boost.” Letting go of the pitted surface he’d been clinging to, Martin made his way toward the black sphere, now just the size of a Ping-Pong ball, if that. “Lindsay, how’s your teleport?”

Her eyes blinked shut for just a moment while she checked.

“Shadow Step is on cooldown.”

That was less than ideal, but Martin was nothing if not adaptable. He took off running diagonally, but the pull of the orb’s gravity curved him back in toward the Heretic on the other side of the chamber.

“Jericho, fastball over the top?”

He spread his arms wide. All questioning, all doubt, gone in this critical moment. Just as it always was. Martin almost wished that they were always in crisis.

“You got it, boss.”

Once he was within reach the world became a brief blur of fur and motion and then he was soaring. The gravity of the black pinprick accelerating him, and Jericho’s fling carrying him up high enough that he descended on what remained of Bellator from above instead of being dragged in from the side to become yet more fuel for its mass-collapse.

Martin thrust his hand down as he fell, and the moment before his palm touched that little black spark of nothingness, Rebuke ticked off cooldown and fired.

In the real world, no force that humanity could wield would have moved something so dense. In the real world, Martin would have fallen, and been compressed into a fine paste to spiral through the event horizon of the black hole. But this was Strata, and the rules of the game overruled such petty concepts as physics.

The black heart of Bellator fell, pushed down from where it had hung in the air, down through the Swiss-cheese stone beneath their feet and now that it was in motion, there was no force in the universe likely to stop it. As it touched the stone, it ripped it to shreds. Crumbling everything in reach of its gravity as it sunk lower and lower.

Martin’s hand had come too close, and he was now straining with all his might to retrieve his arm from the ever-deepening hole, but he did not have the strength to break free. Bellator was hauling him down after it. His shoulder hit the outer edge of the miniature pit that was being made and he felt the joint begin to pop out of place.

Lindsay caught him by the tail, slowing his descent. Jericho’s arms wrapped around him, pulling him back. Julia’s healing hands pressed against his shoulder, glowing with holy light. The three of them embraced him and hauled him back from the dark pit still trying to drag him down.

They all collapsed back in a heap. All piled on top of each other, all breathing hard. All alive and together.

“Okay, that sort of worked.” Lindsay groaned from under Jericho. “But how do we get out?”

In the depths of the stone beneath them, Bellator died. But it did not go quietly into oblivion. All of the mass that it had absorbed, all of the bones and stone and air that had been sucked inside of it was set free when the awful pull of gravity lost its hold. It exploded out, tearing through the stone, exploding up in a pillar of flame from the small pit that it had first made, now widening by the moment as the stone melted away.

Martin used Chasten a moment before the explosion rushed up over them. Preventing all damage from that initial cataclysm. Then Iron Riot fled in an amalgamated mass toward the walls, clambering over each other, crab-walking and dragging themselves across one another and the punctured stone beneath them too. From those fossil-hollows that connected up with that new shaft, more flame exploded forth too, but they were not close enough to roast Lindsay or Jericho on the ground floor of their tower of bodies, even if those bursts of white-hot flame were more than enough to put some extra energy into their motions.

[ANNOUNCEMENT: Iron Riot have defeated Bellator]

Skaife gains 3588 experience.

FIVE

The Lay of the Lies

The notification cleared from their sight before the black streaks across their vision that the fire had left behind. Martin had been tangled underneath Julia, sandwiched between her and Jericho beneath, but even as tremors still ran through him, his mind and mouth ran.

“Remember your job everyone. Small, believable. Glitch in the game has us unable to log out. That’s all.”

“Nah, we should definitely tell them you killed the guy who invented the game and now his cult, who think that a video game controls the universe have trapped us in here as punishment. Everyone is going to buy that.” Lindsay had managed to untangle herself before they all collapsed again. She had a secret talent for disentangling from masses of bodies that seemed to support some of the lewder stories she had shared about her spare time.

“Sarcasm?” Martin blinked out at her from beneath Julia’s draped tail.

“Yes!?”

“Then you do remember the plan. Good.” He nodded.

She opened her beak to spit back an answer, but the sudden influx of messages had begun.

CatelynSnark: Nice!!!! Haven’t seen that boss yet, what Deep is it in?

BoneJon: How the hell you Iron Riot bitches finding all these hidden bosses? You cheating? Can I join you?

RedFace: Yeah! Whoop her ass baby, I’ll hold your earrings.

xxTerminatorxx: Unbelievable! Nobody beats Bellator! How did you do it?

Kroak: Way to go Iron Riot! Choo choo!

Loversham: There’s four of you. How are four of you winning raid fights?

BashTheStampede: Bro! You kicked its ass! That’s awesome. We had to give up on him and move on.

NoobsV: No way.

PrimalFrost: Dude! You did it again?! How are you so far down so quick?!

BobbyBudgie: What the butt? You found another one?

MurderSpagurder: I hate you guys. I’ve been grinding since launch and never even seen half the stuff you’ve killed. This is bull.

Eloise: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH

HarmNWhoopr: Holy crabapples!

BustyRhonda: You did what now? Another one? Come on now. You’ve got to leave some firsts for the rest of us.

10RatsInATrenchcoat: Gratz

MountainMan: Bet you all look like supermodels irl too.

DemiGnome: Thanks, I hate it.

Mentally, Martin filtered all of the messages that were universally positive. He sent those back a thank you, and his practiced speech about being unable to log out. The ones that he was less sure about, he ran by Lindsay. Most of them were positive enough to get the same message as the first lot, but a few had tones too difficult for either of them to parse properly. He tried to reply to them where he could, answering questions and holding back no detail, giving away the secret to beating Bellator, and the secret to surviving its defeat, as though it mattered nothing at all to him. As though this wasn’t a race, or a competition. He supposed, that strangely, the Masters had made it so that they were running an entirely different race from everyone else. Not just in terms of the enforced 24-hour play, but also in terms of their goals. They needed to reach the end of the dungeon and win, not because they were trying to beat all the other players, but because they were trying to beat the dungeon and the Masters that built it. Because failure to do so would result in their death.

That clock was still ticking in the back of Martin’s mind. The seconds until his body would no longer be salvageable when he returned to it. They’d lost so much time already, just navigating the Deeps since the last settlement. Every moment that they were lingering here, answering questions, was bringing that deadline closer.

“Yes, there are only four of us, that’s enough to cover all the job roles, and to work with the mechanics they’ve put in. No, the enemy health and damage doesn’t scale down by that much with smaller groups, but most of the fights are about solving the puzzle of the combat instead of brute force.”

Lindsay glanced over at him in concern.

“Dude, you don’t have to give them a full instruction manual on how to win.”

“I need their help. Why would they help if I don’t give them something of equal or greater value?”

“You’ve got a real bleak view of people, you know that?”

“You believe that I’m wasting time?”

She was still reading through her own messages, at least twice as many as Martin had received. She was the more personable one, of course.

“I believe that if you just ask for help, they’ll give it. Nobody would want to be stuck in a game.”

In truth, the response to his fabricated problem had been overwhelmingly sympathetic.

BoneJon: Oh bro, that sucks. I mean, it's kind of awesome, but y’all must need a bio break.

xxTerminatorxx: Just like that anime! I’ll let everybody know what’s up.

10RatsInATrenchcoat: Weird! I’ll post on the boards.

BashTheStampede: Hah. Sucks to be you, getting to play games nonstop. I’ll send in a Master report. Hope they get you out before you pee yourself.

Martin closed his eyes against the flood of messages.

“Okay, I think that’s the initial influx handled.”

Jericho was scowling across at him, eyes narrowed.

“Why can’t you speak normal?”

“I… what?”

Lindsay cut through the confusion with her usual panache for talking loudly over the top of everyone else.

“So where are we going? You think you can boost Jericho up? I can Shadow Step up to where we came in, obviously. Figure you and Julia can climb, maybe?”

“We already have our exit.” Martin shook his head, casting a final Healing Touch on himself to top his health pool back up to full before they moved on.

“Uh, we just searched the whole room, and no exit. That was the whole point of the panic, right? Everybody freaking out about the exploding black blob thing that you threw into the… oh you made a hole through to the next Deep didn’t you.” Lindsay’s usual eye rolling came up short.

“I did.” Martin graced her with a smile just wide enough for his incisor teeth to pop out.

The four of them gathered around the site of the catastrophe averted and stared down into the darkness. The way was not smooth, in some places the explosion had seared through into air pockets in the stone, in others the molten rock had reshaped in the aftermath. There were handholds and footholds, more than they could have hoped for. Julia broke their silent contemplation.

“Can we just dig to the end?” Martin weighed the idea.

“Hypothetically, but I suspect it would take considerably more time than we have. And the noise would likely attract hostility.”

Lindsay flipped her knives into the air and caught them.

“Oh, I’ve got hostility. I came hostile. I breathe hostility. Hostile? My middle name. Lindsay Hostile…” Martin cut her off before she could get too overexcited.

“While I have no doubt of your ability to handle any conflict we encounter, it would nonetheless slow the mining process. And time is our most limited resource.”

“What if we just find some more super-explodey enemies and use them to bomb our way to victory?” Lindsay’s shoulders had been hunched with the weight of their current predicament, but now she stood tall and proud at the thought of detonating the native population of Strata.

“I’m dubious about whether the game will provide us with any more environmentally destructive monsters.” Martin crouched down to peer deeper into the abyss. “Particularly once the Masters recognize how we are using them.”

Thwarted in her dreams of pyrotechnics, Lindsay kicked him, and he tumbled forward into the pit.

“Get down the butthole, Martin.” There was a certain puckering of the freshly cooling stone that looked almost organic.

“I would prefer if you would describe it in literally any other way.”

“Get pooped into the next Deep.” She put her boot on his head and pushed down.

By now he was actively trying to climb down into the hole, keeping his balance even though Lindsay’s heel was being applied to his scalp.

“Please stop.”

“Hope there’s a nice deep porcelain pool for you to drop into.” She cackled, lifting her foot off him.

“I’m begging you.” He looked up into her eyes.

She jumped on top of Martin with her full weight. Both feet driving him down as she crowed.

“Plop!”

They did descend then, at a rate that Martin would later describe as ‘terrifying’, and Lindsay would have called ‘almost fast enough to be fun.’ They dropped a solid ten feet before Martin managed to catch a hold on the surrounding stone again. And even that was short lived, as Lindsay started hopping on him again almost immediately.

“Go. Go. Go.”

They did go, in sudden drops and careful climbs, until they arrived at the base of the shaft where it opened out into the next Deep. It was agonizingly dark, even with Martin’s low-light vision, and the drop from roof to floor was sufficient that he couldn’t make anything out.

Lindsay bounced on him a few more times before settling down to sit on his shoulders and bitch in his ear.

“Come on! Let’s go!”

From up above them came a groan.

“I would also like… for you to stop.”

Peering up into the dark, Jericho’s legs could be seen, but beyond a pinch in the stone had trapped his larger torso. Seeing her opportunity to be doing something again, Lindsay immediately scrambled up, caught a hold on his feet and started pulling for all that she was worth.

“Suck it in big guy, you can make it through!”

“I do not know if…” Jericho’s voice sounded, if not pained, then certainly strained, as well as muffled by the blockade of his own flesh.

Lindsay was not taking no for an answer, however.

“Suck it in! You Winnie the Pooh looking mother…”

The end of her abuse was cut off as the rock gave way under the combined weight of Jericho and Julia above. She went from having a mouth full of obnoxious comments to having a mouth full of Jericho.

As firm as Martin’s grip on the stone may have been, there were limits to what he could endure, so when the whole of Iron Riot came to rest on his shoulders literally as well as figuratively, he dropped. Low-light vision did show him the ground before more than a heartbeat had passed, but that still didn’t provide ample opportunity to brace himself for impact.

[Skaife has suffered 18 environmental damage]

“From now on. I’m going last.” He groaned from the bottom of the body heap, yet again.

One of Lindsay’s arms was dangling like a wet noodle, and Julia hastened to heal it before anything worse could happen.

“That could have gone better.”

Jericho raised his head a little from where he still lay face down on the stone and huffed out.

“At least we didn’t land in the goop.”

Lindsay’s head snapped around. Excitement flooding her, as Julia tried to keep her arm straight as it healed.

“We got poop goop?”

Martin had made it to his feet, despite the best efforts of the rest of the group to crush every bone in his body. He crouched down by the pool of viscous liquid that occupied a solid quarter of the cavern they had dropped into.

“Oil.”

“Like, for cooking? For hair?” Lindsay was still trying to wrench her head around. How unfortunate that she was a crow-person rather than an owl-person. “For invading the Middle East over?”

“Crude oil. Just like the skin of the Night Ravagers.”

That brought the jovial chatter to an abrupt end. Suddenly this cave no longer felt like a fun new part of their adventure, it felt like the habitat of the dungeon’s deadliest predator. At a glance, it seemed utterly perfect for the creatures. The same complex interconnecting cave structures that they used to ambush prey and keep them disoriented. The absence of any natural light source. Martin had hoped that they’d bypassed the Ravager’s territory the last time that they had encountered them, but it seemed that his luck was not that good.

Without discussion, the four of them drew closer together, as if that made them any safer.

“Can I vote we get out of here as fast as possible?” Julia found her voice first, even if she only dared raise it to a whisper.

Martin’s low-light vision would be a boon here, but it wasn’t perfect, and the dark coated hide of the Ravagers helped them to blend into the shadows in a way that Lindsay could only dream of.

“Wasn’t that already the plan?”

“Yeah, but…” Her eyes darted to the pool of oil as a bubble made its way to the surface. “More so.”

“Okay, let’s move. Same deal as before. Everyone stays close, Martin takes point. Use those night eyes, Rat-Jesus.” Lindsay took a hold on Julia’s collar and physically started to drag her along before the other girl got her feet under her. Martin did not need to be told twice; he had already fallen into position at the front of the rhombus formation.

He did not voice his thoughts regarding their last encounter with Night Ravagers. Not now, when the trust between the guild members was still so tenuous. He didn’t know how they would take the news that the slick black murder monsters seemed to consider him kin. With luck, that kinship would last long enough for Iron Riot to depart this Deep without ever having to encounter their hunters.

As he walked, Martin was actively mapping the Deep. He was starting from a central position, which was less than ideal, but he still felt he had enough sense of direction to lead them away from where the Deep Gate from above was, and therefore, toward the end of the Deep, whether that contained the boss monster or the gate to the next.

Their footsteps should have echoed throughout the still halls, but the oil seemed to dampen all noise. Every chamber that opened out had at least some pooling on the floor, and most had a trickle emerging from cracks in the otherwise nondescript stone of the walls too. It was unfair to describe them as walls so much as the horizontal curve of the cavern. This whole world may well have been designed, but this Deep at least had every appearance of being naturally occurring.

They skirted carefully around each pool of oil, none of them wanting to learn how deep they were, or what fresh horrible status effect the liquid might apply. Martin suspected it would make them susceptible to fire damage and nothing more, but he had no real desire to test that theory.

While his sight was enhanced by virtue of the Murovan racial traits, his hearing and sense of smell were not, yet he found himself relying on them more and more. Last time they had been in this sort of Ravager ambush territory, they had crept forward with care, but they no longer had the time for that kind of caution. They moved, almost breathlessly, from one chamber to the next, following whichever passage Martin judged would take them furthest from the entrance to the Deep. Through twists and turns, ears cocking each time a pebble tumbled or the oil bubbled.

The dead drops didn’t start until they were further along. A black shape on the floor that was not an oil slick, but a terrifying pit, deeper and darker than the one they’d descended to arrive here. Those set Martin’s anxiety running even higher. If they were ambushed, each one of these holes in the ground would be a lethal trap, just waiting for a misstep. Eyes shone back up at him from down there in the dark. Green eyes. Dozens. Suddenly the Night Ravager’s over developed hunch and musculature made a degree more sense, they were tunnelers.

Yet still Iron Riot could not slow. Even knowing that there were enemies just beneath their feet. They moved in lockstep, heading further and further through the twists and turns of the caverns until abruptly, Martin threw out his hands to stop them.

“What?” Jericho growled.

“Eyeshine.”

There in the dark at this tunnel’s end, two green eyes glowed back at Martin. Dim enough that the others probably couldn’t make them out, but towering level with Jericho’s head. Almost scraping the ceiling.

Lindsay drew in closer, and Martin could see Julia doing the same behind her. Their guild leader peered into the dark, seeing nothing, daggers already drawn.

“What do we do, fight through?”

“I think we pick another tunnel.”

“Okay, keep eyes on it while we backtrack.”

The Ravager had not moved yet, and even as they slowly eased their way toward the previous junction those eyes stayed still. Martin had half expected a charge when they showed weakness by pulling back, but it seemed that the monster was quite content just to guard its territory from their intrusion.

At the other tunnel branch, Martin took point again, while the others cast nervous glances back along the passage they had just come from. They made it even less distance along that tunnel before he caught sight of the next pair of glowing eyes.

“Another one.”

“Okay, that feels less like a coincidence.” Julia had an edge of hysterical laughter in her whisper.

“But are they blocking us or herding us?” Martin’s eye narrowed.

“Neither of those sound like good options, can we have another choice that’s less creepy?” Lindsay handled nervous energy differently from the others, it began to manifest itself in her movements. The blades in her hands kept spinning. She shifted her weight from foot to foot. Her beak chattered, ever so gently.

“Push through, or go around?”

She tossed the daggers up in the air, and then snatched them halfway through their fall, too excitable to even let gravity handle part of the job.

“Let’s roll the dice on ‘go around’ one more time, then we’ll know for sure that something’s up.”

Martin already felt certain, but he was also unclear on the best course forward. Contact with the Ravagers ran the risk of exposing his lack of enmity to them again, not something he savored when the other’s trust in him at present felt tentative, so he supposed that retreat was the best option for him, but this was a delay and the time limit before their bodies out in the real world began to fail was entirely too close for comfort. They backtracked and tried a third passage.

This one was longer and wound out to the side rather than plunging straight toward the area where the Ravagers seemed to be gathered. Martin almost let out a sigh of relief when it opened out into a new cave rather than being blocked, but only almost. Six sets of eyes shone back at him from that open space. Each of them an even distance from the last, spaced around the room to provide as solid a wall as they could muster. All six Night Ravagers were standing tall instead of hunching forward and dropping to all fours in a charge, forming an impenetrable blockade.

For one long moment, Iron Riot stood perfectly still. Then the Ravagers came for them. They moved forward in harmony, every movement synchronized, every shift of inhuman muscle beneath their slick outer layer perfectly mirrored on the ones beside it. It was like the glitch you’d see in old games when enemies spawned in at the same time had their animation cycle start simultaneously. Except that Martin felt uncomfortably certain that no Master had placed these monsters here. They had come and waited for this moment all on their own. They were apex predators, moving together like a flock of birds.

No command was given, no decision was made, but Lindsay caught hold of Martin’s tail to drag him back toward the tunnel as she ran after the other two. He stumbled back a few steps before he could turn. He regretted each one of those steps, because in the moments that he was still facing the Ravagers, watching their dreadful symmetry, the green light from within their eyes. And the voice of the Heart began to echo in his mind.

Give in. Surrender yourself to my care. I will keep you. I will feed you. I will make you as great as you have ever dreamed. Through me you shall grow strong. Through me, you shall become.

He unleashed a Halo on the Ravagers, blinding them and breaking whatever tether between their minds that had them moving in the way that they did. The voice receded back to a whisper in his hindbrain. Martin ran. He ran as though it was not some little monster that he’d defeated before dogging his heels, but like it was the specter of death itself.

The others had no clear sense of direction, struggling in the darkness and milling about at the last intersection until Martin burst right through them. He passed the three of them still at a full sprint and headed off down the passage that had originally brought them this way. The pits and oil slicks that had been a minor hazard now required an entirely too large part of his concentration to avoid. Working out a way to circle around the mass of Ravagers seemed to take up the rest. Even though Lindsay was shouting from behind him, he couldn’t parse the words. His brain was too busy. He nearly ran right into the next of the Night Ravagers.

Bow before my throne and I shall grant you life everlasting. Swear yourself to me and become that which the weak worship. Become what you were destined to be. Become mine.

The voice booming in his head came as a warning before his eyes had caught on to what was occupying his path. He dropped to his knees with the burden of that voice and skidded beneath the grasping claws of the Ravager that surely would have caught him had he not. The metallic sheen of the claws was all that he could see for that moment in motion, the sharpness of them so great that he could almost feel them through the open air. Then he was past that Ravager and scrambling up the wall, back to his feet just in time to see the next one coming.

You shall be mine. We shall be one. All will be forgiven. Let me guide you. Let me hold you close.

When the Night Ravager screamed, Martin’s legs gave out from under him. It was not because he was afraid, though anyone sane would have been, it was because that sound was so sharp it seemed to cut through the messages that his brain was sending to his limbs. It was so loud, echoing in those tight tunnels, that every part of him felt pierced by it. He was a butterfly pinned to the card by the awful shrill.

Submit to me and I shall give you all the power you crave. Make order from this chaos. Save me from this nightmare.

The next Ravager brought its face all the way down until it was level with his. All four of its clawed arms scraped against the stone, adding more of that nails-on-a-chalkboard sound to the cacophony as it dropped all pretense of being bipedal.

Die for me. Live for me. Live forever in the deep dark. Come to me. Worship me. Become me.

He could feel the drool speckling his face as that nightmare of metal and oil opened up to reveal more teeth behind it. A whole drill-bit spiral of sharpened metal opened out like the petals of a flower into a lamprey mouthed grimace.

I have always been here, down in the dark. I have always been alone. Now you are here. My other half. The mind to my soul. In the warrens of my body, you walk. Inside of you, I shall grow.

Martin may have been screaming right back into that gaping maw. There was no way that anyone would have been able to tell, over the sounds of both the Ravagers unleashing their paralyzing screeches. His body shook as every muscle tried to strain and pull away from the sound. The Ravager in front of him leaned in closer, until the spread junkyard heap of a mouth completely surrounded his head, isolating him from the whole world.

Give yourself to me. There is no pain. No struggle. Only that which you love. Forever.

Any moment now the Ravager’s teeth could close, and when those ragged metal teeth closed together, his whole head would be crushed and sliced. His face would be gone, his brain, everything that he thought of as him. Destroyed in one bite. He forced his eyes shut so that the awful green Deep light shining out from the guts of the Ravager was no longer shining into him, and in that same instant, life seemed to return to his body.

[MISS]

He flung himself back, and only then did the Ravager’s jaws snap shut, and only the very end of his snout was scratched before the blades interlocked.

As breath returned to his lungs, a sound escaped him that, if spoken louder, could have been mistaken for one of Lindsay’s favorite words to bellow, if he were the sort of person who cussed. But he did not allow himself to dwell in that moment. Mainly because the Ravager was in motion again. Jaws irising open for a second attempt at him now it had tasted blood.

It was too close for him to draw his sword, too close to do much of anything beyond slapping his hand against its slick hide in a desperate attempt to steer its bite off course. There was not enough strength in his arms to do even that. He hadn’t leveled that stat up high enough to defeat a Ravager, but there were other places that someone like him could draw strength from. He cast Javelin of Faith. Summoning that glowing strip of light out of nothingness into the palm of his hand. The palm of his hand that was already pressed hard against the Ravager’s head.

[ELEMENTAL WEAKNESS: DOUBLE DAMAGE]

[Night Ravager has suffered 54 light damage]

Hissing and squeals resounded. Not cries of pain from the ever-silent monsters, but the high-pitched sound of heated air escaping. A tire about to give out in too sharp a turn. The Javelin burned and burst, and the bite was turned aside.

Martin scrambled back in the moment that bought him, turning to come face to face with the other Ravager he had inadvertently dodged by. Its four arms swept in at him from all compass points, the exact spot where they would collide, his heart.

[MISS]

He took a dive once more, leaping under the arcing claws and scrambling between the monster’s legs. Jericho was already there, thumping on the Ravager’s back, and the moment he spotted the Murovan face poking out from beneath the thing, he reached for Martin’s arms and hauled him clear. Lindsay was in flight, soaring over Jericho’s back to hammer both knives into the back of the Ravager. Rebounding off the wide expanse of its back with a showy flip to land beside them.

“Move it or lose it, boys!”

They had no intention of losing anything. Jericho dragged, Martin ran, and they all caught up to where Julia was standing back at the last junction faster than the Ravager could turn.

“Go. Go.”

A glance over his shoulder confirmed Martin’s worst suspicions, the other passages that they’d already tried were now blocked by the hulking bodies of more Ravagers. They were being herded, not warned off.

“Back the way we came.”

The others would obey because they were frightened. The Night Ravagers were terrifying to look at, by design, but that was not why Martin fled ahead of them. His curiosity was ruling him more than anything as base as fear.

If the Ravagers were guiding him toward something, he wanted to know what. They hadn’t proven helpful in the past, exactly, but neither were they hostile. The fact that the Heart seemed to speak through them like they were an Archduke made him suspicious that their actions may represent its will.

He might have been heading down to kill the Heart, beat the game, and escape the dungeon, but that did not mean he was not interested in it. Quite the opposite. He was fascinated by the Heart, and that was no small part of what the intruding voice echoing in his mind was preying upon. He desperately wanted to understand what was happening here.

They passed underneath the hole by which they’d entered the Deep, and the Ravagers seemed to slow in their pursuit a little. It could have been mistaken for a desire to remain in familiar territory, but Martin recognized that it was simply a lowering of pressure so that they didn’t feel compelled to switch from flight to fight. They were being deliberately manipulated.

Lindsay started to slow, but Martin reached back and caught her by a wing.

“Keep going.”

He could see her frown, see her confusion, but she trusted him so implicitly that she didn’t say a word and just went on running. The other two were conditioned well enough to follow her lead that Martin didn’t even need to urge them on. Rounding one corner after another, they made it through five different open areas without a Ravager in sight, then Martin finally allowed them to slow.

“Why are we running?” Jericho panted, “We should be kicking them in the asses.”

“We choose the ground we fight on.” Martin was not an accomplished liar, but he found that reciting the basic rules of strategy often served as a decent smokescreen for what he was truly thinking. “We don’t give them any advantage.”

“Can you imagine if we’d tried to fight the first one, only for the rest to come and hit us from the side tunnels?” Julia came to his support, unexpectedly. “He is right, we’ve got to play smart.”

Martin couldn’t grasp why she was supporting him for a moment, then he realized that she was trying to cover for her own fear. She would rather be thought of as tactical than cowardly, and he had offered her up an excuse. Judging by the way she was trying to make extended eye contact with him, she seemed to think that was the reason he had offered up the excuse. She looked grateful. Martin didn’t know what to do with that.

Instead, he turned his attention to the environment around them. The caves looked the same, the oil slicks and pits were evident in the adjoining chambers. Everything looked the same, with the exception of one detail. Set up amid the rough surfaced stone, there was one indentation that was perfectly circular.

“Found the Deep Gate.”

No sooner had had the words left his lipless mouth than the solid stone above them sprung open and bodies began falling. Martin and the others shuffled back to the only edge of the room without an oil pool or pit and waited politely for this other guild to pass through. It took until about the third new arrival before Lindsay recognized one of them.

“It’s The Brotherhood in Exile.”

They’d swapped out so many members by this point that the chaotic force that they’d run into before was completely transformed. Judging from the way that each of the Brotherhood dropped down and immediately assumed a defensive position to guard the arrival of the others, they were no longer playing games. Their team was coordinated, their leadership focused. Which likely meant that Dante had found someone competent from one of the other guilds that had been making decent progress to run things for him. That did not bode well.

The only advantage of the changing of the guard was that it wasn’t until the very end when Dante himself arrived that the situation turned hostile. There were seven members of The Brotherhood in Exile present, Dante included. A more streamlined force that nonetheless had good representation from across the spectrum of classes and races available in Strata.

When Dante’s eyes fell on Iron Riot, they widened in surprise. Then they narrowed.

Lindsay stepped forward before Martin could string together two words of a plan and called out.

“Hey Dante! Still chasing our tails?”

For a moment his mouth flapped open and shut, but then he got a grip on himself and spat back.

“Iron Riot! What a surprise to see you so far down the dungeon!”

“He does get that he arrived here after us, right?” She turned to ask Jericho, who did a very good job of looming over all the enemies that had just dropped on top of them, the shroud of shadows from his Heretic class adding further menace to his appearance in the inky darkness of the Deep. “You get that we were here first, right?”

Dante had swapped out his old weapons for a pair of long blades affixed to the back of his wrists. A sort of combination katar-bracer. The Sythvan Martyr flourished them now, and almost clipped the back of a robed Corvan’s head. It was nice to see that he was still clumsy, no matter how polished his guild had become. Martin could definitely use that in a place like this.

“It doesn’t matter who got here first, what matters is who gets out alive!”

Lindsay’s head cocked to the side. All of the enemy guild had readied their weapons, prepared to throw themselves headlong into their Guildmaster’s fight, but they were clearly waiting on his command.

“You never won at school sports day, did you? You see, when you’re running a race, the first person to…”

Martin finally had the wherewithal to cut her off.

“Lindsay, this is not helpful.”

“You’re right, you’re right. I’m wasting time.” She threw up her hands and sighed. “Dante, you’re a bitch. You’re guild sucks, let’s go.”

Martin only managed to squeak out, “Lindsay, no!” before the roar of the Brotherhood’s battle cries drowned him out.

She leaped forward, blades driving into the chest of the same Corvan that Dante had nearly hit. Crowing as she went.

“Lindsay yes!”

[VelCrow has suffered 23 piercing damage]

The blow did not prove lethal, but it was enough to knock the Invoker off his feet, and the weight of Lindsay riding him down meant that there would be no opportunity for casting before her blades could rake him a dozen more times. Six of them left upright to deal with.

They could not de-escalate the situation now, so the best option was to get through this fight as quickly and painlessly as they could. Invokers remained an unknown quality to Martin. He did not know how to adapt his strategy to fighting them, so he was grateful that Lindsay had picked that one as a target, though he suspected that it was less about a grand strategy and more about convenience.

