“The last time I played a game you recommended, I had nightmares for a month,” May said, “If this ends up like that—is this going to end up like that?”

“I’m not the one who recommended this—Elliot is,” Dimitri said with a laugh. “But this isn’t really that type of game anyway.”

“Elliot?” May asked.

Elliot closed his eyes at the sound of her speaking his name, the slight tinge of digital undercurrent nowhere near enough to steal away the warmth it caused in his chest—he spoke up, picking his words carefully in an attempt not to make a fool of himself.

“It’s not a horror game,” Elliot said after a moment. “The three of us will be on the same team as well, so we can look after each other.”

“Okay, that doesn’t sound too bad,” May said, “This is just a beta version, isn’t it? Does it already have multiplayer?”

“Just limited co-op, for now, but there will be more wide-scale player vs player in the future,” Dimitri said, “The faction we make now will actually carry over to the full release—the name will, at least, we won’t get to keep any of the stats, items, or gold.”

“So it’s just a name reservation?” May said, amused. “Alright, alright—what ridiculous banner are we fighting under this time?”

“The Distressed Damsels,” Dimitri said without pause. “That way, it will be thematically on point if you do start crying again.”

“You said it wasn’t a horror game,” May accused, “Elliot—”

“I—it’s not,” Elliot managed. “He’s lying.”

Dimitri started laughing again, and Elliot struggled through an attempt to explain what kind of game it actually was. May seemed to listen with great patience, even after he realised he’d been talking for almost an entire minute.

“I want to be the damage dealer,” May decided, “With two swords—or maybe a bow.”

“Figures,” Dimitri said, “I’m going tank this time.”

“I don’t know why you’re saying this time; you always go tank,” May said, “Elliot, you can be my healslut—don’t worry, I’ll make sure to treat you right.”

Elliot shifted in his seat at the words, but any response he might have had fizzled out, he was simply unable to manage it.

“There aren’t any healers in the game yet,” Dimitri said, “You’ll have to use items—he’s not buying them for you either.”

“Scammed,” May complained. “If you’re not going to be my healslut, then what are you going to play?”

“I’m going to be crowd control,” Elliot said, flustered. “There are a lot of movement-disrupting skills and debuffs, so I’ll probably pick up as many of those as I can to make things easier for you two.”

“Okay, okay, I can get behind that,” May said, impressed. “Are there buffs—pick up a few for me, as well?”

“I will,” Elliot said.

“You’re going to let her get away with that?” Dimitri said, laughing. “Come on, man.”

“I wasn’t—it’s just a few buffs,” Elliot managed. “I was going to grab one for tanks as well.”

“On second thought,” Dimitri said, “I was looking at the skill list earlier—”

“Hands off, idiot,” May interjected. “He’s mine.”

Elliot found himself swallowing in the low light of his room. It made him want to say something about it. To tell her that he wouldn’t at all have minded being hers, but the idea of saying something like that out loud was just so far beyond him—

“I—” Elliot said instead. “I can do both.”

“It’s you we’re talking about; of course you can,” Dimitri said with another laugh. “Elliot—we’ve got our classes down, but what’s our plan for the rest of it? You were always better at that kind of thing.”

Elliot felt a spark of warmth in his chest at the words and for how willing the man was to leave it all in his own hands—these were the moments that had always stood out to him, rising above the monotony and making all of the crushing anxiety he’d been fighting through his entire life just tolerable enough to manage.

“The first thing we need to do is to hunt down all of the materials for the slot upgrades, which means we’ll be speedrunning low-level dungeons until all three of us have everything unlocked,” Elliot said, smiling just a bit. “Then, once we—”

#

There were people at the funeral that shouldn’t have been there, and it wasn’t just a few, either. Dimitri Lawrence was very well-liked by the network of people that made up our neighbourhood, and it was easy to see why. Dimitri had been kind, outgoing, and far too generous with how he shared his very limited time—Elliot was especially certain of that last one because he, himself, had been far too lucky to enjoy such a significant part of it. As it was, he’d spent more time with Dimitri in his life than he had outside of it.

Fifteen years had seen the boisterous and inexplicably dirt-covered boy he’d been seated next to in first grade transform into a man. Elliot had celebrated every one of those years alongside him through birthdays, holidays, and bright moments that had recently begun to burn inside his chest whenever he thought too hard about them. May had been there for almost all of it and was perhaps the only other person who actually deserved to be here, though she’d been far too liberal with whom she invited to her younger brother's funeral. An unfortunate side effect of all three of them working in the same company was that the mass of shared coworkers had been given invitations.

It rankled him to see them chatting and sharing small, secret words with one another as they treated the whole thing like a sombre social event. Elliot had heard more than enough acidic backroom talk from just about all of them to know that they had no place here in what was a belated celebration of his best friend's life. Dimitri’s parents—divorced, submerged in hate for one another, and standing on opposite sides of the assembly with their new respective families—skirted the line of what he thought was tolerable. As much as they loved their son, Elliot could see the edges of something inappropriately competitive in how the two groups had aligned themselves, as if, even now, as their youngest son was being buried, they were still vying for the top spot in a game of one-upmanship.

The sight of it should have bothered him, but everything was so muted now that he wasn’t sure he could muster up so much as a derisive scoff at the posturing. Elliot wasn’t even sure when that had actually started, but he knew that it wasn’t when he’d first heard the news of what had happened—he’d been coldly furious then, in a way that he’d only felt a few rare times in his life. Maybe that spark of fury that had consumed him had taken away his ability to feel much of anything else. Without Dimitri, the world was just as dull and uninteresting as it surely must have been way back before they’d ever even met.

Where Elliot couldn’t seem to reconnect with what he was feeling, May seemed far too connected—the barely decipherable speech she had given had actually penetrated the fog surrounding his mind, but the pain he’d felt at her shaking voice had only made him retreat further into it. All of the time they’d spent together, all of the memories, the smiles, the arguments, and everything else in between—what was the point of all that if any one of them could just be torn away without warning?

“This place isn’t fair,” Elliot murmured.

Dimitri had wanted to visit his hometown, he knew, because they’d talked about it only a week before the accident, so it made sense for the funeral to happen here, but it just made the whole situation worse. There were so many people here, faces from the past that hadn’t made any real attempt to keep in contact. But Dimitri had been good at making friends, he always had been, and May had a charm to her that often eclipsed even that of her brother. Maybe they had kept in contact with some of them, and maybe it was just him who hadn’t made the effort. It made him wonder—just how much emptier would this cemetery have been if Elliot Archer had been the one in the coffin?

#

“—really know what to think,” May said, shaking her head. “I’m just glad they didn’t start an argument like the one at the end of last year.”

“I think it’s really bad that you have to be on edge about something like that,” Sean said, frowning. “You should be able to trust your family enough not to walk on eggshells all the time.”

“I do trust them,” May hedged, “It’s just hard, I guess.”

Elliot pulled at the lone thread striking out from the seam of his dress shirt, eyes on his lap, and unable to bring himself to look at either of them from across the booth—this entire day had been taxing, but in a way that was very familiar to him. He’d never been good around people, and that was something that only grew worse with large groups or even just those he’d spent very little time around. Sean was the latter. Elliot remembered him vaguely from the last few years of high school, mostly because he’d been in the same grade as May, so he’d sometimes seen them together. The small, fractional pauses between their ongoing conversation felt like enormous stretches of time, and every breath they took made him feel a pressure building up inside of him. He’d been asked to eat with them; they wanted him here, and there was an unsaid expectation for him to be saying something, but he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. Elliot remained silent, and the conversation kept on moving without his participation, just like it always did.

“I can understand that,” Sean said, “My own folks can be pretty intense at times.”

The longer they spoke, the more Elliot came to realise that he was rapidly becoming a silent distraction from a conversation that they both seemed to be genuinely enjoying—and wasn’t that odd. It had been a very long time since he’d felt like he was bothering May with his presence, but every time she glanced across the table at him, the impression only grew worse. Eventually, when May actually invited Sean to come back with them and hang out for a few more hours, he began to crack under the pressure.

“Elliot,” May asked. “Ready to go?

“Actually, I’m not feeling all that well,” Elliot said as the two of them stood up. “So I think I’m just going to go home from here.”

“Home to Saltwall?” May said, hesitating. “I thought we were staying at the house for the night.”

The idea of staying at her mother’s home overnight had been something he’d been trying to figure out how to avoid since he’d first agreed to it. There were too many memories in that house, and he wasn’t sure he could keep himself from saying something about everything that had happened at the funeral; upsetting her mother today, of all days, would cause all kinds of problems. But beyond that, Sean’s presence was beginning to feel like some kind of sick replacement had occurred—it had always been a group of three, after all. It was also clear from her words that she had seen right through him because he’d already given her a reasonable excuse, and she’d outright ignored it.

“I’m not feeling well,” Elliot repeated, rising to his feet. “Sorry.”

“But—” May started.

“Can’t help it if you’re getting sick,” Sean said, speaking up. “You’ll be good to drive? That’s an hour and a half, at least.”

“I’ll be fine,” Elliot said.

“Elliot,” May said, “I—I’ll see you at work then, on Monday.”

“Yeah,” Elliot said, “I’ll be there.”

#

Elliot had been there, at work, on Monday, just as he’d said—but May hadn’t. Instead of returning to Saltwall, she’d actually decided to stay there with her mother. The initial text messages had suggested it was just a temporary thing and that she’d be coming back as soon as her accrued leave was all used up on the venture. But that time had come and gone as well, after which he’d learned about her resignation through that same acidic coworker rather than from her directly. May had sent him the message two days later, but by then, the crack that had been forming between them in the wake of Dimitri’s death had grown too wide.

Three months had passed by in a monotonous repeat of sleeping, eating and working. The messages between them grew fewer, the time between each grew longer, and some, he began leaving entirely unanswered. Elliot could feel the stutter of vibrations through his pillow as his phone attempted to draw his attention with the first phone call in what must have been four weeks. Rather than answer it, he curled himself tighter into the bed and dragged the sheets up until they were covering his face.

He wondered if it was going to be like this forever. Everywhere he looked, and everything he did was a reminder that Dimitri was gone. He’d tried and failed to lose himself in all of the things he’d once enjoyed, too many of the hobbies that had been shared with his best friend. Every last thing in his life seemed to be tied to the man in some way, and in turn, it acted as an amplification of absence. Last night, he’d found himself copying a web address into their private chat, and he’d just about hit the send button before it had clicked exactly what he was doing.

The phone started vibrating again, and the name on the screen brought with it so much anxiety that he just couldn’t bring himself to answer. The idea of speaking with May now just made him feel like his chest was going to burst open. There was too much shared history between the three of them, and to separate any of it out was a task that was entirely beyond him. Speaking with her felt as if he had to censor himself—cut out all the things they’d shared as a group, and that would act as a reminder—and though the in-jokes, quips, and callbacks would get caught in his throat, the pause that came with them was impossible to hide.

He wanted to talk to her. He wanted to see her face—he wanted to hold her like that one haunting night when she’d crept into his room, and they’d fallen asleep together talking about everything and anything—but he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. Dimitri had been the unacknowledged scaffolding that kept him pushing forward, and whenever he’d begun to falter, the other man had been right there, ready to pick him back up. The man’s absence, in turn, was the catalyst for his life to come crashing down.

