Felicity was nearby. And Joanna was all alone, on a dungeon floor that hadn't been cleared yet. And I was all alone too, but hopefully I could handle myself long enough to meet up with Felicity.

First thing I needed was light. Easy enough to conjure up. I immediately wished I hadn't, though; there was a rat the size of a guard dog not ten feet away! It squealed and pounced on me, its teeth and claws scratching at my leather armor.

Between tough enchanted armor and Joanna's protective spells, nothing got through. I shot an ice spike through its head, making it thrash briefly before dying, then looked around for the source of the sounds of battle. I couldn't see where it was coming from, but the sound seemed to be echoing from off to my right, so I started heading that way. "Felicity!" I called out.

No answer. And a few moments later, the sounds of fighting stopped. I kept moving, tapping the pole on the stone in front of me as I walked. "Hello?"

"Who is there?" came a reply, but it wasn't Felicity's voice. Masculine, deep, and strangely accented, whoever it was spoke Common, but I had no idea beyond that.

"Wait, who are you?" I called out. "I thought we were the only ones down here."

"I am Terenaþ. Come quickly, I require your aid."

That sounded like a divine name. "Never heard of any god named Terenaþ."

"I am no deity, but I do serve them. I am an angel of Meþas's court."

Well crap. That's something I definitely wanted nothing to do with. The Codices teach that the first and highest duty is ever to give aid in the work of divine beings, and that Celestials should be assisted and obeyed without question. It was something I had always kind of accepted easily enough, as it would never actually be relevant to my life... right?

Well, now either it was, or there was someone up ahead trying to mess with me. So far all I had was a voice. But it was the voice of somebody strong enough to survive down here, that much was certain.

"Have you seen anybody else? My party had a paladin of Meþas with us, but we've been separated from her."

"No, it is only yourself. Please, make haste."

I walked more quickly, not seeing any monsters nearby. Maybe Terenaþ had already cleared them out?

It was only a minute or so until I came around the corner and saw a man standing there, dressed in a shimmering white robe, a large, feathery wings sprouting from either shoulder blade, his body shining brightly enough to illuminate the cavern. He turned to look at me as I approached. "Greetings, fellow traveler. You have the strength to withstand the denizens of this dungeon?"

Traveler? "Yeah, I guess." He certainly looked like an angel, at least.

"Then I request your aid. Thrice have I clashed with the champion of this dungeon, and thrice he beat me back. With another warrior at my side, though, we could prevail."

I held up my hands as if to ward off the very idea of trying to face a... champion? I could only assume he meant the dungeon boss, and one strong enough to equal an angelic warrior was something I definitely didn't want to tangle with! "I'm no warrior," I said. "Just an enchanter, here to train and some of my party got lost down here when a wall broke open. Umm... how did you get in here?"

"It is my sacred quest," he said, as if that explained everything. Maybe it did, in his eyes at least?

Whatever. "So what's this champion like?"

"A gargantuan beetle. Slow to move, but swift to strike with its tusks, and able to spray acid."

Giant scorpions, giant rats, giant beetles... hmmm, I wonder what this dungeon's theme might be?

"Is it the acid giving you trouble?" I guessed.

The angel nodded. "The beast can strike with more than my wards can withstand."

"You should help me regather my party. We have an armored paladin and an abjurer who'd both be a lot of help there."

"I cannot. My time on this plane grows short. You are the aid the Highest Ones have sent to me."

Why is he putting all this on me? "I don't know if I can. Protection isn't my role, and if you can't kill it before it gets past your wards, I won't either without some stronger wards."

"Have faith, young man. What is your name?"

"Brad."

"If we are successful here, you will be renowned as a hero, perhaps even more. I say to you, there will be those who dub you Saint Braidaþ."

Well. He definitely knows exactly what to say to entice me, huh? "How could that possibly be the result of killing a dungeon boss?"

The angel frowned. "Is there no faith in your heart, that you cannot accept my words? Then you would not accept the reason behind them either."

So his reasons for wanting me to fight a dungeon boss are just as crazy as the idea itself. Got it. On the other hand... big, powerful angelic warrior who could easily smite me if I flat-out refused. I really had no good options here. "All right. So what's the plan for fighting it together?"

