Matthias didn’t know what he had expecting from Carissa’s first combat aside from a mess and a desperate fight for survival. His own sword, despite a gift from the Water Gods of this world remained off-balance in his hand despite his best efforts of practising with it.

When he saw her again, she would either victorious after her first kill or dead and dying.

The weak want protection and freely die while the strong want to live and survive. He thought to himself

Presently he was walking with his free hand on one wall of the pristine white corridor feeling for any traces or marks which would indicate hidden doors. There had been no further voices ringing out and he preferred to ignore any memories which reminded him of his possession by the overwhelming spirit-God which had entirely crushed his own mind and trapped him deep inside his soul for a short time.

No, he would put it aside and address it another time when this place, this trial of gods wasn’t actively trying to kill or test him. And he certainly didn’t want to talk with another avatar of a god which wasn’t his own, that would be heresy.

His hand stopped for a moment resting on his own gifted bag of holding debating inside his mind whether he needed to retrieve a medicine inside to dull or sooth his own physical pain. He had been luckier than he thought with his wrist as the suit had mostly protected him but at cost.

The material covering him had lessened in quantity and his head and face were no longer covered as it automatically distributed itself across the rest of his body.

The suit reduces as it protects. A valid point to discuss with Carissa when we meet.

He still recalled the message on the mechanical device which he had read. There were sonnets written with the same level of emotion between lovers which had been part of his training when his body had needed to recover but reading it had felt a direct invasion of Carissa’s privacy.

He’d simply hand the device to her and force himself to forget what had been written.

An aching pain inside his body reminded him that several of his ribs had been bruised but not cracked. He had been fortunate to roll with the blow taken from the ogre or whatever the shapeshifting dungeon creature had been in the process of turning into.

As long as it wasn’t a water-based troll with regenerative properties than Carissa was likely to be fine. Ideally. He couldn’t protect the both of them in this place. Matthias knew his own limits and relative inexperience despite a decade of training, several dungeons and a harsh mentor who had beat her own lessons into him.

He would have preferred to use his own weapon and not this coral style imitation but a gift from the Lady of the Lake was no small thing to lose, it had been carried with him when he had been brought into this place of trials and power. To lose such a weapon would have been the same as cutting off one of his arms and leaving behind in blessed Avalon.

He would manage though, his mentor had beat it into him enough to use any weapon in an emergency.

She had been a callous bitch but he’d seen her beat bigger and faster Knights in person and her lessons had truly saved his life more times than he had been able to calculate.

The corridors inside this dungeon were boring to say the least, pristine and devoid of all forms of life and doorways. He knew that this was the way that gods would design their own dungeons, it enabled faster choices and quicker deaths than necessary if the starting area was overly complex.

He had seen his own share of dungeons back in his home world but they had been familiar at least, stone, fire, smoke and even bone if he counted one built by a necromancer.

This place reminded him vaguely of the buildings that those that called themselves alchemists occupied. The mad bastards who locked themselves up and experimented with fire and concoctions and the rare explosion to develop what they called the value of technology.

Placing a hand on the pristine wall he had following the path of the corridor to find that it simply looped around, the previous metal doorway in which he and Carissa had found themselves in had sunk back into the wall although after careful examination he found traces.

There were minor traces of damage though when she had saved both of them in that absolute darkness of the room.

Along with the food and drink which had tasted tainted to himself and with a hint of wrongness but he had accepted them as a gift from his newly acquired comrade. Carissa was intelligent and smart enough to act when he had hesitated to save them both and even to his shame led them out of the room into the main quest for this dungeon.

Matthias considered if directly following the same lessons which his mentor had provided him would have resulted in the deaths of both of them. She hadn’t warned him that the usual first encounter in a dungeon was a shapeshifter designed to entrap and wound or kill the unwary. It had been the eyes which had drawn him in, pale blue like the sky and with a smile and tears in the eyes of the creature and a weak voice begging for his help.

