Anger and grief made my whole body tremble. I fought Mace’s sudden objections over me trying to sabotage the deal, for he wanted to go after Trox right away and get his Ancestral Longsword back. I tried reassuring him that this was a bargaining tactic with Nissa, and that, of course, we’d still go after Trox.

I’m not sure he believed me.

I wasn’t sure if I believed myself.

“What?” The gnome’s face turned red, and her eyes bulged with indignity. “This was not my fault! You never told me she had two spirits attached to her body!”

“Would it have changed anything?”

“Yes! I would’ve changed the contract to account for it!”

I shrugged. “It’s not my fault you didn’t think of it.”

The gnome’s face suddenly grew dangerous. “You have Blood Sworn. If you do not honor this contract, you will die.”

“And she has not been brought back to my satisfaction! That was in the contract!”

Sonja gasped, sat straight up, and screamed, making us all jump. The scream lingered until she had no more breath in her lungs. But it didn’t sound like a scream of pain. It seemed more like a scream of victory.

When she stopped, she slowly turned her head to us. Her eyes were wide, and she was breathing heavily as if she’d just sprinted into the room. She touched her arms and then inspected her leg where she’d suffered the wound. She smiled as she ran her fingers along the pink outline of the scar.

“Constantine, you daft priest, this is your best work to date,” she said. She looked at the dwarf, who held Sonja’s battle-ax. “And thanks for keeping Mourner safe.”

When she held her hand out to Constantine, he hesitated before handing it to her. She took the haft with almost religious reverence and then closed her eyes and leaned her forehead against the steel ax head. She muttered what sounded like a prayer, then sighed and opened her eyes.

“Sonja?” I asked.

She looked at me and smiled. “Mace, don’t look so worried. I made it.” She shifted her eyes behind me and said, “Stephen, you seem surprised. Not all Warriors of the Crimson Leaf want to die.”

“Sonja,” I said carefully, “what happened to Melony?”

Her smile faltered. “I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

“I think you know what happened.”

She looked away then shifted her eyes back to me. What I saw there made me want to take a step back. It certainly wasn’t an expression Melony would’ve given me. It was the warning a lion gives when it thinks you’re trying to steal its kill. I noticed her grip tighten around Mourner’s shaft.

“This is my body,” she said in a low voice, “not hers. She was the invader, just like you all have taken bodies that are not yours. I’m sorry your friend wasn’t strong enough to hold on, but I have my own quests to fulfill in this world.”

I just stared at Sonja, my guts churning, for I could sense Mace agreeing with everything she had just said: You are the invader, Chris.

“She never asked to get stuck in your body,” I said. “None of us asked to be here! We’re just trying to survive and go home!”

“So am I,” she snarled. “And I cannot take the chance that she will divert me from my quests.”

During this whole time in the dungeon, it never occurred to me that maybe my friends and I had leaped into the bodies of people who were minding their own business and just going about their lives. Maybe they had important goals, too, high stakes that meant life or death to themselves or people they cared about.

How would I feel if that happened while I picked up Jack from college?

I wanted to argue with Sonja, but I couldn’t come up with a counter-argument that would make her sound like the villain and Melony the victim.

It turned out that I didn’t have to.

The door on the other side of the theater flew open, and three gnomes hurried down the stairs. They were all dressed in what appeared to be gnomish battle gear—hard leather armor, heavy goggles, and backpacks spewing wires that led to coppery gloves.

“Director,” said the lead gnome, who stopped and gave a fist in the air salute to Nissa.

Nissa nodded impatiently. “I’m busy, Supervisor. What is it?”

“My scouts report that goblin warriors are massing near the river at the bottom of the gravel corridor in numbers we have never seen.”

Nissa’s rosy cheeks paled. “How many?”

The gnome swallowed once. “My scouts estimate at least fifty, Director.”

“Fifty? We’ve only ever seen five at the most.” Nissa seemed to deflate and held onto the table to steady herself. “Just three almost destroyed half of Dungeontown. Fifty will leave nothing but ash.”

We’ve all had those days where problems kept stacking on top of each other. Set aside the fact that my friends and I were stuck in an RPG world when all we had wanted to do was spend a fun weekend with each other reliving old college memories.

Melony’s spirit had just been evicted from the body she was possessing, a goblin mage wanted to capture us and deliver us to a person or persons unknown, and now fifty bigfoot-sized goblins blocked our way to the next dungeon level that might or might not take us home.

All within the last few hours.

Nissa turned to me with desperate eyes. “You must honor your contract. If you don’t, my people will die. This town supplies water and power to the communities on the lower levels. If the goblins destroy us, they will die too.”

My bargaining ears perked up. Constantine and Stephen gave her sharp looks as if they realized the same thing I did, but I was first to ask, “You trade with communities in the lower levels?”

“Yes, of course, we trade with the communities below. They give us the lightning metals, and we give them power and water.”

“So you can reach them?”

Nissa sighed impatiently. “Well, trading wouldn’t be possible if we couldn’t reach them, now would it?”

“Do you use the door at the bottom of the gravel corridor? The one with the glowing etches?”

“That’s one way,” Nissa said, “but the gravel corridor is far too small and difficult to haul trade goods back and forth. Besides, nobody’s opened that door in centuries.”

So there was another way to Level Two! Nissa’s information would save us days or weeks of searching on our own and perhaps our very lives.

I was about to propose a new bargain when Sonja swung her legs off the table and stood. She was a bit shaky at first, but she gained her balance. She hefted her ax against her shoulder and said, “I will protect this town on my own if I have to. Warriors of the Crimson Leaf always protect those who cannot protect themselves.”

I quickly added, “Yes, we will all protect this town”—I prayed Constantine and Stephen didn’t object, and they thankfully nodded along—“if you show us how to reach the next level of this dungeon.”

