"Now, I know what you’re thinking," he said as the carriage jostled against another pebble in the tunnel. "How in the name of Holy Amarata did this handsome piece of sass n’ ass end up here, bound in unflattering lengths of rusted chain (and not the kinky kind)?"

He was answered by a look of good humored incredulity from the lizard-man who was presently sharing the back of the carriage with him and his errant companion.

“Actually,” the blue-scaled Yok’ra chuckled. “I was thinkin’ about how the Don’s gonna let us cook ya. Maybe with a little Crocodilian spit for sauce, slather you up nice and good, then fry you over a fire elemental’s ass. Makes for a real choice BBQ.”

Marius just smiled.

“I hear human skin fries up real good, like,” the sneering Yok’ra continued. “And thieves taste even better.”

“You know, it’s a rare thing indeed,” Marius replied. “To meet a man whose way with words can turn even my stomach.”

The Yok’ra gave another harsh chuckle and then took a hearty gulp of the bubbling black broth he’d been sipping from since their journey had began. Then, apparently satisfied, he banged on the wooden beam he was leaning against.

“How’s the road look?”

“Straight and narrow, Cap’n,” a good humored voice replied.

“How’s Edna holding up?”

He was referring to the giant beetle that was propelling their ramshackle vehicle, its onyx shell glistening against the tiny pockets of light beginning to stream between the stalactites above. Its horned head gave it the appearance of having a fully armored skull – which it used frequently to either spear through Crocodilian resistance or simply breach the walls of their sanctum. Slolwy but surely, the skittering beast was leading them back to the outside world.

“She’s good,” the same voice replied. “Gettin’ a little hungry, though. No more little crocs this close to the surface. Maybe we can toss the gal a little somethin’ for her hard work, eh? A leg maybe?”

At the boys collective laughter Marius did nothing but sigh. There was little else that could be done. He was a captive, at the mercy of far more advanced captors than he’d ever encountered before. He’d gloat too, if he were them.

“Oi, speakin’ of,” The Yok’ra captain croaked. “How’s Damien’s leg?”

“All good, Nils. Whaddya think I am, some level one bumpkin?”

“You’ll be a Voidspawn’s fly-covered shite if you don’t keep yer eye on the road, son,” the Yok’ra – evidently Nils – spat, before taking another liberal sip from his grisly potion. “I ain’t having Luka stitch you up again. Boy’s only got so much juice in ‘im.”

Marius noticed the third cloaked figure – the one with his eyes always focused forwards – shift slightly in his seat at the front of the cart, before settling back into his vigil.

And so it had been for the past – oh, who knew? – hours, days, whatever. Time had ceased to exist for him. These four prattling assassins were all he had for company between his naps, and they weren’t exactly the friendliest of traveling companions.

Then again, Marius thought as his eyes flew back over the bound Argent girl, I never was the best judge of character.

As the bulbous beetle propelling the carriage forwards cleared a sizeable hole leading to Amarata knows what slime filled corridor section, the Yok’ra licked his slitted lips and gave another sly chuckle, leaning forwards to almost touch Marius’ cheek.

“Never had Firvak before. Musta had yerself a grand ol time with that one, eh? Forbidden fruit and all that, know what I mean? Almost felt bad for interrupting ya, like. Almost.”

He gave Marius a wink. The kind of wink a scumbag gives to a fellow scumbag secure in the knowledge that their scumbag-ish tendencies are shared by the recipient.

“You know, there’d probably be a time when I’d just agree with you and move past all this bollocks,” Marius decided to reply. “But honestly, I might as well be known as an honest man before I die, so I’ll tell you straight: I’m not into kids.”

“Ach, prude,” Nils spat. “She’s broken in, let’s be honest.”

“I really wouldn’t know, and my imagination tends to expand beyond the bounds of teenage anatomy.”

Nils spat a globule of engorged puss from his throat and laughed again.

“You’re a talker, ain’t ya? That, I know. I’ve met plenty of ‘em in my time. I reckon you did pretty alright for yourself with ol’ Raava. Daft bint probably gave ye the tutorial quest we told her to give the newbloods. Meant ta kill ya all, ye understand. We’ve made a good haul of the newbloods’ baubles and trinkets these past few years. Still, some folk get through – the good uns.”

