The campfire flickered, its pitiful flame locked in a losing battle against the crushing darkness of the surrounding dungeon. Only a few hours had passed since the raid, and already the weary party were running low on materials to convert into light and warmth. Kriabal’s access to the ‘dark flame’ spell-set had been the catalyst for the campfire, igniting raw materials so that a more natural flame might take hold in its place. But the warlock’s pyromancy was born of a magic designed for combat, not light or warmth, and it was far from self-sustaining. Starved of fuel, the fire was now little more than a stationary night-light, a pale substitute for the orbs of pulsing mana that had once guided their party into the darkness.

To Nyx’s frustration, the apprentice responsible for sculpting those glowing balls of mana now lacked the life-energy to fuel his own avatar, let alone his constructs. His corpse had been claimed for respawn shortly after he fell, and to her chagrin, had yet to show any sign of returning to them. Without his talents, the darkness would soon advance, extinguishing what little light they now clung to. Ordering a retreat was alas, not an option. The prize had to be guarded above all else.

“I’d feel a lot more relaxed if we still had the dwarves,” commented one barbarian, in reference to their dead contractor’s night-sight.

“You missed it while you were dicking about in the tunnel, but they’re both lodged deep in that ugly bastard’s stomach,” replied Craynor, pointing to the barely visible corpse of the slaughtered boss. “You’re welcome to go fish them out if you want, though. Might help the poor sods respawn faster if nothing else.”

The speaker declined the offer, quietly returning to his rations. The dead beast unsettled him, and truth be told, he welcomed the impending blackness if it would spare him the sight of the grinning shadow stallion’s corpse.

“Bloody dwarves,” continued Craynor, now turning to his leader for conversation. “I told you we shoulda brought along seven of them.”

The tank sniggered to himself, his laughter joined by that of a pair of sycophantic barbarians who were keen to get on the tank’s good side. Nyx on the other hand was not amused by the tank’s juvenile attempt at humor. His tendency to question her decisions in front of the troops (even if only in jest) was starting to get on her nerves.

“We’ll have our reinforcements,” she eventually announced. “By now, our respawned allies will have passed on news of our party’s success. That means that very soon, this chamber will be swarming with life. There’ll be workers to build new cells, swordsmen dissecting the ugly bastard behind us for meat, and mages aplenty to light our way forward. For now, we need only hold the lair. So be quiet and eat your rations. Allow sleep to claim you into your own personal darkness, or I’ll send you there myself for peace and quiet. Tomorrow, we press on in search of loot.”

The amazon’s final point went down particularly well. Meals were finished up, guards were stationed, and quiet fell upon the room.

As she tried to get comfortable on a bed of tile and stone, Nyx yearned for the comforts of her own bed. Specifically, the warmth of those she graciously shared it with: her personal harem of slaves. As a general in what was undisputedly the prisons most powerful gang, she was well paid for her efforts, and the outright ownership of the weaker inmates was by far her preferred status symbol. Frustratingly, the ‘slavemaster’ skill had not been kind to her reputation, and so she used it sparingly, only taking possession of the pretty ones: chiefly those whose level had hit zero, leaving them pitifully reliant on the protection of others. The desperate would do anything to survive, and she had quickly learned that their lack of combat ability could be made up for via other physical skills.

Nyx had recruited many pretty things solely for the purpose of her relaxation, but as was often inevitable they were beginning to bore her. As were the artificially pumped-up torsos of her barbarian brethren. There and then, she decided that the well-built noob might make a worthy addition to her harem, if only for the sake of variety. Perhaps he would even welcome the offer, giving up the information she’d instinctively intended to bleed from his him in exchange for a place in her bed. Men were laughably easy to manipulate, after all. Prisoners with few other options even more so.

Her thoughts of pleasure were rudely interrupted by the warlocks incessant need to speak of business.

“I have a theory, whispered Kriabal, tossing his now-empty ration parcel into the fire. The bundle of leaf and string crackled and burned, consumed by the hungry flame. “If you ask me, we were never supposed to start at this point of the dungeon. I think the fissure caused us to enter the arse end.”

“You’d know all about that,” scoffed Craynor.

“I’m serious,” he spat, his tone curt. “Think about it. We discovered a new dungeon, but walked straight into the boss lair? How often does that happen? You ask me, the fissure wasn’t the real entrance. It was a bloody cheat.”

“It’s like running across the ceiling in Super Mario Bros to reach the warp zone,” piped up an excited eavesdropper, one of the recently arrived barbarians.

“Um, yeah, I guess,” replied the warlock. The statement was punctuated by a cough that sounded an awful lot like the word ‘geek’.

Nyx nodded, tossing her own litter into the fire, staring into the flames as they flared up to consume it. She respected the fire. It would indiscriminately use whatever it could to sustain itself a little bit longer. Just like her.