Nissa narrowed her eyes as she looked from me to Sonja. “Why should I make another contract with you when you were about to void the first one?”

“Because you have nothing to lose,” I said. “If we help you defeat this goblin attack and kill Trox, then and only then will you tell us how to get to the next level.”

Nissa continued to study us as she considered my offer. Sonja shifted her feet while Constantine and Stephen remained quiet with their best poker faces.

“That is a fair trade,” Nissa said suddenly. “I will draw up another contract.” She hurried over to the cabinet.

“Director, what should we do?” the supervisor gnome asked, who had been patiently waiting for Nissa’s orders.

“Charge all of the lightning packs to twenty-five percent,” she said as she opened and closed several drawers looking for more parchment. “We don’t have time for full strength. Give them to as many of our soldiers as possible and arm every other able-bodied gnome with spears and shields.”

“And barricade that corridor,” I said. I hadn’t even thought about saying that, so I assumed it was Mace’s Tactical Vision skill bursting out. “If you can force them to come through one or two at a time, their numbers will be meaningless.”

The Supervisor glanced between Nissa and me as if he didn’t know whether to listen to me.

“Do as he says, Supervisor,” Nissa said as she brought the parchment and pens back to the table. She immediately set to writing.

The Supervisor gave another fist in the air salute, and then he and his two companions ran back up the stairs and out the door.

“Why haven’t you blocked that corridor by now?” I asked Nissa.

“There’s gold in the river,” she said while writing. “The risk of one goblin raid per year was always worth the profit of keeping it open. That is, until Trox came along two months ago and started extorting us.”

“Trox can cast portals,” Stephen reminded us.

“Yes,” I added. “He and his warriors can enter your town through them. This approach from the gravel corridor might be a diversion.”

Nissa waved her hand dismissively as she wrote on the parchment with her other hand. “I know how he makes his portals, and only he can travel through them. His warriors must come up through the corridor. There is no other way up from the river below.”

I glanced at Stephen, and he said, “Krait’s magic is very individualistic. That makes sense.”

I thought about the massive pipes that I’d seen coming from the cavern lake and disappearing into the cavern wall. “What about the water pipes? Could they come up through those?”

“Perhaps if there wasn’t water rushing through them at five feet per second,” Nissa said.

“But Trox could cause trouble behind your lines if he alone portals in. He’s a powerful wizard. Where could he appear that would hurt you the most?”

“He wants you four, right?” Nissa said as she wrote. “He sent three of his thugs to chase you. I imagine he’d go wherever you are.”

She didn’t say it accusingly, which made me feel all the more guilty about bringing this calamity upon them.

But she was right. Trox wanted us for some reason. Which meant…

“We can be the bait,” I said.

My Tactical Vision skill kicked in with some ideas on how we could tempt Trox into attacking us. I needed to have a talk with Stephen about Krait’s magic. I could tell my idea for a trap met with Mace’s approval, for he didn’t even flinch at a plan involving Stephen’s magic.

“But first,” Nissa said, pushing the parchment toward me and handing me the pen.

I read the contract as Constantine and Stephen crowded next to me. It essentially said, once again, that we had to kill Trox before Nissa would show us the way to the second level of the dungeon. It declared that all other previous contracts with the “undersigned pertaining to Trox’s killing would be considered fulfilled once Trox was dead.” Nissa had written a remarkably detailed contract within the short time we’d been speaking with her. I couldn’t find any weaselly loopholes that made us promise something we didn’t intend, and Constantine and Stephen nodded their approvals. The three of us signed the contract and then added our bloody thumbprints.

When it was Sonja’s turn, she signed the contract with the symbol tattooed on her thigh, and then she added her bloody thumbprint beneath her symbol. She didn’t even read it before signing.

“Now can we fight?” she asked.

I stared at Sonja as Nissa rolled up the parchment and shoved it into the same shoulder satchel where she’d stored the first one. “I must see to my town’s defenses,” she said, then hurried up the stairs toward the door where the other gnomes had entered. “Come find me near the gravel corridor when you are ready to discuss your trap.”

“Well?” Sonja asked once Nissa had left. “What do you boys want to do? Stare at me or go kill some goblins?”

“What is the quest you spoke of a minute ago?” I asked. “I need to know if we have similar aims.”

“That is private, Paladin,” she said. “But rest assured that, for now, it coincides with your goal to return to your world.” She paused, then said, “I do not wish any harm upon Melony. She is strong and honorable. If her spirit persists, and I have accomplished my quests, then I will do all I can to help you recover her.”

I glanced at Constantine and Stephen. They both wore the same expressions of worry and doubt that I felt. From what I’d seen of Sonja in action, she was valuable in a fight. We would need that in our battle with Trox.

But could we trust her to do what she said? Could we trust that she wouldn’t do anything to harm Melony or that her own “quests” wouldn’t risk our chances of getting home?

I knew that Mace trusted her, and that should’ve been enough. But did he trust her because he knew she would keep her promise or because he was working against me, the invader of his body?

I didn’t sense any deception from Mace, but how could I really be sure?

I couldn’t. At least not now. So I had no choice but to trust them both.

“I will hold you to that,” I said, looking her in the eyes. “In the meantime, I say we help the gnomes.”

I looked at Constantine and Stephen for agreement. Constantine nodded and said, “We did bring this upon them. It is the honorable thing to do.”

Stephen snorted. “Honor, schmonor. If Nissa can save us days or weeks of searching for another entrance to Level Two and all the battles with wandering monsters, then I’m all for deciding it right now.”

I turned to Sonja. “So we kill Trox. And then we’ll talk about what to do next. Agreed?”

Her feral grin returned. “Agreed.”