A sharp-edged exhalation sounded behind Dorri. Something pungent and whispering brushed past her. A sickly smoke writhed around the sentry she’d shot, wrapped around her arrow, and burrowed with a crisp sucking sound into the wound.

[Scourge Sentry takes 10 damage.]

[Scourge Sentry has died.]

The man grasped at the arrow, inhaled with a gasping choke, and thumped to the floor.

Ten damage, nearly as much as hers and Nildeyr’s combined.

Was that Karon? It was magic. It had to have been.

The rounds of combat unfolded. A sentry’s crossbow trigger clacked. Booth flung his shield forward and up, and the bolt clanked off it.

The still-standing sentry glanced, wide-eyed, toward his fallen fellow.

“He’s going to run,” Lora warned from the stairwell behind Dorri.

Dorri’s regular turn came around. She targeted the lone remaining sentry’s throat.

[You use Ranged Attack on Scourge Sentry. 19 hits!]

[You deal 8 damage to Scourge Sentry.]

As the arrow flew, the man twisted and ducked, and the point instead drove into the side of his neck. He uttered a high-pitched gasp, as if he’d have screamed if he were able. He stumbled onto the top of the steps descending into unknown darkness and half-fell out of sight.

Dorri’s turn wound down. On the tactical map, Booth’s square lit up. Booth charged across the room and down the steps after the fleeing sentry.

A thump. A grunt. A clatter.

[Scourge Sentry takes 4 damage.]

[Scourge Sentry has died.]

The air thinned, and Dorri could move freely again.

After a long moment of rustling, Booth emerged again from the stairwell, shield and flail slung once more in their places. With both hands, he dragged the body of the sentry up the steps. Arra helped him haul it the rest of the way, and they deposited it beside the other dead man.

A bloody mess seeped through the man’s clothing, obliterating the symbol on it and dulling the gleam of Booth’s flail. Booth wiped the weapon on the other dead man’s leggings and stood breathing heavily for a moment.

Dorri stared at the bodies of the fallen sentries. Without getting far closer than she cared to, it was impossible to tell for certain. But she thought the realism of weapon blows and wounds might be more realistic than she’d first noticed.

This is real. And dangerous. If I go down there with these people, I will be putting my life into their hands.

Trusting other people with her life—or with anything, really—was not a thing Dorri had a lot of practice with. It sat on her skin like too much sunlight or the itch of a wool sweater.

“None of you have to come with me,” Booth said, like he’d been reading Dorri’s mind. Again, he paused as if practicing what he’d say next before speaking out loud. “Voshell will not smile on me if I lead you into this and then fail to protect you.”

Booth’s sturdy features compressed into an anguished expression.

Does he want us to go or stay? Both? Which does he want more?

That itchiness on Dorri’s skin settled—a little.

Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

None of this was supposed to be easy, of course. And she was good at what she’d been doing over the last 24 hours, actually, tracking and shooting things. People. Killers. It felt good to be doing something that wasn’t a circus or criminal act.

I can use the xp, remember?

Dorri stood straighter. Businesslike, she slipped loose the loop on her bowstring to release its tension.

“We’ll keep each other safe.” Dorri felt like an awkward, ungainly fool as she spoke the words. They’d sounded far smoother in her head.

Nildeyr was immediately at her side, grinning like a fool. “That’s why we’re here, right?”

Booth glanced around at all of them. The anguish on his face didn’t go away, but his jaw worked.

“Voshell, guide us.” Booth turned and led the way down the stairs.

#

Booth felt no qualms about leaving the Scourge bodies where they’d fallen. Grit crunched beneath his boots as he started down the barely visible curving stone steps.

Behind him, someone must have picked up the dead men’s lantern, because light suddenly intensified and cast his own long shadow before him. The smoky warm scent of burning oil swirled past him. When Booth glanced back, red light sharpened the lines of Lora’s face. She held the lantern in one hand and with the other motioned Dorri and Nildeyr ahead of her.

The light glinted as well off the statue at the chamber’s center. If this had been a fountain, Booth saw no water source. The rim surrounding the statue was shallow, and inside it tumbled many loose stones with clinging moss that had to be all but petrified. The matronly figure of the statue wore a flowing robe with a hood pulled up and held her arms outstretched in a welcoming gesture. She reminded Booth of the Voshellian depictions he’d seen, but also not quite.

[You rolled a 5 for Lore.]

This female figure and the geometric symbols around the statue’s base are nothing you have seen before.

Booth shrugged off the narrator’s lack of helpfulness. Who the statue was or what the place had been didn’t matter.

I’m clearing every single one of these murderous assholes from this place.

The curved steps to either side of the long-dry pool and its statue joined at the back and continued in a single flight. The air Booth descended into was as cool as outside, but it became a clammy, musty kind of cool. The lantern swung rays of light over his shoulder, and other footsteps followed his.

Booth didn’t expect any enemies below to be on alert. The sentries hadn’t seemed to be waiting for anyone in particular, and they hadn’t gotten away to warn anyone. The stairs in front of him stretched into darkness, and no sound rose from below.

Eventually the stairs ended in a door, which felt like cold stone when Booth planted a palm against it. Lora’s lantern arrived and illuminated a series of marble inlays, triangles and lines in varying configurations much like what he’d glimpsed around the statue’s base upstairs. Even dust-covered, the rich colors of deep greens and gray-greens and browns and onyx black remained striking.

A handhold had been carved into the right edge at about waist height. Booth curled his fingers into it and tested. With little effort and barely a whisper of sound, the door slid to the left, its surface vanishing into a hidden recess there.

Booth stopped the door before it could slide more than a hair’s width. Hefting his shield and flail, he aimed a “come get this” jerk of his chin toward Nildeyr.

Nildeyr only blinked, but behind him Dorri shifted into a ready stance with her bow. With its butt end, she nudged Nildeyr and nodded toward the door, as Booth had. This time, Nilderyr’s eyes widened in understanding. With Booth standing on one side of the door and ready to smash anyone on the other side, Nildeyr stood on the other side and slid the door the rest of the way open.

The door opened into a large room, split into two by an open archway which bore yet more of the geometric patterns. Long benches marched in even rows, save where some had been shoved together to make space for a pair of tables and a handful of chairs.

One man stood beside those tables.

Flames burned in recessed sconces in the front of the room, but the area beyond the archway remained in shadow. Someone was talking back there, though. In the seconds of chatter about how stale the bread was or wasn’t, Booth estimated three distinct voices.

“Booth.” Dorri barely murmured his name, but Booth immediately envisioned her and her bow waiting for the door to open. He drew back from the door and glimpsed Nildeyr stepping back alongside Dorri.

No enemies had noticed them yet. Dorri and Nildeyr kicked off a surprise round by firing arrows into the darkness at the room’s far end. They must have been able to see something Booth couldn’t, because a yelp of pain issued from where they’d shot.

[Scourge Enlisted takes 2 damage.]

[Scourge Enlisted takes 5 damage.]

Booth charged into the room. Shield forward and weapon raised, he aimed his body at the man beside the table. He swung his flail, letting its momentum carry around and through.

[You used Melee Attack on Scourge enlisted. 18 hits!]

[You deal 11 damage to Scourge Enlisted.]

With a huff of breath from Booth and a grunt of pain from his foe, the blow connected. He considered adding smite damage to the hit, but based on his understanding of game mechanics that was a limited ability he probably shouldn’t be throwing around just for kicks.

I should probably save them in case there’s something really big and bad down here.

Because there was always something big and bad at the bottom of a dungeon, wasn’t there?