Do it. No. You want to. No, I can’t. Or, maybe… No.

The button taunted me. Sitting there glowing a tantalizing red. It was at least three times bigger than all the others around it. That couldn’t be a coincidence. The button was important. It had to be.

Time remaining: 1 hour 47 minutes.

The time was ticking down faster than it had a right to.

“Come on, Joe. Do something!” Gabby howled from her place near the door as she loaded another bolt.

Press the button. No!

Crash! Arghhhh!

I flinched at the sound. Nora was out there slicing through wave after wave of Crocs. If it weren’t for the tight corridor even she would have been overwhelmed by now. She had been stuck in battle from the moment I had set her free. At first, she’d relished it as she always did but soon enough that bloodthirsty grin had been whisked away. What replaced it was a look a little too close to fear. That scared me more than the Crocs did.

We’d run for it. Hiding when we could and battling when we couldn’t. For at least an hour we’d weaved and ducked and opened door after door until we’d landed ourselves here. It was the first promising place we’d seen in the entirety of this maze. We’d abandoned the cozy green lights and dry stone tunnels long ago. Now it was only a dull red glow lighting the rippling puddles of foul water that soaked my new boots. Or, it tried to at least. They were 70% water resistant after all.

“Joe!”

I glanced away from the button, taking in the entirety of the wall. It looked a lot like the room I’d seen the General’s in only much, much bigger.

Press the button.

I couldn’t make sense of any of it. Some buttons and levers were labeled but in a scratchy language that made no sense to me. I might be able to speak a little gnome but I hadn’t gained the Croc Monster Tongue skill if it even existed at all. The screens here were just as full of random Crocs back in our world but just as many of them showed Crocs in very familiar tunnels; tunnels that we had just spent far too long running through.

“Can you read any of this?” I whispered to the ghost of Kendrick still chained and standing beside me.

“Sorry. I know a select few naughty words in just about every language but that doesn’t help much with this.”

“Geez, you can’t navigate traps without being caught, you can’t read Croc language, and you don’t have a weapon. What good are you?”

I expected a snarky comment in return but instead, the shadow of a man remained quiet. I grimaced and cleared my throat, trying to rid the uncomfortable weight of my own bitchiness baring down on me.

Press the button.

Time remaining: 1 hour 42 minutes.

“Joe!” Gabby screamed.

My hand moved before I could stop it. The glowing red button depressed with a solid thunk under my hand. A resounding bang followed by a sizzle and the sound of the siren blaring filled the air around us. Out in the hall, the Crocs let out a wild bellow similar to Nora’s war cry but without the uplifting effects.

Speaking of Nora, she came barrelling into the room. With a fierce cry of her own, she shoved Gabby out of the way and slammed the door shut. She dropped to the ground with her back pressed against the door and her feet braced against a chunk of concrete floor that had cracked and lifted slightly. In her hand was a splintered stick.

“We have to get out of here,” Nora bellowed.

“How,” Gabby answered as she loaded another bolt. “You just blocked the only door.”

“What did you want me to do? That last one had a head so thick he snapped my damn axe clean in half.”

My mouth grew dry as her words sunk in. “You don’t have a weapon?”

“Not one even close to my beauty Bertha. It’ll do in a pinch but with my fatigue drained most of my skills are useless now.”

I breezed over the fact that the woman had chosen to name her axe (really, who am I to judge?) and rushed across the room. I handed over all my remaining Potions of Invigorate. From what I’d observed when I’d taken them myself they acted more like a decent shot of espresso than a true Fatigue replenisher but it had to be better than nothing. Nora was a warrior, after all, and she depended on her Fatigue bar a lot more than I did.

Nora chugged the potions with abandon, not bothering to even question me about their effects. The dark smudges under Nora’s eyes gradually faded and a healthy pinkish hue returned to her pale cheeks. She tossed the flasks away when she was done with them, muttering a sedate thanks as she dropped her head back against the door and closed her eyes. I waited half a second to ensure she was well enough before chasing the discarded flasks across the floor. Don’t judge me too hard. The little glass bottles cost way too much money to toss aside like they were trash.

“All the Crocs have disappeared,” Gabby said.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

I frowned, focusing on the door again. The constant pounding and roaring were louder than before if anything else. I turned, ready to tell her how delusional she was when I realized her eyes were locked on the wall of screens. I closed my mouth, biting back my own smart remark as I eyed them as well. Gabby was right. In every monitor that displayed a portion of our world, there wasn’t a single Croc. The tunnels of this place were overrun though. The hall outside this door in particular looked like a tin of sardines with Crocs in place of the smelly fish.

The reality of my impulse decision to press the button dawned on me. I might have freed the outside world of the Croc monsters but now all of them were in here with us.

Sweat streamed down my face, stinging my eyes and dripping off my chin. My eyes flicked to the quest counter wishing now that the damn thing would hurry up and end.

Time remaining: 1 hour 29 minutes.

An hour and a half. We had to survive being stuck in this room with an unequipped tank and an army of Crocs pounding on the door for an hour and a half.

Oh, we are completely one hundred percent fucked, I thought to myself.

“Doesn’t look good, sweetheart,” Kendrick muttered. “Perhaps it’s time to call in the cavalry?”

