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"Nobody can see where you are," Orchid snapped. "Don\'t start swinging unless you see something! Just distract the damn thing. I can deal with darkness, even without my staff."

"My eyes are not working at the moment," Derek said. "What if I feel it instead?"

Alex\'s teeth clenched. No matter how hard he strained his ears, he couldn\'t hear anything. He sent mental commands to all of his own monsters, pulling them closer and readying them for an attack.

Even the light from within Spark wasn\'t enough to pierce through the dark. He was just a glowing blue mote in the shadows. This darkness wasn\'t natural. It was far too oppressive, like they\'d been dropped into a sea of ink.

He had no clue if any of his monsters could see anything, but he couldn\'t take the risk of extending them and leaving himself and the others open. They had to wait for an opportunity to strike. It was like the Shade that he\'d fought with Claire — but this time around, they didn\'t have any matches.

"How are you going to feel it when you can\'t see where you\'re going?" Orchid demanded. "Just stop talking for a moment so I can concentrate! This is very difficult without a staff."

"Hold on. I\'ve got an idea," Derek said. A foot scuffed against the ground and Alex felt Derek move past him. "Aha! I found it! Softer than I thought."

"That\'s me, you idiot," Orchid snapped.

"Oh," Derek said. "Whoops."

A snick echoed through the darkness. Something wet splattered against Alex\'s face. Princess lurched over him, using her body like a shield, but the attack was already done — and it hadn\'t been targeted at him.

Something heavy thumped to the ground.

A flash of orange light ripped through the darkness.

Orchid lifted her hands, an orb of molten lava twisting above her palms. The magical darkness pulled back from it like it had been burned. There was a hiss of pain as she revealed a hunched monster dressed in ragged clothes.

It was a foot shorter than Alex, with fingers that extended into claws the length of short swords. Several warped, shrunken heads jutted out from its body around its neck area, and its legs were nearly twice as long as its torso. They bent backward at the knees in the wrong direction, leaving the monster in an odd position between crouching and standing.

Night Ripper (Initiate 8)

Blood dripped from the Night Ripper\'s claws and splattered against the ground. The monster let out another hiss of pain and lurched back, diving into the shadows — and leaving Derek\'s headless corpse on the ground before it.

Orchid\'s eyes widened, and Alex was surprised to find genuine distress in them. He hadn\'t expected her to care much at all about Derek. The other Outworlders hadn\'t given him the sense that they gave a shit about anyone living on their native world.

"Go," Alex ordered, pointing in the direction the Night Ripper had retreated. Orchid\'s magic hadn\'t managed to completely illuminate the whole room, but the number of places left to hide had drastically decreased.

Spark and Glint led the charge, bounding across the ground. Glint\'s wing snapped out, transforming into a shimmering bladed whip that sliced through the air with a shrill hum. There was a wet thud, followed by several hisses of pain.

The gangly monster launched itself out from the darkness. It lunged at Glint, claws extended — and Spark slammed into it like a freight train.

His Echo Wraith\'s fists slammed down as one into one of the Night Ripper\'s heads, caving it in. He swapped places with a shadow as the monster tried to counterattack, and its strike passed through nothing but rippling darkness.

Then Princess was upon it. She threw a huge hand forward.

The Night Ripper\'s long legs extended like those of a frog. It leapt into the air, springing for Alex, and Claire jumped to meet it. She flashed through the air, black veins twisting down her right arm. She swung her katana at its neck in a blur.

A loud clang echoed out as her blade struck the monster\'s claws, screeching against them but failing to cut through anything vital. She dropped to the ground behind the monster, which landed directly beside Derek\'s corpse and the still shocked Orchid.

Without a noise, the Night Ripper leapt at Orchid, having recognized her as the source of the offending light.

There was a wet thunk.

The monster slammed to a halt in the air, limbs jerking forward and flopping still at its sides. A huge axe head protruded from the center of its chest. It let out a weak hiss and twitched once before falling limp.

