“Where’s the sound coming from?” Bo asked. He shook his head again, but his hearing was as fuzzy as his thoughts. He could hear his friends just fine, but other noises were too indistinct for him to make out.

You need Meat. Soon. The message you ignored said the monster infected you with shadow fever through its bite. Your wound will not heal naturally, and your senses will fade as the poison runs its course. You’re not drunk, you're dying.

Bo ignored the devil. He wouldn’t get Meat cards from the shadows, and he didn’t have time to find something else to carve into healing morsels. This would all be over soon.

He hoped.

“It’s coming from ahead and to the left,” Jenny said. “But that’s as much as I know.”

“Then we go right,” Bo said, without hesitation. His old man had always told the pitmaster there was no use dithering about decisions when you didn’t have enough information. Sometimes you just had to jump and hope you grew wings on the way down.

The image of him leaping off a cliff, apron fluttering, cleaver in hand, with wings sprouting out of his back, made him want to laugh. Instead, he put on his very serious face and did his level best to concentrate on the problem at hand.

Looking down the first passage on their right showed Bo more branching passages. Signs or markers would have been a big help, but the casino dungeon’s builders hadn’t bothered with any of that.

The monsters who live here know their way around. Signposts would only help champions and other invaders.

While that made sense, it didn’t help Bo decide which way he should go. The pitmaster didn’t have time to stand around, though, so he made one random tunnel choice after another. If they just kept moving, he told himself, they’d eventually reach the core.

Or you’ll walk into a trap. There might be an ambush around the next corner, for that matter.

“Shut up,” Bo muttered under his breath. He did not need to hear Barbie’s pessimism right now. Or ever.

“What did you say?” Jenny asked.

“Sorry, can’t tell I’m mumbling with my ears ringing like this,” Bo said, hoping his friend hadn’t overheard what he’d really said. “I asked if either of you heard anything else?”

They stopped to let Slick and Jenny listen for the sound of approaching carts. Bo wasn’t sure if he was being quiet or not. He felt like his breathing was heavier, but with his hearing messed up, he couldn’t be sure. The buzz had faded from his thoughts, but his body was getting more sluggish by the minute.

“There’s something ahead and to the right,” Jenny said. “I think.”

“She’s right,” Slick agreed. “It’s pretty close, too.”

“Jenny, take the lead,” Bo said. “My ears are still crap, and this cart makes more noise than a rattlesnake on meth. Put some distance between us so you can hear the bad guys coming before we walk into them.”

“How do I know which way to go?” she asked.

“You don’t,” Bo said. “Keep your eyes peeled for anything that looks like a vault door. And keep us away from any monsters. If you see something that isn’t a shadow, though, let me know.”

“Okay,” Jenny said, dubiously. “You look like you’re having a hard time standing up.”

“Just a little tipsy from the bite,” Bo replied. “Go on. We need to move.”

Jenny nodded and left the men behind. She paused at the first passage, hand cupped to one ear, then moved on to the next.

“How bad is it?” Slick asked.

“Not great,” Bo replied. “That thing messed me up pretty good. Not sure how much farther I can walk.”

“Shit,” Slick said, mopping sweat from his brow. “Next time you have to decide between saving my life or keeping yours, let me die.”

Bo frowned and bumped Slick with the cart. “Do not talk like that. No one’s dying.”

Slick chuckled and shoved his hands in his pockets. “You’re a damned fool if you believe that. People will die, Bo. A lot of them.”

“Not if I can help it,” Bo replied, and turned the cart down the tunnel Jenny had chosen.

“You can’t save everyone,” Slick insisted. “Don’t make yourself crazy trying. You’re more important than me. If you die, we lose those cards.”

“Cards didn’t do a damned thing to help us against those shadows,” Bo pointed out. “Everyone is important, Slick. I need all of you.”

“Thank you,” Slick said, “but that’s not true. Part of being a leader is knowing who to save, and who to let go.”

Bo’s legs each went in a different direction. He leaned on the cart until the moment passed, then went back to pushing it.

“Don’t ask me to decide who lives and who dies,” Bo said.

“It’s not me asking,” Slick said. He gave the younger man’s shoulder a squeeze. “Good people don’t ask to be anything special. Fate taps them for the job. How they react once they’re chosen determines whether they’ll become a villain or a hero.”

“You’re talking a lot of shit, old man,” Bo said, struggling to keep his legs under control. They were getting minds of their own, which did not help his walking situation. “You switched from heroes to villains. They’re not the same.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Slick said. “The only difference between the good guys and the bad guys is which side of the battle lines you’re standing on.”

Silence descended on the men as Bo thought about that. He didn’t buy what Slick was selling. Villains weren’t just heroes who picked the wrong side. They were selfish and evil, and he wasn’t about to fall into that trap.

