Max felt a horrible pulling sensation, as if his body was being stretched out to fit through a much too small hole. When it finally stopped, Max found himself on the ground. But it was no ground he had ever seen on earth, from the queer purple colored sky to the barren alien looking terrain; there was only one thing that could explain where the people from that intersection had been taken. They were in a dungeon.

As Max pushed himself to his feet he noticed that other people were doing the same. Max’s heart sank again when he noticed that there didn’t seem to be a single hunter among their group. Looking around he could see construction workers, students, salary workers, and even a few children clinging to their parent’s legs. But there was not a single person qualified to help them out of this situation.

And then the screaming started.

All heads in the crowd turned towards the awful noise to see those few people still on the ground being pounced upon by what looked like a cross between a dog and a piranha. Ravagers, Max thought as his stomach turned to lead. Even non-hunters had some knowledge of common dungeon monsters and ravagers were some of the nastiest there were. They made up for their low level with huge numbers and unreasonable aggression. Preferring to tear their prey apart while it was still alive.

Max couldn’t be sure if it was his voice that was screaming or someone else’s. All he knew was that a single sentiment echoed from across the unfortunate crowd.

“RUN!”

And so he did. Pumping his legs like he’d never done before Max took off in a random direction, biting his lip till it bled as the screams of those slower than him rang out from behind. He hated this. He hated the gates for bringing monsters like the ravagers into this world, for forcing innocent people to die like this for no reason. But most of all he hated himself for being so weak that all he could do was run away while it happened.

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Max had always loved stories about heroes. People who stood up against injustice and put their lives on the line to protect others. When he was young he would often imagine himself as one of those great people, bravely standing up no matter what the odds were. Running away in the face of others’ suffering like this felt like he was abandoning a part of himself with each step.

He still ran.

After about a minute Max noticed that the only person still running in the same direction as him was a mother clutching her young daughter to her chest. Their eyes briefly met before a shadow descended over Max’s head, as one of the ravagers leapt over him and onto the poor mother. As her last act the woman tossed her child away to safety, not that it made much difference. The rest of the screams were dying down and the pack was circling for the final kills.

It seemed the ravagers preferred the easy kill first, as the closest one leapt towards the child. His body moving on its own Max threw himself in-between the two, his back facing the oncoming onslaught of teeth and claws. But before the monster could reach his skin, he felt the same queasy pulling sensation come over his body. And then Max watched in horror as the ravager passed right through the space he was supposed to be standing in.

The last thing Max saw before being pulled to god knows where were the pleading eyes of the little girl fixed on his own, then nothing but blackness.

When the sensation stopped again things had shifted from black to white. The world surrounding Max was almost blindingly bright and hazy. It was as if some sort of glittering fog was obscuring his vision just shy of being able to tell what anything was.

He thought he could make out that he was in some kind of open topped room, at the peak of some enormous tower. Max’s body felt hot all over, almost uncomfortably so, as if he was standing in dark clothing under the summer sun. He searched frantically for something, anything to give him some clue as to where he was now. He needed to get out of here, to go back, to try and-

“Please calm yourself, Maximillian Carter, you are safe here.”