It took a moment for Peter to figure out what was wrong. One minute he had been crawling along an air duct behind his friends, the next it was dark. Then the pain in his forehead started. He tried to reach up to touch it but his hand hit a metal wall. The metal fingertips of Peter’s right hand screeched up the surface, hurting his ears as well. By rolling left and right he was able to contort his body enough to let him touch his face, to find a rapidly repairing hole in his face.

“What in the?” Peter exclaimed as a sudden light assaulted his eyes. With a hissing sound, the metal in front of him revealed itself as the lid of a respawn coffin. He sat up and looked around, finding himself in one of the beds in the barracks at the entrance to the Archology.

“Move it, sleepyhead,” Dani’s voice rang in his ears. “There’s two more cooking, and we gotta get down the hall before they get up.”

Hauling himself out of the box as quickly as he could, Peter looked around. He realised that what he’d taken for beds the first time he was here were actually the dungeon’s version of coffins. He was saddened that he wouldn’t be getting a calming cup of tea and a sit down with every death until he returned his spawn point to the city.

A crackle and a squeal like the tannoy speakers from the old movies drew his attention. A bar on the wall opposite each coffin that Peter had thought was a towel rail or something extruded a white cloth and a gem emerged from an irised portal in the centre of the ceiling. A beam of light shone out, striking each cloth to project an image or splashing off the wall in the places where the bar was damaged or the cloth missing.

“Move it,” Dani insisted tossing a ball of fur at him.

Peter caught DB and lifted him to his shoulder, where DB squeaked loudly and nipped Peter’s ear. “Sorry bud, didn’t mean to leave you behind.”

DB snuffled and curled his tail around Peter’s neck.

As Peter passed the last intact bed, he saw a clear pipe filling with a glowing liquid set into the side of the box. When it had been inactive, the pipe was virtually invisible but now that it was in use he could see the liquid caused the pipe to fluoresce brightly. The left most end was a deep red but as it filled the colours passed through the rainbow towards blue. A quick glance at his own recently vacated box showed the liquid draining back down from a violet that was almost black. The two in use were in the green already and filling fast.

Peter accelerated.

There were more of the projection sheets in the hall, spaced regularly in a way that didn’t impede the traps. The projection gem was still warming up, but there was already a faint crest visible that was becoming more clear with every passing moment. A muted militaristic theme could be faintly heard from the speakers, also gradually getting clearer.

Dani led Peter down the hall, pointing out where Pham’s ingenuity had un-disabled the hall traps but left them looking like they were out of commission still. She deliberately stepped on a marked tile, holding out a hand to indicate he pause. She then stepped off, counted to three and stepped on it again. A massive guillotine blade slammed into the floor just in front of her foot.

“Now, while it resets, go, go, go!” Dani climbed over the top of the slowly rising blade.

Pete followed, slightly distracted by the rising tune and sheets that rustled as they passed. “What’s going on with this?” he asked. “Did it happen while I was dead?”

“Don’t know, don’t care and no. In that order. STOP!” Dani barked.

Peter stopped dead. The tip of his nose stung as though a bee had taken exception to his face. He gently stepped back and wiped a drop of blood from the tip and looked at it. A matching droplet appeared to be floating in mid-air, but on closer inspection it was hanging from an incredibly thin wire. Dani removed a small leather circle on a string and placed it over an almost indiscernibly darker patch on the wall. A whirring sound from in front of Peter was all the indication he had that a grid of wires had been retracted into the wall. “Ouch,” was all he said.

“Be thankful that was the last one we had to mess with,” Dani said after stepping through. “For the rest of them, just us passing through resets them to what Pham called meat grinder mode. When he stopped laughing, that is. That guy’s got issues.”

“You’re not wrong, but also that’s quite the understatement,” Peter smiled. “Like calling Woz big or the ocean wet. Do you think this noise is going to bring the globlins in the car park? Did you have any problems getting back?”

