“I’m going after her,” Victor declared. “The rod belongs to the group—not to that thief.”

“You mean the rod belongs to you,” Santo said flatly. “Say what you mean, bro.”

“Fine. The rod belongs to me. But it should go to help all of us. Right now it isn’t. Come on.”

“There will be other weapons,” Shane remarked calmly. “I’m planning to scout our surroundings and take stock of our resources. Anyone who’d like to help is welcome to join me.”

“We’re not going to try to go rescue her?” Daniel the warrior asked, rubbing the back of his black and red striped hair uncomfortably. “It could be dangerous in there.”

“Why should we try to help her?” Jenna the monk replied, speaking up for the first time. “I voted for her, but that was stupid. She should have respected the vote. I’m with Shane. We have more important things to worry about right now than a runaway mage.”

“We can do both,” Victor insisted. “Someone needs to scout beyond the doors, don’t they? Let’s take a party in, reclaim my rod, and see what’s in there. I doubt she’ll get far on her own.”

Shane shrugged. “It’s not a press gang,” he said again. “If you think it’s valuable right now, I trust your judgment. Go ahead.” He walked into the main building, rocking his Elohim Hammer back and forth in his hand as though testing the weight of his new weapon.

The group was silent for a beat, and about a third of the players peeled off to follow Shane. Cody shook his head. “If you’re scouting south, I’m scouting west. We need intel on more than one direction, and I don’t care either way about the chick and the rod. Who’s with me?”

Cupcake in her druid leathers and a tall, thin shadow of a man named Logan moved to stand beside Cody. Logan was so quiet I’d hardly noticed him before. He wore a dark hooded cape and had a crossbow and dagger at his waist, and his ability to fade into the background was perfect for a rogue, at least in contrast to Dancer’s fiery brashness—I hoped she could shut up and focus when it came time to fight. Cody nodded, satisfied with his healer and DPS, and the three of them began to move toward the western doors.

“Wait,” Victor said. “Who’s coming with me?”

No one spoke. I remained standing with the others and obstinately remained silent as I had a small internal struggle. I agreed with Shane that we had more important things to deal with than Haley’s immaturity—her theft had been a stupid, knee-jerk act that had been funny to me only for it’s brashness. I’d seen it happen lots of times with Bri: she’d get defensive about something, overreact, and then feel guilty. Victor had done the worst possible thing to calm down a person like Haley by hurling insults at her instead of coaxing her back to talk about it. But now Haley’s overreaction had veered into recklessness. I was worried about her being in there—whatever was past those doors—by herself, and if she got herself stupidly killed, we might be down a mage and a rod… especially now that we knew death might be real and final here.

Then again, Haley was the one who’d proudly insisted less than an hour ago that she “didn’t usually worry about taking care of other perfectly functional adults.” So why should I worry about her when she was voluntarily rushing headlong into danger? I already had one errant girl to rescue. I didn’t need a second.

“I’ll go with you,” Daniel said, rising from the ground and drawing his weapons. Like Dancer, he dual wielded a sword and a parrying dagger, though his sword was more of a heavier saber than her piercing rapier.

“I’m out,” Santo said. He flicked his white-hooded priest robe up, concealing his weird black eyes and veins. “Chica isn’t my responsibility. I’m going to do my own exploring to the east, and I don’t need any backup.” Then he strode purposefully toward the eastern door.

“Should we let Santo go alone?” Paige asked, casting a worried look around the small circle remaining.

“I’ll go watch his back,” Jenna offered. She quietly trotted after the white-skinned priest.

Trees shuddered, which looked quite strange on his bark-textured umber-colored skin. “That guy gives me the creeps. I’ll come help with Haley.”

I let loose a long sigh. I shouldn’t be worrying about Haley, but I was worried about her. I was also concerned that if I let Victor lead a group in there alone, we’d end up with a reclaimed rod and a toasted Haley.

“Me too,” I muttered.

