After leaving the arcade, I dropped my gear off at the Spin Cycle for a thorough scrub. It was covered in splotches of crusty vampire blood and my pants felt as stiff as two-by-fours from all the dried sweat. Bertrim gladly accepted the offering, bowing and scraping like the religious zealot he was, while a pair of red-robed, Brownie acolytes dragged away the pile of dirty laundry as if it was radioactive.

  That probably wasn’t far from the truth.

  I changed into a pair of sweats and a baggy T, then made my way toward my private quarters, keeping my head down and sticking to the empty aisleways so no one could ambush me with yet another crisis only I could solve. It had been a long day, and not a particularly successful one, given how things went with Theo. All I wanted was a bite to eat, a hot shower, and a few blissful minutes of uninterrupted sleep.

  God knew I needed it.

  My room was empty—no sign of Croc—which meant the mimic was probably still hanging out at Pooh’s new teashop. I’d promised the Franchisor to look after the little bear and I’d done my best to make good on my word. Pooh was reluctant to leave the 10,000 Arce Wood behind—that was where all his friends were, after all—but I’d sweetened the pot, by annexing his entire treehouse. The behemoth red wood now sat in its own corner of the store, and the bear had taken to serving tea and pastries to passing shoppers.

  Croc spent a lot of time there.

  Despite their differences, those two had been practically inseparable since our fight with the Franchisor. Pooh would ramble about his favorite honeys or recount old adventures with Christopher Robin, and Croc would respond by reading passages of Twilight to the stuffed bear or lecturing him on the many virtues of Froyo. They usually dragged Baby Hands into the mix, too. The golem almost never spoke but, apparently, he made one hell of a listener.

  I took a quick shower, blistering hot as always, and let the sweat, blood, and grime sluice off my body and flow down the drain in a swirl of disgusting red and brown.

  Once I was finished, I grabbed a pair of jumbo, all-beef Franks and an entire six pack of frosty cold beer, then plopped down at the table to eat and get moderately shit-faced while I looked over the Relics I’d taken off the fledging vampire.

  I pulled my prizes from Spatial Storage and arranged them on the table.

  Sanguine Blast, Moving Walkway, Blood Bank, and Sadistic Glee were all basic-bitch Relics that I’d seen before, though Sanguine Blast had some potential.

  Sure, it was only Common-grade and its damage was strictly “meh,” but paired with my Hydrokinesis Relic, it had serious potential.

  I already had a whole arsenal of water-based abilities—Hydro Fracking Blast, Frostfang Spire, and Hydrokinesis—the perfect backbone for a new Elemental Emblem. Add in a Relic that let me summon literal buckets of blood, and an entirely new brand of battlefield tomfuckery opened up to me. I thought back to the battle with Theo and remembered the sucking pool of congealed gore that held Ed in place. I was sure I could do something similar with a little practice. And that was just the tip of the iceberg.

  I’d just need to upgrade Sanguine Blast first. Trying to cram a Common-grade Relic into an Emblem was a great way to create something unstable enough to rip a whole in the fabric of reality, and I already had enough problems without becoming one of Croc’s cautionary tales.

  As for the other Relics, most of them were weird as hell, which wasn’t exactly surprising, considering we were dealing with Disco Vampires.

  Among the more notable items were Inferno Lava Lamp, which let the caster lob gobs of colorful, super-heated wax that both burned and temporarily blinded enemies, and Scotch Guard, a defensive spell that cut elemental damage by 25% for two minutes. Cloud of Mosquitoes reminded me of the DnD spell Gaseous Form, except it let you literally transform into—surprise—a buzzing cloud of mosquitoes.

  The most unpredictable Relic, though, was an Uncommon-grade oddball called Mood Ring, which granted different passive bonuses depending entirely on the wearer’s emotional state.

  Black, for anger, gave a 5% boost to damage, while Red, for pain, increased Health Regen by 5%. But there were other effects that were completely worthless or even actively harmful. Yellow increased movement speed by 10% but the user couldn’t stop moving for any reason, while Blue increased Mana Cost by 5% and also came with a debilitating side order of clinical depression. It was a total crap shoot.

  Mother’s Embrace was an interesting Rare-grade navigation Relic that allowed the user to instinctively find their way back to the “Blood Coven.” It worked on the same general principle as the Twinning Rings, but was vampire specific, which might come in handy. Though, admittedly, the description didn’t say what exactly the Blood Coven was. Was that their Queen? The vampire who turned them? A specific place on one of the floors?

  I had no idea, and the Relic wasn’t forthcoming with any more info.

  My personal favorite was Chattering Wind-Up Teeth, another Rare-grade that served as a pet summoning spell.

