I solve two more puzzles and avoid three more traps before we reach the door to the boss room. We’ve slept once, eaten and drank so a cycle must have passed. I didn’t eat, actually, I mimed taking my turn at the obelisk that Aviela summoned from the wall, but the thought of passing that mush between my lips makes my stomach churn.

  “It’s bigger than last time. The whole dungeon is different too; is it because it’s a different segment?”

  Aviela bobs her head from side to side, she likes to wobble as she thinks. I’ve been watching her more closely since we came inside the dungeon. She smiles more than I thought she did. She’s nervous sometimes too. When I almost tripped the last trap she took a half step forward and hissed with an intake of breath as if worried for me. It’s endearing.

  “Every dungeon is different. Most follow the traits of the segment; so if you’re in a rocky segment then you’ll have a rocky dungeon, if you have a swampy segment then you’ll have a swampy dungeon. That kind of thing. It’s not a firm rule though. Had a fiery one in the middle of an ice cold segment.”

  “What about the bosses? Are they similar? The last one I fought, well, Lakal fought, was made of metal and flesh all in one. Like the metal had grown into the flesh or the flesh over the metal. Whatever way it works.”

  “All different. Some big. Some small. All dangerous.”

  “How many have you killed? You do this on your own all the time, right?”

  “Sometimes.” She smiles and her eye crinkles at the edge like mine does. “I like to go with other Marked too, when I can. It’s less dangerous with others as you can watch each other’s backs.”

  “How many have you soloed?”

  “Fourteen.”

  My eyebrows nearly touch the roof and my eyes boggle. “You’ve cleared fourteen dungeons on your own? Why haven’t you ascended? Surely you’ve outgrown the Undercroft.”

  “Didn’t want to. Anyway, you’re getting distracted before a fight. This is the time you need to focus most, little acolyte. Now, take stock. Tell me what you feel.”

  We’ve done this routine a few times now so I know what she expects of me. I close my eyes and steady my breathing; it’s becoming easier the more I do it. I’ve grown used to the scrolling images my new eye provides so when I close my eyelids to usher in the calming dark the faint blue lines, words, and symbols don’t bother me.

  My body is stronger than it has ever been. I clench my toes in my thin leather shoes and feel the roughness of the dirt floor against them. I flex my feet and roll myself onto the outer arch, onto the balls, back through the arch and rock on my heels. It’s smooth, steady, controlled.

  My legs are next; I test each muscle, feeling the fibres and the signals dancing through my nerves. Then arms. Then neck. Then all the way to my head. I smell the stale air that has grown more fetid the closer we approached to the boss room. I taste it too. Old air. Dust and grime and something more. Behind it all throbs the thrum and hum of the dungeon like a living, breathing beast of its own.

  “I’m strong. I’m whole.”

  “Good. Now, what are you going to do when we go in there?”

  I open my eyes; she’s shrugged off her pack. “I’m going to stay far away from the boss and make sure I’m alive at the end of it all.”

  “Wonderful.”

  She faces the boss room now; she’s shed her coat until all that remains is a leather shirt that comes down to her forearms and leaves her hands free. They glow with the light of her power; deadly, beautiful golden gloves ready to twist and claw. She rolls her shoulders to limber her body and is ready.

  “Please do open the doors for us, Pik.”

  It’s a test of my strength to obey. The doors are twice my height and made of fractured stone; they weep with damp and moss, trailing rivulets of water from their top edge.

  It is dark beyond. My eye lends me guidance as it traces walls in the distance and pillars that hold up the ceiling of pointed rocks. The floor too is covered in a mirror of the ceiling; rocks formed from drips and drops until they are a haunting maze of subtle echoes and sharp warnings.

  There, punctuated by a red light in my vision, is the boss. It hunkers at the far end of the room; a mound of flesh.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  “Keep behind and back, Pik. Watch.” Aviela flows into the room like a stream of light. She sheds power as she walks. Her light lifts from her like steam caught by the light of a rising cycle, bright and ethereal as it floats into a corona about her.

  I follow her orders and slip inside; the doors close behind us without my touch, banging shut with a resounding knell. My heart beats faster and I focus on my breathing as Aviela stalks across the floor. Wherever she had trodden there are pools of light that cast up to reveal the room to my human eye. There are small things between the rocks that crunch as I walk; I don’t look down.

  Aviela is upon the boss. I rely still on my new eye to show me what is happening as I keep moving; the creature uncurls. What I thought was a thick, bulbous monster is a gargantuan serpent. It’s coils lengthen and straighten until it brushes the ceiling. It’s body is shining with mucus. It opens its mouth in silent challenge and I see teeth longer than my arm.

