5

After seeing Silo’s brutal demise, Thao found a section of the wall and promptly threw up her breakfast. Wiping her mouth, she turned away from the chunks of half-digested salmon. She cast Song of Distraction, hoping the spell would work against the attacking Minotaur, but it seemed to have no effect.

As she surveyed the room, she spotted the head of the struss Rachel had plunged into the other monster’s back. Thao cast Boulder. She guided the round rock over the weapon, then swung her arm down. The boulder smashed into the struss, driving it deeper into the Minotaur’s body. The beast groaned loudly and swung its sword at Thao.

“Ufff,” she blurted and jumped, barely dodging the massive blade.

She refocused on driving Rachel’s struss deeper into the injured Minotaur’s back. She brought the marble ball down again, and now the head of the silver spear was splitting. But the blow drove the weapon deeper into the behemoth, and it bellowed painfully.

Thao focused solely on the struss. She pounded it again. The top of the weapon shattered, but the sharp point burst through the monster’s glitch-infested chest. Black space, white qubits, and blood intermingled around the wound.

As the second Minotaur stooped over her, Thao realized she’d lost track of the other Minotaur. That beast glanced back at the injured Minotaur, then back at her, knowing it was Thao who had inflicted the damage. It roared at her and clapped its flat teeth together. To the Grimalkin hunter, it sounded like a bear trap slamming shut. Thao bolted to her left, but the monster caught her and snatched her up from the floor.

6

On the fourth floor, the team’s two injured mages listened intently to the noise descending from the holes in the ceilings. At first, it sounded like your average skirmish. No distinct cries of despair. The battle seemed well in hand. They heard a loud bang and Harper turned to Sierra, who was still lying on her stomach.

“I can’t take this anymore,” she fumed.

“Yeah, but we’re not game-ready,” the Grimalkin mage replied, borrowing a sports phrase. And she was right. Sierra’s wounds had healed somewhat, but she had tried to move several times, only to cry out in pain.

Harper didn’t answer. She bent her knees and allowed her feet to settle on the floor. She grimaced and raised them back up. “Oooowww,” she moaned as her frustration boiled.

Suddenly they heard heavy stomps that shook the ceiling, showering rock dust from the ceiling down onto them.

“This game just went up a level,” Sierra commented into the patch of canvas she was lying face-down in.

Harper eyed her. “You’re full of puns tonight, aren’t you?” The rookie mage twisted her head to the side to look at the veteran. “Or today…”

Harper murmured an agreement, but it was cut short when a loud metallic bang rocked through the dungeon again. A moment later, they heard someone screaming and their blood ran cold.

“Is that Silo?” Sierra asked, stunned.

“I think so,” Harper whispered.

They listened to the pace of the battle pick up. From the sound of the footfalls, the veteran mage knew the team was in trouble. They were running around. More heavy stomps thundered on the floor above.

“Do you think he’s dead?” Sierra asked, but the veteran didn’t answer. She had already concluded that he was. Fixated on the cries and shouts of her teammates, Harper heard another loud strike of metal.

“Fuck this,” she spat. “I can’t just stand by.”

As Sierra asked her what she was going to do about it, the veteran mage cast Boulder and set the rock on the floor. She jostled toward it and used her hands, then her feet, to painfully straddle the marble ball.

“Hey, maybe I can do that,” Sierra enthused from her canvas bed.

“Don’t be silly,” the veteran retorted. “Your ass still looks like hamburger. You wouldn’t last a second sitting on one of these.” As the rookie sighed, Harper cast her buff spells and ascended the floors.

7

Even before Harper had a chance to assess the situation, Damon telepathed her. Save Thao, save Thao! Harper looked for the Grimalkin hunter and saw her at the far end of the room, clutched in a giant Minotaur’s grasp. The Vietnamese rookie was straining her arms, trying to pry loose of its thick fingers. Pain was etched across her face.

Harper leaned forward and accelerated the boulder she was riding, speeding past the first Minotaur, which appeared to be mortally injured. She fired a Mana Flash at the Minotaur gripping Thao. The red beam struck the behemoth. It groaned and staggered backward, loosening its grip slightly. Harper queued a Fire Bullet next. She fired the half-charged bullet at the monster’s wrist, burrowing a hole through the Minotaur’s tough hide as its black fur ignited. The behemoth bellowed painfully, and its hand loosened.

Thao started pulling herself free.

Behind Harper, the injured Minotaur swung its frozen left arm at her. Someone yelled, “Harper, look out. Behind you!”

She turned her head to find a five-foot-high wall of ice speeding toward her. She cast Damage Reject, and the green protective sphere encircled her just as the monster’s arm bashed into it. Harper received no damage, but she, along with her green barrier, was sent flying and she collided with the far wall. Her Boulder spell bounced away across the limestone floor as her back slammed into the bricks ten feet above the floor. Pain erupted down Harper’s spine as she dropped to the floor. Her feet smacked against the hard stone, and she screamed.

The first Minotaur closed in on her. It raised its sword and struck her barrier. Harper fired another Mana Flash to push the creature back, then waited for another bullet to fully charge. In her periphery, she saw Thao scramble to the other side of the room. She telepathed to her, Thao, grab Vlad and use the same spells on the frozen Minotaur.