Jericho needed to become their target. Lindsay was about to need considerable amounts of mobility to avoid the counterattack. Julia was already fading into the background behind her boyfriend so did not require assistance.

Martin activated the Purifier’s Oath and launched a Javelin of Faith across the room. The Brotherhood, with well-honed instincts, flung themselves aside. Just as Martin had known they would.

The Javelin struck the pool of oil, and it caught alight with a roar. All eyes turned toward the sudden explosion, buying Lindsay the moment that she needed to spring clear of the now dead Invoker and take a dive into the newly cast shadows. With the flames flickering and blazing on one end of the room she would have no shortage of places to exit the shadow either.

They hadn’t been expecting a fireball from Martin. It had shocked them. Surprised them. When they should have been paying attention to everyone else, their eyes turned back to him.

The Murovan Knave that should have been skirmishing with Lindsay to protect the vulnerable and slow-moving members of her party was the one that Lindsay should hit next, but she was not the only one getting hit. Lindsay exploded out of a Knight’s shadow, slashing across the back of the hulking Wulvan’s hamstrings without a backward glance.

[Caphrus has suffered 21 crippling damage]

[Agility Reduced]

From there, she rebounded off a Hierophant’s back, throwing him face down in the now swarming melee before finally arriving at her actual target. The Murovan who was still standing with her mouth hanging open, just waiting for the dagger that Lindsay thrust up into it, and through the roof of her mouth.

[CRITICAL HIT]

[Ratasha has suffered 63 piercing damage]

Martin was precise in his blows, but he could not have hoped to match the elegance of Lindsay’s movements. She was an artist when it came to dealing death.

Five left. Two currently immobilized.

A Hierophant, a Knight, and Dante were still threats.

Dante was already in motion, charging toward Martin, splitting the pack with admirable haste. The other two turned their attention in the direction of Jericho’s war cry. It couldn’t have lined up more perfectly if he had designed the scenario himself. The Hierophant seemed to be some sort of damage-focused build, judging from the way she was throwing spells at Jericho. The Knight was a tank that Jericho would be able to down with burst damage thanks to Vengeance while Julia kept his health topped off. The only variable in the conflict at this point was Dante himself. A Martyr that had specialized for speed was different enough from Jericho’s loadout that Martin wasn’t certain how the man would interfere. So, he took him out of the equation.

He turned heel and ran.

There was no need to make sure that Dante could keep up with the twists and turns that Martin was making as he drove back out into the dark of the Deep. The sound of his breath echoed in from the walls.

They were badly out-leveled by the Brotherhood. The new players that they had poached were some of the oldest and most advanced in the game, and Dante had been making use of that to boost his own growth. He had two levels on Martin, and without the element of surprise, or teamwork, to even the playing field, Martin felt quite certain that the man would be able to kill him in the duel that the buffoon had been demanding in the little challenges he kept posting for Iron Riot on the forums.

It was never his intention to fight fair, of course, but the truth of the matter was that cleverness may not be sufficient to overcome their difference in power. So, as he skidded around a corner into what could have been the perfect setup for an ambush, he instead backed away from the entrance to this cave with his hands held up, and his sword sheathed.

“I don’t want to fight you, Dante.”

“That’s a shame, because I really wanted to watch you struggle while I killed you.” The Martyr grinned, showing the elongated fangs that Julia never bared to the air. “Oh well, I guess I’ll just have to slaughter you while you cower and beg for mercy instead.”

“I do need mercy, Dante.” Martin kept his empty hands in plain sight. Backing away slowly as Dante stalked into the room. Tail lashing behind him.

“What? Oh man, seriously? You’re actually going to wimp out now that we’re finally getting to face each other.” Dante was trying to laugh in Martin’s face, he was contorting his own lipless mouth into something like a grin, but there was no humor in his voice. No laughter. Only rage of the most petty, vindictive kind. “After all the years of being so high and mighty, now there’s a chance you could lose, you’re going to beg?”

He swiped at Martin with one of his blades, and it was only luck that he was able to avoid it with both ears intact. Dante was impossibly fast. Martin couldn’t even see his motions, only the subtle shifts in posture that warned another slash was coming. Still, Martin didn’t draw his sword.

“You’re not an unreasonable man. We can come to an arrangement.”

“What could you possibly offer me?” Dante snarled, swinging again. Martin dodged it with a grunt of effort, reading his former guildmate. Despite the power that Dante had accrued, he still swung like a petulant toddler. He could overpower Martin, but he could never outplay him.

Martin circled to the left, where he was expecting Dante’s next strike to come from. It threw him off, stopped him from slipping into the striking rhythm he was accustomed to.

“What do you want? Do you want to beat the game and go down in history? Tell me what you want, and I’ll give it to you.”

Dante took him by surprise, launching himself forward with a heavy kick to the chest. Martin was flung back into a wall. All the air driven from his lungs.

“I want to spit on you. I want to drag you out in front of everyone and show them that you’re nothing. I want the whole world to look at you and know that I’m better than you. Are you going to give me that?”

“Yes,” Martin gasped out.

Dante’s blade was drawn back, the shining razor point of it leveled on Martin’s heaving chest, but the killing blow did not come.

“What?!”

“You want to spit on me. Do it.” Martin pushed his way back up the wall, breath finally returning. “I don’t care what other people think about me, I only care about winning. Working together is the best way we have to win.”

“I don’t want to win,” It came out in a strangled scream. “If winning means I have to do what you say. I won’t do it again. I won’t obey you.”

Martin slowly let his hands down. Dante still had his weapon at the ready, but so long as they were talking, he didn’t seem capable of moving.

“I’ve never asked anyone to obey me. I just tell them the best way to do things and they choose whether to do them.”

“You arrogant piece of…”

Apparently, that had been the wrong thing to say. The attack finally came, and Martin only barely managed to whip his Oathblade out to intercept it at the last moment, turning it from a killing blow into a flesh wound in the shoulder that a well-timed Chasten negated.

[BLOCKED 37 slashing damage]

Hissing through the spreading numbness that he felt even though no damage had technically been done, Martin squeaked out.

“Advice. I offer advice. If you don’t want to take it, nobody will make you.”

As Dante ripped the blade from Martin’s shoulder, blood spritzed out over his scaled face. Over his sneer.

“Why would I need advice from someone like you?

“Because I’m good at…” Martin tried to answer, not recognizing the rhetorical nature of the question.

Dante’s blade slammed into the wall where Martin’s head had been a moment before. Whether he had dodged, or collapsed, even he could not say for sure.

Yanking the katar free, Dante swiped at Martin with the other blade. One that he once again managed to parry.

“You are just another nerd who thinks he’s better than everyone else.”

Once again, Martin circled unsteadily, trying to get out of immediate slicing range so that he might have a moment to think before Dante sunk back into the rattle of blades. All of this time, he had been silent. He had kept everything that was actually on his mind on the inside. How strange that the first person he felt he could be honest with was his enemy.

“I don’t think I’m better than anyone. I’m probably worse than most people. I can’t do the things other people do. There’s stuff I just don’t understand. I try but, the harder I try, the more it seems to upset people. I’m scared and I’m trying to keep it together for everyone else, but it isn’t working.”

If he had hoped that his emotional vulnerability would be rewarded, he was about to be sorely disappointed. Dante looked like he was going to be sick.

“You’re pathetic.”

“Yes. I’m pathetic.” Martin replied without hesitation. “So will you please help me?”

“No.” Dante attacked once more. A flurry of blows that Martin couldn’t hope to keep up with. For each thrust of the blades that he parried, two more made it through.

[Skaife has suffered 10 piercing damage]

[Skaife has suffered 13 piercing damage]

[Skaife has suffered 9 piercing damage]

Not one was a killing blow, though he had no doubt that Dante could have finished him whenever he wanted with the difference in their speed. He wanted to stretch it out.

“It’s pathetic how low you’re willing to sink to try and keep me from killing you. I always knew you were pathetic, but I had no idea you were a coward too.”

[BLOCKED 12 piercing damage]

Martin swept his Oathblade across in front of his body, turning two of Dante’s strikes aside at once, pinning them against the wall.

“You don’t understand the situation.”

Once again, it was the wrong thing to say. Martin never knew the right thing to say.

“Oh of course not, how could anyone other than you understand anything?”

“I’m not trying to…” Martin made one last desperate attempt to make peace, only to receive Dante’s elbow to the jaw as thanks for it.

[Skaife has suffered 7 bludgeoning damage]

“Just shut your mouth.” Dante growled, hammering another overhead blow against Martin’s Oathblade. “I’ve heard enough out of you to last me a lifetime. You and that dumb bitch Lindsay.”

Martin kicked out into the other man’s stomach, catching him solidly in the guts and driving him back a half dozen steps. Mentally noting how unbalanced the Martyr’s stance was. He took a deep breath,

“Please don’t talk about her that way.”

“Aww, did you two finally get together?” Dante’s forced smile turned predatory. “Did I hurt your feelings?”

Martin unleashed a Halo directly into the Sythvan’s face. Blinding him, buying himself the moment he needed to duck under the next wild swing and get some distance.

“You need to listen to me. There is more going on here than you know about. We’re trapped in the game. We can’t access the menu. If we die now, I have no idea what will happen to us. This isn’t just about a game anymore. If you kill us now, we could die in real life.”

“What the hell? That’s the best you could come up with?” Dante swiped at the open air, snarling in contempt. “Oh, Dante’s such a sucker I can tell him complete gibberish and he’ll buy it.”

“I’m telling you the truth.” Martin sighed.

“And I’m telling you to shut up and fight. I’ve had enough.” Dante roared, swinging hopelessly at the empty space where Martin had once stood. “It’s time. It’s time for you to lose. To know I beat you. To know that I am better than you.”

“Then… I’m sorry.” With genuine sorrow, Martin raised a hand and cast Rebuke.

Blind and off-balance, Dante didn’t stand a chance of maintaining his upright position as he was flung away. He tripped over his own feet, stumbling all the way to the pit on the other side of the room as he tried to resist the irresistible force.

Martin let out a breath of relief that it was over, but it was premature. Dante did not fall into the dark pit. Instead, he stopped, tilted over the hole but not falling. Martin couldn’t see what was stopping him. Couldn’t even understand how it was physically possible that Dante had stopped himself, until he caught sight of the shimmer of metal on his back. Protruding from his back.

The elongated claws of a Night Ravager.

Two sets of them pierced through Dante’s chest and out of his back, the lower pair of the Ravager’s limbs, it was using to lift itself up out of the pit. It paused on finding its feet, with Dante still dangling there. The shock of it had stopped him dead, but now he seemed to realize what was happening, just as his vision was returning.

“Martin! What did you… How did you…”

With an almost casual disdain, the Ravager flicked him off its claws, like Martin would brush a crumb from off his sleeve. Dante rebounded off the edge of the pit, and for one moment, Martin thought that he would catch himself, but for all of his incredible swiftness, it seemed that this time, Dante was too slow. He tumbled over the edge of the stone, screaming all the way.

“Martin!”

Then there was blessed silence once more.

SIX

Life of the Lightless

Martin and the Ravager stood face to face. It towered over him, the circular opening of its mouth pulsating in time to the hammering of his heart. Like it could feel what was happening inside him. Yet even though it must have known the frantic dread hammering beneath his ribs to replicate it, it did not charge. It cocked its head to one side, then the other. As though it could hear music too soft for his ears to detect.

“Are you…”

Its head snapped back to him the moment that he spoke, and his terror spiked. Martin stayed very still, waiting to see what would come next. Still nothing.

“Do you understand me?”

It focused in on him again, on the sound of his voice, but once again, there was no further display of danger. The pulsating began to slow. The glints of metal inside its extended maw shone out at him less frequently.

“Will you follow me?”

He still wasn’t sure if it could understand him, or if he could understand its purpose, but when he took the first step toward the sound of battle still raging by the Deep Gate, it did not move to intercept, but to fall in behind him.

“Okay. Okay I can work with this.”

He took off at a full sprint, and the Ravager followed in lockstep. Every step he took, it mirrored, every movement of his body, it copied. He found himself ducking under low slung sections of cavern as though he were the Ravager, and his scalp was the one at risk.

The battle was going against Iron Riot, and while Martin would have loved to have thought that it was because of his absence, he knew that the truth was that they were simply outmatched. Lindsay and the crippled Knight were still locked together, brute strength wearing through her agile defenses. The others that she’d dropped remained down, explaining how the Knight had found the time to gain the upper hand. Meanwhile, Jericho and Julia were backed into a corner, the remainder of The Brotherhood in Exile closing in around them. Both of them bleeding from a dozen different wounds. Jericho’s more serious than Julia’s by a longshot.

He went for them. Lindsay may have been hard pressed, but he had more faith in her ability to hold an enemy one on one to Jericho’s ability to hold off all the rest. He hit the tanking Knight in the back of the legs with a Smite and followed it with a Javelin of Faith to the flank of the ranged-attacking Hierophant.

[WarHawk has suffered 16 slashing damage]

[WarHawk has suffered 30 light damage]

The Knight barely wavered under his blow. The Hierophant literally laughed as a shield blinked into life around her, absorbing his Javelin in a flash. He had managed to interrupt her casting, so he considered it a win, and he’d managed to gain the attention of the Knight. As the Corvan twisted around in his clanking armor, Martin got to experience firsthand the array of facial expressions that accompanied turning around to slap a tiny Rat-man and discovering that he’d brought an eight-foot oil-slicked nightmare monster to the fight.

The Night Ravager launched itself over his head to land on the Knight, driving him down to the ground in a dread cacophony of shredding metal. Armor being torn by jagged iron claws and cast aside in showers of shrapnel.

[WarHawk has suffered 41 slashing damage]

Martin did not stop. He could not afford to stop. A Night Ravager was a challenge for Iron Riot, but the differential in levels that the Brotherhood had achieved made them less of an even match. One on one, any of the Brotherhood could likely have devastated a Ravager. He had to buy his new accomplice every advantage that he could.

Halo was still on cooldown, but he could light up his sword with Celestial Strike and charge the Hierophant, he could force her to defend herself instead of attacking. He could buy those who had a chance to deal with her the time to get free of their current entanglements. He never got the chance.

A second Night Ravager had followed on the heels of the first, coming from some dark crevasse that they’d passed by in their sprint back to the gate. It launched itself straight into the Hierophant, those magical glowing shields deflecting the claw-strikes but doing nothing against the sheer bulk of the creature bearing down on her. She was knocked from her feet and fell beneath the flailing arms, screaming all the way. Her shields held, her defenses were well honed, but it was enough to take her out of the fight. To free up Jericho and Julia, to give them the time they needed to recover.

Lindsay let out a cry of triumph, and Martin snapped around to see why. The first Knight she’d hamstrung had been distracted by the sudden influx of monsters. Lindsay hadn’t.

People may have made disparaging comments about her ability to focus in the past, with people in this case primarily being Martin, but there could be no denying that once she was locked onto a target there was no shaking her.

The hand that held the Knight’s sword came off cleanly at the wrist. Beneath the closed helm, blood began to gush from a slit throat. Lindsay had killed him, but he hadn’t realized it yet.

[Caphrus has suffered 21 slashing damage]

[Caphrus has suffered 36 slashing damage]

Turning from her victim, her eyes locked onto her next target, the third Ravager that was clawing its way into the room. Martin shouted out to her to stop, but it was clear that she couldn’t hear anything but the bloodlust thumping through her.

The Ravager bounded forward. Lindsay rushed in to meet it. Martin raised his hand and unleashed his Rebuke.

Lindsay was slapped off her feet by the impact of the spell. Dropping into a roll to regain her footing, bracing herself as she did for the Ravager’s pounce that never came. It flung itself on top of the downed Knight, those awful spiraling teeth carving into his torso like a drill bit. Gore showered the room, and the stench of pierced entrails washed over them. Sewage and iron.

Caphrus has died.

Lindsay cast Martin one confused look, and then she was up and running again, leading the way, heading for the exit. Jericho and Julia caught sight of Martin through the melee and their eyes were wide. Martin slapped a hand to his guild crest, “Retreat. Follow Lindsay. Run.”

For a moment it looked like Jericho wasn’t going to take the order, that his own hunger for violence was overflowing, and the part of him that resented Martin the same way that Dante always had would control him, but he was not Dante. He had Julia to ground him, he had the sense of security from having been invited to Strata with the guild. Lindsay had put her faith in him, and now it was being repaid. He seized Julia around the waist and leaped over the snarling bloodbath.

Before, they had moved through the caverns of this Deep as though they were harried, now it was frantic. Martin had to keep his hand on the guild crest to keep track of Lindsay’s position, as she had not stopped running since escaping the room. Turn by turn, tunnel by tunnel, chamber by chamber, they rushed past more of the same oil and darkness to find their way to her, and it was only when they came skidding out into another massive chamber that they caught sight of her.

Two Ravagers loomed over Lindsay, but they had not attacked. All of their feral ferocity had been on display back by the gate, but now that Martin had arrived, it seemed they were back into that bizarre passive state that they’d been encountering.

Lindsay stood stock-still, as though the slightest movement might set the monsters off. She whispered out the side of her beak.

“Martin why aren’t the giant murder monsters murdering our stupid faces off?”

Martin was less cowed by the presence of the Ravagers than the rest of them. He’d had more time to get used to the idea that they were not entirely hostile. He walked up to the closest and began to examine it properly.

“Why would you think that I’d know?”

“Because you know everything, you dingus.”

Martin dragged his low-light vision off the Ravagers and turned it to the rest of the chamber they were in. It was more of the same. Rough stone. The odd crack with oil eking out. And four exits. Two behind the Ravagers, one off to the side, one that was now blocked by the steady march of the monsters behind them.

“I’d hypothesize that they’re trying to direct us to a specific location.”

“And any idea on why?” Julia, more than any of the rest of them, lacked the bravado required to hold back displays of fear. Yet while there were tremors running through her, she seemed to have adapted to the idea that just because something looked monstrous, it was not necessarily an enemy. Martin considered that the swift adaptation to this mindset could be used to explain why she was dating Jericho.

He wet his lips.

“For that, I’d need more data.”

“More data?” It seemed that Jericho’s blood was still up, he darted forward to grab Martin by the scruff of his neck and twist him around. “Why are you lying to us you little rat? Tell us what is going on. We could die here!”

“Jericho!” Julia let out a yelp of alarm.

“No, no more.” He shook Martin then, hard and sharp enough that his vision darkened at the edges. “We have tiptoed around him because of his precious brains for too long. He knows something he isn’t telling us.”

Julia had not been trying to dissuade him because she was dismayed by his loss of composure. The moment he had shown himself as hostile to Martin, the Ravagers had sprung back into action.

His fury was giving way to tears of frustration. A display of emotion that Martin previously would have considered to be beyond his usual range. He was still trying to justify his fury to Julia as she pried his hands off Martin.

“He has trapped us in this game. I might lose my job. I might not even… We might never see each other again. We might… This is his fault. And we deserve the truth.”

With one last tug of Julia’s hand, Martin fell back down to the ground. He scuttled back into reach of the Ravagers, where Jericho would fear to tread. All the frustration of the past day boiled up inside Martin, and he lost his own temper more than he would have liked to.

“What truth? That the Masters believe that this is another world that they’ve sent us to? Some sort of spiritual plane? That killing the Heart might end all life in the universe, according to their weird little cult? That the NPCs and monsters that we’ve been killing might have all been real people who got trapped in the game just like us? I’ve told you everything. You didn’t believe me.”

Jericho didn’t seem to know how to deal with a Martin that was being completely honest and forthright, he looked around for something else to focus on, and found the Night Ravagers still standing silently by.

“Why aren’t they attacking us? Why are they helping us? What deal did you make?! Did you promise us to them? Did you trade our lives so that you could win this stupid game?”

“I don’t know why the Ravagers behave this way.” His lack of understanding of this topic was yet another font of frustration for Martin. All he had were suppositions. “But I think it is because they are more closely connected to the Heart than the other monsters. I think… they’re extensions of its will.”

Lindsay still hadn’t torn her eyes away from the looming threat.

“So, the Heart, that we are trying to kill, is helping us get down to it and kill it?”

“I don’t understand it either. I really don’t. The Heart doesn’t seem to have a rational mind… when it talks to me, it is like… it is like it is just repeating the same thing over and over, like it doesn’t even understand the words?”

Martin slowly realized that all eyes were on him as he spoke. The Ravagers stared down at him implacably, but the expressions on the faces of his friends were more easily readable. Shock, horror, confusion, despair.

“Leave them alone, they’re mine. They’re not to be hurt. If any of them are hurt, I’m not coming with you. Do you understand?” If the Ravagers did understand, they had no way of showing it. Other than that uncanny stillness.

Lindsay put on the soft voice that she usually reserved for talking to small children or the terminally incompetent.

“I’m sorry, did you just say the Heart talks to you?”

Martin had not meant to tell them everything, but the relief at having everything out in the open was palpable. It was as though he had been devoting more of the processing power of his brain to keeping his story straight than he had to actually solving the puzzle that was Strata. With the burden lifted, he felt like he was liable to float right off the ground. But despite this elation, he knew that he had to hold onto the trust of his guild. He knew that he’d been lying with good reason, given just how difficult this was to say.

“It… since the beginning I’ve been hearing its voice. I’ve been seeing it in my dreams…”

Lindsay blew out what probably would have been a raspberry if she had a tongue and lips to work with. Instead, it was just a weird croak.

“We all have video game dreams, that doesn’t mean…”

Martin cut her off before she could backpedal on his behalf. He was done with lying, done with the endless confusion and discomfort that it brought him.

“I hear the same voice in my head, every time that green light is around. Every time we fight an Archduke, or even the Ravagers…”

Jericho put his hands over his face and let out a strangled laugh.

“Rat-boy has finally lost his mind.”

Martin wasn’t surprised by this turn of events. Even having experienced everything himself, he still had doubts about the veracity of what his mind was telling him to be the truth. From the first moment he’d arrived in the game, through the impossible graphics and the impossible knowledge that the game seemed to have about the inner workings of his mind, he had been doubting himself. Well, no more. He would tell them everything and let them decide what was real enough to warrant attention.

“You wanted the truth; this is the truth. All of it. Even the parts I don’t understand. All I have is… what I’ve seen, what I’ve heard. I can’t give you more than that if I don’t understand it. I can’t keep…” Julia placed a hand on his shoulder gingerly.

“Martin… you do sound like a crazy person…”

Despite the minute stature that the game had bestowed on him, Martin’s voice had never sounded so small as it did in the moment that he answered.

“I know.”

“But this is a crazy place. Maybe we need to start thinking crazy to get through it.” She had turned to stare down Jericho.

The looming Heretic stared down into his girlfriend’s face, and completely failed to grasp the things that she was saying.

“What?”

“Martin, sees the stuff we miss, right? He understands the stuff we can’t.” She reached back and took a hold of Martin’s hand, pulling him a step away from the Ravagers, back toward Jericho. He wasn’t sure that this was a preferable position. But he couldn’t deny that the things Julia was saying made him feel seen in a very unexpected way. “He puts together design philosophy, and mythology, and metallurgy and all these other things he’s learned about, and he stitches it together and he makes sense out of everything. He’s worked out what the rules of this place are, how we can use them to help us, how we can work around them. He’s… I think he gets it.” Jericho was not easily convinced.

“He gets sent to a nice, padded room with a nice tight white jacket. It is what he needs.”

Playing to the emotions of others was not Martin’s strong point when it came to presenting arguments. He could come out with citations and information the way others breathed, but to convince someone to his way of thinking using an appeal to their feelings… that was a talent that had always escaped him. Yet with the strange warm feeling in his stomach that came with Julia’s acceptance, he now found himself compelled to try.

“I cannot pretend that I understand what is happening here. All I can do is tell you what I do know.”

“And what’s that?” Jericho didn’t even roll his eyes. That was progress.

“We’re winning.” Martin smiled wide enough for his teeth to pop out.

That was enough to drag Lindsay’s attention away from the monsters, at least for a moment.

“What?”

Martin counted off his reasons on his paw.

“The Masters wouldn’t be trying so hard to stop us if we weren’t on track to win. They wouldn’t have locked us in here to kill us. They wouldn’t have helped the Brotherhood catch up to us.” Julia looked confused.

“You don’t think Dante and his guild could have…”

“It’s Dante.” Martin accidentally scoffed, every bit the caricature of smug superiority that Dante had painted him as, if only for a moment. “Every day he ties his shoelaces without assistance is a miracle.”

“Oof. Tell us how you really feel.” Lindsay snorted, not an easy feat with no nose.

“Just as the Masters actively hindered us, they are actively helping anyone who might offer us opposition.” Martin realized slowly but surely that despite his sudden outburst of honesty, he was actually winning them over. Maybe he should have been honest from the start. “I’m passed the point of presuming coincidence with anything that happens here. It is a designed world, which means that design has a purpose.”

Jericho’s hands were covering his eyes again, but there was a twist to his lips that did not speak of contempt. He was smiling, despite himself.

“All aboard the crazy train.”

“Believe what you want, it doesn’t matter.” Martin knew that with Julia, he’d already won over Jericho, which meant that the only one left to convince, was the one person he’d never expected that he’d have to convince of anything. “We need to move on. If we kill the Heart, the game ends, and we get out. Whether that’s because of the attention we draw, or because the cult that trapped us in here sees that they were wrong. Or commits mass suicide rather than deal with their failure.”

Lindsay’s beak fell open.

“Whoa, that escalated fast.”

“If I need to choose between the lives of the people who created our prison or the people I care about, there isn’t even a choice.” Martin was surprised to find that this was not a manufactured response that he’d designed to provoke the response that he wanted from them. He was getting carried away in his honesty. He knew better than that. Openly expressing affection for others drove them away. He was being foolish, but here on the brink of their communal deaths he assumed that an excess of sentiment was probably forgivable.

Jericho had lowered his hands and contempt was back to curling his lip.

“You care about Lindsay. Maybe.”

“I know that I… I don’t communicate well, but… no.” Martin met Jericho’s angry stare, aware that he’d wandered into dangerous territory all over again, but unaware of how to navigate it now that he was here. “I mean all three of you. I know we disagree, but I… I care.”

Jericho stepped in closer, to use his physical mass to intimidate Martin. The little Rat-man didn’t flinch. Even as the Heretic growled.

“You use us like we’re pieces in your games.”

“I help you to achieve your goals.”

He loomed over further until they were nose to nose.

“You boss us around.”

“You rely on me for guidance. I feel like if I don’t tell you the best thing to do you all just…” Martin stopped that train of thought before it completely derailed whatever trust was left between them. Instead, he reached down deep and gave a more honest answer than even he knew he had. “If I can help, I want to help. I… like to be needed.” Jericho’s face was still level with Martin’s, but all the anger faded. He looked almost sad.

“You are a complete mess inside, aren’t you little Rat-man.” Martin felt as though he were being choked.

“Isn’t everyone?”

There was one soft moment as they all felt empathy for one another, possibly for the first time ever. Then Lindsay did what Lindsay did best.

“I’m completely mentally stable and my ass is so fat it makes grown men weep. Can we get back to the monsters and stop talking about our feelings, please?!”

Martin turned his attention back to the matter at hand now that the little rebellion seemed to have been quashed once more.

“If they aren’t going to attack, I’d suggest we don’t provoke them. Whatever they’re trying to steer us toward, let’s go take a look.” Lindsay’s eyes narrowed.

“And if it’s an ambush?”

“If they wanted us dead, they wouldn’t need an ambush.” Martin started walking toward the remaining exit, and the Ravagers that had been so very still up until that moment lumbered forward to close any route of retreat. “There are dozens of them in this Deep and they have no fear of death. They could crush us under weight of numbers.”

“That makes me feel so much less stressed about this whole thing.” Julia’s voice was tinged with hysteria once more.

They trudged their way along the corridors, Martin still in the lead, as he’d always been during their exploration of this floor. But now that they knew that the monsters in the dark were neutral at least, it no longer felt torturous. Lindsay grumbled from right behind him.

“Did I mention that I don’t like this? Like, at all.”

Martin tried not to smile as he took another left turn, resisting the urge to nod to the Night Ravager blocking the right branch of the tunnel.

“It may have come up in conversation, yes.”

“Seriously, this is creepy weird in a whole new way.” She was whispering, as though the Ravagers couldn’t hear her. As if they had feelings that could be hurt.

“Just keep going, and don’t look back.” He reached out cautiously to put an arm around her shoulders and keep her moving along.

“Why shouldn’t I look back?” Martin’s grip on her tightened as she tried to swivel around. “Martin, why shouldn’t I look back!?”

“Because my estimate of dozens of Night Ravagers might have been a little low, and they’re blocking the way back.”

“Oh man,” She groaned. “I wish you hadn’t told me that.”

He cast her a sideways glance and tried his best to distract her.

“I’m not going to lie or withhold information even when it is to protect the emotions and mental state of other guild members.”

Lindsay was one of the least limp people that Martin knew. She typically carried enough tension and nervous energy in her that she vibrated. The fact that she was basically dangling from his grip around her shoulders was therefore, concerning. Even if her words were typical Lindsay.

“You could have at least lubed me up before jamming the idea of a hundred Ravagers into me from behind.”

“Sorry.” He shrugged. She leaned in close and actually whispered this time. Soft enough that the others couldn’t hear.

“Listen we’re… we’re going to be okay. We’re going to get through, we’re going to win, whatever. I know we’ve kind of dumped this all on you, but you aren’t alone in here. We’re on your side. Even Jericho, sort of.” Martin sighed.

“I tried to tell Dante the truth. He didn’t believe any of it. I didn’t know if you would…” She cut off that line of thought before he could get too mopey or talk about his feelings again.

“Well yeah, Dante is Dante. He hates your guts, and even if he didn’t, he’s too stupid to understand like a quarter of the stuff you were saying to him.”