“No way,” Victor protested. “Not you.” He folded his arms across his voluminous purple robe and glared at me. “You voted against me and you walked in with her. How do we know you won’t just turn on us too?”

That irritated me. “Trees voted for her too. I’m not in league with her or anything, dude. I’m just worried about her. We fought some orcs together, and I agreed to watch her back. Besides, she’s a lot more likely to listen to me than to you right now.”

“There’s an easy solution if she won’t hand my rod over,” Victor said. “It doesn’t really matter if she listens.”

“I’m sure she’ll give it back when she calms down,” Trees said hesitantly, running a nervous hand through his wild, green hair.

I wasn’t so sure of that, but I wasn’t about to say so right now.

“Why don’t we give her a chance?” Paige suggested. “But we should go soon, before she gets too far.”

“So you’re in now too?” Daniel asked.

“Sure,” Paige said. “I can heal if Trees wants to DPS.”

“Fine,” Victor said. “But no funny business, okay Paladin?”

“Yeah, yeah. The rod is yours. I know.”

I cracked my neck. I’d just have to hope I could smooth things over between the two of them when we got to Haley, because the truth was that with only sixteen of us, we really did need every person we could get. I hadn’t liked Marutuk’s warnings that “our hand would be forced” to go north eventually, and it seemed like more players working together was better for all of us… especially since we’d probably started with more. It occurred to me after Cody had mentioned his druid companion’s death that the players in our group were only the ones who’d made it through the tutorial. Who knew how many had started there?

“I don’t have many abilities yet—just a stun and a heal—but I’m happy to lead the way and do whatever tanking I can,” I said. “I think I have the heaviest armor besides Daniel here and I’m the only one with a shield. You guys know to focus fire and go after called targets?”

Everyone nodded. It was nice to be working with a group who seemed to know what they were doing. We walked toward the southern door, following Haley’s footsteps in the compact dirt. Victor and I led the way, with Daniel flanking me and Trees and Paige bringing up the rear. As we crossed the short distance to the huge, mossy wall, I noticed that Victor’s gait was a little strange and unsteady.

“Everything all right?” I asked him.

He grimaced. “Yeah, it’s nothing. I’m just not used to this body yet.”

“Why’d you make it so… large? And… unique looking?” Daniel asked.

Victor’s grimace deepened, and he drew his purple cowl around his misshapen head. “I always make big, fat, ugly characters,” he muttered. “Usually it’s just meant to be funny. I’m actually pretty fit and reasonably attractive in real life. I didn’t know I’d have to physically inhabit him.”

“Sorry dude,” Daniel said, fidgeting with the hilt of his saber.

“It’s fine,” Victor growled. “More weight to throw around.”

“I empathize,” Trees muttered, glancing at the front and back of his hands.

“You didn’t expect to be wearing bark-textured skin?” Paige asked.

“I didn’t expect to be a boy,” Trees replied.

Victor’s eyes widened and we both glanced back at the druid, while Daniel coughed into his hand.

“Oh,” Paige murmured, apparently at a loss for words.

Trees shrugged. “I always make my druids men. It didn’t even occur to me that the game might be this… realistic. Anyway, Victor is right. It’s fine. I’ll get used to it. I guess.” But he sounded pretty glum about the whole thing, which I could understand. Talk about an adjustment!

“Yeesh,” Victor remarked. “I guess it could have been worse. At least I still have a dick.”

Pink bloomed across both Paige and Daniel’s faces while Trees ran a hand through his vivid green hair again, and I turned back toward the wall, rolling my shoulders. I was going to keep thinking of Trees as a guy for now, since that’s what he was here… physically, anyway.

“Let’s focus on the mission,” I said. “Come on.”

As we approached the mossy, weathered slabs that formed the 10’x10’ door in the base of the giant wall, they began to rumble and slide smoothly apart, retracting into the granite just like they had for Haley.

“Nice,” Daniel remarked with a grin. “Like a grocery store. That’s friendly. We’ll have to be sure to grab a lot of loot pinatas.”