  Range: 5 Meters

  Cost: 25 Mana

  Duration: 2 Minutes

  Cooldown: 90 Seconds

  Pulled straight from the clearance bin of a novelty magic shop, Chattering Wind-Up Teeth is the perfect gag gift for a sadistic clown or a closet serial killer with an oral fixation. Summon a pair of oversized, aggressively deranged wind-up dentures—complete with glossy enamel fangs, rattling springs, and the bite force of a beartrap.

  Once released, the teeth drop to the floor, wind themselves with manic enthusiasm, and skitter across the battlefield like a homicidal Happy Meal toy on a search and destroy mission. Upon locking onto a target, the Chattering Teeth pursue with the unwavering determination of a rabid junkyard dog, leaping up walls, defying gravity as they race across ceilings, and biting straight through anything that gets in its way.

  Chattering Wind-Up Teeth deal 10 Points of Piercing Damage per bite and leave behind jagged wounds shaped suspiciously like dental malpractice. Chattering Wind-Up Teeth persists for the duration of the spell or until destroyed.

  This Relic Enables Mana Usage.

  On the surface the Relic seemed dumb, and it certainly wasn’t good enough to take a slot in my Active Spatial Core rotation, but I could see it being tremendously useful as a Spell Card. Especially if I added in Balloon Menagerie into the mix. Or maybe some of my other active spells. I could easily envision unleashing a small army of conjured wind-up teeth that would flood the battlefield, attacking enemies and unleashing pinpoint spell devastation in the process.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  And because they were technically summoned creatures, my E Pluribus Unum Relic would give me and all my conjured minions a 5% boost to Athleticism, Toughness, and Health Regen for each one I summoned. Would a small army of chattering wind-up teeth look stupid? Yes. Obviously. It was hard to be intimidating with weaponized novelty toys. But there was an old adage about that—if it’s stupid and it works, it ain’t stupid.

  Results were the only thing that mattered.

  But that could wait for later.

  I was tired, and after slamming a pair of foot long dogs and four of the six beers, I was ready to call it a night. I stowed the Relics, brushed my teeth, then climbed into bed and turned off the lights, not even bothering to put on a show. Usually, it was easier to fall asleep with something playing in the background. That had been true since my teenage years. I’d spent a lot of nights couch suffering as a kid, staying over with friends, playing video games and drinking stolen beer late into the night.

  My best friend, Ryan, lived just a few blocks over—his mom had bailed when he was just a baby, and his dad spent most of his time black out drunk, hollering for half the night. Ryan’s older brother, Jared, was a pot head in a shitty punk band who spent the other half of the night wailing on an out of tune Fender he’d picked up from a local pawnshop. It was a pain in the ass, sure, but the lack of parental oversight made it easy to pilfer cans of Natty Ice without anyone catching wind.

  Still, the TV was the only thing that made sleeping over at his place bearable. And that same habit had persisted through the Marine Corps and into my adult years. The hum of voices was like a security blanket that kept my restless thoughts from spinning out of control.

  But I didn’t need that tonight.

  My head hit the pillow, and I was out like a light within two minutes.

  Since Noclipping, sleep and I had been on rocky terms. Most nights were filled with nightmares in one flavor of awful or another—bashing in Natasha Anno’s skull with a hammer, Funtime Frank hurling barrels of reanimated monkey corpses, the HOA Kaiju chasing me through a hell-suburbia of flesh houses and screaming lawns.

  But this time was different.

  This time I knew I was in a dream.

  Knew it the way I knew water was wet and fire was hot.

  Didn’t matter, though.

  I still couldn’t wake up.

  And, unlike the few times I’d experienced a Lucid Dream in the past, I couldn’t control things either. I was just strapped in, click-clack, ratcheting up a roller coaster toward a drop I knew was coming and couldn’t avoid.

  Mammoth Caves rose up around me in all their claustrophobic glory, yellow rock walls pressing in from every direction. Massive stalactites hung overhead like stone spears, crowding the ceiling. I couldn’t stop staring at them. Intellectually, I knew those things had just hung there for tens of thousands of years—maybe millions—forming drip by drip, undisturbed for eons. Emotionally, it was all too easy to imagine they’d skewer me like a giant stone shish kabob if I took one wrong step.

  When I was eleven, we’d taken a spring break road trip to Kentucky to see this exact cave system—the world’s largest known, according to every brochure my mom could get her hands on. More than four hundred miles of mapped tunnels, with who knew how many more stretching out into the dark, still waiting to be explored.

  My mom was an absolute nature nerd. Hiking, camping, kayaking. If it involved dirt, mosquitoes, or the great outdoors, she was in heaven. Mammoth Caves had been on her bucket list since before I could spell “stalactite.”

  Visiting had always been her dream.

  Not getting buried alive was mine.

  Still, we didn’t have the heart to tell her no. So, despite my reluctance, we piled into the family minivan and made the four-hour trek, cruising past horse pastures and narrow Kentucky backroads winding beneath thick canopies of green. Dad cranked bluegrass music the entire way—banjos twanging, fiddles screeching—while my brother and I loudly protested from the backseat.

