Ortho woke with a gasp.

His body ached all over. Horrid scents assaulted his nose from all around, scents that sparked panic within him that he was too sore to act upon. Despite the impending sense of doom, he could see nothing.

The world was dark and his head felt uncomfortable, being pressed in by something hard. Every now and then he caught a flash of light. It took him a moment to realise that he was wearing his helmet. He wasn’t flowing enma into it, so he couldn’t see. The flickers of light, then, were the enma-forged circuits that lined the helmet’s inside, which made the afto function. They flickered from the excess, unformed enma that eddied off him—a sign he needed to get his enma under control, or else risk burning out too early in a fight like so many inexperienced warriors often did.

He groaned and pushed himself up. The darkness made him want to scream, to lash out at unseen foes. He was in the damned dungeon. There were monsters everywhere; he could smell their rot! However, he listened to his training. He took a deep breath and calmed himself. His excess enma release was gradually contained. It took a few attempts in his haze, but he managed to run a flow into his helmet.

Regaining vision, he recognised the smooth walls and floor of the seventh floor dungeon chamber. His vision was grey through the helmet and could barely tell the difference between the green and purple swirls that lined every hard surface, but he knew he at least wasn’t lying on a green surface because his body wasn’t literally melting off. Everything still hurt, though.

Ortho smelled it before he saw it: rot and burnt ozone, but this time the rot was considerably stronger. He leapt up and feebly tried to get enma into his wadis, the effort making his head spin. Slowly, a monster walked towards him.

“Woah, you can take a hit, alright,” Ortho heard the monster say. Sure, it didn’t look or sound like a monster, but it certainly smelled like one.

The monster came to a halt just a few steps in front of Ortho. Thinking his shield was still attached to his arm, Ortho tried to raise it. When he realised it had gone flying across the room when he’d been hit earlier, Ortho adapted and ran his enma into his armour instead.

The monster’s mouth parted and revealed a mouth half-missing its teeth. “Oh, it’s that armour that saved you, isn’t it? So pesky. So, so pesky.” He lowered his chin. Hints of mischief and malice caught Ortho’s nostrils. “Maybe I should do something about it, so we can fight warrior to warrior.” He let out a terrible laugh, hoarse and high pitched.

“Mr. Ortho, get away from that creep!” Luci screamed.

Threads shot out from Luci’s staff and wrapped around the monster. There were so many of them that Ortho had to leap out the way or he’d get caught in them. With a howl, Luci flicked her staff and set the monster rocketing off across the dungeon. It slammed into the wall so hard that the odd stone was sent scattering. When the dust cleared, the monster was planted in a crater next to the one that Ortho had made what felt like hours ago.

Ortho whipped around to Luci and bellowed, “What are you doing? Stay out of my way.”

“Shut up and listen!” Luci screamed back. “That man isn’t Mr. Wip. I met him once before and he tried to kill me. He’s powerful, okay? We have to stop him.”

Ortho’s thoughts were finally clearing. That… wasn’t Wip? Did that mean that monster had once been Wip. No, it certainly smelled like Wip, but that scent was faint, buried beneath all that rot. Still, that didn’t change a thing.

“I’m fighting him,” Ortho said. He was woozy. He staggered towards the crater in the wall. “Anyone that robs the honour of a warrior of the Nubah Kilebhi must face that warrior’s challenge. Man, monster, it doesn’t matter. Honour is everything. Honour is all I have.”

“Idiot!” Luci shouted. She thrust her staff at Ortho to emphasise her anger. “You stupid, grupp-headed idiot. That guy is way too strong to fight alone.”

The guy, Wip or whoever in Gul he was meant to be, pried himself forwards. He hopped off the wall and landed on the floor. One arm was broken, bent at a disturbing angle. He grabbed it with his other arm and, with a sickening crack, he put it back into place. After a few seconds, he was moving the arm around like it had never been hanging half limp.

Ortho’s breath quickened and a cold sweat beaded on his forehead. “A good challenge,” he said.

“No, it’s not a challenge, you grupp,” Luci shouted. “It’s a massacre. My memory of that day wasn’t the best, but this guy, I think his name is Hyena. He’s like an alter ego or something or Mr. Wip’s. I don’t know the details and, because I’m such a bleeding-heart fool, I never asked Mr. Wip about. But the point is, we need to work together or else—you grupp!”

