“Bet you got questions,” Sonja said.

“You think?” I said. I winced again from the pain in my ribs and put my left hand on them protectively. My tongue also wasn’t fully healed, and my words sounded thick.

Constantine came over and rubbed his hands together really fast. “I got a few Magic Points left. Your ribs, brother?”

“Yeah.”

“Save your Magic Points,” Stephen said as his bony fingers plucked eyeballs from the monster. “Let the paladin figure out how to heal himself.” He didn’t look at me as he said it, and it didn’t take a psychologist to know he was mad at me about something.

Constantine rolled his eyes. “I have enough. Move your hand, brother.”

I moved my left hand so that he could place his stubby dwarf hands on my side. Even that bit of gentle pressure made me flinch, but he kept his hands on the injury, closed his eyes, and murmured some words. An incredible warmth surged through my leather armor and into my chest. It felt nothing like the tingling when I healed myself. Constantine’s healing took away the sharp pain in my ribs and even regrew the final bit of my tongue.

I looked down at my forearm and saw my Hit Points ticking upward as Constantine’s healing spell continued.

“You at max Hit Points now?” Constantine asked, pulling his hands away from my side.

“Looks like it.” I showed him my forearm, but he chuckled.

“We can’t see each other’s character sheets.” He held out his forearm to me, but it just looked wide and hairy. “I’m ‘Adept rank now. You can’t see it, but I got quite the spell list.”

I blinked several times. We have character sheets and spell lists tattooed on our forearms. And they flash and change color and give pop-up notices when I kill things.

I looked at the three of them and cried, “What in God’s name is happening?” Then, for the first time since I woke up, I realized someone was missing. “And where’s Barney?”

Constantine and Sonja frowned. Constantine opened his mouth to say something, but Stephen abruptly stood while shoving bloody monster eyeballs into a leather pouch on his belt.

“Better to show you,” he said darkly, then nodded to the birdbath-like pedestal with the large red jewel in the center of the room.

“Come on,” Sonja said and led me to the pedestal. She stared at the red jewel in the middle as light from the room’s candles glinted off its surface.

“Took us about an hour to figure this out when we first arrived,” she said.

“An hour? Why did it take so long for me to wake up?”

She breathed through her nose, her jaw clenching and unclenching, and then she put her hand on the jewel. A small light appeared deep in the jewel and slowly got brighter like a rising sun. Sonja pulled her hand away, and soon the jewel emitted a hazy red glow above the pedestal.

And just like one of those Star Wars holograms, Barney appeared within the red haze. He looked haggard, and his eyes darted about as if he were waiting for someone to hit him.

“Barney!” I said. “What are you—?”

“Sorry guys,” he said, “I don’t have time to explain, so you’ll need to remember everything I tell you because it will save your lives.”

“Save our lives? What have you—?”

Sonja put a hand on my arm and whispered, “It’s just a recording. Listen.”

So I shut up and let Barney finish his message.

“If you want to leave this dungeon and return to your bodies in our cabin in Georgia, you need to descend to the third level and kill a demon lord called Angelus. He’s the evil son of a bitch that built this place for reasons that I don’t have time to explain. And make no mistake, you must defeat him if you want to go home. No amount of detours or side quests will get you home.

“Look at your forearms. You’ll see the same Character Stats you found on the scrolls I gave you in the cabin. Like any other RPG we’ve played, the more things you kill, puzzles you solve, treasure you find, quests you complete, et cetera, the more experience you get to rank up and get more powerful. Memorize your sheets and keep track of them.

“As you can see, you’re all starting at Rank ‘Apprentice.’ That means you all can defeat the stupidest giant rats alive, and that’s about it. Be very careful in the battles you choose to fight until you’re at least Rank ‘Adept.’ Hell, don’t even think of trying to take on Angelus until you’re ‘Grand Master’ or higher. Trust me on that one.

“And if you do get your asses kicked on this level and you die, you will reappear in this room and lose all the experience and memories you attained since you first woke up. You’ll start right back at Rank ‘Apprentice’ again. That could be a huge pain in the ass if you guys have to come all the way back here to retrieve one of you. Also, you can only reappear in this room three times. That’s it. No more, no less. Three. So don’t freakin’ die!”

I looked at Sonja with an unspoken question, and she slowly nodded. “You died, and we came back for you.”

That’s why I was at “Apprentice” rank while the rest of my friends were “Journeymen.” But how did I die?

Barney suddenly jumped at a sound that only he could hear. “I gotta go,” he whispered. “I’ll see you on Level Three. Be careful…”

His image winked out, and the hazy red glow dissipated.

I looked at Sonja. “That’s it? That’s all he has to say? Why did he do this? How did he do this?”

Sonja shook her head slowly. “We don’t know. We’ve been debating that for the last week—”

“Hold on! We’ve been here a week?”

“Um…yeah.”

I couldn’t get enough oxygen, and the room started spinning. My brain felt like pounded Play-Doh. I couldn’t process anything except the horrifying news that I had been in this dungeon for a whole week.

Jesus, I thought, I was supposed to pick up Jack from college on Monday. What must my son be thinking of me after I was a no-show? Had they put out a missing persons bulletin for me? Did my ex-wife Debra even care?

Sonja grabbed my shoulders with her strong hands and gave me a single jerk that brought me back to my senses. “Mace. Stay with us. We need you, all right?”

We were both the same height, so I could see her eyes. While her face and body looked nothing like Melony’s, her eyes were the same hazel and had the same little crinkles in the corners. It was that link to reality that enabled the “Chris Able” side of my brain to take a deep breath and calm down. Which gave my character Mace a chance to show his confidence and bravery.

“Okay,” I said with a voice stronger than what I felt. “Tell me everything that happened since we first arrived. Leave out nothing.”

The corners of Sonja’s mouth turned up into a grin.