It took a while for Vend and Dallion to reach the gate area to the next level. The entire time Vend didn’t say a word, keeping an eye both on Dallion and the equine. It was obvious he didn’t approve of the draw; it was more uncertainty than anger, although Dallion had still detected a modicum of fear.

While walking, Dallion noticed several other equines—of three different colors—observing them at a distance. There were a few points at which the situation was tense, but thankfully, none of them attacked.

That’s one level less to worry about, Dallion thought. If Vend was right, they would be in the clear up to the eleventh level. There, things would become clear… unless the plot didn’t suddenly thicken. There was one inconsistency that kept bothering Dallion. So far, he had been told that the group had vanished on the eleventh or twelfth level. It was said that the people in question were scouts, but also it was implied that they were the ones guarding the gate from closing. While complicated, both of these could potentially be true at the same time. The biggest point of concern was the message Dallion had seen upon entering the sphere item: twelve floors out of twenty had been cleared. That meant that the gate to the thirteenth floor was also open.

“Don’t rely on draws too much,” Vend whispered as the rest of the party came into view. “And don’t rely on creatures.”

“Can they break their word?” Dallion asked out of curiosity.

“People can. Why wouldn’t others?”

An interesting and rather dark question. The reaction of the rest of the group, though, made Dallion quickly forget it. The majority were impressed that they had managed to catch an equine so fast, and of course everyone gave the credit to Vend.

“Dal!” Falkner was the first to rush to him. “What happened? How did you catch it?”

“Oh, Vend did most of the work,” Dallion lied, not in the mood to go into details. “Anything interesting happen here?”

“Nothing.”

“We were almost swarmed at one point,” Bel said with casual annoyance. “A few tried to have a go, but Spike scared them off.”

“As I said, nothing,” Falkner repeated. “Do you think that we’ll see more action down on the lower levels?” The boy turned back to Dallion, deliberately ignoring Bel. “They say that the creatures after level ten are something else.”

Dallion hadn’t heard anything of the sort. Then again, he was just a packrat as far as the guild was concerned. If it wasn’t for the emergency, he never would have participated in something as large in scale as a twenty-level item.

“Cut the chatter,” Spike grumbled. “Dal, pick up your load and join the rats. We only get a few minutes for this, so don’t waste time.”

Everyone rushed into position. Much to his regret, Dallion had to get a few dozen weapons and shields once more. Despite this small adventure, once a packrat always a packrat.

When everyone was ready, Vend started the gate opening ritual. Dallion was very much looking forward to seeing how a gate opening in such an item worked, so he deliberately kept his expectations low. To his surprise, the event not only matched, but surpassed them.

Vend’s part was simple: taking a few crystal chunks from the ground, he arranged them in a circle, then took a step back. One by one the chunks glower green, then yellow, and finally white. A second circle of light formed on the surrounding ground, then a third. Rays sprouted from the edges of the circle like trees splitting into branches the further up they went. A dozen feet into the air, the branches of light intertwined, creating a circle of glowing leaves in the air, as the stems of light disappeared beneath. At that point, the equine stepped in. Unforced, it made its way to the center of the crystal chunks and waited.

For a split second, Dallion thought that the creature looked at him and muttered “thanks”. Barely was the word registered when the equine burst into a firework of bright lights that punctured the ground beneath it like a drill. Moments later, the circles of leaves descended from the air, forming steps of light in the hole as it went down.

“Get going!” Spike shouted. “Fighters first, rats behind.”

The moment of fascination passed quickly as everyone rushed to take advantage of the stairs before they vanished.

Way to ruin magic, Dallion thought, waiting his turn to go down the stairs. Although he had to admit the display was fascinating. His only concern was the fate of a creature. While he knew that it technically was just an embodiment of the item, in part he hoped that it would respawn and hadn’t sacrificed itself so that the party could have an elevator to the lower level.

The stairway continued down for a while. No sooner had they reached the lower level when they continued onto the one beneath that. In Dallion’s mind he could already see the stairways as tumblers to a lock. A few were misaligned, but for the most part there were great large ones that went straight down connecting several levels. Of course, the initial exploration party probably didn’t know that, nor did they know what they had to do to trigger the guardian fight to begin with.

Several times, Dallion felt like asking Bel a question, but each time he couldn’t decide how to phrase it. That was one of the downside of being among awakened—ask something in a stairwell and everyone heard about it.

“Bel, have you had guardians surrender?” he finally decided on the direct approach.

“Once or twice,” the girl replied, not in the least bothered by the question.

“Is that normal?”

“Definitely is. Guardians usually surrender when facing young children. You have to have really crappy luck not to get the first guardians to surrender. That’s why parents pay the order to have their children go through their first awakening as young as possible. No better way to rack up a few levels early on.”

As terrifying as that sounded, Dallion had to admire the thought process of the first person to find this life hack.