Marius smiled. “You mean like us?”

Nils returned his smile ten-fold, leaning even closer so Marius could smell the stagnant, dead odor of whatever vile concoction he was currently chewing on.

“Yeah, the talkers are alright. Don’t mind ‘em much. I’m a talker meself. But I tell you what I do mind – and that’s upstart little shits that think they’re smarter than they really are.”

Marius held his smile even as his breath caught in his throat. His eyes tried to penetrate into the glowing amber slits of this guy that was basically straddling him at this point:

Appraisal: Failed.

What else is new?

“See?” The Yok’ra captain whispered through his impish little grin. “Yer still newblood, Marius. Still just a lil fish flailing about waitin’ ta be caught. And now that we got ya, I’m wonderin’ what use we’d have fer a two-bit, down on his luck thief. We got plenty of those down in the Oasis. Pretty little blondes though – we don’t got much a them. Think yer friend’ll be stickin’ around fer a little while.”

As he licked the saliva forming from his lips, Marius fought against the desire to try for a Dirty Trick, even in spite of his dwindling desire for self-preservation.

“Nah, Marius”, Nils continued, like he’d just reached consensus on a pressing political matter. “I don’t see yer life havin’ that much value ta us. I’d do ye in meself, but even a scumbag like me’s gotta respect the chain o’ command, like. You’re the Don’s prey now. Hah! I tell ya – the fact that you killed his precious pet Raava’s gonna give ‘im a fucking aneurism! Sure he raised her since she was a wee seedlin’. A gift all the way from the Second Layer to test the newbies. And now she’s nothin’ but a burnt up stalk.”

He took a long sip and spat most of the contents of his bottle at Marius’ groin.

“Nah, Marius,” he said again. “I’m thinkin’ yer time in this world is up. Short lived, aye, but long enough. Longer than most. Ye don’t look like yer made fer this world, big guy.”

Marius met his crocodilian stare head on.

“Wit?” Nils asked. “Nothin’ ta add? No sarcastic little quip? No funny wee interjection? A yer mama joke, maybe?”

“Appearances can be deceptive,” was all Marius said in response.

With a smile. Always with a smile.

The Yok’ra studied him for a solid half-minute before bursting into more raucous, desert-dry laughter.

“Know what? Maybe yer right about one thing, big guy: kids just ain’t fun. There’s no fight in em, y’know? I want a gal with a bit of attitude. A bit o’…spunk, eh, eh? A bitch with a good bit of meat on her bones and a bit of experience’ll do me just fine for a long afternoon of guard duty. And judgin’ by this little number,” he winked towards Yelena. “I’ll be up all night.”

Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

He got up and stretched his thin arms as a ray of light began to stream through the front beams of the carriage.

“Nils!” one of the boys shouted. “Comin’ up on entrance North-One.”

“Righto!” Nils called back. “Well, big guy, I’ll leave ye to yer thoughts – such as they must be. If you’ve got prayers ta say, be my guest. I hear tell you humans get real religious near the end.”

With that he jumped over to join his teammates in song – some guttural Yok’ra chant they all evidently knew by heart. If Marius did have thoughts of a sacred or secular nature, he would have little chance of hearing them.

“You know,” he said, once again, to no one. “Being called ‘Big Guy’ really is fucking irritating. Wherever your crazy-ass spirit is now, Jory, I want to let you know that you have my sympathies.”

He heard the girl stir beside him, her bruised lips pouting to form words for the first time since their journey to the end of this cursed cavern began, and he strained his ear to listen in. He found it amusing that he was genuinely curious what she was trying to say.

“…smile.”

Hah! A hallucination. Auditory – really? Maybe in absence of intelligent company his mind was running overtime to think up some fun companions for him to converse with. Shame their chatter wasn’t exactly spirited.

“You…smile.”

Yes, yes, yes, he thought. Just smile, just smile just bloody smile and everything will be-

“You…have…”

Oh, go on then, Argent girl. Tell me what I have. Tell me what I don’t have. Tell me how to fix myself. We’re both slowly meandering towards our utterly boring demise anyway, might as well start to pile on the regrets.

He leaned forwards and bent towards her twitching mouth.

