Cyn’s laughter cut off abruptly, not just because Hex collapsed, but because she also felt his health dip sharply into dangerous territory. She didn’t even think about it before kneeling to use an Overloaded Restoration on the unconscious Rogue. She could tell there was some kind of toxin inside of him, but it was far outside of her Purify skills ability to cleanse, even with Overload. Cyn wasn’t able to tell what exactly the toxin was doing, but at the very least his health did not continue to drain after the initial dip.

“What the fuck, Spam?!” The familiar was sitting on the ground next to Hex’s head now, having jumped out of the Rogue’s hands as he collapsed, and was just staring intently at Hex’s unconscious form. Beyond letting out a quiet chirp, Spam ignored her outburst. Whatever the toxin was, it was making its way through Hex’s body rapidly. Cyn only healed the unconscious man to about half health before stopping, and since the toxin seemed to have run its course by that point she just anxiously waited for him to wake up.

Luckily, she did not have to wait long. The Rogue let out a long groan, moving one hand to his face to briefly rub at his eyes. Cyn was sitting beside him on the ground and, relieved he was awake, spoke. “Welcome back. How are you feeling?”

Hex didn’t answer for a long few moments before peeking out from behind his fingers, eyes quickly passing over Cyn before finding Spam too close for comfort. The Rogue flinched as Spam hopped over him to return to its tunic pouch, the familiar seemingly satisfied that Hex was fine. With a sigh, he sat up. “Like I was hit by a truck filled with magic mushrooms.”

“Open your mouth.” Cyn thought she saw something, but needed to confirm it. The Rogue gave her an incredulous look before slowly opening his mouth. It had been hard to see while Hex was talking, but this made it much more clear. “Your tongue is black.” It wasn’t like he had eaten something with heavy food coloring to coat it, either. The flesh itself was an almost uniform deep black color, only fading to the normal pink tone unevenly around his gums and teeth.

Spam made a high-pitched warble at Cyn’s observation. Was it laughing? Quickly, a wide-eyed Hex tried to stick out his tongue far enough to look at it. He was unsuccessful, and without a mirror the Rogue would just have to take her word for it. He dodged any further questions about what had happened, only relenting that he had yet to decide if it was worth it, and insisted that they should move on.

As curious as she was, Hex didn’t appear to be dying or suffering other noticeable side effects from the little misadventure, so Cyn did not feel she had an excuse to press further. Whatever he gained would have been a side effect of his profession, so it wasn’t like she could recreate it. Cyn did give the familiar a halfhearted scolding about hurting her friends, which Spam clearly ignored. If the frog could roll its eyes, she was pretty sure it would be rolling all three at her.

It was a few more hours before Cyn admitted she needed them to stop. The mental strain of being awake so long had reached a point she knew if they ran into any trouble now, it would be bad. Hex was reluctant, but almost as soon as he sat down it looked like the weariness caught up with him. Seeing as they had yet to run into anything dangerous that could sneak up on them, it was agreed they would both sleep for a while to save time rather than alternating.

***

This was a nightmare. Sam had just been getting used to the quiet expectations of everyone around him, feeling especially useful after working the machine to get the party down to the boss fight, along with being trusted to carry the Mage into the fight. He had even managed to stop the first attack on her from the Brood King. It had gone pretty well, in his opinion.

But now he was alone. Sam hated being alone. He wasn’t good at making decisions, and this maze was frustrating. He felt like he might be going in circles, and after the leaves changed to red and orange he now had puzzles to deal with. Or he would, if he wasn’t just skipping them. Sam had managed to solve a few of the puzzle boxes, but it was just taking far too long and he wanted to find his friends. Luckily, after the third or fourth time he had tried reading his notifications for clues, Sam had seen his System reward so he could just store the puzzle boxes for someone else to solve later.

He could only read a few of the notifications at a time before getting a headache from the moving letters, and even if he did manage to read them half the time they didn’t make sense on the first read. He was used to it, sort of, and it hadn’t been much of a problem since leaving school to work in construction with the rest of his extended family. Now of course it felt like he was forced to read constantly, and if he failed to understand what he read it could lead to getting hurt, or getting other people hurt.

Being alone was even worse here, because it left far too much time to worry about what might have happened to his family. Before they met the gnomes, he had assumed that he had been chosen for some reason to live in the System. But after speaking with the old gnome, Kreeble, he had understood enough to know that his family would have to go through something similar. His mama would probably be fine. She would make the spiders cower in fear with her voice alone. Sam’s brothers were as big as him, so they too would probably do alright. Especially Isaac, he was the one who was always trying to get Sam to play adventure video games with him.

But what about his little sister? She was small, and far too young to have to learn how to survive in a place like this. Was there someone to protect her? Hopefully she did not have to face the spiders, and was sent somewhere else. The Warrior he had met between floors had not been any help, either, when Sam asked. If anything, the mountain of a man seemed to think that anyone who didn’t survive didn’t deserve to!

A chime echoing through the maze knocked Sam out of his spiraling thoughts briefly. It was the second one he had heard, but he so far had not found anything to tell him what was causing it. Hopefully it wasn’t some kind of timer, because he had yet to find traces of anyone else.

Sam quickly sank back into his worried mind, jogging forward as if run by a rudimentary autopilot. He only took notice of his surroundings again hours later, when instead of the expected hedge-lined paths there was a large, open space now directly in front of him.

