A half-hour later, I spotted a glass-and-steel building. Unlike the skyscrapers surrounding Lincoln Park on three sides, this one stood one story tall. Also, unlike them, a gray wall of fog sat between it and the next building. A sign on the far side read ‘Lincoln Park Zoo: For Wildlife, For All,’ and a massive iron lion sat in front of the fog wall like a sentinel.
“Well, what do you think?” I asked Calvin.
He pointed at the entryway. “That? That’s a trap. The last time you walked through one of those, you got sealed in, right? We walk in there, and we’re not coming out.”
“You don’t know that,” Tori interrupted. “In the early games, the fog walls sometimes separated parts of zones, too. It could be fine.”
“Are you willing to risk your life for ‘could be,’ kid?” Calvin asked.
“Maybe. What if that’s the only way around the forest?”
I held up a hand, closing my eyes. “Tori’s probably right that we can only get through right there, or through some other dungeon. Calvin’s probably right that it’s a trap. So, I think we check the building, get some sleep, and come at this problem tomorrow morning when we’re fresh. Agreed?”
Calvin nodded quickly, but Tori stared at me for a second before turning away. “Sure. Whatever.”
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Last night, when Brian’s party hit the Twilight Menagerie, there were eight of them. They’d been confident in clearing it—they’d survived the Tutorial, were all in the double digits, and three were over Level Twelve. They’d had a balanced team, including a Healer.
The Beast Glastisant hadn’t cared.
The Level Twenty-Eight boss had torn through their front-liners, gone straight for their Healer, and ignored everything else. They’d lost three people, including their healer, before they could escape the Beast Glastisant’s fanged maw and hooves.
Now, the damned zoo’s regular monsters were picking them off one by one right next to the sealed dungeon entrance.
They were down to three—himself and the twins.
Carol had busted her leg in the last fight and couldn’t move anymore, much less fight. Zane was still on his feet, but Brian didn’t think he’d make it much longer. They’d fought off the Tigrilla a half-dozen times, but hadn’t been able to kill the monster. He could see flashes of the nameplate over its head whenever it left the tall grass that had grown all around the Lincoln Park Zoo info kiosk they’d turned into an emergency fortress.
Tigrilla: Level Twenty-Two Monster
Brian had been middle management for an investment firm until three days ago. He’d taken up leadership when Angie died, and he’d held it together all night, but as dawn broke, he watched Zane try to make Carol comfortable. They were just kids, the twins. They could have been his—if he’d ever stopped working long enough to try having a relationship.
“I’ve got to do something,” he whispered to himself. “This has to stop.”
He was almost out of the fort when Zane’s hand landed on his shoulder. “What’s going on? What are you doing?”
“We’ve got to try something, Zane. Something’s got to change.”
“So you’re going to go kill yourself fighting that thing? You don’t have a chance!” Zane shouted, the words tumbling out of his mouth.
“No. I’m going to set you two up to win,” Brian said.
“And then what?” Carol asked. “How are we supposed to get out of here without you?”
Brian didn’t have an answer. He chose to ignore the girl and press on. “So, when it comes for me, I’ll use Parry and Riposte to stall, try to get it facing away from you, and let you blast away at it.”
Zane’s face was almost as white as his sister’s; he couldn’t stop staring at Brian.
“Please, no,” Carol mumbled from her place on the ground. “No, no, there’s got to be some other option. We’ve got food, we’ve got water. Maybe we can wait it out.”
“Wait for what?” Brian asked. “Listen, Carol, I’m not exactly thrilled about this either, but if we win, this buys you two time to figure something out.”
“Something like what?” Zane asked. “We’ll be just as stuck when the next monster finds us, but we won’t have you.”
The kid had a point. Brian slumped against the kiosk’s stubby brick wall and tried not to let himself cry. “I don’t have any other ideas. I just know that we can sit here and wait to die, or we can die fighting. If I die fighting, maybe it’ll buy you the time for something to change. I can’t do nothing. You two deserve to survive.”
The twins looked at one another. Then Carol shook her head. “You…you don’t have to do this. We can find some other way.”
Brian stood up slowly, squaring his shoulders. “I’m going. Zane, are you with me, or am I trying this alone?”
Zane wouldn’t meet his eyes. Neither would Carol.