Dani just flashed him a grin and was probably about to say something sarcastic about her supreme stealth skills when the speakers crackled loudly. The music stopped and all that could be heard was the hiss of an unattended microphone. The projection on the sheets flickered and the crest was replaced by a face.

It was not a nice face. It was the face of a man – probably human but not certainly – who had been angry for a very long time. The features were best described as “vaccum packed Dracula”. Like an American Republican Senator kept alive purely so he could vote for tax cuts to the rich and oppress minorities. The skin was paler even than Pham’s, and the kind of smooth only achieved by magic, very expensive surgery, or generated by early Twenty First Century deepfake technology. The Germans would have called it a backpfeifengesich, and rightly so. Every so often the image would glitch out, and Peter thought he could see two other faces superimposed on the screen, but it happened so fast he couldn’t be sure.

“I suppose you think this terribly funny,” the figure intoned in a rich, deep voice. It was the sort of voice you found in mahogany lined back rooms filled with cigar smoke and brandy fumes. “I have a very interesting and intricate complex laid out for you to play in, and you go scrambling though my vents like rats.”

Peter and Dani looked at each other in consternation.

“Is he talking to us?” Peter asked.

Dani shrugged. “Unless Woz’s cousin figured out the vent thing too, it must be.”

“Yeessss, I see you there. In the control room, playing with buttons and levers never intended for you,” the figure continued. “Rest assured, I have forces on the way to winkle you out of your little hidey-hole. Don’t think I’ve forgotten you, or your lumbering ox of a friend.

Peter’s eyes widened. “Pham! This must be the lich he mentioned.”

“Could be someone’s holding a grudge still?” Dani peered around the corner into the loading bay. “Come on, there’s only one globlin at the moment and I don’t think it’s going to be paying attention to us.”

Knowing time was against them, Dani and Peter slunk around the edge of the loading bay as quickly as stealth would allow. Peter realised why Dani had said the transparent monster likely wouldn’t notice them, as it was obviously watching the massive projection sheet that was covering the roller door. As they tiptoed along, Peter gave the thing all the attention he could spare. Floating in the clear body was the remains of several rust red mechs, the kind they’d seen days before at the entrance.

Floating? Peter thought to himself. Is that even the right word?

As he watched, the mechs disassembled themselves and distributed the parts throughout the globlin body. They weren’t being dissolved, he realised, but repurposed.

Peter poked Dani. “Doesn’t that look like internal armour to you?” he whispered barely above audible.

Dani gave him a zip it gesture and pointed at the door. Peter nodded assent and held his opinions to himself until they were safely on the other side and it was securely locked. He levered the crate over the door once more with his scythe again just to be sure.

“How did you move this thing by yourself?” Peter asked, incredulously.

Dani pointed at the spatula lift, parked halfway down the aisle.

“Oh. That makes sense.”

“So, what was it that you needed to tell me so badly that you risked a fight with the big monster?” Dani asked, readying herself to clamber up the shelves.

“Oh, yeah,” Peter facepalmed. “So that, ugh, I still hate that name, that globlin looked like it had absorbed a bunch of the security mechs and was using them as some sort of internal armouring. Did you see that?”

“Can’t say I did. I did see the same metal men from a few days ago in the big hall when I came to get you, but they were fighting with the greasy buggers.” Dani huffed loudly as she hauled herself up a level. “Maybe they lost and got eaten.”

With a non-committal grunt, Peter began climbing up as well. One level up he realised the spatula lift was still in the middle of the aisle so he threw himself off the rack and tried to use his wings to brake his fall. A sharp sudden pain in his shins reminded him that he was still wearing the kind of suit the CDC wears to an ebola outbreak and there was no room to get his wings out. “Oof, twice in a day!”

Fortunately, it was more painful than damaging and he was able to return the machine to its bay and get climbing again. “I’ll bet you don’t return your trolley to the corral when you go shopping either,” he wheezed at Dani when he reached the top.

