Well, it wasn't magic, but it was cool as hell.

An almost-invisible barrier of suspended dust, made completely immobile by the Exhuman's powers. Trying to walk into it was both apparently again high heresy against the cult of Altaura, but also extremely painful, like trying to push myself against a wall of thumbtacks.

The barrier was a dome which completely surrounded the castle, apparently even continuing underground because of some attack by some mole-people or some shit at some point.

I loved AEGIS and her knowledge here was invaluable, more useful than a head full of video games had any right to be, but damn she could go on. Every time she opened her mouth, I saw everyone on the team pre-emptively ready to tune her out already, and considered ordering her to offer mission-critical information only, except that I could already tell she was holding herself back quite a bit. She wasn't explaining every building or golem we walked past, and she wasn't dumb and blind, she knew her audience didn't care.

But still, Jesus, give us a break.

"So, allegedly, the barrier is produced by the will of Vytar himself and is impenetrable, but there's a PVP questline you can do to sneak through if you're from the Zilwraith faction."

"Can we stop using proper nouns?" I could ask that much at least.

"Sure. Hostile faction. Whatever. Anyway, you discover that the barrier is maintained by The Faithful of...I mean, by a bunch of priests in a temple near here. They hold daily rites which keep the barrier up. We can disrupt the rites...which won't work because they're done in the morning and we missed them, or destroy their holy relics, which is hard because they're in vaults under the church, or we kill the priests."

Karu frowned. "Kill a priest?"

"Kill a golem programmed to think it's a priest," AEGIS clarified.

"You have no problem terminating something programmed to think it is something else?" Karu asked leadingly, which made AEGIS blanch.

"It's just a hunk of rock," AEGIS said plainly.

"And you are merely a hunk of metal."

"Okay ladies knock it off," I said. "That's an order. Keep your squabbles for the afterparty."

Karu gave me an unnecessarily sharp salute while AEGIS gave me a 'yes sir' which involved rolling her eyes. But they did drop it.

"Between the three options, I think relics sounds easiest. The priests could be anywhere, and the rites isn't an option as you said. So let's go smash some stone shit, huh?"

"Hmm," said AEGIS. "We are disguised as pilgrims, and the church is a holy site we'd allegedly be interested in visiting, but you guys will never pass if you don't know all the proper responses and stuff."

"Well, teach us what you can while we walk," I said.

I learned a lot on the way over to the tall, thin church. Namely, I learned that the game developers of Kingdom Blade had way too much time on their hands, and there was no possible way we'd learn even a small amount of the crap we needed to pass as convincing pilgrims.

"Plan two then," Lia proposed. "Go in, close the door, don't let anyone escape, and kill everything between you and the relics.

"I hate how much this makes you seem like a sociopath," I said. AEGIS was about to respond but I cut her off. "But yes they're just golems, I am aware. It just seems horrible that Plan A is trap and kill everyone in a church, regardless of who or what they are."

"I did call it plan two…" she complained quietly.

Inwardly, I wondered if the golems felt fear or pain. Karu's words, while probably just intended as an attack on AEGIS' character had lodged in my head in a weird place. If this were a town of robots, I still wouldn't have any particular problem with destroying them if necessary. But what if it were a town of AEGISes? That was obviously wrong, but where was the line?

The answer was the oldest one in military history. Don't think about it.

We did a lap around the church and left at least one member outside each entrance, so we could all go in at once and prevent anyone from escaping and alerting the rest of the town. Jack counted off the number of golems he saw inside, but warned that there were, of course, catacombs under the church complete with skeletal monsters, because this was a video game world and why not just put a dungeon full of skeletons under a church.

When I told Tem to stay with Jack at one entrance, she kept following me anyway.

"Tem, remember how I told you that you make my job and life harder by not listening to me?"

"But I want to be with you!"

"Sit. Stay. Good girl."

It took another couple of tries before she stayed, including her trying to follow me invisibly once. Girl was a damn liability.

At the next door, I left Tower by himself, but he spoke up and said Moon needed to be with him. After dealing with Tem, I really didn't care anymore. As I left, I saw her climbing into the cage on his back and strapping herself in. I didn't know what that meant, but I was curious as hell to see her in action.

