The kid—Tav, if he'd given his real name. If he was as stupidly earnest as he appeared to be, and not the scheming cannibal she'd originally assumed he was. Tav led the way with competence, poise, training, and even grace.

Annria hated it. Hated the darkness, the shadows only enhanced by the stupid magical torches Tav was currently wielding as paired weapons. She hated the Attercope gore she kept having to walk through and the way it kept soaking through her shoes. There hadn't been any more monster attacks since they'd descended the stairs, but she was carrying their filth with her.

She of course hated the corpses. Not the Attercope corpses, as foul as they were, but the human corpses dotting the hallway, and which Tav seemed to ignore easily. Repulsive, how delvers took death for granted. How it didn't make an impression on them any more. But there were three corpses they'd walked by so far, and that meant three people who had once been alive and now were not.

Assuming they weren't clever facsimiles created by the Dungeon itself for the sake of "atmosphere." Annria's dim understanding of dungeoncraft suggested that such a thing was known to happen, although she had no idea how common it might be.

Tav had checked the first body's pouch, perhaps considering some classic delver grave-robbing, but found nothing to interest him. The other two corpses hadn't had money pouches that Annria could see, and Tav had dismissed them out of hand. No fire or water (not that they had water), no last rites, no nothing. Heartless. Annria was right not to trust him.

She wanted to hate him too, but he was helping her. He was protecting her. He was a product of his cursed, horrifying upbringing, and of the System that had poisoned his homeland the same way it poisoned—well, everything it touched.

Like her.

Annria kept looking back and forth between Tav, stalking ahead of her, and the end of the hallway, pacing them some distance behind. Every time she turned a little window flickered in the corner of her vision. Every time, she tried to ignore it and failed.

For entering a Special Dungeon and earning an achievement, you have been Authorized for System Access! You are now Level 1! Congratulations!

For your previous activities, you have been granted Special Access to Improved Skills and Classes! Congratulations!

You cannot gain experience until you have fully assigned your benefits for Level 1! Please assign benefits now!

"Hey, Tav?" Annria asked.

"Yes?"

"Do you mind talking? At least until something tries to kill us again."

"That's fine. What about?"

Annria braced herself. "About the System. I think I should know about it more, since it's so... relevant. How much do you know?"

"I know a lot! Well, I know a little. I graduated from the Academy, but I'll be honest, I wasn't a great student. Still, if you really don't know anything..." He trailed off. "I'm just kind of shocked at how little information people have here. You don't know anyone authorized?"

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"What's that mean, really?" Annria asked, dodging the question. There was no way she was telling him about her previous experiences with authorized users.

"Authorization," Tav repeated. "It means that you've gotten your first level. There are a few ways to get authorized, but the most common one is that you deal damage to something that already has authorization."

"That's how it spreads?"

"Not 'spreads,' the System isn't a disease!" Privately Annria thought it sounded a lot like a disease, actually, and wouldn't that explain a lot, but she let Tav continue. "You don't want to do it too young," he said, "since you don't want a kid to screw up their build with bad early decisions. But you also don't want to wait too long—the sooner you start, the sooner you can get strong. It's a big deal, it's a whole coming-of-age thing. I know some of the old Houses make, like, a ritual out of it? With a ceremonial knife and everything, or at least that's what I hear. My family was a lot simpler, we just used one of my mom's daggers."

"Wait," Annria said. "How did you 'use' this dagger?"

"The obvious way?" Tav looked puzzled. "Gotta deal damage to something with authorization, and nobody uses caged monsters anymore in case something goes wrong." He held out an arm and made a sharp cutting motion across it. "Quick cut, big celebration."

Annria felt sick. "Everyone in Perrigen draws blood from their parents as part of a coming-of-age ritual. Do I have that right?"

"Yeah? You look kind of green, Annria. Are you okay?"

She took a breath. "You mentioned that there were 'a few ways' to get authorized. Isn't there anything else less—violent?"

"Not the whole 'culture of violence' thing again, please," Tav said. "It's not like that. It's one cut, I've had worse in a rough spar! Hardly worth bothering about."

"Considering that one cut has shaped your entire life," Annria pointed out, "I'd say it's absolutely worth bothering about. You can't have it both ways."

"It's the Authorization that matters, not the cut itself. There are other ways to get Authorized, or at least that's what people say, so the cut's just a means to an end. It's simple and straightforward. It's not—"

"Fine!" Annria said. "Fine. Whatever you say, I don't want to get in an argument about your traditions. I'm just... twitchy. Exhausted."

"Yeah, this dungeon's sure running us hard, huh? It's like it wants us to go somewhere."

Annria glanced behind them. The wall had followed them, at enough of a distance Annria could barely see it in the dim light. They couldn't turn around. When they'd stopped—Annria had needed to catch her breath, even as the skyforsaken System kept Tav perky and energetic—the wall had kept moving, creeping closer with every minute that passed. Blank stone had never felt so menacing.

"Maybe it's a good thing," Annria said, trying to smile. "The dungeon must want us alive for some sinister purpose, which is better than it wanting us dead for the same reason."

Tav shrugged. "I wouldn't know. My classes never covered anything like this. Dungeon shifts in the PND are never this—this sudden, this directed. They're a natural phenomenon, slow, when you're not looking. This does feel intentional, if you believe in such things, but maybe it's just chance?"

"Chance, yeah. I know what it feels like to be pushed into something." Annria looked again at her popup, the words burning into her vision. "Anyway, Authorization. Once you have it, that's it? You're part of the System forever?"

"I don't know why you'd give it up," Tav said. "Nobody in Perrigen would, at least. If it's possible, you'd probably know more about it than I would. If every authorized Karmeri has to serve at the Nadirean Gate, do any of them come back?"

"No," Annria said.

Tav paused, like he was waiting for her to elaborate. The silence stretched until Annria felt herself compelled to fill it.

"It's better that way," she said. "Safer. It's safer for Karmere to have the Gate well-defended—safer for the world, really, so you're welcome. And it's safer for the people of Karmere if those with system access are far away from us. Everyone's better off that way." There, an explanation that should satisfy him.

"Do you know what it's like for the Authorized?" he asked. "Have you ever been there?"

"Not since I started traveling," she said. Annria left out the part he didn't need to know: that she'd become a merchant to get away.

Ever since her ex-wife had been bound to the Gate, Annria hadn't been within thirty miles of the cursed place.