When my eyes fluttered open, I found myself lying on the stony ground. Sonja and Stephen sat across from me. Their eternal torches lay between them as Stephen read a small book while Sonja was curled up asleep.

Besides the usual aches of sleeping on rocks, there was no pain in my chest or abdomen. I took a deep breath and didn’t feel like I was about to puke up a bloody lung. My tongue was thick and dry, but other than that, I felt like I’d just had a good night’s sleep.

I looked at my forearm. I felt my eyes widen, and I sat up straight:

Congratulations! You have demonstrated that you can manage your character’s Negative Trait. You have achieved the Rank “Adept.”

All of your base Character Stats have increased to (5).

I let out a slow sigh. I’d done it. I certainly didn’t feel like I could “manage” Mace, but I think we had reached an understanding. Maybe that’s all that was required.

I closed the pop-up and then reviewed my Character Stats:

Rank: Adept

Strength: (5) 7

Toughness: (5) 6

Dexterity: (5) 7

Intelligence: (5)

Charisma: (5)

Hit Points: 28/28

Magic Points: 11/11

I felt a smile cross my lips as I scrolled down to my Skills and Spells. While I didn’t get any new ones, the modifiers on my existing ones went up 10%, except Ancestral Shield, which had a slightly higher bump:

Ancestral Shield: You can tap into your Ancestral blood to form a shield of divine energy around you or a creature of your choice within 5 feet. The shield blocks 25% of the damage you or the creature would have taken from an attack. You also have a 50% chance of resisting the effects of any spell directed at you while the shield is in place. Costs 1 Magic Point.

My spell resistance was now a 50-50 proposition. Nice.

“Did the pretty boy get his beauty sleep?” Stephen asked without looking up from his reading.

I no longer felt the urge to crush his skull when he called me that. It was now just a vague annoyance. I figured it was Mace’s way of saying he’d never be okay with Stephen’s verbal jabs, but neither would he turn homicidal over them.

“Thank you for saving my life,” I said to him quietly. I felt Mace cringe, but I didn’t care.

Stephen looked up at me, and I could see Alec’s relieved eyes. It was uncanny how that happened, how I could sometimes see the faces of my best friends on those of strangers.

“You’re welcome,” he said, then smiled. “Somebody must’ve gone up a Rank. How do you feel?”

I stood up slowly, testing my healed body. I made a long stretch and felt like I had indeed just woken up from a refreshing sleep. It was like I’d just had my morning coffee, and I was ready for the day.

“I feel amazing,” I said, then affected a proud look. “You’re looking at an ‘Adept’ Ancestral Paladin. Before you know it, I’ll rank higher than you.”

He rolled his eyes. “Right. I might still be an Adept myself, but I’ve got a good XP head start on you to the next Rank, pal. Especially after I just kicked an astral churner out of you.”

I grimaced, remembering the monster’s shark-toothed grin in my face, along with the worst pain ever in my guts.

“I have no idea what that is.”

“It was nasty. It uses the astral plane to open a portal into your abdomen. From there, it proceeds to eat you alive from the inside. Another minute or two, and it would’ve popped out of your chest.”

“Like in Alien,” I breathed.

“Like in Alien. Anyway, it was simple to banish with a Dispel once you stopped resisting.” He licked his lips. “How did that go, by the way? Did you actually talk with Mace?”

I stared at him. “How did you know that? Did you… talk with Stephen when you ranked up?”

“Yep.”

“Well, Mace and I came to an understanding.” I told him about our chat in the cabin and how it began to crumble as we both were dying.

“My talk wasn’t as dramatic,” Stephen said. “It was also back in the cabin, but over a quiet meal of prime rib and expensive Chianti. I made sure he understood that this might be his body, but I was the boss.”

“Really? Because you still seem kind of ‘haughty’ to me.”

Stephen shrugged. “It’s a work in progress.”

Sonja grunted, turned over, and focused her sleepy eyes on me. She immediately sat up. “Are you all right?”

“Besides memories that will give me nightmare fuel for the rest of my life, yeah, I’m all right.”

