Nathaniel Sand-In-His-Shoes had never wanted to be a warrior. He’d wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps as an engineer and architect, using his seismagic to dig wells for needy villages or to erect massive walls to defend entire cities from spawn rushes. At eighteen years of age, the most violence he’d ever known up to a month ago had been the occasional sparring match in Sensei Long-Stride’s dojo or a friendly drunken brawl on a Friday night.

Then a month ago, the world had collapsed around him. There had been the earthquake, and he’d been able to use his seismagic to blunt the worst of those effects. But then had come the revenant with death in its wake. Then the running battle in the tunnels beneath the old town hall, then Sam’s war against God or whatever it was. Then Quentin. Then something else that he was sure was coming any minute now.

An hour ago he’d been in the sky, helping an ancient red dragon fight off twice his number of undead wyrms that flew on shredded wings and spat acid and poison. And not only had he fought them, together, they’d beaten them.

In the stories, it would have been a time of celebration, of mead flasks lifted high and bawdy songs being sung, preferably around a campfire and maybe with a toothsome wench on his arm to whom he could extoll his many manly virtues. But right now the only woman nearby was Sam’s mom, and even nudging up against the thought of her hanging on his arm made any inclination towards amorousness shrivel up and climb back inside him to hide, whimpering in fear all the while.

And even if that wasn’t the case, there were no songs, no mead, and no feeling of merriment. Araxes had taken control of things, and that was good. But Quentin had been injured in the battle, the great dragon lay almost flat in the town square, sides heaving like bellows, breath coming in harsh gasps and exhales that stank of corruption.

He was dying. Even Nat could see it.

“Curse this level one body,” Araxes growled, straightening up from where he’d been examining Quentin. “I recognize the poison. Could have neutralized it easily if I had the full range of my powers left.”

“What about the healers?” Nat asked. Sam’s dungeon had spawned some of those, hadn’t it? That’s why he’d been able to go for so long without sleep, he remembered his friend telling him. “Could they—“

He stopped talking when the lich started shaking his head.

“They will be unable to assist, I fear,” Araxes said solemnly.

“Thy kind hast always been pessimistic,” the great dragon wheezed in a voice that still sounded like an oxcart rumbling down an unpaved road. “Tell me truthfully, what hath been done to me?”

“This is a magical poison,” Araxes said, and his voice was uncharacteristically heavy. “I recognize the symptoms. Rotspire. It will consume you from the inside out, leaving you alive the whole time, until it turns you into one of the creatures that inflicted it upon you.”

“What!?” Nat blanched at the very thought. “Woah, wait, no no no, no, Quentin’s not going to become one of those things. No way, not a chance.”

“Indeed,” the dragon nodded slowly, his scales rustling against the cobblestones. “I shall see mine life end, ere that day comes.”

“Oh cease your melodramatics,” Araxes said, rolling his eyeflames. “The poison is fatal, yes, and debilitating. But it is not incurable. The simplest solution would have been to utilize my power had I retained it. However there are other solutions. A tincture of Saint Finneas’s Wort and various other herbs, properly prepared and treated with spells available to even the basest clerical aspirants will neutralize the poison.”

“Well, great!” Nat clapped his hands together. “Let’s do that!”

“Saint Finneas’s Wort only grows in the coldest of climes,” Quentin rumbled. “There will be none in any apothecary this far south, of that I am certain.”

Nat glared at the dragon—At a dragon! Had like twenty four hours really changed him that much?

“Well it’s a good thing we have a moving dungeon that can take us north, isn’t it?”

“Which, I hasten to point out,” Araxes said, holding up a finger, “we do not know how to control.”

“Then find out!” Nat rounded on the lich—on a lich! What was up with him all of a sudden? “You’re supposed to be some ancient repository of all knowledge or some crap like that. Why don’t you figure out how to steer this thing?”

Araxes met Nat’s gaze and held it for a long three-count.

“That,” he said in the most uninflected tone Nat could ever remember hearing, “is precisely what I was about to do. Have you any more suggestions for me? Making sure we don’t all starve to death, perhaps? Or, even better, go and rescue Tolliver so we can return this whole mess to his less-than-capable hands?”

Nat’s cheeks heated up. “Sorry,” he started, then stopped. His jaw set, and he looked back up to meet those purple eyeflames.

“No, I’m not sorry. My friend is dying, and you’re here insulting me and sounding like an ass when I ask for help. So no, not sorry. What do we have to do to figure out how to move this place where we want it to go?”

“Ah.” Araxes gave a death’s-head grin. “Where else? The library!”

* * *

Cora paced back and forth, watching a kobold, a goblin, and a gnome huddled together around a glowing portal to nowhere, muttering back and forth to each other in arcane terms she only barely understood. Up in the rafters, unnoticed by everyone else, she could see Pearl matching her pace step for step along one of the support beams. The little fairy looked even more miserable than she did.

“The whole anchoring assembly’s come unglued. See that?” Said the gnome woman, who bore the rather odd name of Sherrilegend Applefriend. “It can’t be just a coincidence.”