He was getting comments at work now that he was looking pale, dishevelled, or that he wasn’t as focused as he normally was. His sharpness of mind—perhaps the one true thing he’d ever privately enjoyed about himself—had eroded with his attention, and all of the little missteps were crashing around him like hammer blows. It was affecting his work, and people were beginning to notice. It was worse, perhaps, that every single one of them knew the reason why. The shallow comments of support and understanding that he’d receive throughout the day didn’t help at all; they just served as additional reminders of what was now missing.

The phone began vibrating again, and a flash of that same chilling fury caught hold of him—his arm lanced out, sliding beneath the pillow and sending the phone crashing into the wall across from the bed. It hit with a bang and a clatter as the screen shattered in contact with the floor. Elliot found himself sitting up for the first time in hours, staring down at the cracked name that was showing on the incoming call screen, the world now a cold crystalline thing and everything he’d been feeling pressed down somewhere deep inside of him where he could no longer feel it. He reached down and took hold of the phone before placing it against his ear.

“I rang three times,” May said, sounding like she was on the verge of tears. “Why haven’t you been answering?”

The crystalline world cracked, and he closed his eyes as the emotions boiled at the gap—Elliot felt as if he’d discovered some secret underlying nature of the world. It wasn’t cruel like everyone always said, and it certainly wasn’t conspiring against them. There wasn’t some personification of the world watching them from above and feeding on their pain. The world didn’t hate because in order to feel something as visceral as hate, you needed to be able to feel something in the first place. The world was indifferent to the misery that accumulated across its surface. The lives of the people clinging to it were beneath the world’s notice, and yet they had somehow inherited an echo of it.

Three weeks had been all it had taken for people to stop speaking Dimitri’s name, and in a month, the man it had belonged to had been forgotten entirely. Even May had stopped saying it, and there was something terrible in that realisation. It made him think that even she was slowly beginning to move on from her brother’s death, and Elliot had begun to feel something new grow within him. He couldn’t stand the thought that the quiet, unspoken love he’d always secretly held for her was slowly transforming into a sick resentment—and so he’d stopped answering her calls.

“Hello, May,” Elliot said, feeling nothing beneath the chill. “Sorry I didn’t answer; my phone was in the other room.”

#

Six months passed by, and with each passing day, Dimitri Lawrence retreated fractionally from the world. Elliot had stopped leaving his apartment for anything other than work and, in doing so, avoided any and all attempts at social contact—not that there had been many of them. There had been before, but it was clear enough now that they’d been delivered because of his proximity to Dimitri and May. Without either of them present, work became a place of short, business-related exchanges and self-driven isolation. It was almost like he was playing the role of a person now, just following the steps and working just hard enough to keep the facade running. His phone began to vibrate for the first time in a very long while, but Elliot took his time finishing off the next entry, saved the document, and then finally reached down to answer the call without even looking—

“Hello, Elliot,” May said, sounding almost startled. “Sorry for calling while you’re at work, but I was aiming for your lunch hour.”

“I skipped it today,” Elliot said without any real interest. “We had someone else quit yesterday, so everyone is a little bit behind.”

Someone else—because May had been one of those, hadn’t she? Dimitri hadn’t exactly quit, given the circumstances, but he certainly wasn’t coming into work any time soon, either.

“Janet,” May guessed, “She told me she was thinking about it when she called me last week.”

There was something in the way she said it, a certain pointedness that she probably hadn’t meant but which washed over the emptiness surrounding him without effect—he hadn’t called her in almost two months now.

“I see,” Elliot said.

“I’d offer to call back later after work,” May said, no longer dancing around the topic. “But I doubt you would actually answer.”

“You have me here now,” Elliot said, “Is there something you wanted to talk about?”

“I want to talk about why you won’t answer when I call you,” May said with an audible breath. “I called you three times yesterday and twice the day before.”

Elliot locked the computer using the hotkey, and rose to his feet, the phone pressed lightly against his ear.

“It wasn’t really something I consciously decided to do,” Elliot said as he stepped away from the desk. “But if I were pressed to give a reason, it would be that hearing your voice reminds me of how everything was before.”

The door to the stairwell creaked, then thumped back into its frame as he stepped inside, the odd echo rolling down a dozen floors beneath him. May seemed to be struggling with his answer—or perhaps just the fact that he had answered at all—but her silence only lasted for a little while. He took the moment to lean back against the wall beside the door, eying the railing of the floors high above.

“I understand that—you know that I do, Elliot,” May managed, straddling the line between empathy and hurt. “But that isn’t fair to me.”

The shakiness in her voice caused a tremor in the dullness, and he pushed off the wall, before starting up the stairs.

“I wasn’t really thinking about fairness,” Elliot said, “I just didn’t want everything to hurt anymore.”

“Elliot—” May said, pained. “There are so many times where I find myself thinking about him, but we should be sharing those moments, not hiding from them.”

The fact that she hadn’t used her brother's name bothered him, and it sent another tremor through the stillness. He continued his quiet ascent, taking his time with his response, and she was generous enough to wait for him.

“I guess I know that,” Elliot said, “I don’t think I handled any of this the way I should have—I am sorry for that.”

“If you know, then stop avoiding me already,” May said, drawing in another shaky breath. “There are a lot of things I’ve been wanting to tell you.”

“You could do that now if you want,” Elliot said.

“What are your plans for when you get off tonight?” May asked.

“I don’t have any plans,” Elliot admitted.

The roof access door was actually open, which he hadn’t really expected, and when he stepped outside, he found that there was barely a cloud in the sky.

“Well,” May said, working hard to keep the conversation working. “I’ve been playing Inexorable Melody.”

It was a name he hadn’t heard for a while, and it took him a moment to actually dredge up what he did recall about the game—it had been something the three of them had been intending to play together at full-release, back before the accident.

“Did it end up being any good?” Elliot wondered.

“It’s actually really fun,” May said, warming to the topic. “It might be uh—forty hours? Sixty if you take your time?”

Elliot closed his eyes and just listened, tracing the curves of her voice in his mind. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard so much from her, and every minute he spent as the focus of her attention, the more the pain began to bubble up beneath the dullness.

“I’ve only done the single-player stuff so far because I wanted to wait for you so we could do the multiplayer,” May said, “Have you seen any of the full-release gameplay yet?”

“I haven’t,” Elliot said. “The only thing I remember is the beta.”

“But you were the one who told me about it in the first place—I wouldn’t have even played the beta if you hadn’t convinced me,” May said, sounding almost exasperated. “Did you really think I was going to let you get off with getting me addicted to something and then just bailing?”

The railing shifted at the base as his grip on it grew tighter, the weight of his upper body pressing against it in an attempt to find some kind of outlet for what he was feeling.

“I guess not,” Elliot said.

“Sean is actually really looking forward to playing it with us,” May said, “The faction we made is still there—The Distressed Damsels—so we can use that; it’ll be just the three of us.”

It’ll be just the three of us.

“That sounds like fun,” Elliot said, letting go of the railing entirely. “May, I’m really glad I got to talk to you today, but I’m afraid I have to go.”

“Right, you’re at work; I forgot,” May said, “I’ll send you a message tonight, so you had better make sure you actually check your phone—bye, Elliot.”

“Goodbye, May,” Elliot said.

There was a half-a-second snapshot of her breathing as she pulled the phone away from her ear before the sound cut out and the call ended. Elliot took his time closing the application, locking his phone, and then, once there were no more tasks left to distract him, he stepped forward off the edge of the building. He spread his arms out to his sides, and the wind caught his clothing. It ripped his jacket open and sent his tie trailing up over his shoulder. The phone slipped out of his now open hand, and the pavement grew larger in his vision—

#

The floor was grey, smooth, and unyielding—a combination that took him a few moments to interpret as something other than the pavement that ringed the base of the company building. The slow swirl of a smoke-like substance played out beneath it, suggesting that it was actually some kind of transparent platform, and when he lifted his head, he found that there were four walls as well as a ceiling attached to it. Oddly, there was more than enough ambient light for the room—and it was a room—to be considered well-lit, but there was no origin point for where it was coming from. There was a wooden pole sitting in the palm of his hand, and it scraped across the surface of the platform without noise as he pulled his arm in enough to push himself up to his knees—the glint of something metal at the tip of it caught his attention, and he came to realise that it wasn’t a pole, but a spear.

“Where am I?” Elliot murmured.

A shift deep in his peripheral vision caused a spike of alarm to strike up his neck, and before he’d even considered what he was doing, his head had already snapped around to look at it—it was a strangely dressed woman, and she wasn’t alone. There were actually half a dozen people scattered around the room, positioned almost directly behind where he’d first woken up, and all of them were situated in a way that allowed them to keep an eye on every other person who was present. As his eyes flickered around between them, it became obvious that perhaps he was the one who was dressed incorrectly. Whereas he was still in the suit he’d dressed in that morning, they were wearing a scattershot of armour types.

Everything seemed to be represented, from leather to chainmail to plated leggings and even one man who was wearing a helmet that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a samurai. Like him, every single one of them had a melee weapon in hand or sheathed somewhere on their body—unlike him, they seemed as if they’d had time to prepare for whatever this was. Elliot slowly rose to his feet, turning until the smoke wall was at his back. The movement attracted only a brief moment of attention from the other people in the room before they turned away, apparently dismissing him as a threat in favour of watching each other—all six of them turned to look at the far corner of the room as a person appeared there without any kind of warning or transition.

Elliot stared at the armoured figure, unable to square away the fact that the man had just teleported into the room in what was a complete rejection of everything he’d known up until that moment—this room was strange, and the fact that everyone was dressed as if they were from an entirely different era was stranger, but witnessing the man appear out of thin air was downright inexplicable.

“More like impossible,” Elliot mumbled.

But considering he was alive, unharmed, and not spread across the pavement, had already cleared that bar—two more people came into existence near the middle of the room, and bizarrely, some of the wariness seemed to fade from the group’s posture. One of the pairs actually struck up a conversation as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening, and Elliot continued to stare at them, a thousand questions burning in his chest—his hand came up to touch against the spot in the middle of his chest that was oddly a shade warmer than everything else, fingertips pressing the material of his shirt flat against the skin. The skin was smooth and unbroken, but there was undeniably some kind of extremely faint thrumming inside of his torso. Elliot closed his eyes and tried to feel it out with his fingers and mind’s eye but he couldn’t discover the source.

The number of people in the room steadily increased, but the room wasn’t growing crowded at all; in fact, it seemed larger than it had been when he first arrived—the woman he’d spotted first moved back from the group of three that had just appeared together, aiming for some space, and it brought her uncomfortably close to his place by the wall. The large, too-thick sword that was strapped to her hip looked about a thousand times more dangerous than his shoddy wooden spear, but she didn’t seem to be planning any kind of attack—

“This is your first time,” The woman said, turning her head to look at him. “The suit kind of gave it away.”

The fact that he’d been the only person to arrive laying flat on the ground must have contributed as well, but she wasn’t wrong because he was starting to think he’d overdressed.