"All I need is time. My strongest attack is a Quake spell, to disrupt the stones of the cavern to cause them to pierce the beetle. But I have never been able to charge it to full strength."

Wait, so that was him? "You said you fought three times already, but your Quake was never strong enough? Up above, we've felt the ground shake three times today."

He nodded.

"You do know we're right on the edge of a city, right? Any stronger and there will be devastation."

"The rebuilding will be but a small matter," Terenaþ said dismissively. "All that matters is completing the quest."

Hold fast to that which you know to be true. That's what the Guidance had said. Well, one thing I know for certain is that there is no scenario in which an earthquake levels a medium-sized town and the rebuilding afterwards is "but a small matter," to say nothing of all the injuries and deaths it would cause! I didn't have much in the way of good options, though, so I did the only thing I could do.

"All right. I'll help. I take it the champion's room is close by?" (Seriously, who calls a dungeon boss a "champion?")

"Through that corridor," he said, turning to walk towards it. "Can you earn me the time I need to grow my spell fully?"

"I can. Can you ward me against its attacks?"

The celestial chanted something and waved his hands, and I felt power settle over both of us. "Let us begin."

The corridor sloped downwards and curved around, then emerged into a large, open space dominated by a monstrous stag beetle roughly the size of an elephant! Minor cracks and seams ran throughout the floor, and the high ceiling was full of heavy stone spikes poking down. Wait... was he trying to use a Quake to drop those on the boss?!? "Why not just disrupt the stone?"

"That is what I am doing!" he said as he began preparing his spell. I felt some very minor tremors right away. The beetle turned and lumbered forward, spraying acid at him. His protective spells absorbed it, but I knew I had to do my part. I was pretty sure I could disrupt the stone more efficiently, but not quickly enough for the fanatical angel!

I began to cast ice spears at the monster to get its attention. I rapidly tossed out one after another, aiming for eyes, for joints, for its mouth when it opened. It gurgled and spat acid at me, which hit an invisible barrier inches from my body. Like rain splattering on a windshield, it splashed around me and fell to the stone, hissing and smoking faintly on the stony ground, but the barrier itself seemed to be getting thinner. I could see what Terenaþ meant, that he didn't have long to set up his spell.

"You have a great many castings of that prepared," he said, sounding surprised. But not as surprised as I was by those words!

Is he running on spell slots? No wonder his understanding of magic is all weird! Were things really that backwards on the upper planes?

The ground started to tremble harder as he continued pouring magic into his spell. I steeled my will; it was now or never.

Throwing another ice spear at the beetle, I dodged as it moved to retaliate with its acid breath, running behind Terenaþ, making the angel catch the blast full on his ward. "Be careful!" he called out.

"Sorry! I'll have to be more deliberate." And so I was. My next ice spear went directly into his back, right between his wings.

There was one other thing I knew to be true: an Outsider can only truly be killed on their home plane. Which meant that this would only banish him, and did not count as murder.

He cried out in pain. "Stop! You don't know what you're doing!"

"I'm saving thousands of lives from a mad zealot," I said as I put the next one through his neck. The angel collapsed, clutching at his throat, then his body rapidly faded away into nothingness, leaving only a smear of blood behind on the stone, far too small to truly represent the magnitude of what I had done.

Leaving me alone with the boss in its lair, in the dark as the angel's glow faded away.

I beat a hasty retreat, taking another blast of acid on my back, but the wards held just long enough for me to get back up the corridor a bit, before I slumped to the ground, trembling, hyperventilating. I couldn't believe what had just happened. I'd manipulated someone, gained their trust only to betray it, and then brutally executed them. Technically Terenaþ wasn't dead, but even so...

I was capable of doing such things, in cold blood. And that scared the abyss out of me! My stomach heaved. I was lucky I hadn't eaten anything recently, or I'd probably have vomited it all over the floor. As it was, I spent probably a good five minutes just sitting there, doubled over, trying to get my body back under control. How was all of this happening to me? How was it even possible? I never wanted any of it!

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I don't know how long I was sitting there, completely out of it, lost in my head. Could have been ten minutes, could have been two hours. What finally brought me to myself was the simple, base needs of my body: I was getting hungry. There wasn't much to eat down here, so the only thing to do was to get out.