Just beyond the doors was a dungeon corridor with a low ceiling, maybe twelve feet high, and tight passages lined with torches like the ones we’d emerged from originally. Rather than opening to a straight hallway, there was a wall just beyond the doors, and the passage curved away both to the left and to the right. Huge, block letters were inscribed into the wall which would be impossible to miss for anyone entering the dungeon, spelling out an unfamiliar word: “VlIix.” The font was the same as the ‘ATARAXIA’ text that had hung in the air prior to character creation.

“Veel-ix. Or is it vuhl-ix?” Victor said, pronouncing it two different ways. “What do you guys think it means?”

“No idea. The dungeon name maybe?” I suggested. “Or designation? Anyway, look.” I pointed at the ground going left, where the dust on the floor laid in more of a swishing pattern than the dust on the right. “She went this way. The other passage hasn’t been disturbed in some time.”

The five us advanced cautiously down the passage, listening for sounds of battle. But it was creepy and silent. A sudden breeze whipped across the torches, flickering the shadows of the group, and Paige jumped. We all snickered as she laid a hand to her heart and exhaled deeply, giggling along with us after a moment.

“Just a little breeze,” she said sheepishly.

That was when Daniel began to scream. He fell his knees, eyes wild, stabbing wildly with his parrying dagger just above his shoulder where gaping, ragged tears materialized at the base of his neck, bloody flesh vanishing as it peeled away from his skin.

“Get it off! Get it off!” he shouted, flailing at his side and neck.

“Get what off?” My pulse spiked as I lurched over to him, extending a glowing hand toward his neck with my heal spell at the ready, but some invisible maw gnashed at my gauntlet before I cast it, silently bloodying my fingers inside and knocking a tiny bit of health off my HUD display. I yanked my fist back with a hiss, raising my shield against a foe we could neither see nor hear.

To my three other companions credit, each of them reacted as quickly as I had, though their actions differed: Victor closed his eyes and raised two fingers amid a swirling vortex of wind and then pointed to the ground in front of him, where a small, whirling water elemental condensed out of thin air, while Trees uttered a word that darkened all of our skin and hardened it into a rippling, bark-colored surface while raising his cudgel warily. The bark-skin was weird, but not uncomfortable or inconvenient, and it didn’t appear to limit my movement. Meanwhile, Paige raised her hand over her head and released a flash that left a glowing orb of bright, white light hanging in midair and cast our battle into starkly illuminated relief.

With Paige’s spell active, all of us could now see the matte-black shadow-thing that had its claws sunk deep into Daniel’s flank and its fangs in his neck, seemingly ignoring his armor—at least partially. It ripped another mouthful of flesh off while he screamed louder, ducking his clumsy stabs, and hissed at the shimmering light orb, although no sound came from its mouth. I spotted another of the creeping creatures, which looked like something between a wolf and a lizard but so black that it seemed to absorb the light around us, sneaking up behind Victor, who sent his elemental rushing into battle with the thing on Daniel’s shoulder while Trees circled, trying to find an opening to club it that wouldn’t hurt the warrior too. I lashed out with a quick smite, knocking the shadow-beast behind Victor flat, and cleaved deeply into its neck while it was stunned. My blade sank in halfway, though the neck felt less solid than I thought it should. Then the beast yanked free of my blade and rolled away, hissing silently at me and leaking weird purple energy while my HUD finally identified it:

Shadewolf

LVL: 3

???

I slid between the shadewolf and Victor, raising my shield, and glanced back to make sure Daniel wasn’t dead. He was rapidly healing, thanks to a focused golden beam that Paige had aimed at him, and he’d risen to one knee and wedged his dagger under the chin of the shadewolf on his shoulder, keeping it’s teeth at bay and skewering it through the jaw while it’s feet frantically raked his side. He was breathing hard through his nose, but determination had replaced panic in his eyes. The sheer silence of these shadewolves was eerie. Now that Daniel had stopped screaming, no noise came from our battle except the creak of our mail and leather and the panting and groans that emerged from the mouths of my comrades. Striking the wolves caused neither howls of pain nor thuds of contact.

