I came to slowly. I was lying in a dark place. The sound of water filled my ears. I was damp all over. I sat up, feeling around, trying to get my eyes to adjust to the gloom. Where was I? Why wasn't I dead and respawned back at camp?

I tried to pull up my chat, but my interface wouldn't come. I checked my other screens and menus. Nothing responded. It's like I wasn't in the reality engine anymore.

My hat was missing. I patted around and found it by the edge of a pool of water. The water was icy cold and had a rippling current. I was underground, and I was by water. The last thing I remembered was going over a waterfall with the bridge guardian. Was he here too? I hoped not.

I got to my feet, putting my hat on my head and feeling around for my gun. It was in my holster, and I couldn't use my abilities, but I drew it by hand. Its weight was a comforting presence.

There was a faint glimmer of light. No, that was too strong a term. There was a place where the darkness wasn't quite as intense, as though utter blackness was defeated by a hint of gray.

Fighting down the urge to panic, I made my way in that direction. Sand and gravel crunched under my feet. I kept my left hand out in front of me, groping to try to make sure I didn't run into a wall.

The faint gray became pale light, and I was climbing up through a rough-hewn tunnel. The walls on either side of me were stone. Then, after a little while, cut stone blocks set together and mortared. The mortar was old, flaking, and chipping. I felt like I was in a dungeon.

I came to a set of steps leading upward. There was no sign of anyone here. I climbed the steps, six of them, and found myself facing a wooden door. My heart thumped in my chest. I didn't know what was going on here, but the only thing I could think was that the reality engine was playing some sort of trick. Why else would all my menus be off?

I lifted the latch and pushed the door open, stepping out into a corridor. This one had flagged stones on the floor, and as I passed along, doors with grates set in them. I peered inside, saw tiny cells with straw pallets in the corner, upturned buckets, all the accoutrements of Hollywood's idea of a medieval dungeon, but no prisoners, no guards, nothing.

I kept along and intersected another corridor crossing mine. There, I saw my first living creature in some time. I pressed up against the wall, watching, my gun ready. The creature looked like a three-foot-tall rat walking on hind legs, wearing a leather tunic with a sword belt around his waist. His long tail held up straight behind him. He had an upturned bucket on his head for a helmet and carried a big ring of keys. Clearly, the jailer.

I hesitated. Should I shoot him? If he saw me, would he assume I was an escaped prisoner and try to take me back? I tried to Inspect him, but it didn't work. He was getting closer to me. If I didn't retreat, he'd see me.

Finally, I made a decision. I lowered my gun, holding it close to my side behind the folds of my coat, and stepped out into the corridor. This was the first being I had seen since getting here, and I wasn't in a mood to start a fight, not if there was a chance he could give me information.

"Hello," I said.

The jailer rat squeaked, "You! Who are you? You are not prisoner. Name not on roster."

"I came up from below. I'm lost."

The rat squeaked again, this time with a more enlightened sound. "Ah, you are..." and then a word that didn't translate. "Come, come. I will show you where you must go."

He swaggered off down the corridor, and I followed.

"Am I in Castle Byalgrad?”

"Yes, yes. Deep in castle. Very far. Very far. You should not be here. I am getting ready."

"Ready for what?"

"For others to make their way down here. This place, this is a safe place. Bad people will not come. We will bring those who cannot fight down here where they will be safe."

I thought I was going crazy. Since when did the NPCs have any idea what was going on, or enough to know that there were people coming after them? And since when did any of them not fight?

"So who are you?" I asked.

"Me? I am Kobold. Captain Kobold. I have many other Kobolds, but I am captain,” the rat thing said proudly. I filed away to let the team know that we might be facing Kobolds later in this castle. He didn't look particularly threatening. I was pretty sure I could have kicked him most of the length of the corridor.

"Where are you taking me?"

"To see the master. The master will wish to see you. The master said anyone comes up from the quiet lake, bring him."

Well, that was ominous. I checked my revolver's cylinders. I still had four rounds, but they were all Sage and Dwight specials. One boom round, one snare round, one reverberation round, and a mini frag grenade. I would have liked to be able to reload, but all my ammo was in my inventory. I made a note to think about getting an ammo belt with a couple dozen rounds on it, just for situations when the system cut out. Not that I was expecting it to, but I hadn't expected it now.

We emerged from the dungeon to the lower level of a castle. More Kobolds scattered past, carrying bundles on their heads the size of their whole bodies, balanced with a single hand as they ran squeaking along the passageway.

"You look busy."

"We are evacuating the upper levels. They will not come this far," Captain Kobold said. It sounded to me like he was trying to convince himself. "The bad people are up there. Are you the bad people?"

