Two Months and eighteen days later

“Elsy, duck!” I yelled out and never bothering to see if she had listened, I raised my funneled hand in front of my face, spewing liquid fire and catching the swarm of leech bugs just in time, the acrid smell of their bodies boiling and popping within the intense heat filling the small cave.

My stomach rumbled.

Euck. I hate that.

Not the smell. I hated that I was suddenly feeling hungry because of the smell.

See, that’s the problem with dragon magic that they don’t tell you-

Well, not like anyone is telling you anything about dragon magic in the first place.

-sure, you expect the power and all that, but what you don’t expect is the other changes it makes to your body. Teeth hard enough to chew through metal? Yeah, I won’t deny it; that’s cool.

An appetite that matches those teeth, with nothing off the menu? Yeah, not as cool.

“Tez, behind!”

I dropped just in time as a rod of ice rocketed through the air, slamming directly through a pouncing leech bug I hadn’t noticed and pinning it to the wall.

“Damnit, there’s no end to them!” I heard Amir holler from farther away, two bladed hoops swinging around his arms, reminding me of the chakram chain my brother had often used during his time adventuring.

Now’s not the time.

I pushed the thought of my brother out of my mind, bellowing another breath of fire over the swarm of bugs.

Well, he’s not wrong.

From holes in the walls of the cave, thousands of bugs were streaming out like a living wave of armored leeches, skittering around on legs like that of a spider.

“Elsmere, how is the progress closing those vents up?” Thoron swatted aside more of the skittering leeches, throwing out several fireballs as he did, albeit not nearly as hot as my own fire.

“I just need a moment’s reprieve!” She shouted back.

“Down.” The voice came quietly, a chilling cold to the single spoken word that made me shiver.

Our group, now reduced to six members from the original forty-eight or so of us that there had been, instantly complied, dropping flat to the floor.

And not a moment too soon, the air exploded, suddenly displaced as millions of tiny mana particles expanded, taking form into a cloud of metal shrapnel ricocheting around the cave, propelled by the burst of kinetic force that had accompanied their sudden appearance.

Ducked low to the ground and concentrated within the center of the cave, I managed to get away with only a few cuts as the metal flakes cut me.

The leech bugs weren’t so lucky. Thousands of them had been swarming out from the holes within the cave walls, but in an instant, they had been reduced to nothing more than a vicious smelling paste of insect gore.

“Proceed.” Iris glanced down at where Elsmere was crouched low with her arms defensively wrapped around her head.

Elsmere nodded shakily before standing up, muttering once, and slamming a foot down, the holes from which the wave of insects skittered out from sealed in an instant.

Scary.

It wasn’t the leech bugs either that I was referring to.

“Everyone okay?” Thoron called out. As the last remaining member of our original group, the man had become something like a co-vice leader alongside Intilda, the vice or former vice-captain of Shangsattva. Considering their original party leader Gramm had died, she was now, by default, their standing leader.

Though I doubt anyone is thinking about that in the first place.

The fact of the matter was that when, if¸ we got out of this, the two top gold adventuring parties would officially be disbanded, their total member count dropping below the requirement to be an officially recognized party.

We’ve lost so many….

I frowned, his image coming to mind as it always did when the thought snuck into my head.

Damnit Rook. Weren’t you supposed to go further than this?

The guilt, as always, began to gnaw at me a second later.

My fault.

He only came on this quest because of me.

My fault.

“Scarlet.”

I snapped to, Iris staring at me with her always impossibly guarded expression.

Does she even feel?

The chill returned to my spine, but I hid the thoughts behind the usual cheery mask I wore.

“Sorry, I was distracted. What is it?”

“We’re moving on.”

“Already?” I questioned, noticing Amir and Elsmere were sat down with their heads hung low, exhaustion clearly heavy on them.

“We are close.” She crossed her arms. “Unless you would prefer to voice complaints?”

Scary.

“No, I’m good.” I forced a fake smile, flipping my hair as I did for added effect.

She didn’t seem to buy it, but then, lately, she didn’t seem to buy much of anything.

As soon as she turned around and began to walk away, the smile fell from my face.

Damnit Rook.

It had been.....

Gods, how long have we been at this for now?

It had been some time, at the very least, since those fateful first few days when we had all but lost everybody.

Since we had lost Rook.

Ever since Iris had changed. From my impression of her, she had never been… warm, but even then, compared to what she has become now, it must have taken a toll on her.

Guess that’s what happens when you see everyone you’re supposed to be responsible for die in front of you.

The last two must have been especially bad. First, it was Rook, the memory resurfacing as fresh as if it had just happened.