In a flash of red lightning, the dungeon floor exploded under Hyena’s feet. He charged straight towards Luci.

In a hurry, Luci wrapped herself in a protective cocoon made from threads. When Hyena’s fist connected, there was a burst of lightning and then a bang. Luci went flying across the dungeon. The cocoon slammed against a wall then bounced off before rolling about the dungeon floor.

Ortho turned to Hyena and grit his teeth. He threw enma into his armour on instinct.

Hyena was standing on his toes and shading his eyes with a hand, watching Luci like a Huhl Hademi runner searching for clean water. There was no sun above as they were buried under however many layers of whatever the dungeons were made of. The gesture seemed to be some poor joke.

“Wow, you got weaker, moon girl,” Hyena chuckled. “Last time I was free, you were ripping buildings out of the ground.” He shrugged. “Well, it might be a little boring now, but we can still finish our game from last time.”

“Hey!” Ortho snapped.

Hyena turned to face him with a hand still shading his eyes. Ortho clenched his teeth so hard he thought they would break.

“We’re not finished with our game,” Ortho said.

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Hyena’s face fell into a pout. “I don’t know. Fighting an amateur like you would be pretty dishonourable.”

That was all the provocation Ortho needed. He threw everything into his wadis and shot across the dungeon floor. Every couple of steps brought agony—his boots had been burnt through, exposing his bare feet to the acid floor. he drowned the pain out with sheer fury.

Howling, he tossed his shield. It shot off sideways and hooked back, aiming at Hyena’s chest. At the same moment, Ortho slid low and aimed for Hyena’s feet, going for another double-pronged strike.

Hyena rolled his eyes. “Urgh. Predictable.”

He ducked low, out of the shield’s path and the shield whizzed overhead. Then, in a flash of lightning, Hyena shifted sideways to avoid a strike from Ortho but left his hand near the floor. It brushed Ortho’s shin guard. As it did, red electricity sparked from his hand and into the guard.

Ortho turned onto his stomach and pushed himself up. Using the upward momentum, he spun and threw an elbow at Hyena’s head. Hyena leaned back, flashing a mocking grin, and it passed by harmlessly.

With one hand still touching the floor, Ortho spun and swiped with his foot, using the same leg Hyena had touched a moment ago. Hyena blocked the fuchite shin guard with his forearm, using the other to brace against the strike.

Under normal circumstances, the blunt force from a wadi-strengthened impact, using the fuchite armour to deliver it, would have easily broken an arm, or at least put a dent into whatever afto defence they were using. What actually happened was that Ortho’s shin guard crumbled.

What? Ortho mouthed.

“Oops,” Hyena mocked him.

Ortho didn’t have a chance to pay him back as the recoil struck him immediately, and the curse overtook him. Colours exploded around him, painting the dungeon in nonsensical, riotous shades. Smells drifted up on him, of blood, of earth, of flesh so sweet.

The monster that the shin guard’s aftocore had been taken from, a nuedul, hunted from underground. It used its senses to seek out prey above, then trapped it in a projected field before rising up and crushing it between its thousand, razor-sharp teeth. The curse that Ortho received tried to impress the monster’s strange senses onto him, and his body and soul rejected it wholly.

His soul was usually able to pool up any curses and process them without issue, especially using the Nubah Kilebhi’s soul recycling technique. When bound with a human, the monster’s soul would try to change the human’s body to become a host for it. The levels that Logosians used indicated how much of that effect a human could accept before monsters began to win that fight, though the Nubah Kilebhi preferred to play it by feel rather than using all those numbers and calculations. Overcharging aftos sped up this process, and thus humans traded their body, mind, and soul for temporary power.

But when an aftocore broke, that meant the monster’s soul had lose is home. In its panic and desperation, it would latch onto whatever host it could find. Therefore, the curse that an aftocore released upon its destruction was far, far more potent.

But it wasn’t Ortho’s first time experiencing this kind of curse. No, he’d broken plenty of his aftos in his time battling the monsters of Huhl Hadem. The whole point of his training was that it allowed him to swallow curses, and that’s what he intended to do the first chance he got.

He brought his shield back around for another strike. He still couldn’t see it, but through his binding with the shield he had a vague awareness of its position relative to him. With a bit of guesswork, he figured out Hyena’s position and threw the shield at him.

Hyena went to dodge it by leaning back, but Ortho faked him out. He flipped the shield mid air so that its front faced Hyena then popped it as hard as he could. The burst caught Hyena as he was leaning back and sent him flying.