***

Cyn couldn’t breathe. The feeling had slowly increased as she went about her day at the office. At first it was just an unexpected shortness of breath when walking to the break room, but she brushed that off quickly. Cyn was a far cry from being physically fit, so while that might be a bit excessive she wasn’t exactly surprised.

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It became worrying, though, when mid-conversation with Andre in accounting she felt a sudden pressure on her chest, squeezing the air from her lungs and not allowing her to take a breath. Even worse, Andre didn’t even seem to notice anything was wrong. He just waited patiently for Cyn to be able to finish her sentence. She didn’t say anything to him about not being able to breathe right, though. It would have been awkward.

Then came the team meeting. The very definition of ‘this could have been an email’. You would think a group of people who work so closely with tech would know when to just send a notice, and when they should have an in-person meeting, but clearly not. She ended up just zoning out to Ross’s low monotone, droning on about client expectations and the cool ‘new’ coding language he wanted everyone to learn.

Cyn’s eyes were drawn to a spiderweb in the corner of the room, where she could see a tiny Weaver skittering over its web. As she watched the spider, the pressure on her chest grew again and stole her breath. Struggling to inhale, she watched as the arachnid seemed to grow, larger and larger. The web grew with it, rapidly taking over the room. A distant part of her mind took note that she could no longer hear Ross, but she found herself unable to turn to look at him, or the rest of her team. Had he asked her a question? Why was she more panicked over having missed a question from her boss than about the Weaver, or her lack of air? Why was no one else panicking?!

With a jolt, Cyn woke up to find herself staring into the sunlight filtered through the blue fabric of her cloak. She was confused and disoriented for a few seconds, before realizing she had been having a dream. Maybe a nightmare. The inability to breathe properly was very real, however.

She quickly moved her cloak away from her face, having placed it there because the perpetual noon sunlight had made it difficult to sleep even with her mental exhaustion, and found the source of her breathlessness. Spam was hanging out on her collarbone, practically standing on her jugular. If it had been a normal sized frog she probably would not have noticed, but the dense familiar was slowly strangling Cyn in her sleep due to its weight.

She quickly sat up, causing the creature to fall back into the chest pocket of her tabard with a startled croak. Cyn didn’t think Spam was intentionally trying to kill her, just that when she laid on her back the pouch became pretty unusable, at least without Spam keeping it activated. Her chest would have caused the familiar to just tumble out onto her neck anyway.

Hex was still asleep next to her, so Cyn whispered to Spam in an attempt to explain why it should not be sitting on her neck. Whether or not it would listen was yet to be seen, since it was glaring at her for seemingly getting up without warning. Feeling rested enough, she took the time to take a look at her stats in order to spend free points. She had been putting it off for a few levels now.

Name: Cynthia Price

Race: [Human]

Class: [Mage] Level 7

Profession: [Creature Handler] Level 7

Health Points: 340/340

Mana Points: 580/580

Stamina Points: 430/430

Free Points: 9

Vitality: 34

Mind: 31

Will: 43

Strength: 21

Agility: 33

Luck: 23

Racial Skills: [Dimensional Translator] [Inspect]

Class Skills: [Freeform Mana Casting] [Restoration] [Mana Ball] [Mage Regeneration] [Purify] [Overload]

Profession Skills: [Pet] [Friendly Aura] [Harvesting] [Familiar Bond]

Feats: N/A

The even levels felt nice to look at, even if she knew they probably would not be that way for long. After a few minutes of looking everything over, she decided that being in this labyrinth rather than constant combat actually made choosing a stat to dump into a little harder. Cyn wasn’t sure where she was still feeling weak. The only real challenge so far had only been difficult because it took so long to do using her Freeform Mana Casting, and if she had to do it again now it would be faster from her practice. The challenge had not come from an actual lack of stats.

Cyn just ended up putting all nine points into will. There wasn’t really a reason why, other than the vague feeling it might help with her mana control. By the time she closed her menu again, having gained ninety maximum mana, Hex had started to stir. He actually looked more tired than when they had both laid down to rest, but she decided not to mention it as they got moving again.

She started to notice the hedges were losing color as they traveled, the brilliant reds and oranges dulling into yellow and brown. It did not happen quickly, just the occasional leaf at first, but when they found the first dead end of the labyrinth nearly twenty-five percent of the surrounding hedge had dulled.

Hex slowed as they got close to the hedge, brows furrowed. Cyn felt a similar confusion. Spam had been leading them the entire time and they had found no dead ends, so she did not understand why they would find one now. Curious, she walked closer even after the Rogue had stopped. Something felt…off. But familiar. A need to know more drew her even closer.

She came within a few inches of the hedge before Spam croaked a warning, and while Cyn stopped she did not move away. Whatever she was feeling was beyond the hedge, and it was a mental strain to focus on it, as if it was near the limit of her range to perceive.

“Guess the amphibian isn’t infallible. Let’s get back to the crossroads and choose again.” Spam let out a chorus of angry warbles and chirps at the perceived insult, crawling out of its pouch and up her shoulder to glare at the Rogue. Cyn ignored both of them, at least for the moment. She was feeling…health points? Low health? Bleeding health. Sam!

She was feeling the Warrior, badly injured and bleeding out slowly somewhere just beyond the hedge in front of them.