We stood on a quiet island, the sun shining high overhead as waves gently lapped at our feet. It was, perhaps suspiciously, calming. We stood at the ready, waiting for anything to lunge out at us as we waited for the last two to show up.

Iris and Rook.

When the rift in space cut open, I held my breath until a figure finally tumbled out.

A figure. As in, one.

“Iris?” Thoron looked down at her as she gingerly stood up from where she had tumbled into the sand. “Where’s Rook?”

She said nothing, save for the flicker of a pained expression through her eyes.

“Iris.” It was my turn to speak up, my throat so tight that it was a struggle to get even one word out. “Where is Rook?”

“We picked wrong.” She finally said, her voice quiet, cold. “The platform began crumbling beneath us, and we should have died there. Except, at the last second, he did something, and the next thing I knew, I was being swallowed up by that light.”

We were silent, the only sound the lapping of waves and gentle wind through palm trees as what she said sunk in.

Rook had died, sacrificing himself to save Iris.

It sounded like something he might do. For all his strange behaviors and swings between being belligerently against taking risks and jumping in headfirst, at the very least, I had never known Rook as someone to selfishly pick himself over others when push came to shove.

Or would he? In truth, I’d never even had the opportunity to get to know him more than I had, our interactions always limited to our times adventuring.

And now, I never would have the chance.

I let go of the memory with a sigh. I wouldn’t let it drag me down more than it had.

As bad as losing Rook had been on us, the loss of Lela seemed to irreversibly change Iris. It had been a grisly way to go; Lela, on Iris’s orders, had been investigating something upon the island when the rest of us, still standing on the beach, heard her scream.

The island, we had discovered, had been filled with living trees. Isolated amongst those trees, they came to life when Lela was distracted, vines and branches catching her arms and legs and ripping her apart before moving on to the rest of her body.

I almost preferred the Hollow to that; at the very least, it hadn’t scarred me with the sight of such grisly carnage, as if the trees reveled in bloodshed.

Afterward, I was responsible for burning the island’s greenery to the ground. My dragon fire had greedily devoured the island trees in a burning pyre of wicked vengeance. That was all it had taken for us to move on from that trial, and as good as it felt to burn it all to the ground, it hadn’t brought Lela back.

As a result, ever since, Iris had changed, completely aloof, no longer sparing a single unnecessary word or conversation with the rest of us. She pushed us with equal measures of caution and vigor when needed, and we hadn’t lost anyone else ever since.

Now though, for whatever reason, she had insisted that we were ‘close’; as a result, the measured pace we had been traversing the dungeon had changed to an almost frantic dash forward.

Is it safe to keep relying on her?

It was the unsaid question everyone was left wondering. Her behavior unnerved us, the coldness to her emotions that never seemed to waver anymore. It was only for the simple fact that there had been several occasions since we had been reduced to the six of us that we would have died if not for her, and for that reason alone, we continued to follow her command so unquestioningly.

What would Rook have said?

I dislodged the thought. First, Rook wasn’t precisely the leader type for all the fantastic things about him. Second, such thoughts would only distract and slow me. Sure, Iris was pushing us harder recently, but I could understand why assuming we really were close. The sooner we moved on, the sooner we could escape.

After we escaped, even if our individual groups had been dismantled, there was no doubt in my mind that every person here would be granted nizeium rank. If not for our accomplishments in clearing the dungeon with only six of us, then at the very least from the exponential growth we had seen within the dungeon. It was, perhaps, the only silver-lining of having so few of us, as morbid as it may be.

With only six of us, the spoils of war were much more concentrated amongst us, relics and data crystals that we had found within the many different trials leading each of us to grow leaps and bounds beyond what we once were capable.

What did it cost us, though?

“Tez?”

I jumped; Elsmere had unknowingly to me snuck up on me, her hand upon my shoulder surprising me.

“Sorry.” She gave me a quick smile, giving my shoulder a tight squeeze. “You just had that look in your eyes.”

“I didn’t have a look, Elsy.” I sniffed, pretending to be indignant.

“Don’t give me that.” She raised an eyebrow at me, the corner of her mouth turning up in a quick twitch, her lips cracked and-

Focusing a little much on her lips, aren’t you?

My cheeks flushing, I looked away. We had bonded, not just Elsmere and I, but the entirety of the remaining survivors, aside from Iris, of course. Bonds forged through trials few, if any, could even imagine, we had become a bit like family.

Family. Yeah, that’s what it is.

“What do you make of that?” She nodded toward where Iris was silently investigating the tunnel from the insect den.