“Fine, I’ll do it myself.”
He pushed himself up and over the wall, landed softly on his feet, and drew his sword. His heart wouldn’t stop pounding in his ears, and he could hardly breathe through the tightness in his neck. He’d never even thought about being a soldier—his grandpa had been one back during the Second World War, though, and he’d heard a few stories. This was his Battle of the Bulge. His last stand in the Philippines.
The grass rustled, and the Tigrilla scream-roared.
Brian drew his saber. It shook in his grip.
The Tigrilla erupted from the grass, black fur suddenly visible as it dropped its camouflage. It leaped toward him with its powerful forearms ready to slam down on him. He screamed. Every part of him wanted to run. But he activated his Rogue Class Skill, Parry and Riposte. The two arms slammed into his sword. They stopped in place, and he spun, stabbing into the beast. This was it—his chance to deal some damage, to get revenge for his fallen teammates.
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The point hit and stopped. The cavalry saber bent like a fencing foil.
A fireball crashed across the monstrous Tigrilla’s back. It scream-roared again, its fur smoldering and smoking. He slashed three times as it spun toward their improvised fortress. Its eyes locked onto Zane, who was conjuring another ball of fire.
“God dammit!” Brian lunged, putting all his strength into his thrust and trying to get between the Tigrilla and the twins. Two fists slammed into him, driving him down onto the brick walkway.
The monster broke into a sprint.
“I’m telling you, I’ve seen achievements for completion in games before,” a girl’s voice said behind him. “I bet you a Minecraft orb that if we full clear this dungeon, we’ll get a bonus re—oh shit!”
“Tori, Pull it!” a man yelled.
Brian felt magic swelling behind him. The world flashed pink. A moment later, the Tigrilla stopped like it had hit a brick wall and started getting dragged backward.
Someone pushed past Brian, and he slammed right back into the bricks. A huge, bizarre-looking hammer rose into the air, and the Tigrilla turned and roared defiantly. It rushed the guy with the hammer. The weapon whined like a street bike flooring it, and two heads spun.
The roar cut off with a wet crack.
Brian rolled on the bricks, turning to see his saviors.
Tori Vanderbilt: Level Seventeen
Class: Telekineticist
Calvin Rollins: Level Seven
Class: Quartermaster
Hal Riley: Level Twenty-One
Class: Voltsmith
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Tier One Dungeon: The Twilight Menagerie
Objective: Kill the Beast Glastisant (0/1)
Objective: Kill the Eyes of Perfection (0/1)
Objective: Reach the Dungeon Exit (0/1)
Objective: Survive (0/1)
Completion: 12%
Sealed Environment: You cannot leave this dungeon until it is completed
It turned out that Tigrillas didn’t like hammers traveling at a couple hundred miles an hour much.
I watched Tori consume the experience orb and go cross-eyed like she did when reading her status menus. She was catching up; her spells had locked down the hulking, six-limbed tiger/gorilla hybrid, letting me land a skull-splitting blow that ended the monster before it could even fight back.
She wasn’t too tired out, either.
“That was a solid three percent,” Tori said. “Do you remember what bosses were worth in the Redline Tunnels?”
“No,” I said absently.
“Tori, shut up,” Calvin said, looking over the half-devoured corpses of Brian’s team. He didn’t sound mean, just firm. “Let’s check in on these guys before we go rushing off, make sure they’re okay and stuff.”
He held out a hand to help the man with the sword up and started talking with him. I only half-paid attention. My focus was on the bodies.
Two corpses lay at the edge of the tall, razor-sharp grass bordering the kiosk and the entry courtyard around it; one was a woman in ramshackle armor whose legs had been pulled off her hips, and the other was a younger man. He didn’t have any obvious injuries from what I could see. I swallowed painfully; these were the first people I’d seen since the subway car—not counting Calvin and Tori—and they were dead.
If we hadn’t entered the dungeon, the other three would’ve been dead, too.
Brian Simmons: Level 13
Class: Rogue
Zane Parker: Level 10
Class: Mage
Carol Parker: Level 11
Class: Skirmisher (Fighter)
I stared at their nameplates in disbelief. That monster had been a higher level than me; these people had no business being here.
