The first door opened on a room already in motion. Three creatures were clustered in a heap in the far corner. They had three limbs each — two thick, muscular single-jointed arms growing from what Miles would have called shoulders on a humanoid, and a double-kneed third limb that emerged from the base of their torso. Their skin was teak brown, variegated with darker browns and black. Their heads extended forward from their bodies on sinuous necks about a foot long.

They started out lying on the wooden ground, but at sound of the door opening they all lifted their heads to look at the opening hatch.

On seeing the intruders, they twitched into motion, scrambling over each other in an effort to disentangle themselves, before sprinting at the open door.

They ran like bears, triangular torsos rocking as their weight alternated between their front two limbs and the single one at the rear. Their flattened triangular heads had a row of expressionless black eyes running down each side. Their lizard-like mouths hung open, full of needle teeth.

Torg had been the first in the doorway, and as the lead creature launched itself at him, he stepped forward and tackled it mid-jump.

They collided with the slap of flesh meeting shell. He caught it around the waist, his pincers digging into its side, its weight almost overbalancing him. The two of them fell forward into the room, wrestling, with Torg’s shell enduring snaps from the creature’s mouth.

With Torg out of the way, Miles got a better look at the creatures in the room.

They had been sapients at one point, Miles was sure. They still had tech devices distributed around their bodies. All of them were wearing metallic collars with touch switches, a couple had slim wristbands sporting screens, and while they weren’t wearing clothes, one had a strip of ragged gray fabric around one shoulder, like the remains of a sash.

Miles felt the familiar dilemma at the prospect of hurting someone who’d once been a person. With the Orbellius ghouls, there’d been some ambiguity. It had been before he knew that being trapped in the dungeon during a reset could damage a sapient’s mind. Now, he knew unambiguously that these creatures had once been people. For all he knew, they could be again one day.

The Orbellius ghouls had been shooting at them. Even knowing what he knew now, it had been a matter of self-defense. These former sapients were only trying to bite them. Was there an opportunity here to try a different approach? Was there enough difference in their relative strength that they could subdue the former sapients without killing them?

While Miles was thinking, Drani had pushed past and was striding into the room.

Miles felt the warm, electric flash of magic, and then Drani was reaching up to wrap his hands around the throat of one of the creatures.

The former sapient struggled in Drani’s grip, their head thrashing from side to side. Drani marched forward, pinning them against the wall. As he held it in place, he clawed his hands, crushing its throat with raw, magically-enhanced strength.

The third creature was hanging back, close to the pile of refuse where they’d been gathered at the start. It was scratching at its throat with narrow-fingered hands, like it was trying to get the collar off. It was clearly aware of Drani, Torg, and the others, but it was more interested in the ring around its neck than attacking.

Trin stepped into the room ahead of Miles. He had his scanner held horizontally, reading off one screen. “They are species Floreen. Their biology is ‘A’ type. They are wearing scanners on wrist, and barrier tools on neck. Divers who went crazy, I think.”

Trin glanced at the former diver who was clawing at their neck, checking they weren’t about to attack, before looking back down at his scanner.

“Body strength index is not high. And I don’t see any guns.”

Miles saw his chance with the one who had yet to engage. He swung his shield in front of him and stepped into the room.

He paused to put his hand to Trin’s back and recited the Harmonizer mantra that connected to the Temporary Enhancement spell. He is that which he is. He cast the spell without difficulty, and without even touching the index tablet in his belt.

The energy washed out of his hand as a brief image flashed through Miles’ mind; Trin as his perfected self, quick and agile, reacting to the world with no delay between stimulus and response.

He checked on Torg as he crossed the room, briefly falling into Eyes of the Altruist to check their lancer wasn’t hurt. He wasn’t. Torg’s opponent was trying to worry at a gap between Torg’s chitin plates, but their jaw obviously hadn’t evolved for hurting armored opponents and they couldn’t get deep enough into the crack to do any damage.

Miles focused on himself as he crossed the room, casting Temporary Enhancement and boosting his own Strength. His core spun and he felt warmth flooding his body, sinking into muscle and bone. In a harmonious world, everything is complete.

He grabbed the Floreen diver’s throat, holding their head under the jaw so that they couldn’t bite him. When their right forelimb came around to try and strike his face, he caught it on his shield, the limb hitting the metal with a ringing thud. The former diver grabbed the top of the shield and tried to push it out of the way, but with Temporary Enhancement, Miles’ grip was stronger.

He’d thought of a way to answer his question. Would they get better? If they were given a few days to recover, or a few weeks, would they come back to themselves?

He pressed his hand tighter around his opponent’s throat, pushing up against the snapping jaw, and executed the litany of Hasten Renewal.

