The end of the fourth wave came with succor which Nathan had desperately needed.
It wasn’t precisely a respite. That would imply an opportunity to rest, which was not forthcoming. Instead, as soon as the last opponent of the fourth wave slumped to the ground—a small, wiry woman who had slipped under Nathan’s spear and would have gutted him, had he not managed to fatally brush Saucer’s edge across her shoulder a moment before her knives struck—a visibly rippling wave of magic tore across the room.
Or rather, across the courtyard. The third wave had brought a basic sense of place, and the fourth had fleshed it out to make it a reasonable simulation thereof; but with the end of the fourth wave, everything from the ground under the party’s feet to the texture and temperature of the air felt perfectly real to Nathan’s senses in a way that nowhere else in the Dungeon had managed. The stucco walls of the courtyard had light, irregular wear and patches where the dirt had managed to get into the irregularities in the surface despite all efforts to clean them—or rather, so they had been constructed, since it was a place without history or maintenance in truth, and so the dirt was no less conjured than the irregularities in question—and the mixed dirt and cobblestone footing gave underfoot or resisted the weight of a boot with equal fidelity.
The wall behind the party had also completely changed over the course of the four waves. It was a seamless part of the area, present as though the place had been designed around it rather than it having been brought into a strange and alien place by the will of a mortal. Curving sinuously around the rear of the party, it was the leading sloped edge of a fountain; water gushed out at the top, rising three feet high into the air from a point ten feet tall itself, and poured down through textured mazes that imparted whorls and vortices onto the flow of the water. It drained into a narrow catchment four feet above the ground, and from there it rose again through means more mechanical than arcane, pumped through a series of pipes that spun as they filled and bounced off one another, performing a percussive symphony for the party’s benefit.
Oh shit, Nathan had the wherewithal to think, I recognize this music.
And indeed, the music had been drawn from his memory to be appropriate for the occasion. Its pattern hammered out the fact that there would be a further battle to face; for it was Those Who Fight Further, and it showcased yet again the fundamentally unsubtle nature of the Dungeon.
Nathan did not say anything about that. Not because there was some particular reason he thought he shouldn’t, or because he was unwilling—rather, he had a more pressing problem.
“My spear’s gone,” he observed with forced calm as Saucer shifted into what he thought of as a more typical spear, something designed to be used in both hands without a shield involved. “But I don’t feel—”
“ALL IS CLEANSED! BEHOLD, THE FAIRNESS AND FUNDAMENTAL JUSTICE OF THE GREAT CREATOR, HE AND/OR SHE AND/OR THEY-OR-OTHER-NEOPRONOUN WHO BRINGETH FORTH THE ENCOUNTER! BY YOUR OWN HANDS AND FEET AND EQUIPMENT WHICH IS FUNDAMENTALLY YOURS IN NATURE SHALL YOU LIVE OR PERISH, AND I MEAN YOU, MILLIONBORN, BECAUSE FRANKLY THOSE TWO ARE GONNA BE FINE. BUT REJOICE! IF YOU SURVIVE THIS, YOU WILL KNOW THAT YOU DID NOT, IN FACT, GET TOTALLY CARRIED. SCRUB. AND IF NOT, WELL, YOU HAVE ALL YOUR BULLSHIT LIVES TO GET GOOD.”
The yelling voice of the universe’s most obnoxious coach of esports—or eSports, or Esports, or pro-gaming, or any other permutation thereof—came from, again, nowhere and everywhere, at once, again in its manifold and indescribable chorus of languages.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
“—like my muscles are burning anymore,” Nathan finished with a calmness that was now forced despite aggravated anger, rather than alarm. “So that’s something, I guess. What the fuck is going on?”
“I dunno, man. I’m just happy to be here.”
Nathan jumped in startlement, spinning to his right to face the speaker. The man in question was shirtless and barefoot but dressed in tuxedo pants and a bowtie—heedless of any incongruity in his appearance, he sat comfortably on the edge of the water fountain, grinning with an unmitigated and radiant joy. A different radiance inhabited his muscles, catching the light of an afternoon sun and reflecting not-exactly-blindingly it into the eyes of all and sundry. Beaming, the man slapped the water feature with a thunderous sound and hopped down to the ground, bending his knees slightly to absorb the landing.
“Nathan, right? The—oh shit, sorry.” The implausibly muscled newcomer dropped his decibel levels by several orders of magnitude, each order of which had the effect of a linear decrease in the volume Nathan perceived him as speaking with. “I forgot that voice-bro talks kinda loud,” he apologized. “Feels rude, at least to me. This alright?”
“Yeah, that’s… that’s fine.” The sudden shift in mood and tone, especially with the fight music still playing, disoriented the Earther, but not enough for him to forget politeness. “And yes, that’s me. A pleasure to meet you…”
“Bo,” the mighty man replied, grinning even wider and reaching out with one hand. “Him Bo, and the pleasure’s mutual! Blood and bones bless, but it’s nice to make friends, isn’t it!”
Nathan shook the proffered hand without any hesitation, nodding firmly. “Sure is,” he agreed. “You seem like a happy dude. How do you keep your smile so perfect? The way the sunlight glitters off your teeth…”
“It’s mostly luck, everyone tells me,” Bo said humbly. “I brush and floss twice a day and use a waterjet cleaner every other day. Mama told me to, but she also told me that it’s mostly genetics, and to some degree external and magical influences; still and all, don’t you go trusting cleaning magic.” He leaned in, voice going down to a murmur as he released Nathan’s hand. “I have no idea what any of that means though.”
“It means you’re doing a great job,” Nathan told Bo without dropping a beat. “Being lucky and working hard doesn’t invalidate working hard. I would know, because I’m lucky and I pretty much only worked hard at relaxing.”
Bo nodded appreciatively. “I don’t want to be a jerk. I bet there are lots of people who brush and floss just like me but whose teeth aren’t so healthy!”
“Probably,” Nathan agreed. “Hey, do you mind if I watch the fights? I don’t know how long they’ll take, but… probably not very long? It’s really something to watch Tanya in action.”
“Totally.” Bo grinned his widest grin yet. “We can watch from the stands if you want!”
“Sure, that’d—”
Without ceremony, Bo reached out and fastened his hands around Nathan’s waist and lifted. He posed in a half-lunge with one bent knee and then straightened, tossing Nathan lightly and with perfect grace onto the lip of the fountain where a series of divots made for remarkably comfortable seating. Jumping in his wake, Bo grabbed the edge of the lip and made the one-handed pullup look as easy as breathing, then swung casually into an adjacent divot-seat.
“Popcorn?”
“Absolutely,” Nathan said without hesitation, deliberately not caring about where the bag in question had come from.
It was hot and fresh. There was butter and nutritional yeast, and not a single kernel was unpopped.
And the show began.