“What do we do now?” Nora asked.

“Wait it out?” I replied.

“I like that plan,” Gabby and Nora said in unison.

“Bad idea,” Kendrick muttered, his tone turned sour no doubt because everyone was ignoring him. Me on purpose and the others because they could not see or hear him.

Nora shifted about. A smile lit up her face and yet I couldn’t figure out what we had to smile about. Then she was laughing. Just a chuckle at first but it descended rapidly into hysterics. Gabby and I shared a look over the odd occurrence, neither of us knowing quite what to say. Nora was the strongest. The most stable; so long as you didn’t piss her off I guess. Whatever this was, it wasn’t anger or determination, and that made me way more uncomfortable than it probably should have.

“Oh, shit,” Kendrick muttered, backing away.

“Do… do you… smell lavender?” Nora gasped between bursts of laughter.

“No,” Gabby responded.

I couldn’t help but notice the Daughter of Umbra shifting into a defensive stance. I turned my eyes back to Nora. I flashed up my Blindsense before stumbling back and slamming a hand over the agonizing burn that filled my eyes. Blaring red light from hundreds of clustered auras seared a hole into my skull. I cursed and blinked past the flood of tears trying to assuage the pain and chose my Enhanced Shadow Eye instead. This time, even with the sparkles being displaced by the wavering of my vision I saw something odd.

Faint purple plumes of smoke billowed through the crack under the door, reaching their fog-like fingers up to Nora’s face before they dissipated into nothing.

My feet moved before my brain. I dashed across the room and shoved Nora away from the door copping a face full of the purple smoke myself before I rushed away from it.

“What’s happening?” Gabby demanded from her place across the room.

I snickered as I crawled toward Nora, my giggles growing the more the woman laughed. It was infectious. I laughed harder and so did she until we were both gasping for breath. I reached out, lifting the woman’s chin with a shaking hand so she’d look into my eyes.

“Are you… alright?” I managed to ask before I rolled onto the floor, clutching at my side as the laughter overcame me all over again. New tears joined my old ones in a cascade down my cheeks. A stabbing pain in my side made me twist on the damp ground as I wheezed for air. Nora punched me hard enough to hurt but all I could do was laugh. “Why?”

“Stop,” she demanded. “Please.”

“You… you stop.”

“No, you.”

“Both of you stop!” Gabby screeched.

We fell silent as we stared at the girl and then both of us cracked up all over again. Beside my health bar, a new icon flashed into existence. It was a skull just like the poisoned icon I’d seen many times before but this one was purple and not the sickly fluorescent green it had been in the past. I found myself crawling back across the floor despite my aching ribs.

I yanked a flask from my bum bag and shoved the open end of it at the base of the door, filling it with the vapor that had sent us wild. I stoppered the flask as quickly as I could, eyeing the smoke trapped inside as I scurried backward on my belly. I had no idea if the smoke would actually stay in there but if this was some type of poison I’d not seen before I wanted it. Hoping being trapped in my inventory would help I stuffed the flask into my bum bag.

Gabby was racing around the back end of the room now, gingerly sidestepping the vast array of monitors. Her hands searched the bare patches of the wall as she shouted back at us, “There has to be another way out of here.”

Without Nora’s strength to hold the door closed it burst inward and three Crocs I recognised pushed ahead of the more regular-looking beasts. The leader of them was as purple as the smoke had been. He stared down at me as his jaw opened a crack in a vicious smile that only made me laugh harder. Wisps of the same smoke I’d captured in my flask escaped around his large pointed teeth.

“I do not appreciate having my entire family yanked back here so close to the end. It’s almost not worth the weeks of work it would take to send them all back. This was to be our shining moment. Thankfully, tasting your flesh at the feast tonight will make me feel much better,” the purple Croc said.

I couldn’t respond. There wasn’t enough air in my lungs to form words. Even my laughter was coming out in soundless wheezing. Thankfully, Kendrick answered for me, “It’s a bit sad that your one chance to lead the charge on a new world resulted in your climbing out of toilets.”

The monstrous crocodile hissed letting out tiny puffs of smoke as he stomped closer to the shadowy figure. “You can speak shadow man. I do not remember a world conquered by your kind. I do not even know what your kind is other than a plaything for the Guardians.”

I wanted to tell Kendrick to shut up but how could I when I could barely move? I reached out, my shaking fingers meeting Nora’s. I couldn’t even turn my head to look at her. Her strong fingers squeezed mine. Gabby appeared out of nowhere, pressing herself in between us. I could almost smell the fear coming off of her.

“Who is he talking to?” she whispered to me.

I wanted to answer her. I truly did.

“General Grack, take our main course down to the kitchens. Don’t let them out of your sight. Every single one of them is as slippery as a striped slug.” The purple Croc turned his eyes back to Kendrick and jabbed a clawed finger at him. “Especially this one.”

“Little old me? I’m honored,” Kendrick said. If he had eyelashes I’m sure he would have fluttered them.

The leader of the Crocs snorted and turned away, gliding through the horde of Crocs with ease. General Grack stepped forward and with a swing of his enormous fist, my world descended into one of pain and dancing stars and then peaceful nothingness.