Rita was floating. In and out of vague wispy blue clouds, slowly drifting all around her. It felt like she was lost in the world just before waking on a lazy Sunday morning, consciousness flickering in and out of slumber, thoughts drifting in the non-sensical manner of the dozing mind.

Something was dragging her out of her peaceful rest, however. Something bothering her. She had been busy with something. Something important. Something… what was it again? She felt warm and safe and comfortable, yet it kept nagging at her. Like she’d forgotten to put the oven off or let her cat out. The more she thought about it, the more she rose out of her dreamlike state. She’d been traveling… she’d met new people… she’d been scared…

Then suddenly it all came back to her! The broken city… Gora and the others… all the horrors she had seen…

She jerked awake as if from a nightmare, gasping and looking around in panic. She was still floating among blue clouds with no solid ground anywhere in sight. But more alarmingly, her own body seemed shockingly incomplete!

She seemed to consist of nothing but a torso and the start of a spider thorax sticking out below. No arms, no legs, and no abdomen. It felt strange, but there was no pain. Even as she watched, her thorax and arms started to reappear, bit by bit, as if she were disintegrating in reverse.

Rita stared as her body reformed bones, sinew and skin, seemingly from nothing, her horror replaced by fascination. This was not the nauseating visage of wounds rent in flesh, but the strangely soothing vision of biology as it was intended to work, being rolled out bit by bit. She actually giggled as she held her partially built-up hand in front of her face, watching the bones and tendons form, wiggling her half-formed fingers to the feeling of pins and needles as the nerves connected.

Something about the experience just felt refreshing. Wholesome. As if the experience of being rebuilt was a kind of renewal. Even Alice was quiet. Finally, her feet formed, and with a soft click she found herself standing on solid ground that had not been there moments before.

A soft puff of air emanating outward from herself sent the blue fog spiralling away, and she found herself standing in front of a large circus tent. It had alternating red and yellow stripes, faded until they were almost indistinguishable in the source-less, dim light that illuminated her little ‘clearing’ in the fog. A yawning, dark entrance led into the even more dimly lit interior. Pieces of the canvas surrounding it had ripped and hung down in jagged strips that made it look like a gaping mouth with teeth.

A shiver of dread went through her, quickly evicting the momentary happiness and awe she had been feeling moments earlier. She did not like circuses. Not at all.

There was a soft click from next to her, and when she turned to look, another half-human, half-spider creature like her was standing there, eyes closed.

Rita gave a shriek of fright, leaping away from the new arrival and crashing into the blue fog. It had the consistency of a pillow and cushioned the impact without letting her pass.

When the creature spun around to face her, clearly startled by the sudden noise, she realized it did not just look similar to her, it looked exactly identical to her! The same sock-covered legs, the same disgustingly filthy sweater and even the same face. When it spoke, it even had her voice!

“Rita?”

Rita blinked. “Alice?”

Ava’s eyes fluttered open. She was standing at one end of a large, circular garden, green and vibrant with life. There was lush grass underneath her feet and all sorts of flowering bushes and shrubs scattered about in neat, carefully tended beds. At the edges of the garden were tall hedgerows, taller than her, completely enclosing it on all sides.

Ugh, she hated nature.

On the opposite end of the garden was a large mound of brown dirt heaped up against the hedgerow until it nearly reached the top. It looked decidedly out of place, the only patch of brown visible in an otherwise sea of green and flower-colours. That had to either be the guardian or her way out after beating it.

From her robe, she fished out a bottle of Quietus Essence with one hand and the Storage Sphere she used to store her Anima in with the other and it was not long before her small army began to take shape around her. At least, what remained of it.

Eight Masked, armed with an assortment of crude weapons, a single reanimated Droopy, the badger that she had done her best to patch up and a few more assorted monsters that she had picked up in the Wilderness Zone in various states of damage. That was what she had to work with.

It irritated her that she had had so little opportunity to supplement her forces, but most of their recent kills had either been so thoroughly destroyed that there had been nothing functional left to bring back or the group had been in too much of a hurry for her to spend the time to perform the necessary rituals. Even the Droopy had been a quick and sloppy job, and it showed in the way it jerked and twitched.

She took a deep breath, gathering her focus, and took a step forward. This was what she had. No sense complaining about what could have been.

Guided by her will, the various Anima spread out ahead of her, carefully poking through each bush.

According to what Gora had said, she would need to find and kill some sort of ‘Guardian’ that was tailored to her. She strongly suspected it had something to do with the mound of dirt at the far end of the garden, but she did not want to simply assume. She already had to fight one plant monster today and the last thing she had in mind was to stumble blindly into another.

When she was about a third of the way across the garden, the mound at the other end began to shudder, dirt rolling off it in waves.

As the dirt flowed like water, it revealed some kind of giant root vegetable, the size of human. At least, the bit that stuck out from the ground appeared to be human-sized. It was brown, lumpy and still half-buried like a misshapen potato. It was covered in tiny, malefic eyes and down its side facing her, a long, vertical gash opened to reveal a gaping maw filled with rows and rows of razor-sharp teeth.