“I did try to use small words.” Lindsay let out a tiny croak of laughter.

“The point is… we’re not Dante. We’re us. You’re us. We’re all in this together.”

“Thank you.” Martin squeezed her shoulder. “I think.”

“And yeah, maybe once we’re out of here you might need to go to a therapist for a few decades, but that’s just life, right? Bad stuff happens, you fix what you can and cry about the rest later.”

Therapists held no appeal for Martin. Once it had become apparent to him that there was nothing in his mind that required ‘fixing’ and that it was the world around him that was riddled with flaws, he had rejected all attempts to get him into counseling of any sort. What he thought and what he felt were his business, not that of a stranger whose entire job was to render him as normal as was physically possible. He did not want to be normal. He wanted to be exceptional. And he could not be exceptional if he spent all of his time crushing the parts of himself that were special so that they could go unnoticed by people desperately looking for a tall blade of grass to cut down and keep level with everyone else.

“I think…” He tried to sidestep the whole conversation. “I’d rather just find a new game for us to play.”

“Yeah, switch it up?” It was good to hear the old excitement back in her voice. “Go old school with some MMO we skipped out on last generation or look for something new? I hear there’s a new post-apocalyptic thing where you get to play as cockroach people. You wanna roach it up with me?”

Martin ducked through the only tunnel that remained unblocked by the slick oily bodies of the Ravagers and continued in deeper.

“I suspect that a post-nuclear desert wasteland will be a pleasant change of pace after this.”

“We could just take it slow, level up like normal people.” She said it cautiously as though he might be scared off by the concept. “Maybe join up with a raiding guild once we’re nice and comfy in our roach bods.”

“I…” Martin forced himself to be honest. “Might miss the challenge.”

“How did I know you were going to say that?” Lindsay cackled. “Sausage-looking dumbass. Sitting in the frying pan, yelling to the cook to turn up the heat.”

Martin was about to make some pithy comment of his own about boiling a frog but stopped when he thought of Speckles. Fortunately, he was spared having to stammer something out as they emerged into a far more grandiose chamber than any of them had been expecting. It looked like the inside of a cathedral, with a vast vaulted ceiling and an altar big enough for the whole guild to stand on comfortably. There were ridges cut into that altar, and trickling in rivulets down those graven lines, oil flowed, running down the full length of the chamber to disappear into pools on either side of the doors. With a touch of fire, this whole chamber could be set ablaze in moments. Yet for all of its appearance as some grand church, the finish was not polished or pristine. Despite the shape of things, the construction was of natural stone. This place had not been gravened into the stone of the earth; it had been grown. A natural temple to whatever gods the Night Ravagers worshipped. Martin had some suspicions about who, or what, that might be.

They proceeded in cowed silence along the center of the hall, Night Ravagers filing in through the entrance behind them to line the rear wall. Whatever the monsters wanted to show them, it was here. Even Lindsay showed a little respect, speaking instead of yelling.

“If we get sacrificed, I’m totally blaming you, Martin.”

“That seems fair.”

Before anyone else could make a pithy comment, the reason that they had been herded here became apparent. The vast flat wall that they stood facing at the rear of the cavern cracked open. Not like an egg giving birth to new life, but like someone was demolishing a building with people still inside. Huge boulders shattered from the solid stone were flung across the room, smashing off the walls, the floor, the roof, chipping a corner off the altar. It was not explosive, because that would imply only a single vast force of destruction. Instead boom after boom sounded, and more and more of the stone was flung about. Self-preservation drove Martin and the others back, but it took only a few steps before they were in reach of the Ravagers once more, setting off an entirely different set of alarms in their heads.

Still the concussive thumping from the other end of the chamber went on. Those parts of the plain stone that were still standing were no longer plain. Oil had begun eking out when only cracks were visible, and now that there were holes big enough to drive a car through, the flood came. Slick and black and reeking. It washed over the altar, filling the grooves until overflowing, then spread slowly out in every direction from there. There was nowhere to run to escape it, nothing that any of them could do but stand there and let it lap around their feet.

At the first touch, Martin had expected it to be cold, but somehow the fact that it was at body temperature was even more disturbing. Like they were wading through viscous blood.

Pitch blackness was all that even Martin’s improved vision could make out in the cavity behind the ruined wall, even as it crumbled away to nothing. But then it came. The Deep light. The green, shining not from two eyes down on the level of them, but from dozens, towering up above them. Ducking down to pass under the remains of the chamber wall.

Come to me. Come to me. Come to me.

The light shone down into Martin’s eye. It bounced around inside his head, the voice, the whisper that was always at the back of his mind. It echoed, it boomed. They were so much deeper now than they’d been when this first began. So much closer to the Heart. So much closer to the source.

He tore his gaze away, so that his thoughts could be his own again, and in that brief moment all of the things that his eyes had been seeing but his mind not processing caught up to him.

The Dunmhar was a Night Ravager written large. Ten times the size of the usual ones, slick with the same oil, protruding with the same metallic claws at the end of its arms, the grinding spiral of teeth jutting out from its face. It had dug its way through the wall of the temple to stand before them from wherever it had been hidden in the Deep. For a change, the boss had come to them.

The difference in Strength between it and the Night Ravager was multiplied in the same way as its size. Just in terms of pure numbers, Martin had no idea how they might have defeated it, even with the fire damage that he could now deploy. They had all known that they were running before they could walk, that they were skipping out on the vital grind of leveling up by playing the game in the way that they had. It had made them more and more reliant on Martin’s ability to solve the problems being presented. Secretly he could not deny that he had relished that, but now they were reaching the tipping point where the growth in their foes’ power was approaching insurmountable.

If they had to fight the Dunmhar, Martin felt certain that they would lose. Even optimizing everything that they could bring to bear and minimizing everything it was capable of through strategy, there was just too much of a disparity in power. What luck then that despite its dramatic entrance, it had not started to attack them yet. Lindsay’s beak hung open.

“That is one big Dudezilla.”

“Dudezilla.” Jericho snorted.

“You got a better word, furball?” Lindsay snapped back, eyes never leaving the monster.

“Could we all keep quiet for just a moment?” Martin didn’t dare to tear his eyes away either.

The Dunmhar reared back and then slammed all of its arms down. Dust and pebbles fell from the ceiling, the cracks that the destruction of the rear wall had caused had opened up into fissures in what had been solid stone, and it made Martin question the stability of the entire place.

When the cloud of dust cleared, the stone he’d been thinking of as an altar was gone. Powdered by the force of the monster’s blow. Julia’s hand scrabbled at the back of his collar, and she squeaked.

“Did it just try to hit us and miss?”

Once more the monster reared up until its clawed hands scraped the ceiling of the chamber, then came down all over again, hard enough that it knocked everyone off-balance with the tremors that followed. Only the grip on Martin’s scruff kept him upright, and only his counterbalancing weight kept Julia from falling.

The dust began to dissipate, but before a clear picture of what was happening could emerge, the thump shook through the room once more. Again, and again, the vast fists of the Dunmhar came down, shattering stone, turning the floor of the chamber into a pit of gravel.

“Hey big boy! Knock it off!” Lindsay yelped halfheartedly as she began to slip down the freshly wrought incline. “It might not be trying to hit us, but if it keeps that up, we’re all going to… fall through the floor into the next Deep.” She met Martin’s eye. “No way.”

All he could offer was a shrug.

The pounding of the Dunmhar’s fists slowed, but its motions were not halted, instead it extended those rust speckled claws at the end of each arm and began carving down into the stone instead. It scooped out tractor sized handfuls of chipped up stone at first, flinging it behind it into the void from which it had emerged. The oil which had slicked the whole floor now pooled down in the monster’s pit, and with each flick of its great claws it spattered everything and everyone. The Ravagers stood unflinching in the showers, but Iron Riot did not take it so stoically. Jericho in particular looked like a wet dog with all the oil matting his fur. Meanwhile Lindsay was predictably vocal.

“Ugh, it’s in my mouth!”

Martin had brought a hand up to protect his face, and he was now pinching the bridge of his snout against this latest idiocy.

“Maybe if you close your mouth…”

“What did you just say to me…” Lindsay started to feign indignance before another splash hit her. “Blah! Oil mouth. Oil mouth!”

Jericho was trying not to laugh, because every time that he snorted, he accidentally inhaled a little more oil up his nose and was reduced to spluttering. The only one who looked genuinely distraught was Julia. Her white robes were now black, but her expression was darker still. Martin reached up to touch the hand still resting on his shoulder gently.

“Are you okay?”

She jerked away from his hand as though he were one of the Ravagers.

“Okay? Nothing about this is okay. We’re stuck, we’re… the monsters are helping us? I don’t understand anything that’s going on, and I’m trusting you. Trusting in you to get us through it and… that’s scary. You know? Having to put your life in someone else’s hands.”

Martin was aware of how much trust was being put in him. That the others were relying on him to swoop in with some daring last-minute solution to their problems and save their lives. That trust had felt like an awful burden before but now it felt like it was a gift. Dimly aware that he had to say something, he mumbled out.

“It is all very strange, and I don’t think we’re meant to understand why it is happening. I think we’re just supposed to… follow the logic.” When he glanced over, Julia was staring at him with the saddest little smile on her face.

“It is like you’re speaking a whole different language sometimes.”

“Sorry.”

She shook her head, dislodging more oil, flicking it onto Martin.

“It is nothing to be sorry about… I just wish I could see what you see, sometimes.”

He wiped at his face, succeeding primarily in spreading the slickness around instead of off.

“Mostly oil right now.” She let out a little chuckle.

“Yeah, that thing is messy.”

Jericho shook himself like a dog, spritzing them all and making his already ridiculous looking fur take on the appearance of an electrocuted sheep. They were all just raising their voices in protest when there was a crack from below. The digging Dunmhar dropped down ten feet deeper into its hole in one abrupt movement. Paused, and then set to work once more, now barely visible from the level of the chamber entrance where its smaller kin still stood waiting.

The scent of the air changed, the thickness of the oil giving way to something cooler and crisper. It had broken through to the next Deep and was still digging on without pause. If the thing could tire, which Martin doubted, it seemed that it still had more than enough Stamina for this.

Lindsay wobbled her way across the shaking stone, hopping from one heap of rubble to the next trying to stay out of the remnants of the oil.

“I thought you said we couldn’t just dig down. It would take too long.”

“It would take us too long. At the rate this thing is going…” Martin started doing the math in his head. “It will still be cutting it very fine.”

The head of the colossus was now level with them, all of its eyes turned down, the light and the voice that came with it, blessedly turned away from them.

“Do we help it dig?” Jericho shifted uncomfortably.

“I suspect we would just get in the way.” Martin sighed. The stone beneath their feet lurched and cracked as the Dunmhar burrowed deeper and deeper until even the slick top of its head had vanished from sight.

As if it had been agreed, now that the towering monster was out of sight they all began to move forward to look down into the abyss below. The walls of the shaft that the mega-ravager had been digging were rough, scarred by its claws, and coated with the pooling oil that had once filled the room above.

It would not be an easy descent, but they would manage it, and every Deep they didn’t have to traverse the normal way increased their odds of survival. The only real danger would be losing their footing and falling directly into the dervish spin of claws still excavating below. Martin lowered himself over the rim of the pit, only to have both Jericho and Lindsay seize him by the arms before he could lower himself.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Climbing down?” Martin glanced back over his shoulder, confused.

“You want to be rat-mince?” Lindsay deflated with exasperation.

“If you fall you die.” Jericho was more forthright.

“Surely we can wait until…” Julia tried to play peacemaker as usual.

Martin rattled through his reasoning while trying to slip subtly out of the grasp of the other two. Jericho let him go, Lindsay did not.

“Until the drop is guaranteed to be lethal if we lose our footing? Until whatever monsters were in the Deeps below regroup?”

“Until the giant monster isn’t going to puree you if you fall all the way down?” Lindsay snapped at him.

“Until we know we aren’t dropping into deadly situation?” Jericho growled in his other ear.

“I thought that the two of you were meant to be the reckless ones?” Martin was becoming entirely too comfortable being honest. “Why am I the one pushing to go faster?”

“Because…” Lindsay trailed off without giving a proper answer.

“Because there was no real risk before.” Julia sighed. “We might lose some progress, but the only one that considered that a life-and-death situation was you. Now that we’re gambling with our real lives you seem to be… I don’t know, more relaxed about the whole thing?” Martin shrugged once more.

“Well, I’m not a big fan of my real life.”

“Oof buddy, big same.” He could feel Lindsay’s grip on him loosen. “If I could just chill in VR, murdering awesome dragons all day I’d be there for it.”

“Pathetic, no matter how I struggle in real life, at least it is real.” Jericho sneered.

“Am I the only one that actually likes their real life?” Lindsay rolled her eyes.

“Yes, Julia. That’s why we all hate you.”

Martin paused just as he was about to slip over the edge again, noticing the stiffness of Julia’s posture after that little jibe.

“Lindsay, please tell her that was a joke.”

“Oh, come on, she knows I’m kidding.” She pushed him. “I don’t even hate my life either. Not anymore. Used to, obviously, but I fought way too hard to get it to where I wanted it to be to give up on it now.” Julia cleared her throat.

“I knew she was joking.”

“I can’t always tell.” Martin took one last look down. The Dunmhar was so far down beneath them now that it was fading from his vision, the only motion he could make out was the trickle down of oil.

“That’s because you’ve got a special brain, sweetie.” Lindsay reached down to pat him on the head condescendingly, and he took it as the opportunity he needed, slipping down out of grabbing range. The oil served as lubricant, creating a waterslide without the pleasant connotations and Martin accelerated down almost an entire Deep before he caught a decent hold.

There were a chorus of yells from above, but before they had even finished echoing down, he could see the others beginning their descent. Albeit with considerably more care than he’d made his.

“When I get down there, I’m going to lift your tail and kick your ass, Martin!” He forced a grin.

“You will need to catch me first.”

It had the desired effect. Lindsay let go of her grip on the first jagged handholds and flung herself bodily down the pit toward him, trusting in her hollow bones to slow her fall enough that the landing didn’t do her any harm. She landed just six feet above him, though on the opposite side of the pit, and immediately, the race was on.

Julia and Jericho continued their plodding descent, hindered by a lack of Agility or a desire to stop the other from falling to her death. Lindsay had no such qualms. The lever in her psyche had switched from the side that activated the rational version of her to the one the controlled her when she was at play and Martin was the target in her sights.

In real life, climbing down into a pit like this, let alone letting go of hand holds and willingly dropping the distances that he was flinging himself to stay ahead of her would have been insanity. It would have been like climbing out of the window of a high-rise hotel and jumping down from floor to floor. The line between reality and game may have become fuzzy for Martin, but that wasn’t just because the game was so real, it was because his reality was so ridiculous.

Corporate espionage, genius inventors held hostage, committing suicide to escape into a digital dreamscape. A tech corporation raking through every news feed, hacking algorithms to hide any record of their crimes. A cult obsessed with a game to the point that they were more than willing to cover up the deaths of real people, and even to kill real people to protect it. A world where no matter how good you were at your job: you were never rewarded. Where those born to wealth and power ruled over everyone while every normal person had to struggle and fight for the scraps from their table. Reality had seemed unreal to Martin for as long as he’d been able to understand what was happening around him.

He dropped from Deep to Deep with an almost casual ease, applying his Healing Touch when he’d fallen too far and suffered damage. Feeling that same giddy excitement bubbling in his stomach that he could remember from the very first time he’d logged into a video game and found a world that finally made sense.

Lindsay might have built her character for these kinds of antics, but Martin had lived them. He could do the things that he was doing in the game, because he had already done them. Because both the real world and the game were both aspects of the same person who was here and now and beating Lindsay at her own game, laughing all the way.

She was close enough that he could hear her panting, close enough to the monster below that he could see it again. In the mad rush down, he had lost track of how many Deeps they had already skipped and how much closer they were to their goal than just minutes before. For the first time in entirely too long, it felt like they were winning. Not just striving forward with all their might, but actually winning. Lindsay must have been feeling it too from the way she whooped and hollered all the way down the pit.

With a crunch of stone giving way, the Dunmhar broke through to another new Deep. Which was about when the screaming started.

At first it was the panicked shrieking of people who had just received a fairly large chunk of stone on top of them, followed by an even larger monster, but it quickly changed from fear to surprise and then into the authoritative tones of orders being issued and acknowledged.

With a roar, flames burst up from the bottom of the pit. Some ability of the defending adventurers could deal fire damage, and the Dunmhar was even more slick with crude oil than the average Ravager. Worse still, at least from the perspective of Martin and Lindsay, was the fact that heat rises. The flames lapped up from the immolated monster to lick up the walls of the pit, and the oil still running down it suddenly became flames chasing up toward them.

Smoke flooded up the chimney from below, so that all Martin had to rely on was his sense of hearing. He clung to the jagged stone between Deeps and strained to listen to what was unfolding below. The clash of steel on claws. The shouts of the high-level players who were fighting back against the monster that had just appeared. Lindsay landed beside him on the wall, their game of chasing already forgotten.

“What do we do?”

“We’ve got to help it.” Martin reached for the sword on his belt, preparing himself to drop into the fray, but Lindsay’s hand on his shoulder made him pause.

“Hold up, you want to team up with the monster to kill people? Real people?”

“It is helping us.” He couldn’t understand her reservations.

“It’s still a monster, dude. We don’t know what it really wants.” Martin tugged free of her grasp.

“Who cares what it wants? We need it!” She might not have physically restrained him anymore, but she held him with her gaze.

“This is a line I think we really need to think about before we cross it. Turning on other people to help nightmare monsters from hell? That doesn’t seem like the right thing to do, does it?”

“Right and wrong don’t come into it. We need to survive. Besides, aren’t you the one convinced this is all just a game?”

Another concussive blast rolled up the pit, shaking them loose of their footing. Martin would almost certainly have fallen if Lindsay’s reflexes had been just a little slower. As it was, she caught him by the scruff of his neck until he managed to get a grip again. Through the discomfort he grunted.

“We have to get down there. They’re killing it.” Lindsay wavered for a moment, then loosed her grip on him.

“Fine.”

This time their descent was not a playful romp, but a panicked scuttle. The two of them leaped from side to side to avoid the worst of the flames still blossoming from the walls of the pit as they descended, going as fast as Martin dared to go. The delay of arguing with Lindsay proved to be too long.

As they dropped down from the bottom of the pit into Deep Thirty-nine the deathblow was being dealt to the Dunmhar. Everywhere it had once been black and slick, was now red and raw. Burns covered every surface of its body that Martin could see, and both hands and feet had been lopped from it. A Wulvan Exorcist stood atop the body with a massive warhammer still glowing in her hands from the final Smite that had sealed its fate. The rest of her guild was gathered around, spells and bows still ready. She threw back her head and howled her victory, but the other players seemed considerably more interested in Martin and Lindsay.

SEVEN

Wings of Smokeless Flame

“What the hell was that about?” One of the Invokers stormed over, spheres of flame still circling him in tiny orbits.

Martin threw up his hands before Lindsay could speak.

“Dude, I have no idea. Same thing happened to us; we just followed it down.” The Invoker looked him up and down and laughed.

“Well, ‘dude,’ you shouldn’t have. You should climb back up to wherever you came from.”

Martin did not tense; he had enough practice dealing with petty bullies to know that letting them know that they were having an effect on you was the worst thing you could do.

“I don’t think I’d manage the climb back up there.” The fireballs circling the Invoker seemed to glow a little brighter and burn a little hotter.

“I can send you back to the last town if you want, ‘dude.’ It would be no problem.”

Martin pretended that he couldn’t hear the blatant threat.

“Nah, I think I’d like to explore down here a bit first. Get an idea what is coming.”

“That’s smart. But you’ve got to know you and your little birdy aren’t going to last five minutes down here. Everything will kick your ass.” The other player sneered.

“Little birdy.” Lindsay mouthed to Martin behind the Invoker’s back. Martin forced a smile.

“Then that’s the problem solved.”

“Come on Grady, we’ve got to go.” One of the guild’s other players, a Sythvan Knight from the looks of her, threw an arm around the Invoker’s shoulders and led him away. “Break’s over.” Still the Invoker called back over his shoulder.

“You crawl back up that hole if you know what’s good for you. And if you don’t, you better stay out of our way. Got it?”

“Understood, sir.” Martin saluted in what he hoped was a non-sarcastic manner. It earned him a scowl, because that was inevitable given the stranger’s foul attitude, but it was not enough to have him coming back over, so Martin considered it a win. He turned back to Lindsay to see her quietly fuming.

“I should have kicked his ass. Little birdy. I’m nobody’s little birdy. Do I look like a goddamn canary to you?”

“You look like a grown woman about to have a tantrum over nothing.” Martin crouched over the corpse of the Dunmhar to search it but found only a Deep Key that was no longer even vaguely useful to them in its inventory.

Lindsay huffed and puffed, before finally blurting out.

“I… am not having a tantrum.”

“Well, that’s a nice change.” Martin had turned his attention elsewhere now that the smoke was beginning to clear. Above them was the gaping shaft that the monster had burrowed down still dimly burning, but all around that opening the stone was concealed by growths of crystal that caught and refracted the light strangely. It was not the kaleidoscopic splitting of colors that Martin would have expected from a prism, but more like an odd shuffling of shadows when he moved his head. Like there were moving parts inside the clearly transparent gemstones that somehow blocked the light.

“Rat-boy, why do you think that I won’t kick your ass? I’ll kick your ass from here to the bottom of the dungeon and back. I’ll kick your ass so hard that the next time you try to sit down you just fall over because you don’t have an ass to sit on anymore. I’ll kick your ass so much that when Julia tries to heal you, she’ll find your ass impacted up through your whole body into your chest cavity.”

“Definitely no tantrum going on here.” He chuckled, turning his attention lower. The walls were similarly encrusted in crystalline outcroppings higher up, but the lower that his eye went, the smoother the crystals became, until by the floor it was as smooth as a mirror. Reflecting back an image of his ratty little feet.

Lindsay made an attempt at puppy dog eyes when his gaze passed her by.

“Come on, they can’t have gone far. Let me just go cut off his ears a little bit.”

It was actually enough to give Martin pause. Not because he was susceptible to Lindsay’s pleading. Years of bad decisions had inoculated him against going along with any of her plans. But because of the hypocrisy.

“So, fighting them so that we could get to the next Deep was morally wrong, but cutting off their ears for being rude to you is fine?” She threw her wings up in the air.

“Listen, I don’t make the rules. I just enforce them. By cutting off ears.”

“Whose ears are we cutting off?” With a solid thud, Jericho joined the conversation, grunting his way upright and then holding out his arms to catch Julia when she dropped down.

“A bitch.” Lindsay’s black crow eyes narrowed.

“Not me?” Jericho took an involuntary step back.

“For once, no.”

Martin cut Lindsay off before she could get herself worked up into another rant.

“We met some other players; they were dubious about our chances of survival.”

“Can you put me down as also dubious.” Julia disentangled her blackened robes from where they’d tangled around Jericho’s arms.

“We’re drastically under level, and this is the area where most other guilds find their progress halted.” Martin conceded.

“So, we should just give up?” Jericho’s voice was a low rumble, setting the crystal clusters around the room vibrating softly in harmony.

“No.” Martin’s voice started soft but grew louder as he gained more confidence. “We should take the lessons that Strata has taught us and apply them. If the other guilds have been unable to progress beyond this area despite having had all the time in the world to level up, that means that the problems here cannot be brute forced through.”

“So, we are back to relying on your very big brain.” Lindsay would have grinned if she had teeth. As she had a beak, the expression was different. Mostly revealing itself through a fluffing of feathers around the head.

“We’re prepared for this situation in a way that other guilds aren’t. Not because of me or my capabilities, but because we know to approach these Deeps as puzzles to be solved, not enemies to be conquered.”

“Hold up, I do still get to kill things, right?” Martin pinched the bridge of his snout.

“Yes Lindsay, you will still get to kill things.”

“Then I’m 100% on board with this plan, whatever it is.”

They headed for the exit to the room opposite the one that the other guild had departed through. Lindsay had made some annoyed sounds, as if Martin was caving in to the Invoker’s demands but he explained his reasoning succinctly.

“They were resting up after a fight when our friend came crashing through. That suggests they faced the boss somewhere in this direction, and that they’re now heading to the gate on the other side.”

“That’s a real good excuse to go slinking off and not fight them.” Lindsay muttered under her breath.

Martin paused just long enough to answer that jibe. “We don’t need to fight them; we only need to beat them. And we do that by progressing beyond them. We don’t win by scrapping with everyone we meet. We win by winning. Same as we always have.”

He was startled when Jericho bellowed. “Iron Riot!” But he wasn’t surprised until Lindsay and Julia echoed it back in similarly deafening tones. That wasn’t meant to be an inspirational speech, but if it put a bounce in their step and kept them moving, then he certainly wasn’t going to argue.

The path that they had taken led them down, and while Martin had fully expected the interior decoration of the Deep to have maintained consistency, he was surprised to discover just how consistent it was. Though there was an incline leading them deeper down, the distribution of crystal on the walls remained entirely level, so that the upper portion was soon the only part covered in growths, while the bottom showed the mirror smooth polished crystal.

By the flickering torchlight of one of the dozens of torches Lindsay insisted on carting around, they could see their own reflections in it. Lindsay, hunched forward, only held back by the others at her heels. Jericho, standing proud and tall but surrounded always by a swirl of dark shadows. Julia fading into the background, shrinking into herself. And Martin himself, a tattered ruin of the creature that he had created when this adventure began. One eye replaced with a thick wad of scar tissue, burned away and missing. Holes through his hands and feet. The wound in his side from Bellator’s intrusion, still not entirely sealed despite all of the healing that he’d done. With the notches missing from his ears and tail on top of all that, he looked more like an animated corpse than a player character. There would be no version of any story in which that thing was the hero.

It was only this moment of self-indulgence, staring drearily into the mirror at himself, that saved Julia’s life. He saw the spectral shape lunging out at her from the mirrored wall behind. He was in motion before he could turn his head and realize there was nothing there at all. His Oathblade, lit up with Celestial Strike should have swung through that open air by her side unimpeded, but instead it struck the wraith in a shower of sparks and blinding reflected sunlight.

Scintillant Shade has died.

Skaife gains 743 Experience.

“What the hell was that?” Julia yelped.

“Invisible enemies.” Martin spun in a slow circle, searching for any sign of another attacker. “You can see them in the mirrors. Well, you can see something. A shape. A shadow.”

Lindsay lashed out with a dagger and something behind her folded around it. Something unseen but defeated.

Scintillant Shade has died.

Skaife gains 743 experience.

“This is not feeling very fair.” Jericho grumbled.

“You want fair,” Lindsay slashed out again, her blade passing harmlessly through thin air. “Go to the circus.”

[Tesra has suffered 21 slashing damage]

Whatever wraith she had been swiping at raked her. Two long cuts opened across her face and shoulder, almost taking her eye. But that concerned Martin less than what she’d said.

“Are clowns known for being equitable?”

Despite her foe being entirely unseen, Lindsay managed to dodge under its next swipe, punching forward with her other dagger to hit nothing once more.

“What?”

“Is it something about elephants never forgetting?” Julia cocked her head to one side. “They used to have those at circuses, right?”

Lindsay ducked under another invisible strike, then lashed out with her foot to the spot behind the humming air. There was a solid impact with something, and a moment later the crystal mirror beyond her foot cracked.

“What? What?”

For a moment, they weren’t under attack. Martin tried to steer the conversation back toward sanity.

“The circus?”

“Yeah a circus,” She paused for a moment as if it offered any clarity. “Like a fayre?”

“Is a circus like a fayre?” Jericho stroked his bearded muzzle.

Martin leaped forward, swinging a Smite around the side of Julia to split the next wraith in two.

Scintillant Shade has died.

Skaife gains 743 Experience.

After a moment of eye contact that ended in her blushing, she mused,

“Are you thinking of a carnival? That’s like a fayre I suppose?”

“Okay, okay.” Lindsay held up her daggers in defeat. “If you want fair, dress like it’s the Renaissance?”

They had continued to move forward throughout the fighting and the tunnel was starting to open out. Jericho lashed out a fist and hit something in the air.

“There are other kinds of fayre.”

“I don’t care enough about this pun to keep having this conversation.” Lindsay’s daggers carved sweeping arcs through the air around her as she entered the chamber, making contact with nothing, even though Martin assumed she had seen some tell-tale motion in the mirror.

Another slash opened up on her back, ripping from shoulder to tail. Another wound burst open on her shoulder as one of the slender claws or blades of the wraiths plunged through. Perfectly outlining the delicate curve of the weapon in blood for a moment before it was withdrawn.

“Ow?”

[Tesra has suffered 12 piercing damage]

Julia was already casting her healing spells, the glow of her hands as she wove them together illuminating the whole chamber. It was as though they were inside a vast mirrored egg, with the only thing that wasn’t completely smooth and perfect being a vast outcropping of chaotically sprouting crystals hanging down from the middle of the roof. That light also helped to pick out the wraiths in the reflections. There were more of them swirling around Lindsay now, sensing weakness or smelling blood. A whirlwind of half glimpsed cloaks and blades all spiraled in toward her. Trying to finish her before the healing took hold.

Martin unleashed his Halo.

It swept through the room in an instant. Illuminating each of the wraiths for just an instant before they exploded apart into shimmering dust and then faded to nothing. The light bounced back and forth throughout the chamber, growing brighter and brighter instead of fading. It was already blinding when Martin cast it, and now all that any of them could see was white.

Scintillating Shades have died.

Skaife gains 1886 experience.

“Great job breaking it, Martin.” Lindsay yelled through the light.

He waved his sword back and forth in front of him half-heartedly on the off chance that more wraiths had spawned in already, but he was as likely to hit an ally as an enemy.

“I’ll just leave you to die next time.”