“What do you mean?”

“You know exactly what I mean.” She said quietly.

“Elsmere, she is your party leader.”

“What party?” Elsmere raised her eyebrow again at me. “None of us have a party anymore. Now, answer the question.”

I looked to the side before shrugging. “What can I say? Yeah, she worries me, pushing us hard, but what if she is right and we are close to the end?”

“And how exactly do you think she came to that conclusion?”

I opened my mouth to respond, but when no answer came, I closed it a moment after.

I didn’t think about that.

“I already talked about it with the others. We think… we think she might be losing it.”

“Iris is made of tougher stuff than that,” I answered instantly, perhaps a second too fast as if I were trying to convince myself.

“Tez, you weren’t a part of her party. I was. She’s different. She never was much of a people person, but this is something new entirely. We can hold this pace for now, but if she really has lost her sensibilities….”

“What, you suggest we attempt a mutiny?”

“No.” she shook her head with an intense vigor. “You’ve seen her magic. You think that would work, even if we all worked together?”

No. The answer was obviously no. If Iris had even a second to react to us, her steel haze would cut us down and leave us as nothing more than mincemeat. Her magic, while not always ideal for dealing with heavily armored monsters or things like the Hollow, was almost perfect for instantly killing a group of humans, even if, by all rights, we were all accomplished adventurers in our own rights.

“We aren’t suggesting turning on her, for now. But, if it ever looks like push comes to shove, well…” her words drowned out, the implication obvious.

If the time ever comes, here’s your only warning of what’s going to go down.

I wasn’t exactly fond of discussing potential mutiny but considering her behavior if she were wrong about us nearing the end of the dungeon, it could cost us all our lives. It would be better to take our chances with Iris than the dungeon that had proven it could eliminate us at any time.

Which was why it was strange, that since the encounter with the Hollow, it was almost as if the dungeon was taking it easier on us.

Easier, of course, was being subjective.

What I would give to have ‘Ronika here. She was always good at thinking things through.

Of course, if Veronika were here, she would have been dead by now. No magic and only adequate with a blade at best meant this would have been the last place someone like her should ever be.

“The passage is clear. We’re moving on.” Iris suddenly returned, her mana constantly shifting around her now like a dormant beast ready to awaken at a moment’s notice

I’m not even sure we could get the jump on her in her sleep.

The five of us slowly made our way after Iris as she led us through the darkness of a murk, dank tunnel, the smell of moisture and moss growing more vibrantly powerful by the second.

“You think we’re going to see any more bugs?” Amir whispered from somewhere behind me, apprehension in his voice.

“We’ve seen spiders, leeches, carnivorous worms, locust swarms, and spider leeches. I wouldn’t put it past this damn dungeon.” Elsmere groaned. “I’m just waiting for giant ants or something.”

“Oh, you can find those in the northern rim of the desert,” I replied offhandedly.

“Really?” I couldn’t see Elsmere’s reaction given the darkness, but the pitch of her voice told me she hadn’t been expecting it.

“I sometimes forget that you’re originally from Songhold and only recently moved to the central region.” I snorted.

“Quiet.” Iris cut our budding conversation short, her voice leaving no room for argument. “Don’t leave room for distractions.”

The silence returned as we crept through the tunnel, the darkness slowly lifting as the scent of moss grew more pungent, a spongy carpet growing denser the further we went. With each step, the silhouette of our footsteps was outlined by a luminous glow, the moss reacting as we walked over it.

“Keep your heads up.” Iris suddenly said, her steel haze swirling and rustling around us.

“Can you feel something?” Thoron questioned, his voice kept low.

“I sent some of my mana forward, and the cave opens up into a small cave around three hundred meters from here.”

“You can send it that far from yourself?” I felt my curiosity piqued; while Iris had a rather… effective magic, it wasn’t precisely broad in its reach or raw potency. So to hear her say so casually how her range had extended so far, even if she was stretching the mana thin in doing so, was a surprise.

Has she done it? Broken through her ceiling?

Every mage had a genetic limitation. In the same way, some people would grow to be tremendously tall while others barely grew at all. In that same way, the ability to grow as a mage was limited; some were genetically predisposed for all but limitless growth, while others couldn’t even use mana in the first place.

That was me once.

No one in my family had been capable of using magic, which had been my destiny at one point.

Until Rook had come into my life, opening the possibilities to an endlessly expansive world, I had only ever dreamed of.

And now he is gone.

I felt a bitter resentment gnawing at my gut. He shouldn’t have died. If only he hadn’t been left with Iris, he would haven’t have been in a position to sacrifice himself.