Harper’s Minotaur was charging her again. She whipped the fireball at its lowest knee joint. Bone, fur, and tissue exploded as the giant toppled over, slamming against the cavern it had emerged from. Its horns became wedged in the opening.

“Orcs,” she yelled, “go for its head! Go for the head!”

Armando and Hammer rushed in, using their bone axes to chop through the monster’s thick neck. Blood sprayed against their battle armor as the Minotaur wailed and tried to break free. It thrashed at them with its massive arms, but with their Leap spells activated, the orcs’ jumping skills had improved enough to avoid the grasps. They chopped at the beast again.

Behind the trapped Minotaur, a similar battle was playing out. Thao directed traffic for Damon, Jordan, and Vlad as they attacked the struss-impaled behemoth.

As Armando and Hammer finished off the trapped beast, Harper withdrew her Damage Reject spell and waddled back onto a Boulder. She glided over to Zack, who was sitting and cradling Rachel in his huge frame. A pool of blood gleamed from the limestone just below his knee.

“How are you guys doing?” Harper asked.

The Marine looked up at her. “Better than Silo,” he replied without any traces of sympathy. Then he grunted and turned to Rachel. “She’s in a lot of pain, but then again, she’s a healer.” The injured zoologist chuckled despite herself. Zack smiled and turned his attention back to Harper. “How ‘bout you, kiddo? You looked pretty sharp, riding that bowling ball around the room. I thought you were gonna sit this one out?” he teased then didn’t wait for her answer. “It’s a good thing you didn’t,” he grunted.

8

Hammer got the kill from Harper’s end of the room, while the other group handed the final blow to Thao so she could level up some more. Soon afterward, they gathered near the wall.

“Does anyone want to say a few words for Silo?” Damon asked perfunctorily.

No one said a word.

The orc general grunted, knowing the arrogant Brit hadn’t endeared himself to anyone on the team.

Harper spoke from her elevated boulder. “He saved my bacon a couple of times,” she offered. “I knew him from the gaming tournaments. I’m sorry it ended this way for him.” There were mumbles of agreement among the teammates, and then they moved on.

While Harper, Zack, and Rachel hung back in the room, healing each other, Damon led the team into the second cavern, the furthest to their right. The excavated hole led deep into the earth on a twisting trail, rising and falling.

“Watch us get buried in a mudslide,” Zack joked. The other members looked at him with a serious expression and quickened their pace.

They reached the end a minute or so later, strolling up to a large wooden chest. As he did with every chest they came upon, Damon ordered the mage of the group, Vlad, to cast Song of Distraction. While the ethereal chanting echoed through the long cavern, Damon struck the chest with his skelchion sword. The blade only hacked into the wood.

“The coast is clear, el capitano,” Jordan muttered, and the orc general gestured for him to open it. The veteran Grimalkin hunter raised the lid and scoffed. “Just a bunch of furs?”

As the other members drew in close to have a look, Angie barged past Jordan. “Yeah, well, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” She looked him up and down. “We could use these and, besides, you’re already covered in that blue fur.” She lifted a six-foot length of white fur from the chest. “I’m sure the ladies are going to appreciate these, especially at night.”

Jordan shrugged.

“They look like polar bear skins,” Hammer suggested as Angie dropped six furs into one of her inventory slots and handed the other six to the Alabama orc to put away.

The group backtracked their way out of the cavern and entered the other cave. The tunnel was similar, but it had one difference: this cavern was freezing, and it got colder the deeper they advanced. Soon, the mud walls gleamed with ground frost. It turned to solid ice as they made their way down the darkened hole.

As they got close to the end, they observed a glitch that had torn into the roof of the cavern, widening as they continued deeper.

“Maybe we should turn around,” Thao suggested, but Damon dismissed her with a grunt.

Normally, he would have agreed, but his intuition told him something important resided at the end of the cavern. They clambered on the slippery ice for another minute, then stopped and gasped at what they saw.

Solid blue ice intersected with the black-and-white glitch and spanned the remainder of the cave. As they moved their light orbs closer, the members could see another chest buried under the ice.

“Bet that’s where the good loot is,” Jordan commented, but no one heard him.

His teammates were staring up at the ice above the treasure chest. Embedded inside the glaciation, lit by the starlight of the encroaching glitch, was a blue wyvern. The creature was thirty feet long and fifteen feet across, but most of its body was buried further into the ice. The wyvern’s head was the closest to the surface, almost as if it were trying to break through. As the team stared at the creature, its pale blue eyes blinked.

Thao retreated a step. “Ugh. It’s alive,” she exclaimed.

There was a murmur among the team as more members backed up.

Damon nodded. “Yeah, but I don’t think it can get to us… at least, not yet.” He stared up at a strip of quantum void that burrowed through the physical matter of the cavern. It hummed and sparked with a low-grade electricity.

“I think that’s the fourth realm,” Angie whispered as she stared at the solid ice and the wyvern. “I think we are seeing a part of the ice realm.”

Damon grunted. “Yeah, but what is it doing here?”

No one answered.

They watched for another minute, shivering from the cold and what they had seen. Then they turned away and started walking out of the cavern. Behind them, the trapped wyvern blinked again from its glacial prison.