A bolt of white energy erupted from the center of Morgana's spell diagram. It connected with the nearest [Treant Sapling] in an ear-splitting explosion, then arcing toward its two brethren.

Morgana was briefly deaf and blind. After blinking spots clear from her eyes, three smoking [Treant] husks lay in the grass. Black fractal scorch marks snaked across their bodies in unexpected patterns. Fried inside out. Dead with a single spell.

"Okay," Vesper announced. "Think we've found the first one you need to turn down."

"Can you make it quieter?" Flint agreed, rubbing his ears and moving his jaw side to side. "You'll deafen us."

"Sorry," Morgana said. "I didn't think—well." She probably should have thought about that. Hardly unpredictable. "I can dampen the noise in the design itself, probably. Not the light, though." Well…maybe. Could she? Tests for later.

"Just call it out, and we'll close our eyes." Though still wincing at the sheer volume of the explosion, Flint admired the three corpses on the ground. "And that thing will jump twenty-seven times?"

"For now," Morgana said. She could do better. She just needed some time to refine the design.

"For now," Flint repeated. He shook his head. "Of course."

"So?" Vesper asked. "Boss time?"

***

Boss time it was.

The second chamber was as obvious as the first, though it held only nominal similarities. This one alerted them to the upcoming climactic—though likely unclimactic in truth—battle through an arched doorway where each thick stone brick held a black carved rune on its face. Though not a rune of magical significance, just swirling, archaic designs. Set-dressing. The centermost brick atop the arch glowed red instead of black, the most obvious herald that a powerful threat lay in wait.

Vines hung from the open archway, obscuring what lay beyond. The three of them shared a look, and nodded.

"Don't get cocky," Flint said. "Don't care if our mage can blow bosses up in a few hits. Stay alert."

They advanced.

Flint and Vesper led the charge, pushing through the thick hanging vines to peek into the darkness beyond. The lantern stone attached to Flint lit the space, though the darkness was pervasive, light only cutting half as far as it should.

Flint grunted. "Low visibility. Not ideal. But not horrible." He glanced at the two of them, and neither called to retreat. Sure, lower visibility wasn't great, but it wasn't something worth abandoning the boss chamber because of, either. Bosses weren't all that common; finding this one had taken more than an hour of exploration. They wanted a payout.

They continued forward. The tunnel tapered with each step. Flint had to hunch to get through, though Vesper and her could walk straight—but it was a close call for Vesper.

The passageway opened into a boss chamber. The resistant darkness was less persistent here: Flint's lantern touched the edge of the cave, though barely, and the hulking figure on the other end came into view.

A snake. Coiled on the far end of the chamber was an enormous green-scaled snake. The creature's body was as thick as an oak tree around. Its head rested atop its coiled-up body, eyes closed, asleep. Twin fangs protruded from its slightly open mouth, each as large as a hand, glistening with venom.

Morgana's nose wrinkled in distaste. She preferred the crab monster. Snakes were unpleasant. Much less ones these size.

There was no point in wasting time, and speaking might wake the beast. Seizing the opportunity was their best option. Her hand was already rising to cast [Frost Nova].

Vesper turned to look at her, perhaps to mouth something, or just to see what she was doing. To check in.

Morgana's attack never finished.

She was given only a half-second's warning that something was wrong—the way Vesper's eyes widened, and how she immediately lunged for Morgana.

She didn't have the opportunity to spin, to throw herself away, or even to fully digest Vesper's reaction. As she had made clear a hundred times over, she was an academic, not a combatant of any form.

To be fair, a quicker reaction wouldn't have mattered. She would've been physically too slow as well, because she didn't even have time to fully process what was happening before something heavy had slammed into the back of her skull, and the world instantly went black.

***

She woke lying on the ground five seconds later, or ten minutes, or a hundred hours—any of those could be true.

The world swam into focus as the world's most splitting headache pounded hot iron spikes into her skull. Blood pooled on the floor in front of her. Bright red. Fresh.

Her own blood? Someone else's? No, definitely her own. She pressed a hand onto the back of her head, feeling hot, sticky liquid there.

A million miles away, boots pounded on stone. Scales scraped as a giant serpentine body slithered in pursuit. Somebody was screaming. It took several seconds for the sounds to process. Her head hurt.

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"Morgana! Hey! Morgana!" the voice cried. "Could use some help, archmage girl! Wake the fuck up, yeah?"

It had been that screaming voice that had woken her in the first place. High-pitched, terrified, shouted at the top of her lungs. Pure, unbridled panic—it had a way of cutting into a person's head, to jolt a person out of unconsciousness. Instincts burned into a genome. She didn't have time to lay there, knocked out, the tone said; she was in danger.

Who did that voice belong to? Familiar. So familiar. But not piercing the veil.

The images before her finally started to make sense, her brain's sensory capabilities kicking back into gear. Looking up from where she was collapsed on the floor, she saw…Vesper.

Fighting something?

They were in the dungeon? And something had gone wrong?

She couldn't remember. Everything was fuzzy. She tried to rack her brain.

But…whatever the case…Vesper was fighting.

Running and dodging, more like. Not fighting. Scrambling around for her life. That giant snake thing was far too large for her to deal with alone.

Where was Flint?

Didn't matter. Vesper was in danger.

That realization dumped ice-cold water across her, and some scrap of her lucidity returned. Almost without conscious intent, her hand rose, a spell forming through addled, foggy thoughts. Burning white-blue lines formed in the air.