Derek — still devoid of anything above his severed neck— let the axe lower.

Energy trickled into Alex. It wasn\'t a small amount by any means. The Night Ripper had been fairly highly ranked in comparison to them, but they\'d had a large group. More importantly, a Soul Flame flickered to life above its corpse.

Alex scooped it up and deposited it into a Spatial Mirror.

Derek\'s hand felt across the ground until one of his fingers located an ear. He snagged onto it, bringing the head back over to its proper position. It squelched as he plopped it back on and twisted it once for good measure.

"Found it," Derek said, rising to his feet and wiping some of the blood from his throat.

Orchid stared at him in disbelief.

"I — what? You\'re alive? Your head—"

"It\'s okay. I got it back," Derek said, giving Orchid a thumbs up. "Nothing to worry about."

Alex felt a moment of pity for her. She\'d seen Derek get run through the heart, but there was a pretty significant conceptual difference between that and watching someone\'s head get cut off, only for them to brush it off like nothing had happened.

"That was well executed," Claire said as more light returned to the room. The weak torches sputtered back to life, illuminating cracked old stones around them. It was just a normal room now. The Night Ripper must have had an ability that made it so dark.

Orchid clenched her fist and the orb of magma sputtered away. She hesitated for a moment before shaking her head and holding a hand out to Derek. That made Alex\'s eyebrows twitch upward.

And now she\'s helping him up? An Outworlder? She really doesn\'t fit in that well with the crowd we just saw in the Assembly — though, then again, they were the same ones that tried to kidnap her. Suppose there\'s no lost love there. I really need to figure out what the dynamics are between the Outworlders.

"Do you really have no weaknesses?" Orchid asked.

"Naps, mostly," Derek replied through a small yawn. He accepted her hand and Orchid stumbled as she was nearly pulled off her own feet. Derek clambered up, still holding Orchid\'s hand but getting functionally no use from it, and gave it a firm handshake. "I get tired at the worst times."

She stared at him as he released her. Alex was pretty sure Orchid had no idea how true Derek\'s words were.

The immortality ends when he falls asleep. Still, he makes an incredible tank. Almost makes me wonder if all that noise he made a moment ago was an intentional bait to get the Night Ripper to attack him.

"We should keep moving," Claire said. "Time crunch, remember?"

The others all nodded. They gathered themselves and, after one final look through the now-normal room around them, they continued deeper into the castle.

No more than a few minutes later of pressing through the darkness did Claire abruptly grab Derek by the shoulder with one hand and hold her other up in a sharp motion.

"Wait," Claire hissed.

They all froze, eyes darting around in search of what she had seen. All Alex could spot was the dark corridor that they were currently halfway through. The dark wasn\'t so strong that anything could have hid within it — at least, as far as he could tell.

"What\'s wrong?" he asked in a low whisper.

"That," Claire replied, nodding to a cobbled tile in front of them.

They all stared at it.

"You don\'t like the design?" Derek asked.

"No. It\'s a trap."

"It looks like a tile," Derek said.

It really does, but I think I\'m going to go with Claire on this one. It definitely looks like she knows something.

"Can we get around it?" Orchid asked, looking just as confused as the rest of them.

"I\'m working on it," Claire replied. Her brow furrowed and she stared up at the ceiling in thought, tapping a finger against her thigh. "It might take me a bit. I can\'t figure out how everything is connected, but there\'s definitely—"

Click.

Everyone spun to stare at Derek, who had leaned against the wall to rest. The stone against his elbow had indented half an inch.

Before any of them could react, a spear burst out from the wall in front of Derek. He swore and jumped forward, narrowly dodging it — and landing straight on the tile that Claire had indicated a moment ago.

It slid down.

A thin slot split open in the ceiling and an axe swung free, slamming straight into Derek\'s shoulder. He let out a curse and stumbled several steps into the hallway. Each step was rewarded with another click, and everyone else could do nothing but watch in awe and horror as Derek tripped-staggered down the rest of the hall.

