1

When Brett extended his hand into the glitch, the pain had, of course, been quite terrible. But he soon realized it was the best thing that could ever happen to him. Initially, he’d thought the mass was feeding off of him, but in the end, they had fed each other. As the glitch expanded and the streams of black ichor infiltrated his bloodstream, he felt his body transform, becoming stronger. His mental acuity surged and, later, when he reviewed his stats, he would discover that his experience points had jumped 300 points.

“Level 22,” he muttered happily. He had 48 attribute points to distribute as well. He dropped them into strength, constitution, dexterity, and endurance.

His vision had also changed. At first, it seemed to have diminished as his field of vision receded. A swirling mass of blacks and reds was all he could see in his blurred peripheral vision. But the voice in the black glitch had told him to ignore that and directed him to look through the tower. Brett was confused, unsure of how to proceed. His new master informed him it had gifted him an ability.

So, Brett concentrated on the tower’s exterior wall. After several minutes, he gasped. His vision burrowed through the brick. He passed through and observed every fine detail, from the brick’s small air bubbles and grains of sand to speckles of quartz. His vision had advanced past the wall, and he viewed the tower’s inner courtyard for the very first time. Brett was thrilled with the new ability, and in his excitement, he made a critical mistake.

“Thank you, Mr. Har—”

Indescribable pain blasted through his body as he soared thirty feet above the shore. The clothes and armor were stripped from his body by an invisible force. Spontaneously, lacerations broke open throughout his body. He saw his blood flowing in crooked lines toward the glitch.

“I’m sorry! Please! I’m sorry,” Brett cried, but his blood continued to drain in horizontal streams into the black void. He became lightheaded and realized he was close to losing consciousness. “I… I’ll never cuh… call you that… again,” he sputtered. Suddenly, gravity took hold of him again. His body crashed violently against the rocks. More pain surged through his tortured body, but Brett barely registered it.

As he passed out, he saw long red tendrils reach for him from the glitch.

2

Damon was the first to go through the portal leading to the fifth room, and he realized with disgust that they were in the basement again. His leather boots sank slowly into the wet mud. Like the other basement room, this one was dark. He cast Firefly, and the spell appeared slightly ahead of him.

With the other members entering behind him, Damon scanned the room. “It’s empty,” he muttered. All he could see was another treasure chest. Only this one was closed. Then he heard a rumbling noise, and the wet mud started rippling. As Ethan and Zack lined up alongside him, he watched the mud bulge, forming a small hill.

Long, sharp claws pushed up from the ground, shoving the earth away and creating a hole in the floor. The claws grabbed both sides of the excavation and allowed a creature with a long tubular neck to peer over the crater. Its eyes, which were mounted on top of its neck, saw the orcs standing by the portal.

The creature snorted as it shuffled out of the hole and ambled toward them. Its face was shaped like a starfish, but this one had more prongs that wiggled like small tentacles. Creature Description appeared in Damon’s vision.

STAR-NOSED MOLE (Level 2)

HP: 40

MP: 0

STRENGTH: 8

CONSTITUTION: 4

DEXTERITY: 7

INTELLIGENCE: 1

WISDOM: 1

XP: 21

DESCRIPTION: Oversized, mud-slurping rodent.

The size of a small pig, the mole continued its wobbling pace toward the orcs. Damon looked at Zack. “I think these might be easier than the wolves,” he commented sarcastically.

The first mole reached them. It hissed with a mouth that opened from the center of its starfish appendages, displaying a circular row of teeth. Damon saw four other moles crawling out of various holes in the ground.

Ethan stepped forward and sliced the approaching mole down the middle with his falchion sword. Its body thumped silently into the mud.

“Now this is what grinding should be like,” Harper said from behind them. “Mindless, easy kills. No emotional attachments.”