Finally we were ready. All at once, we pushed through the huge heavy stone doors, closed them behind us and...well…

It was a massacre, there really wasn't any other way to put it. Golems praying quietly, priests conferring in corners, offering advice and blessings to their flock, small groups of golem 'families' sitting together on the pews.

And then we swept in and there was just rumbled screaming and the shattering of stone and panic as the golems fled from the threats nearest them straight into the arms of the ones further away. I put my hand on what would have been a child, and she just stopped and looked at me, like I was reassuring her.

I just needed the contact to force electricity into her to shatter her gemstone heart, and she froze, fell over, and broke in two.

Not one of them fought back, they just ran or panicked until one of us got there and put them down. Karu was standing in the very center of the church, arms at her sides, looking up at the effigy of Altaura, screaming panicked golems bumping into her as they ran past, doing nothing to snap her from her reverie.

"They're just golems," I said to myself, but knowing it would carry over comms. I hoped it reached her. The worst of it was the vaguely-human screaming. I just tried to kill them as fast as I could so the screaming would stop. A group huddled in the pews, watched with horror on their stone faces as one by one I stopped their hearts, pleading for mercy.

It didn't take long. An organized pack of trained killers against a room full of innocents. Finally the screaming stopped, and I stepped through the rubble of their bodies and put a hand on Karu's shoulder, which was stiff.

"They're just golems. We're here to stop this," I said.

"I understand," she said flatly, as much life in her voice as in the rubble under my feet. "I was merely conserving ammunition. It seemed you had the slaughter well in hand."

I'd also forgotten to see what Tower and Moon were doing in the moment, but when I looked over, she was just sitting in the contraption on his back, looking around with an air of indifference. He seemed fine as ever, apparently better at disassociating the golems with humans than Karu or I were.

"Catacombs here," AEGIS said simply, pointing towards a narrow stairway which Tower might fit down sideways if he took Moon off his back. "Should be...four relics down there, I think. The Harp of…" she looked at the disinterest immediately spreading on our faces and stopped. "A harp, a globe, a chalice and a book, Jesus."

"How huge and twisting are these catacombs?" I asked.

"Reasonably so. Probably also poor comms quality down there."

"Great. Well, Jack, you're on coordination duty. You can move between groups and act as a relay if comms aren't getting through, and direct anyone who's lost. I assume you don't have any problem with getting lost?"

"None at all," he said with a nod.

"Tower...you might just stay up here, buddy."

"Thank God." He'd been eyeing the small doorway and his relief was obvious.

"Moon...should you...can you come with somebody else?"

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Her face hardened as the group focused attention on her from casual disinterest to discomfort. I had to stop doing that to her, but it wasn't like I was trying to treat her differently from anyone else.

"Are they going to be able to carry me?" she asked.

"Okay, well, forget the powers then. You can just come with me. Karu, AEGIS, Tem, you'll all be splitting up and spreading out so we can tackle all four relics in parallel. Yes, Tem, you will not be partnered with me. Jack says there's skeleton monsters down there, but AEGIS says they're pretty weak so we should be fine split up."

People nodded around me. "You'll be okay if you run into a monster, Karu?"

"Do you assume me incapable because I would not slaughter innocents in cold blood?"

"Ah, no. I just meant, I know your loadout isn't so great against them."

"Oh." She shuffled awkwardly. "I have realized that while small arms fire is ineffective, concussive force is. I shall be fine."

"Okay. Stay safe in there, kill whatever golems you encounter, stay in touch as best you can, and if you get lost or run into trouble, uh, find somewhere safe and lie down. Jack will collect you. We keep going until Jack has confirmed all four relics are out, and then he'll start collecting us. All clear?"

All clear. We headed down the stairs and they wound down and down, dropping us into pitch black long before the stairway reached the bottom. Finally we emerged into a chamber, or rather, I stumbled into it when the stairs ended, and like the others, I fumbled for my lights. Small circles of light danced in front of us in the darkness until I heard a cracking hiss, and the whole room glowed with an unnatural green. Karu dropped the flare on the ground, and we saw the walls around us, rough stone with bones embedded in them symmetrically, artistically, like this place not just built for the dead but of them.

