I really wished he hadn't said that.
I didn't have a lot of experience with all this dungeon business, but I knew that the words "Something is very, very wrong" rarely preceded anything good.
And the silence that followed was worse.
I observed Kael in this moment: I'd only known him a very short time, but I had already learned that he was a man whose composure was hard to rattle... Even when some of his companions nearly died from poisoned wall darts, trembling hands were the only thing to give away his unease.
He had been openly terrified of the vampire clowns, but so had Hask. So I'd call that reasonable.
This, however, was different. Not only were his hands trembling, but his face was also white as a sheet, and he seemed to have a great deal of trouble finding words.
Hask didn't push him, didn't force him. "Take a minute, kid." His words were simple, but were heavy with concern and patience.
Kael took a deep breath, smoothed out his jumpsuit, and spoke. "I'm okay."
Hask nodded. "Good. Report."
Tessa was watching her friend with wide, worried eyes. Even Alara was giving him her full attention.
"So…SCRUB reported that the core chamber is empty."
He paused again. Hask remained expressionless. "Except for a body. Arren Shadowflash."
Tessa gasped audibly. "One of the members of Thunder Hawk is dead?!"
Kael held up a hand. "Judging by SCRUB's scans, he died fighting the Boss."
I remembered the team explaining that to me. Every dungeon Core had a powerful monster guarding it, called a Boss. These monsters were always considerably stronger than anything else in the dungeon. Defeating them required excellent skill, preparation, and teamwork from any adventuring team.
Hask grunted. "Makes sense. How damaged is the Boss corpse?"
Kael gulped. "That's the problem. No corpse."
The foreman stopped mid-sandwich bite. "No corpse."
"Correct, sir."
Hask's brow furrowed. "That means one of two things. Either Thunder Hawk only thought they killed the Boss…"
"Or the boss respawned prematurely."
Tessa finishing Hask's thought reminded me how in tune these people were with each other.
The big dwarven man sighed heavily and reached for his pack. From it he drew a handaxe. It was old and looked a little battered from use, but was fully sharpened and well maintained. He stared at it long and hard. "That changes things."
He stood, his declaration firm. "We don't have time to go back for help. If this dungeon sits even a minute too long without being reset, it's going to be bad."
Kael shook his head. "But sir, we can't fight a boss."
The look on Hask's face gave me pause. It was grim and determined, but there was a glint of something else in his eyes. If I didn't know better, I'd say it was eagerness. "You won't have to. I'll take point. You kids make for the core and prepare it for reset. We've got this." He locked his gaze on me, and there was something unspoken in our eye contact. Hask knew something I didn't.
Kael, looking on the brink of collapse, was still the peak of professionalism. He pulled a wooden box from his pack. He addressed the group, but made sure he was giving instructions clear enough for me. "I've got the tools. We'll start the prep, and when it's time, Hask has the reset crystal to trigger the reset. Tessa will be on mana manipulation, Alara will be on healing and barrier work. Lorne, you'll help me with the technical aspect."
We all gave a somber nod at Kael. No one questioned, at least aloud, but it was evident that all of us were terrified. We dragged our tired bodies to their feet and gathered our belongings. Hask headed toward the door.
The chamber beyond the doors was not what I expected.
After everything above — the cave, the castle hall, the carnival, the swamp, the void — I had braced for something extreme. Something dramatic. Another escalation in the dungeon's apparent commitment to architectural incongruency.
Instead, the room was almost simple.
Almost.
It was circular. Vast enough that our lamplight reached the walls but didn't have much left over after that. The ceiling was a dome, smooth and perfectly formed in a way that nothing else in this dungeon had been — no cracks, no age, no architectural peculiarity. Just a continuous curve of dark stone rising overhead like the inside of an enormous skull.
The floor was also smooth. Worn not by feet but by something else — a slow, persistent pressure emanating outward from the center of the room, as though the stone itself had been pushed down over centuries by the weight of what sat there.
The elginarium here was unlike anything above. Not veins threading through rock. Entire sections of the wall were the ore — the stone had been replaced by it completely, great slabs of glowing crystal that pulsed with a slow, heavy light. Not blue-green like above. Deeper than that. The color at the bottom of something. The kind of light that had never seen the sun and didn't miss it.
The mana in here was visible without Tessa's spell. Thick, slow currents of it moving through the air like something between smoke and water. It tasted of copper at the back of the throat. It made the eyes want to water.
In the exact center of the room, on a natural plinth of stone that rose from the floor like something the dungeon had grown deliberately, sat the core.
It was larger than I expected. Roughly the height of a man, a rough crystalline formation that pulsed with deep, slow light — the same color as the walls but concentrated, dense, almost too bright to look at directly. Each pulse was slow and deliberate.
Too slow.
