1

Damon’s boots plunged through four feet of brown water, another foot of thick mud before landing onto the limestone surface of the dungeon floor. He shot a glance at the flowers on the wall, but they remained stagnant. He braced his body against the large brick wall.

“Okay, Zack. You’re next,” he yelled up and his fellow Marine slipped off the edge of the tunnel. As the teammates continued after him, the two orcs caught them to soften their landing.

Once Damon had eased the last of the healers, Rachel, into the room, the yellow flowers on the wall suddenly attacked. He saw it as just a blur of movement before he was knocked down, crashing into the murky water and taking the blonde-haired zoologist with him.

In the brief second he was submerged, he heard his teammates’ muffled screams. Damon burst back up again, hauling Rachel with him. Long, snake-like appendages fluttered in the room, striking at the members with their long teeth. Damon traced one of the green shoots back to its point of origin and his Creature Description details appeared.

WALLFLOWER (Level 19)

HP: 246

MP: 138

STRENGTH: 33

CONSTITUTION: 24

DEXTERITY: 78

INTELLIGENCE: 13

WISDOM: 14

XP: 134

DESCRIPTION: In the dance of life, don’t keep an eye on these bystanders.

Above the green appendage that had sprung out of the flower’s bulb, Damon saw a small set of reptilian eyes on one yellow petal. They looked directly at him. Instantly, the green shoot rocketed toward his face. The top half of its jaw clanged harmlessly against his steel helmet, but its bottom teeth gouged into his eyebrow. Blood washed over his left eye, tinting his vision red. Nearby, he heard Jackson scream. He heard metal clanks and knew that the orcs were using their shields to deflect the attacks.

Yells and screams reached a cacophony in the large chamber, but Harper shouted above them all. “Don’t look at them. They’ll rip your eyes out!”

Damon wiped the blood from his eyes and felt his brow hanging like a flap. It pulled along his forearm, and the flesh stretched painfully. Through the crimson veil of his blood, he saw the green strikers dancing and circling in the room, waiting to attack. A darkened blur moved toward him, and he raised his sword before realizing it was Zahra.

She placed dry canvas against his open wound. “Keep pressing on this—and come with me.”

The healer led him to center of the room, where the teammates were huddled together. The orcs stayed on the perimeter, creating a barrier with their shields. As Zahra and Damon reached them, they opened their barricade to let them in.

2

Jackson was the only orc not contributing to the shield barrier. He sat in the center of the huddle, up to his shoulders in water, screaming agonizingly. Both of his hands covered his left eye, but Zahra had already seen the damage. The southerner’s mangled eyeball floated just outside their huddle.

Once she and Damon entered the circle, the nurse glanced at the women in the group. “I need your bras. They’re the only dry clothing left in this room, and I need to pack Jackson’s eye socket.”

The women didn’t argue. They awkwardly pulled the canvas material out from under their armor. Zahra compressed Jackson’s wound with the fabric and handed the rest to Angie. “You have the slots open in your inventory.”

The veteran Marine gaped at the healer, wondering how she knew.

Once all the members were protected by the orcs’ shields, the wallflowers became less aggressive, attacking their defenses only sporadically. Damon continued to press the cloth against his wound until his bleeding finally stopped, but his brow throbbed like a toothache. He noticed that Jordan also had a wound near his eye.

The orc general turned to Harper. “Any ideas?”

“Well, we can’t look directly at them. That’s when they attack our…”

“Yes, yes. I know. They go for our eyes,” he interrupted impatiently. “So how do we kill them if we can’t look at them?”

Under the amber light of the Fire Glow spells, the veteran mage scowled at him and didn’t answer. She turned to the wall and launched her first spell, Dirt Storm. A swirling cloud of dirt appeared between them and the mobs. The flower’s appendages started striking at the brown cloud as if it were a living being.

“This will impair their vision,” Harper said, “but we still shouldn’t look at them.”

She cast Mana Flash next. The red beam exploded out from their huddle, widening as it sped toward the wall. She crouched and peeked through a small gap in the barricade to see if the spell worked. As she expected, the flash drained their mana, but the monsters’ HP was unaffected. However, the wallflowers screeched and started attacking their formation more vigorously. Metallic noises rained down on them as the sharp teeth snapped at their shields.

“That didn’t work,” she said.

“It sure sounds like it worked,” Zack grunted as he kept his shield canted at an angle to protect the side and the top of their huddle.

Harper shook her head. “I want to try Acid Fly next,” she yelled over Jackson’s moans before turning to the two orcs closest to the wall, Zack and Armando. “I need you to create a small opening to allow the fly through.”

They nodded and Harper cast the spell. A purple light sparkled from her hand, and on the tail of it, an oversized, cartoonish bug appeared. Acid flowed from its proboscis, which sizzled as it dripped into the murky water.

Harper gazed at the two orcs. “Okay. Tip your shields enough to make a small opening, just above the water.”

They did, and the veteran mage guided the insect out of the barricade. The orcs closed the opening. She watched the fly, directing it through Dirt Storm toward the first wallflower. She rubbed the insect against the bulb and waited for the purple acid to work.

The flower’s appendage started shaking as the corrosive liquid burned through its base. The green stalk wilted then completely fell off, landing in the brown water like a dead reed. The wallflowers didn’t attack the fly but continued their attacks on the shield barrier.

She smeared acid onto a second flower and got the same result. The attacking appendage flopped onto the surface. She counted the rest of the mobs. There were another ten to go. A dozen flowers, she thought. How typical.