But he wasn’t a hero, either. He was the guy who had the deck, and he’d do what he could to help the people at his camp site, but there was zero chance that made him a hero. He was just a guy doing whatever he could to survive.

That is the old man’s point. You do not see yourself as a hero, Bo Nash, but you are doing things your people consider heroic. I do not agree, but that’s only because I’m so very much smarter than any human.

Jenny stopped at a passage on the right side of the tunnel and waited for Slick and Bo to catch up, hands shoved into her back pockets. “I figured it out,” she said, looking quite proud of herself.

“What’s that?” Slick asked. “How to look even perkier while in a dungeon?”

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

“You wish,” Jenny said. “If I was any perkier, you’d lose an eye from all your gawking at me. No, I figured out how to find the vault.”

“Let’s hear it,” Bo said. He was having a harder and harder time making sense of anything.

“Look at these lines on the wall,” Jenny said, pointing to the edge of a passageway. “They’re only near the passages.”

“I’m feeling pretty dumb right now, so you’ll have to explain it like I’m five,” Bo said. Five was generous. He felt more like a three-year-old coming down off a sugar high.

You know your friends are made of Meat. Eat them, and you’ll cure the poison in your system.

“I forgot I’m the smartest one here,” Jenny said. “Okay, look at this line just outside the passage. See how it’s about waist height? There’s another line inside the passage that’s just below the first one. That means the passage goes down.”

Bo rubbed a hand through his beard. His sweat felt oily and strange under his fingers. Or maybe that was just the fever cooking his brain. “It never felt like we were going up or down,” he said.

“Must be some kind of dungeon magic,” Jenny said. “But I only hear carts coming from the passages leading up from our tunnel. I think they’re bringing coins down to the vault.”

“Makes sense,” Slick said. “So lead us down.”

“And be quick,” Bo said. “I’m running out of gas.”

The dungeon core will heal you, I believe. But only after you defeat the current lord of the dungeon. And in your condition—

“Shut up, Barbie,” Bo said, a lot louder than he intended.

“Who are you calling Barbie?” Jenny asked.

“That’s not what I meant,” Bo said. “Sorry, my brain is fried.”

“Uh-huh,” Jenny replied. “You’re acting sus again, Bo. Come on. Let’s get this over with before I have to carry you back home.”

The men followed Jenny, who moved much more quickly now that she had a plan. Every time she saw a passage that led down from their current level, she took it without hesitation. Bo followed gamely as he could, but he’d resorted to letting the cart support his weight. He lagged farther and farther behind until Slick finally called for Jenny to stop.

“Bo’s not gonna make it much farther,” he said.

“Push me,” the pitmaster said. “We have to get to the core.”

Jenny looked down the hall they were standing in, lips pursed tightly. “Someone’s coming, Bo.”

The big man pulled himself into the cart. His legs hung over the front, and he had to support himself with his elbows on his knees, but Bo was proud he’d even managed that much. “Keep moving. When we can’t run anymore, I’ll fight.”

“And how will you do that?” Jenny asked.

“I’ve got an idea,” Bo insisted.

Do not get us killed.

Jenny and Slick exchanged worried glances, but they did as Bo asked. The pair of them had no trouble getting the cart moving or steering it down one passage after another. After ten minutes of that, though, Jenny stopped.

“We’re stuck,” she whispered. “Someone’s coming up from the passage below us, and someone else is coming down from the passage above us. There’s no where to go.”

“Which one is closer?” Bo asked.

“Below us,” Jenny said. “They’re louder, too. It’s more than just the wheels of the cart. They’re…I don’t know. Grunting?”

Bo had an idea. He wasn’t sure it would work, but he didn’t have a better plan, and he was out of time. “Soon as you see the ones coming from below, push the cart at them. Then look away. I’ll handle the fighting. But if you see me fighting this time, it might hurt you.”

“You have some kind of medusa card, Bo?” Jenny asked. “Because if you turn me to stone, I will never forgive you.”

“Something like that,” Bo said, lying. He planned to eat whatever was down the passage, and he did not want his friends to see that. “Push me at the bad guys, then look away.”

“This is crazy,” Slick said.

“Just do it,” Bo said. “Here they come.”

When no one pushed the cart, Bo looked over his shoulder at his friends. “Come on. This’ll be fun. It’s just like the shopping cart jousting we used to do.”

“Do not fucking die, you asshole,” Jenny said.

Then she pushed the cart as hard as she could at the hulking figures that appeared at the end of the hallway.

----------------------------------------

Bo’s thoughts were so scrambled he actually believed he could win a fight in this condition. He laughed as the cart rolled down the hall and equipped the Carnivore’s Cleaver. He willed the deck to deal him his first hand, and prepared himself for the wildest fight of his life.

Of course, he pulled Metamorph because that damned card turned up at the worst times. But he also drew Hackstorm and Severance, and that was the best he could hope for. Bo activated both cards as the cart rolled down the hallway at the bad guys and prayed his plan worked.

