“Report,” Cassandra ordered.

“Yes, Ma’am,” said the tiny hologram of a soldier wearing the grey uniform of House Reech. “We’ve had some difficulty, but nothing we couldn’t handle. Traps and a few more of those golems mostly. No casualties. We have a team cataloging everything in the main residence, a few interesting artifacts but nothing spectacular.”

“Anything I should know about?”

“Well, a few relics that could only have come out of a dungeon. An old one too, perhaps even pre-cataclysm, but nothing specific worth mentioning … other than the bo—"

“And the dungeon?”

“Well, that’s just it, Ma’am. The obelisk is there, but we’ve been drilling and performing seismic tests for hours, and we haven’t found a thing.”

“That is hardly conclusive,” Cassandra interrupted, “certainly there are more drastic steps you can take?”

“We’ll have a thumper truck here by this afternoon, might give us a better picture. Blasting might work as well, but Ma’am I’ve got to be honest with you … I’ve studied decades of seismic reports from the surrounding area and there is nothing below this location — no void and nothing unusually dense. If there is a dungeon down there it is either buried deep, collapsed, or hidden in ways that defy decades of research.”

“I want the entire area excavated,” Cassandra frowned, pushing a strand of hair out of her eyes. “Give me a full report on everything you’ve recovered so far, oh and lieutenant?”

“Yes, Ma’am?”

“If any of this leaks, you and all your men will find yourselves on a flight to Antarctica faster than you can say ‘please, no.’ I don’t care if the First Spear himself descends from the heavens and asks you to tongue bathe his pointed phallus, you keep your mouth shut. Do you understand?”

“Yes, —”

“One last thing, send the obelisk to Reech Industries, I have a team standing by to receive it.”

Cassandra terminated the call before the soldier could respond. She knew he would perform his job, she had hand-selected everyone on the team, after all. It wouldn’t do, however, to let them forget who was in charge or what the stakes were.

Antarctica was always in need of fresh … volunteers.

She shivered at the thought. No one, not even Cassandra, knew for certain what happened there, only that the great families had all called a truce over the area. Occasionally, high-level classers would be recruited for expeditions, but none returned.

“Slav,” Cassandra yelled, waving towards a large man in bulky black armor.

Yaroslav looked over his shoulder and gave Cassandra a crisp salute. He dwarfed the technicians around him, his wrench seeming like a toy in the bearish man’s hands. He gave a few curt orders to his maintenance techs before passing off his tools and heading towards Cassandra.

He had filled the Defender role in Cassandra’s Quad for three years now and had served her predecessor for several years before that. Like his role suggested, Yaroslav had always shown remarkable loyalty and dedication to his teammates. He had earned a reputation as one always ready to put himself in danger to save others — trusting his remarkable strength and durability to see him through even the toughest encounters.

He had seemed stern and taciturn at first, but Cassandra had spent many summers at his family’s lake house and she had seen how gregarious he was over a grill and a few cans of cheap beer. His sons even attended the same school as Katie.

“Yeah, boss, you got something for me?”

“Where are Striker and Gen?”

“Gen’s in the simulator, like usual. I think Striker was down in R&D chatting up a piece of … I mean he’s speaking with one of the squints down in the lab. Should I get them?”

“Yes,” Cassandra said. “Lord Reech has granted us access to a core, and I’ve just made arrangements for the obelisk to be delivered here — I have a feeling we’ll be doing a little dungeon diving in the near future. Have the men suited up and primed by fourteen-hundred hours.”

“Are you sure it’s going to …”

Casandra gave him a hard glance with narrowed eyes. The giant took off in the other direction, leaving only enough time for a hasty salute. Cassandra could understand his shock; most corporations and even many of the great families wouldn’t have access to even a single dungeon core. It was an understatement to say wars had been fought over them, and yet …

Even with the stipulation that the core had to stay inside the facility, Lord Reech had displayed an uncharacteristic level of trust. There was no guarantee it would work, either. Without a dungeon, the obelisk was useless, but Cassandra had a hunch there was something unique about this one.

