“What? When? How?” I couldn’t imagine myself killing one of my best friends, no matter how confused I was with another personality in my head. Surely my personality would’ve stopped it as it had a moment ago, right? Right?

Constantine held up a hand to silence me and then motioned me to start walking so that we could stay within fifty feet of Sonja and Stephen. “It happened in the first hour we spawned,” he whispered. “You two started fighting in the Spawn Room almost instantly due to your characters being, you know, blood enemies.”

“Goddamn Barney,” I murmured. “Why didn’t he give us our backstories before throwing us into this dungeon?”

“Maybe he thought it would be more fun for us to figure it out ourselves,” Constantine said, with the first hint of bitterness that I’d heard since I woke up. “Anyway, you were broken up about it. When Stephen woke up again, we all just pretended we woke up the same time he did. You know, so that Stephen wouldn’t choke the life out of you for killing him.” He shook his head. “Remember that body you’re inhabiting is not you. It’s hard sometimes, but just keep practicing.”

I nodded, then an uncomfortable thought popped into my head. “Um…you don’t think Stephen had anything to do with me dying?”

“No,” Constantine said immediately. “That was all you. Besides, he was with us the whole time you chased those goblins.”

I nodded, still not satisfied that Stephen was as innocent as Constantine made him sound. I wasn’t sure if that paranoia came from Chris or Mace.

“Look,” he continued, “not only do you have to remember who you are, but you also have to remember who we are.” He pointed ahead. “That’s Melony and Alec. You are Chris. I am Tom. Remember that.”

“Right,” I said. Then more forcefully, “You’re right. If anybody is my enemy right now, it’s Barney. He’s the asshole who trapped us here.”

Constantine snorted. “I’ll drink to that, brother. Come on, they’re almost to the first trap.”

“Trap?”

He gave me a rueful grin. “You’ll see.”

Sonja and Stephen had stopped just inside an archway that exited the mausoleum. I stood beside Sonja—staying as far from Stephen as possible—and all I could see through the arch was pitch darkness after ten paces.

Then I realized I wasn’t looking into a large, dark room. I couldn’t see past ten paces because there was no room ten paces in. I stood before a large, circular bottomless pit. If I squinted, I could see an archway about a hundred feet across from us outlined in an otherworldly green glow. The walls to either side of me appeared to be smooth black stone. But when I looked closer, I saw sigils as tall as me carved in vertical rows like Japanese characters. The sigils rose beyond our torchlight and also descended into the darkness below us. I couldn’t see the top or bottom of the shaft.

“We have a problem,” Sonja said.

“I’ll say,” I breathed. “How the hell did you get across this?”

“That’s the problem,” Stephen growled. “There was a bridge the last time we came through. Now it’s gone.”

I walked up to the edge ten paces away. If there had been a bridge, it looked like a laser beam had sliced it off. The stone path ended in dark, glassy rock.

“Maybe it’s like the third Indian Jones movie,” I said, staring into the abyss. “It’s invisible, and we just need to throw some pebbles on it to see it.”

“It’s not the worst idea,” Stephen mumbled. I glanced back at him, but he was already going back into the mausoleum. Progress, I thought. Maybe we will get to the end without killing each other.

Stephen came back with a handful of debris from the crushed sarcophagi lids. Mace’s instincts screamed at me to keep my distance from him, given how close we were to a bottomless pit. I moved a little closer to Sonja and Constantine as Stephen tossed the debris into the space beyond the walkway. The debris just fell without hitting anything. I never heard it hit bottom.

“Great,” Stephen muttered.

“Maybe The Tomb wants us to go a different way now,” I suggested.

“You think, pretty boy?” Stephen said, then stormed past us and back to the mausoleum.

“Why does he keep calling me ‘pretty boy’?” I asked Sonja and Constantine.

“Because you’re absurdly good-looking,” Sonja said. She coughed and then muttered, “I’d better go keep Stephen alive.” Then she quickly left the platform.

“Think Casper Van Dien if he was born in India,” Constantine said. “Black hair, scruffy beard, cheekbones that could cut marble.”

“Really? Huh.”

I touched my face. My jaw and cheekbones felt hard and way more chiseled than in the real world. I also felt the prickly hair around my lips and chin. I once grew a goatee in college, but it had itched something fierce, and I shaved it after a month.

“Just don’t go quoting Starship Troopers,” Constantine said, “or I’ll toss you off this platform.”

“Not even Sleepy Hollow?”

He raised a hand as if to give me a backhand slap, but then turned to follow the other two.

Before following them, I studied the vertical sigils that covered the black walls of the shaft. Were they magical runes? Were they meant to keep us out…or keep something in? There had to be a purpose for them, and I felt that purpose had to do with the demon lord.

