The Torturer’s chains hurtled through the air over Nate and Mateo’s heads. Both reacted, with Nate raising his shield, blocking one chain, and Mateo’s spear piercing another. Two remained. Threads of Mana reached out and intercepted both as Luke sliced through the spellweaves animating the metal.

  With the attack nullified, Lee took a step back, blinking in surprise. A silence hung heavy over both groups of people until Luke spoke up, his voice trembling with anger.

  "Leave."

  This time, Lee didn’t let out as much as a peep as he shuffled back and then around Luke’s party, following the rest of his group, all eleven of them. Watching them go, Liza sent out word to the others with gems, reporting what’d happened to make sure Lee’s gang didn’t attempt to head down one of the other tunnels, rather than leave the dungeon. This wasn’t the last they’d see of Lee and his cronies. That much was certain.

  Luke drew in a sharp breath. "Simon."

  "Who?" Hannah asked.

  "He’s a friend I met in the last dungeon. He stays by the entrance to create mana gems. I don’t like thinking about what Lee and the others will do once they get there."

  "Don’t worry about your friend," Liza said. "The Department of Integrated Affairs has made sure the portal is secure. Didn’t want any dwarves making their way back to Earth. Nymh must have notified them of what happened here."

  "That’s a relief."

  "How are we doing on mana?" Liza asked.

  "I’m at about half," Penny said.

  "Almost full," Luke and Hannah said in unison. She shot him a smile.

  Liza nodded. "Let’s head out, but tell me if you need to rest."

  The path ahead continued downward with a lot of twists and turns. Occasional messages from the other group reported clashes with dwarves of different sorts, with several being of the stronger variety that attacked when Luke and Curtis made their escape from the outpost. A few smaller bands of dwarves appeared and were dealt with, but the group didn’t meet with much in the way of resistance. At least not until they found a distinct change in the environment.

  "Is that a door?" Nate asked.

  Mateo pointed at it with his spear. "We have found the hidden city!"

  Red lacquered wood with white details, and a metal handle in the shape of a ring set right into the cave wall. Dead dwarves littered the ground. The door stood open a crack.

  "I’ve checked in with the others, but none of them have been past this point, and they haven’t seen doors," Liza said.

  "Then who could’ve done this?" Mateo asked.

  "Not all parties have these gems to talk with," Penny said. "Could be any number of groups."

  "We’ll find out soon enough," Nate said.

  Luke checked the corpses for loot. "I don’t think Integrated did this."

  "How come?" Liza asked.

  "All of these corpses have credits on them. They haven’t been looted."

  Nate stepped over a bunch of dead dwarves, approached the door, and used his sword to push it open. An even more impenetrable darkness lay beyond, but Liza’s light wards dealt with that, revealing a narrow corridor that didn’t even fit two people walking side by side. Wind rushed into the tunnel from the larger cavern. Other than that, it was dead silent.

  "I don’t like this," Liza said. "Nate, go first. Then I want Hannah with her shadows. Penny, you follow after her, then me and Luke. Mateo, you go last this time."

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  "Yes, chief!" Mateo said. "?Yo les cubro las espaldas, ningún monstruo pasa por mí, órale!"

  Liza raised a questioning eyebrow. "I don’t speak Spanish, Mateo."

  "Something about our butts?" Penny said.

  Mateo’s face reddened a little. "Your backs, not your backsides, Penny! I will make sure your backs are safe!"

  "Right," she said, chuckling.

  They moved through the door and continued into the narrow tunnel single-file. Light wards dealt with the darkness, but having walls right next to you, and the ceiling right above, made for an uncomfortable experience, like being in a box. As soon as they’d all entered, the door slammed shut behind them.

  "So," Hannah said. "Is this a trap?"

  Liza cast protection wards. "Be careful."

  "Another corpse," Nate whispered, stepping over it.

  "Human," Hanna muttered.

  Luke craned his neck, trying to catch a glimpse. "Integrated?"

  "No," Penny said. "Can’t inspect."