The creature had half-gutted his stomach before he’d rammed his sword down it’s throat and through the brain pinning it to the wall. His mentor had healed him but left the scar as a reminder. In a way, Matthias was wondering why his luck with men and women tended towards the capable but possibly insane.

Perhaps if he had a specific preference, it would have been easier but his good looks always led him into trouble. This time was different though. He had no mentor in this place nor was The Lady here to give him guidance.

He had been given by a promise by the foul-smelling man known as Mike and his two friends that he needed to support and watch over a beautiful woman called Carissa and in return they would use their own connection with one of the Ocean Gods to re-establish direct communications for Matthias with the blessed Lady of the Lake.

The messages from the spirit that called itself an Ocean Gateway System were an annoyance and on occasion a direct threat. Matthias recognised that they were a necessary part of this Knight’s quest which had been given to him by the Lady but the words either took him longer to process due to his unfamiliarity with them or he struggled to read through and perform other actions.

He would need to ask Carissa how she received them without them affecting her visual perception or her judgement. Then again, she was insane enough that he wouldn’t be surprised if she had simply blocked them out through virtue of denying a part of reality.

He didn’t dislike her though and it wasn’t down to her looks, she was beautiful it was true, the same as any Knight, Princess or Royal blood. No, there was a presence about her. A bearing which reminded him of the Lady, pure will embodied inside a frame which would change the world or die trying.

Her insanity wasn’t in question though, he himself had volunteered for this quest, this holy mission for the Lady and he had been prepared for his lifetime to simply survive and then win.

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All of the so-called player candidates all had something broken inside them. He’d refused enough of them when they’d asked to group with him. Especially a group with the leader called Bonnie, she’d had her own agenda when he’d asked her if she had seen or heard of a woman who called herself Carissa. In the end he’d followed the voice of the shouting to find someone openly hostile and half-mad from her words.

It had been her eyes which had drawn his attention. They were altered in a way, nothing special given the use of magic but he failed to sense a single iota of any power from her form. No, it been again, the sheer blankness inside them which had made him focus.

Dead eyes. Fish eyes he had heard them described by Knights of the Kingdom who had been forced to hunt down and kill their own who had gone mad and decided that they would become heretics and decided to kill those peasants and inhabitants seemingly randomly without reason or thought.

She was closer to madness than he had first thought. Brave though. He had introduced himself and she had agreed to form a team before they entered the Ocean Portal into this dungeon.

Brushing his fingers lightly against the blank wall, Matthias carried on walking, one hand on the hilt of his coral sword and his head up and glancing from side to side anticipating a sneak attack. Not that had was expecting anything, when the spirit-God had possessed him, it had passed on a basic awareness and knowledge of this dungeon.

It would start with a single threat and then slowly increase to a far more dangerous level. To do so otherwise would have killed any player-candidates who lacked the necessary combat experience and fighting ability.

Still, Carissa might have been a casualty but she was armed with a strong weapon of power. Even he could sense the potential of the weapon which she had been gifted.

A tooth club for a novice. Not a surprise gift from a favoured of a Water God. Thought Matthias to himself as he heard noises slightly further ahead.

Violence had a sound he knew. So did pain and anguish and the cry of survival.

This was different though; he knew it from his own training. Dulled certainly but familiar enough that he would recognise it.

Carissa would be around this corridor eventually; it was a loop designed to throw off fresh player-candidates as they managed to escape their own room before initial conflict. All he had to do was to follow the faint noise in the distance and they would meet again.

Injured or otherwise, he would support her and leave this first level to go deeper into the dungeon.

Facility. They don’t call it a dungeon. This is a facility. A Deep-Water Puri-fi-ca-tion Facility.

When had he only been a boy, he had been drawn from his own orphanage by his mentor who along with a dozen other children had been given a blunt sword and pointed towards a recently killed sheep with instructions to hit it until told to stop.

Not surprisingly those who were at first eager to do so with the imagination of letting out their beatings from the owners of the orphanage into another target were keen before the truth struck them that they were beating the flesh of what had once been a living animal.

