It felt scary-strange to be out in the rain. The edge of the forest was close now, though the shelter-promising mass of trees didn’t look as imposing beneath the gray clouds as they had been under the bright sun. Devi pulled her cloak tighter around herself, trampling over muddy ground as she followed her teammates. So wet and cold! Devi adjusted her hood for the umpteenth time, the fabric not quite large enough to cover her head the proper-way. It was clearly designed for small-and-round Human ears instead of her pointed ones, and so the rough fabric irritated the tips of her ears.

Devi shivered, watching droplets of cold rainwater drip from her horns sullenly.

“It’s nice to have some rain finally,” Heda said, slowing down so that she was walking beside Devi. “The weather is usually very dry and hot in this time of the year.”

“I don’t like the rain,” Devi said. “It’s very cold.”

“Really?” the tall woman asked, surprised-sounding. “I don’t think it’s too bad. Do you have warmer rains in your world?”

“We do,” Devi said. “In Ylvasil we don’t go out in the rain. It burns our skin.”

“Wow,” Heda said. “It rains boiling water?”

“No,” Devi said, shaking her head. What was that word called again? “Acid. It’s acid in the rainwater.”

That has been a fun word to learn with Randel. For a moment Devi’s lips curled upwards, but her smile faded quickly as she remembered a more recent memory. Creator, why? Why did that Human man make her feel all these conflicting emotions? It had been so much simpler in Ylvasil, where Devi could just hate everyone around her.

“Your world sounds like a really harsh place,” Heda cautiously said, studying Devi’s face. Jack and Kim reached the edge of the forest up ahead, and Devi pretended to watch what they were doing until she composed herself.

“Ylvasil is very hot and dry,” Devi said. “But I didn’t know better, until I arrived to Nerilia.”

The cold rain wasn’t much to her liking, but she knew it would pass. Now that she learned how good the sunlight could feel, she wasn’t going to let him go that easily.

“It’s so weird that you find this world the better place,” Heda said. “Even after six years, I still find myself dreaming about going back to Earth. Not the Earth as it is now, obviously, but the one in the past.”

“Hmm?” Devi furrowed her brow, wondering if she understood Heda right. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, I mean—could it be that you don’t know yet?” Heda asked. “Have you talked with other Sylven Players yet?”

“Talk? About what?”

“Oh. Well…” Heda trailed off, hesitant-uneasy. The two of them reached the trees where Kim and Jack were already waiting, looking at the projection of Kim’s collar. It was showing a large uneven shape that Devi recognized as a map, complete with little marks about each of the sweller sightings.

“You won’t like it, Devi,” Heda said. “I don’t know how to put it nicely, so I’ll just say it; everyone you knew on Ylvasil is probably dead.”

The two men looked up from their map upon hearing Heda’s grim-statement, but Devi just brushed a lock of wet hair out of her face and waited for the woman to continue.

“Every Human was taken from Earth at the same time,” Heda said. “Even Players who arrived hundreds of years ago to Nerilia. They all left Earth when I did, in the year of twenty-twenty. We’re all in the future, so to speak.”

The conclusion was obvious; the Inspectors kept every would-be Player asleep until they loosed them on Nerilia. Devi didn’t know how such thing was possible without the Players getting old, but she had talked about this with Randel already. He had told her a theory that there could be thousands of hibernated Players somewhere … but he never bothered to talk to other Players about this. He had said that he’d rather not know.

“But it could be different for Sylven,” Kim said, perhaps to console her. Devi didn’t feel any loss-sadness, but Kim could have mistaken her contemplative silence for it.

“It’s fine,” Devi said. “I have no one from Ylvasil who I want to see again.”

It wasn’t an entire-truth, for Devi cared for her father and her brothers … but she would not shed a tear if she never met them again. She had no close friends either – her father had made sure of that after the incident with Kino’lynn – and her peers at the Royal Court she was only glad to be rid of.

“Are you sure that you’re fine?” Heda asked.

“Yes,” Devi said with practiced ease. “We should focus on our Quest. Let’s find swellers, yes?”

The reason why they came out here in the cold rain was because Jack had received another report about the enormous swellers. A group of wood-cutters had died not too far from Fortram, and apparently cutting wood was a job in this world and not something punishable by death.