“Alright, I’m listening. But this better be-“

Her eyes flew open. Full and blue. Strong and bright against her ghostly pale face.

“You have one of the most annoying smiles I’ve ever seen.”

He blinked, scoffed, and then sat back and laughed. He laughed even when the boys at the front turned round and threw one of their noxious bottles at his face. He laughed to himself till he felt his cheeks burn, and then when he composed himself enough to look back at the girl’s face, he laughed again.

“Gracious,” he said, wiping tears and snot from his face on the hard plywood of the carriage. “That’s the best thing I’ve heard since I came down here.”

The girl shuffled in her binds and managed to sit her back against the rickety wooden bars that penned them together like animals. She fought for a sense of balance, and looked like she was struggling not to empty what little remained in her innards.

“First time taking a prison carriage?” Marius whispered. “It’s not so bad, ‘specially when you know what waits for you at the end of the journey.”

“Which is what?” she asked him, weary and unfocused. Her eyes were barely present.

“Our deaths, probably.”

She shook her head. “I can’t allow that, Marius. Maybe you’re ready to go, but I’m not. I can’t be.”

Again he threw back his head and laughed into the slowly receding darkness of the cavern above. The innocence of youth really was pretty funny, when you got down to it.

“I wouldn’t be so hasty,” he said, licking his lips, turning his next words over in his head with care, pondering their potential effect. “Me? They’ll probably just do away with me, sure. But they’ll have other plans for a young girl like you. You know how bandits are, I’m sure. They’ll probably have their fun with you, over and over again, till you’ll be begging for the very same fate they’ve got planned for me.”

He saw her stiffen, but her gaze did not falter.

“If they want to force themselves on me, they can try. I will carve wounds into them that they would not soon forget.”

He smiled at her. “You know, you’re bad at the tough woman act.”

She shot him a look of disdain to which he merely shrugged and sighed.

“But, yeah, I guess you’d give ‘em a run for their money. Took all four of them to bring you down after all, right? Even then, they needed to use me as an adorable hostage to get you to let your guard down in time for a good bonking on the back of your head. Seems like that was all it took to knock your secret weapon out of you.”

He watched her out of the corner of his eyes. Now she let her head fall, and a wheeze of either regret or frustration escaped her, forming a small puff of air that faded away in the darkness of the cave.

“I cannot lie to you now, Marius,” she said. “You saw the thing that took hold of me back there. You saw what it could do, and so you know now why I’m here.”

“And why your Argents couldn’t keep you,” he finished for her.

She nodded. “I’m here to find the cure for it, chosen by the wailing Prophet herself.”

“Cure?” Marius replied. “Like it’s some kinda disease? Seems pretty awesome to me – all that strength, and all those crazy moves. Sure, it turns you a little cookoo, but most of the best fighters out there tend to be a few sandwiches short of a picnic. Or was it apples short of a bushel? I can never get that phrase right…”

The girl shook her head slowly, looking up to perceive the dawning of light streaming through the exit that lay ahead, heralded by the general shouts of their captors still signing their gleeful tune.

“It is not my destiny,” she said. “Or, rather, it’s not the destiny I’ve chosen for myself.”

Marius said nothing. He too was suddenly fixated on the light that lay ahead, bathing them in a warmth he hadn’t felt since he first touched the dry sands of this forsaken place.

“So do you think me a monster?” She asked him suddenly.

He shrugged his shoulders, noncommittal. “We’re all monsters. That’s why we’re down here, ain’t it?”

“I didn’t ask what the ‘rules’ of this place might say, I asked what you think.”

“Meh,” he smiled. “Jury’s still out, I guess. Stick around and ask me that again when you’ve earned my trust, bought me some drinks, waxed philosophical with me next to some stinking bonfire. Y’know, all that shit new companions do for the sake of character development.”

She double blinked as the emerging light shone stronger. “I can’t do any of that if these idiots are taking us to die.”

“We won’t die.”

She gave him a hard look that he felt more than saw, and then it was her turn to smile. That he did look at. If you’d have asked him an hour ago, he’d have told you she wasn’t capable of the action.

“Guess I’m not the only one who’s acting here,” she said.

