I wiped away some forehead sweat and blinked. “So, you basically have no idea how it works.”

“Well, I wouldn’t go that far,” Richard replied. “For example, I do know that my Blessing’s only any good at short distances. Becomes nearly useless after about a dozen or so feet. Erm, what else? Let’s see.. Ah, yes, the stronger my opponent, the less of an effect it has. Which you probably saw, fighting those nasty buggers at the entrance gate.”

“I suppose that makes sense,” I replied.

“Does it work on any other parts of the body?” Aerion asked, beating me to it. She was starting to think like I did, which really came in handy in situations like these.

“Just the one, I'm afraid,” Richard said. “Though Passion assures me I’ll have more control once I grow stronger. It’s a heart squeezer for now.”

I winced at the joke, which seemed to delight Richard. “Do you have a feel for how strong your opponent has to be before the ability stops working? Any way you could measure it?” I asked. I wondered if it would work on the obsidian golems I’d fought in Dominion’s Trial. Did those things even have hearts?

“Afraid not,” Richard replied, frowning. “Asked Passion the same thing, myself. Said there’s no magic in numbers, whatever that was supposed to mean.”

Now that was interesting. It sounded an awful lot like Richard couldn’t see stats and levels the way Aerion and I did. But rather than stats not existing at all for Richard, Passion’s response almost made it sound like they were just hidden from him. Did that mean Eskil was the same? Or did Dominion allow his Champion to see stats?

I thought back to the muscle-bound Viking and the answer became obvious. If I was a god, there was no way in hell I’d trust that brute with numbers. Let alone allow him to guide his own path of progression.

“Still, it’s quite the ability, I assure you. Gave me a right scare the first time I used it, that. Killed a rabbit and couldn’t sleep for days.”

Aerion and I exchanged a look.

“Is that so?” she said. “Surprising, considering how many you just killed.”

Richard’s face fell. “Yes, well. Desperate times make a man do desperate things, I’m afraid.”

“You speak of the Cataclysm?” Aerion asked.

“Well, no. Not quite. A conversation for another time, perhaps,” he said with a sad smile. “Now, since we seem to be playing show and tell, how about you fill me in on your own powers?”

“We’d love to,” I said. “But first, would you mind if we discussed a few things in private?”

“Of course!” Richard said, gesturing with his arm to the other corner of the room. “I’ll just… study this intriguing machinery. Yes, I think I find this quite intriguing.”

I shot Aerion a glance, and it was only through sheer force of will that we stopped ourselves from laughing.

----------------------------------------

“He’s quite the odd one, isn't he?” Aerion said, once we’d sequestered ourselves in the far corner of the room. With all the noise from the steam vents, we could practically shout and Richard wouldn't have heard a thing. “He seems nice, at least.”

“He certainly does.”

“But you have reservations…”

“How’d you know?” I deadpanned.

Aerion rolled her eyes. “You always have reservations. Dominion himself could come down and bequeath you with a Blessing, and I am sure you would ask him a dozen questions to convince yourself it wasn’t some form of prank.”

“That’s… Yeah. I probably would,” I admitted. Was I really so predictable? Or was Aerion just overly perceptive? “At any rate, there are a few things you ought to know. Richard is not only from my world, we speak the same native tongue. And if my guess is right, he’s from a time period relatively close to mine.”

“Unlike Eskil,” Aerion said with a pensive frown.

“Very much unlike Eskil, yeah. I don’t know much about Viking history, but I’d put him at around 1200 years before my time. We’re so far apart that he might as well come from another world entirely.”

Earth in the 800’s practically was another world, having more in common with Axuys than the modern era.

“Amazing,” Aerion said, voice full of wonder. “For the gods to not only summon Champions from other worlds, but other times, too. Their power knows no bounds.”

“Yeaaah.” I grimaced. That gods with the ability to teleport existed already rocked my world view, but time? Did that mean time travel was possible? That bombshell blew apart pretty much everything I thought I knew about the workings of the universe.

As was generally the case with such monumental revelations, I locked it deep within a dark recess at the back of my mind, where it’d stay… preferably forever. Right now, we needed to figure out what to do about Richard.

“I gotta admit, his power is honestly amazing,” I said. “With a monster like him at our side, I can't see how we wouldn't steamroll—er, dominate—this dungeon.”

“Why’d you correct yourself?” Aerion asked, frowning. “You never do that. Not that I’m complaining, mind you. I rarely understand your references, anyway.”

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

“Because if we do team up with Richard, I can’t use those turns of phrase, can I?” I replied, smoothly ignoring her jab. “Not without giving away who I am, at least.”

“Is that such a terrible thing?” Aerion said. “We will be trusting each other with our lives, after all.”

“On its own? Not at all. In fact, I’d love to tell him. He’s probably the only one in this whole world who’d get my references. We’d have so much to talk about. But if Richard’s the type who can’t keep a secret, or if his god decides to snoop on him…”

“Then words would get out about who you are,” Aerion completed. “Which would inevitably force you back to Order’s territory.”

“Which might be bad for me, but it sounds like it’d be terrible for you,” I said.

Aerion bit her lip and nodded. “It’d do neither of us any good.”

“Right. So there are some downsides teaming up with Richard. Risk of exposure. The possibility he’s deranged and bursts our hearts in our sleep.”

“Do you think he can?” Aerion asked, looking suddenly pale.