“It is my first time,” Elliot said, and then, after a long moment. “Is this hell?”

“This is the Grey Room,” The woman said, “Though you’ll be in hell pretty soon—figuratively and literally, hah.”

It sounded like a joke, and she was playing it off like it was one, but he lacked any of the context that might have allowed him to accept it as one—it fell flat, and Jane seemed to wince.

“What happens now?” Elliot asked.

“My boss says it’s bad business to just give out information for free,” The woman said, thinking about it. “Things are going to get hectic pretty soon, though—you have anything interesting on you to trade?”

“A hundred dollars in cash,” Elliot said, which was only half of what he had in his wallet. “Is that enough?”

“Money from the old world doesn’t work here, so it’s not,” The woman said, “You have a phone on you?”

Elliot patted his pocket out of pure habit and found that it was entirely empty—his phone had been in hand when he jumped, but he’d let go of it long before he’d hit the ground. The only things he had on him were his wallet, keys, and a spear.

“I don’t,” Elliot said.

“Then we’ll do a favour trade, and you’ll owe me one down the line,” The woman said, “I’m Jane from Archive—what’s your name?”

“Elliot,” Elliot said. “I’m fine with owing you a favour.”

“You died, and now you’ve appeared in the Grey Room,” Jane said, smiling now. “Within the next few minutes, people will stop arriving, and a door will open on one of the walls.”

“Where does the door lead?” Elliot asked.

“To a dungeon filled with horrible monsters that are going to try and kill us all,” Jane said, raising an eyebrow. “The only way to get out is to kill all of the enemies and then exit through the portal.”

“Are the other people here my enemies?” Elliot asked.

“They’re supposed to be our teammates, but you can’t trust anyone inside the dungeon, so don’t turn your back unless you want someone to put a sword in it,” Jane said, “It’s better outside of dungeons because all of the factions kind of reign each other in, so murdering anyone in Hell is mostly discouraged.”

“Hell,” Elliot repeated.

“It’s the name of a city, not the actual hell,” Jane said, “You should be more worried about surviving the dungeon rather than what’s waiting for you afterwards.”

“What should I expect?” Elliot asked.

“Extreme violence, strange creatures, and things trying to eat you,” Jane said, “Place your hand on your chest and say interface.”

Elliot didn’t need to ask where on his chest because he’d already noticed it. He carefully reached up to touch it, murmuring the word, and the feeling of warmth in his chest exploded outwards across his entire body, leaving an odd tingle in the aftermath—Elliot glanced over at the white rectangle that was now set into the wall beside them, the supplied context of which indicated that it was probably the door she had been talking about. Before he could speak up to ask her about the aberration beside them, the white glowing section of the wall vanished, leaving a tunnel in its place.

“Now you just need to do it again to bring up the menu—never mind, you can play with it later because we’ve got bigger things to worry about now,” Jane said, turning her attention away from him completely. “I can’t cash in a favour with a dead man, so keep your weapon ready and try not to die.”

Jane gave a jaunty wiggle of her fingers as she passed by him to join the flood of people that were moving into the tunnel, and Elliot turned his attention towards the darkness at the end of it, eyes raking across the nothing beyond the room. He remained in place as Jane left through the tunnel and didn’t move even when the rest of the group fell in step behind her, unwilling to be anywhere near the mass of people—out of all of those who had appeared during the short conversation, only two had been without armour, and he pegged them both as people who, like him, had just died.

The first was a husky man with short, neat brown hair who seemed to be fiddling with his wedding band in what might have been a gesture of nervousness. The second was a dirty blonde and lean-bodied woman who was at least a head taller than Elliot himself and whose face was doused in a heavy smattering of freckles. Both of them were in regular clothes; the man was in a suit not too far removed from his own, though it was grey, while the woman was dressed in one of those absurd knitted sweater dresses that always seemed two sizes too small.

Elliot waited them out, taking the warning from Jane about a sword in his back seriously, though in this case, it would have been a sabre and a rapier he was on the lookout for. He stepped into the tunnel after them; spear held up across his body in a position he hoped would allow him to attack quickly if something came barrelling out of the darkness.

“It’s too dark,” The woman said, shaken. “I can’t go out there.”

The sound of her voice was too low for her to have been talking to anyone other than herself because the man had already edged his way out into the dark—Elliot could hear the sound of the man’s shoes crunching the loose stones that carpeted the ground, and he didn’t seem too willing to stray from the entrance either. The light from the Grey Room did illuminate some of the ground at the end of the tunnel, but visibility dropped to nothing after about three meters. The ground was simply dirt, rock, and nothing else of note—and when he risked stepping past the woman to exit the tunnel, he found that the walls on either side were made of the very same material.

“Is this some kind of cave?” The man said, raising his voice just enough to make it clear that he was speaking to the both of them. “I can’t see anything.”

Which made it all the stranger that Elliot could see something—several somethings. There were four white, three-dimensional boxes ahead of them, two of them around the same elevation as the floor and one about three meters off the ground. They were also different sizes and rotations, though the shape was exactly the same for each. Were some of them further away than the others?

“Sorry,” The woman said, swallowing. “But do you know what’s going on?”

“I—don’t know anything at all,” The man tried, “My name is Grant Baker—I just—woke up here, I guess.”

“I was worried you would say something like that,” Hannah said, breathing out. “I’m Hannah—Hannah Walker.”

“Nice to meet you,” Grant said, “I think—”

The sound of a scuffle rang out from the darkness ahead of them, and a series of rocks were sent scattering across the ground at their feet—a man let out a horrible shriek and then smashed into the ground at the edge of the illuminated space. The impact sent a splash of red liquid arcing out across the stones, and Hannah let out a cry of terror that was almost as terrible as the man’s death throes as something tall, pale, and long-limbed briefly came into view—a mouth full of needlelike teeth clamped down on the man’s head, and then pulled back, shredding the front half of his skull without any sign of resistance.

“No—” Hannah managed.

The creature seemed to ignore the noise and their presence completely, right up until Hannah took a step back into the tunnel—its eyeless head snapped around to stare directly at her before it pulled itself lower to the floor. It crept forward across the ground, long limbs stretching out into the light, unheeding or unaware of the light that was washing over its body.

“Oh god,” Hannah breathed. “Please—”

Elliot remained perfectly still as it crawled past him, but his eyes remained locked on its back as it pulled itself into the tunnel—the exact moment its head was passed the wall, he turned, stepped into the tunnel and drove the tip of his spear through the centre of its shoulders. The spearhead passed through its body with a great deal of resistance before it struck the floor of the tunnel, then skated to the side, unable to penetrate the unyielding material. The monster gave a violent jerk of its upper body, but its entire lower half seemed to have gone limp. Its too-long arms struck the walls of the tunnel, the small space making it difficult to reach behind itself.

“Grant,” Elliot said. “I can’t keep it here forever, so you’re going to have to help me kill it.”

Grant—previously frozen still in terror—sprung into action at the words, stumbling over the monster's legs and bringing down his sabre on its folded-up arm like a machete. The arm came off from the force of the strike, and then Elliot was forced to turn his head to the side as more blood splashed across the front of his body. The monster managed to get its remaining arm flat against the tunnel wall and then used the leverage to push itself onto its side. Elliot planted his foot on the monster’s gaunt hipbone, both hands wrapped around the haft of the weapon as he struggled to keep it from turning all the way over. Hannah gave another terrified scream and then somehow—with both of her eyes clenched tightly shut—managed to bury her rapier in the top of the monster’s head. It spasmed for a fractional moment and then went entirely still as Hannah stumbled back away from it to fall on her ass in the middle of the tunnel, already bawling.

“I think it’s dead,” Grant managed, apparently out of breath. “Isn’t it?”

Elliot ripped the spear free with a great deal of effort and then took two steps backwards to regain his balance.

“It’s dead,” Elliot said, turning back to face the cave. “The people that were in the room with us went out to kill the rest of them.”

“You must be joking,” Grant said, picking his way over the monster’s legs. “Are they seriously fighting these things out there in the dark?”

“Can you—can you move it—” Hannah begged, still sobbing. “I can’t—how am I supposed to get out?”

Elliot turned to look at her for a moment, then glanced down at the corpse that was stretched out down a quarter of the tunnel—he reached down and took hold of its leg before dragging it up off the ground. Grant moved to help him without even needing to be asked, and together, they hauled the creature out to the edge of the light. Hannah stumbled along the wall of the tunnel in order to get around the mess coating the floor, and Elliot went still as she grabbed hold of his arm—she clung there, half behind him, with her left arm hooked deep into his elbow. Jane’s words rang in his ears, but he wasn’t sure they applied to people who had only just arrived here—these two weren’t going to kill him without a good motivation, and given what he’d heard from both of them, they knew even less about the current situation than he did.

“These things can’t see or hear us, and they can only see us when we’re moving,” Elliot said, searching the darkness for movement. “It didn’t react to anything except when you started backing away from it.”

“So if we stand still, we’ll be safe?” Grant asked.

“We can’t know for certain, but it came within an inch of touching me, and it didn’t notice I was there,” Elliot said, “It also didn’t start to move until after I stabbed it, so they might only be able to see moving things directly in front of them.”

“Oh no,” Hannah managed, voice whisper quiet. “There is something right there—”

Elliot shifted his eyes across to where he thought her line of sight was aimed and found nothing at all, the darkness too thick to—there was a shift in the pattern, a long thin patch arcing about an inch above the ground.

“It’s another one,” Elliot said, watching it. “It’s coming towards us—stay still.”

“I’m sorry,” Hannah managed. “I just—”

“Close your eyes—now,” Elliot said, unwilling to take any chances. “I’ll tell you when it’s safe.”

There was something in how her grip on his arm tightened that made him think that she’d actually listened to him, like a full body clench that functioned to seal off her eyesight—Grant’s breathing was loud but controlled, and Elliot thought that, given everything else he’d seen from the man, that he could count on him again.

“Grant, it’s going to run into me before it gets anywhere near you, and I can’t attack it while it’s facing me,” Elliot said, weathering Hannah’s attempt to strangle his arm. “I’m going to ask you for something difficult.”

“Difficult?” Grant managed.

“I need you to step out and distract it,” Elliot said, “As soon as it turns its attention away from me, I’m going to kill it.”

“I’ll do it,” Grant said after a strained moment. “Just tell me when.”

“Thank you,” Elliot said, “Hannah, very carefully, I want you to let go of my arm, but don’t move away at all.”

Hannah managed a shaky breath, and then the white-knuckled grip she had on him vanished, but the feeling of her fingers seemed to brush against the sleeve of his suit. The thing was in the light now, and it was just as alien as the other one it was crawling over the top of. Its flesh was mottled white, with odd splotches of a lighter grey, almost like a pattern of bruises that covered its entire body. The tip of his spear had been around chest level when he’d been forced to play statue, and despite the creature’s immense height, it held itself so close to the ground that it would pass straight underneath it without any kind of contact. Its hand stretched out at an angle, touching down on the rock half a foot from where he was standing—he was out of time.

“Grant,” Elliot said.

“Oh god,” Hannah managed.