Like a fading heartbeat.
I noticed two other things simultaneously.
The first was a figure slumped against the base of the plinth. Intricate black leather armor, crafted for both form and function. Stealth and flair simultaneously. Two impressive-looking daggers were clutched in a death grip in either hand.
His chest was slashed wide open, blood spattering his armor and pooling on the floor around him. It was a perfect parallel to the gore and viscera that coated the rest of the chamber.
The signs of battle were naturally the second thing I noticed: besides the blood and guts all over the place, the walls and floor were scored with burns and massive slashes, all bearing powerful mana residue. The battle that had taken place here must have been truly epic.
The last detail I caught was the smell. Under the copper of the mana and the deep mineral cold of the chamber, something else. Something organic, recent, and extremely off-putting.
I looked at Hask.
He was already looking at the ceiling.
I followed his gaze, but saw nothing.
"Move. Now."
We obeyed his command without question, dashing full tilt for the core. As we got close, I felt an incredible weight press down on me, and it took a lot of strength for me to not collapse under it.
Kael passed me a pair of goggles that allowed me to look at the core more closely. The others fitted similar goggles over their eyes.
It was at that moment that we heard the shriek behind us. My head whipped around. What I saw made me wish I hadn't.
It was shaped like a dragon the way a nightmare is shaped like a memory. The broad outline was there — massive body, four limbs, something that might once have been wings. But the details refused to cooperate with that assessment. The limbs were too disjointed and too long, bending in directions that suggested whoever designed joints had not been consulted. The wings moved independently of each other and of any discernible wind, trailing edges dissolving into something that was neither membrane nor shadow but insisted on being both.
The head was the worst part.
Too large for the body by any reasonable metric, suspended on a neck that corkscrewed rather than curved. Too many points of focus on it for the word "face" to apply cleanly. Eyes, perhaps. Several of them, arranged without apparent logic across a surface that kept revising its own geometry. And from the jaw, the throat, the chest — from places that had no business producing them — tentacles. Dozens of them. Some as thick as my torso. Some hair-thin, trailing through the air like the creature was unraveling at its edges.
It smelled like the deep ocean floor and old lightning and something I had no name for that my body recognized as a threat before my brain had finished processing the image.
Every single one of its eyes found us at the same time. I don't know how I knew they were all looking at us, but I was sure of it.
The scariest part, I found, was that the amalgamation of nightmare and raw, desperate hunger bore no wounds that would indicate that it had seen battle. This told me that it had, in fact, respawned. Which, if the information on dungeons I had been given was accurate, meant it was stronger than before.
I had no prior memories to compare it to, which I had always considered a disadvantage. In this specific moment, I considered it a profound mercy.
What I felt was not fear exactly. It was the specific cognitive experience of encountering something that should not exist and having no framework for processing that fact.
My body, apparently, had a framework.
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Hask gripped his handaxe loosely at his side and stepped toward the monster. "Prep the core."
His voice was completely level. I decided that was reassuring and committed to that interpretation entirely, because the alternative wasn't useful.
Kael's voice dragged my attention away from the horror before me. "Lorne. Trust Hask. Let's get to work."
I took a deep breath and did as he said.
Tessa stepped to the core and placed her hand near it. Not on it, I noticed. She was focused and shockingly intense. "Cleansing Art: Assessment. Activate."
There was no flash of mana or magical light. Tessa's eyes flashed for a brief moment, but that was it. She wasted no time in updating us. "The core is highly unstable. It's been dragging in so much mana, and with a premature boss respawn, its use of resources is split in ways that shouldn't happen. We need to work quickly."
Behind us, I could hear the escalation. Not the roaring of the monster and clashing of a fight, but heavy footsteps, a distinctly horrifying hissing sound. They were circling. Sizing each other up. I could feel hungry eyes on my back, but I got the sense the aberrant beast was mainly focused on the foreman.
What did I get myself into?
"Lorne. We have to clean the core first," Kael said urgently. "This is where you come in. You have to be careful. Scrub too aggressively, everything goes ass-over-tea-kettle, and we all die."
I gulped. "Cool. No pressure."
I reached into my pack and drew forth a bottle I hadn't used yet: Resonance Wash. I was told this was specifically designed to clean Cores. This was not a water-mixed cleaner. I had to apply it directly. I attached a spray head to the bottle and assessed the crystal.
I could see the huge patches of residue and magical resonance. They stood out against the glowing of the core.
I set to work.
Spray. Wipe. Spray. Wipe.
Touching the core itself made my hands tingle. I could feel them slowly going numb. Power rumbled me to the bone. I could feel my ribs vibrating. I hurried my pace, while still being as careful as possible.
Behind me, I heard the first clash. A roar, Hask yelling. The sickening sound of flesh colliding with flesh - or whatever it was that that thing had. It was all I could do to not turn around.
