Somewhere at the edge of London in the underground catacombs of a long forgotten Abbey gunfire could be heard.

Two figures just bearly illuminated by the light of a single discarded torch moved about in the darkened halls.

The first, a grizzled middle aged man with short dark hair brown eyes and a muscular build emptied round after round of shotgun rounds into the darkness before him.

The other was a youth with bleached blond dreadlocks and light green eyes, he wore an almost panicked expression as he quickly scribbled something onto the wall with a knife.

"What's taking so long Granum?"

"This is complicated, one mark in the wrong place and everything for half a mile will get vaporized, including US"

"Goddamit, this is ridiculous who's idea was it to come down here anyway?"

"Shut up and keep firing Ziiro, and the answer is yours. It was your idea to come down here."

"Not this far down, I only wanted to go as far as the the prison section on the fifth level, check if any of the 'guests' had woken up and maybe even put the few of them that had woken up back to sleep."

"..."

Granum's eyes reduced into a irritated squint as he looked at his friend but his hands did not stop moving.

"Hey now, don't look at me like that, how was I supposed to know that every single bloody thing down here would be running around looking for for a delicious human snack?"

"..."

"You missed one."

"Mother fuuuu..."

Ziiro turned back to the hall only to see a pale skeleton with a rusty sword charging at him with with no regard for subtlety.

He quickly lowered his shotgun and and drew a beautifully decorated silver handgun, three shots were fired and the skeleton's head fell to the floor before shattering noisily, in that same beat he launched himself forward with a kick and the skeleton's body exploded into a pile of scattered bones.

"Danm I hate these things, they're such a waste, of, bullets."

Ziiro stomped on the fragments of skull until they turned into powder, with that the bits that were trying to reassemble themselves stopped moving completely.

"Just bear with it, or would you rather go down to the lower levels and have a drink with the old vampire bastards that are lurking down there?, or maybe you'd rather have a fist fight with the ancient Daemons that guard the lower realms?, no?, what about the blood spiders, I hear they like how chewey humans are, you could..."

"Stop– stooop..."

"I get it already, geeez. Don't remind me of that time we got transferred down there anymore, I don't think my heart can take remembering that again."

Ziiro was turning a bit pale as the traumatic memories flooded into his mind. He stomped the dust again and began shooting as a dozen new skeletons and a handful of other undead filed into the corridor.

A few more minutes and another few hundred more undead deaths later.

"It's done."

Granum looked at his work and frowned.

"It's a bit rough but it should be enough

"So– slow. Are you sure that you didn't buy that "Rune Master" title?

Granum's eyes widened, he'd never felt so insulted... At least not recently.

"You- you bastard, how dare you!?"

His face was bright red and almost seemed like steam might come pouring out at any moment.

"First you drag me down here on a screwed up night like this one, did you even SEE what happened to the moon? you got us chased by hoards of bloodthirsty undead, demand that I carve a five layered runic inscription into an ancient dungeon wall protected with dozens of warding spells that could kill us in a second saying "a pen won't cut it, since something could just come along and wipe it off" then force me to use your old ass inscribing knife that can hardly even cut paper and now you complain that that I'm taking too long? This thing is designed to incinerate everything in a five mile radius without alerting the entire city or killing us when it the process but if you know someone else who can not only draw such a complex formation with your crappy knife but can do so in less than an hour, then you can call them and drag them down here instead."

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Saying that he threw the dull knife onto the floor, it clattered loudly before coming to a stop.

They both looked down at the knife then at each other then at each other again, an undead corpse shuffled out of the darkness behind them, without looking a silver gun was drawn fired and returned to its holster, the head of the undead had burst open and was now laying in large chunks on the floor. Silence filled the dark catacombs for a long moment after that.

"Sorry"

"..."

Granum sighed then picked up the knife.

"Don't worry about it, now lets get the the hell out of here."

"How long do we have?"

Ziiro inquired.

"It's set to trigger in about four hours and should cook everything down to the eighth level and melt the walls to seal this entrance but if we reach the surface I can activate it from there."

"If?"

"…"

"If!"

"With the way things are down here I wouldn't be surprised if entities below the ninth level have woken up and without going down there to check we have no choice but to purge the whole system and collapse the path leading to the surface."