"Well this is creepy as shit," AEGIS summarized. "I don't like the idea of skeletons walking around in the gloom down here where they blend in with the walls."

"At least you can see in the dark," I said.

"Oh, is this a problem?" Tem asked, and closed her eyes and uplifted her hands for a second. Suddenly, sourceless, soft light filled every corner I could see. It was a little disconcerting that Tem didn't seem to realize darkness was a problem for people but I guess her relationship with light was fundamentally different from ours.

Also her relationship with normal human thoughts, but that was something else entirely.

"Okay. If you don't mind, I'll take the flare. Karu and AEGIS have night vision, Jack doesn't see in the traditional sense, and Tem can light up everything around her, so nobody should be fumbling in the dark. I have my swords of course but..." I glanced at the skeletal walls. "I'd rather not have a flickering light source."

Everyone agreed, but nobody seemed happy about it, especially AEGIS. We hesitated as long as we could, but eventually couldn't put off walking out of Tem's luminance and into the darkness any longer.

Moon followed me as we split off from the others and struck off at random. If we didn't have Jack to coordinate our actions, this might have been really difficult, but as it was, I wasn't worried at all about getting lost. The hard part about mazes was that even if you were physically close to your goal, it might still take hours of wandering to get there, and that assumed taking the most direct route. With Jack around, we could cross walls as much as we liked. It was definitely cheating, and I was a big fan.

The other reason I wasn't too concerned was, at the end of the day, this was a dungeon in a video game. It was designed to be beaten, and having players run around lost forever wasn't fun. This was also a cheaty way of looking at the problem, but it was true.

So I was pretty at ease about the whole thing from a capability perspective, but we were wandering dark tunnels by flare-light. It was still a little unnerving, and the way Moon kept slipping in and out of the green glow made me uncomfortable.

Really wasn't anything for it but for me to talk to her like I'd planned. Maybe without a group focusing on her, I could get her to open up a little and start to know my subordinate.

"Hi Moon. How are you doing?"

"I am fit for service."

"I meant, more in general. We just met, and I'd like to know who I'm working with a little better."

We crunched along in general silence for a few seconds before she replied.

"Is that an order?"

"No. Just trying to be friendly."

"I see."

Yeesh, a little difficult to talk to I guess. I was going to let her go back to silence when she spoke up again.

"My name is Kaori Ikeda. I am twenty-two years old. My birthday is February fifth. My blood type is A. My measurements are, from top to bottom--"

"Okay, that's not what I meant, though I appreciate you talking to me. I meant, you, not like, a list of information I could pull up on your file. I'm interested in who you are."

"Would you prefer a synopsis of my history?"

"Uh, that would be better, I guess. Just a sec."

Something moved in the shadows in front of me, and I directed the light on my chest towards it. A moving, living skeleton, with a crystalline heart inside its ribs. It looked a lot more convincing when depicted in stone than the other golems we'd run into. It made a noise like a faint hiss and leapt at me. Calm as anything, Moon took a few steps back to let me fight uninhibited in the narrow hallway.

It wasn't much of a fight. I channeled four blades in the air and kept them positioned through the thing's heart as it moved, and after several seconds, the gem cracked from the temperature change and it froze, fell over, and broke into hundreds of stone bones indistinguishable from those already lurking in the walls.

"So, historical synopsis?" I said, trying not to roll my ankle on the bones underfoot as we continued forward.

"I was born in Kanagawa Prefecture East Hospital at 4:23pm on 02/05/2229 to Ichiro and Hanako Ikeda. I weighed around 2,200 grams, being born slightly premature--"

"Okay, stop again."

"Another skeleton?"

"No, you're just being impossible. Are you messing with me?"

"Slightly. But I also see no reason to answer your questions."

"You're not at all interested in having a proper relationship? Like, if you just want to keep everything professional, I get it, but then just say that."

"I very much doubt I will have a relationship with you."

"Well, you don't have to phrase it like that, but sure. So why not tell me about yourself?"

"I simply fail to see how you knowing my personal history has anything to do with our ability to have a relationship."

"You don't think your past matters?"

"I think my past is in my past," she said flatly.