“I don’t think he will,” I replied. “And even if he wanted to, probably not? I don’t know how our stats compare, but I feel like we can’t be that far apart.”

Aerion’s posture slackened, and she let out a breath. “That’s a relief. Well, I say we join up. We could use his strength.”

“Agreed. There are some downsides, but the benefits are incomparable.”

“It’s decided then,” Aerion said. “We are now a party of three.”

“For the duration of this dungeon, at least,” I said. “And on that note, we need to agree on what we’re going to tell him.”

----------------------------------------

“I admit, you had me worried there for a moment,” Richard said the moment we’d returned. He looked bored out of his mind. “By your expressions, am I to assume we’re a party, then?”

“We are,” Aerion said. “And I apologize for the delay. We had some matters to attend to.”

“No trouble at all,” Richard said, waving away her concerns. “It's quite the decision.”

Aerion cleared her throat. “Now that we’re officially a team, I believe we ought to reintroduce ourselves. Once again, I am Aerion, a registered Foundation Rank Hunter, and I am proficient in daggers and shortswords. I possess two Blessings. One of Shock, and another that temporarily gives me great strength, at the cost of my Essence.”

Richard whistled. “Two Blessings? You must be quite the silver devil, eh?”

Aerion glanced away, looking embarrassed. “Nothing like that,” she mumbled.

“And what about you, Greg?” Richard asked. “Did you know that the name Greg is quite common in my world? Fancy that, eh?”

I gave Richard the most amiable smile I could muster. “Not a coincidence, really. I’m sure Champions have been summoned from your world several times in prior cycles. It’s only natural certain customs and naming conventions were co-opted.”

“Reckon you have the right of it, Greg,” Richard said. “So tell me, what wondrous powers do you boast?”

“I’m just the bag boy,” I said, thumbing to the oversized pack I wore. “My boon allows me to access a small spatial storage. Someone’s got to carry the supplies, and it sure won’t be Miss Aerion, will it?”

Aerion had, in fact, carried this load, all the way from Basecrest, through a forest, and to the dungeon. Which was probably why she shot me a glare colder than the snow outside.

Sorry, Aerion, but I swear I’ll apologize later.

“Remarkable!” Richard said. “Quite the useful ability, that.”

“I do have combat training, though,” I said. “I’ve been trained in strategy and tactics, and the miss was kind enough to bequeath this magical sword to me,” I said, patting Light of the Fearless on my hip. “I don’t mean to boast, but there aren’t that many swords out there with two magical abilities. Or magic armor, for that matter,” I added for good measure.

Richard’s eyes fixated on the sword at my hip, and widened as I spoke.

“I don’t know what magic you worked to get your hands on such a thing, friend, but bravo. Even I don’t have a sword with two abilities. Passion said it’d take some time to scour her territory for something suitable for my 'limited capabilities'.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked. This was the first I’d heard of anything like this. I glanced at Aerion, but she shook her head.

“Right, so, Passion’s got all manner of swords and badass gear in her capital’s armory, yeah?”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah! Except! Can’t use ‘em. Too high-rank, it seems! Wouldn’t work on my lowly Foundation Rank soul.”

I cocked a brow, and Aerion had the same expression. So, he was Foundation Rank. That was honestly a bit horrifying. If he was this strong at Foundation, what sort of monster would he turn into at the higher ranks? Then again, so would I. I had to remind myself that my Blessing was the sort that took a while to get off the ground. Like powerful Sorcerer classes in games, it would only show its true colors once I could swap gear sets as and when the situation demanded, reconfiguring my stats before every fight. That would give me an advantage no other Champion could hope to attain. That, and sentient weapons... I honestly couldn't wait.

“I admit I hadn’t known about this limitation,” I said, feeling more than a little smug about my sword. Don’t get me wrong—I was plenty smug before, but now I had something nicer than a groomed Champion did! How could I not do a little dance?

I asked Richard a few follow-up questions, but he didn’t know much more about the topic. Seemed Passion found details ‘rather banal’, and by the way Richard dismissed my questions, he apparently felt similarly.

I really wanted to know if this was a strict limitation, or if it was like the Trials and dungeons, where people lost the ability to delve lower-rank dungeons once their soul ranked up. Either way, it seemed like the quality of someone’s soul played a pretty large role in this world’s power hierarchy.

“Well, you don’t seem to use your sword much, anyway,” I said, mostly to cheer Richard up. There was something wholesome about the man that just made you want to like the guy.

“True enough, I s’ppose,” Richard said, immediately glowing brighter.

“Now that we’ve introduced ourselves, I feel it would be good to come up with a plan. Where do we go from here? How should we approach this—”

A blaring siren sounded, cutting her off, and forcing all of us to clutch our ears.

Its drone reminded me of those air raid sirens from World War II. The same ones they used to announce tornado warnings. Deafening and horrible.

To make matters worse, a series of loud bangs rapped against our door.

“I think that’ll have to wait!” I shouted above the din. “It appears we’ve overstayed our welcome.”

“We’d best make a move!” Richard shouted back. “Seems they’ve found us.”

“Alright! I’ll open the door. Aerion? Richard… Annihilate anything that comes through.”

For better or for worse, our brand-new team was about to be thrown into the deep end. I just hoped my mental image of our little elite squad was as good as I’d played it up to be.