Whatever response Dani would have given was interrupted by something slamming itself against the door Peter had wedged the crate in front of. “Can’t get a word in edgewise today, can I?” Dani said, grabbing Peter by the arm. “In you go, I need to pop this up.” Dani held up a circle of black cloth. “Pham said it should hide our path better.”

“Good call,” Peter said, moving further down the vent.

It wasn’t exactly a tight fit, even Warren had been able to squeeze his ample frame past the arms that held the fan motor in place, but it wasn’t big enough for Peter to stand up straight. Instead, he tried duck-walking along as he waited for Dani to finish. Down a side vent he saw a glimmer of light and was just leaning over to investigate when Dani pulled him back harshly.

“You don’t learn, do you?” She pointed at a series of cones in a ring around the pipe. “What do you think sent you for the old dirt nap?” She extracted a sheet of paper from one of her many pockets on her belts and held it over a cone. Light built up around the tip until it shot out, burning a hole in the paper. “Last time it was your head.”

“Sooo… trap?”

“Trap.” Dani confirmed. “Down this way, not far now.” She slipped past him and led the way down the vent. “Leave it, you’re not quick enough.”

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

Peter snatched his hand back guiltily. Dani hadn’t even looked around.

A few minutes of hot, dusty, supressed coughing, half-crawling, half-duck walking as quietly as they could, the pair tumbled out of the vent, bounced off a cabinet and piled up on the floor. A massive sword appeared over Peter’s head as the stars faded from his vision.

“Well that’s a familiar and unwelcome sight,” Peter tried to blow dust off his nose without making any threatening moves. “Nice to see you too Woz.”

“Less kyew kyew, more pyew pyew,” Pham shouted from across the room. His hands were dancing across levers and switches as he whirled from control panel to control panel, all the while trying to keep an eye out the windows that made up the top half of the far wall. “Woz, I’m going to need you down there too.”

The sword in Peter’s face was replaced by a gauntleted hand. “Come on, we need to secure the plant room down there,” Warren pointed to a door with the chin of his helmet.

Dani and Peter were both yanked to their feet, hustled through the door and down the stairs on the other side. DB was handed off as they left the room with Pham promising to take care of the rat.

At the bottom of the stairs they found themselves in a massive machine hall, lit by harsh overhead gems inside the same kind of wire cages as the warehouse had been. All around, pipes and machinery formed a maze that loomed over even Warren’s imposing height. Raw stone walls had been carved smooth giving the room a cave like vibe, while still clearly being industrial in purpose. The far wall had once had a wooden door to allow ground level access, but that door was now in pieces as a melee rocked back and forth through and around it.

Dani put a hand on one of the pipes, clearly intending on scaling it to get a better vantage point but pulled the hand back with a screech. “That’s blood hot, mate!” She whipped off her glove to check if the scalding metal had hurt her hand badly and found it to be pink but unharmed. “Lucky.”

“Very lucky,” Warren growled. “We’ve been through here before, usually at a run, but when you’re fighting a retreat with globlins you can throw them into the pipes for environmental damage. This time we have to defend the place. No running.”

The speakers that seemed ubiquitous now crackled again. This time the voice that came from them was Pham’s. “You see the cabinets with the green glowing gems? We need as many of them as possible. At minimum, three.” He sounded breathless as he ran around the control room. “I’ve got some access to the security bots, but they only come so fast and the globs are coming faster.”

Sure enough, over the hissing and whirring of the machines the sound of battle could be heard. Human sized globlins had burst into the room and were clashing loudly with the red mechanical men. The security bots were doing their best, but they were losing ground rapidly and with every foot lost the intruders had more room to flow together into stronger forms and were trashing every bit of technology in reach.

A horrible stench and a scream like a tortured kettle was emitted every time a globlin appendage struck the hot pipes, but that didn’t dampen their determination to destroy everything in their way. Control cabinets were knocked aside, their insides sparking and hissing as steam escaped the pressure actuated devices in them. Flywheels went flying across the room to strike combatants and machinery alike. Into this chaos the three threw themselves.

