Alex blinked away stars as he stumbled through the portal. Unlike Glitch's typical portal network, Reyna's was a lot more involved. He could feel the way her magic plucked at his own, digging its claws into the foundation of his power to drag him through space. The end result left him swaying as he stood in a dark room, waiting for the others to come through behind him.

Again, unlike Glitch, Reyna's portal wasn't a discrete gap in the world. Instead, it was a shimmering ring of red and blue energy. Alex couldn't see the other end from his side, and instead could only peer at the other end of the room. He waited with bated breath as the portal flickered three times before winking out entirely. There was no sign of Archie or the other mobs anywhere in the room.

"Oh that's not good," Alex mumbled, frowning. He reached for the walkie talkie in his shoulder bag and clicked it on, hoping he could get a message through the other adventurers. "Reyna, come in. This is Alex."

There was a hiss of static as he released the button, followed by a garbled message from the other end. "Alex, what's wrong?" Reyna's voice came through in a mixture of hisses and pops as the radio frequency passes through multiple layers of building.

"Did the others come through the portal? It just closed on me."

There was a moment of silence before Reyna's stunned response came through. "Aren't they with you? They all passed through unharmed as far as I can tell."

Alex swore to himself and peered around the room again. His eyes were slowly adjusting to the darkness, and he was able to make out the faint shape of lab benches and cabinets. Definitely no signs of the other mobs. He tightened his jaw as he thought it over, before nearly smacking himself.

Glitch's shards served as their portal anchor to the building, but they were shards and not whole cores. If Alex had to hazard a guess, each piece served as their own independent anchor. Reyna hadn't been able to differentiate between them, likely since their magical signatures were nearly identical, and so her portal had separated Alex's party.

Alex quickly relayed this to Reyna.

"If there are fragments of a proper network up there, it would disrupt my portal powers," she agreed. "You're on your own for now. Be careful, iron. I don't want to have to report to your guild that you died under my watch."

Alex sneered at the use of his rank but didn't argue. He wasn't too keen on dying, either. With nothing left to say, he shoved the walkie back into his satchel and fumbled around for his other tools. In one hand he held his wand at the ready, and in the other he held a carbonated healing potion in case of emergencies.

With a wave of his wand, Alex conjured a fireball to hover over his head, and finally took in his surroundings. His initial assumption seemed accurate. He appeared to be in some kind of lab. There were lab benches and chairs lining the walls, along with tall cupboards and cabinets. In the middle of the floor was an intricately designed spell circle, though its purpose was beyond Alex's understanding. Turning around, he quickly spotted a fragment of purple crystal sitting on the bench right behind him.

"Well, that's one part of the mission complete," he grumbled, scooping it up. It wasn't very large, barely bigger than the centre diamond on a ring. Still, he carefully placed it in a plastic baggy he'd brought along for just this reason, and slipped it into his satchel. Elsewhere in the building, he could only hope Archie and the others did the same with their respective shards.

As he moved towards the door, something in the corner of his room caught his eye. If it wasn't for the fireball floating over his head and illuminating the lab, he likely would have missed it entirely. Instead, it reflected the light back at him, like a cat's eyes in the night.

He whirled in place to meet the strange object, only to watch as something that looked like a snake slithered into a vent in the ceiling. He only had enough time to hurl the fireball at the creature before it vanished. His spell splashed uselessly off the wall, and instantly scattered into disparate threads of aether. Those threads in turn immediately vanished into thin air.

"Oh, I don't like the looks of that," Alex grumbled, conjuring another fireball overhead.

It was one of the benefits of fighting within a dungeon. Dungeon mobs were composed entirely of raw mana, while the spells Alex cast were composed of aether. When a mob died, he could then absorb their mana to keep his pools topped up, and the dungeon absorbed the aether for its own use.

If Alex missed too many shots, though, he'd run out of mana sooner rather than later. Again, he regreted the fact he didn't have a proper status tattoo to keep track of his pools, but that was a problem he couldn't rectify until later.

Running for the door, Alex through it open and stumbled out into the hallway. Part of him hoped to find Archie or the others waiting for him on the other side, but instead what he saw made him pause in confusion. Instead of the sterile hallway of a lab building, Alex was standing in something out of a science fiction horror film. The walls and floors were covered in thick tubing made from a dark copper metal. The only light illuminating the structure came from redish fixtures dangling from the ceiling by tubes.

As he spotted them, the light fixtures all turned to face him. Alex froze as he got the distinct impression that something was looking at him.