“I was a bit older but went through the same. Not the best experience, and definitely confusing.” Bel smiled, remembering her first awakening as if it had happened decades ago. “It took me months to figure out how I had won when I had been losing so badly against the guardian.”

“What about afterwards? Any cases of surrender there?”

“You always hear talk about it happening, but I don’t believe it. It’s one of those myths like Arthurows’ copyettes. The things existed at one point, there’s no denying that, but now they’re all banished. Same is with guardian’s surrendering—it happens, but unless you’re a child, don’t count on it.”

And still Dallion had seen it happen several times, in some cases he was the initiator.

The further down the party went, the more transparent everything around them became. The walls and columns were the first to lose their opaqueness, slowly turning into glass followed by the local “flora.” It was an unnerving experience, though nowhere as traumatic as what Nox was going through. The temporary calm that had occurred a few levels up now was completely gone, causing the crackling to hiss almost nonstop from its corner.

Things had gotten so bad that Dallion had asked the shield in a whisper if it could do anything about it. Sadly, there had been no response.

“Will you feel better if you come out?” Dallion whispered. The hissy mew suggested that was not the case. “Try to grab a buckler and hide behind it.”

The gesture was appreciated, and to Dallion’s surprise, that was precisely what the cub did. One simply could only feel pity and concern upon seeing what the crackling was going through. At the same time, Dallion felt a bit uneasy, knowing how good Nox was at breaking things. Hopefully, the buckler in the awakened room was going to survive.

The tenth level came and went. Upon reaching the eleventh, the party found that there were already two other groups there. A few of the members Dallion recognized from the guild hall meeting, but for the most part he didn’t know rest so well. Upon asking how they had managed to get there so fast, Vend had suggested that it was most likely due to the small delay that the party had had on the first level. The explanation sounded logical, so no one bothered with further questions.

“Okay,” Vend began. ”The easy part’s over. From here on the actual work begins. Most of you will remain on this floor where you’ll keep searching for the group with the rest of the junior guild members. Meanwhile, I, and the experienced ones, will go to the next level to see if there isn’t any trace of them there. Keep in mind that while a lot of this floor is cleared, there still might be a few creatures hiding here and there. At this level, each creature is as strong as your average guardian. Don’t underestimate them.“

Whispers filled the air. No one was particularly happy by the turn of events. Many had hoped that their leader would remain on the level with them. However, even more didn’t want to go to the floor below, where the chances of serious mishap were greater.

As the groups were formed, it was hardly a surprise that Dallion was grouped with Bel, just as it was even less of a surprise that Falkner joined them as well on his own accord. This was the point at which the first big division occurred. All the groups went to the twelfth floor, while the weaker members remained on the eleventh. Shortly after, Dallion’s group headed east, towards the end of the level.

“I doubt they’ve gone that way,” Bel said with an annoying smirk.

“I doubt they’re on this floor,” Dallion said. “Still, we have to start searching from somewhere and a wall is as good a place as any.” Not to mention that it was furthest away from the source of Nox’s anxiety.

“You think they’re on the twelfth floor?” Falkner asked.

“No. I think they’re on the thirteenth.” Dallion expected to hear some snarky remarks, but for some reason no one said anything, waiting for him to continue. “Well, if you think about it, there’s no reason for so many strong people to go down there while leaving the rest of us here. It would have been more efficient if the groups were divided in such a way as to cover both floors. The only reason I can think of for them leaving us here is that they’re going to try and clear the thirteenth floor.”

“But in that case, why take us along at all? It would have been simpler if only the veterans had gone.”

“Good point.” And one to which Dallion had no adequate answer. “I suspect there might be a chance that some of them are on this floor, after all. Since there’s no point in wasting capable fighters here, we got the short straw.”

“I don’t know.” Bel scratched her ear. “Sounds iffy to me. “

“Just as iffy as them leaving us here on our own.”

“Well, maybe—”

COMBAT INITIATED

Immediately, everyone drew their weapons. Even Dallion reached out to take his dartbow in anticipation of the worst.

Looking around, there was no reason for alarm—there wasn’t a creature as far as the eye could see. Everything remained perfectly calm, and yet the red rectangle had appeared. If there was anything certain in this world, it was that the awakening markers and rectangles were absolute.

“Anyone see anything?” Dallion asked, looking in the distance in search of anything that could turn out to be a threat.

“Nope,” Bel replied, a pair of throwing knives in hand.

“Nothing special,” Falkner said. “Maybe it was meant for another group?”

Technically, it was possible, though Dallion doubted it. Something was out there to get them, he could feel it.

“Nox, come out here,” Dallion whispered. One part reluctant, two parts relieved to be near Dallion, the crackling emerged on his shoulder, claws carefully detracted so as not to shred Dallion’s thread armor. “Sorry about this, buddy, but I’ll need your help to find what’s hunting us. You okay to give a hand?”

Instead of an answer, the cub leapt off Dallion’s shoulder and dashed forward. Now the group had a direction to follow.