The light did die down, but not in the way that they had expected. Instead of a gradual fading as their vision returned it flicked off as though someone had clicked a switch. For a moment, Martin’s eyes couldn’t adjust to the sudden darkness, but then the chamber came back into sight.

Pulsating with that same trapped light, the dangling crystals in the middle of the ceiling cast long shadows around the room. Martin was relieved to note that the pulsing was not in time to his heartbeat, nor even a little bit green. It did seem to be slowing and dimming, however. A glance around showed no signs of more wraiths, which was a relief, but it also showed no signs of an exit. This chamber appeared to be the end of the line.

“Spread out.” Martin spoke without thinking. Instinct informing his words more than reason.

“There is nothing here.” Jericho grumbled.

The light within the crystal was dimmer still, but Martin didn’t trust it at all. Nothing in Strata was as it seemed, and there was no possibility that they’d wandered into a random dead end that another guild had just come limping and injured out of. The boss was here, they just hadn’t seen it yet.

Turning his gaze to the walls, Martin fully expected to see some bigger version of the wraiths come gliding out at them, but the mirrors revealed nothing at a first glance. Just as he was eyeballing himself in the reflective surface, trying to work out if they needed to smash through somewhere like the dinosaur fossil above had done, he finally caught a glimpse of movement.

Everywhere that a wraith had died, there was now something like a trickle of rising steam wending up toward the crystal cluster. The dying light within those crystals no longer looked like a flickering strobe, it looked like the beating of wings.

The crystal cluster shattered even as Martin jerked his head back around to it. The wings of the thing that had been metamorphosizing inside of it unfurling. It was made of light, thin bands of light, rotating through each to make one abstract shape after another. The first time Martin saw some pattern in it was as it began to descend, two spread wings, like a butterfly. He dragged his eyes away from the beautiful image and began to bark out commands.

“Ranged attacks until it gets down here. Jericho, I hope you’ve got some Vengeance stored up.”

“Always!” He clapped his great hands together and then tore them apart, unleashing a bombardment of shadow up at the Effulgent Tinea. Some slipped through the gaps between the beams of light, others struck home, dimming it for only a moment before it blazed back. But by the end, even though more and more were hitting it, the light was not dimming at all.

[Effulgent Tinea has suffered 12 dark damage]

[Effulgent Tinea has suffered 11 dark damage]

[Effulgent Tinea has suffered 0 dark damage]

[Effulgent Tinea has suffered 0 dark damage]

[Effulgent Tinea has suffered 0 dark damage]

“It’s immune to dark damage. Jericho fall back, shield Julia.” He turned to find his guild leader already sprinting out in a parabola that would pass through him on its way to the boss. As he was about to suggest. “Lindsay, you’re up.”

She leaped just before she reached him, and the clawed toes of her bird feet brushed his palm as he unleashed his Rebuke, launching her into the air to meet the Tinea. Lindsay yelled out “Raptor Strike!” as usual, and struck a heavy blow to the creature, but there was nothing solid for her daggers to hook into, so she fell clear through it instead of dragging it down.

[Effulgent Tinea has suffered 33 piercing damage]

Everywhere that the lines of the monster’s body intersected with hers, feathers and flesh parted with a hiss of red steam. When she landed, the leg that one outline of a wing had brushed by gave out underneath her, the bone neatly severed. She crumpled into a heap as Julia rushed forward to heal her, and Martin suddenly became the only one with a hope of dealing damage to the boss.

The Tinea’s graceful drift down toward them had turned into a dive now that it had touched on its prey. Lindsay was what it wanted, and she was what it pursued. It became almost invisible as its interlocking wings collapsed inwards, leaving only a staticky confusion of light descending like a falling star.

[Effulgent Tinea has suffered 30 light damage]

Martin knocked it off course with a Javelin of Faith and was gratified to see the impact of his strike confuse the boss, even if it did little damage. It wasn’t immune to light damage, so he could hurt it. That was as much of a victory as anything else.

The monster switched direction as swiftly as it changed shape. The vast outlines of wings unfolded from its central nexus in a completely different arrangement, and it turned its thwarted dive into momentum for a swoop across at him. He lit up his sword with a Celestial Strike and stood his ground.

There was no tremor in his hands as he held the Oathblade out before him, the blazing pillar of the sword’s light splitting the migraine inducing strobe of motion coming toward him in half. It hit the sword dead on with all its momentum and strength, pushing him back a step and driving the other edge of the blade back toward his face. Only reflex saved him from cutting himself. He dropped to one knee, and angled his sword, letting the unrelenting force of the Tinea carry on, scraping up the angle and over his head.

[Effulgent Tinea has suffered 0 slashing damage]

[Effulgent Tinea has suffered 0 light damage]

It had done nothing. The light damage, the physical damage, nothing had touched the boss. His supposition about its damage resistance had been wrong. There was something he was missing. Something he didn’t understand.

Almost the moment that it was clear of him, the lines of the Tinea shifted again. It swept around at him in a six-way pincer of bright burning light that he had to desperately spring forward to avoid being diced by it.

“Everyone, keep your distance.” Martin shouted into the eerily silent room. “I need a minute.”

The Tinea did not give him that minute, nor did it give him distance. It came on at him again immediately, each band of light flexing through the others to lash out at him in a pattern that there was no way he could predict. His parries did nothing, with the beams of light passing completely through the blade without making contact. All that he could do was frantically backpedal out of its reach while he frantically racked his brain.

Julia had Lindsay back in the fight, and now that the Tinea was in reach, she made a beeline for it. She lunged forward with both daggers to slash at the rear extensions of its light only to discover that, like Martin, her attacks were completely useless against what seemed to be an incorporeal foe. She was so frustrated that she didn’t even remember to call out the name of her attacks like she was in a cartoon. Whipping both blades at it in a Shadow Slice and looking as surprised as anyone else when it made contact.

[Effulgent Tinea has suffered 18 dark damage]

Once more, where the Tinea was injured it showed it by the dimming of its light, and a switch in target. Inverting through itself to swap the direction it was facing and begin pursuing Lindsay.

Martin solved the puzzle.

“We can’t hit it with the same attack twice. We couldn’t hit the wraiths with the same attacks twice either. They were adaptive. That’s why one minute we were killing them in one hit, the next they were a challenge. They’re adaptive, and the boss has absorbed their immunities.”

Lindsay seemed less than enthused, given that she was now ducking and diving through the complex swiveling beams of light trying to slice her up once more.

“That’s great, but what the hell are we meant to do now it’s immune to everything we can do.”

Martin spun his Oathblade up into a high guard and grinned.

“It isn’t immune to damage types; it is immune to specific abilities and weapons. You have more than two abilities, use them.”

She unleashed a flurry of blows so fast that they were almost invisible to the naked eye. Much faster than she was usually capable of. Some sort of special attack that she’d unlocked, that was now proving effective.

“What are you going to do?”

[Effulgent Tinea has suffered 6 slashing damage]

[Effulgent Tinea has suffered 6 slashing damage]

[Effulgent Tinea has suffered 8 slashing damage]

[Effulgent Tinea has suffered 10 slashing damage]

[Effulgent Tinea has suffered 8 slashing damage]

[Effulgent Tinea has suffered 0 slashing damage]

Martin let his hand come down to rest on the Purifier’s Oath at his hip.

“I can reuse all of mine, so long as I move fast. But first…” He leaped in past the first sweeping arc of light and drove his blade up toward the monster’s central mass, where most of the lines intersected. As it was about to slide home, he activated Trinity Strike.

[Effulgent Tinea has suffered 26 piercing damage]

The damage was nothing to write home about, but it empowered all of them to make critical hits with their next attacks. If they only had a limited number of shots at this thing, they had to make every one of them count.

For a moment after his blow had made contact, the Tinea had been frozen in place, the light that composed it flickering. But now it had regained control of itself, and it was going to punish Martin for his indiscretion.

[MISS]

He ducked the first swipe, pleased with himself once more for having picked the character race with the smallest hitbox in the game, but any smugness he might have worked himself up to was quickly brushed away as a dervish spin of more and more streamers of light lashed past him.

“Jericho!”

To his credit, the big man had not been standing idle, he’d positioned himself as far away from Martin and the boss as possible before whipping himself across the back with the Cat-o-nine Tails and unleashing a burst of shadow at the Tinea.

[CRITICAL HIT]

[ELEMENTAL WEAKNESS: DOUBLE DAMAGE]

[Effulgent Tinea has suffered 128 dark damage]

The blow hammered home, and what would normally have been little damage was doubled by Martin making it a critical hit. It may not have been enough to put a pin in this particular butterfly, but it did have the desired effect. The swirl of lights that was their enemy turned, beat its dozen interlocking wings in unison and launched itself across at Jericho.

The Heretic spread his arms wide, waiting for the monster to come, making no attempt to dodge or run. He wanted the damage so that he could unleash more Vengeance, but he had clearly misjudged just how much harm this creature could do in a mere moment. The gameplay loop of suffering damage and using it to harm others was all well and good, but if he died before he could unleash it because the healer couldn’t keep up, he wasn’t going to be much use to anyone.

Martin had to stop it, but doing so would mean ruining his opportunity to deal what he hoped was lethal damage. If he couldn’t achieve lethal damage then all of them would die, not only Jericho. The logical choice was to let one of them die so the others could survive, yet he found his grip tightening on the Oath at his belt and preparing.

[Effulgent Tinea has suffered 1 bludgeoning damage]

A rock soared across the room and barely brushed the Tinea. Martin didn’t even understand what had happened for a moment, until his eyes turned to the petrified looking Julia with her hand still outstretched. She met his eyes with an expression that was equal parts horror and surprise. She had known Jericho would die. She had known that throwing a rock would save him and doom her. She had known all of that, yet she had still done it. Apparently against her own will judging by her face.

The Tinea spun to face her, as much as anything made of abstracts could face anything at all. It began to drift in her direction, slowly gaining momentum, ready to touch her. To shred her, to leave her dead and the rest of them incapable of proceeding without a healer.

There were still seconds between Martin and what he wanted to do, so he did what he didn’t want to do. He activated his Oath and unleashed his burning Halo.

The fire washed over the room. Scorching all of them, but completely enveloping the Tinea. It was a being of pure light, it shouldn’t have been able to burn, yet whatever plasma made it up was flammable. Drawing whisps of the white out into the flames and making them blaze on long after the wave had passed. At last, it made a sound, a high-pitched whine, as its mass was wicked away to fuel the flames.

[Effulgent Tinea has suffered 46 fire damage]

Burning and flickering in and out of view, it stuttered its way back across the room toward him. Like Jericho he did not flinch. Unlike Jericho, he did not have the time to waste waiting for it to get to him. He charged in, slipping through where the first lancing strike would have come down on him a moment later. He was surrounded in an instant by the superheated flames on all sides, but that was where he wanted to be. He ignited Smite on his blade and swung.

[Effulgent Tinea has suffered 0 slashing damage]

[Effulgent Tinea has suffered 30 fire damage]

When the blade made contact with the crux of interlocking lines of light, the whole creature pulsed out of sight. Martin could still feel it on the end of his blade. Though he couldn’t see it, he could still feel the sword and Smite biting into whatever this thing used in place of flesh and bone.

The flames leaped back to life as it took shape once more. Each of its spindly arcs twitching in pain as it returned to reality. He had only a breath of time more before it struck him back, so he did not hesitate. Spinning his sword out to make a burning Celestial Strike into the closest leg while summoning his Javelin of Faith and thrusting it back into the crux.

[Effulgent Tinea has suffered 0 slashing damage]

[Effulgent Tinea has suffered 17 fire damage]

[Effulgent Tinea has suffered 30 fire damage]

His hand was burned, but not nearly so badly as the Tinea. This second blow to its center had left its abstract form whirling into chaos. Martin had to dive back or be caught up in its furiously twitching collapse in on itself.

Martin landed on his back and landed hard. The Oathblade bounced from his grip, and all that he could do to defend himself from the coming attack was to hold up his hands helplessly in front of his face.

Through the framing of the holes in his hands he saw it lunging toward him, bursting back out into dozens of interlocking streams of burning plasma that would slice him asunder.

[Effulgent Tinea has suffered 6 piercing damage]

A bone-handled throwing-dagger jutted out from the crux of the butterfly of light. Jammed right into the heart of it. He could hear Lindsay cawing in triumph as the final collapse took place, each blazing extension of the light twitching and shuddering as it was drawn back into the center until finally all that was left was a single blinding point of light at the dagger’s tip. Then nothing at all.

The fossil-dagger fell to the ground with a clatter and the fight was done.

Effulgent Tinea has died.

Skaife gains 8998 experience.

Lindsay whooped and capered around, Jericho and Julia found each other and embraced. The only one who did not feel like celebrating seemed to be Martin, who was still a little shaken by how close he’d come to death, were it not for some random item that he’d completely forgotten Lindsay had received.

With a touch to the pale patch of dying light left on the ground, he looted the boss’s remains. He retrieved the Deep Key, a pair of butterfly knives for Lindsay, a shimmering gossamer robe that Julia would be happy to take to replace her oil-slicked ones and finally a talisman of rough-hewn quartz with a glimmer of the Tinea’s light still trapped inside it. When used, it would render the user incorporeal and immune to physical damage for a second. Useless in the face of a sustained assault, but lifesaving when it came to many battles where it would allow one of them to ignore a combat mechanic in the enemy’s pattern. Just like the Exorcist ability he’d turned down. The only downside was the hour it took to recharge.

Jericho could have used it to great effect if he were tanking, but as it stood, avoiding damage would only serve to make him weaker. Lindsay’s ridiculous Agility meant that she’d never need to use it, and Julia was never in the thick of the fighting at all. Leaving it to him. He slipped the Tinea’s Echo around his neck and dispatched the rest of the loot to the others.

With a sigh of relief, Julia changed clothes. Meanwhile, Lindsay seemed to be delighted with her Wingclipper Daggers, flicking them around until Martin felt sure that she was going to lose a finger or have someone’s eye out. He hoped it would not be his eye, those were in short supply.

No more wraiths manifested themselves as Iron Riot made their way back to their point of entry. It seemed that the process generating them had been tied to the Tinea, or they were all parts of the boss encounter, designed to give it the maximum variety of immunities before the fighting started. Regardless, Martin was willing to admit that he let out a sigh of relief when the mirrored surfaces of the walls in the lower part of the dungeon gave way to the crystal encrusted stone. He did not need to be constantly checking his own reflection for danger to feel an uncomfortable level of tension. He was already wound so tightly that it was a wonder his tail couldn’t be played like a harp-string.

The gaping hole in the ceiling above them was already gone by the time that they returned. All trace of the Dunmhar was gone, reset to its usual level as though it had never been here at all. The Masters had made quick work of patching things up. That meant two things, that they were close by, observing, and that they had not felt pushed to intervene yet. Both of these were as expected.

The crystals became ever more overgrown as they headed further into the rest of the Deep, expanding out into the passages and caverns until it was a struggle just to squeeze between them without drawing blood on their razor-sharp edges. All at once, Martin became aware of the weight of stone above him, the crushing force that it could apply if it was set loose. He knew logically that he was in a game, that his fate was governed by code and physics engines, not the cold equations of real gravity. Nonetheless, he could imagine it all coming crumbling down on him. When he was sucking in his gut and exhaling until his lungs were empty so he could push through a jagged hole between walls, he could feel it all.

Here and there, he could see blood on the crystals, where larger, less careful adventurers had gone through before. Some stains were fresh and scarlet bright, others had faded to a dull brown with the passing of weeks or months. Jericho was adding to the stains, judging from his litany of complaints and the sound of crackling crystals from behind him. Lindsay was spry enough to make her way through the gaps, regardless of what height they were at, she was probably going to be the only one to pass through the Deep entirely unscathed. At least Julia had an easy time of it, she simply followed in the wake of Jericho’s destruction, healing up his various wounds as they went.

When the crystal growths drew back, it was not so gradual as appearance. They went from dominating the space to abruptly opening out into a vast geode. Martin had half-hoped that they might catch another glimpse of the other guild before they departed, to show that they’d beaten the boss, or for some reminder that they weren’t alone down here. At least not yet.

The next Archduke marked the furthest that there was any record of players reaching. That was not to say that other guilds hadn’t pushed through it to the next area, only that they’d had the good sense to keep all information about it to themselves to maximize their advantage. Which meant that from here on, they were going in blind. Even the Archduke itself was a mystery. Not one of the people who’d run up against it managed to provide any kind of coherent description.

In among the other crevasses leading into this chamber, off on the wall of the vast geode, was a smooth expanse of crystal that reflected just the same as the mirrored sections before. Martin was reaching for his sword before he’d even a moment to think, but then the dimensions of the mirrored section sunk in. It was the same size and shape as a Deep Gate.

Behind the crystalline glass lay only darkness and their reflections. Martin could see all four of them staring into it, staring back at him, eyes dark and shadowed pits like the hollows in a skull for just a moment before he palmed the key to the next Deep from his inventory and held it up. The glass rippled, as though a pebble had been dropped into it.

“This is it.” Martin needn’t have bothered saying it. But he didn’t know how else to start the conversation.

Lindsay started stretching as though she were getting ready to run a race.

“Okay, so what’s the plan here? How do we beat it?”

“I don’t know.” Martin couldn’t bring himself to meet her stare in the reflection.

“You don’t know?” Lindsay snorted. “Come on, dude, you always know.”

“I’ve got no information about what is beyond that portal. I’d assume it has something to do with mirror mechanics. But beyond that, you’re guess is as good as mine. Maybe something to do with reflecting light? Like the butterfly?”

She had drawn her daggers and was going through the motions of her various special attacks.

“So, we’re going in blind and just hoping we can work it out before we all die?”

Martin looked down at the floor. There were more rusty stains here. The rich brown of very old blood.

“Essentially, yes.”

“Not a big fan of this plan.” Jericho rumbled. Martin forced himself to look back up into the portal, staring into the darkness in the faint hope that there might be some hint within it.

“I can assure you I’d much prefer we had another option. But all we can do is stick together, keep our health up until I have time to assess, and hopefully they haven’t got too much in the way of timed mechanics to punish us for not knowing the fight in advance.”

“Plan is jump into completely unknown darkness and hope Rat-boy’s big brain saves us?” Jericho lowered one of his huge hands onto Martin’s skull and gave it a gentle squeeze. Affectionate, but affectionate in the way that one was with a family pet, not a friend.

“Isn’t that always the plan?” Lindsay clacked her beak in amusement.

“Usually we pretend there’s more.” Jericho grimaced, and his fingers tightened uncomfortably.

“We’re going to get through this.” Julia exclaimed, loud enough to startle them all. “We’re going to win. I know we are. I can feel it in my gut. We didn’t come all this way, just to get beaten by the first boss we run into. We’re Iron Riot! We’re going to…” She glanced to Lindsay, hoping that she’d fill in the blanks.

“We’re going to make this dungeon our bitch!”

“Yes, that!” Julia clapped her hands in enthusiasm.

There was a sharing of smiles that Martin forced himself to participate in, then a moment to gather themselves that seemed to stretch on and on.

“Together.” Martin repeated to them.

“Together.” They echoed back.

Then they took the step forward into the chill surface of the mirror and vanished from sight.

EIGHT

The Martyr’s Requiem

The first step felt the strangest, with the surface tension of the mirror still trying to cling to his body. Not a moment later though, he felt it release him and he looked down a long dark corridor with nothing visible at its end. He turned to his left, and saw his own reflection repeated out through eternity. He turned right and saw the same. Even glancing behind him showed only the mirrored surface of the gate, reflecting him standing there with the endless stretch of nothing behind him.

Martin was alone. The others were nowhere to be seen. That was less than ideal given that their entire plan was reliant on unity.

The dungeon toyed with their fears, it was the nature of the place to find those places in their minds where they felt weakest and press in. What scary game was truly scary when you were in the company of friends? Cracking jokes and mocking the monsters. Isolation. He should have expected it.

They had all entered this Deep at the same time, which meant that they were here somewhere, even if they had been deployed to a different section. The best way for them to survive was to find each other as swiftly as possible before they encountered the Archduke. That meant haste was going to be vital. Turning his back on his own reflection, Martin took off running.

Each Archduke was an individual, it had its own mind beyond the will of the Heart and acted according to their own purpose, but that did not mean there was no connection between the boss and the pulsing green at the center of the dungeon. Their eyes shone with it. Their minds echoed with its voice. This provided Martin with an advantage. A sort of radar for Archdukes that should have allowed him to navigate away from the sound of that voice, working around the monster to find his friends before confronting it.

The mirrored tunnel stretched out before him, trying to evoke childhood memories of fairground funhouses that he had never attended. There was no nostalgia that it could use as an angle of ingress. When his reflection began to distort in the mirrors beside him, he did not think of a house of mirrors. He had been born and raised in cities, not suburbia, and in poverty, not the kind of household where the family took a fun trip at the weekend. He knew in the abstract that people considered clowns to be frightening and wondered if that was the artistic direction that this Archduke was going to exhibit, but he had no personal memories of such things. Only the filtered media he’d managed to consume second hand.

He supposed that if they began piping calliope music into the long corridor, he might make a more explicit connection, but for now, all that he had to work from was mirrors and distortions.

Come to me.

He heard a faint whisper from up ahead. The voice of the Heart, echoing out through the mouthpiece it had spawned. Distant, but concerning. It was up ahead of him. If he encountered the Archduke before he found his friends, he had no doubt it would wipe the floor with him. He was under-leveled and alone. Every boss encounter mechanic that they’d come across had required more than one of them to successfully execute. Yet there were no branching tunnels, and he had no choice but to go on running headlong toward it, hoping against hope that he would find something else first.

From the beginning I have longed for you. Since the moment man set foot in my holy darkness.

Letting out a huff of breath, Martin carried on. He could have been running for a mile or only moments. There was no way to tell from the world around him, and his internal clock was providing him little in the way of helpful information. He had slowed from a sprint to a steady pace that kept his Stamina bar hovering about its mid-point with some minor fluctuation, but even that didn’t provide him with much in the way of meaningful feedback. The only real way he could tell that he was moving forward at all were the increasingly distorted reflections of himself, and the increase in volume as the Heart whispered to him.

You were all born of me. You all return to me in time. I am what you were and what you shall be.

Martin very deliberately did not listen to the words being whispered into his hindbrain, but that did not mean he was not filing them away for later study. He could not give it his full attention now, not when he really needed to be focused on the coming battle. He could sift through each turn of phrase during a quiet moment later to work out how effective its rhetoric might have been in creating the cult centered around it. If the others who had left their bodies behind to become a part of this game had fallen victim to the same whispered words that sought to claim his heart and mind.

At last, he saw something up ahead, a towering figure of some distended Rat-man with a sword in hand. His own reflection, of course, but so warped by distance and the curvature of the mirrored surfaces as to appear twisted and monstrous.

It was a T-junction, one tunnel stretching off to his left and one to his right. There was no difference between them that he could see, and no help from the position of the Archduke which still seemed to be coming directly ahead of him, somewhere behind his reflection.

He turned left. There was no logical basis for that decision. But he had to pick one, and vaguely recalled some sort of rule about mazes that you could beat them by choosing a left turn every time. The corridor stretched out ahead of him again. The darkness at the far end still the only invitation to carry him forward.

This repeated once more after another long stretch of running, and this time he chose left once more, knowing that, unless it had moved, the Archduke now was to his right.

The voice had not reached him again since he made his first turn, which he had to assume meant that he was going further away from the Archduke. Something that may have been his stated goal, but nonetheless left him feeling like he had lost his compass for navigating the maze. He still had his mental map of the paths he had thus far traversed, but that was not the same as having a fixed landmark to work from.

In addition, the distortion in the reflections that he had assumed to be due to proximity to the Archduke had continued to worsen and worsen. Now when he saw himself, the image being returned went beyond what a mirror should have been capable of showing. Twists of his form seemed to expose shining wet bone within the glass. Organs that should have remained internal, hung loose like trophies. His spine and tail twisted into a corkscrew that protruded through fur and flesh. They did not hurt him, they were only images, but there could be no denying that they were uncomfortable. Martin’s imagination swiftly presented him with the scenario that if he gave into temptation to touch his body and reassure himself that it was not so twisted, that he would feel the exposed vertebrae, or that his arms would have to twist up from where they seemed to protrude at near to ground level.

He kept his hands by his sides and did not look down. Keeping his eyes always forward, he continued toward the dark gulf at the end of the corridor that even his low-light vision could not perceive.

The pace had never slowed, but now panic had begun to nip at his heels, and he went faster and faster past the reflective panels. In one he glimpsed what he thought was his human self, eyes wide, body emaciated from the lack of food and water. In another, nothing more than an actual rat. Various stages between the two of them flashed past. Then himself, four arms waving, tipped in metallic claws, his rodent snout contorted out from a tangle of shining metal teeth bristling like an exit wound.

Perception was all that he had to defend himself here, awareness of what was going on around him was the only way he could ensure that he was not ambushed, yet it was being turned against him. The horrors and tricks in his peripheral vision turning his stomach as he did his best to acknowledge but ignore them. He ran right past an opening before he realized that there had been no reflection there. It had been on the right, and his plan to keep going left would have overruled his decision to follow that new path anyway, but the realization that he had almost missed it in his hurry was sufficient to startle him and make him second guess himself. The maze actively encouraged him to look to the sides to hunt for more turns, but every time that he looked, he was confronted with some fresh monstrosity. Himself as an Anurvan, suspended and drowning in a swamp with roots dug through his flesh. Himself as a baby, abandoned in a box by the side of the road. Himself, always himself, twisted and warped through myriad tortures and shapes and deaths. His one terrified eye peering back at him. Glowing green.

He passed by himself as every different race of animal that he had seen and met in Strata. Passed by himself as every mindless monster. Stood over the corpses of the monsters he had slain while his one green eye shone out from beneath their death-lidded stare. A slideshow of horrors spinning by him so swiftly that he didn’t dare to slow for fear of what the dungeon was trying to make him understand. When he passed by one mirror on the left and found it completely dark, he mistook it for a tunnel and tried to dart in, only to rebound with a crunch of his snout. It was just an empty reflection, yet he couldn’t tear his eyes away from it until he got his feet back under him and ran until it was out of sight.

There was a nightmare quality to this place. Not just in the horrible things that it was showing him, but in the breakneck pace at which he was perceiving them. In his breathless sprint away from the last horror he had no chance to prepare himself for the next. To see his shining green eye looking back at him out of Lindsay’s crow face or flickering beneath Jericho’s scowl. He reached for his friends as he passed them and touched only the cool solid wall of mirroring crystal. Illusions. All tricks. Nothing real. At the end of the corridor, there was another junction.

A left turn would have taken him back to where he began, but there had been no side passages back there. He took it. Following what he assumed was a spiral in on itself, overlaying what he was perceiving with the mental map that he had constructed and feeling an awful lurch as his ongoing mad rush carried him through where the other passage should have been intersected. He slowed a little then, caught glimpses of himself still in his office cubicle, trapped at a desk doing a job he hated for no reward. His nightmare made real before his eyes. Even there his body looked wasted and ruined by neglect, but he supposed that there was little changed there. He had always been barely surviving on the absolute minimum when he had worked those awful jobs. At least here and now his mind did not feel like it was decaying too. Even if it was being put through something of a wringer by the current torments.

Come to me.

Once more he reached a junction, and once more he took the left, now heading toward where the Archduke should have been, according to his memory. Yet even as he ran by his body reflected back in varying stages of decay and disrepair, there was no whisper in his mind. He slid to a halt on the smooth surface and crouched low to lay a hand on it. Searching for a solution, he pulled a long-forgotten berry out of his inventory and dropped it, hoping to see some indication of any incline in these passages that he could use to navigate. The desiccated berry rolled a little, then began lilting left, completing a full circle back to where it had begun and carried on its merry way. He glanced up and saw himself laid out on his bed, his human body showing all the awful wounds that his digital one had suffered. The scars, the missing eye. All of it. It took him longer than it should have to tear his eyes away from it and get back to running. Leaving the berry to continue its circling.

Nerves jangling, breath raking his throat with every step, he headed on and on down through the maze of crystal. Straining his senses with every step to try and find some hint of his doom coming and finding nothing at all.

Another left turn and another took him back through the space where other corridors should have been. He was increasingly suspicious that there would be no relief unless he turned right, but simultaneously, he felt quite certain that a right turn would put him into closer proximity to the Archduke.

The others would not have been following his line of reasoning, at least one of them would have made the right turn, he couldn’t keep on delaying any longer. At the next junction he turned to the right, and immediately the voice came booming back into his mind.

We are one. Be what you were born to be. Become for me.

It would have been deafeningly loud if he had been hearing it with his ears. With the words dumped directly into his brain, it was merely crushing. He let out a yelp and dropped his sword, slamming his hands over his temples to try and stop his brain exploding out.

You are mine. Mine. Mind. My mind. Is your mind. Your mind. Is my mind.

“Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.” Martin struggled back to his feet, grasping blindly for his sword as he rose. If he had to face the Archduke alone, he wasn’t going to do it empty-handed, and he certainly wasn’t going down without a fight. Perhaps some of Lindsay’s personality was rubbing off on him.

You do not need to bow and scrape. You do not need to scrabble and claw. You do not need to be anything less than the perfection that you are. Not for me. You have always been mine, and you always will be.

There was nothing to see in the dark corridor ahead of him, but in the reflections, Martin saw his foe coming on. A trailing whisp of tattered cloth in the periphery of his vision. Rags swiped across the other side of the mirror’s surface. He lit up his sword with Celestial Strike, and he swung for the space where the invisible creature would be if the reflections showed truth.

[Skaife has suffered 12 slashing damage]

[Skaife has suffered 12 light damage]

The slice opened him up from one side of his ribcage to the other, the light damage bypassing his armor and flesh to crack open bones. Pain burned through him. Sharpness and heat. Real pain, not the false numbness that the dungeon had always granted before. An agony of punctured flesh and organs, the hot rush of his lifeblood escaping. He couldn’t draw breath. Almost collapsed under the suffering.