When my wolf lunged, I bashed it with my shield and kicked it, finishing it off with a quick downward thrust, while Victor’s little elemental smashed the head of the remaining wolf further down onto Daniel’s dagger and finished the battle. The two wolves dissolved into purple energy traces, leaving behind a few small beads of something that identified as Shadowplasm, and I breathed a loud sigh of relief as I tucked them into my belt pouch. It was good to know that these things could be killed with our weapons. The post battle info scrolled across my HUD:

Killed: Shade Wolves (2). XP +24.

Dropped: Shadowplasm (2).

As Paige topped the group off and Victor dismissed his elemental, our wood-skin faded away, and Daniel barked a shuddering peal of laughter that rang throughout the tunnel.

Trees cocked his head. “How can you laugh when you just had your neck torn apart?”

“It didn’t stick,” Daniel replied. “Man, this game is intense. That was some real shit.”

“Can you keep that light spell active?” I asked Paige. “It seems to reveal the creatures here.”

She nodded. “It’s a duration-based spell that follows me. I just didn’t think we’d need it because of the torches.”

“Did you guys notice we got less XP for those than we got for killing goblins or orcs?” Daniel asked. “I wonder why…”

“There’s five of us fighting together,” Victor said. “Looks like we split the XP. Dumb. No group bonus?”

“Just survival,” Paige said.

Victor opened his mouth, looked thoughtful, and then closed it.

I didn’t like the idea of Haley, all alone, fighting monsters she couldn’t see, and I hastened my steps and led the group deeper. The next time the torches flickered, we saw the shadewolves approaching and made short work of them, with Victor hurling firebolts over the head of his elemental and Trees tossing out lightning from his fingertips while Daniel and I held them back.

“Why are your spells different from the ones Haley had?” I asked Victor. “I didn’t get a choice of skills.”

“Are you sure?” He scratched his bulbous nose. “When you confirmed your class selection you didn’t have focus choices? I chose Conjurer.”

I was stunned. I remembered the confirmation screen, but had I been too hasty to notice a specialty selection there? Had I accidentally picked the default? The others nodded along with Victor.

“Elemental,” Trees said.

“Dervish,” Daniel added.

“Mender.” Paige cocked her head at me. “If you didn’t choose your specialty, what did you end up with?”

“Uh… I have no idea. How do I know?”

Paige tapped the side of her head a few times, her HUD flickering. “Just check your character screen. Like this.”

“What?” I raised my hand to the left side of my head and tentatively tapped my temple just like Paige had done. My HUD flickered, and suddenly I was looking at my own, full character readout.

Name: Michael Peters

Class: Paladin [Templar]

Level: 1

XP: 299

Str: 15

Agil: 10

Spi: 15

Vit: 20

Damage 8.1

Armor T1 / 70%

LIFE: 200

MANA: 30

(%) Physical Bonus: 7.5

(%) Ranged Bonus: 3

(%) Magic Bonus: 3

HP Regen (tick): 10

Mana Regen (tick): 1.5

SKILLS

Light Healing (10mp): Heal up to 30HP. Mends one damaged limb outside of combat.

Smite (5mp): Stun an enemy for up to 3 seconds with holy fury and deal magical damage that scales with Spirit. Harms undead for 3x damage.

SKILLS (PASSIVE)

Basic Weapon Skill: Clubs, daggers, staffs

Martial Weapon Skill: Swords, axes, polearms, spears, maces

So I was a Templar specialty, whatever that meant. It sounded more defensive than offensive, which I guess was fine for my purposes, but it annoyed me that I’d stumbled into it instead of choosing it. I tapped experimentally at my HUD again and saw a full summary of my carried possessions and kill tracker.

