The Paths Between Paths was much the same as it had been on his last attempt. It was a vacant void where he was surrounded by pure darkness, save for two floating pale blobs far ahead of him.

Also, he could see Myrin.

She was in front of him, facing away, staring up at the massive shapes in the distance. She didn’t seem to notice him, and he didn’t think there was any way for him to get her attention. If he opened his mouth the air would be ripped from his lungs, and the vacuum around him wouldn’t convey any other sound he could make. He couldn’t clap his hands together. There was no ground for him to stomp and hope the vibrations might reach her.

He reached out. Tried to swim through the void towards her. He swept his arms and kicked his feet. But, as expected, he couldn’t actually move. With no air around him, there was no actual material to push against.

He couldn’t get closer to Myrin. Instead, he just flailed in place like a fool.

Kaldalis was just starting to wonder why he wasn’t freezing to death. Or suffering from whatever was supposed to actually kill you if you were jettisoned out into space. He knew it wasn’t the vacuum, but he couldn’t remember what it was. The freezing? Radiation? He hoped that it was suffocation, because he had no intent on staying in this place long enough to run out of breath.

It felt like half a minute before Myrin vanished, and then a split-second later the whole world reappeared around him. Despite how long it felt like he had spent in the mysterious void, it seemed that barely more than a couple of seconds had passed in the real world; the monsters were all roughly where he left them, and the two undulating figures had finished their darkness blast.

“It worked!” Kaldalis said, though he immediately yelped and flinched back as the nearest of the shimmering humanoids stepped up to try and punch him in the mouth.

“What, did you think it might not?” Myrin asked from across the melee, already moving back into the rhythm of hammering away at the monster.

“I didn’t exactly count the seconds to nail the timing,” Kaldalis admitted. “But it still worked out fine!”

“Bitch, that’s my life you’re playing with!” Myrin yelled, though she had a grin on her face. “Why did you think that was a good idea?”

“I’m not a clever man,” Kaldalis announced, lashing out with his glaive before ducking away from the next assault.

A few moments later, the one Myrin had been beating on turned and fled before it could use its own blast of darkness, giving Balrim ample time to get Myrin and Kaldalis safely healed before the next blast came out.

“Hold the flicker,” Kaldalis said when one of them started to shudder and pulse. “Try and run clear, but we hold flicker to dodge two, not just one!”

The blast came and Myrin managed to bolt out of the way. Kaldalis, moving backwards to avoid leaving himself open to attacks from the other two, took the full one-hundred and seventy-one damage.

“I thought you were running clear!” Balrim yelled.

“It’s fine,” Myrin yelled back at him. “Healers adjust!”

“Sorry!” Kaldalis called. “I’ll pop a cooldown next time!”

Kaldalis and Myrin kept on the remaining three until two of them - synchronized again - started to pulsate. He called the flicker, and there was a brief moment of floating in space to avoid it. When they came back, Haldir ran in and rejoined the fray.

“Glad you could make it,” Myrin chirped with a smile. “I was starting to get lonely on this side of the monster all alone.”

Haldir grunted, but didn’t say anything. He looked pale, his blue-green face faded to the hue of unpolished turquoise stone. He was contributing damage, though, and so Kaldalis guessed he must have recovered from whatever happened to him. The creatures didn’t seem to be applying a debuff to him with their hits, so he didn’t know what had happened.

It was an obnoxiously long few minutes of avoiding meaty fists, taking hits when he had to, and rolling his cooldowns around blasts of darkness. But eventually the last one bolted for the jungle. Myrin went to follow, and Kaldalis reached out and grabbed her arm to stop her.

“Easy there, killer,” he said. “That’s not the most important thing right now.”

“Come on!” Myrin said, dancing from foot to foot, eager to take up the chase. “We need one of those Infernal Horde Core things for the censer, right? Overworld mobs only run when they’re really weak. We should finish the job and get back to camp as heroes with salvation in hand!”

Kaldalis hesitated. That was actually a good point.

“It doesn’t matter even if we get one,” Balrim said, trotting up to join the trio. “You know, if there’s no camp to return to as heroes.” He pointed up above the treeline, back towards the column of smoke. “That’s our goal right now.”

“Balrim’s right,” Kaldalis said, grateful for the voice of reason. “We need to get to work on that before we can do anything else. Once we’re sure the camp and all our friends there are safe, we can chase them to the ends of the earth for those cores.”

“Speaking of,” Myrin clapped Haldir on the shoulder. “Are you alright, buddy? You kinda blanked out for a minute there.”

“I’m fine I just…” Haldir shuddered and shook his head. “You know how they say your life flashes before your eyes before you die?”

“Yeah, but you died before in the dungeon,” Myrin said.

“That’s… That’s different,” Haldir said, “this isn’t dungeon mechanics anymore.” He shook his head. “I don’t know what I was thinking running like that. I was just asking to die on my own.”

That was it, then.

Haldir was an NPC.

PCs respawned. NPCs didn’t. Rules of the wild.

Haldir was distraught because he had nearly gotten himself killed, and that would have been the end of the road for him.

Kaldalis finally got his answer. And it left him with so many questions.

That said, now wasn’t the time to gloat over having his mystery solved or start berating the dude with a thousand and one interrogative inquiries. NPC or not, Haldir was his friend, and he was in distress.

“Well, we’ll stick together from here on,” Kaldalis said, patting him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, you’re one of us. If you go down, it’ll be because the rest of us went first.”

“That’s accurate to my memory,” Myrin said, punching Haldir’s other arm. “You lasted longest against the firmicid.”

“Thank you,” Haldir said, and Kaldalis could see him mentally rallying from the trauma. “Thank you,” he said again, “I’m alright.”

“Good,” Balrim said, “we’re gonna get through this. I’m sure of that. But let’s make sure the encampment will be as lucky.”

“Right,” Kaldalis said, turning towards the column of smoke. “Then let’s-”

There was a smashing sound nearby, and Kaldalis’s head snapped towards the sound. It was coming from where the last of the shimmery humanoids had fled. Was it coming back?

But no. That would have been preferable, honestly.

What smashed out of the jungle was twenty feet tall. It was one of the shimmering gelatinous forms but scaled way, way up. Its arms were like tree trunks, and while it was still featureless, Kaldalis could feel it glaring directly at him with an anger so strong it was like a physical force radiating off of it.

Whatever the little shimmery dudes were, this was the boss version, just like the four-fingered syncoresi boss that had led the initial attack on the camp.

Sure, he’d succeeded then, but that was with the entire town at his back and the magic censer burning. Now he had only three friends and no magic.

In the absence of any coherent emotion besides survival-based fear, Kaldalis yelled the only thing that came to mind.

“Fuck!”