  She strikes.

  In one moment she is padding forward and the next she has launched herself like a lightning bolt. Her light carries her further than I imagined was possible. Her first strike lands on its nose and it rears back, knocking down some of the pointed rocks from the ceiling. She doesn’t hesitate.

  She strikes again and again.

  Some blows are with her clawed hands, rending great gouges from its flesh as it thrashes, surges, snaps, and bites. Even as she attacks with her fists she strikes with the power of her light. Beams slice chunks from its body. Lances pierce its eyes. Discs cut into it and balls of power slip through its scales and burst like boils against its most tender places.

  Apart from the sounds of destruction, the pair are locked in a silent battle. Oran had always yelled, and so had Lucil. The leaf too were loud. Aviela is quiet in her focus; she dives in and brings forth pain before dancing away like a feather caught in a breeze.

  It’s obvious what will happen from the moment they came into contact. Aviela’s strikes weaken the beast with each dash or flash of light. It slows. It trembles in silent rage and impotent agony before it twitches its last and collapses to the floor amongst the rubble it made of the work of time.

  “That was incredible!” I step from my hiding place behind a pillar of stone and clap her victory. “I’ve never seen someone move so fast.” I had, of course, the Banded at the trials had moved more quickly than my eye could follow; perhaps if I’d had this new eye it would have traced his path for me.

  Aviela turns with a smile. She raises her hand; the light around it is fading in wisps.

  It’s gone.

  A splash of blood and darkness falls with her severed arm.

  Time is slow for me now. Her eyes widen and she summons her light as the shadows descend upon her. She dodges the next blow and the next as two shadowy creatures made of smoke and darkness manifest beat upon her with blades of obsidian. Their forms are obscured by their trailing black but I can see the teeth of monsters, the scales of the serpent, and they red eyes of something evil.

  She strikes back with her good hand as she dances on light. Slash. Cut. Brightness of the bright cycle at its peak and the creatures keep coming. They take their toll in blood and flesh. I cry. I scramble forward but slashes of dark and light break the stones beside me and I am knocked to the ground to scrabble in the dust and dirt.

  “No!” My shout echoes in the chamber. Red eyes turn from Aviela and to me. One keeps their assault upon the flagging Marked and the other bears down upon me with a rictus grin.

  My hands are empty. I raise my fists with rocks from the ground. “That’s right. Fight me!” I wish for Aviela’s reprieve. With only one opponent she holds her ground; she takes bites of flesh and pushes it back. But she is bleeding from a dozen places and not one is a scratch.

  When my creature is ten meters distant I throw a rock. It doesn’t block. The stone crumbles against its body without a sound and it raises the point of its shining obsidian blade towards me, taunting me.

  “Pik! Run!” Aviela’s voice cracks the air but there is nowhere for me to run. A creature fast enough, strong enough, to threaten a Marked is more than I can fight. It could chase me to the doors and break my body against the stone and yet it stalks me. It taunts me. It wants my fear.

  I give it nothing.

  “You’ll never see the light of the sun, shade lover.” I stand to my full height and stop moving backwards. I toss my other rock as a matter of principle and ball my hands into fists. “Come on. Kill me already. Try it. I killed the Monarch. I killed a boss. I’ll take you too.”

  I would have died for my bravado. Aviela is there. She knocks aside the blade meant for my heart and throws the creature back. “I said run.” She screams at me as she pays the price for my rescue. Her leg is missing now, her right leg ends at the knee.

  “I’m not running.” I catch her body as she tumbles and she uses me as leverage to regain her posture. She holds herself upright with the stump of her right arm against a pillar. Her light is fading.

  She whispers to me now. “Pik. I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you.”

  “That’s not your job. I knew what I was doing.”

  “No you didn’t, Pik. You think you know of this world but you are like a child; you’re naive and kind and stupid.” She smiles at me and there is such sadness in her eyes that I know what is in her mind.

  “We can make it out. Please, Aviela.”

  “When you see the sun, tell it of me so I may be carried to my place in heaven with your words.”

  “No. Don’t!”

  She shouldn’t be able to move like she does. Light blossoms from her; wings from her back, pillars of brilliance form the limbs that she has lost. She is… an ancient word, a word with no duty in this place. Angel.

  Twinned obsidian blades enter her stomach and cross out of her back. Her hands wrap around serpentine throats, one real, one light, and she leans in to whisper her final curse upon them.

  I turn away at the last.

  Her brightness is so grand and vast that it scorches my skin to blisters and devastates every rock in the chamber.

  I stand now. Near blind but for the gift of my new eye, amongst the destruction of my hopes, the corpses of those evil things, and the glowing remains of my saviour.