Things had turned a corner when they reached the twenty-fifth floor.

Gone were the simple tunnels of goblins and the odd orc. Now Fife found herself pressed by multiple orcs, archers, and several rot-dealing magic users. Her armored hide might provide plenty of crags for the spores to get into, but her healing and armor meant that a quick flash of fire magic barely harmed her—and removed all the spores.

When she tore her way through a wall of orcs to the boss room of the floor, Fife found herself facing a troll and dozens of goblins. Having been fighting for ten hours, though, she knew the others were tired—even if she wasn't. "Let's kill these bastards and find somewhere safe."

Felna looked between her companions. Ogmera, Tom, and Nathaniel were almost out on their feet; Stratus looked like he was struggling to keep slinging spells; and even she was feeling the effects of pulling the double duty of mana regeneration and healing. She wished for one of Travis' mana fields, a warm cup of milk, and a cozy bed. "Then let's kill them. Stratus, fill the chamber ahead with fire and let Fife figure out what's still living."

Glad he didn't have to restrain himself, Stratus edged up behind Fife until he could see into the next room and began channeling his magic into a stack of wide-area spells that burned things every second and repeated five times. How much mana was an easy choice—he dumped almost everything he could.

The goblins in the room, Fife could see, didn't get a chance to scream before the fire scorched them. When Stratus kept casting the spell, over and over every half a second, the heat of the chamber became oppressive even from her position outside it and behind her shield. She'd seen him cast this before, but never so many times, and knew to time the flames dying by when his final cast happened.

Low on mana, Stratus let out a sigh and slumped against the wall. When Ogmera caught him, he was surprised at how much strength she still possessed. "Thank you," he said, the sound of a wild kobold in far too much armor charging into the room stealing his thunder.

Following Fife into the chamber, Felna heard a bow twang from behind her as Huntress came along as well. She envied the centauress a little; the steadiness of an equine form and the ability to fire arrows accurately at the same time should, she theorized, translate well to magic. She couldn't let herself be distracted, though, casting a purify spell on Fife the moment she got near the troll.

Seeing the troll bringing its weapon down in a huge overhead strike, even before she reached it, Fife decided to change the momentum of the fight and sped up. Out of reach of the troll, she jumped and swung her legs forward and raked two huge gouges out of the troll's stomach.

Because its target had gotten too close too fast, the troll's swing missed and the huge axe crashed into the stone. Pulling at the weapon with one hand, it noticed the rips in its stomach and tried to use its free hand to hold its insides together.

With a melee fighter so short, Huntress could keep letting her arrows fly. Shaft after shaft buried into the troll's neck and head. Others failed to pierce its thick hide. What worried her was if they were having any effect at all. Despite the arrows sinking deep into it, the troll was more concerned about swinging its huge weapon from side to side with one arm to force Fife to back away, and hold itself together, than to pay any attention to Huntress.

Cursing the axe's maker with every foul word she had discovered in Travis' memoirs (and a few of her own), Fife judged it as having too much mass and momentum to try deflecting or parrying. While her sword could carve chunks out of the soft steel, it would cost her the grip on her sword doing so. "Dammit, just die already! Huntress, aim for the eyes!"

"The eyes?!" The eyes of a troll, Huntress was finding out, were tiny little orbs of hate that were between a hugely thick brow that overhung them a little and cheekbones that could deflect bullets. Still, she did as Fife asked and aimed at the troll's face. Arrow after arrow broke after the arrowheads dug into the solid bone masses around the eyes, but finally one shaft sang true and threaded the needle.

Wavering on its feet, the troll lost its vision in one eye instantly, and when it reached up to rub at the spot, it shoved the shaft of the arrow deeper. Thinking got harder and its focus wavered; the troll looked down at the small metal thing in front of it and tried to figure out what it had been doing to it. When that small thing got closer, a strange pain in the back of its lower leg made the troll fall down.

Fife ended the butchery with a quick stroke to the troll's neck. Her blade cut through its flesh like a hot knife through butter, and even the heavy bone of its spine gave way when she hacked it between two vertebrae. "And I'm going to confiscate this on grounds that it might be useful."

Watching as Fife lifted the troll's crude axe with her shield hand, Felna smiled and looked around for side tunnels. The ramp to the next floor down was obvious, but she didn't want to deal with that yet.

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Ludmiller willed herself to be visible and waved to everyone. "This way. The tunnel stinks, but it's a blind one and there are no traps."

"Good enough for me. All of you go ahead, I'll bring up the rear." Waiting for the whole group to pass her, Fife followed them, keeping an eye on the boss area for as long as she could before turning away and stalking off.

When she reached the end of the tunnel, Fife scrunched her snout a little. She could complain about the smell, but given that Felna and Ludmiller were the only ones still awake, she didn't want to be too noisy. Crouching down, she set the big axe on the ground beside her and looked to her right. "Let's stay here for half the day tomorrow. Extended fights might be fine for you, me, and Huntress, but the others aren't taking a whole day of fighting well."