INVENTORY

Crude Iron Short Sword

Steel Shield

Steel Helmet

Steel Gauntlets

Steel Breastplate

Steel Greaves

Steel Boots

Shadowplasm (2)

KILL TRACKER

Goblin 8

Orc 3

Shade Wolf 2

After my eyes unfocused from browsing the lists, the HUD returned to its original health readout and identifier bead.

“You can also tap twice to turn it off and twice more to turn it back on,” Paige added. “This was all etched into the wall in the first tutorial room, above the vines. How did you miss it?”

I blinked. How had I missed all this? I must have been so wrapped up in my search for my sister that I hadn’t inspected my environment enough. I was disappointed in myself. Letting my emotions get away from me over Brianna was costing me valuable information. I always did that—it needed to stop if I was going to survive long enough to find her.

“Don’t sweat it, man,” Daniel said. “I missed the small print too, I guess.”

I shook my head. “It’s okay. Thanks, Paige. But we still need to focus and find Haley.”

“And my rod,” Victor added grumpily.

“Just let me do the talking when we get there.”

He harrumphed but didn’t reply, which I took as assent, and we continued until the passage opened up into an enormous, two level room with ramps veering down to the second floor. I spotted movement beneath us in the gloom, but no monsters were in our immediate vicinity, and they did seem to have some kind of aggro radius if they weren’t looking directly at us.

“Could she really have gone this far on her own?” Trees wondered. “Those shade wolves would be nasty solo, and invisible to Haley…”

No one replied. I’d wondered the same thing, but we hadn’t seen a body. I didn’t think a player’s corpse would really fade so quickly without a trace, and more than that, I did believe in Haley’s fighting prowess, having seen her strategically battle first-hand. We hadn’t heard the sound of battle, but then again, the wolves were completely silent…

A flash of light came from below, and I watched as nine arcane missiles pulverized a lone shadewolf into sickly purple energy on the bottom floor.

“Haley!” I called.

A familiar, freckled face emerged as Haley stepped out from beneath the ledge and peered up at us, Elohim Rod pointed in our direction. Her expression was sullen, and her eyes glowed with blue light. “Get lost,” she said. “I’m doing fine on my own.”

“I bet you are, with that rod you stole,” Victor grumbled from behind me.

“Is that jerky douchebag up there with you?” Haley demanded. “Then you can extra get lost.”

I elbowed Victor in the ribs before he could respond. He coughed and glared at me but kept his mouth shut.

“Haley, you aren’t being fair,” I told her. “Can we just talk about this? You don’t need to run off by yourself.”

“I don’t have anything talk about. Why would I ally with people who don’t believe in me?” She glanced over her shoulder while another shadewolf wandered close enough to notice her, and casually destroyed it with another arcane missile triple-cast.

“Why are you making this all about you?” Paige’s question had such a bite to it that I blinked at her in surprise. “Why are you overreacting? It’s just a weapon, Haley. Why wouldn’t you want a healer or a tank backing you up? You’re risking real death here for the sake of… what? Pride? Don’t do that. Everyone needs help sometimes. Everyone. I don’t know you, but I sure don’t want you to die for something stupid.”

I stared at Paige for a long moment—the pretty, soft-spoken girl’s words had been filled with such sudden passion and conviction that they’d startled me. I wondered what had happened to her to make her react like that.

Haley’s face twitched, and she sniffed and looked away, rattling the rod in her hand. “You know… My whole life. My whole fucking life, it’s been a stupid fucking uphill battle to prove myself. To my parents. To my teachers. And somehow I’m still never quite good enough. Troy got all the praise. Troy got all the accomplishments. Troy always did everything better than me.”

“Troy?” Paige asked.

“My fucking older brother,” Paige muttered, blasting away another shadewolf almost casually. “Always smarter. Always more successful at everything. Always better. My parents never think I’ll be as good as Troy, and they’re always right. But guess what? Mom and dad both wanted boys, and they always expected him to be better. They always supported him more.” Another shadewolf bit the dust. “Maybe if people believed in me, I’d be better. Maybe it just sucked to walk into a brand new group and have the same exact experience thrown in my face all over again. So, yeah, it’s an overreaction. And yeah, maybe this is an over-share. But fuck you all. This is a sore point for me. It needed to be said, and I’m not playing with people who don’t think I’m good enough.”

