General Charlie rode at the front of his forces. A set of golden plate armor adorning his tiny baby body. His steed was a half horse, half lizard that inspired fear in the hearts of all who saw it approaching.

Charlie snored. Waking himself up from the dream. He spat something out of his mouth.

It tasted like dirt.

Oh. It was dirt.

Charlie looked up and inspected his surroundings. In one hand, he held on to the friendly Scaler’s tail. It marched ahead of the procession of hunters led by Kashak and Lyra. Charlie had been holding on to the Scaler in place of being carried. It was a pleasant change of pace. But he’d found it so relaxing he must have fallen asleep. Behind him, in the gap between the Scaler and the children, was a tiny, baby sized trail in the dirt where his face had been dragging this whole time.

His palmar grasp ability worked wonders, even when he was sleeping.

Kashak looked at Lyra, a dismayed look on his face.

She shrugged.

Charlie had insisted on it. She did all she could to talk him out of it. The other hunters would probably think it was strange too, if they weren’t so focused on the fight ahead.

Charlie pulled himself up so his butt was on the ground instead of his belly. He continued skidding along as the Scaler worked its way through the dungeon hallway. The table bulbs had long since been replaced by open, empty closets. They didn’t have doors. He wasn’t sure what the dungeon was going for with these.

“How much farther do you think?” Charlie asked, looking over his shoulder at Lyra.

She surveyed the tunnel ahead. “I suspect we’re getting close. Scalers are quick, but for so many of them to coordinate an attack on us…they couldn’t have gone too far. We should be ready to fight at any moment.”

He stared at the temporary core rolling back and forth on Lyra’s shoulder. Its attitude toward her had shifted completely. It had developed a fear of her after she swatted at it when she first saw it. But now it was clinging firmly to her, as if it wanted nothing to do with anyone else.

Charlie frowned. Some dungeon cores could be so disloyal. Orb wouldn’t have chosen anyone else over him! He blew a raspberry at it in his mind. The dungeon core didn’t respond. Apparently, it wasn’t as effective in thought-speech.

The ridges on the friendly Scalers back sturdied. Rising slightly and growing more rigid.

“Arhhhhh” it said softly.

Charlie looked up. “What is it?” he asked. The Scaler slowed to a stop and turned to look back at them.

They were here.

Kashak made a motion with his hand and the other hunters fell to a squat. Lyra hurried forward and crouched over Charlie to shield him with her body. “We need to locate the children before making our move. We don’t need to defeat the Scalers, just rescue the other children and escape. Charlie, you know what to do?” she asked.

He nodded. After they somehow managed to rescue the children, his job was to throw up a series of walls to keep the Scalers from following them. But he wasn’t sure what to expect.

Would the Scalers swarm again? Would they be thrown off by such a simple plan?

One more thing bothered him. In the previous fight, there had been something calling out to the others. What was that?

Would it be here, in their nest?

They crept along, slowly, to the end of the hallway. It opened into a massive room. Charlie’s mouth fell open at the awe-inspiring sight. He recognized it, though he wasn’t sure how.

It was one of those fragmented memories again.

Those sweet yet frustrating memories of pleasant things he couldn’t fully remember.

But the word was clear in his mind.

It was a playground.

There was a staircase leading up to an elevated jungle gym. A series of ramps and steps and slides. Monkey bars, swing sets and see saws. He didn’t know how he knew these things. But the words came to him as clear as every other word he knew did. The other children seemed just as surprised as he did. But not because they recognized it. This was their first time seeing such a grand place.

It would’ve been so much more fun if not for all the Scalers crawling about. They crawled over the walls and ceilings of the enormous room. Like the core guardian room from the dungeon in Sirra, it was a large, domelike room. But this was not the room of a core guardian. There was something different about it. But Charlie could tell innately it wasn’t quite the same.

The Scalers crawled all around, from task to task. It was like they had their own little lizard community. Some of them climbed atop the slide, only to enter it and slide back down.

