Kat backpedaled, a whirlwind of spinning blades glittering in the air in front of her as the Flesh Crawler advanced on her, thrusting what resembled a garbage disposal on the end of a metal rod at her. Two of its multi-jointed piercing arms spread themselves past her, ready to attack Kat’s flanks on a moment’s notice.

With a grunt, she flung a throwing dagger into the Crawler, casting Overpressure a moment after it hit. Thick black blood popped the knife out of its wound like a cork from a champagne bottle before the ichor began to slick the brass floor.

One spike arm darted toward her head while the other tried to whip across her torso. She leapt into the air, gripping onto the higher of the two limbs and letting it pull her back toward the monster as it jerked the metallic extremity away.

Her knife glowed red as she shoved it into the segmented weapon’s joint, Penetrate letting the weapon ignore the Crawler’s metal plates. Something gave way under her dagger’s point, and the piercing limb fell slack as she severed whatever passed for the Flesh Crawler’s nerves.

It screeched in rage as she dropped to the ground, slipping past the cyclone of blades that this Flesh Crawler used as its main weapon in lieu of a chain claw, and hopped onto the bulbous mound of flesh that was its torso.

Her dagger rose and fell, slashing deep into wobbling chunks of meat as the creature’s circular mouth gnashed its rows of jagged teeth ineffectually at her. Blood spattered onto Kat’s face and armor as she sought to carve her way toward the vulnerable organs beneath the creature’s pallid flesh.

A spike arm blurred toward her, forcing Kat to dodge as best she could from her tenuous perch. She managed to avoid the point of the crawler’s weapon, but its haft struck her ribs, ripping her from its back and sending her flying across the boss chamber.

She jumped to her feet gingerly. Her armor had disbursed most of the blow’s force, but Kat could already feel a bruise forming. She lifted her right arm and rotated it in a wide arc to test it. No breaks. Fast Healing should be able to handle the damage.

Across the room, Dorrik fended off another Flesh Crawler while Kaleek made his way through a crowd of Shrieking Fiends toward the acid lake that housed the Brood Mother. Dorrik had given him an oil that should let him brave its caustic waters long enough to slay the pulsing monstrosity that kept birthing new foes for them to fight.

Her foe waddled toward her, taking short steps on its thick legs as blood leaked from its multiple wounds. Unfortunately, her knife was still stuck in its back from when it had thrown her across the room.

She bit her lip. Kat had wanted to save her mana just in case, but its injuries were slowing it enough for Gravity Spike to be effective.

A throwing knife streaked across the gap between them, burying itself in one of the creature’s thick legs. Kat began gathering mana as she moved closer, another dagger leaving her hand as she sought to distract it.

One of the Crawler’s arms flashed across its body, slapping the knife out of the air in a shower of sparks. It screeched its rage at her, disabled limb flopping wildly as it brandished it in her direction.

Kat released her spell, targeting the center of the Flesh Crawler’s body. Gravity twisted, tearing its spongy flesh and crushing internal organs. Even if her more recent skill advances in Gravity I hadn’t granted her a new spell, the increase in her magic’s efficiency was more than welcome.

It vomited up thick black blood, stumbling as her spell ravaged its massive body. Before it could follow, Kat followed up with Overpressure. A thousand minor internal wounds split open, turning its gullet into an ocean of ichor as its essence flooded outward.

The Crawler stumbled, wobbling tenuously on its legs for a second. Then, its metal arms dropped to the ground, limb and inert. Kat wasn’t sure whether she’d killed the monster, or simply knocked it out with extreme blood loss, but either way, she was needed elsewhere.

“Kaleek!” She shouted, running up to the mound of blood, metal and meat, “I’m casting Levitation on you. Jump over the small fry and I’ll deal with them. You need to get rid of the Brood Mother before we get overwhelmed!”

She ripped her knife from its body and jumped down onto the dungeon floor, gathering her mana as she focused on the otter. Kaleek was making progress through the horde of metal augmented apes through sheer strength and force of will. Periodically, his body flashing red as he spent stamina to activate the skills he needed to push the creature’s aside.

“But I was just starting to have fun!” He yelled back, his sword slashing through a Fiend’s collar bone and severing a crude cybernetic arm. “I’ve had a stressful week, and this is far cheaper than therapy.”

Another half dozen of the apes scrambled out of the acidic lake, red eyes glowing in the dark room. They hooted angrily before putting their knuckles to the ground and charged doward Kaleek.

