The dwarf huffed sweat off his bearded upper lip, blinking swiftly. Perspiration beaded on his heavy, black eyebrows.

It was cold down here, and I could feel the chill against the skin of my bare torso. But I was sweating too. It was, as they say, a cold sweat. The kind of sweat you have when you might be in giant trouble. Or dwarf trouble.

A line of ice trickled down my back.

The fighter across from me shifted his grip, fingers adjusting on the thick handle of his axe. My senses were heightened, and I heard a soft droplet of something smack into the floor. Maybe sweat. Maybe spider blood pooling on the tip of my heavy spear and gently falling to the uneven stone.

In the corner of my vision, I watched the final death twitch of the spider the dwarf had just bisected. The creature looked shriveled and small with all its long, knobby limbs curled into its ruined body.

I sensed the tension ease before the dwarf stepped back, shifting his axe to his off hand.

“Elf,” he grumbled. It sounded like an insult, but maybe that was just how he talked.

“Dwarf,” I answered, lifting the point of my spear. I rested the base of the weapon on the ground.

His dark eyes narrowed. “Duergar,” he corrected. There was that word again. I’d never heard it pronounced before, but it somehow fit the ashen-skinned humanoid. It was two harsh, low syllables, like a pair of massive stones grinding together in a rockslide.

“Half,” I responded, mirroring his step back.

The duergar blinked again, then seemed to come to a decision. He straightened, and I only now recognized that he’d been in a combat crouch. “You won’t be coming after me with your spear if I put this away?” He gestured with the massive axe.

“I’d prefer not to.”

He nodded, slowly, then glanced down and slid the handle into a sheathe at his hip. Blood dripped from the pointed end of each huge, sweeping semicircle, but he seemed not to notice as the dark ichor stained his chainmail tunic and dripped from the swaying, metal hem.

He jerked his chin at me. “What’re you doing down so deep, halander?”

It took me a second to decipher his accent, and then I wondered what on earth a highlander was. I shrugged. “Wanted a change of scenery. You?”

The dwarf — I still couldn’t wrap my head around what a duergar might be, since he looked just like one of Tolkien’s dwarves — coughed huskily several times, and it took me a moment to realize he was chuckling. Then, instead of answering, he jerked his chin up above.

“And the bat? That’s with you?”

I glanced up to where Webster was flitting among the quiet, hanging corpses. In the gloom up above, I could see how the microgriffon might look like a large, fluttering bat. Instead of correcting the warrior, I nodded.

“The girl, too,” I added, suddenly remembering my stranded companion.

Ignoring the dwarf for a moment, I whistled, trying to get Webster’s attention. Hearing the sound, the creature swerved around a husk and plummeted toward us. At the last second, the microgriffon flared out its wings, catching the air and slowing with several heavy wingbeats.

“Show off,” I muttered as Webster alighted daintily on one of the crooked legs of the dead monster. The small creature chirped excitedly and puffed out its chest, sitting up like a cat as a long, tufted tail curled around its paws.

“Huh,” the dwarf grunted behind me. “Not a bat.”

“Not a bat,” I agreed. And then I fell to thinking. I clenched my jaw, tapping the butt of my spear on the floor. Clink clink clink.

The crux of the matter was the girl. I could leave her. I probably should leave her. And if I did, Survivor Colin would be satisfied, if not happy. But there was also Jondalar to consider. Hero Jondalar. The stupid fool who had tried to save her in the first place, who had dashed in to help the dwarf — duergar — even after dealing with his own, immediate, arachnid threat.

I scowled. And if I left her… why did I have a sneaking suspicion that Webster would be disappointed in me, too? I narrowed my eyes and gave the microgriffon a suspicious look.

It stared back, blinking innocently several times. It was a staring contest I couldn’t win, because deep down I already knew what I was going to do. I’d made my decision already, in the heat of combat. The time to run away had passed.

I turned back to the warrior. “I’m going to need your help,” I demanded.

The duergar’s heavy brows came together. Fingers with geometric knuckle tattoos scratched at his bushy cheek. “What with?”

I jerked my head upwards. “Getting Sleeping Beauty down without a ladder.”

The warrior grimaced, glanced around with his mouth in a grim line, then nodded.

I’m sure he was wondering who the hell Sleeping Beauty might be.

* * *

The operation was a delicate, but I was glad for the duergar’s impressive physique. If I failed, I wanted to make sure I had backup. The fact that the stocky warrior was a head and a half shorter than me was actually perfect.

