It was first light when Zenos crept from his tent. He was drowsy and dehydrated, and so before he dealt with the issues of the day, he looked for his canteen. It was set outside his tent and had turned ice cold, which was pleasant on his dry throat.
What sort of dream was I having? he wondered. It was Balagrim, wasn’t it? I’ve had these dreams of his father, but I never met him. Why do I feel so certain that it’s really him, and not my imagination?
Zenos finished his draft and sighed with satisfaction. I’ll think about it later. He tightened the cap of his canteen. I have to stay focused on the dungeon break. He blinked the weariness from his eyes and took in his surroundings.
A dusting of snow shrouded the campsite. It was on the firepit and the pans Mad had left out from the night before. Zenos looked up and watched snowflakes flutter down. They turned to water when they touched his cheek.
He heard no movement from Mad’s tent, and his tall black backpack had been left against the woodpile, but there was a trail of foot prints in the nascent snow.
Zenos clipped his canteen to his belt and turned back into his tent. He grabbed his gray coat and his hands shuddered while he fit his arms through its sleeves; fingers quivered as he buttoned the coat closed. From his backpack he retrieved a survival bar and took a single bite. The remainder he stuffed in his pocket, before he left the pack where it laid by the bed roll.
He took a deep breath and turned to the dungeon gate. The footsteps, ever so faint in the snow, ended at its iron doors. Zenos trembled with anger.
After all that, he thought as he approached the doors. You were going to leave without me anyway?
There was no whistle from the surrounding dwarf statues. Their red eyes were cold and dark. As Zenos stood before the dungeon gate, he felt an intense chill—like fear—electrify his spine. Even his unrefined sense of danger could tell the dungeon break had begun.
Did you think I would just shrug and leave it at this?
Zenos steadied the shake of his hands, restrained his anger.
No way!
“Gate!” he shouted. “Open!”
The doors juddered and swung back, into the black mouth of the cave. His eyes, adjusted to the dim light of the morning, noticed only hints of a hall ahead. Zenos stepped past the doors and into the dark. The doors closed and left him in blackness.
There was no light in the dungeon. There was no sound, but for the echo of Zenos’ footsteps. He was forced to stumble forward, into the shifting dark, until he tripped on a taut wire. White light blinded him and he was bound tight by threads of hair. Despite his squirming, he couldn’t break free.
A glowing photograph flapped toward Zenos’ face as he struggled on the floor.
“This photograph was all I had,” the photo of Mad and his party members began speaking in Mad’s own voice. “I needed something that had my likeness, so if it bothers you, I’m sorry.”
“That’s what you’re sorry about?!” Zenos shouted.
“I can’t bear to lose another party member, Zenos,” the photo continued. “You’re my comrade, and it wouldn’t befit someone with a bright future to die in a place so dark as this. I’ve instructed my anima to bind you and play this message until you concede. They will release you when you agree to leave.”
“I’d never agree to that!”
Zenos flexed against the threads, but they were hard as steel wires. His strength of just 900 wasn’t enough to escape by force alone.
“Don’t worry about me,” Mad’s photo said. “This is a fight I’ll win.”
“That’s not what I meant!” Zenos shouted, red in the face as the wire-like-threads constricted his chest. “I said meant we’d win together! Together, damnit!”
“This photograph was all I had,” the anima repeated. Zenos’ protest fell on the deaf ears of a spectral servant.
“Damnit,” Zenos muttered, knocked his head against the stone floor. “Damnit, damnit.”
While the anima held him down, shadows began to move beyond their light. They coalesced from the floor, congealed into individual humanoid shapes. Zenos heard them when they took their first steps; saw the glare of their red eyes, and the gleam of their black axes as they breached the light.
Dwarfs! he thought.
They were dwarfs, certainly, as they stood at half the height of man, and they wore thick beards of length enough to brush the floor. They wore chainmail armor and square open-faced helms that exposed their angry persuasions. The axes they held were fit for two hands, thick in the handle, and broad at their double-bladed heads. They seemed to have the texture and weight of stone, but they were wreathed in burning flames, black like the shadows that made them.
Their red eyes flashed with recognition. Zenos was an enemy.
He struggled again. “Spirits,” he said to the anima. “I’m going to die! If those things strike me, I’ll definitely die!”
The anima remained locked around his body. It stayed wrapped such that he couldn’t move a muscle.
“Is that what Mad wanted?!” he shouted. “Is that what he told you to do? Let me die to these things?!”
The dwarfen monsters approached, wound their arms and hoisted their axes high over their heads. They were primed to strike.
“I know you’re not mindless!” Zenos’ shouting echoed down the hall. “You know this isn’t right!”
“Let me fight!”
“I can win!”
The anima threads loosened. Zenos slammed the ground and moved onto his knee. He held his right hand out to the side, shouted, “inventory!” A dwarfen axe came down and there was a silverine flash in the anima glow.
Ping! Zenos’ clashed with the dwarf, held its strike at bay by the blade of his longsword.
[You received 0 (650) non-lethal damage to the left shoulder. Successful parry negated all damage.] The system’s report refreshed his focus. Zenos broke contact and stumbled backward, onto his feet. The anima fell away around his legs.There were four dwarfen monsters ahead, identical in armor and armament. They lumbered slowly, slouched to one side or the other. They were nothing like the fierce dungeon ruler Mad had described.
He said this was easy, didn’t he? Zenos remembered, gripped his sword tight in his right hand. Their total health was obscured, but a percentage number indicated they were each at full HP. I can’t struggle here. If this is difficult, then I can’t hope to help Mad at all.