Devi was looking forward to hunt down the swellers, because it would be up to her to kill the monsters; Jack had told her that she had the most fire-power in the group. To be truthful, she found this hard to believe. She was still a soft-horn when it came to being a Player! Heda had said that energy-weapons like her Silverfang were Sylven-specific items, but Humans surely had powerful weapons too—or so Devi thought. She wasn’t going to complain, however. If Jack wanted her to prove herself, he didn’t have to ask her twice.

“The last sightings happened somewhere around here,” Jack said, pointing deeper into the woods. “We’ll proceed in formation. Kim, save your eyes for now—we might need your mana later. I’ll take the lead with the Listener, but watch out for camouflaged rocks.”

“Yes, sir,” Kim jokingly said, doing an odd salute. “Any rock is a suspect!”

“Not any, just the really big ones,” Heda said, walking forward. “Come on guys, Devi is right. We should focus on the Quest and find those swellers already!”

Jack stood still, watching with a disapproving frown as Heda and Kim marched on without him.

“I swear they hear only every second word,” he grumbled, then pulled a small black cube out of his pocket. “This is the Listener, Devi. It can hear heart-beats, but I already told it to ignore the four of us. You’ll know that something large is nearby if it turns red.”

“Or if Heda and Kim get ambushed.”

“Or that,” Jack said. “Let’s follow them. We probably won’t need the Listener to find the giants, but if you don’t mind taking an advice from an old man, it pays off to be careful.”

“But you’re not old,” Devi said, walking on Jack’s side with half-a-step behind. “I saw Humans with much whiter hair than yours.”

“I’m old by Player standards,” Jack said. “A few more missions with Kim and Heda and my hair will turn white like yours.”

Devi simply nodded, suspecting a joke but not quite understanding it.

The four Rangers of Fortram marched on beneath the tall trees, the mass of green leaves providing ample shelter. Now that they were out of the rain, Devi felt relieved. Perhaps it was just her imagined-perception, but the cold air around her felt a bit warmer and her footsteps came a bit lighter. She felt energized—and that was when she sudden-remembered. Traverse the forest, her Covenant’s first maxim!

She tucked the front of her cloak down and turned her collar’s projection on. Her simulated, miniature copy was walking in the middle of the screen just like she was, a green aura around her indicating that she was in good health. The left side of the screen with the menu buttons seemed to be unchanged, but on the right side, Devi spotted something new.

Attributes

Tenacity: 1

Strength: 0

Dexterity: 0

Magic: 3

Spirit: 3

Boons

Guided

Guided had a small-and-neat emblem next to it, depicting a tree. Devi tried to open an information panel about it, first by thought and then by touching, but nothing seemed to happen.

“The magic of this world can be divided into two distinct categories,” Jack spoke. His eyes were on their surroundings, but he must have noticed what Devi was doing—which left her with a slight-guilt, for she was supposed to be looking out for swellers too.

“Which two categories?”

“I like to call them soft magic and hard magic,” Jack said. “See, Weapon Skills and most Player Abilities are hard magic; they have strict rules and behave in expected ways. Soft magic, though? You can never be sure about it. Boons from Covenants and Player Domains are soft magic. Healing too.”

“Healing?”

“Your injuries heal unnaturally fast,” Jack said, “but only once you’re out of danger. The healing process follows no rules. Its speed can be very different, based on the situation you’re in.”

Devi stroked her right palm with her left fingers, remembering all too well the scraped-bloody wounds her portals left on her hands in the Dungeon. Her injury had indeed healed quickly enough for her to be able to hold a weapon again … but after that it took a long time for her wound to completely disappear.

“I see,” Devi said.

“If you don’t mind taking an advice from a man who has way too many scars, don’t rely on that healing too much,” Jack said. “If you expect it to save you, it will just screw you over. The rule of thumb is to avoid getting injured by any means; Abilities or healing items are very rare, and more often than not they have some draw-backs.”

Devi was getting lost among the Human slangs again, but she believed she got the gist of what Jack was saying. Something didn’t fit, however. One of her unselected Abilities was called Injury Transfer, which was almost like a healing Ability. Did this mean that her Ability was an uncommon-kind of power?

“Do we have any healing?” she asked, suddenly curious. She was aware of the general capabilities of her three companions, but they hadn’t shared the specifics with her. That would have taken up quite a lot of time, because Jack, Heda, and Kim were Players who had more than five Abilities already. They swapped them at the World Seed all the time, so that they brought the most appropriate Abilities to each Quest.