Harper convinced Janna, despite her aversion to killing, to take down two moles with her flamberge sword. Harper and Zack finished the other two. The XP raised Janna to level 14 and, after consulting with Harper, she dropped her 8 attribute points into intelligence. Ethan’s XP brought him to level 15, and he dropped his 4 points into endurance. Zack got bumped to 8, and he deposited his 4 points into endurance as well. Finally, Harper rose to level 11, and she dropped her points into constitution. She would have normally maxed out her magic stats, intelligence and wisdom. But her recent experiences made her gun-shy, and she wanted to increase her HP as much as possible.

“So, what’s in the chest?” Damon asked as he strode to the large treasure chest propped against the far wall.

Harper had a sudden intuition. “No, Damon. Wai—”

He glanced back at Harper as he continued toward the chest. He didn’t see the eyes that bulged from the top of the chest. But he felt the teeth that clamped onto his extended arm.

3

As pain steamrolled through his arm, Damon screamed. He looked back at the chest. Green eyes studied him from atop the chest while the monster’s teeth sawed side to side, grinding into his forearm. It was like something out of a Brothers Grimm book. The opening of the chest became an enormous mouth lined with triangular teeth. Much too late, Creature Description appeared in his vision.

CHEST MIMIC (Level 6)

HP: 79

MP: 42

STRENGTH: 11

CONSTITUTION: 7

DEXTERITY: 3

INTELLIGENCE: 4

WISDOM: 23

XP: 55

DESCRIPTION: Magical creature that can mimic treasure chests.

The Chest Mimic hopped two feet into the air and chomped down further onto Damon’s right arm, reaching above the elbow. Blood squirted through its lattice of razor teeth. Damon collapsed to the mud.

Harper sprinted forward with a half-charged Fire Bullet and launched it at the mimic. The fireball collided with an invisible spherical barrier that flashed green on impact. The fire from the spell overflowed in every direction around the protective globe, and Damon saw a wave of flames headed his way. He closed his eyes at the last instant and felt the fire burn his hair and beard away.

The teammates converged around Damon and the mimic. Lying on the ground with his blood spilling onto the mud, the orc general saw spells slam into the mimic’s shield. A purple acid shot, a green poisonous orb, a steady stream of fire. With each shot, he noticed that the round barrier reduced in size. He hoped Harper was seeing the same thing.

Arrows, spears, and swords passed through the barrier, not repelled by the magic shield, but they were mostly ineffective against the creature’s metal-and-wood casing. Zack swung his axe and chopped off some wood, but the shrapnel disappeared before it touched the ground and the damaged section grew back instantly.

Damon saw white stars burst across his vision, and the surrounding commotion seemed quite distant now. As he continued to lose blood and grew light headed and cold, he watched his teammates battling against the mimic’s impenetrable force field. The monster opened its mouth slightly, for just a moment, then chomped on Damon’s arm again, shattering his bones. As Damon passed out, the last image he saw was the wild, voracious eyes of the beast peering down at him.

4

After Harper’s spell burned off Damon’s hair, she cleared a path for the casters. Any runoff from the spells would skip off the mimic’s barrier to the solid wall behind it. The hunters and orcs attacked from the side, throwing everything they had at the monster. Harper saw the creature’s barrier reducing from the onslaught and kept casting Fire Scorch at the shield, hoping the monster’s mana would deplete. Below the fray, Damon was unconscious and bleeding profusely.

Suddenly, she heard a familiar ethereal chanting. Oh, no! Not the Dryads too! Amid the panic, an unexpected rush of sadness overwhelmed her. But the music was not coming from the Dryads.

Emma stepped forward, raising her arms and weaving the Song of Distraction.

Harper watched in disbelieving gratification as the mimic stopped crunching on Damon’s arm. Atop the chest, its eyes glazed over. Instantly, the green barrier disappeared. The flames from her scorch spell ignited on the chest’s wood.

She heard a piercing screech, and the treasure chest illusion blinked away to reveal a small goblin-like creature. It looked around at them worriedly, realizing it was exposed.