"Yeah, I agree." Ludmiller could see that Felna was struggling to do the rounds of the tunnel and ward against digging. "Want me to take the first watch?"

"Let's say fourteen hours of downtime. I'll take seven, then you take seven. That lets us both get some normal sleep too." Fife was going to ask if that was okay, but Felna reached them at that moment.

Fighting back a yawn, and losing, Felna waited for her mouth to close before saying, "We need a long break. Today was brutal for most of us."

"We were discussing that. What about fourteen hours of downtime?" Ludmiller asked.

Slumping her shoulders and letting a soft hiss out, Felna nodded. "They need it. I'll admit, though, that I need it too. Travis' bond is far more useful than I'd thought, but constant fighting for most of a day is beyond what I could handle as anything but a sporadic event."

"We need to be smarter about this. Let's make six hours our maximum unless we have a short series of fights remaining to clear a floor," Fife said, looking up at Ludmiller and Felna.

Felna thought about it. "Make it seven."

"That sounds reasonable," Ludmiller said. "We don't want today to happen again, so we need to figure out a way to fall back and not be seen doing it. I guess I can help with that."

"Wake up the others and make sure they eat something. You two have something as well." Reaching for her bag of rations, Fife noticed the gore on her right gauntlet and sighed. Water to clean off with wasn't something they had the luxury of.

Noticing Fife's dilemma, Felna said, "Take your gauntlets off." When Fife complied, she smiled and cast a spell that was common to a race that prized cleanliness above all else. "You're welcome, and thank you."

Fife put up with Felna patting her on the head only because the cat kin had made her evening a little brighter. "Thanks," she said in reply and pulled a stick of dried and pounded-hard meat from her supplies and started her sharp teeth on rendering it down to edible pieces.

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Ludmiller woke up of her own accord. Lifting her head, she looked around the dimly-lit cave and took in the delightful odors of a rot dungeon. "Hopefully I'll go nose deaf soon." She sat up and into a crouch, looking to where Fife was similarly crouched.

When Ludmiller walked up beside her, Fife nodded. "You're twenty minutes early."

Opening her mouth to say it didn't matter, Ludmiller got distracted and asked, "How do you do that?"

"What?"

"Know the time like that. We've been underground for days."

"I count the seconds." At Ludmiller's shocked look, Fife shrugged. "It's not that hard to do—unless I'm sleeping or doing something that requires a lot of thought."

"Fighting?" Ludmiller suspected the answer already, and Fife confirmed it when she nodded her head. "Well, whatever. It's your turn to sleep. Go and find somewhere cozy and let me keep watch."

Fife stood and walked just behind Ludmiller, giving her an easy path to rousing Fife for assistance.

Settling in, Ludmiller let her mind wander while she stared out into the dark tunnel. Thoughts of getting home, of spending time with Wild, and sprawling out in the lizard villages and letting the delightful inhabitants bury every inch of her to share her warmth made Ludmiller smile as she tried to avoid doing Fife's trick and counting—the problem was she couldn't stop counting and she kept losing her place.

It wasn't long, though, before she heard sounds ahead of her. Thanks to Mixie, she knew the sound of a bored goblin, and this sounded like that but louder. Stepping backward slowly, she reached a hand out to Fife's shoulder. When Fife moved, Ludmiller said, "Goblin voices," as softly as possible.

Not moving except to nod her head once, Fife remained still on the floor of the tunnel even when Ludmiller vanished from sight.

By her thinking, Ludmiller was sure it had been at least eight hours since the others had gone to sleep, possibly longer. They'd all be able to wake up fresh, at least. Shifting her weight slowly, she hugged the tunnel wall as she made her way toward the voices.

The boss room, when she reached it, was being cleaned. Goblins were gathering up bits of troll and flash-fried goblin warriors and dropping them in sacks. She really didn't want to know what they'd do with them, but she had suspicions. After a minute of watching, she saw a huge troll finish its walk up the ramp. Wearing armor and carrying a pair of huge cleavers, it slumped into the big stone seat at one end of the room.

When Fife smelled Ludmiller, she moved at last and rolled to her feet. "What's going on?"

"Goblins were cleaning out the boss arena and a new troll moved in. Two cleavers this time." Ludmiller patted Fife on the shoulder. "You still have about five hours of sleep."

"Dammit, Luddy, as if I can sleep now knowing there's a troll out there I get to kick the crap out of."

Smirking, Ludmiller settled back into a crouch and noticed that, despite her words, Fife was asleep again within a few minutes. After another few hours, when the party started to rouse, she held up a finger to her snout and then explained what was waiting down the tunnel.

In the end, the group got bored of waiting less than an hour later, roused Fife, and headed back to work.

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This story is released under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. If you are paying money to see this or the original creator, Damaged, is not credited, you are viewing a plagiarized copy of the story.