5

Before the thorn wall came down, the hunters continued to rain down their arrows and knives onto the Sorceress, but she deflected them away with the tendrils.

Damon turned to Zack, who stood beside him. “I’m going to rush her,” he said, then pivoted around the wall.

Melynia saw him coming and shot a green lightning bolt that struck the water. The energy shot up through Damon’s legs. He was flung twenty feet back, splashing face-first into the pooled water. Briefly, he saw the monster’s tendrils weaving like snakes through the shallow liquid he lay in. Then he burst back out of the water, propelling himself with his huge arms. As he faced the Sorceress, another bolt of green lightning pounded into his chest. Damon was driven all the way back to the thorn wall. He sagged into the water with pain searing through his chest, forcing him to wince and groan. He checked his hit points and saw that he’d lost 104 HP from his 580 total.

He saw legs stomp past him and heard more electrical snaps as his teammates were thrown off their feet as well. Damon heaved himself out of the water. The Dragon was closing in on the wall of thorns now. He could have attacked the Dragon—it was at a higher level, after all—but his orc intuition told him to go after Melynia.

Damon ran at the Sorceress again, who was distracted by his teammates’ attacks. Like a lineman weaving through a defensive line, the orc general saw the clearing and bolted through it. Melynia saw him coming, but she reacted too late, raising her arms.

Damon drove his sword through the monster’s torso… and it slipped right through her like she was a ghost. The orc general stared, perplexed, at the Sorceress’ grinning visage.

“I told you—Dragon or magic,” she said, then blasted Damon square in the chest from a much closer range.

He heard a metallic clang as the force dented his steel battle armor. Then he soared backward again and blacked out before he hit the floor.

6

Like Damon, Zack rushed the Sorceress and met with the same result. He got up again, got blasted again, repeated the process, and was driven back every time. His HP was down to 344 from 552. Then the Dragon obliterated the thorn wall and Sierra was snatched away. As he sat up from his latest pounding, the blonde orc watched the rookie mage pressed onto the Dragon’s back.

He ran for her even before she started screaming, which was almost immediate. Like Damon, Zack benefited from Melynia’s distraction with the other members. As the Dragon began to shamble back to its original position against the bricked wall, he leaped and swung his axe. His blade passed through the fat human like he wasn’t there. There was no rip of the flesh and no blood mark. The axe wedged into the beast’s side. Zack was surprised that the blade had no effect on the fat human, but he had bigger matters to attend to.

He landed on the Dragon’s right side, and as it tried to buck him, the Marine clambered over to Sierra. Her blue-furred skin was being drawn into the monster’s hide, both by hardened veins that protruded from the Dragon’s back, but also by some strange assimilating force.

“Help me, Zack. Help me,” the rookie mage pleaded. Her hit points were 186 out of 294. She was positioned upside-down, with her legs bound to the arch of the beast’s back and her head stuck to its rear legs.

“What… what can I do?” Zack asked helplessly.

As a tear fell down her cheek, the rookie mage answered, “Cut me loose. Cut through my skin before it’s too late.”

As she spoke, Zack could see the hair being pulled back from her scalp, being absorbed as well. Time was running out.

He glanced back at his axe, which was still lodged in the Dragon’s thick hide. Further away, he saw Damon plunge his sword into the Sorceress with the same result. It was like they were fighting ghosts.

Zack equipped his sword and started cutting Sierra’s head free first. The hair was easy to slice through, but the rest of her body was a bigger problem. He ran his blade across the back of her head, then her neck. She bled profusely but didn’t once complain.

Once he had freed the surrounding skin and fur, he told Sierra to lift her head, but she couldn’t. Zack grabbed the sides of her head. His heart ached as her blood drenched his thick fingers. He pulled her head upward, tearing patches of skin and fur from the back of her head.

She groaned loudly. Her mouth stretched in a grimace of pain, but her head pulled free of the Dragon’s backside.

“Don’t put your head back down,” he told her.

“Not on your life,” she replied weakly.

As he got ready to repeat the same procedure on her shoulders, tendrils wrapped around his feet and whisked him away from her. He chopped at the appendages and hurried back to Sierra. He jumped onto the monster’s hide and swung his sword at the fat man with a glancing blow, not expecting much. But this time, the human screeched. A hunch told him to take a quick look at the Sorceress. She was also screaming. Hammer stood in front of her with an expression of surprised astonishment. He had just plunged his sword into Melynia’s stomach, and dark red blood flowed from the wound.

The attacks, Zack thought. The attacks have to be simultaneous!

“Inmates!” he shouted. “You have to attack the Sorceress and the fat man at the exact same time!”

He scrambled away from the eviscerated man as arrows rained down onto the two human bodies the Dragon controlled. Sierra was still holding her head up, but Zack could see it was taking a ton of effort on her part. Recalling how he had freed her head, he looked into her eyes.

“Should I cut your skin away,” he asked, “or should I just try pulling you off?”

“I don’t think it’s going to make much of a difference,” she groaned. “Try pulling.”

Zack squatted near the backside of the Dragon. It kicked at him with its short paws, but the beast’s lack of mobility prevented it from doing any real damage. As the cries of battle—screams, screeches, and lightning bolts—rang out throughout the room, Zack dug his fingers into the space between the monster’s hide and Sierra’s neck and shoulders.