She stood, came over to me, and gave me a big hug. She smelled like battle sweat and blood, just like me. But underneath that was the pleasant, comforting scent of a meadow. And I was well aware of how her muscled body felt against mine, even through our respective leather armor. I wrapped my arms around her and hugged back.

“When I saw you on the ground like that,” she said into my shoulder, “throwing up blood and choking…it was the worst thing I’d ever seen. Even worse than finding your body by the river.” She pulled back and clutched my arms. “Please don’t die again.”

I saw Melony’s brown eyes staring into mine, and I swallowed once. I somehow remembered how to speak and said, “I’ll do my best.”

Then Sonja’s hard face returned, and she slapped my shoulders like a comrade-in-arms. “See to it you do. We’ve wasted enough time here, so I suggest we get moving.”

I thought of Constantine, and my gut gave an anxious flip. “Right. How far are we from the river?”

“Based on the last time we came through here,” Stephen said as he stood and picked up his torch, “I’d say about an hour’s walk. But who knows if that’s still the case now.”

“We need to discuss our plan before we head out,” I said. “What did you see the last time? What were the goblin numbers? Did they have any fortifications or scouts? Was it a village or a forward camp?”

“One question at a time, general,” Stephen said.

“The cavern ahead has no exits or doors,” Sonja said, “so we should be able to talk freely—though quietly—without worrying too much about ambushes.”

I scanned the entrance ahead and the first dozen paces inside. It was only seven feet high, about the same wide, and had chipped walls supported by ancient wooden posts that told me it was an old mining cave. It gave me some claustrophobic anxiousness, but Sonja was right that at least the first part had no exits or doors or nooks where things could hide.

“Very well. Let’s go.”

As I walked past her, she grinned. “Somebody must’ve gone up a Rank.”

I nodded and told her about meeting Mace in the cabin while we proceeded into the dark cavern. It made our voices sound like we were talking in a crawl space.

“I guess you could say it’s a power-sharing agreement,” I finished.

“I had my conversation with Sonja while riding my motorcycle in the mountains,” she said. “We kept fighting over the handlebars, but we stopped when I promised her Mourner would make the killing blow on Angelus. FYI, by the way: I get the killing blow.”

“Fine by me,” I said. Mace’s only desire was to stand over the corpse of Angelus and complete the mission. Mine was to step over the corpse of Angelus and into the portal home. Whoever did the deed was irrelevant.

“How did you convince Sonja to let you drive?” I asked.

“I didn’t. She’s driving right now.”

I glanced at her beside me. “Then how do you control her?”

“I don’t,” she said. “You ever been white water rafting?”

“Once. Back in my young and stupid days.”

“Stupid? No way, it’s a blast! But anyway, in rafting, you ride the river. You don’t control it. You might steer a little, but you’re just along for the ride. Playing a barbarian like Sonja is kind of like that. So I let her drive the bike and hang on to her from behind.”

I eyed her again and asked, “Am I talking to Melony or Sonja right now?”

She rolled her eyes. “Still Melony here. But I choose to do whatever Sonja’s instincts tell me to do.”

“Aren’t you worried she might, I don’t know, want to do something stupid that you know will get you killed?”

“A little,” she said and then winked. “But that’s the fun of white water rafting.”

I shook my head. “If you say so. What can you tell me about the goblins?”

Sonja and Stephen relayed what they had seen the last time they found the goblin camp while I snacked on some jerky and hardtack bread from my pack. The goblins had occupied some cave alcoves along the bank of an underground river. They had no fortifications around the camp itself, but Sonja and Stephen had spied a wooden cage blocking the entrance to one of the alcoves. Besides that caged alcove, all the others were open and contained bedding furs and dung fire pits (Stephen and Sonja had no idea where the dung came from). They had estimated ten goblins, between what they could see in the camp and the empty bedding.

They had just finished their estimation when Mace saw goblins leading some chained gnomes into camp. Unfortunately, he mindlessly charged toward the camp without saying why. That was the last time they saw him alive.

