The first thing she saw was fire, swirling and bright. Its heat licked at her skin and as soon as she had feet to use, she used them to bounce away. The first room of the Challenge Room sprawled out before her, a glass-lined floor with ten pillars of flame weaving throughout. There was no time to adjust. Screams were all around her as others spawned into the room and got bodied before they could blink.

Unlike in the dungeon, where everyone started peppered throughout the first room, this time people were appearing to one side. Their objective would be to cross with their lives and outfits intact.

The space beneath the glass was pitch dark, so the only thing that illuminated the ground was the light from the flames. Other player's footprints quickly smeared across the sheer surface, creating other landmarks in the blackness.

As one of the pillars passed in front of them, hundreds of feet stepped back all at once. Nikola spotted a hole in the floor as it moved, and then another; holes were scattered throughout the room, eager to eat up any unsuspecting players.

The fox-haired man and his party spawned in and one of them was immediately engulfed in searing fire, patting himself frantically off as he backed up. He hit his head on the ridge of one of the holes as his heel found nothing to stand on. The others stood and watched as his leg and then the rest of him slipped through the opening, and away forever.

"Damn," one of them breathed, "he was gone so fast."

Nikola let herself be the one to initiate the hurt; she was better on the offensive than the defensive, and they were already down one man. She sucked in a deep breath and fired out her [Spray of Thorns] hard, the spikes spraying up along their backs.

"What the--"

The pins sunk into their armour, but the panic she expected to follow didn't come. Usually, when she used this spell, her opponents would flail around and worsen their stabby predicament-- this time, they flicked the quills off in clumps. They scattered across the slickness of the glass, some falling through another hole in the ground and pointing it out to her enemies.

She didn't let her momentum fall like their friend had. She initiated her [Double Attack] Rogue skill and used the Cleaver she'd spawned in holding to chop into the flesh of their nearest party member. Her blade didn't sink in like she was used to, leaving the motion unsatisfyingly empty. She disengaged for a second and followed her [Double Attack] up with a [Crunch] in the same spot she'd already gored.

This was her damage dealer.

Surely, this would leave her opponent crying out and clutching his arm like she so craved.

The edge of her kitchen implement found his arm and parted its protective sleeve, but it was a paper cut compared to what she wanted it to be. He sucked in a breath of air that seemed twinged with annoyance more than suffering.

As her feet found the floor and her cape fluttered behind her while she landed, all their eyes looked toward her in unison.

"Is that all you've got?"

"Wow, that almost hurt," chuckled the one she had attempted to lay waste to. But there he was, still standing and certainly not wasted.

"She used Double Attack. She'll be coming back toward you, so move back and prepare to attack her."

He was right. She could feel the pull of her [Double Attack] skill beginning to take hold. She tried to use her [Invilisbility] (CHECK THIS) to give herself a fighting chance but just as her body began to fade, it came back into focus as she was catapulted unwittingly toward all four of them, who had their spells and weapons prepped.

Their eyes weren't the only ones on her. Many sets of eyes from the hundreds of players that were also lagging near the start watched with bated breath as what her foe predicted would happen unfolded.

Nikola soared toward two drawn swords, a bow and a staff, all pointed her way. Two sword tips speared through her, stopping her momentum against their dual hilts. She could feel them in her as she moved her muscles, fighting to unpin herself. Normally, it would be unwise to remove the dam from her body, but as soon as she could dismount from the weapons she would be able to use a potion to knit up the damage.

The pain caught up to her then, just as an arrow pierced into her shoulder with the force of a fist. She gritted her teeth; her health bar ticked steadily downward, soaring from the 70's into the 40's.

Nikola slid her body off the metal that had impaled her. Catching her footing again was like a dance; her own blood worked against her, slicking the surface she tried to stand on. And then, to make matters worse, their party's mage finished muttering a spell and the room lit with an orange bloom of light, balls of fire streaking down from the ceiling. She wasn't the spell's only target - someone behind her puffed out trapped air at being hit, and another narrowly avoided one of the orbs only to tumble through the floor with a horrid yell.

Struggling to pull air through her punctured lungs, she snapped the fingers that summoned her potion and instantly there was relief, her air-regulating organ sealing up inside her just in time for a ball of fire to soar into her chest. It caught her in her still-healing lung and she used her own blood to skate backward like a figure skater, avoiding the second half of its trajectory. It fizzled out against the glass.

The potion fought to recover her health, but the damnable group of men didn't quit while they were ahead. A cluster of arrows fired in her direction with a deadly whistle.

As she glanced toward the door in a desperate search for an escape, she saw one of the pillars scraping through the room in their direction. She side-stepped it and its blessed, terrible fire ate up one, two-- six of the arrows seeking her out, leaving only a few to pierce her armour.

The bolts took what the potion had healed from her, leaving her to snap her fingers again to recover.

Damn it. If things continued like this, her questions about the intricacies of her death would soon be answered.

Hadn't they just finished fighting opponents twice their level and winning? What was the difference between this situation and that one? Nikola thought back to the battle she had just lived through; Luke had been battling one-on-one for an amount of time that was all the more impressive to her as she languished on her own against higher-level foes.

She thought back to his movements, his careful, skillful steps backward when the shield-bearer swung. He struck only when the swordsman was already overextended, and otherwise relied on his DEX to dodge.

Nikola was unused to continuing to battle beyond the first few blows. Her skills were swift and deadly, perhaps to her detriment.

The Butcher sunk her heels in and locked her steely gaze on the four men.

The side of her face was lit with an orange blaze. She knew what to do next.