“I can come up with some Freudian excuse for why killing a giant womb is an important part of your healing journey later,” Kat responded irritably, unleashing her spell on the grinning otter. “For now, jump in the fucking lake and kill that thing!”

Kaleek tossed her a saucy wink before leaping into the air, his double digit strength combining with her spell to send him sailing over the crowd of foes. Levitation didn’t let someone fly, but at its maximum level it all but negated the pull of gravity on its target.

The otter performed an agile flip in the air as he cleared the edge of the lake. Kat rolled her eyes, cutting the mana feed to her spell and letting him dive into the caustic brine with the grace of an olympian.

Then she reached the edge of the Shrieking Fiend swarm and didn’t have time for other concerns. Dehydrate at head level blinded one foe as she ducked under a punch from another’s metal arm.

Reaching up she grabbed her opponent’s limb and pulled them to her, stabbing upward into the ape’s armpit. Her knife flashed red at the last second, and Crippling Blow made up for her lack of knowledge about alien anatomy.

She spun around the monster, wrenching her dagger out of its flesh and severing an artery even as one of its companions swung at her.

The metal fist whistled past Kat’s face, forcing her back a handful of steps even as another three of the creatures tried to surround her. She gathered her mana, dodging a pair of half-hearted jabs before unleashing Gravity’s Grasp.

Almost immediately, Kat and the fiends surrounding her stumbled as their weight quadrupled. The monsters hooted and grunted in confusion, giving her the precious seconds she needed to counteract the spell with Levitation.

The spells didn’t completely cancel each other out, she was still a bit heavier than normal. Where Kat was a big sluggish, the apes, unaffected by Levitation, were all but immobile.

She sprang into action, knife flashing as it found necks and eyes, ending a half dozen of the creatures in as many seconds. One, outside the range of her gravity field, managed to fire some sort of metal spear built into its arm at her, but as soon as it entered the range of Kat’s spell, it arced downward sharply and clattered onto the floor.

Before long she was surrounded. Fiend’s circling around the edge of her magic’s area of effect but unwilling to step over the bodies of her comrades to challenge Kat directly.

Internally, she cursed at herself for not picking up any of her throwing knives from the Flesh Crawler’s corpse. Kat could only keep two first tier spells active at the same time, so without the weapons she was helpless at range unless she wanted to strip herself of the gravity magic that was preventing her from being mobbed and overwhelmed by the swarm of monsters.

Still, as much as she needed to buy a crossbow to compliment the skillstone she’d acquired on the fifth floor, a standoff was actually one of her better options. Her goal wasn’t to actually defeat the almost endless horde of Shrieking Fiends, but to hold them off long enough for Kaleek to kill the Brood Mother while Dorrik finished off their larger foe.

She shifted her knife from one hand to another, eyeing up the mob of metal limbed apes. In the distance, Dorrik used their new iron tier psi ability, Telekinetic Field to redirect a Flesh Crawler’s piercing arm into the ground before scissoring both of their swords through a joint in the steel extremity.

Their blades crackled angrily as enchantments activated, and the severed iron spearhead thumped to the floor, leaking ichor. Dorrik stepped past it, swords flashing as the Crawler fired a hail of needles from its main ‘arm,’ a circular metal grate that had been grafted into the center of its torso.

Between Telekinetic Field directing the projectiles away, and Dorrik’s blindingly fast parries, only two of the metal bolts actually struck Kat’s friend. Neither of them did much more than stagger the lokkel and scratch the paint on their heavy armor.

Then, they made it into melee range, slashing huge gashes into the lumpy torso of the Flesh Crawler before darting back to avoid one of the irate monster’s multi-jointed limbs. They moved like a matador, striking and baiting the creature into overextending itself only to dodge and attack again.

One or two of the Shrieking Fiends surrounding Kat whined and glanced worriedly at Dorrik’s progress, but all it took was for her to lunge toward the edges of her defensive spells, knife in hand, to regain their attention.

Just as Dorrik finished their foe, sliding on their scaly back under its torso by using Telekinetic Field to push off of the dungeon’s brass floor, and stabbing upward into its unprotected underbelly, Kaleek emerged from the lake of acid.

Despite the caustic liquid covering him, the otter looked immensely pleased with himself as he wiped the remaining blood from the Brood Mother off on a nearby dead Fiend. He grinned cheerfully at Kat, and she nodded back, switching off their spells.

Together, the two of them, joined a moment later by Dorrik, tore into the remaining apes. Where Kat had struggled to slowly whittle down their numbers, the three of them combined were a force of nature, slaughtering their way through the horde.

