I hid in the half-ruined house for an hour after Juan and Marta stopped screaming. I watched the level timer tick down, the moments until I died vanishing forever. I wanted to leave, I knew I had to leave, but I simply couldn't make myself move.

Eventually the light started to redden and the shadows started to deepen as the fake sun lowered to the fake horizon. I didn't dare stay out here at night, so I forced myself out of the mostly-imaginary protection of half a roof and parts of three walls; it was time to start back towards the saferoom.

On my minimap I could see the daylight monsters starting to go to sleep, their red dots becoming still. Unfortunately, the nighttime monsters were emerging, and there were a lot more of them. Also, they were stronger, as I could tell the moment I mentally clicked on a few.

Level 13 Ruin Ravager

Level 16 Terror Snake

Level 14 Scaled Scavenger

Nope.

Back the way I had come there was one enormous red dot, fuzzier and lighter red than the others.

Murder Hornet Hive. Level 57 (collectively)

I started to circle wide around it on my way to the saferoom and then paused as a thought struck me. I looked more closely at the hive and noticed that there were two large, slowly-pulsing gray dots inside the larger red dot of the hive.

Corpse of Crawler Marta E - Level 12

Corpse of Crawler Juan R - Level 14

I turned left and crept back to the hornets' field.

It was twilight and most of the hornets had gone back to the hive, but a few still buzzed around, ready to summon their brethren if anything intruded on their domain. In the middle of the field lay the corpses that had been human beings only a few dozen minutes ago.

I bit my lip, thinking. I wanted their gear. I wanted it so badly I could taste it. Their bodies were only five or six meters away and with the inventory system I could loot them in seconds if I could get close enough, but I was 100% confident that I would die if I set so much as one toe in that field.

I watched the hornets for a few minutes, hoping that they might all go back to the hive as the sun went down, but no. Obviously I couldn't be that lucky.

I took a deep breath and lay down at the edge of the meadow, staying in the shadow of a crumbling pottery flower box so that I was out of sight. I reached out my right arm and focused on making it grow. I was a doppleganger, right? That was how this was supposed to work.

Nothing happened.

I chewed my lip for a moment, thinking. Finally, I gripped my right forearm in my left hand and pulled. To my surprise and delight, it worked; my arm stretched a few centimeters. I walked my right-hand fingers forward, pulling the arm straight again, and repeated the process.

It was slow and nerve-wracking but over the course of ten minutes I stretched my arm into the field a few centimeters at a time, going still if a hornet came anywhere close to me. Juan's corpse was closer, Marta's a couple meters on the other side of him.

Their bodies were bloated from the poison with plum-sized divots torn in their flesh from where the hornets had stung; I tried not to think about the cause of those divots—whether the stingers were barbed, or the venom was explosive, or the hornets had powerful jaws, or...

I shook the thought away and tried to pull Juan's entire corpse into my inventory; it didn't work. Apparently the AI didn't think I could lift him from this position. It was probably right.

His axe was on the ground next to him, and that I was able to get. He was lying on his side, loosely braced on spraddled legs, allowing me to see the two clasps on the left side of his leather jerkin. I undid them carefully, keeping one eye on the hornets the whole time. As soon as they were undone the jerkin slid off of him in both directions. It was still pinned under him but at least it wasn't actually equipped. Thankfully, at that point the AI allowed me to put it into my inventory instead of forcing me to actually pull it out from under him. I also managed to get a belt buckle and a coin from his pocket.

I paused, considering my next move. I had maybe another twenty minutes before it was fully dark and I was going to need five or ten of them in order to sneak around the field and reach the saferoom. That wasn't a lot of time.

I couldn't see any other easily-accessible gear on Juan aside from a trio of rings, but there was no way I was getting those off of him; the venom had caused his fingers to swell to the size of sausages. That left Marta, but Juan's corpse was blocking my view to her so I would be working blind. It was still worth a shot.

I pulled my oversized arm around him and reached over to the dead woman. Some careful exploration and fiddling with fasteners netted me a leather hair tie and a broach from her shirt.

Okay, at this point I was pushing my luck. I extracted my arm, using the opposite hand to pull the arm back into my shoulder one bit at a time. It was a slow process and I needed to freeze twice when the motion rustled the grass and caused the hornets to come inspect the area.

Night had truly fallen by the time I managed to get to hands and knees and back away. There was a half moon that gave barely enough light to let me pick my way around the field so long as I stayed crouched with my eyes on the ground to check for bad footing. There was rubble everywhere and if I had tried to walk normally I would have definitely turned an ankle or at least made enough noise to attract the mobs that I could see everywhere on my minimap.