“None,” Jack admitted. “Unless you count Kim’s Domain as one. But a Domain won’t be triggered easily, so as a general rule you shouldn’t count on them. You know how Domains work, right?”

“I know that they activate when we’re about to die,” Devi said. “Randel called it plot-armor.”

“Your friend has some interesting ideas,” Jack said with a smile on his scarred face. “I can’t say he’s wrong, though. The problem with Domains is that we can’t activate them whenever we want to; threatening to kill Kim won’t work.”

“Heda is threatening to kill Kim all the time,” Devi said. “Perhaps he got used to it.”

“That he did, indeed.”

Devi watched the Human couple as they bicker-bantered up ahead. One of them was a tall woman with yellow hair, the other a much shorter man with black hair. Even their faces were so different; Heda’s face was longer with sharp cheekbones and strong nose and big blue eyes, while Kim’s face was more rounded with wider nose and narrow black eyes. They looked nothing alike, but their personalities fit together well, and so they claimed to be boyfriend and girlfriend. They also felt something that the Humans called love, which Randel had explained away as chemicals in people’s brain. However, Devi had spoken with other Humans too and they described it as a higher force binding people together—something that Devi found genuinely inspiring.

Love. The closest thing Devi could think of came from the land of House Xyr, a faraway corner of Ylvasil populated by a tribe of Sylven with a strange culture. House Xyr claimed that every person had a Destined One—also called as a soul-mate. It had been a while since Devi had last read about them, but it was common knowledge that House Xyr was dwindling precisely because of their inferior beliefs. They would marry only their soul-mates – who was sometimes from the same sex, even – and this resulted in much fewer offspring.

On the mainland, soul-mates were popular in fiction books … but it was most often used to portray close-friendship between two men. Devi had never given it much thought before; fighting alongside her soul-mate had been a far-off concept for a girl who wasn’t allowed to hold anything remotely dangerous! But then she woke up in Nerilia, and fiction became reality. She held a knife for the first time. She held a sword for the first time. She battled monsters for the first time. For the first time in her life, she was making a difference. She fought side by side with a man, and her deeds were appreciated.

Devi rolled up the sleeve of her cloak to look at the ink-like dagger symbol on the inside of her wrist. Randel’s mark. If anyone else had done this to her, she would have found it outrageous—but with Randel, it was a mark of trust. When they fought together, she trusted him to not use the mark to put her in harm’s way. In return, he trusted her to have a decoy ready to swap places with. Devi brushed her fingers against the dark symbol, wondering if this could be called love. The more she thought about it, the better it fit the Sylven term of soul-mates. It suited both House Xyr’s definition and the traditional interpretation too. It fit Devi and Randel, and it felt so right.

“You seem to be distracted today,” Jack said, jolting Devi out of her thoughts. “Is the Quest bothering you?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Sorry. I’m fine.”

She had other friends now, and a team who appreciated her fighting skills too. It was best not to forget that even without Randel, she would be fine.

“I wish I could say that I was nervous on my first mission too,” Jack said, “but the truth is that I barely remember.”

“Humans are forgetful creatures,” Devi said, forcing some levity into her voice. “But you need not worry about me, Jack. I am not nervous, and I am not distracted anymore. I know what I need to do.”

“That’s good,” Jack said, “because it seems like we found something.”

Devi glanced at the Listener and saw that the small cube had a glowing-red-hot color already. She stopped walking, and so did Jack. The forest around them was silent, save for the patter of rain on the many-many leaves above them. The looming-tall trees and the stormy-gray clouds above blocked much of the sunlight, but even in the gloom Devi was able to see the silhouette of something large in the distance. It was on her left—Heda and Kim had already passed by it without knowing. Jack let out a high whistle, not unlike what some of the birds in this forest could sing, and the other two Rangers turned back immediately.

Devi took the lead, approaching the large shape cautiously. It didn’t seem to be moving. As she got closer, it became obvious that the sweller was resting, its legs hidden beneath itself to look like a large – and somewhat odd – rock. Green moss grew all over the monster’s skin, and Devi even spotted small-nimble plants growing out of it. Although this rock definitely seemed suspicious now that Devi knew what she was looking at, if she hadn’t known about the swellers she would have just considered it as another oddity of this strange, green world. There was a path of slanted trees and broken branches behind the sweller, the result of its passing as it had squeezed in-between the trees. Judging by the destruction, the sweller’s size was medium-to-small compared to what Devi had seen before; about half the size of the looming-tall trees.

