Sam woke up slowly, feeling every ache and pain in his body as if he’d been put on a rack and been beaten like a dirty rug for hours on end. His teeth were sore. Up until that very moment, he’d been unaware that that was even a thing that could happen.

His senses faded back in equally slowly. His hearing returned first, and he heard his own breathing mixed with the high pitched ringing of blood flowing too fast in his veins. Feeling came back into his fingertips, and he felt the rough stone floor underneath him. Finally sight faded back in, and he found himself staring up at the beige ceiling of his little cell.

“Ow,” he mumbled with a tongue that wasn’t fully responding to his commands yet. “That hurt.”

No response. Gingerly, he turned his head from side to side. The cell was empty. No evil little girl, no glowing black hands. The pain still lingered, but honestly he was kind of getting used to that these days.

He sat up and winced. His head was throbbing, and a quick exploration with his fingertips brought to light a lump that must have happened when his head struck the floor on the way down.

“Well, I’m not dead,” he muttered, patting himself down looking for any wounds. “Which is kind of surprising, actually.”

The quick search revealed no wounds, no broken bones, no injuries at all save for the lump on the back of his head.

“So,” he mused as he worked up the strength to try to stand up. “Just what did she do to me?”

As if in answer to his question, he felt the familiar haptic buzz at the back of his neck alerting him to a new notification awaiting him. A moment later a message appeared in front of his eyes—which was odd given he didn’t have the mana to call up menus on his own. Maybe this was some kind of automated thing?

The message started scrolling, and his eyes went wide.

*ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: YOU’RE FIRED!***

Congratulations Poindexter, you finally managed to piss the boss off enough that she was willing to deal with the paperwork. You have been terminated with prejudice from your position as Guardian. You now join the illustrious company of former Guardians like Herbert “The Molester” McGrady and Mai “Traitorface” Ling, in that they too were removed from their jobs because they were terrible, terrible people.

And just so we’re clear, this wasn’t ‘downsizing’, it wasn’t ‘right-sizing’, it wasn’t ‘exploring new avenues’ or ‘exciting new opportunities’. No no, you’ve been shitcanned for cause. You are pining for the fjords. You are an ex-Guardian. Enjoy that rising feeling of dread, because it’s not gonna be going away any time soon.

Enjoy your new infamy, Bubba. Your life is gonna get a lot more sucky from here on out.

But it’s okay.

You probably deserve it.

Reward: The remainder of your life, although it’s probably been shortened considerably. Should have treated her nicer.

Sam stared at the message, watched it blink back to the start and begin scrolling past his eyes again on repeat. His mouth was dry and his heart hammered in his chest. The Failstate had done it. He hadn’t wanted to believe, hadn’t thought it was possible… Cora had told him, not that long ago, that only she could remove a Guardian from their position.

Clearly that was no longer true.

The message stopped repeating and winked out, leaving Sam seated and staring at the wall of his cell.

He could feel the panic starting to set in now. Alone, imprisoned, without abilities or power, unable to contact anyone, and now…

Now he was no longer a Guardian. No more access to the White Room. No more connection to the Dungeon.

No more little immortality.

Suddenly, just like that, he was vulnerable.

He hadn’t realized before just how much that conditional invulnerability, that strange Guardian ability to respawn after death, had bolstered his courage. Possibly in a false way, now that he was thinking about it. But it had allowed him to take risks, to fling himself into situations, to laugh in the face of danger knowing that even if it might hurt in the moment, he’d come through unscathed.

It had also been a really good escape plan more than once. Now that was gone. Now death was… death.

Well, maybe not completely. He turned his head and rolled up his sleeve, examining the new tattoos on his arm all the way up to his shoulder. The one around his wrist, which was nothing more than a string of mana runes that glowed softly against his flesh, was the one Araxesendenak had said worked on his health. Won’t fall below a single point from normal damage, the lich had said. So there was some protection there… Except what did that ‘normal damage’ mean?