Moving slowly and occasionally freezing in whatever cover I could find meant that it took me an hour to reach the saferoom, a distance that I had sprinted in a couple of minutes during daylight, but I did make it at last. I rented a room from Fedee for ten of my remaining fifty-seven gold. The room was tiny and the walls were unadorned grey concrete, but I didn't care. I fell onto the cot and was unconscious in seconds.

o-o-o-o

In the morning I stumbled into the shower and sluiced off the sweat and fear-stink from yesterday's misadventures. Unlike the other saferooms I'd been to, this one provided something better than towels: A small cubicle next to the shower that hit me with enormous jets of warm air from three sides. I stood in it, turning slowly around with my arms held out, and luxuriated in the flow until I was completely dry and relaxed. Then I took a firm grip on Juan's axe and went back into the world.

I reached the road with only two more encounters—another centipede and a scaled wolf that came up to my waist. I saw the centipede coming and dodged its initial lunge, after which it wasn't too much of a challenge. Its turning radius was terrible so I was able to stay away from the pincers and chop away at it, slowly wearing it down until it eventually died. I took a few hits from the spike on the tail but it was only about ten percent of my health. The wolf I ran from, distracting it by dropping a big hamburger from my inventory.

Two hours out and making good time along the dusty road, I got a message.

Hekla: How are you?

Katia: Hi! I'm doing well. How did your boss fight go?

Hekla: It went fine, but I have bad news. Donut and Carl moved on from that town. They went northeast to a medium town nearby. You'll need to hurry.

Katia: Yikes! Okay, I will. ...Wait, how do you know where they are?

Hekla: Not important. I've gotta run. Stay safe.

Katia: Okay. You too. Bye.

I shifted up into a jog. Time to see what my supposedly enormous Constitution was good for.

Turns out, it was good for a lot. I held to my usual jogging pace for five minutes and didn't even feel the effort so I sped up, and then sped up again, until I was running at what would have been a full sprint before I entered the dungeon. Five minutes later I had to stop and catch my breath because I was laughing so hard at how much I hadn't needed to catch my breath.

I reached the small town slightly before noon, after only a handful of encounters that my new gear allowed me to handle easily. Once again, as soon as I entered town the people stared and whispered. Some ran, others made gestures at me that were probably some sort of superstitious warding gesture. It took three tries but I finally found someone who was willing to tell me that no, I could not reach the next town before sunset as there were no fast-travel caravans going that way today and it was a full day's walk.

I smiled slightly. "Thanks. I'll take my chances."

I turned and sprinted off. I counted my strides as I went; a quick guesstimate based on the steady progress of the floor timer's lethal ticking told me that I was covering a kilometer every two and a half minutes. That seemed implausibly fast so I went back and did the math again. Nope, same answer. I grinned and pressed on.

I arrived in the aptly-named town of 'Medium Sized Skyfowl Settlement' by three o'clock. Virtually the first thing that happened was I got stopped by the city guard.

As with the villages I had left before, there was no wall or distinguishing end to the town, the streets simply stopped at the last building. I had gone half a block when a figure stepped out of a doorway in front of me.

Village Guard Swordsman – Level 75

Everyone likes the strong, silent type. In order to find out what's underneath that helmet, you'll have to first kill the guard. Go ahead and give it a try. I double dog dare you.

Village Guards are tasked with protecting the population centers of the third floor from the creatures who roam the Over City Ruins. They are only on duty when the sun is up, so don't go whining to them for help when it's dark.

The guardsman was 220 centimeters with head-to-toe platemail that gave no clue as to what type of creature wore it. It was carrying a sword in one hand that was as long as I was and fully thirty centimeters wide.

I froze. The guard had stepped onto the street (because of course there were no sidewalks) and pivoted to face me. It stood there silently, both hands resting on the crossbars of its sword, the point of the sword in the dirt. I froze.

After five very long seconds I realized that the guard was not reacting. It merely studied me.

"H-hello?"

There was no response.

"Um...My name is Katia. Katia Grim. I'm not here to make trouble."

There was no response.

"Is it okay if I go now?"

There continued to be no response. By now my fear was being replaced by confusion and annoyance.

I shuffled to the side and started to walk slowly around him, leaving plenty of room. Its head pivoted to watch me, the eye slit locked on me like a gun barrel until I had moved enough that the neck was slightly beyond the human range of motion. At that point the head turned front again, the creature hefted up his sword, and it walked off with clomping metal boots.

I stared after it in confusion, then shrugged and continued on my way.

The town was beautiful. The houses varied in style but most of them were filled with swooping balconies and second-floor promenades. The purpose for them became clear when I saw my first skyfowl—at least, I assumed they were skyfowl based on the town's pseudo-name. They were human-sized birds and there were multiple different subraces. The wings varied in length and roundness, the feathers varied from speckled gray to brilliant red. I watched six of them dancing in midair, something very like a reel with partners changing and promenading together in three dimensions. I stood and watched for at least five minutes, forgetting about the misery of the dungeon to focus on something beautiful.