He pulled and Sierra moaned again. The blonde orc shook his head, wishing there was a better way. Fur and skin elongated between his fingers. More blood pooled into his hands, but he was pulling her loose, inch by inch. As he worked his way down to her lower back, Sierra’s moans turned to screams—and then they just stopped.

Zack looked down at her, fearing she was dead, but she still had 106 HP and had only lost consciousness. The mage’s red blood covered the Dragon’s back. As he collected himself, he saw that his teammates had turned the fat human into a pile of bloody and ravaged meat. The Sorceress was also dead. She hung limply from the dragon’s tendrils that had forever bound her.

Zack cradled Sierra’s back in his arms and finished pulling her free. His teammates gathered around the dragon and started pummeling it with weapons and spells. Zack carried the rookie mage, walking toward the fray. Zahra was near the back, using her trilance struss to stab the dragon from a distance. Zack intentionally bumped into her. Distracted and caught off guard, the healer whipped around, ready to defend herself. Then she saw the bleeding, naked body lying in the orc’s arms.

“Come on,” he grunted. “They can finish. Sierra needs your help.”

7

They jumped back down to the fourth floor. Rachel had been assigned to monitor Harper, so when she saw Sierra’s state, she turned to the veteran mage. “I’d like to lay Sierra’s chest and shoulders across your lap. It’ll help her breathe and keep her wounds off the floor.”

Harper nodded. “Just as long as she’s not on top of my burns.”

On Rachel’s direction, Zack carefully turned the still-unconscious Sierra over in his arms, then laid her face-down across Harper’s thighs.

While Zahra and Rachel emptied their mana pools healing Sierra, Harper gazed down at the rookie’s backside. From the back of her head to her feet, Sierra’s injuries fell into three groups. There were areas of her body where only the blue fur had been torn from her body, revealing the blue skin underneath. A few areas were untouched. But most of her body had been stripped of her skin and fur, exposing the base tissue. Blood still seeped from those wounds, but a good portion of those injuries had coagulated—the first step of the human body’s natural healing process.

As the Mana Heal spells rained down on the rookie mage, Harper couldn’t take her eyes off the damage. A brown discoloration ran along the sides of Sierra’s body where her natural skin and fur was undamaged.

“That’s where the Dragon was… um… assimilating her,” Zack said. “That’s why I had to rip her off of the monster’s hide.” He choked a little. “You should have seen the other human victim. That poor slob was melted into the Dragon’s hide.”

As the numerous healing spells took effect, Sierra began to regain some consciousness and started moaning. “Ow,” she murmured in her half-daze.

Zack looked at the healers desperately, feeling guilty for the state of her body. “Is there anything more we can do?”

Zahra just shook her head.

Behind them, Armando jumped through the hole and approached Rachel. “Come on. We’ve got the Dragon down its last few hit points, and we want you to get the experience points.”

8

The orcs had done most of the damage to the Dragon, breaking through its thick hide. The beast sagged in the shallow pool of water, exhaling loudly and barely moving. As Rachel waded through the water, carefully avoiding the multiple dead appendages, she glanced at the monster’s HP. It was 63 out of 989.

Just like Zahra had done when she was gifted XP, Rachel resorted to the Boulder spell. She whipped the rock at the Dragon’s head, which exploded, splattering tissue across the walls. As the teammates retreated, disgusted with the carnage, Rachel turned to Armando. She pointed at another nude female body, lying face-down in the cold water. The brown tendrils had pierced the body.

“Who’s that?” she asked.

“That was one of the bosses,” he said after he reflected on her question for a few seconds. “But in the end, she was probably just another of the Dragon’s victims.”

He didn’t mention the third participant in the battle, the fat man. He was probably a victim as well. Rachel, of course, never even noticed him. The orcs had chopped up that poor slob into prosciutto.

“Let’s get out of here,” Rachel said, and Armando agreed.

9

The members jumped back down to the fourth floor. By then, Sierra was fully awake and had one of the team’s canvas blankets draped over her body. She was still lying across Harper’s lap, but the veteran's legs were becoming numb from the constant pressure.

The healers arranged all of the blankets into a plush bed and asked the orcs to reposition her there. Damon lifted the blanket covering the Grimalkin mage to see how the healing was going. The bleeding had stopped. Most of Sierra’s backside was covered with scar tissue, but there were still some open wounds.

Sierra, not one for lying on her stomach, tried to turn onto her side and yelped from the pain.

Zahra grew angry. “Do not try that again,” she scolded her. “We will tell you when you can move from that position.”

The rookie mage mumbled an apology and carefully moved the unburned section of her hands under her jaw, trying to reach some level of comfort.

While a few of the members descended to the lower floors to relieve themselves, Damon huffed. “So, we’re down two mages now,” he said, looking for Vlad in the crowd. “How do you feel about taking the lead?”

The Russian shrugged. “Meh, I got da spells, but I am not a gamer.”

The orc general nodded, understanding the dilemma. With his chest still burning from the Sorceress’ blows, he rubbed his temples, groaned, and closed his eyes. “Okay. I can’t even remember which of you have gaming experience.” Thao and Silo told him that they did. “Alright, I want you two to follow me, then Vlad, then the rest of the formation.” He turned to the healers, who were aiding the two injured mages. “Zahra, you can sit this one out. Rachel, you come with us.”

The slim zoologist walked forward anxiously. She glanced briefly at Armando.

“Okay. We still have time left,” Damon said. “Maybe we can get the hell out of here before the day’s over.”

No one told the orc general that there was no way to tell whether it was day or night.