“The whole Tutorial Dungeon was a done deal from the beginning, though. All eight of us started out together, and they let us pick weapons and supplies before dropping us in a safe room. We got through the last boss in the Casual Tutorial pretty easily. It dropped a sword—Bloodletting Blade—and we decided I should have it since I can get hits in pretty fast,” Brian was saying. He looked out of shape and haggard, and his eyes shifted between resigned and hopeful as they flicked toward me.
He was going to have a hell of a bruise later on from where I’d slammed him aside.
“It was my idea,” Zane interrupted. The skinny black kid stared at me from where he sat next to an almost identical girl. They couldn’t have been more than seventeen, and they were obviously siblings. He had a hollow, thousand-yard-stare expression; her eyes were squeezed shut, and her leg was bent at an impossible angle.
“No, trying this dungeon was our idea,” Brian said.
Calvin held a hand up. “What happened?”
No one answered him.
“Are you going to clear the dungeon?” Zane asked.
“No,” Tori said. “We’re going to full clear it. It’ll be good practice.”
I winced, then interrupted before she could put her foot in her mouth more. “We’re definitely going to clear it. What about you three? What’s your plan?”
“We didn’t have one,” Brian said. He stared off into the dungeon—a single brick path led farther into the woods, its red-brown color fading into the mists just past a sign that read ‘Beasts.’ On the far side, a second, yellow path led toward ‘Birds.’
I made a decision. It was a pretty easy one since we had to clear the dungeon anyway, but it still had to be made. They needed our help, but we couldn’t have them walking through the whole dungeon with us—they were too low-leveled and too hurt. All we’d do if we brought them with us was get them killed.
On the other hand, I couldn’t leave them here. Not without some hope of defending themselves. “I think you had the right idea, holing up here. Do any of you know much about construction?”
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An hour later, Fort Kiosk was finished.
At least, it was as finished as we could make it. It still wasn’t an intimidating stronghold—all we’d done was bolt scraps of train car sides to the gaps between the map and informational signs, then braced it all on the inside with tree branches. It looked less like an actual fort and more like something Joey and I had built on his dad’s vacant lot. It only had one obvious entrance, but I’d included an escape hatch on the other side, too.
Just in case.
As we’d worked, Brian and Zane had told us everything they knew about the ‘Beast’ path. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to start making plans. That wasn’t the only Tigrilla they’d fought, and they’d seen something moving through the trees, too. When their archer took a shot at it, it turned out to be a lizard the size of a dishwasher with two gigantic curled horns on its head.
They didn’t know anything about the ‘Birds’ path.
“Thanks for this,” Brian said. He’d recovered a little—enough to help with the construction—but he didn’t have much experience. Zane was a little more helpful, but not much. Carol’s leg looked too bad to ask her to help at all. In the end, Fort Kiosk was all on Tori and me.
I nodded and shook his hand just like Dad had taught me. “No problem. It’s what neighbors do where I’m from.”
“Kansas?” he asked. “I had some clients near Kansas City.”
“Nebraska.”
“Close enough. Good luck with the Beast Glastisant,” he said. “We’ll keep this area clear if we can. If we can’t…”
“Button up in the fort, use the ladder to give Zane a clear line of fire, and use the spears if they try climbing,” Calvin said. We’d left the old throwing spears here, along with some of our unnecessary supplies. It wasn’t enough to line the fort with spikes, but Brian could stab through the gaps. “Don’t panic. Keep inside and pick your targets, then take your shots, kid. Your fire magic will make most things think twice about screwing with you guys. Your mission is to stay alive until we get back. That’s all.”
“Can do,” Zane said.
“What about Carol?” Brian asked. He pointed to the girl, who couldn’t stop herself from crying, but was biting back whimpers and groans as best she could. She was a tough cookie, but everyone had their limits. We’d tried to make her comfortable, and they had everything they needed to splint her leg. That was all we could do.
“If you do kill something here, make her get the orb and put the points in Body. It doesn’t matter how much getting it hurts her; Body points are the best way to fix her up,” I said.
“Okay,” Brian said. He nodded. “You three be careful, alright?”
We walked under the sign labeled ‘Beasts.’ Behind us, Fort Kiosk disappeared into the pervasive mist. In front of us, a bellowing roar echoed through the dungeon.