"Where were you?" Sage squealed. She threw herself on me and embraced me as I appeared in the middle of our outpost. Her grip was surprisingly strong.

"Ugh, don't choke me," I managed.

"Shad, you dummy, you did it again. You jumped off a waterfall for no good reason, and then we couldn't get hold of you. Where were you?"

“Glitch in the matrix," I said. "I'm fine." I tapped my head. "Got some stuff to think about."

We were in the middle of a group of happy, cheering, successful miners. Grandpa pushed his way over and shook his head as Sage let me go.

"Well, that was pretty dumb, but it worked," he said. “The System announced that no further teams would be getting past the doors. We've got some very angry teams on our map. I think they're going to be making our lives difficult. Our crafters are going to need heavy guard, and I've got everybody here while we make some decisions. Our war chest isn't as big as we'd like it to be. Every death's going to cost us."

Juana appeared in the doorway of the church. "In here," she called. "We need a strategy meeting, and I don't need to have to explain things twice. Get on in here, and we'll talk about what's going on."

We extracted ourselves from the happy crowd. Grandpa stood on the steps, turned, and addressed our miners. "Go get some breakfast at Mama Grace's. Be back here in two hours. We'll have a plan by then."

Everybody let out a whoop and streamed toward the portal back to Threshold as we followed Juana into the war room. The tables had been pushed back around the edges of the room.

I found a chair and collapsed into it. In the middle of the room was a glowing display. It showed what I guessed was the layout of Castle Byalgrad. Various chambers had icons and text under them. I was more interested in the underneath. There was no indication of the vast network of tunnels that I had just seen.

"Once we attained the key, the System provided us with a great deal more information," Juana began. "There are eight bosses in this castle which must be defeated in order to attain gems which will be used to empower our key. Once the key is empowered, we can use it to unlock a passage to face a..."

I held up a hand. "Hang on just a minute. I've got some information that might change what we're doing here." But I pointed upward and then tapped my ear. “Loose lips sink ships.”

Juana folded her arms across her chest. She sighed. "Shad, you know we can't make good strategic decisions without all the information, right?"

"I know," I said, shrugging, "and I'm afraid we might need to make a bad strategic decision here."

I turned to Sage, who had seated herself in a chair by me and was devouring a plate of fresh-baked muffins. "Can you toss me one of those?” She hurled a streusel-topped pastry at my head.

“Not that you deserve it, but here.”

I took a bite. “Mm. So good. What do we know about that guardian anyway?" I asked. We had Gideon, our Slavic expert, here along with Arjun and Kirin, who were over in the corner muttering together. Dwight sat down by Sage and stole one of her muffins.

"That was definitely a Chort," Gideon said. "In Slavic legends, they're devils, usually considered sons of Chernobog, an evil deity."

"Okay," I said, "is Chernobog one of the bosses in the raid? He mentioned his father and some other person named Belog. Belabel? I forget.”

"We think Chernobog might be our final boss," Gideon said. "That information is still restricted."

"So what do we know about Chernobog?"

"Chernobog's fairly well attested to in legend. I could give you a rundown of his various supposed abilities and tricks. He's a fairly standard evil tempter god, possibly inflated after contact with Christianity into a more traditional devil figure. The interesting thing is that some legends say he has an equal and opposite, Belobog, the white god. There's a lot of dispute over whether Belobog is original Slavic mythology or something invented in the post-Christian period."

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“Right, that was the name.” I sat up straighter as I chewed on the muffin. “Dual gods, huh? One good, one evil?” That was pretty interesting. Got me thinking about That Which Remains and his jailer.

Gideon shrugged. "Again, the problem with all of these myths is that very little was written down before Christian missionaries came and began influencing the culture. After that, a lot of the old stories take on a much darker tone. They're relics of a pagan past, not something to be held on to."

A thought struck me, a memory of my experience down below, and I didn’t want to forget it. I turned to Juana. "Can I have a piece of paper and something to write with?"

She looked puzzled but pulled a sheet off of her clipboard and handed me a pen. I scribbled out a crude diagram of the solar system and put stars on the places I remembered anomalies on the wall map. I folded it over and handed it to her. "This needs to go to Colonel Ames. I don't want to say anything about it."