Whatever reply he was about to make was stifled by the sight that now stretched itself out before them: the desert of the First Layer, shrouded by a blanket of shimmering dust. Dunes dotted the shifting sands surrounded by not only Crocodilians but innumerable other creatures Marius had never even seen in the cave – bipedal mammals covered in hair, two headed tigers chasing hapless prey, what looked like wasps the size of a man buzzing around a great hive that rose at the far end of the great plain of sand. Here and there, cavern entrances and ancient ruins jutted out from the sun-kissed ground in ways that seemed structurally impossible. Yet, there they were – a sea of adventuring potential for all the suicidal Delvers and Neanderthal prisoners that made the leap, consensually or not, down into the first level of hell.

But these places they past by without ceremony or account. They were not bound for another cavern-sprawling adventure with spume covered tunnels and pretentious talking plants. Instead, their captors drove the great Edna onwards, until their true destination appeared over perhaps the seventh of eighth dune they cleared.

It was like a jewel carved into the desert itself – a pool of water that lay at the foot of a barren valley on the desert floor. Around it were a collection of ramshackle huts, slabs of concrete haphazardly wedged into the earth, and people – real, honest to goodness mortals lounging around or going about their business, skulking round alleys or keeping watch at the stone walls that ringed the settlement.

Life – such as it was – was down there, living, breathing, and milling about around the shimmering pond that served as home. As Marius strained to catch all the details against the desert sun above, he realized that this must be it, the final (final) stop: The Oasis.

“Welcome ta Akris,” the grinning Yok’ra shouted back to them both. “The Oasis of Layer One. Home of the esteemed Don Revok and his merry band of men – that’s us. Here, we rule. Not Amarata, not yer precious surface Argents, and not yer own smug ideas about how the world works. Yer in the Everloft now, and the First Layer belongs ta the Don. Yer gonna answer ta him fer killin’ his tutorial boss.”

Marius almost choked.

“Tutorial?!”

“Aye, Marius of Corbeck,” the grinning snake replied, looking Yelena up and down and licking his lips again. “What, ye think yer special for clearing Duskwood? Yer nothin’ but a slightly less foul smelling piece of shit than what usually gets thrown down here, that’s all. But don’t worry, I’ll be sure ta tell the Don how ya cheated and had yer little friend here do most of the heavy liftin’, like.”

Marius felt Yelena throw herself back against the side of the carriage as the serpent laughed again and turned back to his home. She wasn’t attempting escape, just expressing the same fatalistic urge that he’d already succumbed to, oh, a long time ago.

Even still, seeing the many little lives begin to gather at the front gate to meet them, and thinking on the power that this Argent girl clearly held within her, Marius admitted that he felt some degree of – what would you call it – hope?

Nah. Couldn’t be. That word was a little too pure for him. His mind was busy, now. The girl had a gift – a dark gift, sure – but it was something he could use. Hell, it could be their bargaining chip.

He’d bargained with worse odds before. He could beat death again.

Probably.

Besides, he couldn’t just let it end here. As much as he hated to admit it even to himself, he and the girl had one thing in common: he couldn’t die. Not yet.

“You were right about one thing,” Yelena muttered beside him as the great gates of The Oasis were thrown open to them.

“Do tell,” he replied with a grin.

She looked at the clear sky above – baby blue and saccharine, with only the slightest wisps of white spoiling their purity.

“We don’t really know anything, do we? We’ve read the books, we’ve heard the stories, but none of us know the truth of this place. Here we are, almost dying after clearing just one dungeon – the most basic dungeon, in fact – and now we’re the captives of a whole society of criminals that no one even knew existed down here. Where was this place in Lord Jael’s Ruminations? Why did none of those who returned from the Everloft tell us about this?”

She returned her gaze to him – fixing him with those deep blue, penetrating eyes – and he found himself unable to just smile back, this time.

“We might think we know some of the rules,“ she said. “But we haven’t even scratched the surface yet. So, yes, you were right: no matter how clear those skies look up there, we’re walking in the dark here. Both of us.”

And as she slumped back to her side of the carriage, and Marius saw the great oaken gates of the Oasis close behind them, he had only one reply that came to mind:

“Yelena,” he said. “You must be a real riot at parties.”