Warren charged forth, sword and board style. His first shield bash obliterated the nearest globlin, spraying those behind it with a fine mist filled with chunks of metal it had absorbed. The second hit merely swayed his opponent, which shot pseudo-arms out of its back to brace against the ground. He uttered an ear-splitting war cry that drew the aggro of every new intruder as they came through the ruined door. “Clean up the adds, I got this!”

Peter danced around the periphery of the fight, lopping off limbs and gouging rents in bodies. Whenever he could, he’d slap an attack off course so that it would bounce off of a pipe, turning the clear gloop to steam. Any time he saw two globlins try to amalgamate he’d be there, splitting them back in two with a swipe of his scythe. This didn’t mean he was going unscathed, however. Despite the globlins mimicking a humanoid form for function’s sake they weren’t bound to it and regularly shot out tentacles tipped with metal they’d absorbed from the wreckage on the floor. Some were filled with jagged edged bits and some with balls of metal scrunched up like paper, these unexpected goop spears nicked and battered Peter as he wove amongst their number.

Dani fared much better, her obvious dexterity allowing a greater range and speed of movement. She had a hand crossbow in one hand and a punch dagger in the other and used both to great effect. The punch dagger’s blade had a nasty green sheen to it, and left a trail of blackening goo in every clear body it passed through. The bolts of the hand crossbow were clearly explosive, acting like tiny depth charges and causing massive damage in the cores of every globlin that managed to avoid Peter’s attention and fuse together. The only thing stopping Dani from using it constantly was the limited magazine and the need to cock it by swiping it along a limb before every shot.

This doesn’t mean they had things all going their way. The maze of cabinets and pipes had several entrances and exits and once the effect of Warren’s war cry faded the globlins began exploring these other paths. Pham did his best, dropping security bots from an overhead pipe but the gantry crane that directed the nozzle only moved so fast and one to one the globlins were stronger than the bots. Warren directed Peter and Dani how and where to support the security forces as Pham kept him appraised of the level of damage the room was sustaining.

“We’re down to four!” Pham’s voice cut over the din. “A little one got through, I dropped a bot on it, but it got into the cabinet first. I’ve got an idea, but we can’t lose any more for it to work!”

“What happened to minimum three?” Peter shouted, his voice turning to wheeze as a club-like appendage rammed into his solar plexus. Quashing the pain, he whirled the scythe and cut the limb off at the base, kicking the goo coated metal off into a corner where it couldn’t be reabsorbed. He could feel the same sensation he had experienced outside when training with the crossbow coming through now. He fell into a rhythm, what he guessed an author would call a battle trance if they wanted to be super fancy or were trying to reference eastern philosophy. Right, now to focus my Xi and cultivate my aura, he thought with a smile as an upper sweep of the blade removed the bulge the globlin was using as a head. The gobbet of ick landed squarely on a hot pipe and the entire cloud wafted straight into Peter’s face, bringing him to his knees and instantly wiping the grin from his face.

“Oi, gigglemug, incoming,” Dani’s voice ehoed through the room.

There was a loud PHUT and a sharp pain in Peter’s back but he recognised it as a healing shot from Dani’s Finger. “Hey,” he shouted, “quit poking me or I’m telling Mum!”

Dani’s arm emerged from between two pipes and gave him the two finger salute before she returned to the fight. Through the gap Peter could see that she had slung her weapon back over her shoulder, it clearly wasn’t much use in such confined quarters. Once she and Pham found a concoction that was effective on this sort of enemy it would have more utility, but for now it appeared that her dagger and crossbow brought them down faster. Peter appreciated that she settled for watching her team-mates and boosting their health when they looked spent, and seeking opportunities to inflict her own brand of creeping death on anything that came into the room uninvited. As he surged to his feet once more, the health shot spent but his head clear, Peter took a moment to check on his other friends.