Harper spent the next twenty minutes eliminating the floral adversaries. When she got to the final mob, the orcs stood straight, relieving the pressure that had built in their quads from a half-hour of squatting. The teammates remained behind their shields but had only the one monster to worry about now.

Harper turned Dirt Storm off as she wiped out the last wallflower. As the last green stalk fell into the water, Zack looked up at the sculpture in the ceiling, waiting for it to change. Then the floor underneath them gave way.

3

In the instant before he slipped in the rapidly draining water, Zack saw the face in the ceiling look at them. Its eyes glowed turquoise as its mouth opened, spewing out clumps of thick mud. Then the orc was on his back, driven by the current toward the center of the room, which had suddenly gaped open. Five feet of water poured over the rim of an opening that extended the width of the floor.

Zack dug in his heels against the slick floor that still remained in place. It halted his momentum slightly. Rachel sailed past him and, behind her, Jackson tumbled toward the stone mouth in the center of the floor.

“Hammer, help me,” Jackson cried, but his buddy was against the wall on the other side of the room, next to Thao.

Zack shot his arm out and snagged Rachel’s leather brigandine armor. He pulled her in as he backtracked against the current. Zack recognized Harper’s Battering Ram spell as seven vines shot past his head, entwining into one green limb which flew toward the southerner. He heard Harper scream, “Jackson! Grab hold of the vines!”

As the Alabama orc teetered on the mouth’s edge, he grasped at the vines. His fingers wrapped around the thick green limb and his arm hyperextended as the current and gravity pulled him. With his waist dangling over the edge of the precipice, the floor suddenly moved again. The limestone platforms raced toward the center, blowing the members off their feet. It closed on the vulnerable orc, who lost his grip on the vines. Audible pops rang out through the chamber as the edges of the floor broke through his bones and his blood spewed across the slick surface. While his teammates screamed, Jackson’s torso bounced across the mud-smeared limestone floor, landing on its back. Dark blood gushed from his slack-jawed mouth as his dead eyes stared blankly at the face on the ceiling.

4

“No,” Hammer screamed as he raced to his fallen friend, but Harper jumped in front of him, trying to spare him from the trauma. He pushed her aside as the stone mouth in the floor began to open again. From his left, Zack tackled him, stopping his progress. Hammer looked over his shoulder at the growing chasm. As the mouth opened, the stone slabs they were lying on slid toward the walls.

“Everyone, up against the wall,” Harper shouted.

As Hammer and Zack rose to their feet, the other teammates scurried to the perimeter of the room. The stone platforms moved under their boots, past the physical boundaries of the walls. The two orcs staggered to the wall. Behind them, Jackson’s torso rolled in the opposite direction, toward the mouth.

“My… my friend,” Hammer moaned. He looked on miserably as the torso dropped into the chasm, leaving a wide pool of dark blood smeared across the floor.

The limestone mouth slammed shut, knocking the team onto their backs again. They ran frantically back to the wall, but the mouth did not open again.

5

As they braced against the wet bricks, Harper looked at the beast that had swallowed Jackson and her Creature Description details came up.

CRUSHER (Level 62)

HP: 1249

MP: 2

STRENGTH: 799

CONSTITUTION: 124

DEXTERITY: 10

INTELLIGENCE: 1

WISDOM: 5

XP: 437

DESCRIPTION: Watch out for this near-invincible creature with a voracious appetite.

“So, I guess we don’t have to kill this thing,” Harper said over Thao, Rachel, and Sierra’s sobs. She pointed at the sculpture in the ceiling. “The second floor is opened.” They gazed up at the stone face. Its turquoise eyes still tracked their movement. Water poured in around the edges of its opened mouth.

“So… so how do we g-get up there?” Hammer asked as he wiped tears from his eyes.

The opening was twenty-five feet above the floor.

Harper glanced at Sierra. “The only way we know how: the Boulder spell.”

“The orcs should go first,” Damon suggested.

She nodded. “Yeah, but I want to revert to the altered formation we used in the tower the first time.” She glanced at the rookies. “That means I go second to get an earlier assessment on the threats.”

The team agreed and Harper cast the spell. Damon wrapped the extra chain mail Jordan had in his inventory around the marble ball.

“Wait a second,” Harper said, then turned to Vlad. “I want you to cast a second boulder. Keep it directly under Damon. If the chain links break, it’ll be your job to catch him before he falls into the Crusher.”

The Russian mage nodded.

“And one more thing,” she continued. “I want you and Sierra to go last. You’ll be responsible for getting everyone onto the second floor before you go up.”

Sierra stiffened. “You might need us against whatever’s up there.”

Harper agreed but remained firm. “Just try to get us all up there in a hurry.”

With the preparations out of the way, the veteran mage guided Damon over the mouth embedded in the floor and toward the opening in the ceiling. As he ascended, the orc general noticed two icy, silver eyes embedded into the floor. They watched him intently as the Crusher’s lips parted, revealing an underground reservoir of water. Jackson’s blood swirled on the muddy surface. The mangled remains of one of his ears bobbed near the limestone edge.

Damon forced himself to look away. As he neared the ceiling, the turquoise eyes of the face sculpture followed his progress too. He glanced down at the teammates that were hugging the far wall. They stared at him with expressions of fear and anxiety—except for Harper, who appeared preoccupied. With his big hands clutching the chain mail, the orc general took a deep breath and rose to the second floor.