The diseased monsters charged through the portal, one after another. Killer fell back, staggering out of it, his red cloak in further tatters. His body was ridden with sores and injuries, and thick black fluid ran from the corner of his lips. He heaved a breath, and it whistled through disease-ridden lungs.

Milo immediately raised his staff, and healing light glowed around Killer’s body. Killer shuddered, eyes glowing a faint blue as his own regenerative powers kicked in. Black ooze and stinking puss emanated from his body, and his wounds began to close. He jumped back.

Daiyo grabbed his arm and yanked him up onto the labyrinth walls. Killer flinched away, startled. He shook his head. “I… I might, h-hurt you—”

Daiyo looked at him and laughed. “Don’t worry. Berserker or not, you won’t do much to me with those bare hands of yours.”

“Ah… ah,” Killer said, nodding. He slapped on Daiyo’s stone abdomen experimentally, then drew back and punched, hard.

Blood burst out on Killer’s knuckles, but Daiyo didn’t budge. “See? I told ya.”

A smile spread over Killer’s lips. He nodded. “Yeah!”

Milo sighed, raising his staff again.

Killer caught sight of the staff and waved his hands. “I can heal this much.”

“Are you sure?” Milo asked. He could’ve broken his knuckles with a punch like that.

“Mhm.” Killer hopped off the wall and drew his hand back, ready to punch. Blue light glowed in his eyes again, and his hand twisted back into shape, bones mending and skin closing. His lips curled as he tensed in pain, but then it was over. The blue light faded away.

Turning, Killer quickly scrambled back up onto the wall. He sighed and waved his hand, experimentally flexing the healed knuckles.

“Why’d you jump down?” Milo asked.

“Oh! Ah, well, I… don’t really know how to control these powers, I…”

Aster stood, firing a dart into the mess of monsters. “Berserkers have one source of power from which they can pull. In order to heal, they activate the same exact power they do when they enter battle madness. It’s a roll of the dice whether they charge back into battle, or heal and immediately come back to themselves.” He glanced at Killer. “It isn’t that you can’t control it. It’s simply uncontrollable.”

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“He’s a berserker?” Silas asked, snapping around to look at Killer.

“It’s… uncontrollable.” Killer looked at his hand, then clenched it into a fist. “So I can’t… I won’t ever be able to leave…?”

“Neither can I! Or Alice,” Stella declared. She nodded at him happily, having found another shut-in companion.

Killer sagged, suddenly exhausted.

“Well, you can all leave. It’s just a matter of how dangerous it is when you do,” Aster replied, shaking his head at Stella.

“This… it can’t be controlled?” Killer asked, unwilling to let it go.

Aster met his eyes, then smiled. “I misspoke. I should have said, ‘no one’s managed it yet,’ instead. That doesn’t mean no one ever will. Plenty of people told me a kid without magic couldn’t become a solo adventurer, let alone a Dungeon Keeper, but look at me!”

“You’re still not a Dungeon Keeper,” Silas said, crossing his arms.

“That’s a mere formality. Who cares if they won’t give me the title? It’s their own fault they’re so inflexible,” Aster said, shaking his head.

Killer laughed, suddenly. He smiled at them all, scratching his mess of brown hair. “I never thought I’d get to talk to people like this again.”

“How long has it been since you came in here?” Aster asked, readying another dart. He took aim, narrowing his eyes.

“Years. I don’t know. I ran away from home as a kid… they were, I heard them talking about killing me so I ran up here and hid,” Killer explained.

“In the dungeon?” Aster asked. He loosed the dart. Down below, another monster cried out and fell. Daiyo’s stone spirits marched over and slapped the fallen monster to death, the patter of stone hands on flesh loud in the smooth-walled chamber.

Killer shook his head. “Not at first. I was afraid of the dungeon. I hid on the mountain, but they kept hunting me down, and I’d have to run or…” He took a deep breath.

“Right,” Aster said gently. He shook his head. As a young berserker who’d only just awakened his powers… I can imagine what happened. Not that a berserker can ever control themselves, but when they’re older, they at least know their triggers and rhythms. When they’ve just begun… even they don’t know what will set them off, or activate their battle-madness.

“The only place they wouldn’t chase me away from is the dungeon. Eventually… I stopped leaving. Went deeper and deeper inside, where no one would bother me anymore. There was a time where people started finding me again, and fighting me again, and I had to kill people again…”

“The argument,” Stella stage-whispered from the rear.

Aster glanced back. That’s right. She mentioned the monster in the labyrinth’s center ‘talking’ with her mother once. That was Killer, then.

“I… went to ask the boss monster to change the dungeon’s route away from me, back to where it was before. I’d found out I could talk to some of the monsters by then, so I thought, surely the boss…” Killer gave Stella a guilty look. “I lost control. Fought the boss. Both of us nearly died. I limped back to the labyrinth, but… I guess she got the idea, because after that, people stopped bothering me again.”

Stella looked up at Aster. “Momma survived.”

So it’s all forgiven, I suppose? Then again, she’s never complained about people fighting. Only killing, Aster thought, rubbing his chin.

The portal pulsed with black light. A huge wave of diseased monsters pushed through. Killer jumped to his feet, and Aster put the darts away, drawing his hammer instead.

Silas strummed his lute. Milo hefted his staff.

“Here we go,” Aster said, following Killer into the labyrinth’s center.