“And,” he added under his breath, “let’s face it. In here, it’s not exactly a huge benefit.” If anything, it was more liability. The lich could torture him, run him through any meat grinder he wanted, and he’d come out alive. Talk about your mixed blessings.

The panic was bubbling in his stomach now, seeking escape wherever it could find one. Sam closed his eyes and breathed deep, clenching his teeth together and forcing the fear back down. It wouldn’t help. It never helped. He needed to keep his head, needed to stay cool and collected.

The mantra didn’t help. The panic grew and forced him to his knees, arms clutched around his belly as it contracted and roiled. Bile and vomit rose in his gorge, and he barely made it to the chamber pot in time.

Fear and isolation and desperation forced their way up his throat and past his teeth, splashing into the ceramic container to mix with yesterday’s dinner and blood from today’s beating. He vomited until there was nothing left in his belly. And when it finally subsided it left him weak and dizzy.

He was alone. Utterly alone. For the first time in his life. No family. No friends. No way to contact anyone. Cut off from the outside world and imprisoned within his enemy’s stronghold.

And now, to top it all off, he’d had his last link to Cora ripped away as well.

He hadn’t realized how important that link had grown to him until it was gone. It wasn’t just the immortality—was barely that at all the more he thought on it. It was that he’d been part of something. In charge of something. And while at the start it had been dropped on him from the sky, he’d slowly grown into the role. He’d earned it. And the trust people had placed in him. Like Sally had told him; he’d been a leader.

And now… It was all gone.

He didn’t know how long he laid there, head resting against the rim of the guzunder, the stench of his own effluvia rubbing his nostrils raw. The loneliness and the failure of it all crushed down on him, making his limbs leaden and his breath strain in his chest.

It was all over, wasn’t it? He’d fought long and hard, and in the end, all he’d accomplished was to land himself here, without hope of rescue, without hope of escape, without… Hope.

It was over. He was done and dead. What was left except to roll over and wait for the end to come?

He couldn’t even end himself. The lich’s tattoo promised to keep him alive from any damage that might shuffle him off this mortal coil. He was well and truly stuck in this dungeon, with nothing for it but to await the torture and death that the lich surely had planned for him—

Dungeon…

His head came up off the Guzunder and his eyes stared at the wall like he was trying to drill through it with ocular strength alone.

He was in a dungeon. And it was a dungeon, wasn’t it. Not like he and Pop built, not designed to lure adventurers in with the promise of treasure and essence, but the end result was the same. People who came down here died, and their friends and families were left to mourn their senseless deaths and the emptiness that those deaths left in their lives.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

He remembered that feeling, all those years ago. When he finally understood that Marie was dead and never coming back because she had gone hunting dungeons. Oh, she hadn’t actually died, and was even now somewhere back in Melloram, hopefully recovering from whatever had happened to her during the battle that had taken away all her godlike powers. But he hadn’t know that back then.

Back then he had just known that she was dead. That he would never see the woman he had loved more than air ever again. And that it had been dungeons that had killed her and stolen her smile from him.

And now Araxesendenak had him in a dungeon, and was going to kill him. And his friends and family, miles away from him, would never know how or where he died, and would never even receive a body to bury.

His empty gut roiled and filled with something molten boiling up from the bowels of his soul. Slowly he set the guzunder aside and rose up, still staring at the wall but seeing something miles away. He saw Ma weeping while Pop held her and looked like something carved from ancient oak. He saw Pearl and Cora and Rashun and all the others huddled around a grave containing nothing but symbolism, each mourning in their own way.

And above it all, looming like some pagan deity of old, he saw Araxesendenak laughing, and the Failstate beside him, smug and cold and calculating.

No.

The word was iron and oak, wrapped in determination and pure grit and forged in the fire of rage. He felt his hands ball into fists, felt his jaw clench and his lips peel away from his teeth in a snarl.

No. He would not allow the lich and his pet whatever-she-was to do this. He would not allow that undead son of a bitch to wield him against his family like a maniac with a razor. He would be damned to all the hells eternity had to offer if he allowed that to happen.