The creature’s head snapped to the side as Grant took two large steps out into the open, aiming to draw the creature off its current course. Its left arm swept out to the side before its upper body followed, barely missing his legs as it shifted to face Grant’s arcing path around them. The long fingers seemed to clench down on the rough ground as it tensed, preparing to lift itself up off the ground in what was unmistakably a lunge. Elliot shifted the base of the spear to realign the tip and then buried it in the back of the creature's head—it collapsed like its strings had been cut, just as the other one had when Hannah struck it in the head.

“Brilliant,” Grant breathed.

“Is it—” Hannah whispered.

“It’s dead,” Elliot said. “Thanks for not letting us die; you’re a good guy.”

Grant had already returned to join them by the entrance, clearly unwilling to linger out in the open, and he quietly resigned himself to being used as some kind of emotional support post as Hannah retook her hold over his arm.

“Thank you for killing it,” Grant said, shaking his head. “If you hadn’t told me what to do—I’m just glad you’re so decisive.”

Grant was wrong because he was as far from decisive as could be found—he’d spent most of his life paralysed by indecision and unwilling to take risks. It’s what had led to him being unable to tell May how he felt, and it’s what had led him to closing himself off from the only person who he still had left—ironically, the only real decision he’d ever made had been the one that had landed him in this place.

“I’m really not,” Elliot denied.

“You never told us your name,” Grant said, “Did you?”

“I didn’t,” Elliot said, “It’s Elliot Archer.”

“How are you—” Hannah started, “Aren’t you scared at all?”

“I’m terrified,” Elliot admitted.

“So am I,” Grant said without shame. “I actually thought I was going to piss myself for a minute there.”

Hannah let out an anguished noise at the words before she leaned in until her forehead was pressed against the back of his shoulder. The woman drew in another shaky breath and then seemed to find the strength to let go of him entirely.

“I’m really scared too,” Hannah said, “Can you just—what should I be doing?”

“It’s not like I’m any more experienced at this than you are,” Elliot said, shifting his spear to draw her attention. “Just keep your weapon up, and if another one shows up, I’ll tell you what to do.”

The minutes passed by, and the three of them searched the dark for signs of movement, but no matter how long they looked, nothing appeared. Elliot found his eyes continually drawn towards the white boxes and found himself wondering what exactly they were. They were entirely stationary, unchanging fixtures in the dark, and so he’d considered that they might have been entrances to other tunnels—like the one in the Grey Room that had vanished when the dungeon first opened—but these ones weren’t anywhere near as large.

“Do you think they’re going to come back?” Hannah asked. “The other people, I mean.”

“They’re going to have to, aren’t they?” Grant tried.

Elliot wasn’t quite sure how the man had come to that conclusion, but it only took a moment for him to realise that neither of them had heard any of the information that Jane had given him. There was a loud crack that seemed to come from far away, followed by a man calling something out, but the words were entirely indecipherable—between all of the people who’d gone out there and the monsters that were stalking around in the dark, it was impossible to say who was actually winning the battle.

“I asked a few questions before the dungeon appeared,” Elliot said in the wake of the noise. “I was told that we would leave through a portal once the last enemy was killed.”

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“A portal,” Grant repeated.

“Are we even going to be able to see something like that in this place?” Hannah managed, “It’s pitch black.”

Again, Elliot found himself glancing over at the white lights scattered throughout the dark and came to wonder if he was the only one who could actually see them.

“There are four white lights out ahead of us; the first one is about—twenty meters away,” Elliot said, taking a guess. “Can either of you see them?”

The two of them turned to look in the general direction he was angled towards—he could tell by the fact that they were leaning forward and squinting their eyes against the low light in an effort to see anything that they couldn’t.

“I can’t see anything,” Hannah tried.

“Neither can I,” Grant said, shaking his head. “Am I even looking in the right place?”

“You are,” Eliot said, frowning. “Back in the other room, before the tunnel appeared—did either of you see a massive white door on the wall?”

“No,” Grant said. “Hannah?”

“There wasn’t anything like that,” Hannah said, “It was just walls made of grey smoke.”

Then either he was seeing things that weren’t there, or he was seeing things that were, but that nobody else could see—he wasn’t sure if that made him crazy or if something else was going on, but he didn’t appreciate the ambiguity.

“Are you—” Hannah started.

There was a sudden, high-pitched, and inhuman shriek out in the darkness before a massive pillar of light erupted several hundred meters ahead of them. Elliot found himself shading his eyes against the brilliant mess as all of the cavern’s darkest corners were dragged screaming into the light. It had the disturbing effect of bringing the dead monsters' bodies into perfect clarity, and when the light touched them, their shadows twisted into long, grotesque shapes that crept high upon the wall of the cave.

“Maybe I’m going out on a limb here,” Grant said, sounding relieved. “But that kind of looks like it might be the portal.”

“All the monsters are dead,” Elliot said unnecessarily. “I guess we survived.”

Hannah seemed to lose all of the courage she’d found at the words, and the rapier clattered to the ground as she sank down to her knees in tortured relief. Elliot couldn’t blame her for crying, considering everything that had just happened, and if he’d been alone, he might well have done the same. Grant seemed only slightly better off as he dropped down to sit where he’d been standing, the sabre laying flat across the grey lap of his trousers. The four points of white light were still present, but even with the entire cavern in perfect clarity, he couldn’t actually see what was emitting it—three of them seemed to be on the other side of large masses of rock, showing through the material like a torch held up to a piece of paper. The third was actually unobstructed, sitting on top of a small outcropping of rock, but though the glow was present, there was nothing actually there.

“Even if all the monsters are dead, it’s probably not a good idea to stay here for too long,” Grant said, visibly trying to psych himself up. “We should probably head for the portal.”

“You’re right,” Hannah managed, still crying. “Elliot—can you help me up?”

Elliot glanced down at her and found that she was scrubbing at her face with the sleeve of her knitted dress in an attempt to wipe away the wetness clinging to her skin; her other hand was stretched out towards him. He turned to brace himself and then took hold of it, carefully pulling her up to her feet. Despite his care, she still somehow managed to stumble into him, and he found his arm once again trapped in her grip—he turned his upper body slightly, and when that didn’t really do anything to create any distance, he found himself leaning his head to the side in an attempt to avoid looking directly at her. It was probably unfair of him to be so uncomfortable with the proximity, given that she was still so obviously terrified, but he couldn’t really help it.

“I’m going to see what those lights are,” Elliot said, still not looking at her. “They might be dangerous, so you two should probably just head straight to the portal.”

“There’s no way we’re going to leave you on your own,” Grant said without even considering it. “We’ll just take a detour—they aren’t too far away, are they?”

Elliot wasn’t quite sure what to say in the face of the man’s good nature, so he just shook his head in the negative before starting forward. His attempt to actually walk was made more difficult by the person clinging to him, but she seemed to be struggling with the same issue because she slipped her hand down and stuffed it into his own—he made no attempt to hold onto it, but she didn’t seem all that bothered by the one-sided grip. There were half a dozen corpses scattered across their path forward, including the man they’d seen getting eaten alive, but the ratio of the dead seemed weighted far more heavily towards the monsters. Hannah’s grip on his hand turned painful when they were forced to shuffle past a pair of the dead, their long limbs entangled with one another in death. Elliot carefully leaned down past the mass of rock that was occluding the first of the white boxes in an effort to get a visual on where it was sitting beneath the overhand—but there was nothing there.

“I’m going to need my hand back,” Elliot said, and then after a beat. “I’ll tell you if it’s safe, so stay there for a second.”

Grant crept close enough to lean around the corner, but it was clear that he couldn’t see anything either, and he seemed hesitant on exactly how to proceed—Elliot wondered if the man thought he was experiencing a break in reality.

“Don’t go too far,” Hannah said.

Elliot managed to worm his hand out of her grip—despite her agreement, she seemed entirely reluctant to let go—and then stepped around the ledge. It was possible that this was some kind of trap, but the shape of the glowing outline seemed more akin to a container than anything else. Elliot turned his head away, using some of the overhanging rock as a sort of shield, and then stretched a hand down to touch the glowing lines—there was a distinctive and mechanical click noise. The air seemed to ripple, and for a very brief moment, he could see what it was: a chest engraved with a pattern of geometric lines that covered every available surface. Then it simply vanished, taking the glowing white lines with it. Elliot carefully swept his hand through the space it had once occupied, but there was no longer anything there.

“What was that noise?” Hannah asked.

“It was a—chest,” Elliot said, standing back up. “But it vanished after I touched it.”

“A chest?” Grant said.

The was only one other chest between them and the direct path to the portal; the other two were way off the beaten path and required far more climbing to actually reach—something which he wasn’t sure he was all that prepared for.

“Like something from a video game,” Elliot said, “There’s one more between us and the portal; we should keep moving.”

Neither of them seemed to want to linger in the cave, so there was no real argument about the suggestion. No longer as concerned by the danger of the unknown, he didn’t waste any time being careful with the next one, simply shuffling through the small gap to get at its hiding place and kicking the side of it with his shoe—the same mechanical click noise occurred, but he didn’t really have the line of sight to see if it looked the same as the other one. The three of them made a beeline for the portal after that, but as they walked, Elliot didn’t fail to notice that there were more white lights appearing—it was like he could only detect the chests within a certain radius. Some of them were out of the way but seemed like they wouldn’t be all that difficult to reach with a bit of concentrated effort, while others looked impossibly well hidden. Neither of the other ones had actually done anything; there was no real incentive to go chasing after them, and the return of Hannah’s hand in his own made him certain that the other two didn’t want to waste any more time—ahead of them, a man in a full set of chainmail stepped into the light of the portal and vanished.

“There are people down there,” Hannah said, genuinely relieved to see the others. “We’re not alone.”

“Horrible monsters, invisible chests and magic portals,” Grant said, “Where the hell are we?”

“Hell sounds about right,” Hannah said, “I died, and now I’m here—maybe this is hell.”

“It might be,” Grant said, “Those things that attacked us could definitely pass as demons.”

They came to a stop just outside the light of the portal, hesitating as a group at the final step before Hannah turned to look at him as if he might have some kind of answer about what to do next. Elliot blew a short breath out of his nose at the unseen pressure she kept on placing on him and then stepped forward into the light. His foot hit unyielding stone—this time, it was the kind that had been meticulously crafted—and the light washed over the skin of his face as he stepped through the other side. It was like walking through a sheet of water held suspended in mid-air, and the moment his eyes were past it, he found himself staring down at a large city wrought from neat white stone.

Rolling hills and grassy plains surrounded it on all sides, but beyond it, the mass of land stretched on until it was dominated by a mess of ice-capped mountains, above which a great sheet of stars seemed to hang suspended and in brilliant clarity. Elliot stepped forward onto the platform, passing all the way out of the portal, and then turned as his hand remained tethered to Hannah’s own as she stepped through behind him. His head tilted backwards as he turned to look up at the massive set of bright red gates, reminiscent of the Torii he’d seen in photographs of old Japanese villages. There was a pair of heavy gold bells looming overhead, dangling from either side of the gate and glinting in the light. The white plane of energy that sat in the middle of the Torii seemed to swirl in a slow, sluggish spiral to the central point right in the middle—the moment his hand fully cleared the portal, a neat panel of light appeared directly in front of his face.