If only he hadn’t been invited to this quest.

If only I didn’t push him into it.

Trying to ignore the guilt gnawing at me, I counted our steps, mentally tracking our progress to the mentioned opening we were approaching.

I saw it before I reached the end of my count; the tunnel we were walking through opened into a larger cave, my jaw dropping as we entered it.

The room was all but bare, but what was truly eye-catching was that the walls were entirely made of precious silver, ornate gems dotted throughout, and veins of gold splitting through the silver like a spiderweb.

“You ever seen this much wealth in one place?” Amir whispered, his eyes bulging as he took in the sight.

“Never.” Intilda shook her head. “But that’s not what’s important here.”

She was right. One of the obelisks we had grown familiar with was directly in front of us.

Except, this one was different. It was made of shiny black mineral, obsidian, and blue lights of pulsing light pulsating as if it had been awaiting our arrival.

“This is it.” Iris stared at it, her eyebrow twitching. “The final trial.”

“How can you possibly know that?” Elsmere raised her voice, causing Iris to stare at her, her gaze steely.

“I just do.”

“How?” Elsmere continued prodding.

“Do not question your party leader.” Iris shook her head, but still, Elsmere refused to budge.

“What party? At this point, the Sunju doesn’t exist. It’s just us.”

“Enough bickering.” Thoron interrupted. “It’s not like we have any other options but to press forward.”

Elsmere looked away, gaze averted to the floor as Iris turned to face the obelisk.

“When we cross over, we will likely find ourselves in a dangerous situation.”

“And what has this entire dungeon been, if not dangerous?” Amir questioned with a raised eyebrow.

Iris continued speaking, ignoring the comment.

“We shall end this, here and now, and I will return you all from this anathema.”

I couldn’t deny that even with our suspicions of Iris, of her behavior change, the possibility of escaping from this dungeon which we had been in for what must have been several months.

“Now, are you all ready?”

We spared several looks amongst each other, but when no one spoke up, Iris nodded before approaching the obelisk, one hand hovering over it.

I saw a rare moment from Iris in that second spanning her indecision. Worry, worry of what was to come, but as Thoron himself had said, there was nothing else for us to do but press forward.

Iris, decision made, pressed her palm against the obsidian obelisk, which suddenly radiated a blue light, blindingly bright as the white light that had whisked us away as with every prior interaction with one of the obelisks.

Here we go.

I felt myself floating than I was soaring through the darkness, blue lights streaking by as I flew through what could only be likened to soaring through the night sky.

Wow.

It was exhilarating. The white light which had teleported us before had always been an all but instant process, but this was entirely new, my blood pumping with excitement, the worries of the dungeon temporarily forgotten.

This is what adventuring should be like.

But as with all good things, it eventually came to an end, the blue lights streaking past, or perhaps I was the one flying past them, disappearing as the darkness released me and I found myself deposited within-

What is this place?

The dungeon had been many things, and whenever you felt yourself getting used to it, the dungeon would throw a curveball, dark tunnels turning to sunny beaches or the like.

Yet, not once had we found ourselves in a place like this. We were standing at the end of a long throne room, towering statues of figures I didn’t recognize flanking a royal red carpet that led toward a throne.

To call it a ‘throne’ felt too weak of a word. It was majestic and grandiose, made of black obsidian with platinum inlaid throughout the arms of the throne. Lining it was silver-colored bones, further accenting the authority the throne seemed to command, and at the very top of the throne was the largest skull I’d ever seen, the same silverly bones as the ribs standing at attention around the throne.

It was, without a doubt, the skull of some titanic dragon.

“What is this place?” Thoron whispered as I noticed that I was no longer alone as I had been when hurtling through the darkness.

“Some sort of throne room?” Intilda answered. “But, if this is the final level of the dungeon, where’s the relic?”

It had been so long since we entered the dungeon that I had forgotten our original purpose of coming here in the first place, to locate some powerful relic that was said to be within.

“The Throne,” Iris whispered, her voice sounding hoarse. “The Hallowed Throne.”

“The Hallowed Throne?” I asked, surprised, “Wait, how exactly do you-”

Iris ignored me, and from where we had appeared, she suddenly began to strut forward, walking with speed and purpose toward the Throne while the rest of us remained frozen in place.

“Iris!” Thoron hissed. “Where are you going?”

Thoron stepped forward, arm outstretched as if to pull her back.

It happened so fast for a moment, I didn’t believe my eyes. One moment Thoron was walking forward, intending to pull Iris back.