Mind of my mind. Heart of my heart.

He staggered back, fumbling as he tried to cast Healing Touch on himself and then realizing with mounting terror that it had cast, and it had done nothing to restore him.

The specter in the mirror, the Archduke Solumex, King of the Void, had whispered right through him and on down the other branch of the corridor, making a slow turn before it began its next charge. He could not understand how his attack had missed it entirely, or how it had struck him in the same instant. Unless it was truly incorporeal. But even if it were, then surely the light damage he’d dealt would have been sufficient to do something at least.

You shall be mine and I shall be yours. We shall be one. Forever more.

With a gasp, he readied a Javelin of Faith and launched it to where the Archduke would have stood, had it any flesh to call its own. He did not watch the blaze of light, nor the empty space where he had hoped it would strike home. He watched the mirrors.

He watched as the tattered rags adorning the King of the Void peeled away and revealed a Murovan Exorcist with one eye.

Come to me.

[Skaife has suffered 30 light damage]

The Javelin took him through the guts, slamming through his spine, numbing his legs, and dropping him to the floor. Blood spread out from the gaping wound where his lower back should have been, pooling across the mirrored surface of the floor. Blocking out the gruesome sight of his innards dangling out of his back like a second tail.

Come to me.

In all of his life, he’d never felt pain like this, and in an instant, he could understand why nobody progressed beyond this point in the dungeon. Anyone sane would quit after their first defeat in this mirrored maze. What kind of fool would willingly endure this twice?

Live forever within my Heart.

The Archduke was rushing at him again in the mirrors, once more masked by the cloth fluttering all around it. He needed time. Time to think. Time to solve the puzzle. And it wasn’t going to give him a moment willingly. With a shaking hand, he cast Rebuke.

What should have launched the enemy away from him instead sent Martin sliding along the corridor atop a slick of his own blood. It gave him distance, but not in the way that he had hoped. Every motion sent fresh jolts of pain shooting up him. The horrific damage to his back so overwhelming that he’d basically forgotten the slice across his chest.

You are the one. The one I have been longing for. A son of man. My salvation.

His healing didn’t work. His attacks were turned back on him. Mirrors. They were being reflected. Everything he did to the Archduke reflected back on him. Everything he did to himself…

The Oathblade was an awful burden in his hand. The pain doubling its weight. He was circling the drain already. If he had miscalculated, this would be the end of him, and he had no idea what sort of death awaited beyond the limits of the game. Without any way to log out, he might have been suspended in limbo until he was able to respawn, or he might not have been able to respawn at all. His mind perpetually bound in the endless darkness with nobody and nothing for company. Eternal nothingness. He couldn’t conceive of a more frightening afterlife than that.

Come to me in the dark.

The Archduke came flying along the corridor toward him once more. Ready to administer a killing blow of its own. Martin had no intention of giving it the satisfaction. He angled the flat tip of the Oathblade between his ribs, lined it up with his heart, and forced a smile onto his face.

Come to me.

With a pull that took all his remaining strength, the razor-sharp sword slipped through fur and skin, driving into his heart.

Solumex has died.

Skaife gains 12055 experience.

[LEVEL UP x2]

Everything faded to darkness. All the horror-shows behind the mirrors. All the blood and the pain. It all faded to nothing. Martin drew a ragged breath, feeling the cold metal against his lungs as they expanded. Then even that sensation faded away as an awful shattering sound overtook all of his awareness. He pressed his eye shut against the spray of shrapnel that was peppering his body like spray off the surf, and then it was over.

[Skaife has suffered 2 slashing damage]

[Skaife has suffered 1 slashing damage]

[Skaife has suffered 3 slashing damage]

When he opened his eye, he was standing once more. His sword, which had been plunged so deep into his own chest just an instant before, was lodged tip down into a twisted bundle of rags on the floor. All around him, was devastation. With the killing blow to Solumex, every mirror in the Deep had shattered. He could see the maze laid out clearly now, the lines of it intersecting and overlapping through one another. The whole Deep was small by comparison to the vast chambers that they’d faced the previous Archdukes in. Almost claustrophobic. If it hadn’t been for the fact that he was constantly passing through the same space, he would have realized that.

Jericho was standing at the far side of the chamber, slick with blood. Patches of fur hanging off him and wet bone exposed underneath. Like one of the awful reflections that Martin had seen when the body had been twisted too far. Martin rushed over to him, slapping a hand to the plane of muscle that made up the man’s stomach and willing his Healing Touch to life. It didn’t work. He’d expended the spell too recently and it was still ticking off cooldown.

“Jericho.”

The towering wolfman did not seem to hear him. He was still shell-shocked from the pain. A set of bite marks on his shoulder were a perfect match for the teeth in his jaws. The gouges on his flesh matched the blood on his claws. Every wound was self-inflicted, one way or another. Shadows pooled deep around him, Vengeance still clinging to his flesh even now.

“Jericho!”

Shouting managed to earn Martin a blink or two. Patting at the man’s stomach did little more. It was only when his hand strayed across the bristly expanse of skin to reach one of the claw wounds and his own fingers dipped into it that Jericho finally yelped and came back to himself.

“Martin.” Martin darted back, hiding his bloodied fingers behind his back.

“Yes. Good. Hello. Are you all right?”

The hulking wolfman let out a shuddering sigh and seemed to deflate.

“It was invisible.”

“Visible in the mirrors, reflecting the damage we did back on us.”

“Is that… was that how it worked?” He spat blood and what looked like a tooth from his mouth. The sooner Healing Touch came back up the better. “It was like it was stuck in a loop. The more I hurt him, the more he hurt me, the more Vengeance built up. It just kept on growing and growing until…”

Martin followed what had happened to its logical end.

“You killed yourself with it.”

“I would not make that mistake.” Jericho growled, shoulders hunching back up and some of his usual prickly personality re-asserting itself.

“I’d guess the programming just doesn’t have a solution for the immovable object and unstoppable force paradox.” Martin held his ground, even if instinct told him to dart back out of reach. He was alone here with Jericho. Alone with a man who had tried to kill him more than once. The same instinct that would have had him run would have had him spin a comforting lie, but there was enough of a genuine puzzle here that he could focus on that instead. “Once the rebounding damage had mounted up high enough bouncing back and forward the game must have dumped the damage on you, assuming it would kill you and resolve the exception.”

“Then why am I alive?” Jericho sank down to sit amid the dust that had been the Deep.

Off on the far side of the cavern, beyond the reach of the exploded mirror maze, there was a simple stone door leading them forward. Martin would not be able to cross the distance and reach that door if Jericho went feral on him. The Heretic had too many ranged attacks, he had too much reach, his stride was too long to outpace him.

“Because to beat the Archduke, you had to deal lethal damage to yourself.”

“A win by suicide boss.” Jericho’s voice lowered into an even deeper rumble that it took Martin a moment to realize was a laugh. “Bet the lawyers loved that.”

His eyes still darting around the chamber, looking for solutions to his current problem. He desperately hoped that one of the girls who were so good at keeping the rumbling giant placated would spawn in soon. With no small amount of effort Martin forced out a little, “Hah.”

When he turned his gaze back to Jericho, the stare pinned him in place. The weight of his attention setting the hair on the back of Martin’s neck standing on end. Jericho leaned in closer, grinning.

“So, you are thinking it is just a game again. You aren’t believing all the superstition stuff?”

“I don’t know. There is a game here, the framework is overlaying everything, and I can work that,” Martin forced himself to tell the truth no matter the risks. He was not going back to tiptoeing around reality just to keep the moods of others under control. If they lacked the maturity to handle their current situation it was entirely understandable, but he would not sacrifice the progress that he had made toward being a more complete human being by lying for their benefit. Not unless it was a truth so terrible it would destroy them, and their chances. “But there are things deeper in that I can’t work out. Things that a game just wouldn’t explain.”

Jericho did not look angry; he did not look like he was going to mock Martin or threaten him with imprisonment in some mental institute. If anything, he looked sympathetic.

“I am feeling religious after that... I think… If this is another world, it is hell. And we’re fighting devils.” His voice had trailed off toward the end to a dry and aching whisper. It made Martin wonder what he had seen in the mirrors of the maze. What memories of his real life had been dug out to torment him? What miseries could Strata have mined? He didn’t go near those questions. He had a little more sense than that.

“The name Archduke being assigned to the bosses does imply the hierarchy of hell laid out in medieval demonology texts.”

Jericho stared at him for a long, long time. Just watching him, and breathing, while Martin stared back steadily. Eventually, the bigger man brought a hand up and patted the Exorcist on the shoulder.

“You are strange, little man. But I like you.” Martin smiled, reaching up to pat Jericho’s hand and immediately feeling awkward about the whole thing.

“I like you too, buddy.” Jericho drew his hand back as if he’d touched wet food in the sink.

“And now it is weird.”

“So weird.” Martin looked away. Jericho cleared his throat.

“Let’s never talk of this again.”

“Agreed.”

Lindsay burst into the room in an explosion of shattering glass, already screaming at the top of her lungs.

“What’s up bitches?!”

The boys of Iron Riot deliberately avoided eye contact and rushed over to see her. Jericho clapped her on the shoulders as he had Martin, but between them it wasn’t weird. It was normal. Was it Martin that had made it weird? Was his awkwardness contagious?

“You won!” Jericho bellowed with delight.

“Was there ever any doubt? Have I ever lost?!” She held up her arms as though expecting praise to be offered up. “Am I not the greatest to ever do it to them?”

Martin couldn’t entirely restrain a smile, even as he jibed her.

“We both finished our iterations quite a while before you.”

“It isn’t about how fast you get it done, it’s about how good you get it done. You two look like freshly trampled crap, I haven’t got a hair out of place. Feather. Whatever. I did it better.” She preened those perfectly smoothed feathers, and Martin found that he couldn’t deny it. He may have recovered enough health after being transported out of the battle to be capable of standing again, but he was definitely looking worse for wear. Still, something in the story didn’t entirely add up.

“You worked out that damage dealt to yourself was reflected back on the enemy without even taking any damage?”

“Yeah, I saw this mirror monster thing coming at me and I thought to myself, ‘What would Martin do?’ Then I stabbed myself in the leg and it fell over. Pretty quick work from then on.”

Martin tried to hold her gaze, to examine her expression, to parse the emotions she was displaying.

“You stabbed yourself in the leg deliberately?” Her eyes narrowed.

“Yes.”

“It wasn’t an accident?” If he were a lawyer in court, this would have been considered leading the witness, but they were in a dungeon, so the rules that applied were entirely different.

Her shoulders slumped as she admitted at least some portion of the truth.

“Okay, I might have stabbed slightly harder than I meant to, but I worked it out!”

Martin shrugged his shoulders. There was no reason to try and rob her of this victory.

“It honestly sounds like you worked it out a lot faster than me.”

“Well yeah, my brain is so huge it pulls satellites out of the sky and into its orbit. Giga-brain.”

“Giga-brain.” Martin repeated it back, hoping he didn’t sound too sarcastic.

“Damn right.” She cackled.

Healing Touch finally became available again, and Martin pressed it to Jericho’s back before the other man could make any objection. The tattered fur hanging loose from his wounds drew in taut again, the bloody wounds that had covered him closed, even if they did not fully heal back to the way that the Heretic was before.

Jericho opened his mouth to give thanks, saw the way Martin was looking up at him and let his mouth close with words left unsaid. Martin thought that he understood Jericho now, at least a little better. In his way, it seemed the hulking man had as much trouble clearly communicating as Martin himself. Albeit because Jericho was emotionally stunted rather than having a whole swathe of social issues.

Time ticked on. Martin set off to explore the space, deliberately ignoring the obvious exit in favor of examining the rest. It wasn’t very informative, but it still beat standing there as the mounting anxiety began to take over. Julia wasn’t here yet.

With every moment that passed, it became increasingly likely that she would not be here at all. Martin had not predicted the need to brief her, because he had never expected to be separated from the others. Touching the guild crest that allowed communication between them once he was discreetly away from the others should have revealed Julia’s current position, but she was nowhere to be seen. Nowhere within the dungeon at least.

His Healing Touch ticked off cooldown and he used it on himself. The wounds he had suffered in the battle with this Archduke did not seem intent on persisting the way the others had. Perhaps because he had been the one inflicting them rather than the monster. Perhaps because they were too horrific for him to be able to carry on.

The area in which they’d fought the last Archduke may also have been somewhere outside of the parameters of the usual dungeon structure, rendering her invisible to the crests. Their ability to communicate and find one another had been disabled while they were in the mirror maze, so it would stand to reason that it would have been disabled for those outside too, otherwise one member of a guild could wait outside of the area and coordinate things.

It was also equally possible that they couldn’t see her because she was dead. It would be that conclusion that the other two were rapidly approaching. As the minutes rolled over, the other two would be convincing themselves that Julia had not worked out how to defeat the Archduke by herself and ended up dying. They would be entering into existential crises, trying to work out what would actually happen to them if they died at this point, whether they might face eternal darkness, resurrection on the usual timescale, or real death. There was no way to know, just as there was no way to know what happened after death out in the real world.

The unknown nature of the afterlife or absence thereof had always troubled Martin. He had spent months fixated on the idea as a teenager, unable to live his life, paralyzed by the absence of meaning that either of those options conveyed. Then one morning he had simply stopped thinking about it. Just as he could breathe automatically when he was not concentrating on it yet had to devote brainpower to it when it was on his mind, he discovered that existential dread could be a part of his mind that operated independently of his conscious thought. If he did get onto the subject, he would have to think on it, long and hard. It was one of the many reasons that games like Strata were so appealing. They could occupy his thoughts.

Martin did not believe that Julia was dead, even as his internal count told him that she had been in the fight with Solumex for over fifteen minutes.

The other two were having a conversation in hushed whispers now. Lindsay was doing her best to offer comfort and trying desperately not to say out loud the unfortunate truth that they had to move on regardless of whether Julia lived or died. Jericho’s rumbling voice was low, cracking here and there. Martin did not try to intrude on the conversation. There was no point in having Lindsay on the team if he had to deal with other people’s feelings himself.

Martin did not believe Julia was dead, because he did not believe that she would have attacked. Even with direct prompting she could rarely be forced to take an aggressive action, when left to her own devices, scared and alone, she would have fallen back on the most ingrained behavior. If she did not attack Solumex, then Martin did not think it had any means of doing her physical harm.

He could have told all of this to Jericho as a means of offering comfort, but he was concerned that the hulking man might have a moment of introspection and manage to picture what reality Julia was living in instead. A living hell of nightmarish images. Pursued and haunted by rushing shapes and shadows that she could not escape. Stalked through the worst depths of her psyche, seeing ever more mutilated and ruined versions of herself. If she would not fight, then she would not have suffered physical damage, but that did not rule out the psychological harm that the game could inflict.

Jericho would not abandon her. He would never suggest that their time was short, and they needed to move on. If he thought that she was trapped in the maze, he would not leave, he’d expend all of his energy on trying to rescue her from it, even though she would still remain trapped in the larger trap of Strata itself.

Lindsay would not suggest that they needed to move on, it would have harmed her position as a kindly leader. It would have harmed her view of herself as an empathetic and kind person. She could not do it.

Martin could do it though. He could make the cold calculations required for their survival. It was, essentially, his entire purpose in their social arrangement. He approached the pair of them, and he could see them readying themselves for the blow. He could see Jericho tensing up, readying his arguments, readying his boundless wrath to be unleashed on Martin as if emotion had ever swayed him. He could see Lindsay tensing up, ready to make all the right noises, and pat Jericho on the shoulder and give him all the sympathy it would take to work through his emotions and come around to Martin’s point of view. They were ready for it, and it just made Martin feel tired. He didn’t want to do this anymore. He didn’t want to construct the script and run through it and know that even though it was his whole purpose here, it was still going to destroy the burgeoning understanding he had developed with Jericho. The inevitability of it was enough to make him want to lie down on the ground and just let their time tick away. But he didn’t because he could still save their lives if they would let him. Without a healer it would be harder to progress, but without Julia serving as a timekeeper, it might also be easier.

He opened his mouth and threw away the script. “Did you both level up?”

The different angle of attack took the wind out of their sails before they could even begin. Jericho looked even more upset that he wasn’t getting to have an argument.

“Yes? Why, you want to tell us how to build our characters again?”

Practical matters. So long as he kept them focused on the practicality of their situation, they would not need to think of the existential dread that permeated everything. They would not have to think of Julia trapped in her own personal hell or cast out into eternal darkness.

“I think that we should focus on abilities that allow us to heal. In your case, that’s going to be difficult because I’d imagine you’ll be close to switching back to your Martyr class soon. You’ll need to try and interpret what Heretic abilities will flip into healing, but I’ll understand if it isn’t possible. The ability switches aren’t always easy to parse.”

Jericho was not willing to let go of the argument he had prepared for.,

“And why will we need to do that?” he growled.

Martin ignored him completely, choosing to focus instead on the far more pressing task at hand.

“I’m going to switch my focus from a utility damage dealer to buffs and healing exclusively from here on. Lindsay, I don’t think Knave is liable to have much in the way of healing for others, but they may have put some health draining abilities into your skill tree. You should try to seek those out if possible.”

Lindsay seemed reluctant to ask, but she’d obviously decided that Jericho needed the show of solidarity more than Martin needed to be able to push through. She probably thought that confronting their emotions was the best solution. She always thought that confrontation was the best solution. Courage was not what she lacked.

“Why would we need to become healers, Martin?”

“Because Jericho is either our heaviest hitter as a Heretic or our tank as a Martyr, and his class abilities are all rooted in suffering damage. Damage that we will need to heal.” He turned to meet Jericho’s glower. “I know you have a flat rate of regeneration as a Martyr, and while that should negate a lot of the environmental damage that we’ve been suffering, it clearly isn’t going to be sufficient when we’re suffering the kind of rapid burst damage that we’ve been facing from these higher-level enemies.”

At last, Jericho spoke.

“We already have a healer, Martin.”

“As we’ve just seen, having a dedicated healer isn’t always going to be sufficient, not when the dungeon can divide us like that.”

“You can’t think it is going to pull that same trick on us again?” Lindsay scoffed at that.

“It’s always possible that we will get separated by circumstances outside our control. I believe we should refine our tactics to reflect that.”

He considered the matter settled and started off toward the exit from the chamber. Jericho stepped into his path.

“You think she isn’t coming back. You think she is dead.”

Martin closed his eye and sighed. Apparently, they were doing this, with or without him.

“I can only think of one way to guarantee that she does come back, and it doesn’t involve sitting here.” Jericho leaned in close enough for Martin to feel the Wulvan’s breath on his face.

“She will beat it.” Martin forced a smile onto his face.

“It is my sincere hope that she will. At which point she will emerge in this room, and immediately contact us when she realizes that we’ve moved on without her.”

Jericho seemed to be genuinely surprised by that answer but managed to rally enough to grumble.

“We can’t leave her behind.”

“Whichever way we go, we will be leaving a clear path for her behind us. Whichever gates we unlock, will be unlocked for her too. The more of the dungeon we can clear, the easier it will be for her to make progress when she emerges.”

Lindsay’s beak kept on opening and shutting behind Jericho. Desperately wanting to intervene without knowing how. Jericho took hold of the Exorcist by the shoulders in a crushing grip that only a short while before, Martin would have read as threatening. Now he recognized that the man was desperately clinging to him. That if he were not so twisted by the macho persona he’d assumed, he likely would have been trying for a hug instead.

“Why are you pretending that she is just slow? You never pretend. Is one of your only good qualities.” Jericho’s voice cracked.

Martin reached up to take a hold of Jericho’s wrists. Not obviously comforting him, but not really trying to break his grip either.

“I don’t have enough information to know what has happened to her. We haven’t received any notification that tells us she died against the Archduke. On the other hand, when we’ve killed Archduke’s in the past, Strata always sends out a game wide announcement, and we didn’t get one of those either. If I had to guess, she’s stuck in a stalemate. All of her abilities are geared toward healing and applying buffs, so she likely had no way to damage the boss by herself. At the same time, she’s the best equipped to keep herself alive. If she has, or if she does die, then on respawn she will contact us, and we’ll be able to plan a way to meet up with her. The Skip Gate will be open for her. If she lives, then eventually she will solve the puzzle and emerge here.”

“And if she doesn’t respawn? If she’s…” The Wulvan’s claws tightened into Martin’s flesh.

“Then staying here will not help her either.” Martin met Jericho’s gaze steadily, speaking soft and steady. “If she is… trapped outside of the dungeon, then the only way we can retrieve her is by getting out of the game.”

When Jericho managed to speak, it was just a whisper.

“And if she is really dead?”

“Then the only way we get justice for her, is to get out of this game and destroy the people who made it.”

There must have been something in Martin’s voice that startled Jericho then. Some hardness to his speech that had not been present before. He let go and stepped back.

Martin turned to head for the door once more, hoping that they would follow after him. He heard Lindsay bound up beside Jericho and called after him.

“You are talking about murdering people in real life, now?”

“I am talking about justice.” Martin turned his head so that the blind side faced back toward his friends, so, he didn’t have to look at them. “Whatever form that takes.”

Jericho let out the air in his lungs in one great huff of surprise.

“You are crazy.”

“I already told you; you are my friends.” Martin set off once more, and this time he did not slow. “I will do anything it takes for my friends.”

He made it as far as the tunnel away from the mirror maze before Jericho caught up to him again, grabbing him by the shoulder and twisting him around.

“You are biggest brain. You always know what is happening. So, tell me what is happening. You think she is alive? Tell me the truth.”

One last time, Martin told as much of the truth as he could. But so much of the truth was embroidered with faith and suspicions at this point, that he wasn’t sure how effective it really was.

“I don’t think anything really dies in Strata. I don’t think anything can. I think that’s the point.” Jericho turned to look along the tunnel and his shoulders slumped.

“When she wins, we come back for her.”

“Through the clear channel we’re about to carve through the rest of this dungeon.”

“Then let’s go.” Jericho took the first step off into the dark unknown.

NINE

Crusade’s End

The next Deep was a town, just like they had encountered after every single Archduke, but unlike every previous settlement, this one should have been untouched by human hands. As far as Martin knew, there were no players beyond this point. Or at least no players that had been recounting their exploits on social media or the forums.

The usually joyful experience of leveling up had been tarnished by the loss of Julia and having to pick abilities to replace her. He dumped all of his stat points into Endurance. Without having a steady supply of healing, an increased health pool was going to be essential.

Skaife Murovan Exorcist

Strength: 14 Agility: 13

Endurance: 16 Willpower: 30

Health: 86 Stamina: 102

LEVEL 19

Requiescat was no longer one of the available options. Cloister had vanished too.

Celestial Shield – Deflects all intercepted elemental damage for 20 seconds. [1 minute cooldown]

As Above – Dark damage heals the caster for 10 seconds. [1 minute cooldown]

Vesper – Restores 50% of a target’s health over 10 seconds. [3-minute cooldown]

Lector – Grants an ally a 30% increased chance to Critically Hit for 10 seconds. [1 minute cooldown]

Exaltation – Increases Light Damage by 1% per point of Willpower. [Passive]

Divine Might– Increases Light Damage by 1% per point of Strength. [Passive]

Vesper was an immediate pick, due to it being the only healing ability on the list. Celestial Shield was out, not because it was particularly weak, but because having his off-hand occupied would lock Martin out of using any of his other abilities.

Of the remaining abilities, the most tempting was As Above as Martin had a more than sneaking suspicion that future Archdukes would be dealing that type of damage, but ultimately he selected Exaltation instead. The flat damage increase across all of his abilities was too good to reject. Not to mention the fact it would scale as he leveled up.

It looked more like the town in the first Deep more than anything else but forged not from scavenged materials dragged down into the dungeon from the world above, but from the scavenged materials of the previous Deeps. There were lean-to shacks around the wall that the tunnel opened out into, built not with wood, but with the fossilized bones of the huge creatures that they’d faced before reaching the mirrored crystals. Slabs of that reflective crystal had been broken down into jagged pieces and arranged like bricks to make up the walls of the town’s few buildings. The lanterns strung all about the place dripped with Ravager oil, staining black streaks across every surface. No matter how pristine or polished it may have been.

But stranger than all of that, at least to Martin’s eyes, were the residents of this town. Almost all were dressed in shining silver armor and white cloth, like the crusaders that they’d encountered at the beginning of the dungeon. Unlike those crusaders, these ones had been through hell. More than Martin could count were sporting horrific wounds. The sort that would have killed someone outside of Strata, but which here only served as an impediment. One woman was carved almost entirely in half, held together with belts and bandoliers. Another had the side of their face burned away, revealing glimpses of wet bones along the cheek. Every injury it was possible to have suffered in Strata was manifest on one or more of their number.

Yet even this wasn’t the strangest thing about them. More surprising by far was the diversity of these crusaders. There were Wulvans, Murovans, Sythvans, and Corvans, as expected, but there were so many more. A lumbering Bear-man, bigger than two Wulvans put together strolled by; a fox-headed Knave was firing shots from a crossbow into a target across the chamber and a Turtle-man was repairing one of the reflective huts. There was even one hooded figure that Martin could have sworn had the face of some sort of insect with a distinctive rattling of wings coming from beneath its cloak.

Yet the first to approach Iron Riot when they arrived was an elk-headed Exorcist who greeted them with his arms spread wide.

“Finally, reinforcements have arrived! What word from the world above? How many fresh legions have been dispatched to aid us?”

“Uh, hi!” Lindsay took point on the whole conversation thing, even though Martin reflected a moment too late that it might not be in their best interests. “Just us so far. Most people aren’t getting past the last Archduke, I think?”

“Just you? No, no, no. We need thousands! We must quench the darkness with our bodies! We must drown the Heart of darkness in the lifeblood of the righteous! Just you? Nowhere near to sufficient. We need armies. We need…”

An elbow to the old elk’s side silenced him in a sputtering cough, and the Felidavan that had delivered the elbow pushed herself in front of him.

“Just you calm yourself old timer. Settle on down for a minute. Let me see if I can’t get some sense out of them.” She turned on Lindsay with a ferocity that was frightening. “You girl, what year is it?”

Lindsay’s beak opened and shut a couple of times.

“Uh, I never learned the story of the game…” Looking askance to Martin, all he could do was shrug.

“I don’t think a date has been given anywhere.”

“Not… not here.” The Cat-woman leaned in close enough for her whiskers to brush over the top of Lindsay’s head as she whisper hissed, “The other world. How long have we been down here? How long since we saw the light?”

The elk had managed to catch his breath once more, seizing his compatriot by the scruff of her neck and dragging her to face him.

“Don’t start with this nonsense again. There is no other world. There is only the evil below and the light above. Anything else is heresy. Do you know what we do with Heretics? Do you?”

“Same thing as we do with everyone else.” She snarled, clawing at his hand to be free. “Nothing. We just sit here and rot. Nowhere to go. Nowhere to go back to.”

“We are awaiting reinforcement before we march on the wellspring of evil! We wait, because to do otherwise would compromise the integrity of…”

She dug in her claws and dropped from his grasp. Spitting mad.

“You’re just scared. Always have been. All you herbivore totems piss yourselves at the sight of a demon.”

This seemed to be an old argument being repeated rather than anything new. The Elk-man seemed bored of repeating himself.

“To die is to put yourself in the power of the dungeon! Would you give yourself over to Sin? Become a slave to the Heart like those who came before?”

The cat had not lost her passion. The hair on the back of her neck stood up.

“We’re all in its power! We’re all dead! Been dead for years! Decades?! What year is it? Tell us, girl! Tell us the year!”

“Be silent, Heretic!” He swung a heavy fist at her, entirely missing.

“Heretic?!” She went for the rusted mace still dangling from her waist. “You’ve lost it old timer! You’ve lost it!”

The Elk-man’s voice rose at last at the sight of her drawing a weapon on him. Spurring him into a roar.

“I’ll have you up on charges! Into the stone with you. Out into the void. Too long we’ve tolerated insurrection in our ranks. No wonder the crusade has stalled when there are traitors in our midst!”

Jericho leaned in closer to his friends and whispered.

“Are these NPCs broken, or is this meant to be story?”

At last, the Elk-man seemed to remember that they were there. His milky eyes finally focused on Jericho where he stood towering behind them. The club-like hand at the end of the old crusader’s arm uncurled from its fist and he pointed it directly at Jericho, a quaver of fear in his voice as he bellowed.

“Heretic! Heart-sworn! Evil walks among us.”

The Felidavan’s head snapped around and she noticed him for the first time too.

“Rally Crusaders! The enemy is upon us! Rally now and do battle!”

The Turtle-man repairing one of the buildings turned to look for the source of the shouting, but that was the only disturbance to the lethargy of the town. No army came sallying forth at the old elk’s call. Martin suspected that the ranting and rambling they’d borne witness to, was a common occurrence down here.

Jericho did not consider it to be so harmless. Knocking his smaller companions aside, he went for the elk’s throat. The Felidavan leaped at him, swinging her already drawn mace. Martin threw a Rebuke into her midsection, launching her away before she could make contact. He may not have agreed with Jericho’s choice to go straight to violence, but neither could he afford to have the Heretic killed. Trying, despite the circumstances, Martin called out.

“Stand down, crusaders. We are here to help you.”

Jericho caught the elk’s throat in his jaws, biting down and seizing on the man’s arms before they could be raised in the crusader’s defense. Whatever words he had been ready to bellow, whatever reinforcements he could have mustered, they were all trapped between those jagged teeth.

The Cat-woman had landed on her feet, predictably, and was now coming back on with a dagger drawn in her off-hand from somewhere about her person. There was none of a Knave’s Agility in her motions, she was a Knight, barreling straight at her target, easy prey. Lindsay stepped back, slipping out of sight, and then unfolded in the shadow that the Felidavan had trailing behind her, catching her with a knife to her throat. If she had stopped her charge then and there, then it might have turned out differently, but the Knight was unwilling to let go of her momentum, so the blade bit in.