Survival

315 Exp

315 Gold

Discovery

200 Exp

Items

Common Boots

Common Ring

Total

515 Exp

315 Gold

Revive Ally

Yes/No

Experience, gold, items, chests, and killing monsters; these were all things he’d expect to find in an RPG, something which didn’t make all that much sense considering that he was a real person with a real life—or at least, he had been before he’d thrown it all away.

“We get experience and gold for surviving?” Grant said as he reached up to run his fingers across the panel in front of his own face. “This has to be some kind of joke.”

“You can revive someone that has died? Do you think that is just in the dungeon, or does it work on someone from before?” Hannah managed with a shaky breath. “That’s—five hundred thousand gold?”

Elliot found himself tapping on the ‘yes’ prompt and was immediately rebuffed with a small line of text suggesting he had insufficient gold to perform the transaction. It was a lot of money, in comparison to the amount he’d been rewarded, but also unfathomably cheap considering the product you were buying was a person’s life—if he could revive people from the old world, then the only thing standing between him and seeing Dimitri again was five hundred thousand gold. But he had a feeling that she was being far too hopeful because ‘Revive Ally’ didn’t sound like it was referring to anyone outside of the teammates they’d had in the dungeon.

There were half a dozen people loitering on the stairs beneath the platform and a dozen more already moving towards the gates of the city—almost all of them were people he recognised from the Grey Room, but the numbers were drastically lower than what they had been only minutes before. If any of these people had enough gold to revive their fallen teammates, it didn’t seem to be high on their list of priorities.

“I’m not sure,” Elliot said, watching her out of the corner of his eye. “There is probably someone in the city who knows the answer to that question.”

He’d already caught sight of Jane amongst the group that was returning to the city, which meant that the favour he’d traded away would still need to be repaid at some point in the future—for now, at least, she didn’t seem interested in collecting it. Elliot stepped around Hannah and attempted to search out what was behind the gates—the motion pulled her arm up between them, and startled, she appeared to realise that she was still holding onto him.

“Sorry for hanging all over you like that; I’m kind of a touchy person,” Hannah said in apology. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

The fact that she’d noticed his discomfort only made him feel worse, and a wave of rising anxiety built up within him—unfairly, his inability to interact with strangers or to fit into any kind of social situation seemed to have followed him all the way to the afterlife.

“It’s—fine,” Elliot said without looking at her. “I’m just not used to having people touch me.”

“Sounds like you just need some practice,” Hannah said in what was probably a joke. “Hey—where are you going?”

Elliot wasn’t sure what exactly she considered practice, but the conversation topic was something he didn’t want to linger on. Behind the gateway, he was greeted by a sight of such absurdity that he couldn’t quite understand what he was looking at—the red wooden railing that ringed the platform stood as a frail barrier between him and the greater universe beyond. The landmass they were all standing on wasn’t a planet as he’d first assumed because it abruptly ended less than a meter beyond the railing, and there was nothing but twinkling stars on a canvas of inky black below. He doubted he could have explained what he was looking at to another person with any real clarity, but one thing was certain—he was staring at the edge of the world.

“What is this place?” Grant said, “It’s beautiful.”

“It’s terrifying,” Hannah said, swallowing. “Elliot—don’t get too close to the railing; it might collapse.”

Elliot didn’t heed the warning. Instead, he placed both of his hands on the top of it and then leaned down in order to get a better view of what was beneath them—just more stars and nothing else. It was like he was standing on a flat landmass in the middle of space.

“I hate to say it,” Grant said, “But the flat earthers were right.”

“They were not,” Hannah said with a huff of a laugh. “This isn’t even earth.”

“This shouldn’t work at all,” Elliot said as he straightened back up. “Then again, nothing about the last hour has made much sense.”

“Maybe we should try to find someone with answers,” Grant said, turning back to look at the city. “Someone has to know how to send us home.”

“That’s right—” Hannah said, sucking in a sharp breath. “I need to get back home as soon as possible.”

They were both far too optimistic given the things that they’d seen so far, and Elliot had a feeling that whatever answers they did find, how to return to their lives before all of this wasn’t going to be one of them. Jane had said it plainly, and even if she hadn’t, Elliot knew exactly what had proceeded his arrival here—he was dead, and if his guess was correct, the same thing had happened to every other person who found themselves waking up in the Grey Room.

“Then let’s not waste any time,” Grant said.

Elliot remained where he was, just staring out at the universe, and wondered if Dimitri had found himself waking up here after the accident—was the other man here somewhere, dealing with the same struggles that he was? Had he been thrown into the dungeon and been forced to kill monsters to earn his own freedom? If he had—then had he actually survived? Dimitri was far more athletic and capable than Elliot had ever been, but the monsters he’d seen in the dungeon were beyond the physicality of a single person. Elliot knew that he would have died if he hadn’t been able to take advantage of Hannah’s fear to sneak up behind the monster or if Grant hadn’t agreed to distract the second one. Dimitri had always been more capable of making friends and cooperating with others, so he could easily imagine the other man doing a hundred times better than he had—

“Elliot?” Hannah said, touching his arm. “We’re going.”

Despite the fact that they’d fought together inside the dungeon, the imminent danger was now behind them, and he hadn’t quite expected the loose cooperation they’d held to maintain itself. Elliot tried and failed not to glance down at where she was touching him, but rather than remove her hand, she just smiled at him—it reminded him far too much of how May had used to look at him before he’d ruined everything.

“I—” Elliot said, unsure of how to tell them they didn’t need to wait for him. “Okay.”

“Great,” Hannah said, still smiling. “Let’s go.”

Elliot allowed himself to be steered back around the Torii, internally struggling with the fact that he’d somehow agreed to accompany them—in what must have been an unconscious attempt at conflict avoidance—and perhaps, even more selfishly, because the smile touching her mouth seemed so magnetic. It seemed easy enough to pin down her insistence as a lingering fear of the unknown because he couldn’t imagine any other reason for her to have decided he should continue to tag along. Even Elliot could admit that there was something in the show of trust the three of them had reached inside the dungeon that aligned them more closely as safe than the mass of faceless people that Jane had painted as opportunistic murderers held back only by the threat of force. He found himself tugged along at her side by her continued grip as if she had accurately determined that he might try to separate himself from the two of them should she detach herself entirely.

Grant led them down the stairs and onto the dirt road that led to the gates of the city, hard-packed by all of the boots that must have trampled the grass to death. It was only about a hundred meters from the Torii to the gates that led into the city—Hell, if what Jane said was true—and the closer they got, the less pristine the city seemed to become. From that small distance and elevation, the city seemed like a sprawling mass of white stone buildings—densely packed but neat with uniformity—but the ground level was different.

There were people sitting on the streets in ragged sets of clothes, most of which were without armour, something which led him to wonder. The streets were cobblestone and busy with people, hundreds of people cutting down the main stretch in search of unknown places, but with strides that seemed certain. Nearly all of them carried a weapon of some sort, sheathed on their person, and the variety was far more eclectic than what he’d seen in the Grey Room. Shields, swords, blades, halberds, war hammers, spears, massively thick and unwieldy two-handed swords that looked more like slabs of metal than anything else. There were bows as well, of many different types, including mechanical crossbows and wrist-mounted ones of a much smaller size—no matter how well he looked, he never spotted a singular firearm.

“None of them have guns,” Elliot mumbled.

“I guess not, but the tech level of this place looks like something out of a fantasy game, so maybe that’s not too surprising?” Grant hedged. “Still, you’d think someone would know how to make one, at least—”

There was a flash of movement in the air above the street, and an armoured figure crossed the width of it in a single leap, the movement carrying him across the rooftops and then out of sight.

“Did you see that?” Hannah breathed. “That’s like a twenty-meter jump.”

A twenty-meter jump with a full set of plate mail armour and a Warhammer weighing the man down—either way, it was an outright superhuman feat of physicality that was beyond anything he’d ever seen a human do.

“If they can do things like that—” Grant said, “That must be why everyone was so confident in the dungeon.”

This place was filled with superhumans, and that was most likely a result of using the EXP and GOLD that were rewarded for completing the dungeons. He reached up to touch the warm spot in the middle of his chest for a moment but hesitated to speak the word that Jane had revealed to him—he didn’t know what it would do to say it a second time, and he’d rather be somewhere out of public view when he tried it.

“Excuse me,” Grant said, raising his hand up at a passing man. “Could I ask you a few—questions.”

The man barely looked at him, grunted, and then kept on walking without bothering to stop, leaving the three of them standing around—Grant tried three more times and received much the same response before he actually began to grow a bit discouraged.

“Maybe we should try getting off the street?” Hannah tried. “There was a building back there that had tables and a bar inside.”

“Works for me,” Grant said with a sigh. “Come on then.”

Elliot paused at the threshold of the build—a tavern, guessing by the layout and function—and eyed the rough dragon that had been carved into the sign hanging above it. Barely anybody looked up when Hannah and Grant stepped into the room, and Elliot, untethered for the first time, considered moving on without them. That only lasted until Hannah glanced back over her shoulder in search of him, and he found himself once again frozen at the sight of her smile—he forced himself to move, stepping into the building and dropping his eyes to the floorboards. Despite the fact that she couldn’t have known, he found himself anxious in the aftermath, as if she could reach out and pluck his thoughts from his mind as easily as she could muster the same disarming smile.

“Seems like we can sit wherever we want,” Grant hedged, eying the tables. “This one looks good.”

Grant took the stool on the far side of the table while Hannah slipped down onto the bench seat and pressed against the wall before she patted the seat beside her in a gesture of clear invitation. Elliot carefully stepped forward and then immediately crumbled beneath the pressure, sinking down onto a completely different stool—one much further away from her—unable to bring himself to take the offered seat. The laugh that fell out of her mouth had him angling his body away from her entirely.

“Sorry, it’s not funny,” Hannah said, covering her mouth with the back of her hand. “Do you think the guy at the bar will answer our questions?”

The bear of a man standing behind the bar was entirely unarmoured, but he was somehow more intimidating than just about everyone else present combined. Elliot pegged the man as someone in their fifties, at a guess, the grizzled beard and thick grey hair dangling around his shoulders, making it a bit hard to actually place his age.

“We’ll probably have to buy something,” Grant said, hesitating at the sight of him. “I wonder how we’re supposed to use the gold we earned.”

It wasn’t exactly a private space, but driven by curiosity, Elliot reached up to touch the warm spot on his chest once more—

“Interface,” Elliot said.

Status

Equipment

Inventory

Faction

Servant

The word caught the attention of both of them, but even if it hadn’t, the panel that now sat in front of his face would have done it just as well—Elliot’s attention, however, wasn’t on the panel at all, rather, it was taken up by the thousands of objects, and people that had just come into existence within his mind. Without any real explanation, he suddenly knew where every table, chair, plate, bowl, and mug was located. He knew the position and orientation of one hundred and twelve different people—ninety-eight, of which weren’t even in the same building as him—along with exactly how they were moving their bodies, even though none of them was within his sight.