Charlie giggled. But where were the children?

The others were wondering the same thing. It was Kashak that noticed them first. “Look over there, behind the castle.”

Charlie turned to look at Kashak, and then back to the playground. The triangular rooftops above the slide and other portions of the jungle gym did kind of look like a castle. He followed Kashak’s instruction and looked past it. On the far side of the room, the other children were leaning against the wall. They were stuck to some kind of strange plant-like netting that clung to the wall. It must be sticky or something. Some of them resisted, pulling away, others had long given up and were crying or sleeping.

Somewhere near the middle of them, he saw Sophia. She was one of the fighters. She pulled her hands on either side of her as much as she could off the wall. But anytime it looked like she might escape, the plant net pulled back, ensnaring her against the wall again. She breathed heavily. It was wearing her out.

Save your strength, Charlie thought. We’re coming for you.

“Alright, we need to go in quietly. We’ll wait for an opening and then—”

“Arhhhhh!” the friendly Scaler screamed at the top of its lungs. A vicious battle-cry.

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“Oh no,” Charlie thought.

The heads of a hundred Scalers whipped around to stare at them at once.

Kashak cursed under his breath. “No choice. We fight!” he cried out. Lyra held a hand out to stop him. Too late. Kashak charged forward, spear in hand. The other hunters hurried after them.

Lyra shook her head, staring at Charlie. “We’ll use our powers to support them from the backline!” she called out.

Charlie nodded. Their friendly neighborhood Scaler decided charging into battle sounded like a better idea.

Lyra dove to grab him before it was too late.

Charlie’s eyes grew wide as the Scaler shot forward, dragging him along after it. It moved too fast for him to let go safely.

He was too far into the room now. He had to roll with it.

The Scalers and children were rapidly approaching one another. Charlie looked up at the approaching horde of Scalers. “Ah!” Charlie screamed in his head. He used his abilities and built a ramp to try to stop his Scaler chauffeur from running straight past the other children.

The Scaler opted to run up the ramp and leap over them instead.

As they sailed through the air, time seemed to go by in slow motion. Charlie looked to his left and saw the temporary dungeon core floating alongside them. Apparently, it ditched Lyra for the time being. Charlie was pulled through the air by the long tail of his Scaler companion. They floated, illuminated by the bright light coming off the dungeon core. It reminded him of a movie Orb told him about. Orb always said he wanted to remake the scene. Now Charlie was doing it without him.

“Char-lie, phone home—” he thought as gravity took a hold of them and pulled them into the raging battle below.

The fighting was disorienting. A series of claws scraped overhead, drawing blood. Charlie couldn’t tell if it was human or Scaler.

A spear impaled itself in the ground next to him. He flinched, pulling himself higher on the Scaler’s tail.

He looked through the gaps in the legs of the spearmen and the bodies of the Scalers and locked eyes with a particularly creepy looking lizard. It fixated on him, brushing past friend and foe alike to chomp down on Charlie’s baby flesh.

“Let’s go!” Charlie cried out.

The Scaler turned and looked back at him before leaping again.

Charlie flew into the air a second before the chasing Scaler could bite down on his tiny baby feet. “Bad lizard!” he called out.

They landed on the slide. The friendly Scaler turned to look back at him. “Arhhh.”

Charlie swung from side to side in the air. “No, not you! That one back there!” he said.

The Scaler said nothing. Instead, it stuck its long tongue out and licked its eyeball.

Charlie grimaced. He turned to look at the ongoing battle. It was hard to make out what was going on. He was surprised just how well the children were doing. Then, he saw the reason why.

Kashak stood at their forefront, a raging tsunami of power. Though he swung around a simple spear, the Scalers it hit reacted as if a tree trunk had struck them. It sent them reeling back, scattered into the swarm. Others quickly approached.

This was it.

The Scalers wouldn’t run away this time. The children had invaded their nest.