“Chief’s the one who really understood this muck-a-ruck,” said the goblin named Booger, scratching his nose thoughtfully. “But even a one-eyed weasel could see that y’all’s origin point’s not stable neither.”

“Who cares!” Pearl zipped down from the rafters and fluttered back and forth in the air like an agitated hummingbird. “We gotta get Sam back! Just… Just push a button or something and get us there!”

“We’re not going anywhere until we anchor ourselves to one spot,” Rashun the kobold sighed. “And we can’t anchor until we learn how to steer.

“Oh, now this is curious,” Sherrilegend said, causing four sets of eyes to swivel to her in hope. “I can still access the White Room from here.”

“Really?” Rashun came over and peered at the readout the gnome woman had been studying. “Oh that’s weird. Look at those numbers. It’s like it’s… I don’t know what it’s like!”

“Why y’all rackin’ your brains for the answer when it’s starin’ ya right in the face like a hen looking for an omelette?” asked Booger, idly picking his nose.

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Four pairs of eyes swiveled to the goblin in identical looks of confusion.

“Like a what?” Cora asked in spite of herself.

“You know what’s going on?” Asked Rashun and Sherrilegend at the same time. And Cora was force to admit, that was a much better question.

“Sure. Stands to reason. What, y'all cain’t see it? Boy , and here I thought you was supposed to be smart.” He flicked whatever nose gold he’d discovered away and hooked his thumbs into his belt. “Chief is gonna laugh when I tell 'im this one–”

He was interrupted by a very particular kind of sound. It was the sky-steel hiss of a narrator fairy very slowly and very pointedly drawing her magical sword from it's sheath.

“Booger,” Pearl said in as growly a tone as Cora had ever heard her use. “If you don't say something useful in the next three seconds, I'm making goblin sausage for dinner.”

“Y’all are thinkin’ about the Dungeon and the White Room as two separate places, right?” Booger asked, suddenly talking much faster. “But ain’t we all know that they’re linked? Chief dies, he goes to the White Room. He resurrects back here in the dungeon. There’s already a tunnel connectin’ the two, even if miss Cora here,” he waved the same hand he’d been picking his nose with, and Cora stepped smartly to the side just in case there was more run-off from that particular activity clinging to his fingers, “ain’t anchored to nowhere no more.”

“That… Actually makes sense.” Rashun frowned. “Some kind of entanglement theory. Miss Cora…” he glanced over at her. “You’re kinda linked to everything with the dungeon, right? And Big Bro is linked to you?”

“That is…” She started and frowned thoughtfully. Well, technically it was functionally incorrect in every conceivable way, but it also had the benefit of being accurate on a surface level and also easy to understand. “…Mostly correct,” she finished. “Does that help you?”

“Yeah,” Sherrilegend nodded, her strawberry curls bouncing. “It means that any place linked to you is also connected to the dungeon. So we can still use this portal to access the White Room, I think. And probably the Blue Room.”

“Which has all those books and stuff in it!” Rashun perked up. “Which means we can figure out how to steer the dungeon and go get Big Bro again! Yes!”

Cora felt her heart flutter in her breast. Yes. Yes, by all means, let them be able to go and rescue her Guardian. Please.

What was being done to him, far away in the clutches of the enemy? Was he suffering torture? Was he in pain? She felt like needles were being pressed against her chest every time she tried to imagine him in the lich’s dungeons. It was hard to breathe, and her eyes had a tendency to overflow with tears every time it happened. It was incredibly inconvenient, and she couldn’t figure out how to make it stop.

And even now, thinking about it, she felt her heart drop in her chest and her eyes squeeze shut against the ugly images her fool brain was conjuring up. She sucked in a deep breath through her nose and let it out again the same way, fighting against the strange pain.

Then a small hand slipped into hers and gave a squeeze. She opened her eyes to see Sherrilegend there, smiling up at her.

“Don’t you worry about the Chief, miss Cora,” she said. “He’s a tough nut. I’ve seen him stand up to dragons and demons alike. A little lich ain’t gonna be able to do nothing against your beau, I promise.”

Her what? She frowned and looked down at the little gnome. “My… Beau?”

“Oh, ain’t he? I just kinda figured, the way you two were always hanging around each other.” Sherrilegend shrugged. “Well, either way, don’t worry about him. I’ve been watching him. I don’t think there’s a force on heaven or earth that could take out the Chief if he didn’t want it to happen. He’s tough. He’s gnome tough, and that’s sayin’ something.“

“Yeah,” said Pearl, alighting on Cora’s shoulder and placing her own tiny hand against Cora’s cheek. “Sam’s tough. He’s… He’s really really tough. There’s no one alive who could keep him down, not for… not for long, I mean. It’s…”

Cora reached her free hand up to gently pat the fairy’s back, deciding not to notice the tracks of tears starting to flow down the little fae’s cheeks.

“Thank you Pearl,” she said quietly. “I am certain he will be alright.”