Eventually the dance ended, the dancers flew off, and I had to mentally come back to earth and resume looking for my hopefully-future teammates.

It took nearly two hour and several stops to track them down. A good chunk of that time was spent simply finding someone willing to talk to me long enough to give directions to the kinds of places crawlers would hang out. I saw more of the guards along the way but none of them reacted to me.

The first place I tried was Lucky Lacey's Lace and Lingerie, a strip club that had half a dozen crawlers in it. Thankfully, none of them were Donut or Carl.

My second stop was the Desperado Club, which turned out to be a nightclub that you were only allowed to enter if you had the appropriate tattoo.

"Is there a tattoo parlor nearby where I could get it?" I asked the bouncer. She was a woman with the head of a crocodile, dressed in a pantsuit of elegant cut that was somewhat ruined by the fact that it was made of red velvet.

She laughed. "You don't just go to some ink jockey. You gotta earn your place here. Show us what you got...knock somebody off for a reward, kill a bunch of kids, steal from an old granny, that kind of thing. We don't want no goody-two-shoes in here. Go over to Club Snooty for that bullshit." She tossed her chin at the building across the street, its entrance flanked by Doric pillars and its façade done in white marble.

Assassinate someone, murder children, or steal from a grandmother? I knew the dungeon made us do horrible things but surely there were limits?!

"Oh. Okay. Um...thank you." I hesitated. "I don't suppose you could tell me if Carl and Donut are inside? He's human and she's a cat who talks. They have a pet dinosaur." For whatever reason my minimap refused to show me the insides of the club or I wouldn't have had to ask.

"Nah."

"Um...is that no, you can't tell me or no, they're not inside?"

She grinned, showing far too many teeth for my comfort. "Nah, they ain't inside. Speaking of gettin' things, I get off at midnight. You want to get off with me?"

I blushed. "Um, I don't think so. Thank you, though."

"Eh, your loss."

I nodded nervously and scurried across the street.

"Excuse me—" I said to the robed man standing by the door. He had a mace dangling from a lanyard on his wrist and was holding a book open in his other hand, eyes locked on the pages.

He never even looked up before interrupting. "Go away. You are not worthy of Club Vanquisher."

"What? How do you know what I'm worthy of?! I could—"

He closed his book with a snap and looked me over. He had a nose as long as Route 1 and deep-set eyes that made clear he regarded me as barely better than trash.

"You have not earned your place here. If you had then the gods would have granted you the favor of a tattoo. No tattoo, no entrance."

I took a breath and forced myself to sound pleasant. "Thank you, that's good to know. May I ask what sort of thing would earn me a tattoo?"

"Those who are worthy of a tattoo would not need to ask," he said with a sniff. "Noble deeds. Healing the sick, defending the defenseless."

"I see. Okay, thank you. I don't suppose you could tell me if Carl and Donut are inside? He's human and she's a cat who talks. She wears—"

"Our members expect and receive privacy in all their affairs. Be off."

I considered bribing him but thought that probably wouldn't go well. "All right. Thank you for your help." The words were strictly reflex; he hadn't been any help and really I would have rather told him to go jump in the fjord.

I tried two other places before finally locating them at a saferoom tavern known as The One-Eyed Narwhal. It was purely by chance; I had been reduced to simply walking a grid search through the town until my Pathfinder-enhanced minimap showed crawlers. In this case it was not the blue dot of a crawler that I found but a yellow star (an icon type that, of course, Bannon had never mentioned) for Mordecai – Incubus. Level 50. I breathed a sigh of relief; the back of my mind had been marinating in the fear that Carl and Donut might have moved on again and that I would spend the rest of the level chasing after them.

Katia: Hekla? I found Mordecai.

Hekla: Fighting a boss. Talk when done.

Once again, I overrode my instinctive desire to say goodbye or good luck; distracting her in a fight was not a good thing. Instead, I hurried over and pushed through the splinter-surfaced door of the One-Eyed Narwhal. Mordecai was easy to spot; not only could I see his exact location on my minimap, not only was his name floating over his head as I entered, but I would have guessed it was him without either of those things because he didn't fit in.

Mordecai was stunning. Like, 'stop in the doorway and gape' stunning. Tall, so handsome it hurt, with dusky skin the color of storm clouds, long raven hair pulled into a pony tail, a sinuous tail, bat wings, and a short pair of devil horns thrusting forth from his forehead with "Why yes, I am the kind of boy you don't bring home to mother" vibes dripping off of them. I felt certain that when he stood up I would find that he was exactly the right amount taller than me—enough that I could wear my strappy heels and still look up into those limpid eyes, and—

I mentally slapped myself, wondering why my brain was forcing all those bodice-ripper images on me. I made myself push that aside and do a more cool-minded assessment so that I could get past the drooling. I knew nothing about him and I needed to make a good first impression. That would be hard enough looking like a mannequin carved by H.R. Giger, I didn't need to act like a blushing schoolgirl too.

