It was a phenomenal sight. Fife was like an indefatigable machine. She cut her way through goblins, orcs, trolls, and hobgoblins like they were wheat and she a scythe. Nathaniel barely needed to feed her any healing spells for most fights. He was, he knew, a little in awe of her.

They descended to the thirty-seventh floor, a depth he'd never reached in any dungeon before, and they started encountering heavier resistance. Stratus and Tom were casting their cleansing fire almost constantly, and Nathaniel had to unleash cure spells more often than heals as diseases and infections reached for them without the need for corpses.

Not that he found it hard to identify when anyone had the various maladies he could cure—each of them was a fast-acting toxin that slowed, blinded, hampered, and even some that tried to put the infected to sleep.

Nathaniel was so focused on keeping the others upright and healthy that he didn't notice his own fungal infection—growths forming around his nose—until Felna's magic poured into him and banished them. He spared her a glance and a nod before getting back to his task.

"Fife!" Felna called from beside Nathaniel. "FIFE!"

Pausing the ever-moving rampage of destruction, Fife stepped back from the corpse she'd just made and asked, "Yeah?"

"This is our limit," Ogmera said, one hand holding a cloth to her face. "We can't cure the toxins fast enough as it is. We either back out and leave or Ludmiller sends us all back."

Fife rocked on her feet and looked around. "Right. Sorry. Hard to remember what it used to be like."

Nathaniel shivered at that. If their whole party were kobolds, would they have just pushed through and emptied the dungeon, he wondered. With the decision to turn back made, he was happy to go along with either plan. "Maybe we could try a fast withdrawal?"

"Oooh! I like that. Uh," Fife said, sounding a bit uncertain for once in her life, "that's when we run back to the entrance and only engage things in our way, right?"

"In a manner of speaking. Stratus and Tom become our leads. They burn up anything in our way and we charge through. You and Ludmiller can be our rear guards, but let Huntress try to disable anything chasing us before you engage." Lifting out a fresh carving of a hare from her pack, complete with four rabbits' feet hanging from it, Ogmera swapped it with the two dice that had been attached to her staff. "And no heroics. If we do this right, we'll move faster than the dungeon can respond and be out the door and back to the light in no time."

Huntress, overhearing the conversation, asked, "You'll be able to keep that pace up?"

"Moving upward fills you with a lot more energy than going down. We'll manage," Stratus said as he squared his shoulders.

"Yeah, babe. It's like—I know that Breath of Spring is up there, somewhere, and that makes fighting toward where she is easier than away." Fife had only barely finished her explanation then her blood ran cold. "Incoming!"

Nathaniel heard the impact as two trolls with giant hammers each started wailing on Fife and, to his shock, Fife didn't move—but she did cough. "Spores!"

Tom was the first to react. His Flashfire spell burned fast in the air, singeing hair a little, but leaving a fine gray powder dropping to the ground. Felna was faster on the cure spell, getting Fife with it, but Nathaniel was afforded the sight at the end of the tunnel that worried him.

A goblin creature, a hobgoblin he estimated, surrounded by a sickly gray/yellow miasma, gestured in their direction. A trail of stark white mycelia carpeted the floor, spreading out from the hobgoblin and toward their party. "Stratus!"

Balling up flame and sending it out between Fife and the hobgoblin, Stratus didn't look any worse for wear, but Nathaniel still pushed some of his own mana to the wizard.

The mycelia, cracked and blackened, sprouted again white and whole at the edges nearest them. "We have a problem!"

"Hotter. Hotter. Hotter." Stratus was chanting away, pulsing his magic over the creeping fungus, but nothing seemed to stop it for long. In the distance, the hobgoblin was chanting, obviously providing the creeping death the vitality it needed to resist the repeated incineration.

Intuiting the problem, Huntress started sending arrows whizzing down the tunnel toward the hobgoblin. None struck it down, but it had to find cover while the deadly shots kept coming. "Move!"

Fife cut the legs out from under one of the trolls, stepping back from the other and using her shield to cover her. Huntress, walking backward just as slowly, kept up her shooting at the hobgoblin while everyone else started making their way back along the tunnel toward the next floor up.

Nathaniel looked at Felna, gave her a nod, and moved up close to Fife with Stratus at his side. "I've got you. Felna's working with the others to clear a path for us. Keep moving backward and we'll try to disengage from this lot at the stairs. Stratus, how are you holding up with mana?"

"Not well. Those spores need a lot of heat, and over that area it uses a lot of power." As he spoke, he started to cast again.

Reaching into his reserves, Nathaniel poured mana into the man and reached an arm around him when he seemed to falter. "Lean on me if you need to."

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Fife stepped backward with every beat of an internal drum only she seemed able to hear, but it created a rhythm that everyone could work with. When she caught the remaining troll with a slash across its gut—cleaving its armor as she went—she let out a whoop. "Huntress, nail that bastard!"

Stratus shook his head and kept moving down the tunnel toward the way up. "She can't. The goblin put up some kind of mana shield. It looks like it needs to be concentrated on, though, so at least it can't spread those spores. Don't let up on it."

"I don't plan to." Drawing and firing over and over, Huntress plucked out the last of her adamantine-tipped arrows and sighted it directly on the hobgoblin. The shield, when she released, flared bright and struggled to stop the adamantine.

A glance back revealed to Nathaniel that the hobgoblin's shield spell failed. Beside him, Huntress entered a frenzy of action, loosing arrow after arrow as soon as she could draw her bow, making the hobgoblin retreat from harrying them. "Move! Run!"