Warren had set himself into a major junction between several approaches and had swapped his kite shield for a tower shield. As often as he could he’d shout the same sort of taunt that drew aggro he’d used earlier, drawing the globlins away from alternate paths and towards where he’d set himself as a bulwark.

Pham was a barely visible silhouette in the control room window. Obviously what he was doing was working, the security bots kept dropping to support and absorb attacks but it was also clear that it was a losing battle. The room was getting more and more trashed, allowing the globlins more room to move and combine, letting them eat the debris and create more lethal weapons within their bodies, and making it easier to bypass the defenders. A whoop of success blasted out of the speakers and a metal door ground its way out of the floor to impede the ingress of the gooey beasts.

“Right, got it!” Pham said. “Once the door closes they won’t be able to get in. Just keep those cabinets safe, we need to keep the flow up or we’re done for!”

There were still plenty of the things flowing over the rising door as yet and Peter didn’t get a chance to revel in Pham’s success. He kept bifurcating beasts and cleaving creatures. As his body got used to the motion, muscle memory took over and his mind started to relax once more. It wasn’t the same as before, when the Paragon state took over in a flush of cold blackness, it was more an acceptance of how things are and dealing with the issue in front of him. Yet, he still felt the added strength, his scythe lengthened and took on a more deathly aspect and it felt like his wings were free of the constricting suit that they were all wearing.

The final confirmation that he was wielding Bani’s power came when, instead of splashing all over the floor, the globlin he took out sloshed together to form a tiny hourglass. Peter nearly stepped on it, it was so small, only big enough to boil a bantam egg if you used it as a timer. Knowing how durable they were, he shoved it aside with his foot, intending to collect it from the corner of the room should they survive the fight.

A burst of incomprehensible scots that was nevertheless clearly the kind of cursing that would make a sailor blush drew Peter’s attention to where Warren was facing off with the result of multiple globlin fusions. Not only was it taller than Warren, it had punched a spear-like arm through his shield, through his body and into the cabinet he had been protecting. Multiple syringes were protruding from the joints in his armour as Dani fought the massive damage to keep him alive. Warren released his grip on his weapons, the sword clattering to the floor but the shield was pinned to his body. He reached around the shield, grabbed what passed for a head on the creature and headbutted it so hard the whole body rippled with the transmitted shockwave.

A moment later the globlin’s body lost all cohesion and splashed to the floor. The damage was done though, and as Warren slumped forward holding the still closing hole in his torso a gout of steam erupted from the cabinet. The metal door across the room ground to a halt a quarter from the top. Their flow had definitely slowed, but they were still coming in.

“Hey Pham,” Peter shouted, I’m going to try Plan B!”

“Hey, when you’re flying by the seat of your pants, nothing sounds better than Plan B!” Pham agreed, still racing around the control room flipping switches and pulling levers. “Uh, what is Plan B again?”

“This.” Taking a moment to ensure he was aligned with the hall on the other side of the door, Peter sat on the ground, folding his scythe into its rifle configuration. He built his position the way Dani had taught him, using his knee to steady his aim. He let all thoughts flow away as he whispered the mantra to himself, even though they didn’t really pertain to this weapon. He saw his body change, the almost spectral armour of the Paragon hardening into actuality. “Breathe in. Half breath out. Squeeze.”

A burst of anti-sound silenced the room. Peter hadn’t tried anything fancy like aiming over the door, so a thumb sized hole appeared in the metal, neat and gleaming. The globlin that had half oozed over the door splashed to the ground unmoving. Nothing else tried to come in.

A golden glow suffused Peter’s body and for a moment he thought it was something to do with the Paragon state. He realised a moment later that he was levelling up, and revelled in the extacy. As he came down, all his existing injuries made themselves known again and he collapsed to the floor, lying on his side and trying to get his breath back.

“Sheesh, you couldn’t have done that sooner, mate?” Dani asked, out of breath and kneeling on the floor a few feet away. “We were getting our butts kicked.”

