In the Map Interface, I can see bits and pieces of the stone light up, like individual cubes of rock have been selected and highlighted in an 8-bit computer interface. Then the graphics break apart and fall away. Beneath my hand, the stone turns into perfect cubes of sand, hissing between my fingers.

Not all of it, though. Some grains don’t cascade to the floor, but appear to vanish into thin air. I raise my eyebrows.

Is that you? I ask the Core. Are you doing that?

The Dungeon Core mentally skitters away, like a dog caught with bone it knows it shouldn’t have. It only ate a little bit of it! It’s so hungry. A little stone won’t hurt anything!

You can eat the rocks? I ask, baffled.

Of course! Rocks are its favorite thing.

I shake my head. Next time, ask me first, I tell it. But it appears consuming the rocks—whatever that truly means—didn’t cost any more mana than breaking them up, so at least there’s no downside to it sneaking in its geological snack. And this revelation does unlock new possibilities. It appears the Dungeon Core can do more than just deconstruct its surroundings. What else might it be capable of?

As Mirzayael’s leg comes free, I pull my hand away and take a cautious step back.

She gasps with pain as her leg shifts from the relieved pressure. The revealed limb is crushed almost entirely flat, and immediately begins to ooze a thick, black paste. Mirzayael stumbles away from the passage with an anguished cry, collapsing against a nearby wall and leaning heavily against it as she steadies her breath.

The Core, meanwhile, is still dissolving the rest of the boulder, happily chewing away at the stone. My mana is rapidly plummeting, however, and soon I’ll be left without a way to speak with it— not to mention, without a light—so I cut off my flow of mana.

That’s enough, I tell the Core. The boulder is mostly gone by now anyway, reduced to a pile of sand of a noticeably smaller mass.

The Core tries to object, but without my mana flowing into it, it doesn’t have a choice. It pouts, clinging to its last little reserve of unspent mana. This isn’t much at all. What is it supposed to do with this? I still am holding onto so much more mana I could give! Why not just a little bit—

I end Psionic Touch, turning my attention to Mirzayael instead.

The injured leg looks bad. Mirzayael has let it droop limply on the ground behind her, and I’m unsure if that’s because she doesn’t want to move it, or can’t. Just below the joint—ah, knee?—the leg is entirely collapsed, crushed flat and shattered into several jagged fragments that leak a viscous blood. I worry the entire leg will come off if too much more force is applied. As I speculate on the extent of the damage, I apparently trigger another one of Echo’s Checks.

[HP: 181/240]

I’m pretty sure that’s lower than it was before.

“We need to get you to a doctor,” I say. “That injury seems grave.”

“I will be fine,” Mirzayael hisses through clenched teeth. “I am Captain of the Guard. I’ve trained for worse.”

“You won’t be able to do much guarding if you bleed out,” I say. “Come, we need to get you to someone who can help, as quickly as we’re able.” I step toward the passage, now largely cleared from the previous blockage. “Is your city in this direction?”

Her spear whistles through the air, snapping to a stop inches from my face and barring my way. “I cannot allow outsiders access to our town. It is my duty.”

“You won’t be able to stop me if you’re unconscious from blood loss,” I point out. “And given you’re the first sign of life I’ve found in these tunnels, I’m not going anywhere either. You can let me help you make it back to your town, and I can finally get some food and water, whatever the consequences of my arrival may be, or we can both sit here until you kill me, or you pass out. Now choose quickly.” I fix her with a look. “Although I’d rather prefer if you chose the option where you don’t kill me.”

To my surprise, Mirzayael’s grimace shifts into a pained grin. She coughs out a strained laugh. “You are a strange phoenix.” The speartip lowers, and then she turns it around to use as a walking stick. Mirzayael jerks her head toward me. “Alright. Help me get through the passage.”

Relieved, I clamber out of her way, scattering a portion of the sand in my haste. Mirzayael limps toward the tunnel, leaning on her spear as she carefully steps over the remains of the boulder. Her injured leg drags behind her, scraping over the stone and sand until she needs to hoist it over the rock.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

“Here,” I offer, coming up behind her. “I can help lift it. It’s going to hurt, however.”

“I can handle pain,” she growls.

No one should have to handle this kind of pain. And there’s only so much anyone can really tolerate, no matter what they claim. I doubt voicing any of this would improve Mirzayael’s mood, however, so instead I just say, “Alright.”

Picking up her leg will require me to extinguish my Spark. I’ll have to rely on the Map Interface to track my surroundings, then. But when I snuff out my light, I find there’s a distant glimmer of blue at the far end of the tunnel. Not much, but enough to travel by.

I bend down to lift the end of her leg. The feet end in a bristle of tiny claws, so I grab halfway down her leg, away from the injury, but enough to give leverage. The chitinous material is smooth and cold, as firm as a rock beneath my grasp. It truly must have taken tremendous force to cause such damage.

