“You fools.” The book mocked.

  “BRAH!” Brody screamed as his broken fist connected with the book’s spine with full force.

  Instead of striking it down, Brody’s fist seemed to weld to the paper spine as a disturbing energy filled the discount food room. His body didn’t drop, freezing and floating in place rather than falling. A dark wind sucked into the book. The force of the punch and momentum of his body was collected rather than blasting through and the book’s flapping stopped as the suction pulled more and more kinetic force into itself.

  “Weak. So weak,” the Collector’s voice chuckled as it floated without moving. The suction didn’t stop and seemed to be draining Brody of something vital. His flush skin paled, and Alex saw dread fill his eyes on his frozen face.

  “Stop it!” Alex rushed toward them from the back of the room. To do what? Anything but just allow his friend to be drained.

  “Emotion for another person. How easy it is to take and use. Every time.” The book said in an old, twisted French voice as Alex rushed in.

  WHU-BOOM

  A violent shockwave that felt like jealousy blasted out from the book, spinning Brody through the air. Alex was knocked off his feet from the force, tumbling painfully head over heels as metal cans crashed into his body.

  He heard a thud against the wall and a groan behind him as he finally stopped. Turning his head, he saw Brody lying facedown with arms splayed at odd angles.

  Alex lurched to his feet, battered and bruised all over with just a lick of Essence, to limp over to a fallen Brody.

  “That’s enough, Lich,” Freeda growled and stepped to the middle of the room in one step with jangling bangles to place herself in front of the boys. “Show your true form and then we’ll see if you can handle a peak Silver Grade Boss.”

  The Book laughed again, darkly, as Mr. Mystical jittered on his rug and stammered. Alex got to Brody, and thankfully he was breathing. Turning his head, he saw the spark of life in his eyes.

  “I’m sending you back,” Alex said frantically. “Back to the unspace. It’s too—”

  Brody’s unbroken hand shot out and grabbed his red delivery polo. The clone shook his head and grunted.

  “MUH!” Brody groaned. “MUHNUH.”

  “Wh-what is she talking about, Harold?” Mr. Mystical squealed.

  Without turning, the book spoke. “Don’t be such a dunce, Barty. Do you really think I’d leave all this work to a weak ghost?”

  “But-but, he has to have something on you!” The mouse jittered back to Freeda. “The Collector has something of mine! He’s holding it hostage, you see, and I haven’t had any choice. What does she mean you’re him?”

  “But, but, but,” The book mocked. “Enough driveling from you. You had a choice. You made yours. Help me defeat her, and kill Alex and the idiot accomplice, or that ring is destroyed. Tonight we put an end to their cheating expansion.”

  Mr. Mystical seemed frozen. Trapped in shock within the shell he inhabited.

  Freeda grunted and flashed out her bangle covered arms. Her eyes glowed with light that creaked through the seams in her skin as the cans and food scattered shook and then shot form the floor. A dozen, then a hundred coalesced around her, forming a cloud of metal cannons. She smiled her uranium glass teeth and turned her hand.

  “If you’re here,” she said. “That means we can I can not only defeat you but kill you!”

  She clenched her hand and the stream of canned goods floated in a cloud around her while her voice got came from all directions of the room, booming.

  “A Lich can only leave their Domain when they bring their phylactery, Collector!” she said throughout her Domain. “I wonder what it is? I can always use more trinkets for my Dungeon. I can’t wait to destroy it and give it to a lowly Adventurer.”

  Then she fired the cloud of cans right at the flapping book.

  Can after can struck a wall of dark energy in front of the book. Alex dragged Brody up while his heart hammered. To be stuck in a room with a Dungeon Boss, a Ghost, and an unhinged Lich.

  At first, nothing happened to the shield. It grew a dark shell, but the cans kept coming. A constant stream of powerful weights struck the barrier Skill. Horizontally, like a thousand little battering rams, the cans stacked atop on another, applying more weight and more force.

  “Again, weak,” The Collector laughed again from within the book. “Is this all a Dungeon Boss can—"

  Freeda raised her second hand and fired out bright sheets of thick paper. The famous sale signs that Honest Ed’s was so well known sliced the air like whipped, paper daggers. Each one had a different deal, written by hand in bright letters so many years ago in a solitary office by a hard-working Jamaican immigrant woman. Now she used them to cut between the stacks of cans to fight against The Collector’s shield.

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  Cans stacked further as more magical paper fought against the shield. Freeda groaned as she stacked her attacks while The Collector laughed against her barrage. The whole room shook as The Collectors began to show the first cracks.

  At first, just a corner of a sale poster bit into the shell. The deals of Honest Ed’s had been endless. One could find anything there, and it all had been on rotating discounts that just kept plunging.

  “Come on Collector!” Freeda croaked loudly. “I know you’re stronger than this!”

  With a whoosh the cans and the paper knives blasted through the dark wind shield and smashed into the floating green book. It momentarily resisted. Then, it was sent hurling against the back wall as a deluge of metal and preserved veg crashed against it. Freeda pulled back her left hand and the stacks of sales posted shot back into a slit in her stitched together palm.

  The cans piled against the book, making a sloppy, dented pyramid twenty feet high. Eventually, Freeda ran out of ammo, and the room fell silent save for Mr. Mystical’s whimpering and the occasional falling can. For now, The Collector was buried beneath aged and discount goods.

  Without looking, Freeda shouted at Alex and Brody. “Back! Be careful! It’s not over yet. Run if you have to.”