I was about to turn toward the hall when I noticed something on the gray cobblestones at the platform’s edge. I brought my torch to bear over some off-color areas that I thought were smudges at first. My torchlight illuminated sigils painted in light gray on each stone along the edge.

I glanced from the sigils on the platform to the sigils on the walls. They seemed the same. The sigils on the walls were engraved in columns, and an oval separated the sigils into groups of five. Every group on the wall within my torchlight had the five sigils listed in the same order.

Could it be that simple?

I studied the sigils on the shaft and then stooped to the ones on the edge of the abyss. My hand hovered over the sigil copy that displayed at the top of each group on the wall. What if the correct sigil order was from the bottom up? What if I hit the wrong order and the platform collapses into the pit?

I thought about calling the others over to get their thoughts, but Mace’s “Stubborn” trait resisted. They treated me like a child to whom they had to explain everything. I needed to do something right now to show that even though I was a Rank below them at the moment, I could pull my weight. That I was useful.

Top to bottom, I thought.

I took a deep breath and then put my hand on the first sigil. Nothing happened for a second, but then an orange glow slowly lit the cobblestone beneath my hand. I pulled my hand away from the glowing character.

I checked the second sigil on the wall and then placed my hand on the same one three cobblestones from the first. It, too, glowed orange.

I pressed the remaining sigil cobblestones in the order I saw on the wall and then stepped back. They all glowed orange now.

But nothing happened. No bridge appeared over the chasm, and the platform seemed as stable as always. Did I need to say a word to extend the bridge?

“Extend bridge,” I said in a clear, loud voice that didn’t even echo in the pit.

Nothing.

“Open sesame?”

Nothing.

“Fly me to the—”

When I said the word “fly,” my body launched from the platform like a rock from a catapult. I flew into the air in a 45-degree arc over the bottomless pit. The wind rushed past my ears, my stomach leaped into my throat, and I’m not ashamed to admit that I screamed my bloody head off. Long ago, when things were great with my ex-wife Debra, we’d racked up twelve skydiving jumps together. This was very much like it. Except back then, I was excited and confident; this time, I was terrified that I would fall forever. Especially when I hit the apex of the arc and descended toward the platform on the other side.

I’m not gonna make it, I’m not gonna make it, I’m not gonna make it!

I didn’t honestly believe I’d make it until my body slowed and my feet lightly touched the cobblestone platform just inches from the edge. When I stopped, I put my hands on my knees to keep from passing out. Once I’d taken several calming breaths, I stood up straight and released a triumphant yell that was part victory and part relief.

My forearm itched, so I checked the stats and noticed a glowing green pop-up:

Congratulations! You have solved the puzzle, “Crossing the Tomb Pit.” You have gained 200 XP toward your next Rank.

I closed the pop-up and checked my Character Stats. The “Rank: Apprentice” label was now more of a greenish-brown color. And I felt smarter. It was that feeling you get when you’ve been trying to figure out a new skill for the longest time, and then it suddenly clicks, and you can’t believe you didn’t see it from the beginning.

My friends came running back out onto the platform from which I’d just launched. Understandably they went to the edge and looked down.

“Over here!” I yelled, waving the torch I’d somehow held during my flight.

They all looked up as one and stared at me for several moments.

“How?” Constantine yelled. I could barely hear him from a hundred feet away, so I screamed back a description of what I’d done.

Stephen decided to try it first. Sure enough, he launched into the air from the platform and landed right next to me with a grunt and an exhilarated grin. “Well done, pretty boy,” he said. “Maybe there’s hope for you yet.”

Mace’s pride grated at the condescension in Stephen’s voice, but I, Chris Able, could hear the good-natured ribbing of my friend Alec. It took some effort, but I managed to calm Mace’s annoyance.

Constantine landed next, his normally ruddy face pale with fright. At least he didn’t scream as I had.

“I’m never doing that again,” he said vehemently.

Sonja let out an ululating war cry as she sailed through the air and landed on the platform between Constantine and me.

“What a rush,” she breathed. She looked down at the edge of the platform and said, “Does it go both ways?”

“You serious?” Constantine asked. “I’d rather fight Angelus by myself than do that again.”

“We might need to go back if one of us dies again,” she said as she rubbed the tip of her toe on the cobblestones at the edge. Dust and debris tumbled over the edge after she revealed what was underneath. “Good, there are sigils on these as well. Maybe I should test it.”

“Na, na, let’s keep moving,” Constantine said. “I’ve no desire to watch you fall to the center of the planet.”

Sonja rolled her eyes at him. “Fine, mom.” She pushed past Constantine toward the open archway behind us.

Constantine looked up at me and nodded. “Solving puzzles already, brother? Well done.” He snorted a laugh and then followed Sonja.

For the first time since I woke up there, I felt a genuine smile cross my face.