And once they’d either thrown up the contents of the meals that passed for food or refused to strike the dead sheep the mentor had given each of them a coin and a quick word which had brought a bright smile to their faces.

When it had been Matthias's turn, he had refused the partially broken and chipped wooden blunt sword before pointing at the one hanging on the belt of the Knight, her face grew into her own smile which he hadn’t appreciated before he started hacking at the flesh of the sheep by himself.

The limbs at first and then the head which had caused his arms to ache deeply and his body to strain but in the end, it had fallen off and flies had begun to gather.

When he had struck the dead sheep for long enough that the sun had gone and the skies above had darkened, he plunged the sword into the body of the dead sheep before turning to face the Knight who rewarded him with a slap to his face which had sent him flying.

He had regained consciousness when she had poured fresh water from her own flask onto his face and crouched low, she spoke the first words he would hear from his mentor.

She demanded to know why he had done it. What had caused him to do it and he simply replied that he had seen the other orphaned children smile and been given a coin from her purse for joining in.

Shaking her head, the women who would become his mentor raised a gloved metal hand and struck his head again driving him into unconsciousness. Only later during his initial training sessions with the Knight Matthias had ventured to ask her three questions.

The first was why had she made the children smile, the second was the coin and the third had been why she had knocked him unconscious twice.

The sound was just around the corridor. There was no indication of battle or a desperate fight to the death but a repetition that Matthias clearly remembered when he had used the shiny, deadly sword of the Knight to cut into the wool and flesh of the dead sheep.

The reason that had hadn’t heard it clearly was simple. The repeating impact of bone on flesh made a smaller sound than he had been expecting. Over and over, he heard the sound.

A little bit further and Matthias would see Carissa once more. The women with strange words and a strange device which had spoken to him. Given him a message to ask her.

Shaking his head Matthias recalled once more the response of his mentor when he had asked the questions. Clearly, the inhabitation of his physical form of the spirit-God had shaken decade old memories clear.

His mentor had raised a gloved gauntlet when he had finished his stamina conditioning for the day. He’d made good progress and she was in a good mood so she had responded when he had asked, even provided him with a solid wooden sword of his own to keep.

The first finger accompanied her answer to his first question, the children smiled because the Knight had promised to teach the owners of the orphan a lesson for being bad to the children which they would never forget.

The second finger raised she explained to him that she had promised the children a life away from the orphanage where they would have food and safety provided freely.

The third finger raised Matthias's mentor had brought up a gloved metal hand in his direction and prepared to strike at his head once more before he raised his wooden sword and blocked the blow.

The memory of the sun shining behind her in the bright morning, the creases on her older face and the half-smile on her lips as she spoke to him despite stopping the attack gave Matthias pause as he kept his wooden sword held up holding back any further movements from her metal gloved hand.

‘Never throw your weapon away. Never let it lose your sight, never let go of its young man. Sticking my Knight’s sword inside the dead sheep wasn’t an insult to my honour or yours. Letting go of the grip of it was. Still, it wasn’t a bad effort for a seven-year-old.’ she had told him.

A shame that he never saw the headbutt coming were his last thoughts before he was knocked unconscious again.

The old Knight taught him a valuable lesson that day. Mainly the fact that she was a callous old cow who liked to drink too much and beat up children. And also, the fact that she’d given him a lesson that had enabled him to survive, far, far worse situations including this one.

Stepping forward and readying his coral sword in his hand Matthias emerged around the bend of the corner of the corridor loop pleased to see that she had a firm grip on her bone club weapon and was actively using it.

The fact that she was repeatedly using it to smash into a large pile of greyish flesh and bone which had long lost any sense of resembling a humanoid figure was not.

Shaking his head once more Matthias began his approach to Carissa. He gave one final prayer to the Lady of the Lake to watch over the soul and spirit of his mentor.

Blessed Lady, please watch also, over that old woman who helped me survive. I didn’t mean to call her a callous bitch even though she was one.

When he received no response to his prayer, he wasn’t overly surprised. This world had its own gods when he received a blinding headache and a singular message from the Ocean Gateway System.