It was right then that Araxes strode into the room, wearing his new authority about him like a robe. Even to Cora, the air around the lich-copy practically thrummed with purpose. Behind him came Nathaniel, Sam’s friend, who looked sad for some reason.

“Is everything alright?” Cora asked.

“Of course not,” Araxes scoffed, moving over to the portal. “Aside from all our known problems, now we have a bloody great wyrm perishing on our doorstep—doubtless half from his own hubris—Ack!”

The sound of the hollow ‘donk’ faded as Nat cracked his knuckles after striking the lich on the back of the head. “Sam’s not here, so maybe I shouldn’t have done that, but I don’t care. You talk about Quentin like that again, I’ll rip your jaw off.”

“Hit him again!” Pearl cheered from her perch next to Cora’s right ear. Cora had to fight to not jerk her head away from the sudden shrill sound.

Araxes turned slowly to glare at the boy, who shrank from the gaze, but then straightened up and met it head-on. Well, Cora thought. The battle seemed to have put some steel in his spine.

“Don’t,” she said, stepping forward and in between the two of them, ignoring the disapointed noise from the fairy on her shoulder turning her silvery head first to glare at nat and then at the lich. “We must keep our heads if we are to survive this. Samuel would not want us at each other’s throats.”

“Tolliver would have struck me even harder,” Araxes grumbled.

“Nathaniel,” Cora turned back to the elf. “Apologize to Araxes. He has taken the mantle of leadership for us for now, and he must be treated with respect. Otherwise it is meaningless and we are nothing but gibbering wretches awaiting doom.”

“But he—“ the boy started, and Cora made a chopping motion with her hands, cutting him off.

“I know what he,” she said. “But it does not matter right now. Apologize.”

For a second she saw the hesitation and resistance. Then it melted and his shoulders slumped.

“I’m sorry, Araxes,” he said quietly. “I’m just scared for my friend.”

“Accepted,” the lich said, nodding once. Then he reared back as Cora spun to face him now.

“And you,” she said, thrusting a silver finger at him. “Apologize to Nathaniel. You are our leader now, you can no longer make disparaging remarks about us or our allies or our friends. Not in public, where you might be heard. Just as we must respect you, you must in turn be respectable.”

“Now see here,” he began, but she cut him off with the same gesture.

“I know. When you were powerful you did not need any of that. But you are not powerful now, except for your knowledge and your skills. Be worthy of those in our eyes. Or risk losing everything you hoped to gain.”

Araxes stared at her for a long moment.

“I remember,” he said in a softer tone, “when you were an emotionless orb, utterly incapable of doing anything on your own without your Guardian.”

She felt her lips quirk upwards. “Samuel helped me through much, including remembering how to be a person again. Now I am learning on my own.”

“And doing a fine job of it, I daresay.” Araxes nodded, then turned to Nathaniel. “I apologize for my words. They were crude and boorish and borne of both frustration and long habit.”

Nat swallowed and nodded once. “Thanks.”

“Think nothing of it.”

“Wow,” Pearl muttered from where she was still perched on Cora’s shoulder, one hand wrapped up in her hair. “You uh… You got kinda scary all of a sudden.”

“My Guardian is missing,” Cora whispered back. “I believe that gives me some leeway when it comes to social interaction.”

“Now, Mistress Cora,” the lich turned back to her, eyeflames bright. “May I continue, or did you have another diatribe in which you wished to partake?”

Her lips parted in a full grin. “No, I’m good.”

“Excellent. Then to more pressing matters: is the portal functioning?”

“Sort of,” Rashun said from where he’d been watching, wide-eyed, the whole conversation. Quickly he outlined the situation, and by the end Araxes was nodding again.

“Excellent. Well, not excellent, but enough to meet our immediate needs. I must take a trip to the Blue Room as soon as possible, and—“

Tug.

Cora gasped, eyes going wide as something deep inside of her suddenly felt like an invisible hand had grabbed it and pulled. The world lurched around her. She heard the others call out to her in surprise and worry, but the words were unintelligible. She looked up and met Araxes' wide eyeflames, watched him take a step towards her, saw his hand come up.

“Cora? Cora!” Pearl’s voice reached her ears even as she felt herself falling to the floor. “Cora, what’s wrong?”

TUG.

She was facedown on the floor. She tried lifting her arms, but no sensation came. She tried turning her head, but her muscles refused her commands.

"Cora!"

She heard Sally's voice, clear as a bell. She felt her sister's panic, heard the rising terror in her voice, but could do nothing about it. Her breath would not stir in her chest, her eyes would not move, her mind felt full of molten glass.

Healing magic flowed into her, but there was nothing to heal. She felt what should have been soothing white light pass right through her, doing no good at all.

“She’s not responding!” It was Pearl again. Yes. The little fairy had healing magic of her own, didn’t she? “Help! Someone do something!”

Deep inside of her, the invisible hand gripped harder, and pulled again.

Sam. Help me.

TUG.

Something inside Cora broke. The last thing she heard before the blackness took her was Pearl’s scream of surprise.

Then nothing.