Tav roused in the middle of a hallway. Annria was lying on the flagstones next to him, unconscious but breathing. The ceiling above them was unbroken stone, with no sign of the stairs they'd fallen down and no clue how far they'd fallen. No sign of the mule, either, and Tav hoped that was because the Dungeon had left it aboveground and not because some monster had dragged it away. He checked the walls—classic Dungeon stone, torches every twenty feet, very traditional. Just like Perrigen. He pulled one of the torches off the wall and examined it. The flame didn't look quite right. It moved too slowly, and the light it cast was a little too bright, a little too steady.

Tav tore a tiny scrap of fabric off his shredded trousers and held it in the flame. It didn't burn. He tried again, very briefly, with his littlest finger. It hurt like hell, but also failed to catch fire.

Eternal torches were rare and extremely useful. Tav grabbed two.

He knelt down and shook Annria. "Hey. You really need to get up." She didn't wake. Tav prodded her shoulder, hoping she wasn't seriously injured—he didn't have a skill rank available this time. He couldn't pick up a [First Aid] skill the way he'd grabbed [Wilderness Survival]. He shook her again. Still nothing. Tav set the eternal torches on the ground, where they continued to blaze merrily, and hoisted Annria's body onto his shoulders. This was apparently enough to wake her: she screamed, rolled off Tav's shoulders onto his back, and knocked him over.

"You could have woken up thirty seconds sooner," Tav said from the floor.

Annria clambered off of him and to her feet. She checked herself over, running her hands over her body, adjusting her clothes, and finding nothing obviously amiss. "Sorry about that," she said, sounding not at all apologetic. "So Tav, I don't suppose your delving experience told you which way to go?"

Tav stood up and raised a torch. In both directions, the hallway stretched out featurelessly. "Nope."

"And neither of us have weapons, do we."

"I certainly don't."

"Don't suppose your combat specialty is in unarmed fighting?"

"Never," Tav said. "I have standards. I can hit things with this torch." He picked up the other torch. "Two torches, actually. I'm a Dual Wielder, so I'm getting some benefit, but it's not great. You want to grab a few torches, too?"

"Not for fighting," Annria said, pulling another torch off the wall and eyeing it dubiously. "I'm a merchant. I don't think dungeon monsters will be intimidated by my negotiation tactics, however terrifying humans might find them."

"Don't worry, I'll cover the combat. After all, I'm the one built for violence, right?" Tav peered down the hallway. "Both directions look the same, so let's go... this way," he said, pointing at random. "Stick close to me."

"I plan to," Annria said. "By the way. Tav. If you entered in Perrigen and woke up in Karmere, do you have any idea where the dungeon exit's going to turn up next?""Not a clue," Tav said. "I wasn't even conscious the first time it spit me out."

"Well. I don't want to miss too much of my trading route, is all. On the other hand, by now Rutherford's probably raised the alarm about a cannibalistic delver roaming the countryside, so perhaps you'd better stay away from Karmere until I can explain. Try to explain, at least."

"You really told him that? When?"

"When I told you to wait outside. I was trying to be fast and subtle. I didn't have time to mince words. I am sorry, for what it's worth."

"Well, if you're sorry, then I guess it's—" Tav paused. "Actually, you know what? It's not okay. I understand why you got that idea, but if I ever go back to Karmere they're going to assume that I'm—well, that I'm a cannibalistic delver. You've slandered me to an entire country."

"Just to one guardsman! By accident! And maybe I did you a favor?" Annria said. "If you look at it with the right perspective, I mean. I told someone, but at least we didn't try to kill you. I just... led you away. If Ford, my guards, and I had all teamed up and attacked you, you might have had to kill us in order to defend yourself. Probably would have been easy for you, that's why we didn't do it, but if you're so committed to not being a murderer, you're welcome." She cracked an awkward smile. "Or you might have taken your achievement as a sign from the Dungeon and eaten all the bodies afterwards. One never knows with delvers."