Recursive Ray, or Silverfang? The sweller was a small one and it was unaware of her presence, so perhaps approaching it with a sword would be more prudent. Devi needed to preserve her mana more than the energy-charge of her dagger.

“We got your back, should you need it,” Heda whispered.

Devi nodded, then drew Silverfang and activated it with a thought. Bright light coalesced around the blade, illuminating the gloomy-dark forest. The blade hissed softly as small drops of water fell upon it from the leaves above, evaporating instantly. Devi walked closer to the resting sweller, watching it closely for any sign of movement as its lumpy body towered over her. But the sweller lay perfectly still, and so Devi took her time to line up her sword and activate Thrust.

Silverfang sunk into the creature’s flesh with ease, at which the sweller shuddered. It began shifting, but Devi wasn’t done yet; she expanded her sword, drawing on its energy-source to overcharge it. When she judged that the blade was long enough to reach the trembling sweller’s core, she swept her sword to the side. Although the blade met some resistance and Devi’s arm burned from the effort, the blade slid through the creature’s flesh much more easily than any ordinary sword would have. The sweller let out a pained chitter, then fell still once again. At first Devi expected blue blood to gush from the wide cut she had made, but then she saw that the gray flesh was completely burnt and cauterized.

She took a step back, unable to decide whether to feel elated or horrified at what she had done.

“That went surprisingly well,” Kim broke the silence. “I was expecting it to call its friends before it died.”

“That might have been the better outcome,” Heda said. “It would have saved us the trouble of finding them all.”

“That’s also a good way to get overwhelmed and die,” Jack said. “There is something off about this place, by the way. Kim, please lift the body aside.”

Devi backed away from the corpse as Kim stepped forward, extending both arms with his palms out. Blue light enveloped the sweller that suddenly moved, floating slowly upward. Eight segmented limbs folded out from beneath the bulky body as Kim lifted it up and up, revealing first a pale-gray torso, belly, genitals, and finally a pair of legs.

“Disgusting,” Heda mumbled, pinching her nose against the sour-smell that wafted them. She tapped a finger to the side of her waist, after which Devi felt a soft-warm breeze that washed away the odor. Meanwhile, Kim tossed the sweller aside with his telekinetic power, and so Devi cautious-approached the hole that the monster had rested in. It wasn’t just a small pit for the sweller’s legs to hide in; the hole ran deep, the sides of it slanted slightly so that Devi could have walked in and out of it if she wanted to.

“This is not a hole,” Devi said. “This is a tunnel.”

“An entrance to the Dungeon, to be more precise,” Jack said. He was holding a medallion that wiggled in his grasp like a small bug, tugging on its chain as if trying to get closer to the tunnel.

“It can’t be the same Dungeon that Devi has been in,” Heda said. “We’re still too close to Fortram. Right, Devi? You said it took you two days to reach the city after you escaped the Dungeon.”

“We did a lot of sleeping in that time,” Devi said. “But yes … it was not this close.”

Something was afoot, Devi could see that much too. The Dungeon was supposed to have eight entrances, but how could they spread so far-and-wide? The entrance that Devi had first entered through was so far away from Fortram that the city had looked almost like a pebble-speck from that distance.

“I doubt it’s another Dungeon,” Jack said, “but we’re about to find out.”

“We’re going to clear it?” Kim asked, eager-sounding.

“We’ll try,” Jack said. “It’s not what we planned, but we should be able to handle it. We can’t afford to bide our time and get backup, not if my suspicion is correct.”

“You’re so dramatic, Jack,” Heda said, rolling her eyes. “Just tell us your suspicion. Does the Dungeon have more than eight entrances?”

“No, it’s worse than that,” Devi said with terrible-realization. “The Dungeon is crawling toward Fortram! Like a sweller, ready to eat it.”

She watched the faces of her three companions, expecting rebuttal but finding none. They all looked concerned-worried, too used to the strange magic of this world to outright reject her idea. Devi didn’t know how a moving stone-city could be real-existing, but she had seen many impossible things already. If the gods of this place willed it so, she had no doubt that a Dungeon would be able to move.

None of them knew what would happen if the Dungeon reached the revolving city, but all four of the Rangers of Fortram agreed that it was better to prevent that from ever-happening. Devi walked down into the tunnel close behind Jack, and soon enough the already-familiar message greeted her.

You have entered the Dungeon: Swellers of the Deep