“Your theory definitely deserves consideration,” she eventually announced. And it rightly did. Dungeons followed certain rules, and this incident had flown in the face of many of them. Then a thought occurred that unnerved her…

“Shit!” she exclaimed.

“Wussup boss?” asked Craynor, instinctively reaching for his sword.

“That means the corridors beyond this point may not be loot caches, after all. They could just as easily be the mob-filled path that was supposed to lead us here. For all we know there could even be another boss.”

“So what if there is?” declared Craynor with his usual bravado. “If this is the final room of the dungeon, what lies beyond can only be weaker, right?”

That much was true. But still, she knew it would be wise to bolster their numbers before proceeding.

Damn you, Tiny, Nyx thought to herself. You’re the reason I went into this fight with only half a party. And damn the spineless fuck who didn’t kill you to clear the passage sooner. If G’rrak hadn’t slipped in and slit your throat, they’d still be trying to get past you. And I’d be making my way back from my respawn point.

“What’s wrong, boss, you’re grinding your teeth?” asked Kriabal, his apparent concern for the amazon’s wellbeing immediately betrayed by his next statement: “I’d sell you something to take the edge off, but I’m all out.”

“Just thinking about that fucking waste of space who almost cost us the lair,” she replied, sharply.

“Hmmm, Tiny. Big lad, that one. If only his brain had been in proportion, eh? Trust me, love, you were right to sever his ties to your organization. Bloody liability, that one.”

She nodded. And then it dawned on her: reinforcements were on the way. Big, clumsy barbarian reinforcements who hadn’t been deemed worthy of joining the first wave. With that, she shuddered at the thought of the exact same thing happening again. Once was an accident. Twice, would make her a laughing stock.

“Kriabal… when the shadow stallion died, you gained a level like the rest of us, right?

“Yeah,” he replied, ignoring Craynor’s two-fingered attempt to remind everyone that he had gained two levels. The warlock waved back his confirmation that he had personally climbed one level, then continued. “So did my pet. Despite yer bloody ‘contractor’ penalty.”

“And your mana generation stat… how high is that?”

“I have five stat points…,” he confirmed, unsure where all this was leading.

“That means nothing to me, I’m not a fucking magic user. What I want to know is, how quickly can you recharge when you’ve exhausted your full reserve?”

“Empty tank to full… hmmmm, never timed it, but I’d say about fifteen minutes, if I focus hard enough.”

“Perfect,” she replied. “Then I have a new role for you. I need you to go guard the entrance of the cave…”

“Don’t be daft, you’ve already a pair of knuckleheads guarding the fissure. And unlike me, they haven’t just been through a boss fight. Let them look after it, I need some kip for the day ahead.”

“I mean the other end. When the fire dies out, our guards will be left in the dark. And that’s the perfect opportunity for nosey rogues and dwarves to slip in and raid our hard-won loot caches while we sleep. It makes sense to position someone on the entrance where there’s enough light to see what’s coming.”

“But why me?” he moaned, his voice taking on the tone of a child who really didn’t want to go to school.

“A level 6 warlock and his scary-ass pet. I can’t think of a better deterrent for would-be thieves, can you?”

“GlueFactory too? Are you kidding? Look at the size of her. Even before she leveled up, she was too big to scuttle through that cavern.”

“So go alone, then.”

“I can’t. She’s still in the early stages of dominance. If I can permanently bend her to my will, that gives me a serious power increase. But if I leave her side so soon, she might revert back to her original programming.”

“I guess you’ll just have to widen the tunnel then, won’t you?” Nyx replied, her own smile widening as the warlock fell into her carefully laid trap. “You know force spells, right? If so, it shouldn’t be a problem blasting your way through with your creepy new staff.”

“But blastin’ rock is manual labor,” protested Kriabal, his voice growing increasingly whiny. “I’ll be at it all bloody night. I should be getting paid a separate fee for that.”

“I’m paying you to go guard the entrance, how you achieve that is your own damn problem,” she snapped. “You’re welcome to bring your pet along or to leave it with us. But if it turns, I can’t guarantee it won’t find its way into our rations in the meantime.”

Kriabal cursed the savvy businesswoman under his breath, then called GlueFactory to his side.

“What this prison needs more than anything else, is a fucking union,” he grumbled as he slowly got to his feet, grabbed his new staff, and begrudgingly made his way to the cavern. As he walked, he began to will mana into the weapon, the eyes of the animal skull that rested at its tip now glowing with destructive energy that begged to be unleashed. The warlock would have liked nothing more than to turn his weapon on the bitch and send her for respawn. That would take her down a peg or two, he thought, with a smile. But he was an independent contractor, and top-level gigs like this were few and far between. Besides, what Craynor would do to him afterwards didn’t even bear thinking about. So he ordered the guards to stand aside and consigned himself to the task ahead. It would help grind his skills, if nothing else.

One thing was certain: he had a long night ahead of him.