By some miracle, confused and disoriented as she was, she didn't miss. A [Frost Nova], recently upgraded from Expert to Mastered, flew through the air and snagged the giant snake on its tail, a far cry from its head, which she had been aiming at. But the spell didn't care she'd missed in some technical sense. Huge bursts of crackling ice erupted up its scaled body, encasing the monster in a solid glacial prison.

All at once, the chamber fell silent.

"Kill it! Kill it!" Vesper's voice was shrill and panicked. "Hurry up!"

Staggering into a kneeling position, Morgana nearly fainted, but forced herself to not through sheer willpower. A second spell formed: [Magic Missile]. Still dealing with the aftermath of what was probably a concussion, the designs came to life slowly and clumsily. But a mastered [Frost Nova] was more than capable of holding her opponent down for as long as she needed. Bolts of arcane energy slammed into the beast one after another.

As unceremoniously as any other fight, the boss died, torn apart by overwhelming magic. That was why they'd been willing to tackle the harder encounter: because of how easy they were for Morgana to put down.

But it didn't matter that it was dead. The damage had already been done. How quickly she could kill the boss was irrelevant if she was rendered useless before the fight started.

The worst-case scenario had occurred.

What was the damage?

Vesper hadn't waited to watch Morgana kill the snake. As soon as the boss had been frozen, she'd rushed off to the other side of the chamber.

Morgana discovered the answer to 'where was Flint?'

Lying on the ground, unconscious, like she had been moments prior. Her stomach sank, and she staggered to her feet. It was some sort of good news she could manage that. Her splitting headache had gone nowhere, but her ability to think had returned, and she was mobile; that meant she wasn't seconds or minutes from death. Though she needed to get a healing bandage on as soon as possible.

What had hit her, anyway? A trap? A monster? Something else? It wasn't exactly the time to worry about the how; she had consequences to deal with.

"What… What happened to him?" Morgana croaked, unsteadily staggering over. "Is he okay?"

She was almost thankful when Vesper ignored the inane question. No, Flint was not okay. Stumbling to him, she saw that he was twitching on the ground—not a seizure, but something similar, maybe. He'd gone deathly pale. His eyes were closed.

The source of his condition was obvious. The snake had bitten him. Two huge bloody holes were in his left leg. Vesper was in the process of pulling out the healing bandages; they'd bought three. She tossed one to Morgana, not uncaring for her injuries, just triaging: Flint was in much, much worse shape, and Vesper didn't have time to check in on Morgana. She was standing, after all.

"He got bit," Vesper said, voice shaky. "Shit. Also took a blow to the head. The snake did this… whip thing, with its tail. Hit hard. Real hard." Her hands shook as she fumbled open the bandage's packaging. She applied the healing item to his leg, overtop the two bite holes—which were their own serious injury, having penetrated deep; the poison wasn't the only thing they needed to worry about. The next, and last, bandage went on the side of Flint's head.

Morgana, meanwhile, applied her own. She did her best to scrape her hair out of the way; the sticky adhesive material would cause problems mucking about inside her hair, but now wasn't the time to worry about that.

The two bandages didn't do much for Flint. He lay there, whole body shaking, eyes closed. With nothing else to do to help, Vesper grew significantly more distressed.

"Is that enough? These things are rated for cuts and bruises! It's not. It's not enough. We need to get him to a healer." Her attention snapped in Morgana's direction, as if she'd had an idea. "Can you help?"

"Me?"

"You can do magic without mana! With your blood?"

"That—blood magic isn't for healing," she said. Never mind the fact trying to draw on her vitality for a serious work of healing might kill her instead. And never mind she didn't remotely trust herself to heal someone in the first place; it was one of the most complicated branches of magic, one she had little practice in. Thankfully, it was out of her hands. "I couldn't if I wanted to," she said. "I don't have life mana. Blood mana simply wouldn't work." Except perhaps with specific blood-related diseases, which poison might count as, but again, really not the time to be experimenting.

Vesper grimaced, visibly racking her brain for a solution.

"The—the loot?" Morgana suggested.

Vesper turned one of the most incredulous and outraged looks she'd ever seen toward Morgana.

"There might be antivenom!" Morgana hastily clarified. She wasn't worried about their payday when Flint might be dying in front of them. "It makes sense a snake boss would drop antivenom, right? That could help." Though that would far from fix his head injury, or the giant bite wounds in his leg.

"R-Right," Vesper said, shooting to her feet. She alone seemed to have gotten out unscathed. Physically speaking. Her face was nearly as pale as her brother's. "I'll find the chest."

The bandages might not have done much for Flint, but they were helping Morgana. Each second had the hot iron spikes pounding into her skull a little less violent. She still felt horrible, though. She doubted it would fix her completely. Stopped the bleeding, at least.

Since Vesper found the chest right away, Morgana checked the snake boss's loot core. It didn't have antivenom. Her heart sank. A second later, she realized they wouldn't have been able to extract it even if they wanted to; loot cores had to be unpacked in town.

"Anything?" Morgana called.

"No," Vesper said.

Her stomach sank further into her boots by the second. This whole situation felt almost dream-like, and not just because of the concussion. How had things gone so badly, so fast?

But that was the dungeon. Flint himself had been drilling that into them since day one.

Vesper cursed, shoveled the chest's loot into her backpack, and ran to her brother. She hauled him up and threw him onto her shoulders.

"Hurry," Vesper grunted, already staggering toward the exit. "We need to get to the surface. A healer. Fast. He might not have long."

Morgana, for her credit, didn't hesitate. Still unsteady on her feet, she drew a [Magic Missile] to the forefront of her mind and headed forward, hoping against hope that the dungeon would take pity on them and offer swift passage up.