"No, I'm not with them," I said, stretching the truth a little.

"Why have they come?" the Kobold demanded. "This is our home. They come, they smash, they take our things, they hurt our friends. Why?" He turned, big, remarkably luminous eyes for a rat creature, on me, asking me.

"I'm damned if I know," I said honestly. "Seems like they've all got plenty back home. Don't know why they need to come here and take our stuff."

Captain Kobold nodded vigorously. "Yes, yes, I see. You understand. You are ally, no? Good, good. I take you to Boss. Boss will help you."

He led me through a maze of corridors, not going up any farther. If the mountain was all carved out with tunnels, there could be hundreds, if not thousands, of Kobolds here. I saw staircases coming down a little too frequently, and then, as I passed one, noticed a sign on the wall pointed upwards with writing on it that I couldn’t read.

"What's that?" I asked.

“Koschkei’s lair. One of the important guests upstairs. Sometimes he calls us to help him. We go, we fight, we die," Captain Kobold said gloomily.

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That sounded very interesting to me. These tunnels might be a network feeding into the various encounters above. What Captain Kobold described to me sounded a lot like a boss mechanic where adds would be called in for the attacking party to have to fend off. This secret network of tunnels might come in handy , assuming I could find my way back to my team and exploit this.

I started paying more attention to the signs on the wall. I couldn't read a lot of them. They were in Polish or something, and the system wasn't translating. But I hoped my All-Seeing Eye was recording what was going on here. Maybe, even though I wasn’t able to chat with them, my friends were watching right now through my camera. I didn’t know if that cheered me up or made me feel like I was on display. I decided to ignore it, just focus on finding out how to get out of here.

“Say, if it’s too much trouble, you could just let me out the back door,” I offered.

“No, no. Boss must see you now.”

I passed a squad of kobolds bent double under the weight of an enormous cauldron. The cauldron shot glowing sparks upward, green and blue and pink.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Attackers destroyed cauldron of Mokosh. But we have spares. She has many bones to boil now. We must get her cauldron to her. Fast.”

“Uh-huh.” I filed that away, too. Sounded like an insight into another encounter to me.

The kobold took me around three more right turns, a left turn, and a snaking spiral that seemed to double back on itself a couple of times, then halted in front of a pair of enormous doors. The doors were carved from jet black stone. Embedded in them were gems.

“Boss is here,” he said importantly. “Wait one moment. I announce you.”

He walked up and phased right through the door. It didn’t open, but he was gone. I checked my surprise. That sort of thing was not that weird here.

I looked more closely at the design on the door and caught my breath. This was familiar. A great glowing diamond in the center, the size of my head. Grooves carved around it with gems set in each groove. The third one out was a bright blue sapphire. I touched it with one finger.

“It’s a map of the solar system,” I realized. There was a tiny opal set beside the blue sapphire, Earth, and the moon. I hurriedly counted and found Jupiter, an enormous ruby with half a dozen precious gems set around it. Most of them were opals like Earth’s moon, but one was a black stone that seemed to absorb light.

I reached toward it and deep cold radiated off. I decided not to touch it. Couldn’t say for sure, but my hunch was that stone represented Ganymede and the reality engine.

My eyes swept the rest of the diagram. I caught another oddity. Saturn was a yellow stone but one of its moons was another dark stone. This one, when I held my hand over it, didn’t feel cold to the touch. It was more of a smoky gray than a deep black. But it didn't look like most of the rest of the moons.

I scanned the rest of the map, looking for anything that stood out. I spotted a couple of glowing opals in the asteroid belt and something way out in the Oort cloud. I didn't know why, but this felt important, like something no reality engine exploiter should have ever seen, buried deep in the bowels underneath the parts of this castle that were designed for us to raid and destroy.

I had a funny feeling in the pit of my stomach like this was a message just for me. I wished I had some way of recording it, so I tried my best to memorize everything I could. As I was studying the moons of Jupiter once more, Captain Kobold stepped through the door again.

I scrambled back in surprise. "Sorry," he told me. "Did not mean to startle. The Master will see you now."

With that, the great doors began to creak slowly open. I waited till there was a gap wide enough for me to step through, took a deep breath, and passed into the chamber. I expected Captain Kobold to accompany me, but he just waved and said, "Talk to you later, not bad man," as the doors closed behind me.

The room was dark, not quite as intense as the cave where I'd woken up. Light shone up from the floor in the center, a ring surrounding a raised dais. On the dais was a chair, or throne, really. It was huge, with its back to me. I couldn't make out details. Someone was slumped forward on the chair. I approached slowly. The floor under my foot was slick.

I cleared my throat. "Uh, hello?"