Lord Reech hadn’t even questioned her motive or the likelihood of success. Instead, he had hastily signed over an object worth a decade of corporate revenue. He seemed as if he had expected the request, surprising Cassandra further when he informed her a core was already in the building ready to be delivered at her convenience.

What is that slimy bastard keeping from me this time?

***

Nina’s steel-tipped boot came down on the thorax of a Doberman sized spider. Its splintered carapace gleamed like diamonds as it crashed into the hard earth. The sound of shattered crystal echoed through the cavern as ice-clear shards spun across the faintly glowing cavern floor.

The air hummed as Nina turned, her saber slashing in a wide arc. It was silent, nothing moved. An itch played over the back of her mind as she scanned for more enemies. None appeared to quench her blade. She frowned slightly as she dropped her saber, thin streams of energy flowed into arm as the blade disappeared.

Piles of blue crystal were all that remained of the battle, some more intact than others. Sapphire limbs twisted above cracked thoraxes and bulbous, gemlike eyes. Some of the remains still contained faint sparks of light, slowly fading as the energy was absorbed back into the dungeon.

Nina felt a shiver run up her arms as a small part of that energy flowed into her. Her eyes closed as a gasp escaped her slightly open mouth. The energy did little towards advancing her level, and yet it still felt euphoric. Tense muscles eased, and Nina smiled. It was her first true moment of happiness in days.

“Feel better?” Max raised an eyebrow.

“I certainly do,” Nina’s eyes glittered under the shifting light. “I needed to let off a little steam, what better way than crushing a bunch of monstrous spiders? I could do this all day.”

Nina watched as Max continued to sift through the shattered crystals. Occasionally, he would look at a particularly large chunk before shaking his head and tossing it aside to pick up an intact limb or faceted eye. Was he a crafter, or just so poor that even these … scraps, had value to him?

“You could have left a few for me,” he said. “I do need the XP, after all.”

“That’s,” she harrumphed, “well I’m sure there will be plenty more, I’ll be waiting to bail you out when you get in over your head. You did mention this floor had given you trouble in the past?”

“Yeah, I can stealth or fight my way through this part pretty easily, but there’s a Boss at the top of the tree. Eve calls her the ‘Matriarch of the Resplendent Weave’ and she’s a pain in the ass. Not only is she as big as a Mack Truck, she’s got a horde of these,” Max gestured towards the crystal remains, “guarding her.”

“I should be able to take care of that myself, you just hold back and let me do the heavy lifting.”

“Oh, I intend to, I’m too pretty to be spider food — but there is … well, better not mention that just yet.”

“What? Tell me, Max, what else is there?”

“I can beat Ole Splendy if I spec into Might or Reaction, hell it feels like we’re old friends at this point. The real problem is when she dies … she crumbles into thousands of tiny, swarming spiders. A door appears at the same time, but I can never make it. Eve has had to teleport me out each time, which I doubt is a viable option at this point.”

“Ugh,” Nina shivered, “I thought you were joking about that. Spiders. Why did it have to be spiders?”

George agreed, launching a small jet of flame from his perch on Nina’s shoulder.

“That’s the spirit,” Max said. “We’ll roast those critters.”

“Don’t encourage him. George is just a child, and I’ll be keeping him tucked away when we are fighting the flesh tearing spiders, thank you.”

George protested with a smoke-filled snort but quickly curled up on Nina’s shoulder, forgetting the insult as his eyes closed. Nina scratched between the boy’s eyes, before turning back to Max.

“All right,” she said. “You lead the way. I’ll leave the small fry to you, and you leave the big gal to me. I think I have a plan, but we’re going to have to be quick.”

“You had me at, ‘you lead.’”

Nina forced down a smile, covering her face with her hand. Either the man’s inane chatter was starting to fracture her sanity or killing those spiders had put her in way too good a mood. Either way, it was something Nina needed to fix.