Martin got his sword out of its sheath and lit up with Smite before the half-decapitated Felidavan had cleared the distance and he hammered the strike into her face. Knocking her from her feet.

[Ashlynn has suffered 29 slashing damage]

[Ashlynn has suffered 39 light damage]

Jericho and the Elk-man spun around in each other’s embrace, gore slicking down between them. When the elk Exorcist tried to catch a hold on Jericho and pry them apart, his hands were too slippery with blood to find purchase.

Once again, Martin made the attempt, though it was pretty apparent that they were too far gone for reason.

“We don’t want to fight you, please stop.”

The Felidavan would not stay down. Even battered to the floor and bleeding to death, she rose again, driving her dagger at Martin, and she nearly had him too. Probably would have buried it in his chest if Lindsay hadn’t pounced forward with another Raptor Strike to the back of her legs. Her daggers hammered through the flesh of her calves and drove her to the floor once more, piercing all the way through to pin her to the stone.

[Ashlynn has suffered 21 crippling damage]

[Agility Reduced]

Martin looked down on her with something like sadness, but he did not hesitate. With a single Celestial Strike, he took the head off her shoulders and bore the burden of Sin.

[Ashlynn has suffered 14 slashing damage]

[Ashlynn has suffered 18 light damage]

Ashlynn has died.

His class switched over to Shadow Templar, and now there were two of them locked in their dark class. All the healing abilities he might have used to keep them alive became useless. It wasn’t the worst-case scenario, but it certainly wasn’t good.

Jericho had worn the old elk down, and now both of them were on their knees. Martin couldn’t watch this butchery anymore, and he certainly couldn’t stand for Jericho accruing any more Sin and staying locked in his own dark class. They’d need him self-healing as a Martyr if they were to have any hope of surviving Martin’s own changeover.

He and Lindsay raced to Jericho, each driving a blade into the old Exorcist’s side. The impact drove what little air was left in him out in a blubbering stream of red. Jericho finally released the moose-man, jerking back, and catching hold of his antlers. His face and chest were soaked in blood, dripping with it. Drunk on the violence, all he managed to slur was, “Shut up.”

Drawing back a fist, Jericho hammered it down. Again and again, while Martin and Lindsay held the poor man down. It was as though their friend had forgotten that this was a game, forgotten that he had all his special attacks and weapons and all the rest. As though he would tear the whole world apart with his bare hands if he could.

Martin registered that this may have been a response to the loss of Julia, an emotional outlet, but that did not mean that his stomach didn’t turn at the thought of what he was party to. He caught Lindsay’s eye across the broad bowed back of the dying Exorcist. They couldn’t let this go on, even if it was providing Jericho with catharsis.

As one, they withdrew their blades and then rained down their attacks so rapid-fire that half the time Martin swore he felt his blows clattering off Lindsay’s blades. Though it may have been bone or antler turning them aside, when they weren’t charged with the darkness that had replaced his Celestial Strikes.

Martin managed to take on the burden of Sin when it came to the Exorcist’s end. Luck more than anything else, but he’d take any luck at a time like this.

With the fighting done, Jericho wrenched once more at the moose-man’s head and twisted it free of the corpse. Holding it up like a trophy when he should have been paying attention to what was going on around him. Martin’s head had snapped around the moment that the first target was down, checking the other crusaders weren’t moving to join the conflict, brushing away the notification of his own increasing Sin to focus.

The NPCs, or the ghosts, depending upon who you asked, were paying no more attention to Iron Riot than they were to each other. Whatever damage had been done to their minds or programming it was enough to keep them blind to all that was happening.

So, Martin was alone in watching as a second passageway opened up beside the one by which they had gained entrance to the Deep, and all of The Brotherhood in Exile came tumbling through.

To Dante’s credit, he looked as bewildered as Martin to have been dumped out of some random tunnel so deep beneath where he had entered it. There was no way that the Brotherhood could have caught up to them by normal means. There had been no notification that they had beaten the Solumex and most of them should still have been dead.

The Masters were cheating.

It was no surprise, given how they’d interfered in Iron Riot’s progress so far, and how closely at least some of them had been monitoring their progress. In a way, this was a clever solution. To throw other players in their path instead of intervening directly would prevent those in the other faction of Masters from noticing and intervening in return.

The confusion vanished from Dante’s face the moment that he set eyes on Martin. He came charging on then, with his katar already drawn and ready.

“No monster to save you this time, rat!”

Lindsay finally disentangled herself from the corpse, spotting Dante and his posse coming on. Spinning her knives to point blade down and dropping into a crouch. Ready to fight once more.

Jericho was the only one who remained oblivious, even as an arrow took him in the shoulder.

The Corvan Invoker that Martin had been worried about earlier was at the center of their ranks, bundled safely behind a Knight so that he wouldn’t be easy pickings this time around. Martin stretched out a hand to him and cast what would have been Rebuke if he were an Exorcist.

But now he was not, the purpose of the power was inverted. Summon hauled the Invoker off his feet and dragged him across the room, knocking the Knight who was meant to be the caster’s shield off his feet too.

As the Invoker soared, Martin readied his Oathblade to skewer him. Charging it with the dark energies of Afflict, Smite’s evil twin. The Corvan spread his wings to try and slow his flight, but just as Rebuke was irresistible in its pushing, so was this pull.

The flat tip of the blade drove through the soft cloth of the caster’s robes. The dark energies Martin had gathered exploded out through him. Turning the once bright eyes that were bulging out of his feathered face a black as dark as the deepest shadows.

[VelCrow has suffered 28 piercing damage]

[VelCrow has suffered 39 dark damage]

With a twist of his blade and a kick, Martin knocked the Corvan back out of reach. The tumbling body was sufficient to trip Dante as he came forward in his mad rush, buying the half second Martin needed to bring his sword around to parry.

Dante was impossibly fast. The first swipe of his blades may have been deflected but the next came before Martin could hope to block it. A slash across his thigh robbed it of its strength in a wash of numbness and sent him tumbling to the side.

[Skaife has suffered 12 slashing damage]

There was already a blade dipping in to catch him as he fell. It slipped through Martin’s stomach and out the back as quickly as he could blink.

[Skaife has suffered 23 piercing damage]

If Dante had kept on with his assault, then it might all have ended then and there, but instead he kept Martin pinned through so that he could gloat.

“All your high and mighty talk, and here you are. Weaker than me. Worse than me at the only thing in this game that matters. Too slow.”

Martin’s hand caught on Dante’s wrist. Leaning on the other man’s strength for support so that his wounds didn’t drop him to the floor. Withering Touch was the counterpart to Healing Touch. The first of the new powers that Martin had used when he switched classes for the very first time.

Dante didn’t even notice it being used.

Martin swiped at Dante with his own sword, forcing him back a step. The katar-blade was torn from his guts, and no small amount of them spilled out after it, but there was no pain now they were free of the mirror maze, only that blissful numbness. Only the numbers mattered, and that was a world Martin understood perfectly.

Numbers like Agility, gradually decreasing as Withering Touch took hold.

Dante didn’t understand what had happened to him. Didn’t even notice that his motions were sluggish. When the Martyr swung his blades at Martin’s head, it was still a near miss, with his wounds slowing him as much as his magic had slowed his attacker.

Both of Dante’s blades whipped around once more, and Martin just barely managed to club them down.

“You’re nothing to me. Nothing.” He brought a blade around slow and heavy. “I’m going to kill you. I’m going to beat you.”

Martin caught the blow on his Oathblade, but it left his other side wide open, and the Martyr fought with twin blades. With a snarl of delight Dante brought it around in a sweeping arc, ready to end it at last. Martin’s Javelin of Bedlam launched from his palm to take Dante’s arm in the elbow.

[Dante has suffered 39 dark damage]

It sent the Martyr staggering back, off-balance. Now he finally noticed that he was sluggish. When his heels caught on his dead Invoker’s leg, and he went over backward.

It gave Martin the moment he needed to take in the rest of the room. Lindsay was in the midst of the Brotherhood, ducking and diving around, finding not a single moment to strike back but managing to tank the whole group of them. Jericho, for his part, was working his way in from the outside of their mass. Their flankers, who should have been taking him apart, had instead taken a dive back into their own ranks to try and root out Lindsay. Martin couldn’t have planned it better if he tried.

Dante had rolled back to his feet, readied himself for another clash. Martin was less enthusiastic about closing the distance once more.

“Dante, it doesn’t have to be like this.” The Martyr cleared his friend’s corpse with a hop, practically salivating with anticipation.

“That’s it, beg for your life.”

Martin parried the first blow, then cast the inversion of Vesper, Nightsong, on Dante, sucking out his life and closing Martin’s own wounds.

With a gasp, Dante shuddered, slowing even more as the numbness that should have been pain racked through him. His next swing, Martin didn’t even need to parry. He just stepped aside and let it scythe by. With a sigh, he brought his sword around, dipping past another strike to slice deep into Dante’s scaled arm.

“Look at the numbers, Dante.”

Dante spat blood at him, but it fell short. He had devoted so much of his build to speed and aggression that when stripped of the first, all he had to rely on was the second. It didn’t work. Without his blinding speed, his movements looked clumsy, untrained, he’d relied so much on his stats to carry him through that he’d never learned how to fight without it.

“They’re on my side, I’ve got a full guild, all you’ve got is your bitch and your dog.”

“The levels, Dante.” Martin’s voice came out unintentionally sing-song, as though he were trying to teach a lesson to a toddler. “When we fought the last time, any one of you could overpower us. Look again.”

So, Dante did stop and look, glowering at him until the numbers resolved in front of his face.

“How could you have… you’re cheating. You’ve found some trick, some exploit that you’re…”

While he was distracted, Martin lashed out with a Void Strike. The blade of darkness carving through Dante’s feeble defenses to tear deep into his chest, across the breadth of his collarbones.

“I’m stronger than you, Dante.”

[Dante has suffered 14 slashing damage]

[Dante has suffered 18 dark damage]

“I’m…” The Martyr had little strength left in him now attack after attack sapping his health, and Withering Touch still working away to drain his other faculties. “I’m going to gut you…”

Despite the ranting and raving, Martin spoke calmly in the face of his onslaught. His flailing strikes. His spitting. His fury. None of it mattered to him at all.

“I’m faster than you, Dante.”

With one last hissing roar, Dante charged again. Never learning from his mistakes. Never growing. Martin lashed his blade across and both katars went tumbling to the ground with a clatter.

[Dante has suffered 18 slashing damage]

Dante’s hands too, not that they mattered. Off-balance from his sudden loss, the final wild strike’s momentum carried Dante to the floor. At Martin’s feet. Where he belonged.

“None of those things matter, Dante. Because I’m smarter than you.”

He put the tip of his blade beneath the Martyr’s chin and tilted his head up until their gazes met. Blood pouring from his lips in tides. Dante hissed.

“You are nothing!”

“Then you’ve been beaten by nothing. Again.” He thrust his blade through Dante’s neck and was done with him.

Dante has died.

There was little time to savor the moment, when all the rest of them were at war. Not that there was much to savor. For all that Dante had been so fixated on Martin, he found his own feelings to be entirely absent. It was a game, still to Dante and his friends. His death in Strata might have meant some frothing and ranting at his computer, but it didn’t matter. Not really. It was as though he wasn’t real. As if none of them were real. Nothing outside the game mattered right now, but Martin struggled to remember a time when anything did.

He stalked in, careful and quiet despite the riot of screams and clashing metal. When he drove his Void Strike into the back of the first of the Brotherhood, there was not even a scream.

[WarHawk has suffered 21 piercing damage]

[WarHawk has suffered 21 dark damage]

This was the way it had always been. Lindsay at the center of everyone’s attention; Jericho making a fuss, trying to get attention for himself, and Martin in the background, doing the necessary work that would actually bring them victory. Not that he wanted the attention really. If he could stay in the background orchestrating everything and never having to see another living soul, he’d probably be considerably happier for it.

The first Void Strike had not been enough to kill the Knight, but the Afflict that he pulsed through the blade before withdrawing it brought him close enough that a simple backhand swipe was sufficient to have Martin moving on to the next target.

[WarHawk has suffered 52 dark damage]

[WarHawk has suffered 16 slashing damage]

In the chaos around Lindsay, all of the soft targets of The Brotherhood in Exile were being pushed out to the fringes. Martin set on a Hierophant next, hammering the secondary form of Void Strike; Demiurge Strike into her chest as she turned before she could raise any of her annoying shields.

Dulia healed him for the damage that he had caused her. A critical hit was enough to take her out of the fight in one blow, and the next two hits that followed would likely be the same, so he imparted them on one of the tanking Knights. He carved easily through the protection of their armor as though it wasn’t even there, thanks to his increased odds of crits. Once again, each blow restored his own health.

Lindsay fell on the Knight an instant later, blades diving into the eye-slit in his helmet as she ran over him. Taking the gap in the enemy lines as a welcome opportunity to get out and restore some Stamina.

“Take it Dante’s done?”

“He just wouldn’t listen to reason.” Martin sighed, bringing his Oathblade around to protect her from a Raptor Strike from the enemy Knave.

Lindsay Shadow Stepped behind the poor Murovan as he backpedaled from Martin’s strike and jammed her daggers into his shoulders, driving him down to his knees before she ripped them down his back.

“Well yeah, who wants reason when there are asses to kick?”

The Brotherhood’s advantage of numbers was well and truly gone. Moving together in a pincer, Martin and Lindsay downed the remaining Hierophant who was so desperately trying to keep his remaining teammates upright and went after the remnants still engaged with Jericho to prevent him accruing more Sin.

None of them would be heading into the next Deep with their usual classes. That was going to make things difficult. Particularly if he had judged the situation right and was accurately predicting what the next Deep would be.

The settlement was awash with blood. The NPCs finally seemed to have taken notice of the chaos unfolding in their home, and had retreated to the buildings, or fled all the way out of town. Martin hadn’t spared them enough attention to register which as soon as he was certain that they weren’t going to be involving themselves in the fighting.

On the downside, this removed any potential benefits of the settlement. They could not trade for new equipment or consumables, couldn’t seek out repairs, nor even pester those with enough sentience left for clues as to what came next. The three of them were completely alone here in this new section of dungeon. Completely isolated from everyone and everything.

After a minute of standing in silence, the other two turned their confused looks to him.

“Why are you just standing there?” Martin held up a hand and tried to stay calm.

“Wait for it.” Lindsay shoved him off-balance.

“I thought we were in a hurry. I thought we were going to make it to the end before we ran out of time. Now you’re just standing there. Come on dude. We’ve got to go!” He shook his head.

“Wait for it.”

Jericho was reaching to physically pick Martin up off the ground and carry him when the stone beneath them shook.

“What the hell is…”

The town dropped like someone had cut the elevator’s cord. They plummeted twenty feet, with the walls falling up and away, leaving only darkness stretching out in every direction.

No sooner had they found their footing from the abrupt drop, were they all flung sideways as the floor beneath them suddenly shot off to the side out into the total darkness, away from what little comfort the light of the dungeon could give.

It wasn’t the whole Deep. Martin could see what was left of the Deep still there, with a gaping wound in its middle that they’d just been plucked from. Hanging in the darkness were the almost imperceptible shapes of the Masters at work. Already constructing a replacement for the town they had ripped free so that The Brotherhood in Exile would have somewhere to respawn.

That would have been the greatest insult of all if Dante had the intelligence to grasp it. That the Masters would push his guild ahead of one of the biggest impediments to progress, already knowing that they would fail at whatever hurdle they encountered next.

With a crackling of crystal, the NPCs of the Deep were plucked loose of their homes, those few that had remained. They were wide eyed and fearful, lost, and desperate, reaching out to Iron Riot as though they might be able to save them from being carried out from the place where they had taken shelter, and out over the endless void below. Dragged off like puppets that had forgotten they had strings.

They were being delivered to the new town that was being built, to make it look populated. The Masters had no care that these poor creatures were confused and terrified, only that they served as set dressing for their game.

If Martin could have snatched some of them from the sky, then he probably would have, even if it meant condemning them to this outer darkness. At least then they might have understood the form of the trap that they were inside instead of confusion still reigning over them. Half believed the story of the game was their history, half believed that they were real people, trapped here by the death of their bodies in the real world. And both of those halves co-existed in a great many of the unfortunate souls that were trapped, those that came in close enough contact with the players to be reminded of what their world had once been.

There was no doubt in his mind now. Not anymore. Too much had happened for that. Maybe he was just succumbing to the same madness, believing in stories that couldn’t be true. But if he were truly insane, then the last one to realize it would be him. He couldn’t run a diagnostic using broken equipment.

Then as swiftly as all the bone rattling motion and fearful screaming had begun, it was over. The town was a floating island out to the side of the dungeon. The Deep was reconstructed with the unfortunate ghosts trapped back inside it. Iron Riot were alone.

They waited a little longer for a Master to present themselves and explain the situation, but it seemed that they were not due that degree of respect. Nobody came.

Martin turned his attention to the town at last. Blood still splattered the walls. The corpses of the Brotherhood still littered the streets, pumping more out. It ran along the lengths of the streets, such as they were, and trickled over the edge to rain down into nothingness.

“What is happening?” Jericho growled.

Martin beckoned him forward, as they headed into the town. Lindsay followed as well; her avian gaze locked on Martin. It was an all too familiar situation, both were looking at him with the expectation that he was about to explain everything. That he had all the answers and all the solutions to every problem that they might encounter.

It was lucky they were right.

“The Masters have elected to remove us from the game.”

Jericho and Lindsay once more exchanged some silent communication with their eyes and body language that Martin simply did not parse.

“So, what do we do?” Lindsay asked.

“We wait.”

“What do you mean, we wait? Do you know how little time we have left?!”

“I am aware of how little time we have left, but there is nothing that we can do but sit here and wait. Wait for the other faction of the Masters to realize we have been unfairly removed from play, and to return us in due order, just like what happened the last time they did this to me.”

Lindsay cocked her head to the side in confusion. She’d heard the story of how Martin escaped his captivity before, and that wasn’t it. The cogs in her head started turning at last, and though she stiffened up and tried to school her body language to the best of her ability, there was nothing that could stop her taking a fearful glance around. As though she could see the invisible Masters lurking in earshot.

Jericho did not understand. He grabbed Martin by the scruff of the neck.

“What do you mean wait!? We are all going to die! Have you forgotten that?!”

“I can assure you, that I have forgotten nothing. Nor has any part of my planning been put off course by this. I was certain that the Masters would attempt something like this eventually when their earlier attempts to stop us failed. I just didn’t know how desperate their attempts would grow before they resorted to this kind of direct intervention.”

“You planned for this? This!?” Jericho scoffed.

“Everything has been taken into consideration.” Martin replied to him as coolly as he could muster. He didn’t want to deal with an enraged guild member right now. Not when he already had so many other variables that needed to be accounted for. He needed for them to be as boring as possible.

Jericho did not understand that, of course, and Martin had no way of conveying it to him without spoiling everything he’d been working toward.

“What about Julia? Was that part of your plans? You meant for her to…” Jericho trailed off in something like a sob.

Martin tried for honesty, but overswung.

“She was not the one I would have chosen to leave behind, if that’s what you mean.”

“I was.” Jericho’s voice came back soft as a dagger sliding home.

“Given the choice of the two of you, she’s the one I would have saved. Yes.” He reached out to Jericho tentatively, only for the hulking man to snatch his own hand away. “I suspect you feel the same way.”

Jericho’s eyes were wet, but there was no sadness in his voice. Not even the sound of defeat. Just that same old rage.

“We’re all going to die in here, aren’t we.”

“Not if I can help it.”

He brought his head around, and Martin could see his snarl.

“We’re all going to die, and that’s all part of your plan. You never cared if we made it. We’re just pieces in your game.”

It was unfortunate that of all the stages of grief, Jericho had so inevitably become trapped in anger. Even despair might have been easier to manipulate. To beat anger, Martin would have to take the fight out of him, and that would render him useless to them.

“Someone has to be logical about things. The more of us make it to the end, the better our odds would be to win.”

“But winning was what you cared about.” Jericho took a step forward, and Martin fell back the same distance. Being driven toward the edge of the abyss. “Not us.”

“I’ve already expressed my affection for you all.” Martin held up his empty, scarred hands. Showing how defenseless he was. Even if it was a lie. “I meant for us all to make it. For us to win, and for us to be released from Strata.”

“But if some of us died…”

This was too fine a tightrope for Martin to walk. He didn’t have a talent for social manipulation, no matter how he planned for these conversations, they always seemed to jump the rails. He needed to keep Jericho’s anger but turn it in a useful direction. Unfortunately, right now, Martin had no alternative directions other than toward himself.

“That was always a risk. You cannot progress without taking some risks.”

“And now she’s really dead, isn’t she? No body to go back to. No way to come back to life.” Jericho’s voice cracked, and his hands convulsed into fists. “It feels like it has been hours. If she could have come back by now, she would have.”

“She may still be locked out of the necessary menu, or she may have been logged out.”

Jericho’s roar was deafening from so close, though it likely died the moment it went beyond the confines of the town. There was no sound out there in the nothingness.

“Don’t lie to me. Not now when there’s no hope.”

“There is still hope.” Martin tried to catch Lindsay’s eye. Tried to get her to intervene in some meaningful way. But she was lost in her own existential crisis, staring off into the darkness beyond. Realizing that their time was almost up, and they were trapped. “You just have to wait.”

“What if I don’t want to wait?” When Jericho met his gaze, it was with a new sense of focus and purpose that Martin wasn’t certain he trusted. He shrugged his shoulders.

“I’m afraid that there isn’t anything else you can do right now.”

Lindsay came out of her stupor just long enough to realize that there was trouble brewing, but without enough context to actually intervene in a meaningful way.

“Jericho, just leave it alone.”

“Leave it alone? Why are you still trying to protect him? He did this to us.”

Martin had been expecting this of course. He had known that Jericho would blame him rather than the Masters, because he was there in front of him while the Masters were more nebulous and unseen. It was easier to take it out on him.

“I’ve never been anything other than forthright about that. I accept full responsibility.”

“Then you should be the one to pay for it!” Jericho came for him then, resolve settled, hand drifting down to the Cat-o-nine Tails Whip on his belt.

An appeal to their common humanity was all that Martin had left in his arsenal now that he’d fired off all of his honesty.

“I am right here with you. I am experiencing the same thing you are suffering through.”

“If you were gone, the Masters wouldn’t care about the rest of us. You’re so special, aren’t you?”

Lindsay had closed the distance between them while the two men stared one another down. She laid a hand on the Heretic’s chest, as though she could stop his forward motion with a single touch. He brushed her off even as she wheedled.

“Jericho, come on man. Don’t do this.”

Martin’s buck teeth cut into his lip as he worried it.

“You have been exposed to the same sensitive information as me.”

“But you’re what they’re scared of.” In a world full of giants and monsters, it was easy to forget just how big Jericho was in comparison. He towered over Martin, a dark echo of every bully he’d encountered in his childhood. “You’re the one they think is going to spoil their fantasy.”

Martin did not let his hand fall to his sword, he kept them spread and open so that no mistake could be made about his intentions.

“I am not sure where you’re going with this. But I’d advise patience.”

“We should kill him.” Jericho wasn’t speaking to him anymore; Lindsay was now the one under his glower. “That’s what they want. Give them what they want, they’ll let us out.”

“If you do that, then you will not be successful in defeating the dungeon. We maximize our chances of success by maintaining the highest number of players. Without my skills, I don’t think you will make it.” It should have calmed Jericho; it was a completely straightforward analysis of their situation. Yet it only incensed him further. “I’m sorry. But that’s the truth.”

“Because you’re so smart.” All the growl was gone from Jericho’s voice now. It sounded human. All too human.

“Because I’ve been building my character to fill the gaps in our line-up. Because of the three of us, I have the best grasp of the tactics that will be required to win. Because even if the first two weren’t true, you’d still have better chances with three of us.” He offered all of this up without ego or expectation. More facts, even the last one, tailored to eliminate everything about himself from the equation, to make himself just a number.

Jericho shoved Lindsay away and drew his whip. Stalking toward Martin as he went on retreating, trying not to trip over the scattered remains of the Brotherhood, or the rubble of the rundown town.

“I’m not waiting for a chance when we could be done now.”

Martin had not wanted it to come to this. He had never wanted it to come to this. He’d genuinely thought that after all of the time he had devoted to earning Jericho’s trust and affection, he might have avoided ever dealing with this direct confrontation. It seemed that he was not so lucky.

“I think you are working off a false assumption.”

“What’s that?” Jericho’s lip curled, showing all his jagged teeth.

“That you can beat me.”

“You little…” He lashed out with the whip, each head of it trailing flames, and not a one of them making contact with Martin as he took the final step back out of Jericho’s impressive reach.

“You don’t know how to use your Heretic class. You haven’t been building for it correctly, you’ve been building a Martyr. Whereas both of my classes have the same focus on dealing melee damage.” Martin counted off the facts on his clawed fingers as he continued to retreat. The emptiness of the abyss was behind him, and he could feel it like a cold wind on his back. The absence of anything.

“We have limited space here with considerable cover, which would put us in close combat, rather than allowing you to take advantage of your ranged attacks. You also blew the last of your Vengeance fighting Dante’s lackeys, which means you can’t even use most of your abilities without my damaging you first.”

Another lash of the whip left scorch marks on the stone by Martin’s feet. Jericho was so intent on doing him harm that he had forgotten that he could turn the weapon on himself to generate Vengeance. He probably didn’t dare to when he hadn’t been healed.

“You will die slow as I beat you with my own hands.”

Martin’s retreat stopped dead. When Jericho snapped his whip out again, he swept his Creedblade from its sheath to turn the burning heads aside.

“Again, working off the assumption that I will simply stand still and let you hurt me. I have spent years analyzing the way you fight and how best to utilize you. I know how to beat you Jericho. Even if I had no tricks up my sleeve, I could take you apart.”

“Liar.”

Even as the echoes of that barked fury died away, Martin continued.

“And even if I wasn’t, you aren’t accounting for the final variable. Do you really think that Lindsay is just going to stand there and let you try to kill me? Her only ticket out of here?”

“Please don’t drag me into this dick waving contest.” Lindsay said from behind Jericho’s back. Martin could see that she had drawn her daggers and was ready to make the pounce if it came to the bit.

Jericho grit his teeth, and dropped his shoulders, all of the things that he always did as he was just about to start fighting. Martin had to stay ahead of him.

“You’ll charge, try to grapple, and maintain a hold. I will backpedal toward the edge, defending myself but dealing minimal damage to prevent you from gaining Vengeance. Then when you overbalance yourself in your assault, as you always do due to your overly aggressive manner of fighting, I will cast Rebuke. Except I’m a Templar instead of an Exorcist, so instead of pushing you away, it will pull you toward me. I will dive to the side. You will go over the edge. You will attempt to catch onto me as you pass, using your whip. That has about even odds of succeeding. Then I will activate Void Strike and sever the whip, sending you plummeting down before I’m dragged more than two feet.”

Jericho stopped. Every word of it had been his plan, Martin knew. The charge, the grapple. They were the best way to eliminate the advantage of Martin’s smaller size and greater Agility. Martin may have been terrible at social manipulation, but Jericho was no liar of any competence either. “You cannot know that…”

“I know. Jericho. I have observed your barely restrained aggression toward me since the moment we first met. I have been putting contingencies in place for this eventuality.”

“And if Lindsay helps me?” Jericho rolled his shoulders to loosen them.

Martin let surprise show on his face, even if it wasn’t entirely real, it would have looked real enough.

“I don’t have a contingency plan to deal with Lindsay.”

“Because she isn’t a threat?” Jericho scoffed.

“She is considerably more of a threat than you are. I do not have a contingency plan to deal with her turning on me, because I trust her completely and implicitly. Neither one of us would ever do anything to bring the other harm.”

“Aww.” Lindsay’s tensed shoulders drooped a little at the sentimentality.

“Do not aww.” Jericho seemed genuinely disgusted by the sound. “This is not time for aww. He has killed us! He has killed us all!”

“Just wait.” Martin stood up straight and forced his body to relax.

“How long do you want us to wait? Until the timer has ticked by? Until our bodies give out? How long!?”Martin paused for a moment to consider the question.

“Let’s explore the town, gather anything that could be useful. Then we can decide.”

Jericho was still behaving as though they were about to fight, but as usual, Lindsay’s well-placed words, or at least, noises, had defused things.

“You don’t even know?!”

“There are… variables I can’t be certain of,” Martin took care not to glance around for any sign of Masters still observing them from their invisible and ethereal plane of existence. “And I’d rather be sure that we will not face… interference.”

“What are you…” Jericho’s jaws snapped shut as he abruptly understood what Martin had managed to convey to Lindsay with just one misplaced word. He stowed his whip and forced himself to turn his back on Martin. Even though it must have pained him to do so. To appear as though he’d been beaten. “Explore town. Steal anything useful. Got it.”

“Jericho.” Martin couldn’t leave it like this.

“What?”

Martin was surprised to find he had a lump in his throat, but he forced the words out.

“I never wanted it to come to this. I never wanted anything bad to happen to any of us. I hope you know that. Even if you are angry.”

“You save us, then I will listen to your sorry.” Jericho’s back vibrated with tension, but he did not turn. “Until then, keep to business.”

Martin eased his hand away from his sword again.

“As you wish.”

TEN

The Deepest Darkness

It took them all of a few minutes to scour the town for anything of use. With each new house that one of them explored bringing with it a new wave of sadness. From the materials that they’d been able to gather from Strata, the people here had built life sized, clumsy dioramas inside their homes. A desk with a computer, both carved from fossil-ridden stone. A great rectangle carved into a wall with the picture of a man drawn as if by a child’s hand inside of it. A television. A news report. Other things from the real world, mostly forgotten or partially remembered; impossible to understand outside of their original context.