Not without a fight.

Okay then.

Escape was first priority. He could do nothing against the lich trapped in this cell. And as long as he remained within the walls of Phyrexes his family wouldn’t be able to get to him. So, he had to get out of the cell, out of the palace, and out of the capital as fast as possible.

“Right,” he muttered. “Let’s start work on that.”

He took a deep breath, wobbled a little, and started to turn to examine his cell. Then stopped when he realized something else was buzzing at the back of his neck. Another notification?

As soon as he concentrated on the sensation, another message box popped up in front of his eyes.

Your Guardian Items have been de-registered and returned to you. They will reappear in your inventory space as soon as this message is complete. If you do not have a suitable inventory space, they will appear organized by type at your feet. The management is not responsible for any injuries or lost of limb that may occur during this process.

Sam barely had time to register the words before they disappeared and another screen popped up. This one, true to the previous screen’s word, contained a thumbnailed list of several items, all of which he’d chosen as his Guardian Equipment when he’d first gone through Creation with Cora weeks ago.

They were all there, up to his old clothing that he’d thrown away almost a month ago because it’d gone so gamey even the rats wouldn’t touch it anymore. The canteen, the harness, the glasses, and—

For a split second his heart lurched in his chest under the weight of hope. Thumb Bane was listed there as well. He tried to turn, to look at the spot on the floor where he’d dropped the little wooden box containing its remains, but the menu swung along with him, occluding his vision almost completely.

No Inventory space found. Deploying Guardian Items into Normalspace.

Sam blinked, then his hands flew to his face. His glasses were gone, and with them the inventory space they linked to.

Oh hell.

He felt the power building. He was about to get a whole armful of magical items, drawn from wherever they’d been… And it was a lead-pipe cinch that Araxesendenak had this room monitored.

His mind sped down a dozen different avenues. A huge advantage was being dumped in his lap, but he had maybe five minutes to use it before a house in the form of a pissed-off lich king landed on him.

Okay then.

Sam swallowed hard and took a breath. The harness would have to come first. It was his best weapon right now, and the only thing that that had the oomph to knock down walls if needed. He’d have to hit the ground running, take the challenges as they came, and hope that he could keep the distance between himself and Araxesendenak long enough to get to ground and hide. If luck was with him, maybe he could even get free without getting spotted.

Stranger things had happened, surely.

Light flashed, and the ever-full canteen he'd chosen way back at creation hit his shoes with a heavy 'thud' sound. Another flash, and the shards of Thumb Bane peppered his head and shoulders. He yelped as one of the heavier darksteel bits clipped his ear.

"Appear at my feet. Right," Sam growled, tensing. The harness would be coming soon, and the glasses. He'd have to move quickl--

The next flash blinded him, and then he was slammed off his feet. Breath left his lungs as his back impacted the wall behind him. Something massive and heavy pressed against his chest. His hands slapped at it and encountered flesh, hard and solid with muscle, and a toenail. It was a foot? A foot the approximate length of his forearm from elbow to fingertip.

"Hey! That tickles!"

The voice was deep and throaty and decidedly pissed off. The foot jabbed at his chest, and Sam gasped as he felt something give under the pressure.

Okay, that was a rib, a corner of his mind reported.

He twisted and wrenched at the foot, and managed to get it off of his chest. His vision began to clear, and then another flash and another body slammed into his. He went sprawling and landed on something broad and fleshy, which caused another squawk from the throaty voice. But he wasn't listening because the other voice that called out was a very familiar one.

"Sam!"

He jerked and spun his head to face the speaker.

"Cora?"

He stared. The silver woman was standing there, sapphire eyes wide and staring back. He barely noticed when the harness finally dropped out of the air right at his feet.

Then her arms were around him, and squeezing hard. And he didn't even mind the pain in his chest as he wrapped his arms around her and squeezed back just as hard.

"You're alive," she whispered.

"You're here," he replied, then blinked and jerked back. "Wait, you're here! How... Did the lich get you too?" Then another neuron fired and his head spun to look over his shoulder at...