This was supposed to be her guardian? A giant vegetable? Ava didn’t know whether to feel lucky or insulted.

As she tried to send her army forward, however, she realized several of them had been entangled. Fine, white roots had come out of the ground and begun wrapping around their legs, feet or whatever equivalent they had.

She jumped to the side, out of reach of another of the white roots that had tried to loop itself around her legs and mentally commanded her trapped forces to start freeing themselves, either by cutting at the roots or by the simple expedient of ripping it out of the ground. The individual roots were not that strong and could be torn loose with a solid pull, but whenever something became ensnared, more and more of the roots grew out and around it, binding it tightly.

Her death bolts splashed against the earthy hide of the creature but seemed to have little effect. Ava swore. Something about it repelled death magic, or possibly absorbed it and spread it throughout its entire form. Either would prevent the concentrated necrotic power necessary to cause real damage.

More white roots around her feet forced Ava to keep moving, but all around her the damned things began breaking through the grass.

It was not long before the inevitable happened. Ava leapt over one patch of entangling roots only to get her foot hooked on another as she landed. She stumbled to her knees, and before she could get up, felt another root tighten around her thighs.

She promptly freaked out.

Gora opened her eyes and saw pretty much what she expected to see.

She was standing in a dark tunnel, in front of a closed portcullis. Beyond it stretched a brightly lit, oval arena, with sand on the ground and empty stands along the sides from where a non-existent audience could watch bouts of battles to the death.

Behind her, the tunnel stretched into darkness that she knew would turn thick and impassable only a few metres in. Instead, when the portcullis began to slowly crank upwards, she slipped under it and stepped onto the sand of the arena, swinging her sword around to limber up.

In the centre of the arena, extended above the sand by a few centimetres, was a smooth stone platform. On it, Gora could just barely make out a symbol etched into the stone, composed out of many interlocking circles. The traditional demon summoning symbol.

As she watched, the symbol flared to life and with a plume of fire, seemed to fall away, revealing a glowing, burning hole in the world.

It was exactly the same as the last two times she had gone through here. She would wake up in the tunnel of the arena, and then when she stepped inside, the summoning circle would erupt and a large, flaming, massively muscled dog would climb out through the hole to face her.

Demon summoning did not technically create an actual open portal, but she could appreciate the Tree’s sense of the dramatic.

“Alright, you overgrown pup. Let’s see what you got this time” she said as something moved inside the hole.

The lesson she had had to learn when fighting it the first time, several years ago, had been that she could not always rely on being stronger than her opponent. She had still been relatively new to the Delver Guild at the time and had had a rather large chip on her shoulder. Her approach to any problem had been to fight, and her approach to any fight had been overwhelming strength. It had worked quite well for her. Due to her heritage, she had pretty much always had a significant edge in physical power. It had been the era in her life that she had earned her ‘Destroyer’ nickname.

That had all changed when the demon dog had crawled out of the hole.

It turned out be a match for her both in sheer power as well as demonic regeneration. What she had intended to be a quick takedown turned into hours of grinding combat, requiring every ounce of her strength just to prevent the dog from tearing her to pieces and for the first time pushing her endurance to the limit.

She had come out of the fight a changed woman, humbled by the ordeal.

When the exact same thing occurred about a year later when she passed through again, she smacked the dog down like the bitch it was. Unfortunately, you could only earn the reward once, so it had been for nought, but she confirmed what some of the other senior Delvers had told her: that the Tree’s challenge never changed, even when you went through it again.

This time she would play with the doggy a bit to kill time, just to ensure that all the monsters outside had enough time to grow bored and wander off.

Then a large, red, clawed hand gripped the edge of the hole and something completely unexpected hoisted itself up and out of the hole.

It was a massive, red-skinned demon, towering even over Gora, with long, curved black horns ending in razor sharp tips. It appeared to be dressed in fine furs that left most of its incredibly muscled torso and arms exposed. In his one hand he carried a gigantic, jagged sword.

“Did you just call me a pup? How disrespectful, Gora.” His voice was deep and sonorous but contained an undercurrent of restrained violence.

Gora gaped, completely taken aback by the sudden and unexpected change in opponent. “How… how do you know my name?” Gora asked, gripping her sword tightly.

The demon rested the tip of his gigantic sword in the sand and chuckled in a deep, rumbling sound, before grinning at Gora. “Take a guess.”

Gora looked more carefully at his brutish face, flattened nose and blackened horns. He looked familiar, but she could not quite place him.

Then she noticed the eye set into the cross guard of his sword. Not a painted-on eye, or a set gem that looked like an eye, but an actual, red-veined eye that twitched and glared at her. The entire blade emanated an aura of menace, but from the eye itself she could feel actual hatred.

Her eyes widened as recognition finally dawned. Her mother had told stories of that sword.

“You… it can’t be…” Gora choked out, her voice faint.

“Oh indeed it can,” he said, grinning even wider and showing a mouth full of sharp, triangular teeth like a shark. Then the large demon threw his arms wide. His sword remained standing on its tip.

“Come give your old man a hug!” he exclaimed.