The next, he toppled to the ground, split in two as a stone ax cleaved him through the waist.

“Thoron!” I yelled, my instincts kicking in. From all around us, the tall, imposing stone statues were moving. A statue directly to our left had moved silently without our notice until it was too late, its stone ax striking through Thoron as if he were made of butter.

“To arms!” Intilda yelled out as the stone statues lining the opposing sides of the throne room began to make their way toward us, each easily three times our standing height.

The statue which had killed Thoron was already turning to attack again, its ax, a polearm now that I got a better look, sweeping through the air toward Intilda.

“Not so fast!” Amir dropped to the ground, slamming his palms to the ground. “Aultar!”

A geyser of grey liquid shot out around the statue, the quicklime hardening instantly.

“Thanks!” Intilda never looked back at Amir, fire dancing at her fingertips before she pointed it at the trapped statue. “Rentorz!”

A bullet of magma shot forward, streaking through the air before colliding with the trapped statue. Aside from singing the stone, it appeared to leave no damage, the trapped statue already breaking free of the quicklime.

“That’s an issue.” I heard Intilda mutter. “That’s my strongest magic.”

If her magma magic had no effect on the statue, it was unlikely her primary fire would either.

It was my turn to test the effectiveness of my abilities as I funneled my hand in front of my mouth, spewing forth dragon fire at the statue. Bathing the marble warrior in crimson, cracks began to form.

But that was it, the extent of the damage I had inflicted.

“Watch out!”

Elsmere shouted, warning Intilda as a statue hefted a stone spear before launching it across the room.

To Intilda’s credit, her reaction time was impeccable. She clapped her hands together, yelling as she did.

“Scortar!”

As she pulled her hands apart, a buckler of metal formed between her hands, just in time to catch the stone spear as it rocketed toward her.

It was just unfortunate that before the dominating strength imposed by the stone statues, her impromptu metal shield didn’t last for even a second, exploding in a thousand metal shards as the spear impaled her against the giant set of closed doors behind us, doors that led in and out of the throne room.

“Intilda!” Amir shouted before raising a hand overhead. “Aulous!”

Above his hand appeared a floating disc of water, beginning to rotate with increasing speed until it was like a buzzsaw of water. With a surprising amount of expertise and mana control, he began to direct the disc around him, using it to defend against the stone polearm of the nearest statue.

The situation was desperate. Just one of the statues was proving an issue, and there were about twenty more heading toward us. Thoron was dead. Intilda was presumed dead.

And Iris continued forward unabated the entire time, almost gliding toward the throne.

Damnit.

For my part, I continued spewing my dragon flames as best I could, but the damage was too minor, the statue far beyond our ability to deal with.

The writing was on the wall. We were already dead; we just didn’t know it yet.

Perhaps our only saving grace was that the statues made it no major hurry to make their way toward us, only moving quickly when they felt like it. It was taking everything Amir had to defend against the single statue, his water disc just good enough to redirect the statue’s polearm out of the way by a hairsbreadth, surviving on a devil’s luck alone.

Elsmere had engaged a statue wielding a giant maul, its slow, heavy swings shattering through her earthen walls with ease.

As for me, I was left tumbling and dodging around a statue, my dragon fire slowly forming cracks in its marble body.

It’s not enough.

From the corner of my eye, I finally saw Amir stumble, his footing unstable as the stone statue slammed a heavy foot down upon the ground. Unable to dodge away in time, the polearm came down in one fell swoop. A moment later, Amir was left with one less arm, cut away below the elbow as his water disk vanished, the concentration necessary to make use of such an intricate control of mana disrupted by the agony and shock of losing an arm.

“Tez!”

Distracted for a split second by the sight of Amir losing an arm, I was slow to react, my eyes darting back to see a marble fist hurtling toward my face.

I hope dying doesn’t hurt.

I closed my eyes. There was no point in dodging; in fact, the only reason I registered any of it was likely born from the fact that when faced with death, it was said that time felt as if it moved slower as the mind sought any possible way to save itself.

There was none. I simply had to accept I would die here and now.

Sorry Zet, sorry ‘Ronika. Looks like we won’t be seeing each other again.

I waited for the release of death, seconds passing by as I held my eyes tightly shut.

Wait, why am I still alive?

Peaking open an eye, my breath froze in my throat.

A figure had appeared before, almost nonchalantly holding back the statue before he looked back at me with a tight smile.

“Rook?”

Time restarted, and I found my breath, my mind unable to believe what my eyes were seeing. The man who had popped into existence in front of me looked back, a faint look of amusement in his eyes.

“Miss me much?”