Janna lunged forward and buried her sword in the creature’s small torso, killing it immediately. The team gazed at her, surprised. Janna grunted. “I know, I know, but that thing deserved to die.”

5

Janna gained 55 XP from the mimic kill, which bumped her a couple of levels. Harper asked her to place her 8 attribute points into intelligence and wisdom.

Meanwhile, the bone above Damon’s elbow had snapped and protruded through his skin. Zack squeamishly helped Janna reset the bone. Damon moaned painfully but didn’t regain consciousness. The nurse pulled canvas from her inventory and tied a tourniquet around his shoulder. They wrapped more canvas around his mangled arm, splinting it with Harper’s short baselard. As she cast Intermediate Heal, the nurse turned to Emma. “What in the world ever made you think of using the distraction spell?”

Emma shrugged. “I tried everything else.”

An Epiphany cloud had risen from the mimic’s dead body, and Harper extended her palm into it.

Congratulations, Harper! You have found an Epiphany that contains the spell: Mana Reject. This spell will create a protective barrier around your target of choice, rejecting the effects of attacking spells! Certain advanced creatures will be able to counter Mana Reject. Ranked progressive and available to Mages only, so tell all your friends. Mana Reject will cost you 2.5 MP every second, and has a cooldown rate of 15 seconds and a range of 100 meters. Don’t be a social reject, be a Mana Reject!

Harper asked Zack and Ethan to lift Damon out of the mud. They moved Damon’s splinted arm across his torso. Zack held it in place while the two orcs lifted him gingerly.

“Take him back to room four,” Harper said.

Zack gazed at her, confused. “But we haven’t tried carrying a person through a portal yet. How do we know he won’t be split in two or something?”

“I know,” Harper replied, “but he needs to get out of here. God only knows what diseases he’ll catch in all that filth.” She explained it had worked with every other MMORPG she had ever played.

The orcs looked at her doubtfully but turned toward the portal with a glum expression. They breathed a sigh of relief, along with Harper, when Damon went through the portal in one piece.

6

When Brett woke up, he could sense he was no longer in mortal danger. He peered down at his body. I’m still naked, he thought, and felt an instant chill. A burst of wind swooped past him and he started shivering.

His body screamed painfully as he sat up. He forced himself to a tentative standing position. His knees were shaking. He searched the area for his clothes and armor. They were there, at the base of the tower. He staggered to the massive stone steps, half-expecting his former teammates would come strolling out. They would laugh at him, of course.

Brett reached the site and grabbed his canvas undergarments. When he finished dressing, he walked toward the forest, where the wolves were waiting for him. He gave the glitch a wide berth, wary of the thing that had attacked him.

As he stepped into the river, the voice called to him. “Stop.”

Even though the voice sounded benevolent, Brett still flinched.

“Come closer,” it commanded.

Brett stood frozen with his foot in the icy water, afraid to move. He looked fearfully at the void.

Don’t make me ask you again, the being telepathed.

The battered nurse approached the black glitch. “I’m sorry. I’ll never—”

“The man you named is gone forever,” it declared. Then the deep voice imparted its vast knowledge of the new world. It spoke of metamorphosis, of rebirth and forces that hearkened back to the very existence of life. Of the primordial soup and powers long forgotten. Brett listened studiously, and when the being was finished, he thanked it and asked for its name.

A lengthy pause followed, and Brett thought his master wouldn’t answer. Then, finally, the voice uttered one word. “Wendigo.”

Brett had never heard the term, but he didn’t ask for clarification. He didn’t want to provoke its anger again. Still, the name danced on the outskirts of his consciousness like an unfulfilled wish.

“Go now,” the Wendigo ordered. “They will be coming back out.”

Brett looked at the tower entrance, startled. “Thank you, master,” he whispered, then splashed through the river, dashing toward the forest on the opposite side.