You are an insane person. When you die, I will tell all my devil friends about what an absolute lunatic you were. Your exploits will go down as the dumbest things a human has ever done.

“Yippee-kai-yai, Mr. Falcon!” Bo roared.

The two oversized figures at the end of the hall seemed more confused by Bo than worried about their impending demise. One of them shoved their cart out of the way, while the other pressed its hands together.

No, not hands.

Hooves.

The creatures were the twins of the ones who’d manned the buffet smoker, but their arms ended in cloven hooves shod with metal tips. Their porcine faces twisted into brutal, gleeful masks as they anticipated the violence they were about to visit on Bo. They chortled darkly and stepped toward the cart rolling in their direction.

Just in time for the cards to activate.

Bo’s cart careened into the pigmen, bouncing off one and crashing into the other. The two monsters were clumsy, but monstrously strong, and one of them shoved Bo’s cart so hard it spun wildly in the middle of the floor.

The passage whirled around Bo, leaving him dizzy, as his cards exploded into action.

Hackstorm went off first, and Bo’s Cleaver flashed through the air like strokes of lightning. The blade opened fresh wounds on each of the blubbery monsters, both of which squealed in protest at the unexpected assault. Then Severance went off, and one pigman suddenly had something to squeal about. Bo had carved off a good pound of flesh, leaving a gaping red crater in the monster’s belly.

ONE MEAT CARD ADDED TO YOUR PERSONAL INVENTORY!

Caught off-guard by Bo’s attacks, the pigmen could only squeal and stomp their feet. Before they recovered from their astonishment at how quickly the situation had turned, Bo struck again.

His new hand held Danger Spice, Hungry Hungry Devil, and Carnivore’s Cleaver. He opted to disorient the least wounded pigman and put everything he had into taking down the monster he’d already carved up.

The string of cards worked like a charm. Danger Spice made the less wounded pigman squeal and try to scrub at its eyes, which resulted in a nasty cut to its forehead from its hooves. Bo’s belly was suddenly full, and he felt the poison’s effect recede. A brutal cleaver attack ripped the other pigman open from throat to crotch. With a piggy squeal, the creature fell to its knees, then flopped over onto a pile of its spilled entrails.

Bo wanted to end the fight quickly, but a cold, dark part of his mind warned him that was a a bad idea. He needed more Meat, and there was only one way to get it. With a quick glance over his shoulder, the pitmaster confirmed his friends weren’t watching him. It was time to do some grisly work. He hopped off the cart, and got to it.

His next hand came up with Severance, Hungry Hungry Devil, and, perfectly, Danger Spice.

The pigman had recovered from the first round of Danger Spice, and came at Bo with an angry squeal. Its metal-shod hoof swept down in a brutal swing aimed at the pitmaster’s forehead. As strong as the blow was, though, Bo’s Constitution protected him from a wound.

“I’ve eaten bigger strips of bacon than you,” Bo growled, and activated his cards.

Severance hacked deep into the pigman’s thigh, tearing apart muscle and shattering bone. The blow dropped the creature to one knee, and Bo glared at it as his second card healed another wound. The third card, Danger Spice, took the fight out of the pig creature and left it mewling on the floor.

“Bo,” Jenny called. “You need to hurry it up.”

“Doing my best,” the pitmaster said. His next hand had Severance, and he used it to hack off another hunk of meat.

The pigman was too badly wounded after that to fight, so the cards stopped shuffling. Bo found he could use Severance at will, now. Over the next minute, he chopped at the pigman. He had eight Meat cards, and he’d healed himself back to perfect health.

“Let’s go,” Bo called back to his friends.

When they turned to face him, both of their faces fell. Jenny stormed up to him and slapped his chest with the back of her hand.

“Could you just once not end up covered in blood?” She asked. “You scared me to death.”

“Thanks for asking, Jenny,” he said, “I’m fine.”

“Is that…do you have blood on your teeth?” she asked.

“Probably,” Bo said, trying to cover up his embarrassment with a shrug. “You know how it is. Blood gets everywhere when you’re fighting monsters.”

“You’re feeling better,” Slick said, a statement, not a question.

“I think the poison ran its course,” Bo lied. He worried his friends might think he was a monster if they found out how he’d healed himself.

“We’ve got a lot to talk about when we get out of here,” Jenny said.

“You’ll forget all about it when you see my sexy legs,” Bo said, striking a coquettish pose.

“They’re not as skinny as they used to be,” Slick said. “They almost look like normal.”

“That’s just more Pure Friggin’ Magic for you,” Bo said. “Perk of being a champion. I told you—”

The red lights in the floor pulsed. A strident warning siren blasted through the passages, and Bo saw more monsters charge into the passage behind them.

Sneaky time was over.

Things were about to get very, very messy.