Chapter 18.

Eli listened patiently as his teacher explained his reasoning behind his suggestion, and in the end he agreed with the man.

“Will you help me convince the others?” Eli asked.

“Yes,” the man said.

“We’re not sure that you’re right. Floor two could be completely different from floor one,” Eli pointed out.

“Then we turn back as soon as it becomes apparent that’s the case and we regroup,” Erik said. “But I don’t think so. The objectives are the same. The layout is the same. Everything looks the same, it’s just twice as hard. But half of the party was sitting on the sidelines last time. Luke couldn’t use his magic, and I couldn’t use mine.”

“I didn’t realize you had magic,” Eli said.

“I’m a trickster, Eli. Of course I have magic,” Erik said.

So as the others finished taking their breaks, the two began convincing them of Erik’s crazy suggestion.

It took some suggestion, but with both Eli to convince the teens and the responsible Mister Estabon to convince the adults, eventually everyone gave way. They discussed for a few minutes how to break the teams up before they set out. Not everyone was happy with how the teams were split, but they had to agree most of the reasons for the splits.

Unlike floor one, there were three directions to head out into. They gave up on trying to assign north or south and each party simply picked one to go down.

Eli was in a party with his mother, Peter, Sophie, Junior and Susan. The other party, Maia, Elaine, Erik, Luke, John Sr, and Alaina, took the exit counter clockwise to Eli’s party.

Sophie bumped fists with her younger brother and then took off at a sprint down the hallway. As their scout, she was … well she was going to scout out the area. They’d already sort of planned for this possibility before coming into the dungeon. She had both a massive marker to write on the wall, and sidewalk chalk for the same purpose.

She vanished down the bend of the hallway. They couldn’t hear her footsteps, but they couldn’t hear them even before she’d gone thirty feet.

Following behind at a slower pace, Peter, the thirteen year old wearing football gear and wielding a baseball bat, took point. Right behind him stood Junior and Susan Campos, who were both wielding their crossbows, each ready to fire the moment that they were confident of a shot. Eli stood next to them, keeping his weapon enchant and his “Resist Slashing” enchant on his clothes, ready to project them at any of his allies if he thought that it would help. Hovering next to Eli was Gabri, who had been surprisingly silent and cooperative throughout the delve so far.

Mattie Mathews took up the rearguard position. The first floor had shown that was an important position, after all, and they were learning from their mistakes.

The party made swift progress. When they came to the first fork, Sophie had already scouted the left and written “Six gob” on the left passageway in chalk. They went right, ignoring the potential conflict for now.

Sophie was, it turned out, a very good scout, because the next five forks were labeled the same way, with varying amounts of goblins. Twice they came across a goblin with an arrow in its heart, and nobody said anything as they stepped over the corpse.

Finally they came to a fork which hadn’t been successfully scouted yet and they waited for her to return. Which she did moments later.

“Wow, is it just me or am I really good at this?” she asked, cracking her neck to the side.

“How are you constantly picking the side with the goblins to scout first?” Eli asked her.

“I can hear them,” she said. “So then I just go close enough to count them or see if they’re patrolling or just sitting about. Anybody got any water?”

Junior tossed her a bottle from his own pack; the two tinkerers on the team were the only ones who were still carrying most of their gear.

Sophie drank half the bottle before tossing it back to him. “Thanks,” she said. “So, here’s the thing. I think we should fight this room.”

If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

“We agreed to skip—”

“It’s got one of the boss monsters in it,” she explained. “If we kill one here, then we can clear the dungeon just by killing the second one we find. On the other hand, if we skip it—”

“Yeah, okay,” Eli said. Sophie’s eyebrows rose, she’d been expecting more of an argument, but he just turned to the others, who all shrugged. “Give us the layout. What’s going on?”

“He’s in there with four minions. He’s not dressed in bondage spikes like the last one, instead he’s got robes and spectacles. I’m not one hundred percent certain he’s a boss, to be honest, but I figure he might be a rare, you know? We should take the chance.”

“Okay,” Eli agreed a second time. “Here’s what we do.”

So they followed the hallway to the end, which came out into a library where five goblins—four in loincloths and one in robes with spectacles—were busying themselves about. Two of the goblins were doodling on the floor, while one was shuffling papers, and the fourth loincloth wearing goblin was trying to reach a book off the top shelf.

The robe wearing goblin turned and saw them, its white eyes going wide with surprise. It raised its hands and began weaving them, speaking even as it began forming Power with its hands.

“It’s a Mage!” Eli called out.

Twang! John Junior Campos’s crossbow went off and the bolt slammed straight into the robe wearing goblin’s chest, pinning its arm in place. The goblin kept chanting.

Mattie leaped into the room, crossing the distance in moments and jumping into the air. She brought the crowbar down and Eli empowered it with the Greater Impact runes on his baseball bat. The crowbar slammed into the monsters head, and she followed it up with a second and third strike, but the goblin just kept chanting.

A second Twang took one of the robed goblin’s allies in the side, sending it down. Peter rushed forward to help Eli’s mother bring the elite goblin coup de grace.

Sophie shot two more of the goblins while this was happening, but not the one that was the most dangerous; Mattie was in the way.

Mattie Mathews continued smashing away with all of her strength. Finally the robed goblin stopped speaking, but not before a sudden burst of blue light enveloped her. She was helplessly tossed about as magic pulled her this way and that, slamming her into the walls and floor. The goblin had a look of anger on his face as he abused Eli’s mother.

Eli stepped forward with his bat and took a wide swing at the same time as Peter. Their bats met in the middle, and the monster’s head cracked as the enchanted weapons collided at the same time.

That still wasn’t enough. It turned to them and laughed and--

And another arrow pierced its heart.

It frowned, looking down at its chest, then looked up at Sophie, who had probably just risked her friend’s life by shooting in the middle of them.

“Why come here?” the goblin asked in Bokuto.

“To get strong!” Eli said immediately.

“Why?” the dying monster asked.

“To fight back!” Eli answered.

“Against Antithesis?”

“Yes!”

The goblin nodded. And then it died, falling over, the light in its white eyes vanishing as they turned grey.

“Oh very good, very good, you killed an elite,” Gabri said, hovering over to look down at the corpse. “Make sure to strip him down and search for jewelry. And steal that book that he was looking at. Actually hold on, let me look at all the books.”

Rather than immediately obey the little faerie, Eli went to check on his mother. She was a little bruised and beaten up, but mostly no worse for the wear.

“My menu says that I lost thirty health points,” she confessed, “but they’re already going back up. I’m at ninety now.”

“I don’t care what your menu says, I just want to know you’re alright,” he said. “That magic, what was that?”

“Magic, Eli. What did it look like? I felt like I was being ripped apart in different directions like a ragdoll. I’m lucky you kids were here to put an end to the monster who cast it,” she said.

“Yeah,” he agreed. He helped her up and they hugged, and then he went to search for loot.

‎