Much to Alyss’s obvious chagrin, Luce was a huge help in the dungeon moving forward. Every once in a while, as they were walking through the long, empty-looking corridors of the dungeon, Luce would shoot one of their arrows of light into the shadows at the edges of the flickering torchlight and creatures would shriek. In between these displays of deadly awareness and precision, Luce hovered around Blaze, trying to convince her to let them into her party.

Alyss hung back a few paces, her arms crossed and her thin lips pressed into a scowl. Just a step behind her was Hiro and Alphonse. Hiro desperately kept his eyes on the ceiling, trying to, just once, see the monsters before Luce attacked them. With each passing second, Hiro felt more and more useless and more and more like he would never be able to make his fathers proud as he watched someone who might actually be able to solo a dungeon work.

Alyss was pretending to be unimpressed as she scoffed, “I don’t know why Blaze is entertaining this creep, who knows what they really want or where they came from.”

Alphonse raised an eyebrow and snorted, “Maybe you should let it go. You’re starting to sound jealous.”

Alyss’s face instantly turned as bright red as her hair. She threw her hands down and stomped her foot, her mouth opening and closing until finally she shouted, “shut up!”

The echoes of their footsteps changed as they wandered out of the narrow hallway into a large open chamber. On the other end of the chamber was a door. Luce kept walking on to the door without stopping. Hiro peered into the dark corners of the large chamber but saw nothing but cobwebs.

“Head’s up, guys!” Luce called back over their shoulder, as they and Blaze stopped in front of the door, “Boss fight room, get ready.”

*

Suzie and Kelsi made it back to the safe zone without incident. It was only after they had stepped through the gate of the town that Kelsi grabbed ahold of Suzie’s armored forearm. Suzie glanced back at her with a raised eyebrow.

Kelsi frowned with her eyebrows furrowed. She chewed her bottom lip, “we never passed that person’s party...”