The two began running through the catacombs at a light pace, many undead popped out at at various times but they were quickly dispatched with a bullet or two.

They'd been running for almost an hour and were about to leave the forth floor via the stairs when Granum suddenly stopped.

"Huh?, What is it G?"

"There's– something–"

"…like?"

"I don't know, but it's strange, it's like everything on the next floor…

isn't... there!?"

Visible confusion appeared on both their faces for different reasons as they looked toward the stairs.

Ziiro began to cautiously approach the stairs when Granum called out.

"No wait, let me..."

He drew a pure white pen from his coat and began drawing a series of runes in a circle on the floor, after a few seconds he drew one last rune onto his left hand before placing it into the circle and saying the incantation word.

"Search"

A white pulse of energy burst fourth from the runic circle and went in all directions before fading.

"Well?"

"I, can't see it!"

"Can't see what? The third floor?"

"No!"

Granum shook his head and looked as if he might collapse at any moment.

"Not just the third floor, the entire dungeon is just, gone. Everything except this floor is just...

"...This isn't good, we have to get out of here fast."

Looking as if he'd suddenly seen a ghost Granum stood up and made for the stairs.

"Hold on now."

"What do you mean by that, if the floor isn't there then where are we even going too?"

Granum looked directly into Ziiro's eyes, and the message was quite clear. 'Don't ask anymore questions and just move'.

"Right, lets go."

They both rushed up the stairs and through the thick black fog that was seeping in from above.

But what they found at the top shocked them both to the core.

Fire...

Everywhere...

Fire, smoke and Molten rock was everywhere and on everything, the land, the hills and cliffs behind them there was even a lake of what could only be called magma sitting in the distance as it spewed melted rock into the air in huge geysers. But the strangest thing about this place was that it was cold, very, very cold.

They both pulled their coats closer as they looked into the distance in horror.

For them this place was unmistakable and they said the name aloud just to reconfirm it.

""Daemia!""

Daemia was the homeland of of Demons, Daemons and all manner of horrifying creatures. Most just refered to it as the place below hell. If even one creature ever go loose the upper realm would be scarred forever.

"Fu*k–"

"How the hell are we in Daemia again G?"

"I'm– not sure, someone... SomeThing, must have transferred us along with the entire floor to this place"

"I only know one bastard who's capable of doing this on short notice and he's dead."

Zirro said as he watched the horizon come alive with activity.

"That only leaves a few that would know we would have been in that dungeon and could have prepared all this in advance."

"Wouldn't that also mean that they knew what was going to happen to the moon?"

"You got it G!."

"Shit"

"It looks like we're doing this again."

Ziiro spits off to one side but before his saliva hit the floor it froze solid and then turned instantly into gas as it impacted the terrain.

""…""

Silence washed over the two as every manner of unspeakable creature crawled out from everywhere.

Ziiro's guns all began to glow as the runes engraved on them activated all at once, both his arms turned charcoal black as the hundreds of micro runes written on them all charged with energy.

Granum removed his cloak to reveal an uncountable number of tattoos, each one pulsing with red energy as he breathed. He grabbed his snow colored pen which slowly increased in mass until it easily dwarfed him.

"Y'know for a four hundred year old kid you're not half bad."

Zirro smiled as he spoke to his friend.

"Is that so?

"Even though you are an annoying geezer you're not half bad either."

"…"

The two looked at each other smiled then began heartily laughing.

When the moment passed Granum jumped off what remained of the fourth floor and ran toward the incoming horde.

"The first one to reach a thousand kills gets to keep Carla."

"Hey, you can't do that, Carla's mine."

"Not for long!"

Granum swung his pen in a horizontal line and a silver arc of energy burst out cutting down several massive creatures that seemed to be made up of only black ooze, sharp teeth and claws. In the same motion he drew five runes in the space around him and fired them off with a shout.

"Ignition"

Everything touched by the runes burst into crimson flames before turning to ash.

Ziiro in turn jumped high into the air and rained down a barrage of shining bullets that perforated everything below him, the squeals and death howls erupted with every shot. On closer inspection each expelled bullet pulsed with energy then detonated when an enemy came near.

A horde of monsters bore down upon them they as an endless sea and they soon realized that their troubles had only just begun.