The first four entrances seemed to support the “evacuation” guess. They were small shops and restaurants, and they’d been cleaned out. The fifth entrance was boarded off and locked; they skipped it, figuring they could come back if it was important and it was probably just someone who wanted to try to keep their property safe while they were gone.

The sixth entrance was a larger shop than the others; it appeared to be two shops with the wall between them removed, selling mostly foodstuffs, but that wasn’t what grabbed Andarit and Serenity’s attention.

The attention-grabbing feature of the store was the bodies on the floor. They were bloody; there were injuries from both slashes and blunt trauma, but Serenity didn’t spend much time looking at them. They were dead and he was close enough to tell that they weren’t undead; they weren’t likely to be a threat.

Andarit and Serenity hadn’t completely dropped their guard after the last few empty stores, but the bodies brought them back to full alertness.

“I don’t see anything.” Serenity glanced around the store. Unlike a modern grocery store, he could see over the shelving holding the food, so he could tell that there were no large monsters or anyone standing. He couldn’t be certain if there was anyone or anything hiding, unfortunately. What he could definitely see was a set of doors towards the back and a section where the shelving was knocked over. “We should make sure nothing else is in here.”

“You don’t think there’s anything?” Andarit glanced at Serenity before returning to keeping a watch for monsters.

Serenity shook his head. “It’s hard to say, since this is a dungeon. Whatever killed them was large; those aren’t small injuries. It could be keeping quiet and hiding, but it would have to be intentionally hiding at this point. We haven’t been quiet. Keep watch and stay near me while we sweep the store.”

He’d have told her to watch his six if he’d thought she’d understand, but she probably wouldn’t. It was a phrase he knew from Earth movies, not from his life as Vengeance.

It took a while, but after two careful sweeps, Serenity was convinced that either the store was free of monsters or they were hidden better than he was going to manage to find. If the dungeon really wanted to surprise them, it could; this dungeon had already shown that it could manifest monsters when it wanted to with the chimeras and possibly the Mana Eater, so Serenity didn’t see any reason to assume that something couldn’t pop up anywhere other than the clearly designated safe rooms.

There were several other bodies, but the majority were at the front of the store. Serenity didn’t like the scenes he was seeing, but he didn’t say anything about it to Andarit. She’d learn in time. Everyone did, if they lived long enough.

Serenity headed back to the back of the store, where there were four doors. They were obviously dungeon architecture, rather than part of the original scene, because each of them had a plaque with a silhouette on it. Above all of the doors was a question: “What monsters did this? Speak my name and enter.”

The first door’s silhouette had wings, claws, and a tail. Serenity assumed it was probably the imp they’d run into a flock of in the first room.

The second door’s silhouette was clearly humanoid, but beyond that there were no obvious distinguishing features. They definitely hadn’t run into whatever it was - at least, not as a monster. Serenity had a sinking suspicion that he knew what it was supposed to be, and they had run into them; they were simply all dead already.

The third door’s silhouette was a strange tentacled creature that looked sort of like a squished octopus. Serenity couldn’t tell what it was, but he knew they hadn’t encountered it, whatever it was.

The last door showed a silhouette of a chimera. Serenity wasn’t sure if he’d have recognized it if they hadn’t just fought them, but the goat’s head sticking up from the shoulders and the serpent for a tail were both quite obvious when he knew what he was looking for.

“It’s the second door.” Andarit sounded confident in her conclusion.

Serenity nodded; he was sure she was correct, as well. The injuries he’d glanced at as they entered didn’t match any of the monsters they’d fought, and they didn’t seem right for something with tentacles, either, though he couldn’t completely rule it out without a closer look. Tentacles could do bludgeoning damage and a monster octopus could have a nasty beak or even suckers that doubled as knives.

Still, that wasn’t why he thought it was the second door. “That’s my guess as well. Why do you think so?”

Andarit shrugged. “It’s not any of the others. Imps don’t hit things like that, chimera would burn it, and that multi-armed thing, well, how would it do the slashes?”

Serenity shook his head. “Monsters can surprise you. It could have a sharp beak or something hidden. But we need to know what the second door is to speak its name. Have you figured that out?”

“If you already know, just say the answer.” Andarit scowled at Serenity.

“I have a guess,” Serenity admitted. “I think it’s a good guess. I just don’t want it to be true.”

“Why not?” Andarit clearly had no idea what Serenity thought the second door was.

Serenity shook his head, surprised to find that he was smiling a little at her naivete. “If I’m right, it’s the worst monster of them all. Let’s go take a look and confirm it before I say any more; I don’t want to prejudice you.”

Andarit frowned as she led the way back to the front of the store, clearly unhappy with Serenity’s refusal. “You don’t have to keep it a secret; I’m not going to believe it just because you say it.”

Serenity shook his head before she was done speaking. “That’s not it. If I say what I think, you’ll be trying to prove or disprove it instead of looking for more options. I don’t want to get stuck in that box.”

