The doors swing open wide but, instead of a path for them to follow, it opens into a swirling black vortex.
“What’s that?” Hester asks, looking at the swirling mass of darkness nervously.
“I think it’s a portal,” Emily says, approaching it. “It looks similar to one I’ve seen before. Though, maybe it’s a barrier of some form.”
She reaches up, bringing her hand close to the doorway.
“Are you sure it’s safe to touch?” Juliana quickly asks with concern, making her pause in her steps.
“Nope,” Emily responds, flashing a smile back to her girlfriend before pushing her hand in.
Her friends jump slightly at her lack of caution, but quickly relax as nothing happens and Emily pulls her hand back out.
“But its mana flow feels completely stable and non-threatening, and dungeons aren’t known for being impossible to enter,” she finishes with a teasing grin, trying not to laugh at the cute glare Juliana fixes her with.
“So you checked first before doing that?” Enzo asks, ignoring Dante laughing at Emily’s stunt beside him.
“Yeah.” Emily nods. “I did say it looks like a portal I’ve seen before, but it also feels similar. Not quite the same though. The other portal was purely space mana, and I could tell it was linked to another portal. This one feels strange. It kind of seems like it’s just compressing in on itself, a little like a dimensional storage, so I think the dungeon is a type of pocket dimension and this is the entrance.”
“I see,” he says, nodding as Emily pulls out a spool of thin steel cable.
“I’m gonna take a look inside. Can you hold this and pull me out if I tug on it, please?” she asks with a smile as she tosses the spool to Juliana while holding the end, letting it unravel in the air.
Juliana catches it, letting out a small sigh and dropping her glare.
“Fine. Be safe.”
“What do you mean? I always am,” Emily says with a wink before turning and stepping into the darkness.
The portal engulfs her, reaching out past the doorway’s boundary to pull her in the moment half of her body passes the threshold. Her vision instantly turns black, not even aided by her infra-sight. Strangely, the innate spatial awareness she’s had since first comprehending space also fails to give her any information about her surroundings. From the moment the darkness embraces her, Emily feels as if she’s stepped into a blank, floating expanse, with nothing around her but herself.
Looking down, she sees the warmth of her own body clearly, a welcome anchor in the sea of nothingness. She tries to cast light, a pure white magic circle appearing over her hand and morphing into a glowing ball in no time. But, other than her own body, the light doesn’t fall on a single surface or object around her, and the darkness seems unaffected.
Emily makes the light float above her head, just in case, and takes a step forward. Her feet find no purchase, but she doesn’t lose balance, and her foot stops at the same level as the other even though she doesn’t feel a floor below her. However, she can’t seem to move it further down no matter how hard she pushes.
“How odd,” she mumbles, still able to hear her own voice, but not hearing a single echo despite her enhanced hearing.
Emily keeps walking, placing one foot before the other, but she doesn’t seem to move.
Do I have to keep going further in to find something? This is a strange dungeon. I’ll let the others know first before I keep going.
She tugs on the wire still in her hand but feels no resistance. Frowning, she quickly spins the cable between both hands, reeling it in for a moment until the end appears between her fingers.
“My cable’s been cut. I don’t think I’ll be able to find the way I came in with this darkness,” she says, glancing over her shoulder and bringing a hand to her belt. “Should I reset and warn the others that you can’t leave once you enter?”
Suddenly, as she questions whether to stay or not, a change occurs in the space. A ripple spreads from her position, washing out over the blank expanse and wiping away the oppressive darkness.
A dark stone floor appears below Emily’s feet, spreading out to form a thirty-metre wide disc with her at the centre. The ripple appears to rise up, revealing walls of dark brickwork with four, closed silver portcullises spaced evenly around her, and several unlit torches mounted in violent-looking sconces formed from clustered barbs of metal.
Emily drinks in the details around her with anticipation, lowering her hand from her belt as the ripple comes back towards her, solidifying the darkness above her into a tangible surface that looms like a starless night sky.
“I guess it wasn’t about distance then. It just started on its own,” she muses, enjoying the acoustics of the chamber as her voice rings out around it.
My cable was probably cut when the entrance closed. I’ll see if I can complete the dungeon alone for now, and reset later if I need to. The longer I leave it, the less of yesterday’s march I’ll have to relive.
The torch directly in front of her suddenly flickers to life with a low, sickly-green flame. It’s followed a second later by the torch to the right. Then another, and another, increasing in speed with each new flame. Emily turns with the light, her heart beating a little faster each time a fire sparks into existence, an excited grin on her lips.