There was a weird irony in scrubbing and polishing while a monster tried to kill my foreman just thirty feet behind me. It was not lost on me.
As I scrubbed the last patch of residue, Tessa set back to work. She explained to me exactly what she was doing. "I have to do a mana bleed now. Be careful. Pulling excess mana to stabilize the core can cause feedback. It's dangerous and could vaporize us."
I stared blankly. "There are too many things that could destroy us."
Kael gave a harsh, nervous laugh. "It could burn our souls away too. No afterlife, no reincarnation, just the void."
Great.
The carnage continued behind us. Roaring, the sound of flesh rending. Yelling from Hask. I heard a huge crash of stone breaking.
While Tessa uttered another spell, Kael set to work. "While she's bleeding mana, I have to synchronize the core's signature with the trap infrastructure in the dungeon. If I get it wrong, things don't reset correctly."
"And let me guess," I said dryly. "If you get it wrong, we all die."
"Yup."
"Cool."
Kael pulled forth a device that I couldn't make any sense of. It was clearly something of his own design, however. He activated it and began to touch the core in various places, magic rippling and mingling with the swirling mana of the crystal.
I watched him disappear behind the core as he moved around it.
Hask yelled behind us, this time clearly in pain. He had told me not to look, but it was all I could do not to.
I saw Tessa's face go from worry mixed with professionalism to deep fear. "Kael!"
"What's up, Tess?" His voice came from behind the core.
Her voice was even higher pitched than normal. "Someone messed with the core!"
Her words made me feel like I was hit with a very confusing hammer.
Kael clearly felt the same. "What do you mean?"
Tessa's response was even more frantic. "The mana bleed is abnormal. I'm finding traces of magic that don't belong here. The crystalline structure doesn't make sense."
"That explains what's causing the weird mana draw."
"We have to tell Hask."
Tessa looked at me.
This was the first time I turned around. I sorely regretted it.
I saw it in all its glory and horror: Hask was a blur of motion. Dodging tentacles, striking monster limbs, bleeding from too many wounds. As I opened my mouth to speak, I watched him leap, barely dodging a tentacle smashing into the ground where he just was. He landed on the fleshy protrusion and dashed up it like it was a bridge, leaping toward the creature's "face" and landing a sickly-sounding blow. The axe buried itself deep, and the monster screamed.
I pushed down the emotions I was feeling and yelled. "FOREMAN!"
Hask was hanging by his axe from the monster's face. "WHAT IS IT, CALLISTER?! I'M A LITTLE BUSY!"
I could see that. "THE CORE'S BEEN TAMPERED WITH!"
I saw his concentration break. It was a brief lapse, but enough for a tentacle to catch him full in the chest and send him rocketing away. He crashed into the stone wall with enough force that his body cracked the stone violently. He slid down the rock face like a ragdoll.
That was it. We were done for.
The monster's attention focused on us. I felt it more than I saw it. What I did see was a slimy black tentacle rocketing straight for me.
"Protection Art: Mana Ward. Activate!"
Alara's voice.
Before I could even make a move to dodge, the tentacle crashed against a pulsing wall of light. I looked over and saw Alara, hands out, light pulsing from her outstretched hands. "Stop almost dying, idiot!"
Her words struck me in a way that I didn't have time to process. All I noticed was her face. Fear. Concentration. Anger. Tears in her eyes.
I looked back over to the carnage. I was astounded to see Hask was on his feet.
He called out. "NOTE IT! KEEP GOING!"
Somehow, he was able to heft his handaxe and keep going, launching himself back at the creature and drawing its ire once again.
"Can you heal him?" I asked Alara.
Alara gritted her teeth. "He's out of range."
"Then go to him!"
She glared at me. It was a different kind of glare. Not disdain, not distaste.
Despair.
Her next words were laced with pain. "I can't. I have to prepare a ward for you all."
I shook my head. "What do you mean?"
"When we reset a core, it releases a heavy pulse. It's harmless to monsters, but dangerous for us. You need to be warded; I've been holding it this whole time."
I realized in that moment that there were probably many more strikes from the monster that would've splattered us without her interference. She was amazing. "What about Hask?!"
Tears flowed more freely from her eyes now. "We have to trust him."
I fixed my gaze back to Hask. He was flying through the air again, hit by a tentacle, only to be smashed into the ground by a giant twisted limb. He was pinned beneath giant claws.
From behind me. "Done! Tess, you ready?"
"Yeah! We need the crystal!"
"We can't reset with the boss alive! We still need to clean!"
"I know! We have to hold the line until then!"
I fixed my eyes on the battle once more. For the first time since we entered the Ebon Maw, I felt what must have been real fear. Not fear of vampire clowns. Not fear of deep water or bog witches. A vise-like clenching in my stomach that made me want to throw up. I felt sweaty all over.