  When it was Luke’s turn to pass the corpse, a man squeezed into the corridor the wrong way, his body a mess, he made sure to loot it. A light gem and some rags. "His arm is cut off."

  "Noticed," Nate said from up front. "Gruesome."

  "There’s almost no blood," Luke added.

  Mateo walked backwards, keeping his spear pointed toward the closed door. Almost tripping on the corpse, he let out a mild curse. "The poor man was not killed here, then."

  "I don’t like this," Penny said.

  Nate’s armor creaked and his shield scraped against the stone wall as he got into position. "Corridor opening up."

  "Fan out," Liza said, her voice hushed.

  Moving out into a wider chamber, the ceiling rose a little taller, easing the claustrophobic air. Light gems were set into the walls. No furniture or decorations made for a bare chamber, except for one feature impossible to ignore.

  "Blood," Luke said, as if the others needed that pointed out.

  Dried blood covered most of the stones underfoot, with some deeper recesses in the floor still fresh enough to pool.

  Nate’s breathing picked up. "Where are the bodies?"

  "Through there," Penny said, pointing to the other side of the room. "Probably."

  At the opposite end of the room, three more doors waited for them. Well, two doors and a gaping hole in the wall leading to a hallway beyond. Broken down wood from that particular door was on the floor. The middle door was open, askew on its hinges, and covered in blood, while the third was closed and in pristine shape.

  "Which one?" Nate asked as he crossed the room with careful steps.

  Mateo strode over to the empty, gaping hallway. "This one! Let’s face danger together!"

  "There’s no way of knowing what we’ll face behind the different doors," Luke said. "We might even have to backtrack."

  Penny eased the leftmost door open and shuddered, closing it again.

  "What?" Hannah asked.

  "Remember that smell back before we met the Flesh Golem?"

  Hannah shuddered too. "Definitely not that one."

  "Kirk’s party has located a door much like the one we found," Liza said. "And Luke’s sister’s party just reached what they’re describing as an abandoned city."

  Luke raised an eyebrow. "I didn’t see any messages."

  "These gems can do more than just speak to everyone who has one. I can send messages to a specific person and even create something like smaller chat rooms."

  "Neat," Penny said.

  Nate opened the middle door and poked his head in. "Not much of a smell through here."

  "None here, either," Mateo said, having checked the one he wanted the group to pick.

  "I wonder if the gems would let you talk to people outside the dungeon," Luke said. "That’d be something."

  Liza gestured for Nate to take the middle path forward. "Nymh is sending a gem through the portal to test just that."

  "And?"

  "They haven’t heard back yet."

  This new corridor was a little wider, but not wide enough to allow them to walk two-and-two together, and continued at a slight downward slope. At first, the silence clung to them, but soon that changed. A shriek from somewhere up ahead made the whole group flinch.

  "What was that?" Hannah asked.

  Nate glanced over his shoulder. "A bat?"

  "What sort of bats do they have where you come from?" Penny asked. "That was no bat I've ever heard before."

  "Thought so," Nate said, his shoulders slumping a little.

  "A beast cried out in anger!" Mateo said.

  Another sound reached their ears. This one was fainter and belonged to a woman. A terrified woman.

  "Go!" Liza shouted, and the group pushed forward.

  Down and down they went. No rooms appeared, and no other corridors joined the one they were running through. It took them no more than a minute or two of running, listening to that woman wailing all the while, to reach a widening where the man-built walls once again turned to natural caves. The cave ceiling rose high above them, and the place was too big to see the other side, except for a few pinpricks of flickering light in the far, far distance that might've been torches.

  More shouts reached them from inside that blackness. Not just one, but many. Luke squinted, trying to see. Dots. Red dots. Those screaming were dwarves. A whole lot of dwarves. The silent monsters they'd struggled against up until now, who'd died without as much as a peep, were crying out in terror. Unsettling, to say the least.

  Something large moved through the darkness above the red eyes, huge but silent. Liza's light wards revealed the rough shape, that of a lizard soaring in the air.

  "Is that a?" Luke began.

  Mateo grinned. "Dragon!"