Then Ortho got to work on suppressing his curse. Recycling enma out and back into his soul, he created the feedback loop. It wasn’t strong as his enma was generally weak, intended to be used to control aftos rather than for melding, but the effect was good enough. His senses gradually returned to him.

The downside was that it cut into his total enma flow. Therefore, he needed to be careful of how much enma he dedicated to recycling, as it directly took from his combat potential.

Pushing air through his teeth, Ortho scraped up the fragments of his shin guard and tossed them high.

“You want to play?” Ortho howled. “Then here. Catch!”

He brought his shield back into his hands, reeled back, and batted. With a sharp flow of enma, he sent the fuchite fragments rocketing at Hyena. Not waiting for the fragments to strike, Ortho put everything into his wadis and sprinted forward.

Hyena scraped to a halt a hundred steps away. With a grin, lightning coursed along his body and he charged into the rocketing fragments. Weaving this way and that, he cleared them easily.

Ortho pulled his shield close. Hyena charged straight at the shield. Just as Ortho was about to let out a pulse, however, a heliotoma flew in from the side and pelted Hyena. Ortho scraped to a halt and turned to Luci.

“I said, he’s mine! Don’t—oh, what in Gul?”

Flying towards Hyena were dozens of heliotomas. Silvery threads reached out across the dungeon and hurled them all at Hyena. One snot-green monster after another pelted him, and the monster-man screamed from pain and frustration.

Luci flung in from the side and tumbled to a stop next to Ortho. She thrust the head of her staff at Hyena and threads exploded from the end of it. Hyena was quickly balled up in a glowing, silvery knot. Luci then raised her staff and swung it around and around her head. The ball that held Hyena started to rotate around Luci. Gradually, it picked up speed and was soon whirling so fast that Ortho could only make out a glowing blur.

“Wee!” Hyena screamed, his voice muffled by the threads.

“You find that fun?” Luci said, bearing her teeth in a wild grin. “Well, let me show you a new trick.”

She dropped the staff and the threads disappeared at once. Hyena’s momentum, however, did not, and he was fired off like a stone in a slingshot. He slammed into a wall, creating a third crater.

Luci collapsed to the floor beside Ortho. “Urgh. So heavy,” she groaned.

Ortho kneeled down beside her. “Are you stupid? I told you, he’s mine.”

“Listen, Mr. Ortho,” Luci said. She struggled to push herself up and crawled towards her staff, now lying a step or two away from her. Whatever effect her enma fatigue had on her was clearly making such an easy task a struggle. “There’s only one way I know how to stop Hyena. Will you please help me?”

“What part of, ‘He’s mine,’ don’t you understand?”

Luci turned to face him. There was genuine fear in her eyes, and only now between the riot of odd smells coming from his curse and general rot of the dungeon did he notice how pungent the sharp and bitter scent of fear was that rolled off Luci. Her hair was dull and grey again and her beanie was sitting crooked on her head. “Please. I just want to get Mr. Wip back,” she whispered.

He didn’t want to admit it, but Luci’s plea and the sight of her struggling with her fear, all the while putting up such an incredible fight, finally struck something within him. He didn’t want to admit that he’d seen this once before, on the day when his tribe was attacked, as his father crawled bloody on the floor; begged him to flee. He didn’t want to admit that he cared, because a warrior cared about nothing but honour, so he rationalised his situation instead.

Ortho’s breath was coming in heavy. He was tired from having to keep the curse at bay with the recycling technique, and with his enma cut low, he wasn’t sure how well he could split his flows between his wadis, his armour, and his shield. His shin guard was broken. If it kept going like this, he was going to get pummelled. But there was nothing wrong with fighting dirty, of course. When fighting monsters, a warrior did what had to in order to win.

“Alright,” he huffed.

Luci reached out with a shaky arm and grabbed her staff. The two glowing aftocores on its crescent-shaped head gained intensity. She sighed and stood. Then she stared at Ortho with an expression of grim determination, her eyes pulsing silver as brightly as her hair. She was a head-and-a-half shorter than him, but she seemed as overwhelming as any Sara, the elite warriors of Huhl Hadem.

“Here’s what we do,” she said.

Ortho stomped the corner of his shield on the ground twice in a warrior’s salute.

“We have to hug him,” Luci said, completely serious.