It should have been overwhelming, and he shouldn’t have been able to keep all of it straight in his head all at once—but it just wasn’t, and somehow, without ever having done anything with this odd sense before, he knew that he could reach out to any one of those objects, and trade places with them. Hannah’s hand rose up from her lap to press firmly against her own chest, and he tracked its progress without having to turn his head—a moment later, Grant followed her example.

“Interface?” Hannah asked. “Whoa—what was that?”

He could only imagine that she’d experienced the same tingling feeling he had back in the Grey Room, but it wasn’t until she looked at his panel, frowned, and then repeated the phrase that an identical panel opened up in front of her own face. Hannah leant back away from it, startled by its sudden appearance. It was odd that he could feel the entire movement of her body and that she registered as a target for this sense, but that everything she was wearing wasn’t targetable as an individual object. It was like her clothing and shoes were a part of her body. The scimitar that was lying on the bench and not quite touching her thigh registered as its own separate object—but the moment she reached down to touch the handle as if to reassure herself that it was still there, it became subsumed in the same way that her clothing did.

“You have to do it twice?” Grant guessed, “How did you know what to say?”

Elliot was still trying to sort out exactly what was going on, so it took him a moment to actually figure out how to respond.

“I asked someone for information in the Grey Room, but I didn’t have time to test it out in the dungeon,” Elliot said, turning his attention back to the panel itself. “It was a woman named Jane from something called Archive—I owe her a favour now.”

Neither of them said anything in response, their focus taken up by the respective panels, but Elliot didn’t mind at all—he opened the STATUS menu.

Status

Level 1

Attributes

Strength

1

Speed

6

Magic

1

Defense

1

Attribute Growth

Strength

1

Speed

6

Magic

1

Defense

1

Passive

Hidden Sight

Reveals hidden objects within the environment.

Active

Swap

Allows the user to swap places with anything inside of their range; positional changes and momentum manipulation are possible.

Dungeon

167:46:13

Elliot sat back as he read through the information, frowning at how similar it was to a status screen from any number of roleplaying games. The existence of a Level meant that this was where the experience points were going. Strength, speed, magic and defence were common attributes, but the specific combination of them was odd. Usually, there were things like Wisdom, Intelligence, Dexterity, or Luck, but these four options seemed oddly simple. Attribute growth seemed to outline which attributes would increase with each level, though he wondered if he could gain some kind of control over how that actually functioned—the spread was entirely lopsided towards a single attribute, and he wasn’t really sure how to feel about that.

The passive and active that were listed, however, went a long way towards clearing up some of the questions he’d had. Hidden Sight explained why he was able to see where the door in the Grey Room would open up, and it provided a clear reason for being able to see where the chests were located throughout the dungeon. Swap, on the other hand, explained why a large radial section of his immediate surroundings was being jammed into his head. Having magic at his fingertips made him oddly eager to try it out, but he had enough restraint to wait until he wasn’t in public—he had no idea if there were rules against using abilities in the city, but finding out it was against the law was something he should try to discover before he broke it. Perhaps the most notable of everything present was the timer slowly ticking down at the very bottom of the screen.

The question was, did the timer describe how long until they could enter the dungeon again—or how long until they would be forced back into it?

#

Grant returned to the table with three mugs in hand and a face that was far more pale than when he’d first gone over. Hannah seemed to grow more nervous, like some kind of sympathetic reflex that tapped into the unease of those within her surroundings.

“You were right,” Grant said, “Every seven days, we get summoned into the Grey Room—it happens to everyone.”

“Even him?” Hannah tried.

Hannah fanned the fingers of her left hand over at the grizzled man at the bar as if by virtue of the man’s massive size, or perhaps his status as the owner of the tavern would make him somehow immune to it. Grant sent a somewhat concerned look at the man in question—visibly regretted it, as the man frowned at the three of them—before turning back to give her a hasty nod. Elliot leaned forward onto his elbows and linked his hands in front of his mouth as he considered the news, the STATUS panel strategically arranged to serve as a shield between him and Hannah—though it hadn’t stopped her from leaning far enough around to peer at him.

“I asked him about what we should do now, but he didn’t really have much to say about it,” Grant said, “He did say that we should find somewhere to stay at night because bandits have a history of sneaking into the city at night.”

“Bandits?” Hannah asked.

“They’re just like everybody else here, but they live outside the city and don’t follow the rules,” Grant said, “He made it sound like they avoid coming here during the day because they’ll get killed by one of the factions that deal with that kind of thing.”

“What are the rules?” Elliot murmured.

“I asked that too,” Grant admitted, “He said that there were a bunch of factions that were all vying for control of the city and that the only rule they could really come to agreement on as a group was that you don’t kill anyone in the city.”

In the city, it was relatively safe, but outside of it—or inside the dungeon it was the opposite. Jane was right; you really couldn’t trust anyone in this place. But beyond all of that, the knowledge that the rules in this place were created at the whim of a bunch of factions instead of an actual governing body was more than a little concerning—what did vying for control even mean? Were they fighting members of the opposing factions in the dungeon whenever they got the chance? Was the structure of this place really built entirely on the concept of might makes right?

“Did he suggest somewhere we could stay?” Elliot asked.

Hannah seemed to frown at the question, though he couldn’t immediately identify what the cause was.

“There are a lot of places along the main street, and they have signs up like the tavern did,” Grant said, “He pointed us towards the one with an umbrella on the sign—I think we passed it on the way here.”

“We did,” Elliot said, “Eight buildings from the front gates, left side of the street.”

“Good memory,” Grant said in appreciation. “He didn’t know the prices off hand, but I don’t think he would have mentioned it if we couldn’t afford it.”

“How much gold do we even have?” Hannah wondered.

“The drinks cost one gold each, so three less than whatever we had before,” Grant said before taking a sip of his. “Huh—better than I thought it would be.”

“Don’t let him hear you say that,” Hannah said, “I have three-hundred-and-fifteen gold.”

“Three-hundred-twelve for me,” Grant said, “So we both earned the same amount?”

“Elliot?” Hannah prompted.

“Three-hundred-and-fifteen,” Elliot said in consideration. “Personal contribution in the dungeon doesn’t seem to affect the rewards; I wonder if every single person earned the same amount of gold.”

“It sounds like that might be the case,” Grant agreed, “Same amount for experience, right?”

“Yep,” Hannah said. “Three-hundred-and-fifteen.”

“I earned more than that,” Elliot said, “Opening the chests grants one hundred experience points for each one.”

“Really—” Hannah said, blinking. “Did you get anything out of them?”

Elliot opened up the INVENTORY menu just to check if there was anything else inside, and once he’d confirmed that there was, he selected one of the items—three options appeared: EQUIP, IDENTIFY, and DROP. He selected the second option as he spoke up, just to see if it did anything.

Identify Item

1000 Gold

Yes/No

“Common boots and a common ring,” Elliot said, eying the prompt with some disdain. “It says they need to be identified—which I’m not going to do.”

Hannah seemed to perk up at the words, but Grant was the one who spoke up.

“Why not?” Grant asked.

“It costs one thousand gold per item,” Elliot said after checking to see the cost for the other item. “I don’t feel like going into debt because I’m curious.”

“Hold on, that’s the same thing that my active does,” Hannah said, backtracking through her interface. “Appraise; identify items and reveal a spread of information about a target.”

“Is it free to use?” Grant asked.

“I don’t know, I haven’t used it yet,” Hannah said before minimising the panel entirely. “Let’s find out—Appraise.”

Elliot felt a spike of alarm cut through him as she spoke the words while looking directly at him, and he turned the description she’d just mentioned over in his head in an attempt to figure out exactly what it might reveal about him—what constituted a spread of information?

“Elliot Archer. Level one. Five-foot-nine. Seventy-five kilograms—you’re only twenty-three; I thought you were older than that,” Hannah said with interest. “Feeling nervous—oh, you poor thing, that’s not my fault, is it?”

Elliot could feel his face grow warm at the words, and the laughter in her voice only made it worse—what an invasive skill.

“Oh, leave him alone,” Grant said, “What does it say about me?”

“Grant Baker. Level one. Six-foot-three. Eighty-eight kilograms. Twenty-eight years old,” Hannah said, “Feeling amused. Sound about right?”

“I’ve lost a little bit of weight,” Grant said, apparently impressed. “Not bad.”

Hannah laughed again, and Elliot forced himself to speak up.

“What does it say about you?” Elliot managed.

Hannah grinned at the interest, and he completely failed to maintain eye contact with her as she leaned forward a bit.

“How badly do you want to know?” Hannah teased.

“Just tell us already,” Grant complained.

“Hannah Baker. Level one. Six-foot-one. Fifty-nine kilograms. Twenty-eight years old. Feeling pleased.” Hannah said without shame. “Satisfied?”

“Not really,” Elliot mumbled.

“Did it cost anything?” Grant asked.

“Nothing at all,” Hannah admitted, “I don’t have anything to identify, but I have a feeling that won’t cost anything either.”

Elliot took a moment to try and bury his embarrassment before selecting the common ring and removing it from his inventory. He pinched it between his thumb and middle finger, then held it out for her to take—to which she flashed him a brilliant smile that wasted his hard-fought attempt to brush it all off.

“We’ve only just met, you know,” Hannah said, “Isn’t this a little too fast?”

“On second thought, maybe you can find your own item,” Elliot managed, withdrawing the offer. “Did the owner say anything else?”

“He did, actually,” Grant said, raising an eyebrow. “There are apparently a few factions that—”

“Wait, wait, wait—” Hannah squeaked, catching hold of his now closed hand. “You didn’t even give me a chance to accept.”

“It really wasn’t that kind of offer,” Elliot denied.

“Elliot—please?” Hannah cooed. “I really want to see if it works.”

He let her take the ring out of his hand without a fight, and she brought it up in front of her face before speaking the activation phrase—he wondered if it was actually required or if she just hadn’t thought to try sub-vocalising it.

“It’s a Common Ring of Magic; it increases the magic attribute by ten percent,” Hannah said with interest. “So we really are magic now.”

The fact that it targeted the magic attribute made it almost completely useless for him because ten percent of one was basically nothing, and it would take ten entire levels before he would receive even a single-point increase.

“There’s no point in me using it,” Elliot said, “What do you both have for Attribute Growth?”

“Three strength, two speed, two magic, and two defence,” Grant said after he’d brought it up to check. “Seems like I’m spread pretty evenly across all four.”

“I’m two strength, one speed, four magic and two defence,” Hannah said, tilting her head at the numbers. “Is this what we get when we level up?”

“Probably,” Elliot said, “You’ve got the highest magic, so you might as well use it.”

“I knew this was a proposal.” Hannah accused.

“It’s not—that’s not what it was,” Elliot managed before sliding off his stool. “I’m going to find somewhere to stay the night.”

“Wait for us—” Hannah said as she attempted to scoot free of the bench seat. “Hey.”

“Now look what you’ve done,” Grant said with some irony. “You’ve chased him away, you harlot.”