Barely five minutes later, Kat stood beside a pile of cooling bodies, heaving for breath as she tried to restore the stamina expended in the fight.

“See,” Kaleek called out cheerfully between deep, panting inhalations. “Iron dungeons are a lot more fun than wood. Plenty of things to kill and complicated environments to do it in. Just enough challenge to keep us on our toes without the annoying level of difficulty you run into with silver tier dungeons.”

“I suppose that’s one way of putting it,” Kat responded, making her way back toward the first Flesh Crawler to retrieve her throwing knives. “Except we were fully prepared for this one. I can’t help but remember us struggling with even wood tier dungeons that we weren’t ready for. Here, Dorrik knew how best to avoid those lightning spheres, and they had that oil of acid resistance on hand. I honestly don’t know what we would have done without it.”

“We would have managed.” Dorrik interjected solemnly. “Likely with hit and run attacks letting Miss Kat’s mana recover before having her blanket the depths of the lake with ranged spells.”

“But that would give the Brood Mother time to fill the chamber with monsters.” Kat frowned. “Plus, even with the way my mana reserves have been growing, Gravity Spike still takes a lot out of me. That probably would have taken three trips with ten to fifteen minute breaks in between.”

“Indeed.” The lokkel nodded. “I doubt Kaleek would be quite so chipper if we had to fight the Brood Mother in such a fashion. We would have prevailed, but it would have been truly miserable.”

“Maybe,” Kaleek shrugged cheerfully, “and maybe not. Either way, let’s clear the dungeon altar and get back to the village. We finished a bit early so there’s still time for a drink or two before we have to wake up.”

The desoph led the way through the brown, metallic room. Past the lake of acid and out onto a narrow pier that ended in a simple, waist high stone structure. Kaleek touched the altar’s flat top, disappearing in a rainbow soap bubble of energy as The Tower of Somnus whisked him back out onto the sixth floor.

Kat’s turn came next, the smooth stone surface of the altar tingling under her hand for a fraction of a second before she teleported.

Congratulations Adventurer!

You have completed the Iron Tier Level Six Dungeon, Tunnels of Lightning and Brass.

Three of Three party members surviving. Good Job!

Assigning awards:

Skill Stone (Gravity II)

Subscription Stone

She felt the comforting weight of the two stones appear in her hands as Kat blinked against the thick mists of the sixth floor. In the distance, an eerie keening note caused the hair on the back of her neck to stand on end.

Kat squinted, unable to make out anything more than a handful of feet in front of her. Literally anything from another traveller to a predator could be a dozen paces away and she wouldn’t even know.

Something large, and much closer howled back, a rumbling sound of territorial aggression. She drew her knife warily.

A paw clapped down onto her shoulder, causing Kat to almost jump out of her skin. Kaleek leaned in, whispering into her ear.

“So, did you get anything good?”

Silently she opened her hands, showing both of the awards to the curious otter. He let out a low whistle as, behind them, Dorrik popped into being.

“Nice.” Kaleek punched her in the shoulder playfully. “A second tier skill stone on your first delve is good luck no matter how you look at it. Absorb both of those so that we can head out. We might need to climb deep into the mists to reach the iron dungeons, but that doesn’t mean we actually want to fight anything that lives down here. The sooner we can get back to the mountaintop the better.”

Kat nodded, closing her eyes and willing herself to bond with the rocks in her hand. Warmth flowed through her body as the Gravity stone confirmed that she had reached her maximum skill level in Gravity I. Another screen popped into existence in front of her.

You have reached Level 1 in the skill Gravity II, please select a second or first tier spell.

First Tier

Gravity Spike

Levitation

Gravity’s Grasp

Repulsion

Increase Density

Decrease Density

Second Tier

Shear

Flight

Crushing Fist

Gravity Pulse

Reverse

Gravity Plane

She minimized the menu, and they started climbing up the mountain, Kaleek leading the way. Occasionally, he would stop them, sniffing the air for the spoor of the monsters that dwelt in the deep valleys where the floor’s dungeons were located. Four times, he motioned the three of them into hiding, frantically concealing them from some unknown threat.

Only one of those times did Kat get any inkling as to what Kaleek had noticed, but it was enough for her blood to run cold. An elephantine shape plodded through the mist, a quartet of tentacles writhing as they swept through the air.

She shivered, but that slight movement was enough for the creature to stop. Suddenly all four of its tentacles snapped away from what they had been doing and darted toward her. Kat froze, eyes wide and fixed on the tendrils sweeping through the fog in her general direction, questing for the interloper that disturbed the heavy mist.