“Whoa, dude…” Daniel murmured. “Heavy.”

“We don’t doubt your abilities,” Trees said. “Not all of us.”

“You are good enough, Haley,” Paige said.

“I believe in you,” I told her. “I’ve seen you fight.”

“Prove it,” Victor said.

We all turned to stare at him. My head moved so fast it felt like my neck had whiplash.

“Wait, what?” I asked.

“Prove it,” he repeated. “Duel me here and now. Neither of us gets the rod during the duel. Personally, I expect you to be all talk and no game, but I think that about most people. So come at me and prove it. If you can take me to 50% before I take you to 50%, I’ll give you my rod. I want the better player to have it.”

“This is a terrible idea,” Paige said.

“In the middle of the dungeon?” Trees asked.

“Sure,” Victor said. “These wolves are pansies. We’ve been killing them with ease now that we can see ‘em. You guys can watch our backs. And I just care about being efficient. So yeah, maybe I can be an asshole. But if she thinks she’s so fucking great, let’s see her put her money where her mouth is. I’m willing to put my rod on the line. I’m confident in my skills.”

“This is dumb,” I protested. “We don’t have to do this… we definitely don’t have to do this here.”

“I accept,” Haley said. She obliterated another shadewolf and walked up the ramp to the ledge where we were all standing. Her blue-glowing eyes dimmed back to regular blue as whatever spell she had active faded. Then she held the Elohim Rod out to Paige and unslung her maple staff from her back. “Here. Give it to the winner.”

But then I noticed something new in my HUD—Haley was level 2! “Uh, you leveled up, Haley,” I said. “How can this be a fair duel? Victor is still level 1.”

She shrugged. “Haven’t spent any points yet. None of my stats changed.”

“We get points to spend on level up?” Daniel asked. “Cool.”

Paige accepted the rod with a frown. “I still think this is an awful idea.”

I scanned both her and Victor and saw that Haley was right. Now that Paige held the spirit-enhancing rod, Haley’s HP and mana matched Victor’s exactly.

“It’s fine,” Victor said, dusting off his shoulder and hefting his own maple staff. “You ready?”

The rest of us drew back while the two combatants squared off. Victor’s face was neutral, while Haley’s brows were drawn down in anger, but both of them looked determined to win. I kept glancing over my shoulder, looking for danger, but fortunately most of the room’s shadow monsters seemed to be patrolling down in the pit area where Haley had been. I didn’t like this stupid duel any more than Paige did, but I could tell I wouldn’t be able to stop them, either.

“Ready,” Haley said sharply.

Both mages spun into action: Haley hurled a crackling frost bolt at Victor and he whipped out his hand and tossed a hissing bolt of fire back at her. The two projectiles crashed together in a startling flash that made me briefly shield my eyes, but neither one of the players had waited for their bolt to land. Haley charged through the steam of the evaporating missiles, her staff spinning toward Victor’s head, while he coaxed his water elemental pet out of the ground with a quick gesture, never taking his eyes off his opponent. Victor ducked her swing at the last minute with more agility than I would have expected and swiped her feet out from under her with his own staff.

Daniel audibly sucked in a breath as the red-haired girl crashed down hard, taking the brunt of the fall on her elbow, and she winced in pain and scrambled back while kicking at the little water elemental that charged her with its tiny, hammer-like fists windmilling. Despite her retreat, three purple bursts fired off rat-tat-tat from her hand and slammed into Victor’s bulk. She’d been too close for him to have a chance to dodge them, and each one thudded into him with audible force, battering him and knocking him off his feet as well. He landed with a groaning crash but managed to hang onto his staff and roll to his side. They’d both lost only a few health points, but neither of them had much mana left.