This state is an aberration. In a harmonious world, everything exists in its true state. The aberration will pass.

As the energy left his hand and sank into the diver, Miles sensed a little of its operation.

Like Close Wounds, Hasten Renewal was a spell that returned a target to Harmony. A being who would eventually recover from an ailment was disharmonious because they were out of their ideal state. Hasten Renewal would help them return to it. Someone who would eventually die from their ailment was disharmonious because they were dying but still alive. In that state, they'd be more harmonious dead. The spell hastened that end.

The Harmonizer tradition seemed to be made up of benign healing magic at first glance, but it depended on context. Hasten Renewal had the potential to be one of the more sinister applications of the concept of Harmony that Miles had encountered.

He assumed there was a way to tell which way the spell would go for a given subject, to sense the direction of the flow of Harmony in them, to see what ideal they were aimed at, but he couldn’t start to figure out how. There was probably a spell for that higher up the Harmonizer price list.

The Floreen diver reacted to the spell by going still. Their head twitched from side to side. Their oil-black eyes widened, dark beads flexing at the direction of subcutaneous muscles.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

Miles thought he sensed a level of awareness in them that hadn’t been there before. He let his grip relax slightly.

The former diver twisted their head to look around, looking first at Torg, wrestling on the ground, then at Drani, still throttling his opponent against the wall. Then they let out a startled croak.

Miles had never met a Floreen individual before, had never even heard of the species, but in that sound, he heard misery. It struggled for a second, moving in a way that seemed like a rejection of reality as much as it was of Miles’ restraining grip. Then it lost its temper, twisting its sinuous neck down and snapping its jaws down on Miles’ wrist.

Needle teeth daggered into Miles’ flesh, piercing muscle and veins. The teeth stopped at the bone and then tore sideways as the former diver flicked their head like a dog with a rope. Its mouth pulled free, leaving ragged, uneven tears in its wake.

Miles spent a second staring at the injury. Blood swelled up out of the red cracks in the skin and started flowing to the floor. At first, there was barely any pain, just a cold pressure. Then heat. Then a dull stinging.

He pulled back and managed to free his hand. The crazed diver stretched its neck to try and bite Miles’ throat.

Miles threw himself backward. The Floreen diver came down on top of him.

He managed to push his arm into the diver’s mouth. When it next bit down, their teeth caught on the heavy-duty fabric of his robe. Miles could feel himself racking up bruises under the cloth, but the diver’s jaws weren’t breaking skin.

He struggled with the former diver for a few seconds, then two bright firefly projectiles flickered through the air just above his face. They disappeared into the Floreen diver’s head like pebbles dropping into water, leaving ripples in the skin that stayed.

Miles kept struggling for a handful of pounding heartbeats, until he realized his attacker was dead.

He rolled, throwing them off to the side.

His wrist was bleeding. It felt far away, like it was a wound on someone else’s body. He focused on it. He could heal this.

“Your friend’s spilling all over the floor,” he heard Drani say. “Let me get that for you.”

The Eppan healer appeared in Miles’ peripheral vision.

Miles flinched as Drani lay a furred mid-paw on his throat, then again when electric energy flickered into him through his skin.

It took a second for the energy to sink into Miles’ body, and then the wound on his wrist was gone. It was just gone. It didn’t close. It didn’t heal at an accelerated rate. There was a flash of warm, electric energy, and then it was as if the wound had never happened.

Miles stared at the place where it had been. He felt at his wrist with his other hand. The skin was clean, unbroken. It felt fine. It had a full range of motion.

He got to his feet. He still felt shaky, but he didn’t think he was in shock. He felt only a little worse than he had at the start of the fight.

“Thanks,” Miles said. He looked to Trin, who was still holding the pistol that had killed his opponent in one hand, while the other tapped on his scanner. “You too.”

“Don’t put hand in sharp mouth!” Trin said, barely glancing up from his scanner.

“Right. I’ll remember.”

The crazed diver that Drani had been throttling was dead. Its neck was left looking like mangled clay.

Torg’s opponent was down, but alive. It looked like Torg had injured them to the point where they’d stopped fighting, and left them to nurse their wounds by the far wall. From Torg’s posture, he was watching carefully for any kind of retaliation.

Miles could feel ongoing magic in his own body. There was the magical matrix of the Temporary Enhancement he’d cast to enhance his own Strength, but there was something else, as well. The spell Drani had cast was lingering in the same way. An ongoing effect.

He looked at Drani, then at Trin.

“Trin, can you ask Drani what spell that was?”

“Drani, what was that magic? Miles wants to know,” Trin relayed.

Drani sniffed in a breath, brushing his silver head-flaps back out of his face. “That one? That was Flash of Harmony. It’s kind of expensive, so he probably hasn’t heard of it.” He turned to Miles. “Just don’t get hurt again, okay?”