Hannah laughed out loud at the insult, taking it for the joke that it was, and Elliot wondered how they could so easily interact with what was essentially a complete stranger—whatever wiring was required for these types of situations was something that he’d just never had installed. Elliot did wait for them—though he wasn’t sure why he was doing it—but he did so from out on the street. Seeing Hannah rush out in an attempt to find him before he could vanish was an interesting sight, and he probably shouldn’t have felt as quietly pleased about it as he did.

#

“There are two rooms left; the big one downstairs is one-hundred gold a night, the shitty one upstairs is ten; if the three of you are alright with squeezing in there together, I’ll throw in a second mattress and let you have it for twenty.” Matilda said, “You don’t get food, but there is a toilet in the bathroom you can use on the bottom floor by the stairs—most people just drink straight out of the faucet, but there is a ladle you can use.”

Grant seemed to visibly wilt at the words, though Elliot wasn’t sure if it was the price of the bigger room or the extent of the options at play—there was no way he was paying a third of his gold for a single night.

“We’ll take the shitty room, please, with the extra mattress,” Hannah said, a bit hesitant. “Just checking, but—does the door lock?”

“That one does,” Matilda admitted before slapping the trading stone onto the benchtop. “You know how to use this?”

Grant had already explained how he’d paid at the tavern, and Elliot had investigated the trading stone that was sitting in his own inventory enough to have figured it out. Hannah reached out to lay her fingers on the stone and then spoke the agreed-upon price—Elliot wasn’t sure he liked the idea of someone else paying for his room, but she hadn’t exactly given either of them a chance to do it.

“You’re good to go on up,” Matilda said, “You have until midday tomorrow to pay for another night, or you can just leave—and try not to make a mess.”

“I’ll make sure to tidy up before we leave,” Grant said, shaking his head. “But we might end up staying here for a while, so expect us to come down and pay for another night tomorrow.”

“That’s fine by me,” Matilda said.

Elliot was the one standing closest to the stairs, so he was kind of forced to go up first, the extra mattress sitting unwieldy in his hands, and the other two followed close behind. Hannah’s hand seemed to find itself resting on the small of his back as he came to a stop in front of the door—something he might have considered as an accident had she not kept it there for so long—but he didn’t really have the space to try and do anything other than pretend it didn’t exist. He found himself crowded into the shitty room ahead of them, and there was barely enough space on the floor for the mattress to even lay without riding up the far wall.

“This isn’t even a room; it’s like a closet,” Grant sighed. “I want to go home.”

Hannah turned towards him at the words and patted him on the upper arm in commiseration, looking as if she felt about the same. Elliot didn’t like the room, but he’d rather have slept here than go back and face the person he’d left behind. Hannah’s hand seemed to once again find its way to the back of his hip before dropping even lower than that, and he jumped about a foot in the air as she gave his ass an overt and unmistakable squeeze—

“Hannah,” Elliot managed. “You’re touching me.”

“Sorry—there’s not a lot of space,” Hannah said, but she didn’t sound all that apologetic. “Maybe we should wait outside until the mattress goes down?”

They did just that, and he struggled to jam into the space well enough that the door could actually be closed. He tried to stake out a corner for himself, but even then, it was crowded. Hannah sat on the edge of the bed while Grant seemed content to stand in the small space at the end of the single bed, leaning against the wall.

“I feel like we’re going to suffocate in here,” Grant said, “That tiny little window can’t be enough for ventilation.”

“I think it’s the best we can do for now,” Elliot said, eyes locked on the floor rather than risk making eye contact with either of them. “Twenty gold a night gets us a couple of weeks here, but it won’t last forever.”

“That and we’ll need to pay for food as well,” Grant said, “Marvin said that he sells stew for a couple of gold pieces, but I don’t think we can live on that for long.”

“Marvin was the owner’s name?” Elliot asked.

“Yeah,” Grant said.

“I can’t stay here for a couple of weeks,” Hannah said, hands bundled in her lap. “That’s way too much.”

“Sorry,” Elliot said, “If it’s too crowded, I don’t mind going to find another room elsewhere.”

“I’m not talking about the room,” Hannah said, shaking her head. “I’m the one who takes care of my little sister, and there isn’t anyone else who can look after her—I need to get back as soon as possible.”

“Hannah, I don’t know what happened for you to arrive here,” Grant said, “But I was killed in a car accident—I don’t think we can go back.”

“I—I was run over by a bus,” Hannah managed, “So I realise that we’re dead, but—but—who’s going to pick her up?”

“Hannah,” Grant managed. “Is there really no one else that will step in?”

Hannah choked down a sob as best she could, then jerked her head to the side, then back again before burying her face in her hands when she failed to maintain her composure. There was an awful pressure in the room now, sitting between the three of them, and Elliot felt like he was going to be crushed by it—

“How old is she?” Elliot asked.

He wasn’t even sure how he’d managed it, but the sound of her pain somehow worked to drag the words straight out of his mouth before he’d even known what he was going to say.

“She’s only nine, and—and there isn’t anyone else,” Hannah said, voice shaking with the words. “I’ve been taking care of her since our mother died.”

“There’s no father in the picture?” Grant tried.

“No, there isn’t, and we don’t have any other family either,” Hannah said, “It’s just the two of us—I—what’s going to happen to her if I’m not there? She’s at a friend’s house for the day, but they’re expecting me to come pick her up.”

“They will try to contact you, and when that fails, they’ll call the police,” Elliot said, voice quiet. “Once they learn what happened to you, social services will take her into custody—and then she’ll be placed with a family.”

Some of that was nothing more than guesswork, but some of it was informed by what had happened to the boy who lived next door to his childhood home and what he’d overheard from his parents. The explanation and the clarity didn’t seem to do anything to reassure her. Instead, it only served to make it worse. He struggled in the wake of his failure, unsure of what he could possibly say to make the situation any better. Dimitri would have known what to say had he been here, Elliot knew, and it was a testament to how much time they’d spent together that he knew exactly what the other man would have said—

“I know this is difficult, Hannah, but she will be taken care of,” Elliot said, with all the shame of a man who’d just robbed a grave. “Then, after we’ve figured out how we can get home, you’ll be able to go see her again.”

Hannah reached out for him from her place on the bed, and he found himself reaching up to take hold of her hand—the discomfort of touching a stranger momentarily overcome by the desire to help. Grant slipped free of the small space at the end of the bed and sank down onto the bed beside her, offering her his own extension of comfort by patting her on the back.

“Elliot’s right,” Grant said, “Nobody is going to let her come to any harm, so it’s probably best for you to just focus on what you can do from here.”

Hannah managed a jerky nod at the words and then seemed to try her best to push past everything she was feeling. Elliot gave what he thought was a rather brave squeeze of her hand and then retracted his arm entirely. Grant seemed to tilt his head back and look up at the ceiling for a moment, the man’s eyes rushing through a rapid pattern of blinks.

“I—left my partner behind,” Grant said, fighting to keep his own voice level. “It had to be a car accident, didn’t it? Matt is going to be so angry about that.”

“We’ll go see him as well,” Hannah said, leaning into the man’s one-armed hug. “As soon as we find a way out of here.”

“Yeah,” Grant agreed.

“Gosh, I’m a complete mess today; all I’ve done is cry,” Hannah said with a shaky laugh. “I can’t believe we both died in a traffic accident—is that what happened to you as well, Elliot?”

Elliot hesitated at the question, but the unseen pressure of not providing an actual answer seemed to rise up in the air between them. Hannah and Grant seemed entirely untouched by it, the latter even going as far as to smile at the lack of answer—but Elliot felt like he was being crushed.

“Was there someone you wanted to go see?” Grant asked in a clear attempt to push past the awkwardness of his refusal to answer. “When we get out of here, I mean.”

That pressure continued to build as the silent expectation to share buried its hooks into the walls of the room, seeming to distort the space around him and he could almost see May’s face flickering behind his eyes with every blink.

“I don’t have anyone waiting for me, at least not anyone I deserve to see,” Elliot said, cracking under the strain. “I—jumped off a building.”

It might have been the least prepared thing he’d ever said to a stranger, and he hated everything about it the very second it had come out of his mouth. There was a horrible silence in the wake of his words, and though he’d expected it, it didn’t make it any easier to weather. Unable to bear the unspoken attention of either of them and feeling as if he had overshared by about two-hundred percent, he turned until his back was flat against the wall in an effort to avoid having to face either of them directly—and when that wasn’t enough to escape it, he pressed his hand flat against his chest.

“Interface,” Elliot murmured.

The INVENTORY said that he was still in possession of three-hundred-and-fifteen gold, something that would need to last at least seven days. Hannah had paid for the room tonight, but if they rotated through each of them, it would cost him around forty gold. Three meals at ‘a couple of gold pieces’ per meal would be around ten gold a day to keep himself fed, or seventy gold across the week. That was a hundred and ten gold accounted for in order to simply exist here. It also only left him with two-hundred-and-five gold to try and fill out all of the slots in the EQUIPMENT menu in preparation for the next dungeon—he brought it up to actually check and eyed each of the icons.

Weapon(Common Spear)

Alternate Weapon(Empty)

Helmet(Empty)

Cape(Empty)

Torso(Empty)

Gloves(Empty)

Legs(Empty)

Boots(Dress Shoes)

Amulet(Empty)

Ring(Empty, Empty.)

Bracelet(Empty, Empty, Empty, Empty.)

Clothing(Work Suit)

There were six armour slots that needed to be filled—five if the Common Boots sitting in his inventory were used to replace his dress shoes—and seven jewellery slots. The main weapon slot had an outline that spoke of the potential to allow for dual wielding or the use of a shield in the off-hand, but it was clear that equipping a two-handed weapon took up both. There was a secondary slot for weapons as well, but it was shaded out, which made him think you could only have one set of weapons in use at a time; maybe it was supposed to allow for switching between them.

Elliot didn’t have any kind of formal training with a melee weapon—who would in the modern world—but he’d had some relative success with the spear he’d woken up with. It had a good range on it, and it seemed to be effective at leveraging what strength he had into a single point. He didn’t really see a reason to switch it out, especially when he had such a small amount of gold to work with in the first place. He didn’t really have any idea what a piece of armour would even cost yet, but if just identifying something cost one thousand gold, he had a feeling that two hundred and five gold might not be enough to purchase anything at all. The fact that he’d given away a ring to Hannah was starting to feel like a pretty reckless decision, but there was no way he’d ever go as far as to ask for it back and internally, he didn’t actually want to—he didn’t need to look over to know that Hannah was still quietly watching him, because he could feel it with his swap-sense.

In an attempt to distract himself again, he turned his thoughts back to how best to use what little resources he had—if this had been a game, and the danger was nothing more than a simulation surrounding a character he controlled, then the path forward became so very clear to him. The optimal strategy wouldn’t be to spend an entire week waiting around as his gold slowly depleted; it would be to spend everything he had right now on better equipment and then go straight back into the dungeon as many times as he could manage. Even if three-hundred-and-fifteen gold—which was what he had right now—wasn’t enough to buy a full set of gear, it was unequivocally better than trying at the end of the week when he had significantly less.