I shook my head at that. Based on my conversation with Mace and his instincts during battle, I had a hard time believing he’d just run off without telling his friends why or even waiting for them to follow. He was “Stubborn,” that was true, but he didn’t seem stupid. Besides, when I thought about enslaved gnomes, I didn’t get much reaction from his instincts. Certainly not the response I got when I thought about letting Stephen cast Krait’s magic on me; that was a revulsion to the point of suicide.

Since I couldn’t figure out why he ran off, I resolved not to do it no matter how many gnome slaves I saw. Seeing Constantine among the captives would certainly move me to action, but I wouldn’t do a thing without a proper plan and backup from my friends. I swore it to myself and him.

“All right,” I said, “sounds like the cage is where they’ll likely keep Constantine if things are the same. But we’ll do a thorough scouting regardless.”

“I don’t know about you, Red,” Stephen said to Sonja wistfully, “but I can’t wait to try out some of my new spells and skills on those goblins.”

“Me too,” she said. Her nostrils flared, and that feral grin spread across her lips.

Mace’s instincts agreed, but my instincts were pushing caution.

“I get it,” I said, “but remember our goal. We want to rescue Constantine and then go home. We’re not here to see how high we can push our XP or test our skills like we would sitting at the table in a real-life game. For all its appearances, this isn’t a game. This is life and death. You guys heard Angelus, same as me.”

Sonja rolled her eyes. “I know that. But pushing up our XP and Ranks is the only way we’ll defeat Angelus. Not to mention it’s a lot of fun.”

“Using magic is everything I imagined it would be and more,” Stephen said. “Tell me it isn’t the same for you, Mace, even with your simplistic divine magic.”

I felt a twinge of annoyance from Mace, but I certainly agreed with Stephen’s point. Wielding magic was…indescribable. I know that’s a cliché, but how do you describe channeling the powers of creation to someone who’s never done it? Can’t be done. I never would’ve understood it had I not done it in The Tomb. I can give a close approximation in these journals, but you’ll have to get sucked into a game world yourself before you truly understand.

And looking back as I write this, I wouldn’t wish that on anybody.

“Again,” I said sternly, “get Constantine, defeat Angelus, and go home. Agreed?”

Sonja scowled. “I liked you better when you were ‘Cautious Chris’.”

“So naïve, so easily manipulated,” Stephen said. “Besides, you’re the one who needs to focus after what you did last time.”

“I don’t understand why I ran off either. But it won’t happen again. I swear it.”

Both of them were quiet for a time, as I knew their characters told them that the vow of an Ancestral Paladin was about as reliable as you can get. They eventually nodded to me.

I stared at Sonja. “‘Cautious Chris’?”

She shrugged. “It’s what Barney called you when he invited me to the cabin.”

“He did?” I turned to Stephen. “Did you and Tom call me that too? I mean, yeah, after the accident and my divorce I got a little risk-averse—”

Stephen stopped, held up a hand, and said, “Did you guys hear that?”

We all stopped. I focused on my hearing but couldn’t pick up anything besides my breathing and heartbeat.

“Probably nothing,” Stephen said, then started walking again. “We should stay quiet, though.”

I narrowed my eyes at him and wondered if he’d done that to avoid my question. I decided to let it go for the time being.

We pushed through the seemingly infinite mining cave. After a while, I quietly brought up to my team possible tactics and strategies in rescuing Constantine from a goblin tribe. Stephen didn’t object to talking again, so he and Sonja gave me more goblin details. Though they were way larger and tougher than the typical fantasy tropes, Sonja said they were pretty dumb. They weren’t very good at tactics or strategy and would rush headlong into a battle without any coordination, especially if we made the insane mistake of mocking them.

I decided right there that we would use that in our plans.

The cavern began sloping downward around the place that Sonja and Stephen expected and continued that way for a few hundred paces. Halfway down, we noticed bones scattered along the ground. We couldn’t tell what they were from, but they seemed to be small mammal-like creatures and large fish. Stephen hooded his torch to reduce the light we were giving off, and we stopped talking. When the cavern leveled off, the air grew moist and chilly, and we could hear a steady rumbling from up ahead.

I gave Sonja and Stephen a questioning glance, but they both shrugged and shook their heads. It was new to them, too. We pressed on.