He was wearing a tuxedo and tails, except he had slung the jacket casually over his chair and unbuttoned the collar and top button on the crisp white shirt. The bow tie was missing, presumably tucked in a jacket pocket. He was scribbling on a note pad and looked up as I came in.

"Katia?" God, even his voice was perfect: A low, rumbling purr drowning in sex. This was so unfair.

"Hi." I walked nervously over to the table, resting my hands on the back of one of the chairs and checking his properties.

Mordecai – Incubus. Level 50.

This is a Non-Combatant NPC.

Also known as the Gigachad of the Over City, Incubi are the male counterparts of the infamous Succubus. The smooth, seductive, and ultimately deadly Incubus can be identified by his stunning good looks, exquisite charm, and sensuous feet. They can only be found on the urban levels of the dungeon. They give new meaning to the phrase, "hit it and quit it."

"'Sensuous feet'?" I asked, immediately regretting the words. Oh god, way to make a good first impression, Katia. That was the last thing I should have been focusing on.

He snorted in amusement. "Turns out, the AI has a foot fetish. That's why Carl is always barefoot. He came in barefoot and killed a goblin by jumping on it from high up. The AI loved it so much that it started giving him powerful loot that only works if he's barefoot." He gestured to the chair. "Please, sit."

Right, I had been standing here like a lummox. I quickly sat down. I didn't know what to do with my hands; I clasped them on the table but that felt weird so I lay them flat but that must have seemed strange so I put them in my lap and oh god please don't let me screw this up.

He smiled and it was kind. "Relax. Donut explained everything. We're happy to have you in the group. The Terrible Twosome Plus Dinosaur will be back in a bit, so how about you and I get acquainted first? Want a drink?"

I blushed to my hairline. "I'm not— Uh, that is, I don't—"

He held up a hand. "Sorry, I could have phrased that better. I'm not propositioning you and there's no expectations." He shook his head in annoyance. "This Incubus form makes everything harder—more difficult. Damn."

"It's not your original form?" I asked, ignoring the apparently unintentional innuendo.

"No, I was a crawler a long, long time ago. I'm actually a skyfowl—like the ones in this town but a different variety. Think humanoid eagle. When I got to the third floor I chose the Changeling race. It's sort of like yours but not as general. I could turn into any creature I had touched regardless of its size, whereas you can turn into anything at all but you can't change your mass. At least, I'm assuming—you're a doppelganger, right?"

"Yes? Doesn't it say?" I pulled up my own properties so I could tell what he was seeing.

Crawler #9,077,265. "Katia Grim."

Level 9.

Race: What the f-word?

Class: Monster Truck Driver.

I gasped and put my hands to my face, trying to feel my features to see if they had somehow become even less human.

"Relax," Mordecai said again. "I'm getting that drink. You can have one or not." He flagged down a waiter and ordered a 'dry martini, shaken not stirred'. I asked for a glass of grapefruit juice.

He smiled, showing off perfectly formed, dazzlingly white teeth. "I figure if I look like this then I pretty much need to get the Bond drink. Anyway, I am a skyfowl who turned into a Changeling. I made it to the eleventh floor, got a job as a tutorial guildmaster, and now my Changeling powers are no longer under my control. I can't voluntarily change form and every time my guild moves down a level I get changed into something chosen for me." The drinks arrived; he raised it in salute to me, then took a sip before continuing. "After this floor I would normally move down and run a magic shop on one of the deeper levels, but Donut chose the Former Child Actor class, which comes with the Manager benefit. Now I'm her Manager and I'm in it for the long haul. Every time Donut walks into a saferoom I get teleported to her location."

"Oh." I thought about that for a moment. "It sounds inconvenient for you."

He shrugged. "It is what it is. Anyway, as her Manager I don't have access to the information system anymore but I'm also not restricted in what I can talk about and I'll be here until she exits the dungeon. I can't fight beside you but I can provide advice, and I can make potions that will help you all."

"Wow. That's amazing. Donut is seriously lucky."

"Thanks." He was trying to play it cool but I could tell he was pleased. "Anyway, let's talk about you. You're a doppelganger, right?"

I nodded. "My game guide, Bannon? He talked me into it. He said it was rare and powerful."

"It is, but it also needs a lot of practice to be effective. Don't worry, I've had several crawlers who chose doppelganger so I can help you with it. Why don't we work on that until the others get back and we can go from there?"