Maya didn’t have time to react before everyone else sprang into motion.

Circe shouted and jumped back, throwing her arm across her face to shield herself from the sudden onslaught of stone fragments.

Farrison stepped forward, already casting. A shell of stone formed in front of him just in time to block most of the flying shards, but this was no ordinary explosion. The flying stone projectiles seemed to be actually gaining speed as they continued to ricochet around the corridor, rebounding and splintering, chipping more pieces off from the walls they impacted.

Every second, the danger area expanded nearer.

"Back," Circe ordered, as Farrison's shield began to falter.

Circe stepped forward and added her own shield between him and the flurry of deadly stone projectiles. Still, some shards bounced at the right angle to get behind her, and each time they hit the floor or ceiling they propagated more, beginning to fill in between the first two and the rest.

“RUN!” shouted Farrison. “Why aren’t you all running? Anyone have ice?”

"I do!" Xyborg began throwing blasts of ice at each shard as it neared them, knocking them to the ground before they could propagate. "But I can't keep this up long, there are way too many."

Maya hesitated, her mind racing and frozen at once. She had to be able to do something!

"It's fine, just get out of here," Circe said. Her shield began crumbling.

"You go, I'll stay." Farrison ordered. He pushed ahead of Circe, his own shield snapping back into place.

"What? But you were the most opposed to this idea in the first place!" Xyborg protested.

"No, I'm opposed to being imprisoned. Dying in a dungeon isn't the same thing at all. I'll respawn and be fine. But if you're going to have even a chance of surviving Domitius, you need Circe. Now stop arguing and run!"

"I'll see you later," Circe said, and retreated. Xyborg knocked a few more shards out of the air in front of her to clear her path back to the rest of the group.

"I'm taking over navigation," Circe said, pushing her way to the front as she ran. “Hurry!”

That did it. Maya fell in with the others, only glancing back once to see Farrison holding back the trap as it slowly closed in around him.

They ran. The occasional stone projectile still bounced and sliced its way toward them, but Farrison was holding the majority of them. Xyborg brought up the rear to knock out any that came too close. They were steadily outpacing the trap's remnants, but Maya wasn't sure how long it would be before they filled the entire series of tunnels.

"Will this be safe?" Maya asked, as they started to slow down.

"Now you ask?" Alwyn sounded incredulous. "Wasn't this all your idea?"

"Well, yes, but it was a straight corridor before. I don't know where the traps and maze came from. They weren't here before—"

"Shut up. I really don't care right now. We had to leave Farrison behind. You don’t get to talk right now."

Maya sighed and shut up. She wanted to protest, to defend herself, but really ... what could she say? She had been stupid, hadn't realized that once Judah realized someone other than himself and Domitius had access to their back door .... well, she hadn't realized that he could add passages and traps like this, but she supposed it made sense. Player housing of whatever type doubtless had a lot of tools to create cool stuff, and she hadn't looked into it sufficiently to know what it could or couldn't do.

She just had to stop assuming that things would stay the same, that no one would react to what she did. That she was the only person making plans and trying to do things.

Something had to give. It still felt crazy to be planning to go up against Domitius and the mysterious other player who didn't show up anywhere, but seemed somehow above him. The master of the soulbinder, Judah was an insidious threat that she couldn't afford to discount.

Domitius was straightforward and easy to work around or with. She knew enough about what he wanted, what he was willing to do, and what resources he had to do it with. It would be hard, impossible perhaps, but at least she knew what she was dealing with. Judah? That was a whole other thing entirely. She knew nothing about him.

They passed several more passages before she remembered that she'd been planning to write down and map out the trip. She didn't want to fall behind on her archiving. Guh. She'd been so distracted with her self-recrimination and musing she hadn't been paying attention to where they ere going.

Following others was relaxing, but dangerous. She couldn't afford to lose focus now.

"Can I go off ahead?" she asked. "Just to scout. I have high agility."

"No. I'm sorry, but if anyone's going to be scouting it won't be you. I'm beginning to agree with Farrison here."