Hask was still pinned by the creature. He seemed to be barely clinging to consciousness.
Then, still with complete stillness, he uttered words that would quickly astound me. "Combat Summon: Tempest Striker. Activate."
As he finished the incantation, there was a flash of power strong enough to break him free. He didn't knock the monster's grip free. He severed the limb. It fell limply to the ground as the Boss Monster gave a shriek of pain and terror that shook the foundations of the room.
Hask was on his feet. He was no longer limping or wobbling. His body was consumed in magical fire. In his hand, he no longer gripped a simple utility handaxe: he held a gleaming golden axe that radiated power from a massive red stone set into its face.
The foreman stepped forward. "Should've opened with this."
He shifted his feet into a balanced stance, his heavily bleeding wounds and clearly broken bones no longer an issue for him, it seemed.
The same calm voice. "Warrior Art: Tempest Cleave. Activate."
What happened next was over before I'd even noticed it began.
There was a flash, a loud rending of stone and flesh.
When I was able to refocus my vision, Hask stood directly behind the massive beast. He was leaning forward, axe held before him, back to the Boss, legs bent.
There was a long moment of complete silence.
Then we watched the monster move.
It wasn't moving of its own volition: it was moving because it had been severed clean in half. The pieces of the monstrosity fell, almost in slow motion, to either side of the foreman, hitting the stone floor with two massive fleshy thumps. Tessa, Kael, Alara and I all stood dumbly. Awestruck didn't begin to cover it.
After another moment, Hask straightened up and turned to us. The magic and power vanished, and all we saw was a battered, broken man that should be dead ten times over. The handaxe, ordinary once again, dropped from his hand.
He croaked out a single sentence. "Callister. Catch."
He threw something at me with surprising force. I barely managed to get my hand up to catch it. I looked at what was sitting in my palm. A small shard of crystal that looked like a piece of the core behind me.
I saw that the corpse of the Boss was dissolving into a swirling shadow and dissipating. No corpse.
"I'm rusty."
Those were the last words our leader spoke before he collapsed.
A long silence.
Tessa screamed.
Alara stood rooted to the spot, magic still active, sobbing.
Kael stood numbly, equally stuck. "...holy shit."
It was at this moment that the wrenching in my gut faded. I turned to my companions. I had an idea of what I needed to do. I took a deep breath, trying to steady myself. "Kael. Show me how to reset the core. Alara. Keep the ward up, then go to him immediately when we're done. Tessa. Prep food and water for him."
The other three acknowledged my orders without question.
Kael explained that all I had to do was place the crystal on the core and recite some words. He gave me the incantation.
Tessa looked at us, worried. "We're not done!"
I shook my head. "Doesn't matter. We need to get Hask and leave. Hopefully we've done enough. No boss corpse. Only blood left."
I stepped with Kael to the core and did as instructed. As I pressed the crystal to its larger counterpart, I felt power pulse through me again. This time it felt like resistance. The core was fighting.
I closed my eyes and pictured not a reset Core, but the active process of the Core resetting. I was certain it was enough, though I wasn't sure how I knew. "Cleansing Art: Reset. Activate."
The resetting of the core was slightly anti-climactic. After all of the insanity that had just taken place in this room, the core's glow simply dimming and receding to a dull pulse felt almost insulting.
But I couldn't have been more thankful.
Alara immediately dropped her ward and dashed toward Hask. She knelt beside him and murmured an incantation. Hask glowed faintly with light for a moment.
She called out. "He's stable. But he's still fading. Help me get him to the plinth."
I wondered why he needed to be there but did not question. We all hoisted Hask as gently as we could and collectively hauled him to the reset core.
Then, a gentle, mechanical voice echoed through the chamber, emanating from the crystal itself. "Dungeon Reset complete. Exit warp activating in ten… nine…"
We frantically pulled Hask the rest of the way, laying him as gently as we could next to the giant crystal.
We all exchanged tired, worried, and despairing glances.
"Three…two…one…"
I blinked, and we were no longer in the Core chamber. No longer in the Ebon Maw.
I felt a cool nighttime breeze ruffling my hair, cooling my sweaty face.
We were back on the mountainside. The dark, unassuming cave that led into the dungeon stood before us.
We were out.
I glanced up at the sky. It was flooded with an endless expanse of stars amid inky blackness. We had entered in the early morning. All day. We were in there all day. It felt like a month.
I collapsed backwards, planting hard onto the ground.
I looked at everyone else. Their tired, sweaty, tear-streaked faces. I felt their fear. Their grief. Their anger.
I clutched desperately for words.
I couldn't find any good ones. "Well….fuck…"
Stupid. That was the wrong thing to say.