Webster had seemed enthused about the idea. At least, as far as I could tell. Who knew what was really going on in the mind of a cleaner bot who had just been transported through time, space and plausibility to inhabit the body of a foot-and-a-half-long miniature bird-lion? Maybe behind those wide, innocent eyes were the dark thoughts of a future serial murderer. Maybe he still hadn’t forgiven me for forcing us to leave my kitchen floor covered in crumbs.

But, nonetheless, after I explained my plan the microgriffon had chirped helpfully and flapped up into the still shadows above. He dove between several hanging corpses and alighted with surprising grace on the shoulders of the now-stirring woman. I heard her gentle sighs of breath and soft, drugged murmurs drifting down through the intervening space.

I’d gendered Webster as a male for my own mental clarity — sidestepping the question of where robots fell on the new age gender spectrum — and I wondered if my little friend did a quick cleavage check down the front of her cocoon before he went to work. I’ll bet he did, the lecherous little bot. But he soldiered on, despite the tantalizing distraction, sharp beak snip-clicking away at the single strand that disappeared into the heavy shadows above where even my strange, monochromatic night vision couldn’t pierce.

Now that I was on the floor level looking up, I could see that the natural cavern was larger than it might have seemed. It was effectively circular, as I’d noticed, with rough walls that seemed to climb straight up as far as I could see. Layer after layer of cocoons and corpses hung like sinister, one-string puppets. They canted forward just forward enough that it was as if they were all leaning in, waiting. Watching.

I swallowed and ignored the prickling down my spine. What could possibly be watching? I wanted to ask. It’s not like there are more of these fucking spiders. Right…? Do spiders live in packs in this godforsaken place?

My eyes slid sideways at the duergar, who was watching Webster with a look of tense concentration on his face. “There aren’t…” His eyes glittered darkly as he glanced over, and I hesitated for a moment. But my desire for knowledge was stronger than my desire to remain aloof and enigmatic. “There aren’t any more of those things, right?”

I jerked my chin toward the crumpled bodies of the hairy, blood-soaked monsters.

That low, grunting chuckle again. “You are being serious?”

I swallowed, then cleared my throat. “I suppose I was just hoping…” I trailed off and glanced back up.

The chuckle went dry. “Aye, elf. Don’t we all. But hoping might be a wise hobby to lay aside. There are more of her brood at every turn, down here in the deep tunnels.”

Of course he’d say something like that. Isn’t that just like a dwarf? Always raining on my parade. I wanted to scowl, even though I knew my thoughts and hopes were absurd, but instead I sniffed several times and shook my head. What did you expect from this place? I asked myself harshly. A sunshiny rainbow kingdom full of… waifus and Mountain Dew? A neckbeard paradise?

Waifu was a term that Kyle had introduced me to. Neckbeard, too. That was a strange one. I scowled, ignored the tugging guilt in my gut, grunted in response to the dwarf. Duergar. Then, I sucked in a breath as, with a squawk, Webster finished his task.

There was an audible sssnap as the silken strand stretched and then broke. And then the woman plummeted.

Too late, I hoped that I was strong enough to catch her.

White cord trailing like a mummy’s parachute, the dark-skinned maiden fell directly toward me. I held out my arms in a vague basket shape, like I was going to carry a wife across a threshold. A wife… Another stab of pain in my gut. Another thought shunted aside before it could take root.

The woman slammed into me like a sack of falling bricks. I grunted, stumbled, smashed down on one knee and grunted out a curse. But Strength 17 was apparently a worthwhile investment. My arms bunched, elbows and wrists straining, and then the worst of it was over.

I lowered the woman to the ground, trying to find a patch of stone that was mostly not pooling with blood.

Note to self: find a way to kill evil fucking death spiders with less gore? I contemplated the note, then crumpled it up and tossed it away. Nah.

I tried to lower the semiconscious woman without groping her. But if my hand strayed across one round, taut hemisphere of her ass as I gently set her down, was that really my fault?

Of course not. Besides, I was a hero. I felt like that gave me a little bit of leeway.

I swallowed down the second hiss of pain that tried to bubble up from my bruised knees as I shifted my weight and slipped my hands out from beneath her body. I contemplated the woman for a few seconds, running my eyes down her body. I was checking the spider silk cocoon and definitely not checking her out.

