The door squeaked for the entirety of its swing. All three of us stiffened, waiting for what was to come. Gabby had her arm raised with a barbed bolt that shone with magic loaded against the lock of her crossbow. Nora’s hands were curled into fists, a single bead of sweat rolling down her cheek. My blade led the way in the cramped space.

The hall on the other side was empty.

I blinked. That didn’t seem right. I stepped out, wishing Nora still had her axe so she could do it instead. Silence and the smell of burning hair were all that met me on the other side.

“Well, that was kind of anticlimactic,” I said, sheathing my blade.

“Were you hoping for a crowd of Crocs to greet us?” Gabby asked.

“Well, no. Something would have been better than nothing though.”

“I’m not sure I agree,” Nora said. She stepped out to meet us, her hands flexing as she glared at them. “I miss my axe.”

“You do look a little strange without it,” I said.

Gabby elbowed me. “Shut up, Joe.”

“Ouch.”

Something hard tapped against my leg. I stiffened all over again as my neck whipped around. My fingers clamped around the grip of my blade.

The little shadow glob looked up at me with its featureless face. Its body was more rounded than usual as it held tight to the still-intact mirror. The wind rushed from my lungs as a wave of relief took hold of me. I crouched to scoop up the thing.

Gabby’s scream brought the fear right back. The girl leaped away from me. Her bolt shot from the end of her crossbow, whizzing right by my ear before it ricocheted off the floor and bounded around the hall in a wild uncontrollable path.

“Gabby what the hell?” I bellowed.

“What the hell is that?” she screamed.

I gathered the shadowy glob into my hands and cuddled it against my chest. The mirror I plucked from inside it before stuffing it back in my bum bag where it belonged. “This is my shadow pal.”

“Is that who you’ve been talking to this whole time?” Nora said, her voice unnaturally high.

“No, of course not. He is…” The glob turned into wisps of smoke in my hands and vanished entirely back to the realm from whence it had come. “My friend.”

I guess my level and Perception stat weren’t high enough to keep him around for any longer. Truly, I was surprised he could last this long.

“You have some very strange friends,” Nora said.

“You should know. You’re one of them.”

“I’m pretty sure you just insulted me.”

Gabby groaned and slapped her hand to her face, rubbing so hard she turned her own skin red. “How are we going to get out of here?”

“Well, you could always shoot us with your bolts. That would get us out of here real quick,” I said.

Gabby glared at me. “It was an accident, alright? Your little thing scared the living hell out of me.”

“We should move before the Crocs come back this way,” Nora said.

“You’re right,” I said, moving to follow the pair down the tunnel away from the kitchen that had nearly been the death of us.

The golden band around my wrist still weighed heavy on my soul. It was slack now, its far end trailing far off to a place I couldn’t see. The lack of resistance could mean only one thing. A thing I didn’t want to think about right now. Even pushing the thought away had a pressure building inside my chest. It hurt, like a wound but without the blood or broken bones. My eyes flicked to my health bar. It was unbothered by my internal pain.

“Where should we go?” I asked.

“We have to find another way out of here,” Nora said.

“I know that, but how? We can’t craft a fantastical potion like the one Cassie did and we can’t work any of the odd mechanisms in this place that might send us back there. That fancy pants purple Croc made it seem like going back was a difficult task.”

“We have to try,” she ground out.

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I sighed, knowing she was right but hating that it was without a plan. I prefer to attack problems with a plan. Granted, I rarely seemed to actually manage that, and yet it remained my preference. I could go ahead and scout the tunnels, keeping to the shadows and the silvery sparkles that would hide me from the Crocs. To do that though I would have to leave the others behind and finding them again was not a guarantee. I couldn’t risk running off to find our freedom only to lose them entirely especially with Nora unarmed as she was.

Frustrated and rubbing at my chest that still felt as if Sob had planted a hoove square in the center of it I focused on my Blindsense. The skill was a better choice now that we weren’t completely surrounded. It showed many blinking auras, all of them red, rushing one way or another in all directions. Three were heading our way.

The tunnel came to an intersection. Using my skill as a guide I chose the path with the least red auras. The others didn’t argue which was a nice surprise. Next came my Enhanced Shadow Eye skill. I eyed the sparkles, looking beyond the hiding places they revealed in a desperate search for something more. I knew there would be no arrows here. The Shadow Walkers were prolific, sure, but even they weren’t game enough to plant an NPC in the Crocs home base.

At least, that’s what I thought before my eyes focused on the arrow shimmering deep in a cluster of silver sparkles in a shadowy alcove.