I can process my emotions some other time, I told myself. Right now... escape.

I reached into my spatial bag and pulled out an engraving tool and a blank plate. I always carried a few on me just in case a need arose. This was gonna be tricky without a rune tablet to prepare the schema, but what I wanted was pretty straightforward: I began etching runes to weaken stone, and added a specifier that it would only happen in perfectly horizontal bands of a highly specific thickness of exactly ten feet across. Once I had the schema prepared, I took out Felicity's Potion of Æther, twisted the top off and, as advised, chugged it down.

It tasted... indescribable. Like, different from anything I've ever had in my mouth before, so there was no basis for comparison. Not sweet or salty or bitter or metallic, not meaty or fruity or cheesy or fishy or nutty or medicine-y. The closest I can come is that it tasted vaguely kinda-sorta the way cleaning chemicals smell, but even that's not particularly accurate. I swallowed it down quickly, though, then gasped as the aftertaste hit me. Ouch! That was almost physically painful, like the burning sensation of biting into a hot pepper, but somehow in my soul rather than the flesh of my mouth!

I took several deep breaths until my eyes and ears stopped stinging, then walked back into the boss room, already starting to feel my mana pool filling. That was good; I'd need a lot of power for this. Throwing the plate on the ground, I started pouring energy into it, hoping I could get enough to activate the schema before the boss attacked. It didn't seem too concerned by my presence at the moment; maybe it didn't recognize what I was doing as hostile?

After an exhausting near-minute of simply channeling more and more power into the plate, the runes engraved on it flared with bright light. Looking up at the ceiling of the cavern, I used stone shaping to knock free three suddenly-loose stalactites, which fell and impaled the giant beetle, killing it instantly. It was honestly kind of anticlimactic, and it filled me with sadness; if only Terenaþ hadn't been such a crazy Jenkins, we could have simply done that and resolved things peacefully!

I blame being drained emotionally, physically, and magically, overwhelmed and pushed well past my limits, for what I did next. I really should have tried to backtrack and find Joanna and Felicity. And to be fair, it's not like I actually had any intention of abandoning them down here! It's just... as long as I was there, with the boss defeated and the Core one room away, I might as well go touch it. That's what you do after you beat the boss, right?

I walked into the Core room. It looked a whole lot like the previous one, with two notable exceptions. First off, this Core was enormous compared to the one above, at least three feet in diameter!

Second, it was badly damaged, its surface crisscrossed with fine spiderwebs of cracks, plus one rather deep one that curved in a nearly straight arc down about half of its surface. It almost looked as if someone had slashed at it with a sword, or hacked into it with an axe or something... and then, for whatever reason, left before finishing the job.

Was Terenaþ trying to destroy the Core? The thought suddenly struck me. But what purpose could such an act possibly serve?

Well, as long as I'm here... I reached up to touch the levitating gem, and like before, I felt power flowing into me. It felt good, refreshing, soothing. Made me feel a bit less broken after the... overwhelmingness... of recent events. But I also felt something else. There was a will there that brushed up against my mind. It felt as exhausted as I had been a few moments prior, but then there was a feeling of resolve, a distinct sensation of "let's try one last time."

Was that the mind of the Core? Was it trying to somehow pull itself together? To heal or repair itself? I watched as rays of light began to shine from within, leaking out of the cracks in the core, and just as I was expecting the cracks to begin sealing themselves, the stone shattered. I instinctively held up my arms to shield my face, but thankfully the Core shards didn't explode outward; they just fell straight down, raining onto the pedestal and the cave floor around it.

And so did the man who was suddenly there.

He was curled up in the fetal position, falling hard onto the pedestal and rolling slightly, over the edge. I stepped forward, holding my arms out to catch the mysterious man. A grown adult, he was heavier than I expected, and I had to shove him against the pedestal to keep from dropping him to the ground. Then he let out a soft, pained groan and began to uncurl himself.