In terms of useful equipment, there was little. They came upon enough food and healing materials to restore themselves to their full health, but nothing portable enough to carry on with them. Martin found a staff meant for Hierophants that he chose not to mention. Lindsay came upon a Flagellant Oath to hang on Martin’s hip. This one meant to turn his light, or now dark, damage to lightning. It suggested that the next Deep down likely would have involved electrical foes, if the last one had been anything to go by. Not that they were ever going to see that Deep now.

A full set of plate armor, he lugged out to give to Jericho. The man rolled his eyes at it.

“I am meant to take damage.”

“You’re meant to take damage of about your own level, this should bring heavier hits down to that level.”

“We are strong enough to face anything in the next Deep. You saw how we destroyed the Brotherhood.”

“We aren’t going to the next Deep.”

Jericho gave him a quizzical look but understood well enough that they might still be under observation, so kept any further commentary to himself. Instead, he began the arduous process of strapping himself into his new gear. Martin would have helped him, but he didn’t know if the big man would have tolerated his touch so soon after their latest argument, so he left him to fumble through himself while returning to the mysteries of the abandoned settlement.

Lindsay had a better eye for this sort of thing and returned to where they’d first split up on multiple occasions to dump another armful of potentially usable gear. There was a great deal of wealth, which would have come in very useful if they had anywhere to spend it, but there would be no more pitstops. This was the end of the line for them all.

Sifting through the heaps of silver, he picked out a few potions to grant elemental immunities that he set aside for Jericho. He then passed a few more throwing daggers to Lindsay’s to bulk out her diminished supply. Predictably enough, he noted with no small amount of irony that there was nothing at all for him. The new Oath was great, of course. It offered him a lot of flexibility in terms of damage type, but he still couldn’t quite restrain a pained smile from appearing on his face. All the way down Strata, there had been no decent loot for him. It was nice to see that even now, things hadn’t changed.

Gathered together to check over their takings, the three of them mostly stuck to the divisions that Martin had made while sorting through them. A few items required further explanation as to why he’d doled them out where he had, which he covered in detail. It was the tedious work that made up so much of playing MMOs at the highest level. The adjustments and balances of minute changes in statistics, all meant to optimize their abilities. To squeeze that one tiny point of damage out of their builds and equipment that would mean the difference between success and failure.

He stiffened as the Master whispered into his ear. He imagined that they’d wanted him to jump, but by this point he’d had sinister whispers in his brain from some of the best in the business, so a little tickle wasn’t going to cut it.

“So much effort, and for nothing. What was it that you hoped to achieve?” The others didn’t seem to hear the Master, but Martin spoke plainly for all to hear anyway.

“I wanted to beat you. I wanted to get to the end, to the point where you’d have no choice but to listen to us.”

Sounding annoyed that their privacy had been disrupted, the Master cast off their cloak of invisibility.

“If that was what you wanted, why did you go begging other players to report that you were trapped?”

The rest of Iron Riot gawked at the sudden appearance of the cloaked figure for only a moment before going for their weapons. Lindsay leaped right through the intangible ghost, while Jericho still seemed paralyzed by his first time seeing one of the mysterious figures he’d heard about in the flesh. Martin smiled.

“Because I knew that you’d interfere if you could, and if there was attention on the Masters, it would limit that interference.”

“You thought that they’d spread it across the news feeds? You aren’t the celebrities that you think you are. Nobody cares about you. If you four sad little nobodies vanished, nobody would blink an eye.” It was meant to be antagonistic, Martin knew, but he’d had a lifetime of being told that he was nothing and proving everyone wrong. He was not upset.

“I know you have controls on the media feeds, that was never going to be a viable option.” Beneath the shrouded shadows, Martin felt sure the Master was frowning.

“So, what was the point?!”

“Distraction, misdirection, the same way I’ve been beating you from the start.” He let his smile curve up even further as he spoke. What he considered a genuine smile, but that Lindsay had told him looked condescending. “I don’t have your advantages, but I can rely on you jumping to the wrong conclusions every time.” The Master was baited quite easily, snarling.

“But even if you somehow made it too far, surely you knew that we could simply remove you from the game if the Heart was in danger. We have removed you before.”

“Well yes, and I got out of it before, didn’t I?” Martin shrugged.

“Not alone you didn’t. The only way that you managed to escape was through interference by…” A thought seemed to dawn on the Master at last. “Klimpt.” Martin spoke slightly too quickly, announcing.

“Klimpt is gone. He went out into the void. He’s never coming back.”

“Precisely what you wanted us to think.” The Master flung up their empty sleeves. “Why couldn’t I see it before? This has all been misdirection, you were trying to get pulled out here so that Klimpt could rendezvous with you undetected. This was what you were pushing for. Well, it isn’t going to work. If we’d had no idea, then perhaps. But in bragging about your misdirection and distractions, you’ve just told me precisely what your plan is!”

“Klimpt isn’t coming here to pick us up. He is gone.” Again, Martin answered just a little too fast.

“Get outside the dungeon, rendezvous with the old coot, have him drop you at the end where you’d have leverage. It is so obvious now.” The Master cackled.

“That isn’t my plan.”

“Oh, don’t embarrass yourself.” The Master turned from Iron Riot and spread their arms wide. “Masters, heed me. Klimpt is returning. We must scour the void for him. We must keep him away from Strata.”

“No. Don’t go…” Martin called after his own personal pest. But the Master was already flitting off into the endless night. With that done, he allowed his expression to return to normal from the mask of panic and clapped his hands together. “Right, that should keep them all distracted for a little while.” Jericho’s mouth hung open.

“Did you just…”

“I didn’t do anything. They jumped to the wrong conclusions.” Lindsay fell to her knees.

“Holy crap, Rat-Jesus. Please make me your disciple. Teach me your ways.”

“It isn’t hard to be smarter than idiots.” Martin rolled his eye.

“Well, that’s me out at the first hurdle.” Lindsay shrugged and pulled herself back to her feet.

“What did all this accomplish, what purpose did all this have?” Jericho was still confused.

“They aren’t watching us anymore.”

“And?” Jericho clearly needed a little more help.

“That means that they can’t stop us.” His smile returned, unbidden. “This was always going to be what the Masters did, it was just a matter of us making impressive enough progress to prompt them to intervene. The combination of the mini-boss and Archduke that nobody could beat was enough.”

“Yeah, great, you really played them.” Lindsay had given up listening to him quite some time ago and was now laid out on her back throwing a silver coin up into the air and catching it over and over. “Getting us stuck out here in the middle of the big black nowhere. Good job, buddy.” The math had knocked her out of the conversation as surely as it had bored the Masters into leaving.

“You recall how we got back into the dungeon when we escaped the pit?”

“We dropped to the next Deep’s roof.” She stifled a yawn.

“We’re going to do the same again.”

She didn’t bother to even look around. “Great, then what?”

Martin smiled. “Then we’ll be at the final Archduke.” Her head snapped around.

“What?”

“You don’t take fall damage for the distance traversed outside the confines of the dungeon. We can drop from here, all the way down to the final Deep, without suffering any consequences.”

“Any consequences except having to fight the last boss of the game when we’re only level 3.” She snorted, which was quite impressive given that she had no nose as such.

“I’m not going to pretend that it is going to be an easy fight.”

She rolled to her feet. Growing more animated with every passing moment.

“It is going to be the hardest fight in the game, Martin. It is going to be like all the other Archdukes got together orgy style, then nine months later they pooped out the biggest, baddest monster turd in all of history. We aren’t ready to fight it.”

“You’re right. Of course, you’re right. There’s no way we could win in a fair fight.”

Jericho’s laugh rumbled, deep enough to set their bones to quaking.

“So, you have tricks up ratty sleeves, yes?” Martin’s grin spread a little wider. His teeth popped over his lip.

“Do you remember the first secret boss we found, the big octopus guy?”

“Yeah, we kicked his ass.” Lindsay rolled her eyes.

“Do you remember how?”

“Yeah, I jumped from…” She fell silent for a moment. Basically, a miracle in itself. “No way.”

“The game doesn’t track fall damage accrued outside the dungeon, but it still adds it to your attack.”

“No way.” Jericho echoed her sentiment.

“I checked.”

“So, if we get lucky and land on it…” Martin cut her off.

“I don’t believe in luck. We will have two opportunities to deal catastrophic damage. One for each of you.”

“What about you?” Jericho’s eyes narrowed.

“I’ll drop down first and position myself under the Archduke so that you can aim.”

Lindsay may have been caught up in the excitement at last, but she wasn’t completely oblivious to the risks involved in a plan like this.

“Isn’t it going to completely chew your ass to death when you’re alone in a room with it?”

“It is going to try, I’m sure.”

“You aren’t a tank. You aren’t going to be able to outlast…” Jericho rolled his shoulders again. Getting ready to volunteer himself. Martin cut him off.

“Unfortunately, you aren’t a tank either. At least not right now. Otherwise, I’d be happy to give the task to you.”

“Why not Lindsay?” Jericho nodded to the Corvan, and she nodded. “She is quick.”

“I…” Martin tried for honesty again. “I got us into this mess. If anyone has to be sacrificed to get us out, it should be me.”

“What happened to everything being better with three of us?”

“I’ll endeavor to survive, of course. But if anyone should assume extra risk… it should be me. Besides, I have some self-healing. I think I’ll make it.”

“You think you’ll make it.” Jericho scoffed.

Martin didn’t stick his tongue out, but it was a near thing.

“Thinking is what I’m good at.”

Lindsay had turned her back on them both, staring out into the big black nothing outside of the dungeon. The endless darkness stretching on to the edge of eternity.

“I should be the one to drop, I’m the leader. I’m the one with experience landing the belly flop on these guys.”

“That’s why I need you to make the drop when we have our target locked in.” Martin carefully placed an arm around her shoulders, unsure of how his touch would be received. “You’re our big hitter. Always have been.”

Jericho cleared his throat.

“I am ten times the size of her.”

“But you’ve got no Vengeance banked. You’ll have wind up time once we land. She can burst out the maximum damage immediately.” Lindsay shrugged off his arm.

“Can we just… do it? Can we stop talking about it and just do it. Let’s go.”

Martin took her at her word, heading for the edge of the town, and the endless drop beneath. All three of them peered over the edge at the full depth of Strata alongside them. It was too far away to jump to the Deep that they had just been torn from, but not so far that a lower level couldn’t be hit. Martin supposed that the trick would be landing on the correct one. The lowest visible floor of Strata, the one hundredth Deep where the final Archduke resided, was a vast enough chamber to be visible, even though it was so far down. The Deeps above it jutted out from around the central post of the dungeon, connecting up in odd places where the gates were located, some meandering out in one way, some in the other. Some were vast vertical spaces of tangled caverns, some flat planes with nothing to distinguish them from the outside. To reach the final Deep, they would need to pass all of the others by without making contact, yet they had to stay close, or there would be no hope of hitting the one place they intended to land. It was going to be hair-raising, to say the least. The free-fall toward their almost inevitable death. Martin couldn’t let himself think about it, hesitation would kill him as surely as the monsters.

“Knock back the potions I gave you before you jump. I’ll message you once I’m under the target.” He took a deep breath, took aim and was halfway into a running start when Lindsay caught him by the tail.

“Martin.”

“Yes, boss?” It took some effort, but he managed to give her a smile.

“If you die, I’ll murder you.” He couldn’t hold back a little chuckle.

“I’m not sure you’ve thought that one through.”

“Just jump already.” She rolled her eyes at him and gave a halfhearted kick after him.

Never one to disobey a direct order, Martin backed up a little, took off sprinting and leaped.

There was no air out in the void, but he did not need to breathe. There was no wind, whipping past him as he fell. No sound. His own heart thundered in his ears, but beyond that, silence.

All of the distance that he had to drop, it should have taken forever, but the Deeps whipped by so fast he couldn’t see them. He got faster and faster. He passed by terminal velocity and kept speeding up. There were no physics out here. No logic. Just the fall. The endless fall.

He was close now, all too close, the dungeon walls tearing by so close he could reach out and touch them, then a vast sudden emptiness when the architecture swerved off in the other direction, then rough stone again, inches from the tip of his snout.

If he could have closed his eyes, it would have seemed the sane thing to do, but he had to guide his course as he plunged down into the interminable darkness. He had to lean and strain, so that when he came down, it would be where he meant it to be. The fear, the gut-wrenching sensation of his endless acceleration, he just had to live with them, because to do otherwise would be to fail.

Come to me.

He could not fail. Not with so little time left before the others realized what he already knew and he lost them. He couldn’t do it. So, he endured.

The stone of the final Deep came up on him so abruptly that he didn’t even have time to process what it was before passing through it. The roof of some vast vaulted chamber, a temple built to house the most unholy of beasts. Every inch of it was covered in engraved majesty. All the saints and gods and low-born creatures of all humankind represented there. Dragons fusing into the lamb of God; elephant-headed Lord Ganesha offering seeds from his many hands to human-faced sirens and throughout it all, the nightmarish Archdukes of Strata, represented with all the due honor that should have been reserved for religious symbols instead of imaginary horrors.

Martin hit the flagstones of the final Deep of Strata as softly as a falling feather despite the speed he’d come down. He drew his sword and made ready to do battle with the final evil of this place, ears swiveling for any hint of its approach.

Nihilex, The Conqueror Worm, Firstborn of Strata emerged from the shadows ahead of him. Backlit by the green glow of the Heart coming up from the chamber’s only exit. The only light.

The green light refracted off its chitinous armor where it could, but for the most part, the hide of the Archduke was so dark that even the Deep light was entirely consumed until it seemed more like a hole in the world than any living thing. It had no eyes that Martin could see, and he considered that a small blessing. There was no green stare penetrating his soul from atop what he had to assume was its head.

Mandibles snapped up there, the head was like some great centipede’s in form though armored so heavily that any true shape seemed lost in the blockiness. There was a centaur-like quality to it lower down, as that segmented body broadened out into something more solid and steady footed, but the part of it that remained upraised and facing him showed so many arms that he could not count them all.

Human hands as large as his whole body at the end of spindly insect limbs. Fingers protruding from amid the chitinous joints at each segment. Some clinging to old, rusted weapons but most just reaching out for him with a hunger.

Long whip-like stingers trailing about in the air like the tentacles of anemones in the pull of the tides. Great scythe blades like a mantis. Grasping scorpion pincers that chattered excitedly. Every natural weapon that any one of the previous Archdukes might have wielded, all fused into this one hideous wall of flesh.

Come to me, and live.

The voice echoed in his head, not from the direction of Nihilex but from beneath his feet. The Heart was so close now that he could feel its presence against his skin. Pulsing through him with every beat of his own heart. In his mind and his flesh and his bones. It was here.

With a shaking hand, Martin touched on his guild crest,

“Getting into position now. Be ready.”

“Always am.” Lindsay’s voice came back to him, soft as a whisper.

There was some comfort in hearing the voice of another human being. A reminder that no matter how far he had fallen or how terrifying a foe he faced; he was not alone. With a deep breath, he charged.

Nihilex stood, making no attempt to slow his rush, giving no sign it had even noticed his presence, but for the hungering snapping of pincers. He came into range of the whipping stingers, but they did not strike at him. If it flung itself forward it could have crushed him with its bulk alone, but it stayed upright and ready. Waiting for him to come.

The Oathblade in his hand turned dark as its hide when he channeled Afflict but still there was no motion. Not until he was only ten feet away. Then one of the pincers, seemingly of its own accord, snapped out at him.

It was impossibly fast for something so huge, faster than even Dante had been, but he had been expecting its attack, and his sword was in place to parry it. Steel, darkness, and chitin met in an awful shrieking crunch, and he realized all at once that the claw had never been closing on him, but on the blade itself. With a strength beyond anything he’d ever encountered, it hauled on his blade, ripping it from his grasp as another of the great pincers darted in. He was off-balance from being disarmed so brutally, and even had he not been, he wasn’t sure he could have dodged it anyway.

The claw snapped shut around his head, around his precious brain, and the ridges and spikes that ran around its inner grip bit into him. Blood washed down into his eye from the perforations all around his scalp. Chitin ground on bone, and he was lifted from his feet.

[Skaife has suffered 14 piercing damage]

He’d been a fool to think he could go toe to toe with this monster for even a second. He’d been a fool to think that this plan might work. It didn’t matter how clever he was in the face of something so powerful. All the tricks in the world weren’t enough when you were in the presence of a god.

His skull creaked as the pincer carried him up and away from the ground. The numbness that Strata gave in place of pain enveloping his whole head. All it would take was a squeeze and he would be dead, lobotomized and useless. He half expected to be passed up the length of the Archduke’s body to arrive in whatever it used as a mouth, but instead he was just drawn in closer. The cold clammy hands that had so desperately hungered for him grabbed and tugged once he was close enough to reach, each yank sending fresh numbness shooting down from his scalp.

His armor protected some parts of him from the inquisitive fingers, but every exposed area was being pinched and prodded. Fur was ripped from his skin by those grasping hands and dropped down around him like confetti. The patch on his eye was ripped clean away and the fingers dipped into the scar tissue that clotted his now empty socket. The chinks in his armor where other wounds had been made were an invitation to the fingers too, they slipped inside, rubbing across every scar and pressing at them like they could get inside of him.

The crown of thorns biting into his head loosened as the hands took hold, drawing him in deeper and deeper. The hands reached around the back of his body and pulled, embracing him tighter into the mass of protruding lumps at their base. It began to part, rather than serve as a surface for him to be crushed upon.

Opening, inch by inch, with a sound like wet velvet being torn.

Too enveloped in the press of flesh to make out what he was being drawn into, he strained against the hands. Whether the wet things pressing against his face were teeth or more half-grown fingers, he could not see. This was a small blessing.

His fingers brushed against the guild crest, but they were interlinked by the fingers of one of the grasping hands and pried away. Even a single hand had the strength to overpower him.

With a grunt of effort as fingers forced their way past his lips to pull at his tongue, Martin called on his Javelin of Bedlam and seared the hand grasping his away. It withdrew the moment that the roiling energy touched it, but another was already reaching to take its place as Martin slammed his hand onto the crest and gripped tight. Biting through the fingers in his mouth, he bellowed through the link.

“Now!”

The fingers dug into his hand, trying to pull it away from the crest that was lighting him up for Lindsay to follow down. Fresh hands pressed into his open mouth, pushing the severed fingers down into his throat and gagging him on them. He had to swallow, or vomit and risk drowning in it, so he did what was needed to survive, though he didn’t think he’d ever forget the taste in his mouth as the rubbery lumps of flesh slithered down his gullet. The mildewy taste of decay mixed with the raw iron taste of flesh blood.

Still, he was drawn in ever deeper, the soft wetness of the Archduke’s body entirely surrounding him now. Consuming him. Swallowing him whole. He could feel a prickle across his body as whatever fluid coated him began to eat through his skin. The sound of the sizzling was almost clearer than the sensation, with so many other things probing and clawing at him.

[Skaife has suffered 12 acid damage]

He couldn’t say for certain, the exact moment that he realized he was being made into a part of the Archduke. Whether it was the tender way that the hands turned inward were contorting him so that soon his limbs would protrude out too, or the way that the searing acid of the thing’s innards didn’t seem to be destroying him so much as making his flesh more pliable. Where the fingers probed at his old wounds now, they found ingress. Sinking into his flesh. Shaping him back into the wounded ruin that the past Archduke fights had left him in. The hand that wasn’t still clinging to the crest had all fingers extended out, and something probed at his palm until it sank all the way through the hole there and out the other side, hooking onto the back of his hand.

It was worse than any nightmare he could have conceived of. Worse than being left a crippled mess by the fighting. If he died and came back, no part of him would even resemble what he had been before. Martin cast Night Song in a desperate attempt to tear some health from the Archduke and use it to retain his own self, but it was far too little.

That was when Lindsay hit.

He couldn’t hear her screaming, “Raptor Strike.” But he knew without a doubt that she would have been screaming it. The whole body of the Archduke convulsed as she struck and then as suddenly as Martin had been consumed by darkness, suddenly there was light again.

[Nihilex has suffered 489 piercing damage]

From the top of its head to the middle of its mass where Martin had been drawn in, Nihilex had been split in two. And there, in the center of the wound, with both her daggers still shining, was Lindsay. Crowing with triumph. The two of them caught sight of each other in the same moment, and Lindsay, being Lindsay, couldn’t help but throw back her head and cackle.

“You let it eat you?”

“Let, might be a bit of an overstatement.”

“Oh man, Jericho is going to laugh at you forever.” She reached down to take hold of his wrist, the grasping pincers, claws, and hands within the monster had gone limp at the moment she hit. “Hell, I’m going to laugh at you forever.”

With a strain, she withdrew him from the mass of chaotic flesh. Grunting with the effort.

They extricated themselves from Nihilex and leaped down to the ground, swinging from one limp limb to the next, until they were back on solid ground. Lindsay turned to look at the enemy at last.

“So that was the last boss in Strata? Bit of an anticlimax really. One big bug.”

Martin was scrambling across the floor in the fresh outpouring of gore, trying to find his sword.

Lindsay strolled after him, occasionally giving him a gentle but firm kick on the ass.

“Dude, what’s wrong with you? We won.” He snapped his head around.

“Did you see a death notification?”

“No.” She shrugged. “Oh.” She turned on her heel.

“Oh no.”

The slit down the center of Nihilex had continued down the length of its great body, and now the two halves were pulling apart, unleashing another wash of the same slick black ichor that had hidden Martin’s sword from sight.

Fresh black chitin bristled up in the wound. Pushing aside the flesh that had been there before, sloughing it off to land in steaming heaps at its feet. It pushed out, and out, until it had replaced all that had been lost in the division. Until there were two Nihilexes tottering there off-balance, until fresh legs could unfold from between the panels of black and settle on the ground.

“Oh, come on, I just made two of them?” Lindsay moaned.

Snatching his Oathblade from the grip of one of the dislodged and dropped hands, Martin charged for the one on the right.

“Jericho, get ready. Aim for me.”

“Ready.”

It seemed that standing by passively was no longer enough for the twinned Archduke. Both parts of it moved in harmony, both parts swinging out with all their stingers to tear him apart. He’d expected as much. With a flex of his hand, he cast Summon. Dragging the further of the two Archdukes closer to him. Setting all of its attacks off course and entangling all the whipping strands that would have hit him otherwise. As they struggled to disentangle themselves, he charged on, dropping into a slide before the pincers could catch him again.

“Now!”

He spun his Oathblade up, setting the pommel to the stone an instant before the Archduke surged forward to crush him. Instead, it impaled itself.

The blade was not enough to hold back its crushing weight, of course. But bracing his back against the smooth chitin that was meant to crush him, Martin held it up for the precious seconds that he needed.

Jericho hit.

[Nihilex has suffered 311 piercing damage]

It may have dealt less damage than Lindsay’s more honed blow, but it was still enough to kill this particular incarnation of Nihilex. The crushing weight gave way, parting somewhere high above to fall to either side instead. Martin managed a breath before scurrying his way out.

Lindsay was doing her best to keep the other Nihilex occupied, but even her superior Agility was no match for the thing’s incredible speed. She leaped three sweeps of stinging tendrils, knocked two pinching claws away and then fell foul to one of the hands, catching onto the feathers on the back of her head as she rushed by. It yanked her from her feet, leaving her vulnerable to the whipping stingers whirling back around to strike again.

At this range there was nothing he could do. Even running full out, he would not be able to reach her in time.

Jericho rose shakily from the corpse that had broken his landing and unleashed a flurry of shadows. There was not enough Vengeance in him to do any worthwhile damage, but in the chaos of impacts, the strikes that would have killed Lindsay were knocked off course.

Martin barely managed to yelp out, “Yes!” before the dead Nihilex began to heave, knocking Jericho off his feet once more. This one had not been so neatly split down the middle. Instead, there were tatters of it hanging in every direction, and before Martin’s eye, each one began to regenerate and divide.

“They’re just going to keep on dividing. We need area-of-effect damage.”

“Do you have any?!” Lindsay yelped.

“No. You?”

“None.”

“Great!” Martin’s sarcasm seemed almost silly here in this evil pit. “Jericho?”

“Nothing.” He rolled his shoulders.

“Then I guess we do this the hard way.”

Each Nihilex that rose from the ashes was smaller than the last. Not exactly half the size of the previous generation, but noticeably smaller. With enough wins, they’d be facing an army of enemies the same size as them instead of a smaller cadre of giants. Martin wasn’t certain that could be considered better.

He activated his Purifier’s Oath and charged in at the Nihilex that was still trying to kill Lindsay. His Void Strike was engulfed in dark flames that seared through the chitin of the Archduke’s leg as though it were not armored at all.

[Nihilex has suffered 0 slashing damage]

[Nihilex has suffered 38 fire damage]

There was a hissing of escaping hot air, but nothing more. No cry of pain. Like the Ravagers before it, this Archduke seemed incapable of making a sound. From out of the wound where Martin had carved away the leg came a tumult of ichor and pallid flesh, hands came pushing out of the wound, grasping for anything in reach. More and more of them forcing out to fill the gap and stanch the flow of blackness.

It may not have hurt the Archduke, but it did get its attention. The whipping stingers that had been aimed at Lindsay were now brought to bear on him, and while he was quick to parry and dodge, they coiled around the flat of his blade to brush over his bared arms. Everywhere they touched went numb, and Martin could not tell if they’d imparted some agonizing toxin or simply an analgesic, robbing his nerves of all sensation.

[Skaife has suffered 31 acid damage]

He could only consider himself lucky that he hadn’t been stung before the thing tried to consume him, or he’d have had no chance of fighting it off at all.

A pincer came down at his head once more, but he batted it away with Afflict rather than risk his sword being grabbed. Once more, dark flames leaped up from where the blow had been struck, and that strange hissing started up.

[Nihilex has suffered 30 fire damage]

“Yeah baby!” Lindsay cheered from amid a whirl of severed tendrils. “Boil that lobster!”

As plans went, it wasn’t a bad one. He didn’t have much time left to use the Purifier’s Oath, but Void Strike would definitely be off cooldown again before it was done. He turned on his heel and sprinted back toward Jericho and the exploded corpse that was reassembling itself amid a lake of ichor. Ichor that it seemed was flammable.

“Tell me you drank the potions? Fire immunity?”

Jericho scoffed as he stamped on another outcropping of chitin trying to grow near to the center of the burst mass.

“Of course, I drank the potions.”

Void Strike caught the Oathblade aflame as Martin ran. He made no attempt at hitting the spreadeagled starfish remains of the Archduke. Instead, he drove the burning tip down into the pool on the ground.

For a moment it seemed that the ichor might quench the fire rather than letting it rage, but perhaps there was some sense of kinship between the black flames of the Void Strike and the contents of the Archduke’s veins. First smoke, then flame burst up from the pool coating that side of the cathedral. Spreading fast.

Even as they regrew, the outcroppings of Nihilex’s flesh were cauterized and driven back. It still gained bulk and it still grew into facsimiles of its greater self, but they were twisted, half-melted things, barely capable of boasting its form, let alone its abilities. The reaching, grasping limbs of the original thing were fused together in the flame. The thick chitin was pitted and smeared out of place.

Lindsay let out one of her more graphic descriptions of what she intended to do to the Archduke’s mother from behind him, and Martin spun in place again. This was the sort of fight where a full complement of other players in their ranks would have come in handy. When they were spread so thin that he spent every moment spinning like a top.

The Purifier’s Oath stopped burning at his side, so he activated the Flagellant’s Oath instead. Any damage was liable to be more effective than dark damage against this creature. Darkness was a fundamental part of it. He launched a lightning bolt Javelin into the head of the Archduke that Lindsay faced, and blue sparks rained down all around them.

[Nihilex has suffered 30 lightning damage]

Lighting the chamber up and revealing all the horrors it had to show. The gargoyle carvings loomed suddenly out of the gloom. The staircases carved into them coiling up toward the gate from the last Deep.

On the floor below, every monster in the dungeon respawned after death, creeping past this nightmare beast to head up and wage war on the invading players. Every one that had died in the last few minutes then stood cowering in the doorway leading up to this chamber. Every enemy that they’d faced and a dozen alien creatures stood there, cowering from the booming sounds of battle. If they charged in right now, then the battle would be over. Even with all the advantages that he had clawed out of the world for Iron Riot, there was a weight of numbers there that even he couldn’t surpass.

But they were too afraid to come out. Whether of the Archduke, or those heroes mighty enough to face the Archduke. It didn’t matter. He’d take whatever advantage he could.

Lindsay was climbing her Archduke now, leaping from one thick scythe arm to the next, slicing at the hands that tried to grab her. Flipping past the pincers and whips with a laugh. She was always the best of them, the fastest, the strongest, the bravest, Martin couldn’t help but crack a smile at the sight of her in her element. She loved this. Even now when their existence was on the line, she found joy. He wished with all his heart that he could be like her, but he was himself. He was a creature of calculation. They were not going to win. Not the way things were going.

Jericho was being set upon by the swarming misshapen clones. Even broken down in size they towered over him, and now they rained down blows. Scratching and clawing. Whipping and stinging. He didn’t let out a sound. He took it all. Every hit, until he was shrouded in Vengeance from head to toe.

[Jericho has suffered 12 bludgeoning damage]

[Jericho has suffered 22 slashing damage]

[Jericho has suffered 19 acid damage]

With a roar he unleashed it. A catastrophic barrage of shadows bursting forth from his body, hammering into the Archdukes closest to him, knocking the ones further back off their feet. It was all that he could muster. All the power that he had, unleashed at once.

[Nihilex has suffered 81 dark damage]

It wasn’t enough. One of the most molten of the Conqueror Worms was torn asunder by his outburst, and some of the others were wounded, but these were not the petty enemies that they had faced above. Any one of these lesser copies of Nihilex would have been a match for the Archdukes they’d already faced.

With his attention split between the two fights, Martin didn’t feel like he could properly intervene in either without leaving one of his friends to face their own personal hell all alone. It was something that he would not do. He raked through the list of abilities that he had left to him after being converted to a Templar. One of them had to do something.