Maya shrugged, as Systerian stepped forward to volunteer. He ran off ahead, his Spark disappearing into the dimness. Maya wanted to improve her map, but everything was already conspiring to make her seem like the villain here, she didn't want to push her luck by wandering off alone.

They walked on another several minutes in silence, before Systerian came running back.

"There's something up ahead," he whispered. "Big, asleep, in its own cave. I want to say it's a slime dragon? but I don't know if that's a thing."

"I've never heard of one. But we should probably avoid it. Any side passages?" Kurod asked.

"Not before the cavern. We'd have to backtrack to the last branching."

"Then let's do that. Did you still want to scout ahead?"

"Sure." Systerian disappeared into stealth, but his Spark remained visible as he sprinted off back the way they'd just come. Kurod took the lead now as they turned and headed that way as well.

Maya started a new map, since the old one was doomed to inaccuracy, starting with 'slime dragon' cave and drawing a passage out from there to indicate their current route.

They spent another twenty minutes wandering the tunnels, and tis time Maya managed to stay focused on her map and not let her thoughts wander. They found another trap, but this one Systerian had warned them about before they stumbled into it so they were able to backtrack and try another route.

Maya frowned as they reached another dead end. There were more dead ends than anything else, and they were forced to backtrack farther and farther to find anything passable. She'd stopped trying to use her luck to direct them, since the others wouldn't listen to her anyway.

"Are we sure they didn't just completely block off access from this direction entirely?" Venix asked quietly.

"I don't know. It seems plausible. But I doubt they'd make a shortcut and then close it up just because of me. I would have expected maybe a few more guards, not a whole labyrinth."

"Is it a delaying tactic?"

Maya froze. "You're right, it could be. But how would they know we were coming?"

"Another dragon?" Systerian reported, running back from his latest scouting run. "Or perhaps the same one. Are we going in circles?"

Maya checked her map. "It can't be the same one, we're a long way from there."

"This tunnel goes downward for a while first, then curves around," Systerian said. "It might be the same."

Maya realized that she wasn't actually tracking the direction they were going, small curves in the tunnels would evade her notice. And her minimap wasn't any use, it didn't include the area at all.

"It could be," she conceded. "Was anyone else tracking our location?"

Kurod and Circe both nodded.

Xyborg shrugged. "Just pick a wall and follow it. Isn't that the way to do it?"

"Only sometimes," Circe said. "It doesn't matter. We should kill it and see what's on the other side. It makes more sense as a guardian than as a trap."

"Alright, then we're going to need a battle plan," Kurod said. "I have the base spells and the Wind set. You?"

"Base, plus wind, fire, and frost area blast spells," Maya said.

The others listed off their spells, many of which Maya hadn't heard of, and definitely wanted to ask about when they had time.

"Okay. Sys, you said it was a slime dragon?"

He shrugged. "Or something like that. I don't know exactly what to call it. It's really big, really gooey, and has two heads."

"Oh, that changes things," Kurod said. "Nature hydra?"

"Sounds like it,” answered Circe. “Fire and physical damage are our best bets. It's immune to plain magic and has high resistance to cold."

"I can hold Heart of Magma for over a minute if I have someone to hold aggro."

"Then let's kill a dragon."

“I don’t think we should,” Maya said. The moment they stepped toward the room, the concern echoes that she’d begun to associate with luck warnings had gone crazy. “It’s dangerous.”

“We lost Farrison to a stenjin corridor trap. Of course it’s dangerous. Stealth.”

They entered the chamber carefully, everyone in stealth to the extent they could be in stealth, and stared up at the magnificent, disgusting creature that somehow had materialized between the last time Maya visited and now.

The hydra sat in a swamp, the kind of algae-covered stagnant swamp that you'd have to wade through with it clinging and pressing in, water as thick as mud, stench like dying vegetation.

Islands dotted the room, each large enough for a single person to stand, islands of matted vines and twisted roots that looked slick and uneven. They would be footing, but not steady or secure. Better than standing waist-deep in swamp, but not safe by any means.