Now the water elemental reached Haley, though, dodging around her kicks, and he began to batter the girl in the face just like he’d been doing to the shade wolves. The small humanoid’s fists were only about the size of a toddler’s, but the magic that formed him made them as hard as ice and heavy as stone. Each blow that landed snapped her face to the side, rattled her jaw, and knocked 5-10 HP off.

“I don’t like this…” Paige murmured, her eyes downcast. Trees grumbled something under his breath that sounded like agreement.

Haley rolled away from the elemental, onto her knees at the edge of the ledge, and pulverized him with another three arcane pulses. Under the sustained damage of a triple arcane bolt, the elemental lost cohesion (along with all of his HP) and shuddered into a formless puddle. She touched her split, bleeding lip, and I saw the golden flash of Mend spark and heal her for a small amount. Victor, however, had not remained idle while Haley fought his pet. As Haley healed her lip, he released a second fire bolt at her. She desperately threw herself backwards, tumbling off the ledge and landing with the unmistakable snap of a broken bone in the pit below. Victor leapt down after her without hesitation, his staff raised over his head to strike, and the rest of us rushed to the precipice as Haley choked back a pained scream.

The ten-foot fall had left Haley with two inches of white bone jutting out of a ragged gash above her right ankle, and my HUD read her at 53/100 HP. Despite the wound, she gritted her teeth and raised her staff in time to connect with Victor’s brutal downward swing, and wood met wood in a loud, shuddering crack.

“Victor, enough!” I shouted. The bulky man was at 72/100 HP and breathing hard, but he didn’t stop his assault. He swung again and again, and Haley blocked each blow with grim determination, twisting her staff to the left and right to meet Victor’s at every angle. Two shade wolves, attracted by the players that were now inside of their aggro radius, began to circle closer to the duelists, and Daniel and I both leapt into the pit to intercept them while Paige charged down the ramp. Trees stayed on the precipice and channeled streams of lightning at each wolf. The lightning flashes illuminated the savage staff battle in eerie shades of blue, casting strange shadows over their faces.

Haley managed to deflect one of Victor’s blows and wallop him in the side of his head in a single motion, smacking a few more HP off his total, and then he got really angry. As Daniel and I put down our wolves and Paige raised and dropped glowing hands toward Haley half a dozen times with a sick expression on her face, Victor stomped hard on Haley’s broken ankle and ground his heel down. Haley cried out in pain and dropped her guard for a moment, and Victor brutally struck her across the face with the gnarled end of his rod, knocking a tooth out of her mouth and throwing her sideways. Her health dropped to 38/100 and he stepped back as she crumpled onto the ground, choking sobs through gritted teeth.

I walked up to Victor and knocked him off his feet with a shield bash that cracked his temple and dropped him another 10 HP. “What the fuck, Victor?”

He glared up at me as blood seeped down his face. “I win.”

“Yeah, good fucking job, asshole. Did you have to beat the shit out of her?” I was livid. Dueling was stupid enough, but the savagery I’d watched him beat Haley with made me want to drive the sharp point of my blade right through his fat, ugly face. It took every ounce of will not to do it. I stood over him shaking, blade bared, and I didn’t trust myself to move. Dueling was one thing, but this… this made my blood boil.

“Can I heal them now?” Paige pleaded.

“Give him the rod,” Haley croaked. She spit blood onto the ground and rolled to a seated position, tonguing her missing tooth while she touched her mouth. Her fingers came away red, and she stared at the blood dispassionately.

“What?” Paige asked.

“Give him the fucking rod,” she said again. “I lost.”

“Haley…” I began. Then I shook my head. “Are you fucking kidding me? This guy just beat you within an inch of your life.”

“I agreed to fight him.” She met my eyes, sniffed hard, and shook her head, rubbing the bloodied fingertips off on her robe. “You think I never rough-housed with my brothers? You think I’ve never broken a bone before? Don’t patronize me, Michael.”

Daniel and Trees were silent. Paige quietly walked over to Victor and handed him the Elohim Rod. He accepted it and climbed to his feet while grinning at me through twin streams of drying blood that forked over his brow and leaked down both sides of his misshapen head.