The dash to get up the ramp to the previous floor required Nathaniel to help Stratus up, the wizard visibly strained by the effort of maintaining his flames in the tunnel behind them.

When he got to the top, Nathaniel could see Ludmiller flickering in and out of view, dancing around a troll while Ogmera inflicted the monster with curses and Felna did her best to distract the beast when it came to swinging its huge hammer.

"Get him on my back."

Nathaniel turned his attention to Huntress, nodding in reply to her command while she stood at the top of the ramp, bow drawn. Not knowing if she'd seen him, he said, "Come on, old friend, do what the nice lady asks and you'll get a free ride out."

Stretching to get onto Huntress' back, Stratus groaned and barely got his leg over her back before angling himself upright. "Forgive me, lovely lady, I'll try not to make this any more of a problem than— Oh damn."

Nathaniel opened up and sent more mana pouring to Stratus as he blanketed the ramp tunnel with flame. Huntress, beside him, held her arrows back while Fife moved past them all to engage the troll. "Is that damn goblin going to harry us all the way up?"

"Only if we don't kill it." When the hobgoblin looked into the tunnel to enhance its creeping fungal attack, Huntress sank two arrows into its shoulder before it could get out of the way. "And I don't think my arrows are doing enough damage."

Fife, finishing off the troll by the simple act of getting its attention and letting Ludmiller do her work on it, saw how beat up her friends were. "Okay, this isn't going to work. We need the fast ride out. Are you all cool with this?"

Nathaniel looked up at Stratus, then at Huntress. He nodded. From the corner of his eye, he saw Ogmera doing the same. "This is the dungeon boss, isn't it? The plague goblin that Pen spoke of." He grunted. "I'd like to go down fighting it, but I have heard what rot goblins can and will do. Make it quick."

Tom walked up to stand beside Huntress. He put a hand on Stratus's thigh and took over incineration duties for the tunnel. "Ludmiller, make sure we're the last."

It wasn't enjoyable for any of them. Waiting for Ludmiller to work was almost worse for Nathaniel than—

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Gasping, waking up, Nathaniel was in a temple. He recognized the scent coming off the woman beside him. "Priestess," he said, coughing and spitting out a gold coin that rattled onto the floor.

"Your god favors you, or so I understand is the meaning of that gesture." Walking around the man on her alter, Fairheart ran her fingers over his shoulder and the fading scar at the base of the rear of his neck. "Ludmiller was careful."

Memories flooded back and Nathaniel nodded. "She used to be an adventurer, she knows the ways. I didn't even feel it."

"All your party except Felna came back through my temple. The others returned to their homes, and I believe your feline friend is in Travis' care. She had a—a link that superseded my goddesses' talismans." It shouldn't have annoyed her as much as it did, but she was nothing if not competitive to win and support the hearts of the city. "You may have two more talismans from the table."

"Travis pays well?" As he slipped off the altar and knew what was coming. He rubbed his right ear as the ringing and hissing started. "Always. Every damn time."

"A side effect?"

Nodding, Nathaniel sighed. "It'll fade in an hour, but it's always loud and not a cure or dispel yet has managed to stop—" He froze as a pair of gentle lips touched his ear. Warmth spread into him and the ringing faded away. "Y-Y—"

"You're welcome, Priest Nathaniel of the Golden One. Know that you are always welcome in my temple." Brushing her lips against his ears one last time, Fairheart lashed out with the smallest lick. "There are few enough half-elves in Northridge."

Shivering at the attention, Nathaniel struggled to focus on ensuring his party were recovered. "Are my friends revived?"

"No. I am due to do them next." Sparing a glance to one side and the smaller temple that housed the bodies her talismans summoned, Fairheart asked, "Perhaps you'd help me regain some mana before I do?"

The followers of the Sisters of Grace, Nathaniel knew, had rituals that would boggle the mind and beguile other parts. He cleared his throat. "Uh, perhaps rouse them first and I'll take care of recharging your mana in full?"

"Devoted to your friends and willing to help one of another faith? You aren't like any other Golden One priest I have ever met." As she spoke, Fairheart began drawing on her mana. He knew it was an excuse as much as she did—with Travis' traits affecting the whole city, her mana wouldn't run dry if she had to bring every single person in the city back one after another. "Give me a moment."

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"Huh. Where is this?" Felna asked.

"Hey. Uh, this is where everyone bound to the dungeon ends up if they die. Things didn't— Oh, there's Luddy. You got a lot of floors, but not the bottom?"

"We were about to return home, Trav, when the dungeon boss started harrying us. Fife made the decision to leave the fast way. Uh, where is Fife?" Ludmiller asked. "I made sure to give her five doses of that damn poison."

"Ow! Shit! Luddy!" Fife cut loose with a few more swear words, blistering the mental ears of those sharing Travis' headspace. "That poison sucks!"

"I told you!" Ludmiller tried to mentally cuff Fife but realized that if her daggers didn't so much as slow the woman down, her wit likely wouldn't do any more. "Oh, Felna? Trav, does she have a timer?"

"Timer?" Felna asked, still trying to get a grip on where she was and what it meant to be here. That Ludmiller and Fife weren't worried was a relief.

"Same as yours, Luddy. Just under a day. I guess that's the advantage of all this temple stuff, huh?" Travis felt relieved that they'd gotten out without any issues. "Why'd you go through all this, though? Why not fight to the death?"

"Because goblins take captives, Trav, and none of us wanted to see what a rot dungeon would do with captives." Fife yawned, not that she was tired. "So, anything fun happen? Get some resources?"

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