After almost ten minutes of Kat clinging tightly to the rocky outcropping that concealed her from the monster, it gave up, walking away with heavy steps. She suppressed her desire to let out a sigh of relief, sure that any movement would bring back… whatever that was.

Finally, almost two and a half hours later, the three of them climbed above the mist line. Their starting village loomed nearby, carved out of the mountainside a mere thousand paces from the predator infested fog.

Now, Kat let herself sigh in relief.

If her team had been willing to settle for wood tier dungeons, they could have been in and out in under two hours. Most of the easier dungeons were within a twenty minute walk of the sixth floor’s mountaintop villages. Even the predators on those levels were little more than an inconvenience, best avoided but easily slain.

“You did well Miss Kat,” Dorrik smiled at her reassuringly. “Baelzar Fog Hunters are hardly to be trifled with. We were unlucky to have one pass that closely to us and your poise when it noticed you was admirable.”

“Thanks.” She smiled back. “Actually, before we head into town, I got a Gravity II skillstone and I haven’t picked out a spell yet. I was wondering if-”

“ A lucky find.” The big lizard’s expression brightened. “Although iron dungeons can drop tier two skills, it is far from common.”

“Sounds like a lecture is about to start,” Kaleek said with a chuckle. “Anyway, I’m heading in to find a bar. You can track me down after you’re done talking with the professor here.”

“As I was saying,” Dorrik continued, not letting the desoph’s backtrack distract them. “Shear is a combat spell, a quicker to cast and more focused version of your current Gravity Spike. It will only hit one target, but it will hit them faster, harder, and for less mana.”

“Flight.” Dorrik tapped themselves on the chin with a claw, a contemplative look on their muzzle. “Flight is similar in that it is the natural evolution of Levitation. The user can lower the pull of gravity on themselves and selectively control its pull such that they can control themselves in the air, albeit at slow speeds.”

“Crushing Fist generates a cage of gravity around a tarket, immobilizing weaker foes,” the lizard’s voice took on a lecturing tone. “Gravity Pulse fires a wave of energy at a target, flinging them away from you with enough force to deal damage. Reverse doesn’t eliminate gravity, but it does change it in a small area, allowing you to walk on the ceiling or toss an enemy into the air and drop them.”

“Finally,” Dorrik nodded to her, “there is Gravity Plane. The name is a bit of a misnomer as it actually creates a pyramid made out of four triangles of mana. Each triangle creates a gravitational pull away from you, deflecting enemy attacks. At lower skill levels it is helpful, but for those that manage to max out Gravity II, well, it won’t stop bullets, but curving most of them around you is almost as good.”

Kat smiled at the big lokkel, taking their intensity for what it was. Care and concern.

“It sounds like you’re a bit biased toward Gravity Plane,” she chuckled.

“Of course Miss Kat.” Dorrik’s crest ruffled sadly. “You always insist on throwing yourself into dangerous situations. One of these days you simply won’t be able to move fast enough to save yourself from a bullet or a blade. As useful as another offensive tool might be, I would prefer that you survive whatever your next risky scheme might be.”

“Sold,” Kat replied, opening the minimized menu and pushing her finger through one of the options. “Gravity Plane it is.”

“Splendid!” Dorrik broke into a wide toothy smile. “But before we go and pull Kaleek out of whatever den of inequity he has no doubt found in the last ten or so minutes, I have one more thing I wish to discuss.”

“Oh?” Kat asked, raising an eyebrow.

“As I have made you aware, I am currently on a lokkel vessel in orbit?” Dorrik began uncertainly. “I am currently still handcuffed by Consensus law, but at the very minimum we can prevent the stallesp from returning and flouting that law once more.

Kat nodded her understanding, motioning for them to continue.

“I hesitate to ask, but.” They closed their eyes, obviously trying to gather their courage.

A million possible scenarios played themselves out in her head, from out of control swarms of nanobots to a request that she leave the adventuring team. Kat bit her lower lip, steeling herself for the worst.

“I do not understand the Vex Valance arc in Chrome Cowboys,” they begged, desperation in their eyes. “I have been trying to understand more of your culture by consuming your popular media, but Vex Valance’s deeper meaning eludes me. Then when I try to read message boards to understand more, it is simply groups of fans trying to ‘ship’ ‘Sexy Vexy’ with other characters.”

“It does not make sense Miss Kat,” Dorrik rambled. “Vex is not a naval vessel. How can he be a ship?”