I turned away from him, trying to get a handle on my rage. Deep breaths, Michael. Deep breaths.

“Are you going to fix me up or just stand there, Paige?” Haley asked sharply.

Paige blushed and immediately directed her healing beam at Haley. Haley’s wounds faded away, her ankle mended, and her HP climbed back up to full. Even her missing tooth reappeared. She gathered herself off the ground and stood cradling her staff and testing her mended ankle, refusing to look at any of us. Trees climbed down to stand beside Paige.

“This was so fucked up,” I muttered. “You suck, Victor.”

“I play to win,” he said defiantly. “You think this is the last time you’re gonna watch your girlfriend get the shit kicked out of her in this game? You think the mobs are going to go easy on your bitch of a sister, if she’s even still alive? I have news for you, you weak-kneed, white knight cocksucker: this place isn’t playing around. We’re getting hurt. For real. These are real combat situations.”

“It’s still just a game,” I replied, my voice and fist shaking. I quivered with every bit of restraint I could muster to avoid laying into him with my sword. “A real one, yeah, but… Jesus, dude, do you have to be such a cutthroat shitbag?”

The torches all around us began to flicker as Victor barked a sarcastic laugh. “Yeah. You know why? This isn’t just a game. Whatever this place really is, we’re at war. You heard the golden-skinned dude. And these girls?” He pointed at Paige and Haley, and after a moment’s hesitation indicated Trees too. “They’re soldiers, right along with the rest of us. Soldiers die. Soldiers get hurt. Soldiers need to fall in line, and sometimes they need the shit kicked out of them to save their lives. Your little girlfriend gets it. Why don’t you?”

“You talk a whole fucking lot,” Haley spat, her eyes suddenly blazing. “Can we just go back, now? He beat me. Whatever. But that doesn’t mean I need to listen to him ramble.”

“Guys?” Daniel asked.

“Yeah, we can go back,” I muttered, forcing my rage down. He’s a troll. I’m not going to pound this creep into the ground. I’m not. I’m not. I could, but it wouldn’t be helpful. “I hope your rod was worth it, Victor.”

Paige reluctantly healed Victor too, and he wiped the blood off his face with his sleeve and grinned at Haley.

The torches flickered harder, and the breeze coming from the tunnels picked up enough speed to make a rushing, whistling noise all around us.

“Hey, guys…” Daniel repeated. He pointed to the center of the pit, eyes wide.

I turned around and sucked in a sharp breath, my rage at Victor momentarily forgotten. A quickly growing mass of darkness simmered and bubbled in the middle of the wide, open space, illuminated by Paige’s light spell in the same matte black coloring as the shade wolves. All of the silent shade wolves were running toward it and leaping into the mass, and it absorbed each of them as they came, growing larger and gnarlier each time. Thick, writhing tentacles began to extend from the creature, and they strained eagerly to reach us. Everyone took two steps back.

“Time to go,” I muttered.

“Problem!” Trees called. He pointed to a dark, solid wall of semi-opaque film that had just formed to block off the ramp, blending seamlessly with the ten foot wall around us. He poked it to illustrate that it was solid and frowned unhappily.

With the exit walled off, I realized we must have triggered some kind of boss fight. We all turned back to face the blob that had grown to be almost six feet in diameter and four feet high. Paige raised her staff and looked at me nervously while Victor cursed. Haley’s jaw tightened. Daniel drew his weapons again, and Trees hastily cast bark-skin on the group.

Two huge, glowing eyes opened at the center of the black, squirming mass, and a ragged gash suddenly split it at the base and revealed two sets of sharp, matte-black teeth. It released a bone-chilling roar that made my heart leap into my throat as it snapped and waggled the thickening tentacles that were still sprouting all over its body. Apparently this horrifying creature wasn’t as silent as the wolves that fed it.

“What do we do now?” Paige whispered hoarsely.

I raised my shield and stepped forward. “We fight it.”