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"I'm really not—" Tav shut his mouth midsentence and held a torch out to stop Annria. He'd seen something move further down the hallway. "Get your back to the wall, Annria," Tav said, motioning. "If you can't fight, try to stay out of the way. I'll do my best to keep us both safe, but—"

A spiny shape skittered down the hall toward them. Tav assessed it. It was yet another damned attercope, although this one was small, a hatchling, without the developed fangs and venom of an adult. Not much threat to him, especially with his early Class evolution, but Annria could be in danger. He raised the torches into a ready stance. They weren't much better than clubs, really, but at least he had two of them.

The attercope stopped abruptly just outside of Tav's reach, all eight spiny legs twitching as it sized him up. It cocked its head and seemed almost confused by his presence. Tav decided to take the opportunity. Attercopes were known to work together to take down prey too dangerous to kill alone. He didn't want this hatchling calling for help.

Tav lunged forward, one torch raised to guard as he thrust out with the other one. His Gold-ranked [Dual Wielding] guided his body like instinct, like training he couldn't remember but that was already soaked into his bones. The head of the torch slammed into the attercope's face, smashing one eye into oozing ruin, and the thing screeched in surprise. It reared up and slashed with a foreleg. Tav swung with his free torch to parry, might have missed if the torch hadn't flexed and stretched, knocking the creature's leg safely aside. Tav drew back the blood-covered torch and stabbed again, this time catching the attercope in the vulnerable patch underneath the mandibles. His torch went all the way through and burst out the back of the thing's head, enchanted flame still fluttering cheerfully amidst the gore. Its legs lost tension and it crumpled to the ground, almost pulling the torch from Tav's hand.

For good measure he smashed its head into yellow goo. Best to be safe, and it would keep Annria from worrying. He felt his System ping softly.

Slain: Attercope Hatchling! Level 18 achieved!

"Hey, Annria, I just leveled up! See, the dungeon's not all bad. It's an even level, though."

She looked blank. Tav sighed—it'd be awkward to explain the basics to a woman older than him. Not that she could be much older, though, and since she didn't know... "Every odd level gives you a skill rank up, but except for class specializations and evolutions every ten levels, even levels don't have anything. Even if Karmere doesn't have delvers, you really don't know this? You've never heard someone complaining about empty evens?"

Her blank look turned hostile. "I don't usually have delvers sharing their personal problems with me."

"It's not a personal problem, it's the way the system is built—wait a minute, something's up."

ERROR: Perception stat unexpectedly low! Reset Perception stat to baseline?

ERROR: Prerequisites for skill [Eightfold Awareness] not met! Grant prerequisites?

Tav shut his eyes. "Yeah, yeah, go ahead," he told the system. "I thought I already reset my perception, but do it again, I guess. Fill in my missing prerequisites. If it's a free advantage, I'm happy to take it."

Perception reset to baseline 16 from previous 10!

Anatomy rectified to meet prerequisites! Skill gained: [Eightfold Awareness]!

Okay, so something was still wrong. Core stats weren't usually visible to users, but 10 was supposed to be the human average. Why was 16 suddenly his new baseline? Tav could feel the increased sensitivity, a knowledge of his surroundings even with his eyes closed. He could tell where Annria was standing, feel her nervous twitch through the air. This couldn't be baseline. If everybody felt like this, he would never have been able to get away with some of the pranks that he'd pulled back at the Academy.

And "Anatomy rectified" was a phrase that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

Tav opened his eyes.

Then he opened the rest of his eyes.

Tav blinked at Annria, who was covering her mouth and trying not to scream. Was it still called "blinking" when you had, in addition to the usual two eyes on the front of your face, two on your forehead and another pair on each side of your head? Tav tilted his head, considering, and trying to get a sense for how his awareness shifted with his motion. He didn't have full three-hundred-sixty degree vision, but it was close.

He could see himself reflected in Annria's eyes, shiny with the panic-tears she was barely holding back. In the reflection the extra eyes were similar to his original pair, but glossier, and the iris was ragged around the edge, bleeding into the whites. Tav had had brown eyes before—this morning, he reminded himself. Maybe "yesterday," depending on how long we were unconscious. Now all eight eyes had a red tinge ringing the brown, the colors of a scab.

"On the plus side, Annria," Tav said, "I think I've figured out the source of all the ERRORS my system has been giving me."

"Oh, good," Annria said, her voice strangled. "I'm glad that's working out."