  “I’m not leaving him! I’ll do what I can.” Alex settled Brody and stood up shakily.

  Alex pulled Brody up to a sitting position by that time. The clone was in a bad spot. Alex wanted to go over his head and tried to send him to the safety of the unspace, but he wouldn’t budge. His arm and hand was broken in three places, and he had a massive welt forming along his temple.

  “And you!” Freeda pointed at the floating Mr. Mystical. “Move and I’ll end your miserable existence forever.”

  Mr. Mystical made a whining nose within his mouse body. The entire while, he seemed unable to process the information, jittering and crying miasma tears from his mouse body.

  Something shifted within the pile of cans, causing a metal landslide.

  If they could see through layers, they would have witnessed the spine of the green book splitting open like a rotted wound. A bloodshot eye stared out into the shadow. The true form of The Collector chuckled and began to pull himself out of the book.

  What a delightful disguise it was, and he would miss it. But there were much more important things he needed to add to his collection. A most important one was in this very room, right on Alex’s wrist. A handmade Relic from a Dungeon Boss would do quite nicely for his collected power to call upon. After he put an end to a rival Lich’s expansion cheat.

  The Collector’s liver-spotted boney hand came first, pulling forth his curdled body. Decades old unwashed hair was birthed, alongside his ammonia breath and tattered sweater. No one had ever called him a sweet-looking old man when he lived. Now he looked like a vile, sneering geezer who wanted nothing more than torment you about what he had and what you did not. The canned goods surrounding him got covered in grease as he chuckled and slithered out of the pile.

  He didn’t move like an old man. Like a liquid snake, The Collector pulled himself out of the attack, his body squishing and creaking and bending at odd angles. Before long, he hunched and grinned at them all with eyes of endless abyss.

  “A Dungeon Boss isn’t as strong as Lich. This you will see. Each and everything little thing in this Dungeon will belong to me,” he said as he pulled out something small and silver and a black notebook. The one where every deal was written in compact French. “You,” he looked at a shaking Mr. Mystical, who locked onto the silver item in his raising hand. “Attack them all or this gets crushed. Now.”

  Mr. Mystical’s sobbing grew louder, and the ghost of a man inside jittered the body to look back at a fuming Dungeon Boss, a broken Brody, and an exhausted Alex.

  There was never any emotion in the taxidermized mouse with three eyes. The ghost that lived inside used its jitters and speech to express himself. But Alex swore he felt the glassy eyes break as the ghost finally came to a decision.

  “No,” Mr. Mystical whispered while crying. Then louder, shaking. “No. No. NO!” He spun on The Collector quickly, his voice turning not to begging, but to rage.

  “GARY WOULD NEVER STAND FOR THIS!” Mr. Mystical roared, and blue miasma steamed from his body. “I WILL NOT DESICRATE HIS MEMORY ANY LONGER!”

  Then faster than Alex thought possible, Mr. Mystical howled and rushed The Collector on his Persian rug. His scream sounded like the dead, full of rage and exhaustion.

  The Collector smiled back and flipped his notebook open while his eyes began to suck the light in around him. “But we had a deal, Barty,” he laughed. “It’s right here.”

  A beam of bottomless black shot out from the notebook, headed right for a glowing Mr. Mystical. Right before it crashed into him, the ghost inside felt love win out over fear, only speeding his charge.

  And a rotten bracelet that knew only malice cracked.

  Though the Unspace Nina flew in her true Lich form. Icy wind whipped around her, the cold trailing behind her like a train of winter. Dead dreams flew out of her path, and more importantly, out of the path of her [Wooden Spoon].

  It was only a foot long and made of simple wood. A burnt scoop and a worn handle polished through the centuries. Upon a glance, it looked like nothing. It had been nothing once. But after generations of stirring soups, sauces, and stews, the spoon had become one of the most dangerous Relics on the continent. The blood of a thousand enemies at the hand of Nino helped as well.

  Nina appearance barely changed from what she wore in the shop. Slippers, a floury dress patterned in flowers, a gold chain. Her eyes, though, were the endless white of frost. Her small, ever-present grandma grin never left her face.

  The biggest difference was her hair. Or rather, the near absence of it.

  The few scraggly strands were all that remained after her untimely, or timely ascension. Or perhaps, it was a descension into Lichdom with Nino, depending on how one looked at things. A price gladly paid by him to save her from the clutches of permanent death. Even so, both she and Nino agreed. Nina was the more powerful one of the pair.

  Her smile widened as her fingers found their phylactery. The place where she and Nino kept their souls bound together. It was the only way she could leave their Domain. A Lich may roam, but only if they bring their soul along with them, available for attack.

  It had been twenty years since she’d worn it.

  Nina turned her gold wedding band, hidden for decades inside the rotary phone, around her finger. Ahead, she began parting the Unspace. Freeda, a dear friend, had allowed her to open up her portal right into her Dungeon. Seventy years of friendship had built that level of trust.

  She floated toward the boy she had grown to care for. Toward the enemy that threatened her and Nino’s Domain expansion. Nino had taught her many things for such a simple man. Chief among them that nothing stood in the way of love. Nothing stood in the way of family. And in her heart, Alex was family.

  The Portal opened, and there he was with his back to her.

  She heard another voice she recognized. It was a scream of a friend she’d mourned and grieved with. How she longed to redeem him to help him find peace.

  “I WILL NOT DESICRATE HIS MEMORY ANY LONGER!”

  Perhaps tonight was the night.