“Saaaaaaaaaam!”

Another feminine body, this one barely a foot tall, slammed into his face at the flying equivalent of a dead run and rocked his head backwards. Arms that couldn’t quite get all the way around his head wrapped around him, and tiny hands grabbed his ears as his head was given a full-body hug by a tiny person with a very familiar voice.

“Pearl?” he tried to say, but it came out muffled and incoherent.

It was Pearl. And Cora. They were here. Actually here. How in the hell–

No, he didn’t have time for that. The clock was ticking. Araxesendenak was surely on his way. He extricated himself as quickly yet gently as he could from the hugs, mind still reeling, and opened his mouth… Then his eyes landed on the third person in the room, and he forgot what he had been about to say.

She was a mountain of a woman, practically filling the entire room. Sam guessed she was nine feet tall if she was an inch. And that was the least noticeable thing about her. Her skin was ruby red, her hair was long and curly and robin's-egg blue, and her eyes glowed gold. Two long bull-like horns protruded from the crown of her head. What Sam could see of her body under her simple utilitarian clothing was corded with muscle. She looked like she could tear bricks in half.

She was glaring at him right now, mouth half-open in a sneer or a growl he couldn't tell. She had the razor beauty of a naked blade, her face all angles and straight edges that somehow communicated both femininity and pure 'don't screw with me' in equal parts. Sam could see her teeth were fangs, clearly designed to rip and tear flesh.

Oh, and she had four arms, each ending in a hand that could have wrapped around his head without stretching.

"The hell you looking at, Butter-boy," the huge woman snarled.

Sam's jaw dropped.

"Sally?"

“No,” possibly-Sally growled, shifting around and nearly knocking over the bed, “it’s your great-aunt Myrtamae with a basket of goodies for you. Ow," the creature who was almost certainly Sally grunted and reached up with one massive hand to rub her head. "I've got a headache like you wouldn't believe. What happened? Where are we? How did we--"

She stopped and looked at the hand rubbing her head as if seeing it for the first time.

"Uh. Sam? I have a hand. I have lots of hands. And a head." She looked down her form to her large bare feet, one of which had narrowly avoided crushing Sam's chest cavity only moments before. "I have feet. Sam, why do I have feet?" She spread all four of her arms and stared down at her body, half-crouched half laying on the floor and taking up most of the available space.

"What the hell am I?"

Sam felt like his entire brain had just been dumped into a mixing bowl and stirred vigorously by the world's most aggressive baker. His eyes told him the sisters were here in his cell with him, and his body was definitely reinforcing that information with Cora's arms still around him and the broken rib from Sally's foot still throbbing in his chest.

“Sam, where are we? Where were you? How did I get here? What’s going on?” Pearl’s babble of questions skipped across his brain like a stone across a pond. He felt Cora’s hand on his arm, felt the breeze on his skin as Pearl’s wings beat frantically at the air, felt the weight of Sally’s gaze on him, and knew he should be doing something. Anything.

But his mind just wasn't processing that information right now. They were here. They were here. How in the hell--

Further questioning was cut off by the sound of a key turning in a lock, followed closely by wood scraping across stone. Four sets of eyes flew to the door to Sam's cell, which was now swinging ponderously open.

"Samuel Tolliver," A voice as dry as parchment grumbled as the door swung inward. "We don't have much time. Damn you for making me do this, but--"

Giichi the halfling stomped into the room, ancient eyes glaring, then stopped. The glare shifted from Sam to Cora, to Pearl who now had her sword out and pointing at him, and then up to the huge red woman, who Sam was still having trouble thinking of as Sally, then back to Sam himself.

"I trust," the dry voice got drier, "I am not interrupting anything?"

Sam's eyes darted from the withered halfling to the door. A rune sigil he did not recognized glowed with a harsh orange light. No guards that Sam could see were in the corridor beyond. And from the way he had begun his sentence, it seemed doubtful that the halfling was here on official business.

Which made Sam's next move very easy.

"Grab him," he said.