Okay. She didn't like being the center of attention, and she didn't like discussing her past. Good to know.

"---sst here----tar---"

My ear crackled with an unknown, incomprehensible voice.

"Just---moment." Jack said, his voice getting more static even in the short time he was speaking. Obviously moving away from me and towards the mystery first speaker. After a few more moments he spoke again.

"Chariot? Do you copy?"

"I hear you, four-by-five. What's the word?"

"Karu located the book relic in a small chamber. She was able to destroy it successfully. I found another relic chamber based on the physical attributes of the first, and steered AEGIS towards it, I was unable to destroy the globe on my own."

"Good work. Please keep in contact with the rest of the team as you have been."

"Wilco," he said and cut out as he moved away again.

"Well, if we were to hypothetically have a social relationship," I said back to Moon again, "what type of conversation do you think would be productive towards that end?"

Again, she just walked behind me for a few seconds without responding, making me feel like she hadn't even heard me. At long last she spoke up. "What is your favorite animal?"

"Dogs," I said without hesitating. "I love dogs."

"And why is that?"

"They're smart, fluffy, loyal, everything you could ask for in an animal."

"Do you consider any of your own characteristics or personality as being particularly dog-like?"

I paused to think for a second. "I don't know, maybe? I like to think I'm smart and loyal. I would definitely do anything I could to protect my friends. And I guess I'm plenty fluffy," I poked at my mess of brown hair.

"I suppose so."

"So what's your favorite animal?"

"Are you familiar with dolphins?"

"Wasn't that a type of whale?"

"Similar."

"So you like swimming?"

"We are discussing dolphins and their attributes, not mine."

It felt somewhat like talking to a very competent Tem, or a very calm Mage. If things weren't worded precisely, she wouldn't go, but it wasn't because she was stupid or angry...just...what, particular? Like she enjoyed being difficult. "Okay. Then what attributes of a dolphin in particular do you like?"

Again with the silence. That was a little annoying too.

"When oceanic mammals were on the verge of extinction, most every effort was made to keep their populations alive. One of the unexpected issues was that as population density dwindled, more dolphins were growing up isolated from others. By nature dolphins were social animals. Do you understand?"

I nodded, having no idea where she was going with this.

"Dolphins who grew up normally and then found themselves isolated could not cope with the loss and would beach or drown themselves, exacerbating the population decline. However, those which grew up isolated were content with such a lifestyle, and soon it was only individuals such as that which remained. Again, do you understand?"

"Yes, but--"

"Eventually, dolphins changed as a species, becoming almost entirely asocial creatures, and then went extinct because no dolphin wanted to associate with any other dolphin, even for the necessary act of reproduction. To be sure, it is humans which drove dolphins to the edge which scarred them, but it was the nature of being a creature which never should had been which cause their final decline."

Well this was all kinds of worrying. And this was her favorite animal, huh?

"If you're a bit of a loner, I think that's okay," I said, trying to be reassuring without patronizing. "In fact, I think humans have a bit of the opposite problem, too many of us, which just creates problems, like wiping out all the whales and dolphins."

"I am not sure you were listening. I was not talking about myself. I was talking about dolphins."

I sighed enormously.

"Okay, then what part of the story you just told me about dolphins relates to why they are your favorite animal personally?"

"No part of it. I simply think they were cute."

"You have got to be fucking with me. There is no other option."

"Eyes forward, Chariot. There appears to be a relic, and a number of enemies, besides. I will await in the hallway until you are finished."

She was right. We'd wandered pretty much in a straight line from the entrance, and entered into a huge open chamber with tall bone-studded walls, with a small number of skeletons standing, seemingly on guard around a stone altar holding a stone chalice.

But that's not what drew my eyes. Behind the altar, standing thirty feet tall, looming out of the darkness with broad wings made of stone and a crystal heart the size of a desk was a huge skeleton like nothing I'd ever seen in the world. Dozens of sharp teeth, spiraling horns, claws half the size of my body.

Standing, staring at me, and making a throaty, guttural, rumbling roar which made the floor tremble and loose stones tremble on the ground, the stone skeleton of a dragon rose to its feet and stretched its wings.