The man was wearing fancy but badly banged-up banded mail armor, but no helmet. His hair was white and fairly short, his beard similarly white and badly overgrown, unkempt, like a prisoner. Was he a prisoner, trapped in the Core? Was this dungeon some sort of... dungeon? But his face was much more youthful than you'd expect on a guy with white hair, unlined and looking to be in the prime of his life. It was a surprisingly familiar face. I couldn't quite place it, but I had the distinct impression that I had seen him before, however impossible that may sound. About medium height, human-looking, tanned skin stained with dirt and grime, particularly his hands. After a few breaths, he opened his eyes (blue) and looked at me. "Water?"

I helped him to the ground, letting him lean against me as he got his feet under him, clad in some kind of leather boots in a style I was unfamiliar with. I could conjure water easily enough, but I didn't really have much in the way of containers to drink from. Except... the potion bottle. I'd put it back in my bag after I finished it, not wanting to litter.

Pulling it out, I cast a simple water spell to fill it up, then handed it to the man, really hoping that someone being held prisoner inside a Core wasn't somehow a threat to me or... you know... the world in general? But there was something about the way he looked that resonated with me. I knew, at some level deeper than rationality, that helping him was the right thing to do.

The man guzzled it down, then gave me a weary smile. "Thank you, good man, for coming to my aid. How long has it been? I feel like I was trapped there for at least a week!"

A week? "Umm... I think it's been longer than that..."

His eyes widened. "Certainly not! My men would have stopped at nothing to seek me out! The war effort is in too much peril if I am lost."

"Umm... sir, there hasn't been war in these lands in hundreds of years."

"What do you mean by that?" he asked. But I hardly noticed; something he had just said was running rampant inside my brain. His men? The angel who I could now only assume had been trying to rescue this man had called himself a servant of...

I trembled and sank to one knee as I suddenly realized where I had seen that face before: in holy artwork at church! "You... you're Meþas!"

He looked down at me with an odd mixture of confusion and scowl on his face. "My name is General Gareth Meranas. What are you doing giving me a saintly name?" he snapped.

I slowly got back to my feet, feeling just as confused as him. "You're saying you're not Meþas, and furthermore you don't even know the name?"

He shook his head. "Should I?"

"The Builder God? The Holy Twenty, apex of the panþeon and paragon of Good? God of craftsmen and creators of all kinds? Looks exactly like you, if you cleaned up a bit? And you've never heard of him?"

The man burst out with jovial laughter. "Ha ha ha! I've done many great feats in my day, young one, but nobody's ever confused me with a god before!" He gave me a hearty slap on the back. "What's your name, soldier?"

"Brad Webb, sir. But I'm no soldier. I'm just here with some people from work. Errm... what war were you were fighting in?"

He scowled at me again. "Nothing you say makes any sense, young man. I must return to my camp."

"What camp? General... Meranas, was it? There is no war going on. The Empire, most of the entire world in fact, has been at peace my whole life."

He shook his head. "I am leading the Eighth Regiment in the War of Liberation," he insisted. But it was his next words that shook me to my core. "We were days away from converging on the Great Tyrant's palace, throwing down Valaminor once and for all, when I was captured. I must get back to my men!"

My head spun. Saint Valaminaþ was a name that every child of the Empire knew. Hero of the Chaos War, the leader who beat back the forces of the Great Tyrant, united the land, and became the first and greatest Emperor in the newly-founded Sixth Age. And now this bizarre man was trying to turn it all inside-out?

Half a dozen possible explanations flashed through my head, each one worse than the last.

"I honestly don't know what to tell you. What you're describing is not the world outside this dungeon."

The warrior slumped forward slightly, a profound weariness in his eyes. "Then something terrible has happened," he said quietly. "I suppose it would not be the first time. Master Webb, would you be so kind as to escort me to the surface?"

Three people go into a dungeon, and four come out. Not like that's gonna raise all sorts of unwanted questions or anything...

"I can. But I don't suppose you have any way to turn invisible? There are people who will notice you leaving a dungeon that they never saw you enter, and please just trust me on this, that will cause complications neither of us wants to deal with."

"Invisibility, no," he said. "But I can do this."

I wasn't quite sure what my new companion was doing, but whatever. "Come on, let's get out of here." On impulse, I crouched down and picked up a piece of the shattered Core, simply because when would I ever get another chance to own something like that? And then we walked out and started making our way back towards the top of the dungeon.