As the last torch ignites, and Emily’s gaze returns to the first, all of the flames grow massively, filling the chamber with their pallid light. A screeching noise fills the room soon after as one of the portcullises starts to rise. A black portal, similar to the one Emily used to enter the dungeon, forms behind the gate as it rises. But, as opposed to swirling in on itself in a controlled manner, it seems to expand outwards, like a gaping wound in space, leaking into the chamber.
Emily checks the other gates, finding them sealed shut and unmoving, before honing her focus on the new portal. The gate slams to a halt in the roof of the portcullis, and the portal roils as a figure steps through.
Emily hears the sound of a battered leather sole hitting the floor as the creature steps free of the portal’s grasp. She closes her grip around the Spitter’s handle and pulls it free of its holster.
She sees a small, humanoid creature, almost two full heads shorter than her. Its thin skin seems at home in the sickly light of the torches, and Emily can’t quite tell if it’s actually green, or just a pale shade reflecting the unnatural light. She recognises the snarling maw, filled with jagged teeth, and the piercing yellow eyes, as sharp as the points on the end of its ears.
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“Goblins,” Emily mutters, keeping the Spitter pointed at the ground in front of her as she calls out. “Are you a friend?”
It’s strange to see these guys outside of the Lerus Isles.
The goblin growls in lieu of an answer, raising its surprisingly clean dagger before its chest and advancing.
“I guess they’re less intelligent here.” Emily shrugs, raising the Spitter and sending out a single shot.
The goblin tries to respond, raising its guard the moment it hears a bang, but the lightly machina charged bullet cuts through the air quickly, punching a hole through the goblin’s throat. The creature drops its blade, falling to the floor while grasping at its neck, leaking a dark, tar like blood through its fingers. As the dagger hits the ground with a harsh clatter, two more goblins step through the portal.
One wields a polished wood and metal shield, protecting its rag-covered torso, and the other holds a sturdy bow at the ready, with a quiver of arrows hanging at its hip.
Emily meets their hostile gazes with a smile, snapping her aim to the bow-wielder and squeezing the trigger almost instantly. The goblin releases its arrow as a bullet shatters its skull, but it flies wide, missing Emily. The other goblin quickly ducks behind its shield, protecting its head.
Emily scoffs, flicking the Spitter into burst and firing three shots into the centre of the wooden mass. The first bullet dents the metal plate crossing the shield’s body, the second cracks it, and the third meets little resistance, carving straight through and burrowing into the chest of the goblin behind, knocking it to the ground. Emily tracks it down to the floor and raises a brow in surprise as she sees her first two kills dissolving into liquid darkness and seeping into the ground.
They’re magical constructs, like the dummies in The Dome’s training rooms.
Emily clicks her tongue at the realisation that she won’t be harvesting any organs from the creatures, finishing the last survivor with a single bullet to the head in her frustration. She looks back to the portal, waiting for the next opponent, and her silent request is quickly answered.
The portal shakes violently, and body after body steps out.
“At least I should get a good fight.”
She aims both hands at different targets, one holding the Spitter, and the other with her palm facing outwards, exposing the glinting metal of a Claw in her sleeve.
A violent dance of death starts with a click, as a bullet and a blade leap out to claim their prey. Emily twists, ripping the blade free of its new home in a goblin’s head and shooting a few goblins as she turns, cutting through their front lines with the flying blade. She drops infra-sight, and dismisses her light, internally casting bolt, channelling it through the Claw, filling the flying blade with crackling lightning.
The goblins press forward with reckless abandon, throwing themselves against the storm of metal biting away at their ranks, pushing further and further into the room by clambering over the fading bodies of their fallen. After culling a few dozen of the green beasts, Emily’s rhythm is disrupted as an arrow nicks her cheek, and a burning sensation spreads across her face.
“Poison,” she hisses, her focus snapping onto the archer who shot her.
In her moment of hesitation, a sizzling orb of fire, too weak to deserve the title of fireball, flies in from the back of the crowd, aiming for Emily’s face. She reacts in time, bending her torso and slicing the Claw on her gun-wielding hand through the spell, bursting it in the air next to her, singeing a few of her hairs along with the fabric of her sleeve.
They have mages now.
Emily quickly kills the archer with a single bullet, checking her system and finding her health fixed at 269/270.
I don’t seem to be taking any more damage from that poison. It’s either too weak to harm me right now, or only meant to cause pain.
Her machina floods the site of intrusion, burning out the foreign substance as a glistening green magic circle forms above her head and fires a lance of wind into the spellcasting goblin’s chest, pinning it to the floor. The burning in her face fades as quickly as it came, but Emily triggers the first injector against the base of her spine just in case, sending a comforting warmth through her body, knitting the scratch on her cheek back together quickly, as if nothing ever happened.