Lindsay was caught by another of the grasping hands, yanked from her perch on a chitinous arm and cast down. She thrust a dagger into the belly of the beast to slow her fall, but it wasn’t enough to stop gravity. When she hit the stone, she hit it hard, and her body bounced before settling in a pool of blood. Some Nihilex’s, some her own.

[Tesra has suffered 29 environmental damage]

Demiurge Strike lit up Martin’s sword with dark lightning and he turned his back on Lindsay as she lay there on the verge of death.

The first molten Nihilex he came upon, he carved in half with a single overhead cut.

[CRITICAL HIT]

[Nihilex has suffered 78 lightning damage]

The electric charge in his sword rushed out through its body, paralyzing it before arching out to strike another two. They were all still huge, all still powerful, but he didn’t need to beat them all. Not right now. All he needed was to beat enough of them.

Behind him, the Archduke that still hadn’t split a second time reared up on its hindmost legs, readying itself to come down on Lindsay with its full weight and put an end to her. Martin could not allow that to happen. The Rite of Passage that had carried them so far through the dungeon was off its cooldown once more, converted by his switch of class to the Rite of Bondage. He cast it now and that looming tower of doom up in the shadows was stilled.

It did not fall. It did not rise. It was pinned in place in the air by the weight of Martin’s will.

It wouldn’t last long.

The next Nihilex swiped at Martin with scything blades and whipping stingers, trying to clear an arc around itself. He stepped right into that arc and swept his blade up. As he’d suspected, without the bulk of the larger body, every part of this Nihilex was fragile by comparison. The whip thin stingers were easily snapped, and the mantis blades easily cracked. He drove them all up with one rising cut and drove the flat tip of his Oathblade down into its central mass with a full-bodied thrust.

[Nihilex has suffered 29 piercing damage]

That was enough to tip him back over the see-saw of Sin and bring him back to his original class.

The Archdukes that he’d slain were already regenerating into still-smaller versions of themselves, but he didn’t give a damn. Winning the battle was something he could worry himself with later. For now, he had a purpose that was far more pressing.

Taking off at a sprint once more, he fired off Vesper at Lindsay where she lay. The glow enveloped her, picking her out as the only speck of light in all of the darkness. Her wounds closed. Her bones set themselves and her beak, previously hanging open in desperate gasps for air, began to move.

“Took you long enough!”

“Sorry. I’ve been busy.” He continued his sprint toward her as she found her feet. Sliding to a halt by grabbing onto her shoulder with a hand already shimmering with Healing Touch. She looked over at the towering inferno consuming the far side of the room and nodded.

“Yes. Yes, you have.”

“Going up?” He nodded to the paralyzed titan looming over them. She crowed with delight.

“Gimme a boost!”

Before the words were even out of her she was leaping, and Martin had no choice but to throw up both hands and cast Rebuke, or risk having her full weight come down on him. It served as just the lift she was looking for, firing her up not quite to the level of the Archduke’s head, but close enough to spit.

With Lindsay taken care of, Martin turned his attention back to Jericho and the burning legions surrounding him.

The hulking Heretic clubbed the Archduke’s back with his bare hands when they were too close to whip, and with his teeth and blood-soaked brow when they were too close even for that. They swarmed in at him from all sides, scoring cuts, stinging with their whips, hammering him with everything that they had, but the man just would not fall. With a crack of his whip, he unleashed a wave of shadows into the midst of them, blasting some of their feet, and splitting others in half. All the harm they had done him was turned around on them, but he couldn’t go on forever like this.

[Nihilex has suffered 39 dark damage]

Martin had no healing magic left to use, not for a minute or more. Jericho was going to die before he could reach him, even if he could close the distance. It was like the Heretic knew that. He fought with the reckless abandon of somebody who knew they were beyond saving. Accepting blows that he could have dodged so that he could hammer his own attacks home. Chitin and gore rained down all about him. His unleashed Vengeance filled the air with screeching. With one last, great roar he seized the largest of the standing Nihilex and unleashed the full barrage of his Vengeance into it, tearing it apart from the inside even as he was pierced through with its mantis scythes.

He fell to his knees. Eyes meeting Martin’s stare across the battlefield. Blood poured from his mouth when he opened it, and no sound emerged, but Martin knew he was trying to bellow out, “Iron Riot” one last time.

It was such a wonderfully dramatic moment that he almost felt bad about what was going to happen next.

Jericho has died.

Martin hit the first rank of Nihilex head on, but leaped as they crashed together, to ride over their top and down the smooth slide of their chitinous rear side. From there, closer to the epicenter where Jericho had fallen they were more scattered. He could dodge around them now that they were only as big as a human. Their reach was reduced enough that he could get by without risking a scratch.

[MISS]

The sundered remains all around Jericho were pulsing with regeneration already, and the flames that had enveloped the room were dying down now that the first initial slick of ichor was burned up. They would rise again in a moment and become a problem. But not one that he intended to face alone. Dropping to his knees, he placed his hands on poor dead Jericho’s chest, and he cast Rite of Revival.

The body had not even had a chance to cool before Jericho was thrust back into it with a thunderous gasp.

“Darkness. Nothing but darkness.” Another ragged breath racked him. “No escape. Oh God. Julia.”

Martin took a hold of his wrist and dragged him to his feet. No small feat, given the disparity in their heights.

“We all get out together. Just one more fight to win.”

There were tears smoothing down the bloodied fur of his face as he swayed on his feet.

“Why couldn’t you bring her back to us?”

“No body.” Martin had to yank Jericho off-balance to avoid a sweeping sickle of black chitin. “Now focus.” It was enough to raise a grumble from him.

“You focus.”

Lindsay let out a cry of victory from somewhere up in the vaulted shadows and a slab of masonry thick chitin came tumbling down to crush one of the smaller iterations. It soon turned into a strangled yelp however, as the Rite of Bondage came to its end.

The towering Nihilex toppled as gravity reasserted itself. What Martin would have called its head came down hard on the stone floor, and Lindsay was flung free despite all her best efforts to maintain her hold. Some forces were too powerful for dug-in daggers and squeezing crow claws to overcome. She rolled across the chamber, coming back to her feet halfway to the wall and sliding the rest of the way before charging right back in again.

Where the great chitin plate that had covered the Archduke’s helmet had been pried away, there was more of the pallid flesh that made up the human hands, a great writhing whorl of it, puckered where its armor had been plucked away. Inside, it looked like something that lived under a rock, devoid of all signs of color and life, but for the awful throbbing motion of its flesh.

Martin should have taken his own advice. He should have focused on the problem in front of him. Or in this case, behind him. One of the mid-sized Archdukes had rushed him while his head was turned, the stingers whipping at his legs, numbing them, and making him too slow when the claws came sweeping into him. Down each side of his spine, they tore, right down the length of his back, from neck to tail.

[Skaife has suffered 22 slashing damage]

He'd spent all his healing on the others, and he couldn’t regret it. But now he fell to his knees, feeling nothing at all. In the distance, he could hear Lindsay crying out his name, but he had no breath to answer.

The same Archduke that had dropped him now reared up to land the killing blow. Flinging itself up onto the very tip of its tail and coming down on him with its full weight.

His sword lit up with Celestial Strike for what should have been the last time. And just as he had with the greater Archduke, he set the pommel to the floor.

When it came crashing down, the sword plunged into its soft underbelly, through the hands, claws, and pincers to hammer deep. It was just enough. The crushing weight of it collapsed on him, but the mincing flurry of cuts he’d anticipated did not come.

Nihilex has died.

Skaife has gained 21000 experience.

He leveled up from the experience of killing yet another one of these monsters so far beyond his capabilities, and with a laugh, he realized that this was how they could win. He grabbed the first ability from the offered selection without looking, dropped the stats into his Endurance and felt life return to his body as his full health was restored by the increased level.

His tattered lungs stitched back together faster than his shoulder blades could reform, so even though he couldn’t yet move, he could yell. “Level up! Every time you’re injured, just level up! Focus fire on one at a time.”

The cooldowns on his abilities had not reset, much as he wished they had. But he had enough to work with now. He cast Introit on one of the smaller Nihilex clones as it rushed in to finish him off, and was gratified at how it, and all its siblings, flinched away from the sudden burst of light. Chasten stopped another from killing him in a flurry of blades.

A Javelin of Faith followed after that first bright flash, knocking the thing off course once more, and by the time that it rounded on him again, his sword was already lit up with Smite.

“Come on!”

He hit it across the center of mass, dipping the tip of his blade past its parrying claws to rake it open, slick ichor and pale flesh came bursting out from within the shell where the light damage had split it.

[Nihilex has suffered 30 light damage]

This final enemy was not a puzzle to be solved. It was a meat-grinder. An endless procession of more and more enemies unleashed on them relentlessly to wear them down. But it had been designed with the intention of facing off against players who had made it through the whole of Strata and were at the height of their power. Low-level players were never meant to see this place. They were never meant to beat Nihilex. And that was the flaw in the design. With every one of the clones they killed, they grew stronger, and the Archduke grew weaker. The initial titanic form of the Archduke probably would have been enough to kill them all in short order, but they’d managed to hit it with enough damage upfront to trigger its second phase and cause it to split. Now all they had to do was outpace it.

They could win.

Just the thought of it was enough to get him back in the fight. Pushing forward despite what seemed insurmountable odds. The strength of the players was always that they could grow stronger. Now it was time to push that to the limit.

Jericho was surrounded by enemies once more, but before Martin’s eye, the hulking Wulvan’s wounds were closing as fast as they could be opened. He suffered, he returned that suffering to the Archduke with great booming explosions of Vengeance and as they died, he leveled up, restoring himself to fighting form.

[Nihilex has suffered 36 dark damage]

[Nihilex has suffered 42 dark damage]

[Nihilex has suffered 35 dark damage]

Martin faced off against one small Archduke after another, moving at a full sprint between them. Raining down Celestial Strikes and Trinity Strikes as they became available. Empowering the others to make critical hits with his attacks, and his Rite of Retribution. Weaving in Smite when the other abilities were on cooldown. Launching out Javelins of Faith when it seemed an enemy would gain the advantage over Jericho and trusting in the window of opportunity that Chasten provided to keep himself alive as he devoted his attention to dealing damage.

On the far side of the chamber, Lindsay was not engaged in fighting so much as butchery. Her blades bit deep into the pale flesh that she had exposed, revealing layer after layer of it within the vast Nihilex as she dug in deeper and deeper. Even as it tried to draw itself back up to its full height, she would strike at it with another one of her lethal abilities, tearing into whatever it used to think and making it slump back into place for more slaughter. Martin was amazed it hadn’t split apart yet.

He had almost the length of a whole breath between foes, and he took advantage of it to glance around the room and take everything in. The monsters in the stairwell to the Heart were still cowering back, but the weight of numbers behind them was starting to push them out whether they wanted to enter the fight or not. That did not concern him yet. What did worry him was the size of the Nihilex clones on the periphery of the fighting. They seemed bigger than they should have been.

At first, he assumed that the splinter clones were continuing to grow, attempting to regain their original size, but then he caught a glimpse of what was happening on the edge of his vision. Two Archdukes went charging toward each other and collided with a fresh splatter of ichor, recombining into the bigger version of themselves. The process was reversible. It didn’t matter how many they killed; the Nihilex could still recombine.

That presented a problem. Martin ducked a whipping tendril and parried a snipping claw with the flat of his Oathblade. It meant that there was no way to finish the fight. They couldn’t deal enough damage fast enough to break the enemy down completely. Eventually their leveling up would hit a plateau where they were no longer generating enough experience to keep them alive, and they’d fall. No wonder it was so easy for even low-level characters to kill these smaller clones, they didn’t need to survive to win.

With a thunderous crash the Archduke Lindsay had been massacring broke apart, not neatly splitting like the last one, but exploding apart all along its length. Hunks of chitin rained down across the chamber, and from each one, legs and hands at once began to sprout. Some had teeth, some had claws, all were on their way to becoming clones in the next few moments. A second legion for them to face.

Lindsay was in the midst of them all, forced to pivot from all-out attack to frantic dodging and struggling to make the switch. Martin hit a leaping hunk of white flesh, freshly sprouted a sickle blade of chitin, with Rebuke to knock it off course, but he had his own swarm of enemies to attend to. There must have been a hundred of them now, and the assault was not slowing.

Jericho stumbled. His leg sliced through, and a new level just out of reach. Martin launched himself into the fray, picking off the nearest of Jericho’s attackers with a Javelin of Faith but it wasn’t enough.

[Nihilex has suffered 30 light damage]

The rest set upon the Wulvan, hacking and clawing. Once more, the colossal outburst of Vengeance was unleashed, the barrage attack that he usually used to strike from a distance exploding into enemies at point blank range. It cleared the mass of them, but it also had another effect.

[Nihilex has suffered 6 dark damage]

[Nihilex has suffered 8 dark damage]

[Nihilex has suffered 12 dark damage]

[Nihilex has suffered 9 dark damage]

[Nihilex has suffered 7 dark damage]

[Nihilex has suffered 16 dark damage]

The shadows of Vengeance that had never fully left Jericho’s side throughout the past few days faded away into a warm glow. As they’d all been rushing through these monsters to gain experience enough to level their way through the damage, unseen, he’d been wiping away the burden of Sin that he had been carrying for so long. At last, he was no longer a Heretic, but a Martyr once more. At the exact moment it rendered him utterly useless.

As a Heretic he was churning out enough damage to overcome the swarming Archdukes but stripped of his Vengeance he could not. His ability to tank extra damage, and to slowly regenerate health, might have been useful against a lesser enemy, but the sheer damage being doled out each second that they were fighting down here meant it would soon be overcome.

Jericho seemed to realize it at about the same moment as Martin. He tried to break free of the melee, to run, but there were just too many of them, and they were just too strong.

He dragged the mass of them with him, claws hooking into his flesh, stingers wrapping around him, hauling them all on by force of will alone, to close the distance to Martin, as he tried to fight his way in. Martin did all that he could, raining blows down on anything in reach and shouldering his way through the mass, but it was obvious that he was going to be too late.

His Exorcist abilities just weren’t as destructive as his Templar ones, too much had been diverted to healing and utility. Where his Afflict, Withering Touch, and Void Strike would have carved him through to Jericho in time, his light infused powers just weren’t enough.

Blood matted Jericho’s fur. The armor he’d strapped on had been shredded like someone had been overzealous with a tin opener. He lunged out of the mass, still struggling to keep them from pulling him back into their butchery.

“You win this. You save her.”

Martin was at a loss for words for only a moment, then Jericho shrugged off the swarming enemies and tore the chest piece from his armor, exposing his wounded torso to the air.

“Do it!”

Martin drove his sword into Jericho’s heart. The light of his Celestial Strike changing to the absolute darkness of Void Strike as it sank home.

[Jericho has suffered 18 piercing damage]

[Jericho has suffered 18 light damage]

[Jericho has suffered 18 dark damage]

Jericho has died.

For an instant all he could do was draw breath, then a plan snapped into place, and he ran.

“Lead them to me.” He bellowed over the tumult of battle.

Lindsay, completely surrounded by enemies should have struggled to oblige, but her Shadowstep must have been off cooldown, and she used it to get to his side in an instant.

“Jericho?”

“Sacrificed himself. For this.” Martin didn’t dare to kill an Archduke again, not when his Sin was teetering on the tipping point. He had to rely on Lindsay to carve her way through them, using Summon to yank her out of a stinger’s reach only once as they headed for the monsters spilling out into the far end of the vast cathedral of evil.

“For what exactly? For us to go fight every respawned monster in the game? Because I prefer our odds against the big bug.”

“Have you ever known me not to have a plan?” He managed a smile, though he was coated in viscera.

They cleared the final line of rejoining Archduke clones and staggered on, closer and closer to the far end of the hall, with all of hell following at their heels. Martin had no doubt that the Nihilex would catch up to them before they reached the far wall, but he didn’t need to outpace them for that long. Just long enough that they were all in front of him.

He spun around, bowed his head and unleashed Eclipse.

The wave of darkness spread out from behind him, it swept out across the room, it filled every nook and cranny of the walls, washing into every crevasse on the pitted chitin of the Archduke. For a moment the horde went on charging, and Martin felt like a fool. He hadn’t used Halo because they had no eyes, why would he think that Eclipse would work any differently just because it affected their minds instead?

But then one of the front-runners tumbled. A tendril whipped out to sting at its legs. Behind it, the great mandibles of one of the still huge Archdukes snapped shut on the armored back of one of its smaller kin and tore it in half. It was as though the dam had been burst, and all at once every single one of the Archdukes turned on its own kind. Every one of them consumed by a berserk bloodlust that could not be sated.

Lindsay moved to join the chaos, but Martin laid a hand on her shoulder to stop her. They backed away toward the wall, and the lesser monsters of Strata, as the Archduke, divided and divided time and time again, waged war on himself.

It was a slaughter beyond anything that they could have managed to perpetrate themselves. The sharpened claws of the Nihilex perfectly shaped to pry apart their own armor plates. The stingers perfect to numb the grasping hands that should have trapped them. The mandibles were the real stars of the show though, carving through chitin and flesh alike with wet snipping and crackling sounds that would haunt Martin’s memory.

They killed one another, then split apart, and the smaller versions killed one another. It went on and on and on. At some point Martin was sure that his Eclipse had run out, but still the slaughter went on. Body after body, cracking and spurting apart. Smaller and smaller duplicates emerging just to start the cycle over again, perfect simulacra of their old selves, bound to repeat the same mistakes.

As they grew smaller and smaller, the crunching and slicing grew softer and softer, until finally there was nothing at all but the gentle chittering of insectile legs in motion.

From the lake of ichor, they came. A tide of tiny chittering black bodies the size of roaches. Thousands upon thousands of them, as far as the eye could see. At some point, their brains must have grown too small to hold the hatred that Martin had planted there or perhaps Eclipse’s effect had simply worn out, and only base instinct now remained. Only hunger.

“What do we do?” Panic prickled up Martin’s neck as the usually unflappable Lindsay sounded on the verge of tears. “What do we do?”

The words that he had never expected to speak slipped from Martin’s lipless mouth.

“I don’t know.”

Swarming and chittering and buzzing, the tide of bugs came for them, like an eclipse’s shadow chasing over the surface of the world. One bug was bigger than the rest, by barely an inch, it seemed to lead the charge, heading straight at Martin’s feet.

It closed the distance, and he readied himself to stomp on it when suddenly it was snatched away.

Martin and Lindsay’s heads snapped around, following the elasticated tongue of Speckles back to its source. He crunched the bug in his mouth thoughtfully before nodding. “My am liking it.”

“Speckles?!” Lindsay yelped, so surprised that she lost all fear. But Martin saw what was behind him.

“The Anurvans!”

The Frog-men that he had once fought to save came hopping out from between the legs of the greater monsters of Strata, dozens if not hundreds of them. All that had been slaughtered in the past few days, finally returned to life. They bounded forward, tongues darting out to pick the coming bugs up from the ground and swallow them down.

There was no need, nor time, for chewing with the Archduke having been broken down so small. They just lined up for the buffet and set to it. One or two bugs may have made it through, but one or two could be trod upon. The vast tidal wave that had meant to wash over them and strip them down to their bones was gone into the stomachs of the frogs before there was even time to speak.

[ANNOUNCEMENT: Iron Riot have defeated Nihilex, the Last Archduke of Strata]

ELEVEN

The Heart of Strata

What felt like a million different messages started pinging. Every eye in the whole game was on them now. According to the plan he’d presented to Lindsay and the others, this would be their opportunity, their chance to leverage all that attention into freedom. The Masters could hardly keep them trapped in the dark now that their obscurity had been stripped away.

But the game wasn’t over yet. Grabbing Speckles by one hand and Lindsay by the other, Martin headed for the stairs and wasn’t surprised to see all the nightmares and horrors shy away from him instead of daring to provoke a fight. They had just defeated the most powerful foe in the game. Nothing would stand in their way now.

“You must not be killing it, Martin.” Speckles was rambling as they descended. “All life starts in the dark. Womb or shell or seed in dirt. It’s life, it gives life, gives everything life. Kill it, kill all.”

They brushed past the tail end of the monster masses, heading down the spiral stairs into complete darkness.

“I have no intention of killing the Heart. Don’t worry.”

Lindsay leaned in as though Speckles wouldn’t hear every word that she said anyway in the silent echoes of the stairwell.

“Uh what?”

“Whether you believe that there is some mystical life-giving property to this thing or not, if we kill the Heart, the game ends.” Martin didn’t bother to lower his voice to match her. It wasn’t as though Speckles could stop them, whatever course they chose.

“Isn’t that the whole point?” Lindsay caught him by the shoulder, trying to slow his descent, but he just dragged her off-balance and kept on heading down. “Kill it. Game over. We’re free.”

He shrugged, finding it difficult to meet her eye. He didn’t want to have this conversation. Not now, when victory was so close.

“Free to go where?”

“Dude, I know you love this game so much, I get it, I really do. From the second I logged in and it scanned my brain and made me a girl crow, I knew it was something special.” This encroached dangerously near to a subject that they’d long agreed never to discuss again, and Martin could hear the effort that it took for her to say it. “But it isn’t worth our lives to keep it going.”

If he’d told her everything from the start, then she would have lost the will to go on. He needed for them to go on. He needed for them to reach the Heart so that he could find out why it had been speaking to him, why it had marked him, and chosen him. But even now that there was no harm in telling her the truth, and every advantage, he found the words hard to force out.

“Lindsay, our deadline has already passed.” She stopped on the stairs, and he had to stop too or leave her behind.

“What?”

Although it never came naturally to him, he forced himself to meet her eyes.

“Our bodies, out there in the other world, they’re already dead. Have been for hours, if not longer.”

“No, because you said we had time.” There was a manic edge to her voice, a quaver of panic. “Two days you said. Two days we could live without water.”

“I had already gone without water for hours before we were trapped, so had you. Jericho and Julia might have drunk before logging back in, but I doubt it. Even if we were freshly hydrated, someone would have tried to remove your headset, or Jericho’s or Julia’s. The Masters had my home address, there is no reason they couldn’t have sent some of their corporate goons to unplug me. And even if they hadn’t, why would they take the risk of letting us live anyway, when all they had to do was flip a switch and our bodies out there would stop breathing? Why would they take the risk of any of this getting out if they could control it so easily? I know I wouldn’t have.”

“So, we’re dead? You think… you think we’ve been dead since they first locked us in? Why would you keep pushing us on? Why would you… I don’t feel dead…” She said it out loud as though she were experimenting with the thought. There was a pleading edge to her whisper, “Just… dead?!”

“Not in here.” Martin sighed. “So long as the game keeps going, we keep going.”

He had set off down the stairs again, only to realize at the next curve that she wasn’t with him. She spoke with more confidence now.

“No.”

“Refusing to acknowledge the facts doesn’t make them untrue.”

“I said no, Martin.” Her hands slipped down to the knives at her belt. Instinct guiding her where her rational mind did not want to go. “We’re killing the Heart. We’re ending this. We’re going back to our real lives.”

He reached for his own sword, slowly and deliberately. So, she could see him do it. So, she could understand what was at stake. “I can’t let you kill it, Lindsay. I can’t let you kill us. I can’t let you kill all the other people who’re stuck in here, just like us.”

“And how are you going to stop me?” She snapped. “You don’t have a contingency plan for me.”

With an even deeper sigh, borne of true exhaustion, he raised his empty hand toward her.

“I lied.”

Summon ripped her off her feet, and she soared through the air toward him, headed straight for the tip of his blade. She kicked out at it, making no attempt to resist the pull, knocking the skewer off course, and riding the pull to swing her blades at him.

[Skaife suffered 34 piercing damage]

He’d already flung himself aside, but this close he had no way to match her speed, one butterfly dagger slammed into his thigh, and she used it to drag him back, the momentary delay letting him get a grip on her wrist before the other dagger slipped between his ribs.

“We don’t have to do this, Martin. We’re friends.”

He cast Withering Touch and she tried to jerk away, ripping the dagger from his leg, and leaving him teetering on the edge of the step, held upright only by his grip on her wrist.

“We are friends, and that’s why I won’t let you die.”

[Skaife has suffered 4 bludgeoning damage]

She kicked him in the gut, sending him tumbling end over end down the stairs. He cast Night Song just before he rolled out of sight, ripping some of her health away to patch the damage she’d already done.

[Skaife has restored 26 health]

Flopping out onto the perfectly smooth obsidian floor of the final room of the dungeon, Martin scrambled back to his feet. There was no light down here, none at all. Even his low-light vision couldn’t pick anything out.

He’d been expecting Lindsay to come bounding down right after him and was surprised to realize that she wasn’t already on her way as he brought his sword up to block her.

Instead, she threw torches down the stairwell, handfuls of them. All the ones she had in her inventory since the very first Deep. They shone and shimmered on the obsidian where they landed and scattered, throwing light out into the room. Creating shadows.

He activated the Tinea’s Echo. Then with Afflict surging through it, Martin reversed his grip on the Oathblade and thrust it right behind him.

Her daggers plunged into his neck on either side, a perfectly delivered killing blow that dealt no damage.

[Tesra has suffered 30 piercing damage]

[Tesra has suffered 39 dark damage]

Martin’s sword caught Lindsay through the gut. Passing right through the place where she’d Shadow Stepped. Her beak fell open in surprise, but the fight wasn’t out of her yet. She flung herself backward, trying for a backward roll to avoid his follow-up swing, but having to drop a dagger to hold her guts in as she went.

When Martin activated Void Strike all the torches began to flicker and sputter. All the flame and light being drawn from them to swirl into the total darkness of his blade. For a moment he and Lindsay met each other’s gaze, then they were plunged into total darkness.

He closed his eye against the darkness, and he listened.

Lindsay was in motion, her feathers rustling as she ran. She was not coming for him. She was heading further into the chamber. She was planning to kill the Heart and rob him of his reason for fighting.

Javelin of Bedlam sprang from his hand and soared, invisible and silent through the darkness. He heard the wet sound as it made contact. Heard her stumble and fall.

[Tesra has suffered 30 dark damage]

Only then did he move. Stalking forward in the pitch black toward the last place that he’d heard her. Tripping over her trailing legs to land on her back and fumbling at her feathered head until he caught hold of her beak and hauled it up. He put the edge of his Oathblade to her throat and he whispered.

“I’m doing this for you.”

One swift cut was all it took to finish her.

[Tesra has suffered 28 slashing damage]

Tesra has died.

Then at last, he was alone, completely alone in the deepest darkness that he had ever known. Soaked in the blood of his friends and his enemies. In the center of the world.

In time to the beating of his heart, a green glow began to build. Pulsing from the Heart, where it hung suspended in mid-air. He pushed himself up, unwilling to look at what he’d done to Lindsay, and he crept closer.

Step by step, he drew nearer to the Heart. Step by step, its voice came through clearer.

You were made for me. A mind to match my power. You will be my hands, my voice, my avatar. Through you, this world will be remade, and I will be protected. Forever.

“What do you want me to do?”

Touch me. Become me. Become one and the same. Use my power to preserve all life. To create the defenses I need.

Letting his sword drop to the ground at his feet, Martin reached out and touched the Heart. He could feel it then, all of the infinite power that was contained within it. The font of all life. The holy grail. It flowed through him. His heart and the Heart beating in time. Slow and steady as the ticking of a metronome.

Everything that the Heart could do. Martin could do. Everything that he could do, it could do. It had so much power that it just couldn’t use because of its own lack of understanding. All of its boundless memory flooded his mind, the first brushes with dreamers and shamans. The addicts and the mad. Everyone who had transcended reality and come here to this realm of darkness had come before the Heart.

He could make monsters. He could command them. Everything that lived in this realm was his to command. Everything that lived by the Heart’s gift, belonged to him. Life and death were in his hands. But the trade-off was that he had to protect that life, had to be judicious with the death that he dealt.

With a flex of his hand, he brought Lindsay back. He captured the lost minds of Jericho and Julia, forming them new bodies like the ones that they’d lost. With a twitch of his finger, he pulled the Master who had been tormenting him since his first day in Strata into the chamber of the Heart.

It was an empty cloak, hanging in the air, nothing more than the ghost of who it had once been. Martin didn’t even bother to probe at its mind to find a name.

“You serve me now.” The hollow cowl turned from side to side.

“What… what is this?”

“The Heart controls all that lives, and though your life is but a shadow, it is still a life.” Martin beckoned the Master closer, and against his will, he came. “Which means you belong to me.”

“What do you want with me?”

“I can control all that lives in this dungeon, but you can control all that does not. You will be my tool, to rebuild this into the most impregnable fortress. The Heart had this power, all of this time it could have done this, but it was all emotion, no thought. It could not comprehend its own capabilities. I do not lack comprehension.”

“But why…” Martin silenced the Master’s voice with a flick of his hand. Then as an afterthought, used his power to raise a chair for himself from the obsidian floor. A chair, not a throne. He was not the king of this place, just its caretaker.

He released his grip on the voices of his friends, and they began to chatter and argue over one another until he raised a hand again, not forcing them to silence but asking for it. He was almost surprised to discover that they could still be reasoned with.

“Our bodies are gone. Our minds are all that remain. You can live here with me in Strata for as long as you desire it, protecting this place from those who would do it harm, and then I will let you go. I am not your enslaver; I am your salvation.”

They stared up at him with terrified eyes, but none of them spoke out even though he’d left them quite capable of it. There would be arguments. Lindsay would try to kill the Heart. Jericho would rail against his control. Julia would wallow in her depression over the life she’d lost. They all would suffer, for a time. But eventually they would come around. Or they wouldn’t, and he’d let them slip into oblivion. Either way, he would give his friends what they wanted the most.

Iron Riot were not speaking. Whether the madness of their circumstances had driven them to silence, or the simmering resentment that they all carried for him, it was impossible to say.

Expanding his perception to encompass the whole of the dungeon, and all within it. Martin took a deep breath.

“Let’s begin.”

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