  Mom beamed like Christmas had come early.

  I… did not.

  I’d had nightmares for months afterward.

  There was just something ominous and terrible about that much rock pressing down from above, like the hand of some ancient, indifferent god. One wrong shift, one bad tremor, and that hand would close, smearing me into meat paste.

  Yeah, I knew the tour routes were safe. Even at eleven, I understood that. Thousands of visitors trudged through every year. They sold tickets. They had souvenir photos. Nobody did that if cave-ins were a regular thing.

  But logic didn’t matter to my underdeveloped eleven-year-old brain.

  It rarely did when primal, bone-deep terror was at work.

  It was all too easy to imagine something slimy crawling out of an unlit passage to snatch one scrawny kid from rural Ohio whose mom loved National Parks a little too much. Even after we went home, that image clung to me like a stain I couldn’t wash clean. And as I got older—and the internet introduced me to every terrifying cave incident known to man—my feelings about spelunking went from “yeah, no thanks” to “absolutely fucking not for any reason.”

  By 2010, after falling down a particularly cursed rabbit hole about John Edward Jones and the Nutty Putty Cave disaster, I’d sworn off dark, cramped holes in the ground for life.

  But now, here I was, right back in the very place I’d promised myself I’d never set foot in again.

  Except this time, I knew I wasn’t alone.

  There was something waiting for me in the dark. I was sure of it.

  Yellow construction lamps were bolted to the walls in regular intervals, splashing warm circles of light along the tunnel. Beyond that patchwork glow, the darkness was thick and heavy. Watching. I could feel unseen eyes on me; goosebumps crawled along the nape of my neck as every ounce of evolutionary survival instinct screamed at me to run.

  But I couldn’t run. It was like my feet were glued to the floor.

  So instead, I squinted and peered into the dark.

  There, just at the edge of the light, I could make out the silhouette of a man—or at least something man-shaped. A pair of silver eyes, like pinpricks of pure malice, regarded me with cold hunger.

  “Hello?” I called out, my shaky voice echoing off the stone walls. “Is… Is someone there?”

  The man, if he was a man, didn’t reply. Instead, he seemed to slip further into the cave, until shadows swallowed him entirely.

  Against my will, my feet carried me forward. Deeper into the gloom. On my left, a pocket opened in one of the walls like theater curtains being pulled back to reveal the set of a stage play. I really, really didn’t want to look. But the dream tugged at me like a leash, hauling me toward the opening whether I liked it or not.

  Inside was… my childhood living room.

  Not a recreation. Not some uncanny-valley knockoff stitched together by the high school props department. It was exactly as I remembered it. Down to the scuffed hardwood floors, the fabric sofa shedding little fuzz balls, and the coffee table covered in backpacks, unfinished homework, and a winter coat my brother had carelessly tossed there instead of hanging it on the wall rack near the front door.

  The entire room was still carved from rock—smooth sandstone instead of drywall—but all the furniture was exactly where it should’ve been. Perfect and undisturbed by the strange surroundings, as if our little rural Ohio living room had simply sprouted inside the cave like a fungus.

  Only one lamp was on. The thrifted wooden one with the crooked shade. Its golden glow pooled across the floorboards, leaving the rest of the room in shadows.

  My mom was standing beside the couch, her hands neatly folded in front of her.

  She looked exactly as she had in my memories. Just a stereotypical midwestern woman in her forties, sporting jeans and a worn purple sweatshirt advertising the Cincinnati Zoo. She had her hair pulled back in a ponytail and faint smile lines were carved into the corners of her mouth.

  “Danny?” she said warmly.

  My stomach bottomed out. The urge to bolt intensified a thousand-fold, but instead I took a tentative, reluctant step forward. Then another.

  I couldn’t stop myself.

  “Hi, Mom,” I said, though my throat was tight and my voice came out thin.

  She gestured me closer, just like she had a thousand times after school. C’mon, honey, tell me about your day. And for a second—one second—I almost forgot where I was. Almost forgot this was a dream. Almost forgot that a man-shaped monster with silver eyes was watching me from the shadows.

  With each step, the world stretched, warped, shrank. Or maybe I did.

  My arms got shorter. My legs thinner. My bathrobe disappeared and my worn jeans shifted until I was sporting the same Superman T and baggy cargo shorts I worn so often as a kid. My perspective dropped like an elevator plunging down its shaft, and suddenly I was looking up at her. As an adult, I’m loomed over both my parents, but I hadn’t hit my first real growth spurt until fourteen, when my hormones really went into overdrive.

  Suddenly, I wasn’t Dan Woodridge, combat vet, general contractor, and Backrooms warlord anymore.

  I was little Danny W, awkward and anxious and still afraid of the dark beneath Mammoth Caves.

  And Mom… wasn’t Mom either.