“Here I go,” I warn her, lifting the limb slowly upward.

Mirzayael screams through pressed lips, stumbling forward and over the remains of the boulder as I hurry to keep pace. On the other side I don’t lower the leg back down. It would be worse to drag it, I think—though I am certainly no doctor. At least, not of the medical variety.

“Keep going,” I urge. “I’ll carry it like this for as long as you need.”

“Keep it still,” she snaps through clenched teeth. “Stay steady.”

“I’ll do my best.”

Each of us step cautiously, trying to match the other's speed, as we make our way down the tunnel. As much as I can, I try to snatch glimpses of our surroundings. Not only is the tunnel man-made—ah, I suppose that term might not apply here. Sentient-creature made? Artificial, let’s say. Not only is the tunnel artificial, it’s carved with old, weathered patterns and images. I can’t make out the subject of the murals in the dim light; only the occasional vague suggestion of a wing or claw. But I feel there’s ancient stories here, carved into the walls. At some point, I’d desperately love to come back.

The faint blue light grows closer, and as we approach the end of the tunnel, a strange feeling of anticipation stirs in me. I don’t know where we’re going. I haven’t been here before. Yet, that same sense of familiarity when I’d found the Dungeon Core flutters through me now. I grasp at it, trying to pinpoint its source, but it slips through my fingers, evasive as a breeze, and then is gone once more. Even so, I keep glancing toward that growing blue light, wondering what it could mean.

We step out into a giant chamber. At least I think it’s giant—the way sound reverberates around the cave tells me this is the biggest space I’ve set foot in, yet. The source of the blue glow is a spot on the wall near the tunnel entrance. I do a double take when I realize it’s some sort of circular design like an alchemic circle.

What is that? I ask Echo. Ah. Check?

[Check: Spell circle for a simple Glow spell. Mana remaining: 15. Time remaining: 3 hours.]

I tip my head. A design that can be used to cast a spell. Can it be recharged?

[Affirmative. The quantity of mana imbued in the circle determines the duration of the spell.]

Amazing! Like a battery. That’s incredibly useful. Would I be able to imbue it with mana, too?

[As the requirement for this spell does not have any particular Affinity requirements, affirmative, anyone may be able to activate the spell circle.]

My mind swirls with the possibilities. That means I’m not limited to just the three spells I innately know. I should be able to do other spells as well, as long as I can find or replicate these circles. Fascinating! This magic certainly does seem to have some concrete rules to it. Maybe not so different from laws of physics after all. Just a new logical framework I need to learn.

We keep close to the wall as we traverse the chamber, our way lit with more spell circles carved into the rock. Their glow is dim and they only illuminate our path for a few yards before petering out into the dark. Opposite from the wall, I can almost feel that giant, sprawling cavern like the presence of a beast. From the way our breaths and scraping footsteps echo back down at us in a parade of delayed susurrations, I know it’s not empty. There’s some structure that’s refracting our echoes about. I’m dying to investigate, but not dying comes first. I need to make it to Mirzayael’s town so I can finally get some water, a bite to eat, and begin to take stock of my situation.

Half bent over as I carry Mirzayael’s maimed leg, my back begins to ache in protest. Ah, back pains, how I haven’t missed you. In fact, since arriving on this world, in this body, I’ve felt better all around. No cracking joints or tight muscles. I feel rejuvenated. Fresh. It’s nice.

It’s just so strange that it comes with a new body and gender. I mean… I suppose I’m not sure about that last part. I lived my whole life as a man. I fathered a child. And mentally, I don’t feel any different about who I am now, no matter how different this body is. So that means I am still a man, right?

But this body is female. And strangely, I don’t feel any shock or repulsion over that. If anything, the harpy physiology feels much more peculiar to me. So does that mean it’s the body or the mind that determines one’s gender? Or some amount of both?

I puzzle over this thought that I’d never really had any reason to think before. There had been a couple of gay kids working at my office. I’m sure they would have had some ideas on the subject. Maybe I should have tried to speak with them more.

Maybe I should have tried to speak with my coworkers in general, more.

Too late for that now. I suppose this is an enigma I will need to solve for myself.

“Here,” Mirzayael abruptly says.

I look up and find we’re standing before a wall. Nothing of note. Just a blank face of stone.

Yet Mirzayael steps through it anyway. I awkwardly lurch forward in surprise, still trying to keep her leg steady, as the wall rapidly swallows the front half off the arachnoid. I instinctively lean back as her forward progress draws me toward the rock face as well. But my hands vanish into the stone without so much as a whisper. In another step, my arms, feet, and then head are pulled inside. My vision goes dark for only a moment.

Then warm light bursts into existence all around me, and a notification on my map blinks in the corner of my vision.

For the first time, some textual overlay has appeared.

[Fyreneth’s Keep,] it reads. [City of the Forsaken.]