The chests in the dungeon contained items as well, and if he focused his efforts on finding as many of them as he could, then he might not even need to spend any more gold. Beyond that, with the additional EXP granted by each one, he was bound to grow stronger—he just had to avoid dying in the process. But that was a danger that existed whether he went into the dungeon now or if he did so in seven days. It might actually be better to do it now because a week spent sleeping in a cramped space—with two strangers that he could barely look at without feeling like he’d stepped on some kind of social landmine—would likely drain his mental acuity and render him a dozen times more stressed than he already was.

Elliot wasn’t actually sure how long they’d spent in the dungeon, but it couldn’t have been much more than thirty minutes. Granted, it was thirty of the most terrifying minutes of his life—or perhaps his death, given the circumstances—but that still wasn’t a large amount of time. Trading half an hour of immense, life-threatening danger for a safety net that would help keep him fed, rested, and more equipped to handle any future danger was well within what he could tolerate.

“Elliot?” Hannah murmured.

The sound of her voice sent his heart racing in his chest, and he could have drowned in the irony—how was it that sitting in a room with a stranger was somehow more daunting than stepping into a dungeon filled with monsters?

“I’m going back into the dungeon,” Elliot said, rather than risk whatever question she had chambered. “Today.”

Hannah seemed horrified by the idea of willingly returning to the dungeon before they were forced to, and Elliot wasn’t sure that he could blame her. He weathered their disbelief as well as he could, and then, when pressed, he explained his reasoning.

“Buying equipment might actually be the best use of our money, so it’s not like the strategy isn’t sound,” Grant said in the aftermath. “But there’s an alternate option that I didn’t get around to telling you about—courtesy of Marvin.”

“You started to say something about factions earlier,” Elliot noted, “Did it have something to do with that?”

“Yes, and from what he said, factions are essentially just large groups of people who’ve banded together to help each other survive,” Grant said, “They routinely recruit new members as well—there was actually a noticeboard pinned to the tavern wall that had some of their advertisements on it.”

Elliot had seen it on his way out, but it had been a ragged mess of overlapping parchments with so many different sets of handwriting that it had been impossible to identify much of anything in passing. The FACTION menu was something he’d already investigated, though he’d learned nothing more than the fact that he could create one himself—if he had the one million gold needed to do so.

“That sounds a thousand times better than going back into the dungeon,” Hannah breathed, pushing herself to her feet. “We should go back and check before it gets too much later.”

Elliot was starting to notice a trend, in that the two of them were far more optimistic than he’d ever allowed himself to be—they’d asked about a dozen people for help or just information since they’d first arrived here, and not one of them had been willing to take the time to answer a single one. Jane had dragged a favour owed out of him for barely more than a handful of questions answered, and even Marvin hadn’t said anything until Grant had paid for the drinks. With a one-million gold price tag associated with creating a faction, where was the incentive for them to help brand-new arrivals? They had nothing to their name other than the clothes on their backs, and he couldn’t imagine what a level one could bring to the table that would enhance the survival of the greater group enough to warrant any kind of serious investment.

#

“Lion’s Edict, Menagerie, The Crushers and Everhunt,” Hannah said, reading them out loud. “Three of them have level requirements.”

“I didn’t see that part,” Grant admitted, “Which ones?”

“Lion’s Edict wants people over level eighty. The Crushers and Everhunt want people above level three hundred.” Hannah said, sounding more than a little discouraged. “Menagerie says they’re looking for people with useful skills, though it doesn’t say which ones.”

“Appraise is probably considered useful,” Elliot said, watching them from the corner of his eye. “Being able to identify items for free could end up saving them millions of gold over a couple of years if they are the type to collect a lot of items.”

Hidden Sight would definitely be considered useful if they had any interest in finding chests, but Elliot had no real desire to join a faction that was run by someone else.

“You think they would want me?” Hannah said before pausing. “I wouldn’t go without you two, though, just so we’re clear.”

“That’s sweet of you, but considering just how dangerous this place is, it would be foolish to turn them down if they offered to take you,” Grant said, bringing up his own INTERFACE. “I’m not sure if either of my skills would be considered useful.”

“What are they?” Hannah asked.

“My passive is Communicate, which seems to translate any spoken language into something I can understand,” Grant said, “The active is Power Strike, which enhances melee attacks.”

“The passive skill would probably count,” Hannah argued, “There might be people here who lived in other countries before they died, so being able to actually understand them should count as useful.”

“It might,” Grant admitted. “The skill you used to find those chests is probably up there as well.”

“Hey—all three of us have useful skills,” Hannah said, blinking. “That was your passive, wasn’t it? What was your active skill?”

“I can swap places with objects in a certain radius,” Elliot said after a moment of consideration. “I haven’t tried it, so I don’t really know how it works yet.”

“That’s a strange one,” Grant said, “What are the dates on the Menagerie flyer?”

“It says the first of every month, which means it’s like three weeks away—and that’s if the dates here are the same as back home,” Hannah said, biting her lip. “Even if we wait for them, we’ll have to go into the dungeon at least three more times.”

“That’s for when they’ll come here to see if anyone turned up,” Grant said, cradling his chin in his hand. “If we can find someone who knows one of the members, then we can go to them—we’ll just need to come up with a good way to sell ourselves.”

“It hasn’t been all that long since I was doing that,” Hannah said offhandedly. “It shouldn’t be that hard to dust off the old charm.”

Elliot furrowed his brow at the odd comment, though it seemed that Grant didn’t quite catch the reference either—Hannah grinned at the confusion.

“I was an escort for about three years, and then after that, I switched to doing the whole camming thing,” Hannah said without shame. “It was actually really good money—and it was something I could do from home.”

“Hold on—I called you a harlot earlier,” Grant said, wincing. “I hope you didn’t think that I—”

Hannah laughed out loud at the apology in his tone.

“I’ve been called far worse things than that, and I know you were only joking,” Hannah said, visibly amused. “I wasn’t mad or anything—it was funny.”

“An escort, huh? That’s fun.” Grant wondered before shaking his head at himself. “I was the duty manager at an upscale hotel—I’ve got quite a bit of experience dealing with all sorts of people.”

“Oh, look—common ground,” Hannah said, drawing an invisible line between their chests with an extended finger. “I guess you could say that the two of us spent a lot of time putting smiles on our customer’s faces.”

Elliot blew a sharp breath out of his nose at the unexpected comment, unable to help himself, and then, when she turned her smug smile on him, he glanced away.

“I’m taking back my apology,” Grant said, the words so thick with irony that he wasn’t sure how the man could have managed to speak around them. “You really are a harlot.”

“Guilty,” Hannah said, preening like it was some kind of compliment. “Elliot—what did you do back home?”

It was nothing more than a plain old question, and one that he’d heard other people ask a hundred times back in the old world, but he still felt a spike of anxiety at being the focus of their full attention.

“Data entry for a tech company,” Elliot said without investment. “It wasn’t really anything special, and I didn’t really have anything to do with the customer-facing side of things.”

“That’s okay, the two of us can handle that part,” Grant said, “We’ll just need to actually find them first.”

Elliot felt another crack grow between them, and he began to feel as if he didn’t speak up, he’d find himself dragged halfway around Hell in search of a group that he didn’t even want to meet—worse, perhaps, was that between the two of them, they might actually succeed. He didn’t want to join a group of strangers with an unknown cause and questionable motivations—

“Listen,” Elliot said, forcing himself to speak up. “If the two of you want to go looking for members of Menagerie, then you’ll have to count me out.”

“You don’t want to join them?” Hannah tried, deflating at the words. “I don’t think they’d mind us coming to look for them—they went to all the effort of putting up flyers, after all.”

“The woman I spoke to in the Grey Room said that all of the factions were vying for control over Hell and that they could only agree on one rule between them all—to avoid killing each other while inside the city,” Elliot said, glancing over at them just once. “There is no telling if the leadership of these factions are actually good people or if they’re just well-dressed tyrants trying to take advantage of people that don’t know any better.”

“It’s true that we don’t know if they’re good people, but we also don’t know that they’re bad,” Grant said, “Shouldn’t we at least meet with them first before coming to a decision?”

“They’re specifically looking for useful skills, and there is only one tenuous rule protecting us right now,” Elliot said, “There are a lot of things you can do to a person short of killing them, and many of those are actually worse.”

“You think they might not let us leave after we reveal what we can do,” Grant said, in understanding. “I hadn’t even considered that.”

Not for the first time, Elliot found himself quietly impressed by just how sharp the man seemed to be.

“We don’t know that they’re bad people, though,” Hannah tried, picking up the already defeated point. “But even then—why wouldn’t they let us leave?”

“I already told you earlier,” Elliot admitted, wilting a bit as she took a step closer. “The cost of identifying one hundred items is one-hundred-thousand gold—and you can do it for free.”

“If the wrong person found out about that—” Grant said, furrowing his brow. “People have killed for far less money, and that was back in the old world.”

“Then we just ask them to explain the benefits of joining first, and we can decide if we want to join before telling them what our skills do,” Hannah said, “That way, we’ve made our decision without them pressuring us.”

“You could do it like that,” Elliot said, turning his head to keep her out of his line of sight. “But what if they aren’t quite as friendly as you first thought—or worse, what if you decide you want to leave later? They’d be heavily incentivised to make sure you stayed put.”

“You don’t know that, though,” Hannah said.

“I don’t, but I’m also not willing to risk it,” Elliot said before abandoning the argument entirely. “Which is why you should do what you want to do, and I’ll do the same—I’m leaving.”

“Elliot,” Hannah managed before jaunting to the side to put herself between him and the door. “Don’t just leave—we need to stick together.”

“We actually don’t because there is nothing really tethering the three of us together,” Elliot said, unable to avoid looking at her now. “I’m just some loser who happened to cross your path, and it’s probably better if you figure out what to do without me weighing you down.”

“We don’t think that,” Grant said, genuinely taken aback. “Elliot—”

“You saved my life,” Hannah managed, hands pressed together in front of her chest. “You didn’t just cross our path, and you’re not some loser either.”

Elliot felt a spark of adrenalin roll up his spine at the confrontation, and the sound of her voice twisted up in panic set his hands shaking for a moment—he mastered it by clenching them into fists, the skin stretching white across his knuckles.

“We should at least try to learn more about this place first before we do anything rash,” Hannah tried, “There might be a better option that we just haven’t found yet—you don’t need to go straight back into the dungeon.”

There might have been better options, that was true, and there was nothing he could really say to contest it, but even if he had been in the right place to listen, there wasn’t anything particularly convincing about her argument. There might be a better option, just like there might be some saviour that would come down from the sky and solve all of their issues. There might be a faction that would try to help with no ulterior motive, and there might even be a way to get home—but he had a distinct feeling that in a place like this, the only might that meant anything was the force you could bring to bear.

“I’ve never been all that good with people, so I’m sorry, really,” Elliot said, and he thought he might actually mean it. “I suppose that’s the reason I ended up here in the first place.”

Elliot reached for the outer limits of his swap sense, to the pebble that was bouncing across the cobblestone road—

“If you go back in there, you’re going to die—I just know it,” Hannah managed, crying again. “I’m not going to let you leave.”

“Sorry, Hannah, but I don’t think that you can stop me,” Elliot said, closing his eyes against the pain in her voice. “I—think I’d hate it if either of you died, so don’t do anything reckless.”

“Elliot—” Grant started.