And in the center, a beam of yellow-green light illuminating it from far above, stood the hydra. Well, sat. It was curled up, looking very lizard-like, a sinuous tail spiked with stegosaurus-like plates, and Maya immediately saw why Sys would have thought it must be a dragon. Slick green skin gleamed under a thick layer of gelatinous slime.

The whole thing felt far too planned. It had to be a trap. She couldn't believe it was anything else. There was no way this wasn't a deliberate room intended to present like a boss fight.

It would play right into players' anticipation, lull them into a false sense of security. Oh, it's just a boss room, we have to beat the slime hydra to get past.

She didn't know what else to do, though. If it was a gatekeeper, then pointing out that it could be a trap would only raise suspicions more.

But would it really be better to stand by?

"This feels like a trap," Maya blurted, before she could talk herself out of it. "I don't like it."

"Neither do I," whispered Kurod, "but what choice do we have?"

"I thought we were going for Domitius, not a stupid dungeon!" Xyborg burst out. "Can we just get on with it? If this is what we're doing, then we're wasting time."

The hydra raised its heads, on long sinuous necks that uncoiled to an absurd length, breath hissing out as he stared around at the empty room. One claw slid forward, touching the water and sending sluggish ripples across its surface.

No one moved.

The hydra snorted again, then lay back down, watching with half-closed eyes for another minute, then returned to its slumber.

Kurod and Alwyn slipped carefully into the water, which turned out to be deeper than Maya had expected, reaching nearly to their shoulders. They walked around the edge of the cavern, while Circe and Xyborg did the same in the opposite direction, unseen but for the faintest ripples of their careful movement.

Maya stayed at the room's entrance, with Venix and Systerian on either side. She'd swapped out her equipment for her most energy-boosting items, so she had a total energy pool of 152. Then she waited another half-minute, until the others had found islands to climb upon.

Then Kurod slipped, his foot splashing back down into the swamp.

There was no time to react. The hydra’s tail lashed out to slap Kurod even further off-balance. He fell full-body into the stagnant slime, disappearing from view, as the hydra rose with a hissing snarl.

Maya dropped out of stealth and into Heart of Magma stance, beginning the chargeup sequence. But she knew it was too late. They'd completely lost any element of surprise.

Circe must have started already; before Maya’s activation was half finished, balls of magma began pounding into the hydra’s back.

The moment the first attack landed, Maya’s interface expanded to show health bars for everyone in the party, as well as the hydra.

“Official boss fight?” Systerian shouted. “What level is this zone? I don’t think we’ll survive.”

The hydra lunged toward Alwyn, then raised both its heads and spat a ball of slime. Alwyn tried to evade, but there wasn’t time. His health bar dropped drastically.

Kurod crawled out of the swamp and onto his tiny root island, then began firing spells into the hydra.

Maya still hadn’t finished the charge sequence for Heart of Magma before the hydra abruptly turned and lunged for Circe. Her barrage had hardly changed its health bar, but she’d done enough damage to draw aggro.

Xyborg leapt into action, throwing himself between Circe and the Hydra. He started casting small, sharp spells that Maya didn't recognize, at least from this distance. She was too focused on getting her own Heart of Magma up and running. Circe continued casting until the last second, when the hydra's head roared right into her face and pushed her off her island and into the swamp with a reduction of her health bar.

At least Circe still had most of hers though. Xyborg took more damage from the area attack proportionally, dropping him by almost a third of his total.

"There isn't enough time to bring it down, we have to run!" Kurod shouted. He wasn't bothering with any long chargeup spells either, just snapping off quick attacks as fast as he could.

"Sys, find an exit! If we can get through without fighting--"

Systerian shook his head. "The exit is sealed. I think we have to fight."

"Well, crap," muttered Venix. "At least it's just a dungeon boss."