Miles blinked and looked away. He hadn’t heard of it.

With the threats dead or subdued, they were free to give the room a more thorough look over.

The walls of the room were similar to the walls of the passageway outside; coconut husk surfaces that angled inwards slightly as they reached upward. There were oval gaps in the material on the far wall that might have been windows, if they'd opened on anything. Instead, they were blocked by a layer of dark metal that was closer to the dungeon’s usual structure.

The floor of the space was different from the corridor, and more in keeping with the look of the walls. It was a layer of wood, the surface showing a distinctive grain pattern.

What the purpose of the room had been, if any, was hard to tell. There had been furniture at one point, made from textiles and wood, but it had been broken and scattered. Miles couldn't make anything from the pieces.

Most of the damaged furniture had been dragged to the corner of the room where the former divers had been when they entered. It looked like they'd been making a nest. Rags were piled in the middle, surrounded by a low structure of more solid pieces.

Trin was checking it out with his scanner, but Miles could already see a pile of luggage and equipment there.

"Here is the jackpot," Trin said. "Those people must have had some stuff."

Miles walked slowly over to the nest.

Torg hung back, guarding the surviving Floreen diver.

Trin was reading something off his scanner. When Miles approached, he started pointing at cases and equipment and giving their names.

"Wyn Corporation air cleaner. Four hundred seln if new from Exchange. Wyn gas maker machine. Two hundred twenty seln. Dianenes medical set, six twenty seln. This one… is not in database. Looks like weave field reader or something. No price."

Miles' attention had fallen on a different device, a trapezoid computer tablet with a black-red screen, framed by a control-packed bevel. While Trin was scanning the rest of the pile, he reached down and picked it up.

"That is Sora brand personal computer. Fifty seln if new," Trin said, commenting on Miles’ find.

The screen was showing a placeholder glyph. Miles tapped it and the symbol vanished, giving way to the listings for a personal database.

There were entries for documents, photos, videos, even a couple of proprietary database files. Whoever had last used it had left it unlocked. They couldn't have foreseen anyone else coming across it.

He was about to start looking through when Trin interrupted him.

"We should take most. Miles, please put some in your bag. I will sort rest into cases."

Miles put the computer tablet into his bag, while Trin upturned one of the metal carrying cases, spilling brick food rations and sachets of liquid, before starting to fill it with the more valuable equipment.

Overall, the gear they managed to bag added up to about three and a half thousand seln's worth of environmental and measurement equipment, at least when it had been new. What they’d actually get would depend on what the clerks at the entrance facility were willing to pay, but they’d made that week’s rent for sure.

Miles found it hard to get excited about the potential payout. He was already weighing it against what he could expect from his Kuiper belt resource allocation.

“You going to finish that one off?” Drani asked Torg, staring down at the disabled former diver.

Torg clicked once in answer. ‘No’.

“Okay. I guess I’ll take care of that for you.”

Torg put a pincer on Drani’s shoulder. He clicked again. ‘Unnecessary.’

Miles kept his eyes on the downed diver as they headed for the door.

What would happen to them? Probably the same thing that would have happened if their group had never found them. He assumed they would eventually die from lack of nourishment, or else attack another diving party and die in that battle. Or attack another party and kill them, instead.

“You want to just leave it?” Drani asked, sounding perplexed. “Seems cruel.”

Drani pulled out of Torg’s grip and walked towards the downed diver, moving as if he was going to put an end to them despite Torg’s intervention.

“Wait,” Miles said. “I was trying something with the other one. I think it might have been working. Can we try healing them?”

Drani stopped. He turned to look at Miles, his head flaps half raised. “What’s he warbling about?”

“He says wants to heal three-leg guy,” Trin translated.

“Heal it? But we just brought it down.”

“I was trying Hasten Renewal to see if they’d recover from what happened to them,” Miles went on. “Maybe you could try Flash of Harmony as well. We can see where they’re headed.”

“Miles says he wants to fast renew him, and he wants Drani to harmony flash him.”

Drani turned from Trin and stared at the downed diver, perhaps considering it.

He seemed to have decided when he started casting a spell. Miles felt the spin of the Eppan mage’s magical core, then a flash of energy.

Drani reached out, grasped the air, and ripped the Authority from the mindless survivor.

As the spell tore at the downed figure, something inside them broke. They spasmed once, then froze in place, forelimbs outstretched, wide mouth open. Weakened by the spell, their injuries must have been too much for them.

Drani turned around slowly, avoiding eye contact, then headed for the door.

Miles’ gaze lingered on the former diver, then he followed.

Still inside, he heard Drani addressing Trin in the corridor.

“You want to hit that other room too?”