I glanced over at the duergar, who had helpfully stayed stock still and watched impassively. I’d hoped he’d be there to help in case the woman was too heavy or I missed my catch. Guess not. “You have a knife?” I asked. My spear lay on the ground next to me, but I didn’t feel particularly comfortable using such a big, unwieldy weapon for a delicate task.

The stocky fighter grunted, then reached under his cloak. There was a gentle shiing and a long, glittering blade appeared in his thick-fingered fist. Instead of offering it to me, he stumped forward and knelt on her other side.

“We need to cut away the cocoon,” I said.

The duergar nodded, not looking up at me.

I leaned in, brushing dark hair back from the woman’s face. She looked surprisingly peaceful, her slim features only slightly troubled as her eyes flicked back and forth rapidly behind closed lids. Even in sleep, the woman was pretty as hell. I could tell she had large eyes, and I was getting more and more into the whole pointed-ears thing. Even the short, sharp-looking lower canines that I could see poking against her upper lip were kind of cute. She looked younger than I’d expected, but what did I know about strange fantasy women?

I wondered why the spider’s poison was affecting her so much more powerfully than it had me. Did I have some sort of natural resistance? Was it a bodyweight-ratio thing? Did it have something to do with… my mind spun back through the dozens of impressions that jostled for space in my short-term memory… that health regeneration boost I’d been granted by a literal god?

I was so wrapped up in my thoughts that it was only by instinct I moved in time.

The duergar grunted in shock as I uncovered the woman’s face, and his short, brawny arm shot forward almost at the same moment. The long knife was bare inches from punching up through her ribs when my hand shot out across her body.

The blade halted, quivering, as my fingers wrapped around the duergar’s thick wrist and my face twisted in shock and horror. Maybe I’m callous. And maybe I would have left her for dead. But I’m not about to murder some defenseless girl.

I opened my mouth to protest but the warrior spoke first. His dark eyes blazed. “Orc,” he hissed.

The word struck me hard and something in the back of my mind stirred. An instinct, one that I knew I hadn’t had back on Earth. Back when I was 100% human. It was an instinctive, almost irresistible urge to release the hunched, muscular warrior’s hand. To let him finish off the girl. The orc.

I resisted it, scowling at the duergar and at myself. “No!” I barked, my voice cutting and hard. Like when I’d had to scold Cleo for peeing in the house. My arm shook with the effort of holding back his straining muscles. I briefly wondered what his Strength score was. Did he have one? But I clung to his wrist, grunting, our bodies straining across the still form of the comatose girl.

The fighter bared his teeth and wrenched his arm back, suddenly, pulling away. But instead of trying to stab the young woman again he frowned at me, panting. He had a thick black beard, short and tangled, and he chewed it before he finally spoke. “You’re no ordinary elf, elf.”

I scowled. “No,” I grimaced. Maybe because I’m a half-elf. “I’m stuck halfway down to hell, with no one but a happy-go-lucky minigriffon, a half-dead fantasy supermodel and an albino dwarf who wants to kill one of my only potential allies. I’m sick and tired of this shit, but the least I can do is not stand by and let you murder an innocent girl who I only just saved from getting fucking raped.”

My bare chest was heaving, my muscles twitching and ready for any sudden movements.

The duergar looked at me, scowled, spat to one side. “You speak not like any elf of whom I’ve ever heard. Nor like any speaking creature, above or below the stone.”

I didn’t answer. So I guess I talk like an Earthling.

His big, broad nose twitched, and his eyes suddenly widened. His gravelly voice was stunned. “You’re one of them.”

I blinked, tensing. That didn’t sound good. “No I’m not!” I protested, voice heated. Without looking, I subtly inched my hand toward my spear. Just in case… I immediately ruined my denial by following it up with, “One of who?”

The pale face twisted into an expression I couldn’t place. There was a brief gleam, a flash of concern, a contemplative pause and then a clear, hushed friendliness that was surprisingly out of character. “One of the Undying.”

I blinked. Undying? What the hell was he talking about?

I was too surprised to stop the pseudo-dwarf as he moved again, but the duergar was suddenly harried, blade flashing in his hand as he deftly sliced through the cocoon. Now, apparently, he was more preoccupied with me than with his brief flash of murderous racism.

I wondered if that was a good thing.

He raised his head from the task, dark orbs deep and flat and unreadable. “We must get you to my home,” the thickset warrior said. “And then…” he seemed to hesitate. He tasted his beard again, his tongue darting out to wet his lips. He stared at me intently. “I believe they call it… leveling up?”