I paused in my forward rush, staring at the thing until my eyes began to ache. It shouldn’t be there and yet there it was. I yanked my head around, my chin hanging loose as I stared a Gabby. The girl frowned at my odd expression and then her face went slack and she looked at the alcove the same way I had. Her lips turned up in a wild grin and her eyes twinkled as they whipped back to me.

“You see it too?” I asked.

“I do.”

Nora frowned, her head snapping between the pair of us in quick succession. “See what?”

“There’s an arrow in the sparkles,” I said. “It could mean a way out of here.”

Nora looked like a fish out of water. Her mouth opened and closed a dozen times and her eyebrows did an odd dance above her eyes; first dipping into a frown then flinging right back up as the words sunk in.

“I don’t get it, but lead on.”

I took the lead for no other reason than that I was excited. I prayed whoever the arrows were guiding us toward wasn’t another freak like the clown back in the swamp. I didn’t think I could handle that even if it did mean a way out of here. I lost count of the number of times we were forced to take another path due to bobbing red auras heading our way. With the advance notice, it was easy enough to avoid the majority of them. The few we couldn’t escape succumbed quickly to Gabby’s bolts and my backstabs. Each time one fell Nora grumbled angrily under her breath for a handful of minutes, her hands always flexing at her sides.

The arrows grew more insistent until finally, we stepped into an uncomfortably familiar room. Here the floor dipped into a pool of stagnant water while screens buzzed on the wall, all of them showing nothing more than angry snow. The table the Generals had been seated around sat in the center of the pool. The last time I had been here Kendrick had been by my side and now that he was gone I missed his frustrating presence.

Atop the table was a long crate that glowed with insistent golden sparkles. My mouth watered at the sight of it. Did it hold more treasures like my new fancy armor? I rushed for it, grateful that my boots were water-resistant as they sunk deep into the foul smelly liquid.

Gabby and Nora followed me without question. The rope around my wrist sunk into the water beside me, the light coming off of it glimmering between the ripples. I reached the crate and fought to lift the lid but it was fastened tight by a line of nails. Each one of the many was perfectly spaced and there were far too many for the simple purpose of holding a lid in place. Whoever had hammered the metal spikes in had been determined to keep whatever lay within inside.

“Did you truly think you could escape me?”

We spun in unison back toward the door. The purple Croc stood there, framed by the portal, his scales lit by the flickering screens. Wisps of purple smoke escaped from between its scaled lips.

“Don’t breathe in the smoke,” I cautioned as I yanked my blade free.

The Croc chuckled as it stepped inside. Two enormous beasts followed in his wake, both of them with flames crackling around them.

Fuck.

I didn’t need the title floating above their heads to tell me what they were. Combustion Crocs. I couldn’t say the same for the purple Croc. The most I got from him was a bunch of question marks.

Nora let out her war cry, bolstering our stats as she reluctantly moved back. Gabby already had a handful of bolts lodged between her teeth and one loaded. I dumped a bottle of poison over my blade and Blinked.

The small wisps coming from the purple Croc had turned into giant clouds of poisonous gas. I moved to rush around them hoping to place a solid backstab only to have an enormous clawed hand catch me across the chest and throw me. I landed hard on the crate feeling the wood of it splinter beneath me before I tumbled off the table with it atop me.

“Do you think me some peasant who can’t tell his tail from his snout?” The purple Croc roared. “I am the Prince of Smoke. Your little tricks won’t work on me.”

Double fuck.

I gasped for air as I tried to shove the huge crate off of me. Chunks of now broken wood came off in my hands sending the full weight of it back down atop me whenever I raised it even a little. Water lapped at the sides of my face, threatening to swallow my head whole if I slipped any further.

Gabby was firing bolts with abandon and leaping away from the fiery blasts aimed at her. Water surged every time a fireball struck it before the ball fizzled out. The steam from the strikes mingled with the encroaching smoke.

Gabby was running along the walls, her wings carrying her whenever she made a wild jump, with them spread she became a different being altogether. One far more powerful than I was. It was easy to forget when she kept them tightly drawn in against her back, looking more like an odd backpack than a set of full feathered wings.

Gabby cried out and launched herself at Nora, yanking the woman out of harm's way as a ball of fire burned toward them both.

Enough was enough. I roared as I gripped my sword harder and slammed it into the pool until the blade hit the ground with tremendous force. Shadow Pulse exploded around me with every ounce of rage I could feed into it. The table flipped into the air smashing against the far wall. A wave as high as the ceiling swept over the Crocs, swallowing the smoke and extinguishing any flames. The crate atop me splintered into little more than a mountain of toothpicks, the heavy weapon trapped inside dropping into the pool beside me.

I eyed it for a moment wishing it was for me but I knew better. Along the shining wooden shaft was a word painted in gold; Gertrude.

“Nora, catch!”