"That is preferable to being enslaved by fellow players, yes," Maya muttered. "But still not preferable." She finally started throwing balls of magma into the hydra, one every second, but she knew it wouldn't be enough to draw aggro. Circe and Kurod traded that back and forth between them, but they were still dropping. They may have huge health pools compared to the lower level players, but they didn't have enough. The hydra still had 95% of its health and they were both below half.

"We're going to wipe," Kurod said. "Can we retreat back the way we came?"

Maya glanced behind her. "Nope."

"Then see you all at the leypillar to try again," Xyborg said. "We're not giving up."

"Right. Good plan. Just avoid this room in future."

"I doubt we'll be able to find a way in without going through it," Systerian said. "You know how dungeons work."

"But this isn't supposed to be a dungeon!" Maya protested. "It's just a backdoor into Domitius's base."

"This is an actual boss fight," Kurod pointed out. "Official, health bars and everything. Not a back door. Maybe someone else had already cleared it last time you were here, but it's definitely a dungeon."

Maya really thought she would have noticed if she were walking through a solved dungeon; it had been a straight underground tunnel that just went from the base to the leypillar room. Not a series of rooms, nothing like that. Straight tunnel. But things were obviously different now, so how could she really continue to protest?

"We should check to see which ones are active now that weren't--" Kurod's last chunk of health vanished as the hydra spat two globs of acidic slime onto him, and he disappeared mid-sentence.

Echoes of distant laughter rang through the room, a maniacal cackle entirely lacking in sanity.

For the first time, the boss turned its attention to Maya. She felt the beginnings of panic, her luck strongly suggesting that she run, but she stayed in stance and forced her hands to continue through the throwing motions for Heart of Magma. It burned through her energy at a steady rate, but she had to finish before it was too late. Better to run out of energy first than to die whil eshe still could have done some damage.

Instead of spitting or biting, it lunged forward and stomped down on the ledge where she stood. The movement was too fast for Systerian or Venix to dodge, but Maya's high agility and momentum allowed her to duck back just in time. The other two fell off the ledge and into the swamp, health bars dipping. Then the hydra stood poised, one foot on each of three islands, the fourth on the ledge, raised its heads high up above, and began a slow gurgling inhalatino that grew louder and higher in pitch.

Maya backed away until she was up against the door that had closed behind them upon entry. Since her evasion had broken her casting stance anyway, she no longer had to stay in place.

She took a page out of Kurod's book and didn't bother retaking the casting stance, firing off Flaem Words instead as fast as she could.

“Get away from it!” Circe shouted. “This is a big attack, get as far away as you can!”

Maya couldn’t get any further away without going past it and wading through the swamp. She highly doubted she would be able to make a wider gap between them in the time remaining.

"How long?"

"I don't know, I've never fought one before, but I've heard of it. Seconds?" Circe had jumped for another island, missed, and was wading further away from the humming, gurgling hydra.

Maya didn't want to stay this close, but before she could make up her mind to move it was too late. The hydra stopped inhaling. It coughed, then exhaled in a long hissing breath that went on and on. Billowing yellow fog flowed out, enveloping the area around the hydra in a thick miasma. It easily reached to Maya, no more than a dozen feet from the hydra's front claw. She immediately felt unwell, health steadily sliding downward, like an inverse of regen.

She tried to cast another Flame Word, but breathing in just made her cough on the sharpness of the hydra's fog, and she couldn't get the breath-based spell to work right. She switched to Magestrike and got off two shots before her health reached nothing.

Waiting. Hurt.

Her lockout period had increased along with her tier upgrade. She spent three unbearably long minutes with her thoughts running around in increasingly tight circles, wondering if there were anything they could do.

This wasn't like the Crimson Flame dungeon at all. That had been hard, crazy, but completely possible. This hydra? They'd all thrown everything they could at it and it still seemed hardly injured. It had already taken out half the team, assuming Sys and Venix hadn't escaped its deadly breath special move. Circe wouldn't last long.

Even if she managed to do as much more damage as they'd all done combined, it would still have close to 90% of its total!

This was a whole other level of boss fight.