Daisy scratched her head. “How do we know it’s Sofi’s blood?”

“We don’t, but Non-Heroes die so quickly they don’t have time to bleed and who the hell else would be in Vermögenburgh?” Natsuko said.

Daisy shrugged. “I was.”

“Regardless, the trail ends here,” Shuixing said, her finger tracing the path of the blood to the edge of the cliff overlooking the waterfall. “They couldn’t have fallen and de-spawned, since water prevents any damage from falling. Either they flew off, or they’re in that strange—”

“Anomalous,” Pechorin said.

“—Anomalous dungeon."

Natsuko leaned over the cliff and gazed at the spraying foam below. Above, the sun had come up and was baking them with a comfortable warmth. Against the pleasant surroundings, the blood looked like it belonged to another world entirely.

Pechorin cleared his throat. “One enigma remains, who drew his blood?”

Natsuko’s mouth was hanging open, ready to tell him to shut-up when Pechorin accidentally said something relevant and useful.

Daisy bent down, pinched some warm, sticky blood between her fingers, lifted it to her nose, sniffed thoughtfully, then said, “yuck!”

Shuixing stroked her chin. “It’s highly likely that more than just Sofiane is involved in this. We should be careful going forw—”

“Let’s get this bread!” Natsuko said, leaping off the cliff into a front flip.

Shuixing glanced at Pechorin. “Did you tell her where to land?”

Pechorin shook his head.

They ran to the edge of the cliff, but Natsuko had already disappeared. By the lack of wet, floating mop of red hair, Shuixing surmised that her friend had found the anomalous spot that dimension-jumped into the empty dungeon. Her eyes scanned the length of the waterfall for the jagged geometry she knew to be a sign of dimension-jumping potential. The only promising candidate was the gnarled trunk of a dead tree near the plunge pool with a jumble of overlapping burls. The coinciding curves of the burls, plus the texture of the bark, equaled a terrain where the universe had to calculate too many different sets of forces simultaneously and eventually gave up and threw the colliding mass in a direction of least resistance. That was, at least, Shuixing’s internal metaphor for the process. The idea that the universe was a series of mathematical calculations was probably not realistic, but it was comforting.

“I believe it’s there we have to land,” Shuixing said, pointing to the knotty tree below.

Daisy leered at it. “We gotta land on that tree?”

Falling was the one thing that scared the stronger Heroes. Damage was a percent of HP by distance traveled rather than a flat health loss. This meant that if a fall was a certain height, it would kill the top Heroes the same as it would kill Non-Heroes. Everyone was equal against gravity. Coincidentally, the tree was right at death height.

“I-I am... reasonably certain, though I have no way to empirically confirm this,” Shuixing said.

“If I am sent to hell, it would improve my fate,” Pechorin said, casually stepping off the cliff.

This time, Shuixing was in position to watch. The moment his coal-black boots collided with the lumpy trunk, his body distorted into a jagged polygon and lurched to the right, through the granite door that lay behind the waterfall and marked the entrance to the Dungeon of Stars.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

“Huh, guess it does work. Seeya in there, Shui!” Daisy said, swan-diving into the tree trunk.

Shuixing was now alone on the cliff, staring down at the solid tree trunk below. Her hands and neck were clammy with sweat. She'd always been afraid of heights, which was why she invented the glider. But a glider would defeat the point of a dimension-jump.

“Shuixing, your hypothesis was empirically proven, why are you still so scared?” she asked herself.

She had never liked dimension-jumping. The actual process was painless, but there was something uncanny and frightening about the physical distortion that accompanied it. Nor could she disassociate it with the terrifying potentiality of being thrown through the center of the earth, never to return. She didn’t know which possibility was worse: That one fell forever, or that one was annihilated instantly. Both gave her nightmares. That was how her former teammate Hemiola had died and she'd never quite gotten over it.

She peered down at the plunge pool.

“Okay, we can do this. Natsu had no problem with it…"

The limbs of the tree shook in the wind. Shutting her eyes, she stepped off the cliff, letting out an ear-piercing shriek that echoed out across the entire lake and perked up monster ears.

“Shui, you good?” Natsuko asked.

Shuixing was still screaming with her eyes clamped shut even though solid stone was now underneath her.

She blushed. “Ahh! Oh… Umm… I suppose this will not be a stealth operation.”

“Aw that’s alright! Take your time, Shui. I can obliterate anyone who gets in the way,” Daisy said.

Of that, Shuixing had no doubt.

They found themselves in a small stone antechamber before the main room of the dungeon which was a large, circular cavern with a stone path that wound in and out of the cavern wall. The internal rooms were full of monsters, treasures, and traps. Or at least, were supposed to be. Normally, the dungeon had shade-like minions of the Entropic Axis who flew out of a giant pool at the bottom of the cavern full of glittering stars. But the dungeon was silent. Still. Frozen. The only thing that was normal about the dungeon besides its layout was the omnipresent illumination that permeated the air and allowed it to be seen without the use of light spells.

“This is so weird…” Natsuko said, looking around.

“Anomalous,” Pechorin corrected.

Natsuko walked over to a moss-covered urn that often had basic food items in it when knocked over. Upon nudging it off its decrepit stone alcove, the urn collided with the ground and instantly stopped. No shattering. No bouncing. No rolling.

Shuixing frowned. “Physics don’t appear to be working quite right. Though… in a different way from the dungeon we visited with Sofiane.”

“What was that one like?” Daisy said.

“Also creepy and weird, but you could die, and things didn’t despawn when you destroyed them, they just sat there being… uh… broken,” Natsuko said.

Daisy shivered. “Not sure I like the sound of either, but I guess I prefer the one where no one dies to the one where folks die when they’re killed.”

“Unless we, too, are invisible to the gods here,” Pechorin said.

“Shut up, moron,” Natsuko said, her tone less insulting and more fearful. “Let’s get going. We’re not doing anything sitting around here and thinking ourselves into an anxiety attack.”

Despite her apprehension, Daisy elected to take point since, as far as conventional threats went, she was a brick wall. All of them kept further than usual away from the edge of the rock path downwards. Without a blood trail to follow, they meandered through the floors and chambers of the dungeon that should've been filled with combat. A room without goblins. A secret chamber without a treasure chest. A puzzle room with doors already open. Pechorin’s book had proven correct: There was nothing and no one.

“Now, uh, your book thingy, Pech… Your tome of the oogly-spookily or whatever? Did it say, like, how to leave?” Daisy asked.

Pechorin shook his head.

“Mighta wanted to know that first. Oopsie…” Daisy walked a few more feet then started pulling her hair. “Oh gods, we’re going to die down here! We’re gonna start going hungry and I’ll have to murder and eat the friends I just made!”

Natsuko stopped. “What?”

Daisy froze, clumps of blonde hair in both hands, then laughed and knocked on her head. “Sorry, bad at keepin’ my thinkpan on straight sometimes., We’re still a ways off from the ol’ eatin’ each other stage, hehe.”

Natsuko and Shuixing shared a glance. Pechorin just nodded. “I am no stranger to man’s inhumanity to man.”

“I’m a woman,” Daisy said confidently.

After several more empty chambers, they arrived at the ground floor where there was supposed to be yet another puzzle that would light up an insignia on the wall with four prismatic crystals obtained elsewhere in the dungeon to reflect light into the void of stars in the floor and open up a hidden door in the cavern wall that led to a room with an underground pool where an ice-crag golem would be awakened from its slumber by the machinations of the Entropic Axis and emerge and attack them. But there was no puzzle and the door was already open. Echoing voices emanated from the doorway, bouncing off the icy walls. A moment later, purple lightning flashed from within.