“Sorry,” Peter stood up, once more in his CDC approved suit. “Firstly, it needs to charge up so I couldn’t until I’d taken down enough of them things to fill the crystal, and second, I have no idea how much damage I’ve caused down that hall. That was absolutely a last resort, Hail Mary kinda thing.”

They limped over to where Warren was slumped against the wrecked cabinet. Dani started working the charge handle of her weapon, but he held up a hand. “Wheest awa’ wi’ tha’. It bloody stings every time. I’ve had enough needles for two lifetimes at this point, I’ll take a bandage and a potion if you’ve got them.”

“Incoming,” Pham shouted, bounding up behind them. He overarm bowled a fuzzy ovoid at Peter’s head, which grew arms and latched onto his face on impact. “That rat of yours ain’t much in the fighting department, but he’s a wizard on the keyboard. Maybe pinball too?”

“What?” Peter prised his pet from his head carefully.

“We couldn’t have done it without him,” Pham explained. “This little guy was the one pressing the buttons to direct the bot pooping pipe in the roof. I was too busy routing and rerouting the feed to keep the room working. I think he even gained a level or two up there.”

Peter immediately popped open his inventory and pulled out a small pile of berries. “Who’s a good boy then?” He placed the berries in a wrecked bend of a pipe that formed an improvised bowl. “You deserve a reward. Eat up!”

“Hey, I could do with a snacky-snack too,” Pham complained. “I kept the room up there from filling with gas.”

“Hurk-“ Warren heaved himself to his feet holding a dripping piece of cloth over the hole in his chest. “You think your special key would work in that door up there? I’m going to need a lie down and maybe even a log off.” He pointed towards the door at the top of the stairs with his blade then used it as a crutch to hobble across the floor.

Peter did his best to keep ahead of Warren, though his legs felt like jelly and he nearly fell twice before reaching the steps. “Stairs! My nemesis!” he exclaimed as he hauled himself up using the rail as much as his legs. The outside of the door had no keyhole at all, and when Peter stumbled through and closed the door he found the key wouldn’t fit into the keyhole on that side either. He leaned on the doorframe and breathed heavily as Warren clumped up the stairs outside.

In Peter’s hand the key twitched slightly. Intrigued, he held it up to eye height and looked at it carefully. The key twitched again and began to pull gently. Peter allowed himself to be led to one of the control cabinets in the back wall where there was an almost imperceptible keyhole in the top right corner of the frame. Looking along the racks Peter could see a matching keyhole in all of the frames and wondered what made this one different as he inserted the key. With a gentle click the key turned, then extruded itself from the keyhole. The cabinet recessed into the floor to reveal a room with several of the coffins and in the back wall was a door to an alcove with a bathtub like font the same as the one near the entrance.

“Guys, I think I found something!” Peter shouted, turning around and running dead into Warren’s chest with a clank. “Oof, sorry. You ok?”

Warren had his helmet off by now and was looking rather green. “I have no memory of this place,” he whispered, looking around the sterile, well lit room.

“Did you just… You did, didn’t you?”

“You tell Pham and I’ll deny it,” Warren pushed past him. “Nobody will ever believe you.”

Peter spluttered a bit until Pham and Dani came to see what the commotion was all about. Pham was sharing berries with DB, who was riding on his shoulder. “Taxi fare,” was all the explanation Peter got. Dani perched up on one of the coffins, running a finger over the black surface.

“Clean,” she noted. “No dust, nothing. Ent no-one’s been in here forever.”

Pham placed DB down next to Dani and moved to help Warren rest on the edge of the font. “How many times have we run this place? Ten? Twenty? We’ve never found any spawn points except the one down the front.”

“Not to mention that we lose a man for every just about room we go through,” Warren said, pain evident in his voice. “We used to have to take turns, now we find out it wasn’t needed.”

“What do you mean?” Peter asked, closing the door at the front of the room and trying his key. It fit, and clicked.

“I’ll explain tomorrow,” Warren pushed past into Bani’s house. “For now I want somewhere soft to bleed out.”