“Box?” Andarit stopped and turned to look at Serenity. “What does proving or disproving something have to do with a box?”

How was Serenity going to explain “thinking outside the box” to someone who’d never heard the phrase? “Ah, it means you would be limited by what I suggested and I don’t want that. I’m already going to be looking at it, I want you looking for other options.”

Andarit looked puzzled as she started moving again. “Then why didn’t you just say that?”

There was no good answer to the question, so Serenity just let it hang there.

They took their time looking over the bodies, both the ones at the front of the store and the ones scattered around. Some of the injuries were clearly from the shelves, but many of them couldn’t be explained by what was still near the bodies. When they found a bent and ruptured lead pipe that perfectly matched the diameter of some of the injuries, Serenity knew he’d been right. Unfortunately.

“What do you think the second door is?” Serenity hoped Andarit had already come to the same conclusion so he wouldn’t have to break the news to her.

She shook her head. “I don’t know. There are so many monsters that are humanoid. Goblins, maybe?”

“Not tall enough for many of the head injuries,” Serenity dismissed goblins as an option. “Also, we’d see some goblin bodies. They’re pretty fragile. I’m convinced I know what it was. Let’s get out of here; I don’t want to look at this any longer.”

“You’re just insisting on being mysterious, aren’t you?” Andarit stalked behind Serenity; he could hear her boots hitting the floor harder than they needed to.

Serenity stopped in front of the second door without answering Andarit’s accusation. She’d understand when he told the door. He stared at the door, refusing to look at Andarit as he solved the puzzle. “People did this. Humans, probably, but almost certainly they were Pathed.”

Andarit gasped but Serenity didn’t look at her. He simply reached out to the door handle and turned it. It moved smoothly in his hand and he pushed the door open. He expected a question about his answer, but Andarit simply followed him through the doorway.

It led into another small room much like the one they’d found after the subway system. Like the first safe room, the entrance disappeared once they were both inside, leaving only a single exit. There was a similar pair of beds and a pair of chairs, but that was still all that was in the room.

Serenity couldn’t help it; he wished there was a shower.

Or at least a restroom facility; he might not really need it, but he was certain Andarit would. Unlike Vengeance, Serenity didn’t have convenient magical items to handle those needs. He hoped Andarit did; she was prepared for dungeons, after all. He didn’t plan to ask unless it came up.

“I think we should stop for a rest,” Andarit stated. “I’m tired and I’m sure you are too. We should eat and sleep, who knows how long the next section will be.”

Serenity nodded and sat on one of the beds; the chairs both had backs and that wasn’t really comfortable with wings. “This is a good time. Another section would probably run long enough we’d be tired and make mistakes.”

Andarit dropped the small pack she’d been wearing next to her feet, plopped herself down in a chair, and pulled some unappetizing travel rations out of her pack. Serenity was suddenly glad that he’d packed his own food; it might not be as long-lasting, but an apple, a small block of a hard yellow cheese that wasn’t cheddar, and some nice spicy jerky was a far better meal than it looked like Andarit was having. He even had a little bread, though it wouldn’t last long; it was already going stale. “Would you like some of what I packed?”

He didn’t need that much food anyway, not here; the mana levels were high enough that he was slowly taking in some of the mana to supplement what he ate.

Andarit folded the waxed paper back over her rations and stuck them back in her bag. “I’d be happy to. I should remember to pack something better tasting for the first few days next time; that’s a good idea.”

Serenity shrugged. It was a relic of his time on Earth and in the Tutorial; the dungeons weren’t generally long enough to be worth packing food for; the few that were multi-day tended to be story-oriented and would have food available inside. He’d gotten out of the habit of packing long-lived supplies, but he always had some snack food on hand. “I should put some rations in my kit, as well. We can do that when we get out of here.”

“Speaking of when we get out of here,” Andarit paused, then asked the question Serenity had forgotten he was hoping she’d avoid. “What are you going to look like? And how do you even change like that, anyway?”

Serenity froze for a moment. He’d never decided how he was going to answer that.

Shapeshifters had a reputation, especially people following a shapeshifting Path, though ones who only had a combat form were more respected; at least they weren’t pretending to be other people. The fact that his face didn’t change when he shifted was probably in his favor.

He might as well admit the truth. “I’m not human, but when walking among humans it’s often good to look human. Especially since I’m trying to track down the people who abducted my people; I was worried I’d be recognized, so I wanted to look different.” He set down the food so it wouldn’t get shifted away, then slipped into his normal human form. “This is what I usually look like among humans, but it’s still pretty obviously not quite human and I’m very recognizable.”

He wasn’t sure where to go from there. “Is it a problem?”

Andarit chuckled and grinned. “Father said it would be something like that. After you went off with the Guildmaster, I mean. I thought it was an item.”