Arrows flew. Spears burst forth and gouts of flame shot out from concealed holes. Derek didn\'t manage to dodge a single one of the traps. He bumbled his way through every single one of them, practically rolling by the end of it, and thudded to a stop against the far door.

"Ouch," Derek said.

"Are you okay?" Orchid called.

What do you think?

"I have some extra holes. They\'re — oh, wait. They\'re gone." Derek slowly rose to his feet. He nudged the ground where he\'d just stood, but the stone was still indented. "Hallway seems safe, though."

Claire stared at him. Then she ran a hand through her hair and shook her head. "Let\'s go. Only step on the lowered tiles in case Derek somehow managed not to trigger something."

***

They continued to press across walkways and through rooms, making their way through the dungeon before reaching the central building of the ancient castle and beginning their descent through it.

Monsters lurked around every corner. They were everywhere, and they all seemed like they would have enjoyed cheap horror games. There were more Night Rippers, a spiderlike creature called a Dropfang that clung to the tall ceilings with eerily human hands, and even a species called a Floormouth that blended in with the ground perfectly until they were all standing on top of it.

Fortunately, Derek accidentally stepped on one of its eyes and the monstrosity started thrashing around in agony, giving them a chance to attack it before it could get its surprise attack off.

Alex couldn\'t help but feel like hiding on the floor was a poor evolutionary strategy if ones\' eyes weren\'t tough enough to get stepped on, but perhaps that was why they only met one of those.

The odd group forged into the dungeon, defeating every monster in their path. Orchid stayed largely out of the way as per their agreement, but Derek lent a helping hand whenever anything got too close to him. Their efforts rewarded Alex with a steady stream of magical energy, largely on account of the high Initiate Stages that their opponents were.

It came at little surprise to anyone that the dungeon got considerably harder the further they went. The monsters lurking in wait rose to get as strong as Initiate 9, and each fight came harder than the last. They had to pause multiple times to gather their energy, let Alex\'s monsters revive, and recover from their wounds, but still they pressed on.

And, after what felt like a day of grueling battle but was really more like twelve hours, the four of them arrived at a high-ceilinged circular room with an enormous pair of wooden double doors at its end.

The doors were trimmed with old, tarnished silver. Scratch marks marred their surface and the age had worn the wood away. Scrapes along the floor marked the pathways of the doors where they opened.

"This has to be the throne room," Claire said.

"The boss will be here," Orchid said without a speck of doubt in her voice. "Ready?"

"No point hesitating now," Claire said. "Let\'s go."

Princess and Derek both moved forward as one. They grabbed the huge handles on the doors and strained. The others all tensed, readying themselves as the doors ground open, scraping against the stone with a dull roar to reveal a lengthy room beyond them.

It was indeed a throne room. Weathered tapestries covered the walls and the ceiling was vaulted, an enormous chandelier dangled in its center. A faded red rug ran all the way down the room, leading up to a huge stone chair at its end.

And within the chair sat a skeleton clad in heavy black plate armor. What had once been glossy obsidian was marred and greened. A broken sword, still nearly as tall as Alex, rested against the throne, a shimmering shard of black crystal embedded at the bottom of its pommel.

Alex exchanged a glance with the others. They all shared a nod and, as one, they stepped into the throne room.

Two dim green lights lit within the skeleton\'s eye sockets like burning torches. Its body shuddered and its head raised to look straight in their direction.

"Another comes in search of the heavy crown," the skeleton said, its words echoing through the room in a weary whisper.

Alex\'s eyes went wide.

What the fuck? It speaks?

Bone ground against metal as the skeleton rose from the throne. Molten red words ignited over its head.

The Night King (Adept 1)

"As all who came before you, it shall be carved into your bones." The Night King wrapped a hand around the huge, broken sword leaning against its throne and lifted it into the air before it. It lowered the blade until its pointed tip was pointed at Alex and the others. "The burden of rule is death."