His fears were proven justified a moment later as the nearest light fixture snaked out of the ceiling and lunged for him. A trio of metal spikes jutted from the tip like an alien jaw, snapping for his face. Alex ducked under it just in time and projected a thin stream of fire aether from his wand at his attacker. The spell struck home, lancing right through it and severing the head from the rest of the tube.

The metal monstrosity made no sounds as it struck the ground, lifeless. The red light dimmed before going out as the rest of the tube was sucked back up into the ceiling.

"Oh, I don't like that. I don't like that at all," Alex muttered.

Again, his fears were justified as a loud klaxon filled the hallway. It pierced through his ears and drilled into his skull, forcing him to drop his potion and wand as he clapped his hands on the side of his head. Even blocking the noise, he could feel it vibrating his rib cage. His legs felt like jelly as he dropped to his knees, crying out in pain.

A sudden flash of movement caught his eyes again, followed by sweet, merciful silence. Alex gasped as he dropped to all fours, panting and wheezing as he tried to catch his breath. His body ached all over, he could feel something wet trickling down the sides of his head. When he reached up to check, he winced as he felt it dripping from his ears. Burst eardrums.

Scrambling, he grabbed his potion off the floor and popped the cork. He downed its contents in a second, and sighed in relief as his hearing came back in fits and bursts.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

"Alex, are you okay?" A familiar voice asked, followed by a hand offering him help up.

The kobold coughed, his aching lungs and stomach following his ears on the mend. He reached out and grabbed the furry blue hand and allowed Archie to hoist him up.

"Good thing you triggered that alarm, I might never have found you otherwise," Archie said, quickly dusting the kobold off and scooping his dropped wand off the floor.

"Not an alarm," Alex coughed, tapping his chest to clear out some of the blood in his throat. "Sound element." He coughed one more time and spat a clump of blood onto the floor, his throat already feeling loads better.

"Sound? Dammit," Archie swore as Alex retrieved his weapon. "If that was a sound-element spell directed at you, it explains why I was unaffected by it."

Alex nodded and looked around the hallway once more. The hanging lights were all extinguished, their severed tubing sparking from clean cuts that removed them from their fixtures. Once more, the only light was from Alex's fireball.

"Please tell me this is normal," Alex finally asked, looking up and down the hallway.

"Wish I could. Matt has certainly been busy. Curious how he acquired the sound element, though. You would think that Zack could have acquired another element by now if Matt was able to?"

Alex shook his head, no answer forthcoming. "We're not here to answer that question. We have more important things to worry about."

"Right. Oh, by the way, I found this," Archie said, handing Alex a plastic baggy with a tiny shard of purple crystal in it. Another of Glitch's fragments. The kobold nodded appreciatively and stuffed it into his satchel.

"I have three strong healing potions left, one of Zack's mana potions, and two topical health pods," Alex muttered, quickly taking inventory of his bag's contents. "What about you?"

Archie patted his pockets and nodded. "My potions are okay, too. That's good news at the least. Have you any idea where our mobs might be?"

"None at all. They're probably with Glitch's other shards though."

Archie sneered and shrugged. "Makes sense. Broken shards serving as portal anchors would disrupt the actual flow of portal. Well, we still have a mission. No point in wasting more time than necessary."

"Shouldn't we look for them?" Alex asked as the six foot tall rabbit turned on his heel and started marching.

"No point," Archie shrugged. "They're outside my telepathic range—which is greatly diminished what with our being outside of Zack's influence—so I've already lost control of them. There's no guarantee I'll be able to reassert control if we find them."

Alex sighed but didn't bother arguing. Archie was the one who understood how mobs worked, and the kobold wasn't really interested in learning. Still, it bothered him to know that they had already lost both their tank and their healer. Hopefully they wouldn't need them, but he wasn't confident.

As they walked, Archie continuously looked up and down the corridor. Occasionally he paused in front of a knot of coils and scratched his chin before continuing his march. When they passed under another collection of lights, the two went on guard, only for the fixtures to remain firmly planted inside the ceiling.

"I think those used to be pot lights," Archie said, as he stayed close to the wall in an attempt to keep out of their immediate range.

"Think?"

"Well, based on what we know about how dungeons operate, we know they absorb patterns and materials within their structure. The metal is clearly copper, although it's a shade darker than normal. I can't tell if that's just the lighting or something else." In demonstration, Archie tugged on one of the tubes in the wall and pulled it into Alex's view. The fireball cast a warm orange glow, which still did a better job illuminating the tube.