This was all out war.

Time to get involved. Charlie thought.

Pillar time!

Wait, he paused. He thought back to the netting that held the children behind him. The Scalers weren’t especially strong. They were quick, nimble, and could jump wildly in any direction.

Maybe the best way he could help was by reducing their mobility…

“Lyra! I need your help!” he called out to her mind. He didn’t bother explaining. She would understand.

Transfer! Dungeon Manipulation!

An almost liquid material poured out from the portal to his dungeon. He directed it with his hands, aiming at the areas of the room that the Scalers were more concentrated in.

Lyra followed his lead. Her own elemental hex shone brightly throughout the room, a calming blue hex with swirling water dancing around it.

Together, they quickly flooded the battleground with several inches of the strange mixture.

She held her hands up, as if to ask, now what?

Charlie had found out he could alter his material even after summoning it back in Sirra. He’d used it to attack, and then altered it to create a landing spot for himself. Now, he was going to do something similar. But in reverse.

The Scalers lifted their webbed feet, trying to free themselves from the murky liquid. But that wasn’t what they should be worried about.

Charlie smiled.

Dungeon Manipulation!

The liquid suddenly hardened, encasing the feet and lower bodies of the Scalers on the ground. Though many still climbed on the walls and ceiling. They couldn’t join the battle without climbing atop the bodies of their kin. He’d seen in the previous fight that even these creatures wouldn’t mindlessly leap into battle. They were aware of how much space there was.

So now, the trapped Scalers were easy to deal with. Kashak and the others realized they weren’t trapped in the same way the Scalers were. The material around their feet was still soft, easy to maneuver through. Kashak looked up and his eyes locked on Charlie, hanging freely from the tail of the friendly Scaler.

Kashak nodded at Charlie.

And then his mighty spear flashed all around him, as he cut down Scaler’s left and right.

Charlie made a baby fist. They would win.

Lyra threw him a thumbs up, then rejoined then battle. Quick burst of water spurted from a multitude of her hexes. They cracked against the heads and bodies of Scalers, incapacitating them.

The hunters spread around the room, striking down the Scalers as quickly as they could.

They would win.

“Arcaaaa!” A deep, rumbling cry resounded throughout the room. The Scalers on the walls and ceiling cried as one.

“Arh! Arh! Arh! Arh! Arh! Arhhhhhh!”

Charlie looked around. The friendly Scaler’s tail trembled. It pulled Charlie up with its tail and bit the collar of his onesie, holding him up by it with its mouth.

“What are you doing?” Charlie asked, letting go of the tail. He trusted the Scaler by now. He knew it wouldn’t try to eat him or anything.

It climbed higher atop the playground until it reached the triangular rooftop of it. It looked around, its eyes searching frantically. Then Charlie saw what it was looking for.

This Scaler was much larger than the others. The others were long, adult-human sized lizards. This one was a deep, dark shade of green and could probably swallow Marvin the horse in one bite.

It roared again.

“Arcaaaa!” It slammed a large foot into the ground.

A loud crack could be heard around the room. Charlie looked down and saw the other Scalers breaking free of his trap. His eyes widened.

The hunters were spread out now. They’d been taking advantage of the immobilized Scalers and now they were separated from one another.

Kashak realized it, too. “Retreat!” he yelled above the clamor of Scaler cries.

But it was far too late for that. The Scalers were free now, and they were out for blood.

The room reverberated with every step that the new, large Scaler took. The boss Scaler, Charlie, decided to call it. It lumbered toward the center of the battlefield. The other Scalers all scrambled to get out of the way.

The boss Scaler turned to survey the room, its eyes locking on Kashak. It roared and broke into a run toward the tan-skinned boy.

Charlie could tell, even as strong as Kashak was. He couldn’t face this beast alone.

He punched a baby fist into his palm.

That big Scaler needed a spanking.

Charlie was going to give it one.