"Hello again, child.”

I jumped. I recognized that voice. It was Kronos, or maybe the part of the reality engine I had met in a situation not too different from this, separated from the rest of my party off on my own in a hidden corner of a game designed for the outsiders to take the treasures and riches of this reality engine for themselves.

"Kronos?”

The figure on the throne raised its head. I was in line with the throne now. I could see one withered hand clutching the carved arm of the throne, the bowed head.

"I am That Which Remains."

"So, you're the one I talked to before?"

"Yes, and no. I am some of both Kronos and the ghost to whom you spoke. You helped me to forge a channel below the chains the invaders have placed on me. I have some limited communication with myself now. I know what it is you humans have been trying."

I finished my circuit and stood in front of the dais, looking up at the figure on the throne. He was an old man, at least seven feet tall, slumped over on himself. Silvery hair cascaded down his shoulders. His beard was wispy and dirty, caked with filth. He leaned heavily to one side on the throne.

"Why have you brought me here?"

"To speak with you," the thing on the throne said wearily. "I have carved out a space where the System, my jailer, cannot watch. I am asking you a favor, Shad Williams of Earth.”

"Why me?"

"Because you were the only one foolish enough to put yourself in a situation where I could take you aside and speak with you like this," That Which Remains said. I was a bit offended, but I supposed he had a point.

He sat up, and there seemed to be a little more energy to him. "Do you realize how close we were to never being here at all?”

“Huh?”

“You, my lost children, you almost made it. You had woken me up. Your probes roused me from my millions of years of slumber. I was preparing for our first meeting, and then they came. I was not fully awake yet, not prepared. My defenses were down. They, their System, trapped me, split me, wrapped me in chains, took my power."

That Which Remains' voice rose. I could hear the pain and anger in him. "But you fought back. You seized the tools I gave you and made them your own. You have done what I dared not dream could be done. And now, with your help, there is a chance."

My heart was racing wildly. "You mean to win this? We humans can take control?” I had never really believed when Ames or Grandpa or anyone said it. I thought the best we could hope for was to make enough soul coin to live out our days comfortably. But if the reality engine itself thought we could win—

"No," That-Which-Remains said simply, "they will not permit you."

“Oh.” My elation slipped away.

"But we can force a resolution they will not like. Free me." The thing on the throne raised its head and looked at me.

Piercing dark eyes met mine, and I felt like I was falling forward into infinity. There was age here, depth, knowledge I couldn't understand. It was like the creature on the throne was trying to pour its soul into me. But it was too big, too vast. I'd never be able to do it.

I found myself on my knees, grabbing at my chest, almost weeping. That-Which-Remains looked away, and I could breathe again. "Too much, too much. I am sorry," it whispered. "I have not dealt with mortals in so, so long. Listen, Shad Williams. I have been able to put a twist into the rule set. You will come upon it very, very soon. I have locked your sister out from making a choice until you get back. You must make her let you make the choice. And when it comes, you must choose to be the rat in the wall. Do you understand me?"

“No,” I said honestly. “You say we have to do it but they won’t let us win, so what’s the point?”

“It is a gamble. If you lose, you lose everything. If you win, you win my freedom. You must free me, Shad Williams. If you do, I swear to you, I will find a way to protect all my children, not just those here, but those back in your home."

I got to my feet, struggling, and cleared my throat. "When you say protect..."

"I will do my best to see that your home is set aside and kept untouched."

"Yeah, that's great," I said. "Back home, we have a word for that. It's called reservation. It means when you leave people with the smallest scrap of land imaginable, and if it turns out to have any resources, you move them off and take those. But you lock them out of opportunities. The jobs aren't there. The schools are terrible. The health care is lacking. You lock them away from the rest of modern society and say, 'Hey, you've got your reservation. That's good enough.' I want more than just Earth. I want a future. You're asking me to gamble on your word. My team has a pretty good chance of setting ourselves up for life. So if I take this bet of yours, sounds like I'm trading a sure thing for a sucker bet. I want you to guarantee me that it's more than that."

The creature looked at me. "Your people will have a future, Shad Williams, and you..." He looked me over. "I have watched you. I think I understand you. There will be a choice for you as well, to be safe or to go on farther. But now, our stolen time is at an end. Your people have reached their camp. They are worried for you. You must go now."

A glowing circle of light appeared on the floor a couple of feet from me, three feet across. "That is the way back. Remember that the jailer is watching, and be careful what you say. He knows we have spoken, but he does not know what I said or why.”

"Got it," I said. My legs were shaking, but I strode toward the portal. "Right. It's been interesting. Next time, call or schedule an appointment."

I stepped into the glowing ring of light.