He took a breath and hardened his face. He fixed his sharp, reptilian eyes on the dwarf-like shadows and balanced his sword in his outstretched arm.
“I’m going to win,” Zenos said. “I’ll destroy anything that stands in my way. Those of you who’ve come to kill me—I hope you die with regrets!”
He launched forward. His target dwarf, the foremost of the four, swung for him. Zenos weaved around the strike and cut toward its eyes. The blade cut straight through the sockets, separated the head like it was made of clay.
[You have dealt 1,000 critical lethal damage to the head] the system reported as the dwarf collapsed on its knees. Its axe clattered to the floor and disappeared in a puff of smoke. [Target is dead.] [Sword (One-Hand) Proficiency has increased from 40 to 41.] [Five level ups are waiting for you.]Zenos straightened his back, twirled his sword in his hand. He turned to look over his shoulder, glare through the light of their beady red eyes.
“Who’s next?”
The dwarf-like shadows howled in a familiar cry. It was similar to the noise of the statues outside the dungeon. They charged Zenos together, swung their axes. The din of battle echoed down the hall, dwarfen moans punctuated by the crash of blades.
[You have dodged. You have gained a bonus of 35% agility] the system informed.Zenos spun on his foot, cleaved a dwarfen arm with his back swing.
[You have dealt 300 lethal damage to the left arm. Limb has been severed.]If it’s not a hit to the eyes, it won’t be lethal, he thought, eyes round as he stepped aside sweeping axes.
Zenos clenched his teeth, tossed his sword up, and took it in a reverse grip by the left arm. He plunged the sword through a monster’s eye socket, straight through the back of its head. Its jaw went slack and its body broke into black dust.
[You have dealt 1,000 critical lethal damage to the head.] [Target is dead.] [Sword (Two-Hand) Proficiency has increased from 45 to 46.]Zenos adjusted his stance, took his sword in both hands. “Come on,” he said through hot breaths, his face flushed red with exertion. “Let’s go. Come at me!”
The dwarfs collided with Zenos. He kicked one to the floor.
[Non-lethal damage,] the system reported, but he ignored the message.After killing two dwarfs, the total HP had become visible on the holographic health bars tethered over their heads. Each one had just 650 HP. They have less HP than the automatons, Zenos thought as he cleaved another head with a single stroke.
[Target is dead.] [You have…]
The last dwarf bellowed a battle cry. Zenos shouted back, cried at the top of his lungs. They traded blows.
[Your HP was reduced from to 1,200 to 550. Your chest was hit for 650 lethal damage. You have one stack of bleeding.] [You have dealt 1,000 critical lethal damage…] [Target is dead.] [There are six level ups waiting for you.] [Combat has ended.]Blood poured from Zenos’ chest and he fell to his knees. He gasped for breath, but his ribs had been shattered by the blow, and the effort brought him pain. He spit up blood and dropped on one hand. His sword clattered to the floor.
Careless, he thought with shuddering eyes, round with terrible suffering. Two hits and I’m dead, but one hit alone is enough knock me down. My constitution can’t suppress the trauma!
He coughed. Blood splattered his hand. The bleeding debuff blinked and ended. His health began to regenerate. The wound down his chest closed, but his coat wasn’t mended by the system. There was a gash hacked through the thread from the left hip to the right shoulder.
Zenos grabbed his sword and lifted up from the floor after his HP had been restored and his energy felt full. Behind him were the collection of anima threads. They glowed as they laid among monster dust and red crystals. Those clouded rubies were the core gems Zenos had heard of, and although they had registered in his mind, he had a more present concern.
“Anima,” he said, addressed the threads of hair strewn around the floor. “I’m going wherever Mad is. He got it in his head that he was doing me a favor, but if I’m not there, he’ll definitely die. You’re not going to try to stop me, are you?”
The threads made no movement.
He turned half back toward them. “The hall ahead is dark, and I don’t know the way through these halls. I’m sure Mad is far ahead of me already, and maybe he’s fighting the dungeon ruler even now. So, how about you lend me a hand?”
There was still no movement from the anima.
“You can hear me, can’t you? I’m not your master. I can’t give you instructions, but…” Zenos frowned. “Isn’t it true that Mad didn’t give you orders? You answered his call because you wanted to. That man will die if I don’t reach him, so please—”
“Heed me!”
The photograph stirred from the floor. It flapped up toward Zenos’ face.
“Could you?” it asked it Mad’s voice. “Do you really have that power?”
I don’t know if this will work. Zenos’ eyes lit with orange light.
[At-Will Ability: True Eyes of the Emperor Activated.]“If you have eyes to see,” he said. “Look into mine and tell me that I can’t.”
The anima threads lifted from the floor. The slithered into the air as eels through water, made their tepid approach to Zenos’ face. Their thread-bare ends moved close to his eyes as they seemed to probe him.
[Connection established,] the system reported.The white-lit animas shuddered and their light turned orange, like Zenos’ own eyes.
“We don’t want him to die,” the photograph said. “Follow closely.”
The threads slithered down the hall and Zenos turned to follow behind.
It looks like they approved of whatever they saw, he thought as he stuck to their field of light. but why did their color change?
He was led to the exit of the dungeon’s first floor. It was a grand stairwell that descended in a corkscrew through the stone. But before he could move to the second floor, shadows congealed, and the monsters appeared in force. It was a group of nine dwarfs, all together.
The anima threads shot toward them and tangled their legs.
Zenos launched into battle.