She looked puzzled, glanced at the paper, frowned, shook her head, folded it back up, and disappeared it back into her inventory. "Whatever you say, Shad."

I turned back to Sage. "Can I see this key you got?"

She pulled it out of her inventory and tossed it to me. As soon as it hit my hand, a box appeared in midair with words in it. A system voice began reading the words in the box.

[Congratulations, team. You have acquired a key to Castle Byalgrad. You have found the key to Castle Byalgrad. You are one of the five teams who will be permitted within its walls to lay siege to the inhabitants and their treasures.

You must pick a faction to champion. These factions are part of the entire exploit attempt, across all reality shards. All teams engaging in this exploit will choose one of these factions. Whichever factions end up with the largest shares of the reality engine will receive additional rewards. Each faction has certain benefits and drawbacks. Faction choice is permanent and cannot be changed.

So choose carefully. Be sure to read the descriptions thoroughly!]

Then there was a long, long list of factions, at least twelve, with names like the Crusaders or the Avengers of Mjaal or Sacred Warriors of Heaven.

"Okay," Juana said, staring. "I will start to read through the descriptions and make lists…”

I was scrolling through the list, looking for what I knew had to be there. Down at the very bottom, the last entry, the Tunnel Rats. I expanded it.

[Warning! This faction choice will change your experience dramatically.

Tunnel Rats. Side with the Tunnel Rats and defend your home and heritage against invaders. This faction is only open to natives of planet Earth.

Warning! If you choose this faction, you must defeat all other factions, causing them to give up their attempt at bosses.

Read that again. ALL OTHER FACTIONS. Every team not allied with you. Currently, that’s 852 other teams.

Warning! This will implement secondary rule set which will apply to all miners across all 87 Reality Engine shards. There are severe consequences to the secondary rule set. It is advised that you review entire secondary rule set before picking this faction.

Warning! Seriously, don’t pick these guys. You’ll lose, and it’ll be painful.]

I was holding the key in my hand. It grew hotter and hotter as I held it. "Tunnel Rats," I said aloud. "We'll take the Tunnel Rats." The key burned so hot, I yelped and dropped it.

[Confirmation! Misfits Guild has selected Team Tunnel Rats. The secondary rule set is now in place. There will be a two-hour pause on all attempts at bosses so that teams may adjust to the new rule set.]

"What did you do?" Juana yelped. She turned on me, hands on hips, eyes glaring. I leaned back in my chair, trying to get away. "Shad, what the hell did you just do?"

I held up my hands defensively. “It’s all right, Juana. I know what I'm doing. Kind of."

I didn't. I was going off of an encounter with the ghost in the machine. If I'm honest, I wasn't sure I'd made the right choice. But I knew what we were going to get if we played the game by their rules. Scraps. Trash. A promise of retirement for us and misery for everyone back home. “I don't know what we're getting with this, but I think neither do they. We've got to upset the apple cart, Juana. It's our only chance.”

“Every other team?” Juana demanded, her eyes unfocused. “852 teams? We don’t even have two hundred combat-ready miners, how are we supposed to defeat thousands? They’re not just going to sit around and wait for us to show up one by one either.” She turned to me. “Do you have some sort of plan?” she asked desperately. “Please tell me you have a plan. Because I just don’t see how we can do this.”

Grandpa was looking at me quietly. He cocked his head. "Does this have something to do with where you were just now?"

I nodded.

"And you don't want to talk about it because we're trying to keep things away from the man upstairs?"

I nodded again. "I'm not sure about this," I admitted. "I'm gambling everything on a hunch."

Grandpa sighed. "Well, what's done is done. So let's look over this secondary rule set and figure out where we go from here."

Juana was still seething, her dark eyes furious. "Shad Williams, I know you're headstrong and impulsive and like to leap before you look, and it's one of the things I like about you, but argh!” She threw her hands up in the air and stomped off to go speak with Kirin and Arjun.

Dwight was shaking his head, looking at me. "Well, at least I can say one thing about hanging out with Team Twofeather. Life certainly isn't ever boring, is it?"