The bottom floor was mostly clear, with just a few giant rats wandering around, easily dispatched with my magic. We found the staircase quickly enough and headed upwards. As we emerged onto the floor, I heard the sweetest awful sound of my life: the harsh, dissonant guitar chords of a bardic sonic attack!

"Kayla!" I called out. "Is that you?"

"Brad?" came an echoing voice in response. It was Felicity.

"Just sit tight!" came Torrin's voice. "We'll be there soon."

Screw sitting tight. I started walking at a brisk pace towards the voices, with Meranas behind me. I probably shouldn't have. A massive, fifteen-foot rattlesnake came out of nowhere, leaping towards me, fangs bared, but suddenly Meranas darted forward, moving faster than even Felicity when she went full-out, grabbing the monster by its tail and swinging it like a whip, bashing its head against the stone. It lay there, unmoving.

"You should be more cautious of your surroundings," he said, his voice soft but stern. I just gawked, then stepped up and prodded the serpent with my boot. It was heavy! If I had to guess, the whole thing had to weigh at least 200 pounds, and he had just swung it about like it was nothing!

I let him lead as we continued.

Three snakes later, I saw magelight that wasn't mine. Looking around to make sure we were in the clear, I ran forward, and soon enough came across the whole party, plus three armored warriors in police gear.

"There you are, lad. We've been worried!" Kade said, taking several steps forward and clapping me on the shoulder. "Are you well?" Somehow none of them was paying much attention to the strange armored man ten feet away.

"Yeah, I'm fine. I think I landed near the bottom of the dungeon; I found a Core room but the crystal was shattered."

Kayla nodded at me. "Must have been the earthquakes that did it. The barrier dropped after the last one and we've been down here searching for you ever since." She looked over at Meranas. "And who is this?" she asked casually, with far too little interest or surprise.

So... he wasn't invisible, he just had some sort of effect that made himself... what? Uninteresting?

"He says his name's Gary," I said, really hoping that he'd pick up on the cue, "and he's been trapped down here for a bit."

"It's a good thing we're here, then," Torrin said. "Well, this is everyone, plus one extra, all accounted for." He turned to the policemen. "Thank you for your assistance, officers. We can head out now."

The dungeon was clear as we headed back up. I noticed Felicity's helmet looking over at Meranas a time or two, but aside from that no one seemed to pay him much mind. There were several locations marked with a big red flag in the ground, trap locations I assumed given the way everyone gave them a wide berth. Once we reached the top of the dungeon, there was a rope ladder stretching down from the staircase above and we were all able to climb back up, then exit the dungeon.

A bunch of police were outside, wanting to get reports from everyone, and particularly me, Joanna and Felicity. I told them about the earthquake, how I fell into an old, abandoned dungeon, got separated from the party by a teleport trap, and found a broken Core. I left out any mention of the other people I had met down there, for obvious reasons, and no one asked about Meranas, let alone tried to question him. He just wandered around, gawking at the buildings, the signs, the parking lot, looking like a guy who'd never seen the modern world before.

Probably because that's exactly what he is?

Once all the questions and paperwork were taken care of, the cops told us we were free to go, that there might be a few follow-up questions in a few days but don't worry, none of you are under investigation or suspicion of any crime, and so on. I went in and got changed in the locker room, then was about to head to my car when Felicity stepped up to me, also in civilian clothes now.

"Brad," she said softly, "can I get your phone number?"

I blinked. "...you're not trying to ask me out are you?"

She rolled her eyes at my attempt at levity. "Be serious. There's more to Gary than he's letting on. I want to talk about it with you, but not here."

So she had picked up on that. Because of course she had.

I traded contact info with her, then headed to my car. I found Meranas approaching me as I got in. "Such odd carriages," he remarked. "Is one of these yours?"

He had nowhere to go, did he?

"Yeah, this one. Here, get in. I'll help you find a place to stay." I gestured to the passenger's side door, and he saw how I opened it, slipping inside easily enough and buckling up once he saw me do the same.

"I did not want to believe you," he mused as I pulled out of the parking lot. "But it is clear that Mundus has changed a great deal while I was locked away."

"If only you knew," I sighed at the man who may or may not be some sort of amnesiac avatar of my god. If only he knew, and if only I knew how to deal with this!