Sure enough, it was copper. It had the telltale smell and scratched easily when Archie dug at it with his knife.

"The real question is why a dungeon would fill itself up with this much copper," the dire hare pondered, tapping his chin. "What could he possibly hope to gain by adjusting his structure this way?"

Curiously, Alex poked at another tube as they continued to walk. To his surprise, it wriggled and twitched at his touch. He tried again, this time with a thread of fire aether. Once again, the echoing klaxon hit him like a truck, pinning him to the wall. Archie was by his side in an instant, slashing the offending coil blasting Alex with sound mana and saving him from further sonic damage.

"Why on earth did you provoke the dungeon?" Archie demanded.

"Sorry," Alex grumbled, peeling himself off the wall. "I had a hunch and I think I just proved myself right."

Archie raised an eyebrow and gestured for Alex to go on.

"Well, you know how Zack is always aware of what's happening inside his dungeon?" Alex proposed.

"Naturally," Archie confirmed.

"Is the same true for Matt?"

Archie opened his mouth to answer and paused, cocking his head. "I'm actually not sure. I distinctly remember him speaking to me through radios, and observing me with cameras. But that was it. I never actually communicated with him beyond that. From what Zack tells me, that level of observation isn't something dungeons start with immediately. It takes time for them to acclimate and become able to process information at that scale."

"And what we know about Matt is that he's much younger than Zack, but significantly stronger. We also know that Cornelius Snow led him to believe he's a monster," Alex continued. He poked the wall with his wand but didn't try to unleash aether again. Instead he dug around in the hole his spell had already made and found what he was looking for.

"Is that… Mana?" Archie breathed, his eyes wide with shock.

It was orange-red in colour and surging through the tubing, but the thin lines of magic were unmistakable. Alex his stuck his finger in the stream and pulled them away again, thin fibres of mana coming away and sinking into his hand.

"It's an artery," Alex explained. "Blood vessels, but for mana."

Archie looked up and down the hallway again. "Now that you mention it, there is something… organic about the way these tubes are arrayed. And the only resistance we've encountered comes from those light fixtures."

"I think those are his equivalent of an immune system," Alex confirmed. As he checked again, already the broken copper tube was repairing itself using the stream of mana.

"But this doesn't make any sense," Archie grumbled, shaking his head. "Dungeons can't keep their mana sealed like this, it kills their influence."

"We've been operating this entire time under the assumption that Matt is a dungeon core. We haven't stopped to consider the idea that maybe he isn't." Alex shivered.

Archie's ears perked up as he stared down at the kobold. "If he's not a dungeon core, what else could he possibly be?"

Alex shook his head. "I don't know. Something similar to a dungeon but also something vastly different. Maybe he's a—"

Before Alex could finish his sentence, Archie's ears twitched. The rabbit lifted a finger and shushed the kobold, flicking and twisting his long ears like a pair of radio antennae. "Something's coming."

"I don't like the sound of that," Alex grumbled, readying his wand.

"Me neither," Archie said, readying his daggers.

It was only another second before Alex could hear it too. Dozens of legs clicking on the metal surface. The chittering of alien creatures. As they rounded the corner ahead, Alex had to gasp to keep from running.

They looked like copper ants, with six legs on either side of their segmented bodies and thick mandibles where their mouths would be. Instead of eyes, they had a single glowing red light in the middle of their face, where the mouth would be on a normal animal. Worst of all, they were each at least up to Alex's waist.

"Oh I don't like that," Alex cried, readying a fireball.

"Don't!" Archie warned, grabbing Alex's wand and lowering it to the ground, cancelling the spell. "If you trigger a sonic attack I might not be able to save you again!"

"Well what am I supposed to do against metal bugs!?" Alex cried, as the first of the ants reached them.

"Figure it out!" Archie shouted. He punted the nearest insect and cried out in pain as his foot collided against its metal frame. He didn't let that stop him from finishing it off, though, stabbing at it with his dagger. "Shit! They're too thick for me! We have to run!"

"We'll never outrun this many of them!" Alex called.

"Well, do you have any better ideas!?"

Alex was about to say no, when he felt something click into place. He looked down at his wand, and realized that he had more finite control over his fire aether than he used to. With an exertion of will, he allowed the faintest bit of it to leak out of his wand's head, creating a blade of glowing orange magic.

"What the hell!?" Archie shouted, as the burning blade effortlessly decapitated the nearest ant.

"Mmm! Strong in the force, this one is!" Alex cackled, in his best Yoda impression.