She continues cutting down the swarm, getting close to the front-liners with shields, daggers, and swords to use their groups’ numbers against them, blocking the spellcasters hiding at the back from wantonly attacking. They still do, scorching several of their teammates, but Emily keeps the melee close anyway, putting away the Spitter and revelling in the thrill of the battle.
After ten minutes straight of combat, the flow of goblins from the portal starts to slow, its violent motion receding and, after Emily reaps the lives of everything else in the chamber, it stops. She stands alone in the centre of the room, seeming no worse off than at the start of the fight other than a few tears and burns on her robes and a few inconsequential points of stamina lost.
Emily breaths in the silence, staring at the portal expectantly, waiting for the next opponents to arrive. Nothing happens for a few seconds, the quiet stretching on slightly too long with Emily’s high from the battle slowly ebbing away, then the torches lighting the chamber move again. They dim and brighten repeatedly, pulsing like the beat of a heart as the portal churns again.
This time, only five figures appear from the portal, stepping out into the light of the chamber. They look similar to the goblins, but they stand at the same height as Emily, even being slightly taller in the case of the one at the centre of their formation holding a tower shield. Three of the others are armed, two with swords, and the third with a bow. The last carries a wooden staff with two crystals mounted on the top, one red and one green.
The shield-bearer has shining metal plate armour, like the knights of old, and the spellcaster dons a flowing robe, similar to those worn by Covenant mages, with a hood draped low over its head, concealing its face in shadows. The other three all have lightweight, polished leather armour.
“Hobgoblins. And you’re all well equipped,” Emily says through a manic grin, a dense, swirling magic circle of fire, metal, and light forming around her as she raises both hands and prepares to pounce.
The archer signals the start of the fight by releasing an arrow that rockets forwards with immense speed. Emily leans to the side, deflecting the projectile with a Claw and springing forward to meet her opponents. The spell behind her finishes casting as she clashes with the swords that flash forwards to meet her. A glittering arrow fires out of the magic circle, punching clean through the tower-shield and bursting inside the chest of the hobgoblin holding it, killing it instantly.
Emily hears guttural chanting coming from the spellcaster in some ancient language, indecipherable to her. She deflects an incoming sword and kicks the wielder in the knee with her heavy boots, flicking out the spikes at the moment of impact and shattering her enemy’s knee. She slashes a Claw across the hobgoblin’s throat as it falls unguarded, and raises a barrier of stone between herself and the chanting spellcaster as a half-moon blade of wind mixes with a matching blade of fire above its head and slices through the air towards her.
The spinning blades burst against the protective spell, cracking it but not breaching it. Emily takes the opportunity to dodge another arrow and parry an incoming blade, letting it run off her own before slipping inside the hobgoblin’s guard and burying a blade several inches deep in its chest. As the last melee combatant falls to the ground bleeding, she retracts her Claws and pulls the Spitter from her thigh smoothly, levelling it at the archer.
A single trigger pull halts the creature’s breath as a bullet bores a hole through its chest. Emily calmly turns and points the pistol at the earthen wall blocking the enemy mage, cancelling the spell as she pulls the trigger again and the slide locks back, signifying an empty magazine. Another bullet whistles through the air, dropping the mage and interrupting its next spell as it forms.
Emily drops the magazine from her gun with a well-practised motion, catching it and sliding a fresh one from the side of the holster and into the bottom of the weapon, clicking the slide back into place before the mage’s body hits the floor. She looks around the room, her tension high as the portal shows no signs of moving.
She holsters the Spitter and finishes off each of the still breathing hobgoblins with a quick stab to the head as the portal shrinks in on itself and vanishes. The open gate falls shut as well, slamming into the ground with a clang.
Emily glances around, waiting for the next attack to come. But, instead, the torches flicker, shifting from a sickly green to a warm orange glow, and a crack appears in the wall between two of the portcullises. It slowly widens, forming into a doorway to another well-lit chamber.
Why didn’t the other gates ever open?
Emily cautiously glances at the closed gates before approaching the new door, raising her brow as she feels several familiar mana signatures on the other side. She walks through into another circular hall, this one massive, with a diameter of at least a hundred metres. Stepping into the room with her, from similar doorways on either side of her, are Dante and Enzo, both scratched and battered, bleeding from several wounds, with Dante sporting a particularly nasty gash on his forehead.
“What are you guys doing in here?” Emily questions as they turn to look at her with pale faces, a cold realisation sending a chill down her spine. “And if you guys are here, where’s Jules?”