Esteemed Journal,

  Have you ever experienced the distinct and unpleasant sensation of being reduced to a temporary footnote in someone else's story? That was how Lionel J’Khall felt, at least, as he endured what could be described as the conversational equivalent of an unskippable cutscene.

  Stonemason Bac was still talking.

  Any attempts at being polite was firmly working against him. He had listened with the patience of a man who knew better but hoped anyway. He had nodded at all the right moments, made a few polite sounds of agreement, and at one particularly dire moment, briefly entertained the possibility of slipping into a light coma.

  By the time Bac finally reached the interesting part—the "what’s for sale" part—Lionel had already resigned himself to the creeping suspicion that he had aged several years. Possibly more, if measured in headache time.

  “So,” Bac said, with the gleeful expression of someone about to sell you something that was, at best, technically legal, “how about I offer you a lovely, hand-curated, Fun-Romp-Through-a-Lakeside-Castle Dungeon? They’re my specialty!”

  Lionel blinked, hauling himself back from the abyss where his attention had taken refuge.

  “With suspiciously placed skeletons?” he asked before he realized to stop himself, causing Bac’s face to light up.

  “How did you know?”

  And then, tragically, she took his poorly-timed comment as encouragement.

  So began another long-winded monologue about passion and craftsmanship and the art of placing a skeleton just-so, which caused Lionel’s soul to start quietly detaching itself from his body in protest.

  Unbelievable as it might sound, Achim Makov had been downright pleasant to deal with in comparison—as far as dungeon merchants went, at least.

  ***

  Annabell had never felt more alive.

  This was, in hindsight, not an ideal thing to be feeling in a situation where she was also in very real danger of being not-so-alive very soon—being stuck in a flooding, vermin-infested kitchen, and all.

  She scrambled up a pair of rank drapes with the agility of a desperate raccoon, a wave of shrieking rats snapping at her heels. Which was going remarkably well until one of the wall-holds, which had presumably been holding itself together purely out of spite, decided that this was an excellent moment to retire.

  Dexterity Check…

  The die spun. And spun. And spun.

  And then petered out in the holographic equivalent of a shrug.

  Chaos Roll: We’ll Make it Work!

  With a cheerful cry, Annabell swung across the flooding kitchen. Left foot bounced off a sinking drawer, right foot barely caught a half-drowned chair, allowing her to skip across the murky water in an impromptu display of agility that would have impressed an acrobat and distressed a health inspector equally.

  It was, in many ways, an elaborate version of The Floor is Trying to Kill You—a game that, much like most of her current predicament, Annabell had not signed up for but was nevertheless determined to make the most of.

  Of course, this particular version of the game also had a lot of hissing, undead rats who were, technically, Trying to Kill Her as well. And any available surfaces she made contact with were slimy, sewery, and deeply unpleasant to touch. Also, the murderous floor kept rising.

  Actually, thinking about it, this wasn’t a fun game at all.

  At least not for Wallace. He was tucked deep into her hoodie, radiating the quiet stress of a plushie who had not, at any point, chosen to be part of this. His opinion was not improved when Annabell’s latest midair stunt—attempting to cartwheel off a floating, rotten banana peel—resulted in her crashing straight into a stove top.

  Annabell did not seem to mind.

  In fact, she was already turning stove knobs with the enthusiasm of a mad scientist, sending flames sputtering to life with an ominous whoomph.

  “Fear the Queen of Flames, you thieving scumbags!” she crowed, as the nearest rats—who had, up until this moment, been charging toward her with confidence—suddenly reconsidered the situation. They skidded to a halt, hissing and retreating before the equally hissing gas flames.

  And then, brandishing a wok pan that was more rust than metal, Annabell launched herself across the countertop in a flailing, cackling frenzy.

  Rats? Smashed.

  Utensils? Sent flying.

  One very weathered coffee maker? Absolutely obliterated.

  Somewhere in the multiverse, the God of Kitchenware was weeping.

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Annabell’s temporary refuge from the rising flood—slick with a combination of water, rat blood, and what she sincerely hoped was just very old soup—offered all the stability of a politician’s campaign promises.

  The kitchen island was narrow, slippery, and frankly not made for running across—providing the sort of acrobatic challenge normally reserved for circus performers, professional stunt doubles, and those unfortunate enough to chase a cat across a kitchen counter.

  Cabinet drawers clattered loose whenever she crashed into them. A stray toaster fizzled and sparked as it was incidentally booted into the rising waters, taking a surprising number of rats with it to the afterlife. A fridge door—no longer attached to its fridge through means best left unexamined—floated merrily along, now doubling as a makeshift raft for a few enterprising rodents who had apparently decided that piracy was the way forward.

  Annabell, meanwhile, bouncing between kitchen surfaces as if she was born for this and currently mid-swipe as another lunging rodent was forcibly evicted from existence, skidded past a moldy breadbox and very nearly introduced her face to the intimate mysteries of a broken microwave.

  She wasn’t really paying attention either way.

  Her eyes darted wildly across the waterlogged battlefield. And then—

  There!

  “Ah!”

  She pointed, her finger jabbing with the conviction of explorers sighting land (or someone who had just spotted the last slice of cake at a crowded buffet).

  “There, Wallace!”

  Indeed, there—drifting serenely past what had once been a kitchen table but now bore a much closer resemblance to a garbage barge—was a familiar, soggy pillowcase.

  Her loot.

  A perfectly sane individual, upon seeing their worldly possessions floating toward a swirling, gaping drainpipe that absolutely should not have existed in this apartment, might have paused to reflect on their life choices. They might have considered, for instance, whether they had become overly attached to said possessions. They might have asked themselves whether this was, in fact, a battle worth fighting.

  Annabell, however, was not burdened by such thoughts.

  “Captain Wallace,” she yelled, digging her cat-paw-claws into the counter for leverage as a tide of hissing, spitting rats closed in from either side, “Prepare for take-off!”

  Then she took a breath, squared her shoulders, and did the only thing a Gremlin could do in that situation.

  She pounced.

  Right into the swirling heart of a rat-based naval disaster.

  The whirlpool that’d formed around the hungry drainpipe was already sucking in several unfortunate rodents—some perched atop dirty cutting boards, others clinging to the remains of moldy take-out containers.

  They had, until now, been relatively at peace with this new seafaring life. There were worse fates, after all. They were afloat, there was no immediate risk of drowning, and the odds of being violently bludgeoned by a wok pan had, for a brief and shining moment, seemed remarkably low.

  A flailing Gremlin Cannonball was about to change all of that.

  ***

  In a rather restless corner of the metaphysical space that was the Dungeon, a certain Core saw this and was beginning to sweat. Not in the "like a pig" sense—pigs, after all, do not actually sweat, despite the slander—but in more of a “light perspiration above the lip, slight dampness under the metaphorical armpits, and a general sense that things were Going Wrong in a way that one was not entirely trained for” sort of way.

  When this Core had first come into being, it had been assured—repeatedly—that undead mobs were terrifying. Zombie rats? Even worse. A proper, horrific menace. And so, the Core had taken all the required certificates. Gone to the proper seminars. It was destined to become a daunting challenge for any Delver who dared enter its domain.

  At no point in its education had the fine print included anything about maniacal Gremlins.

  Certainly not the kind that would leap into obvious death traps—that sought out dark, chittering holes in the floor, or jumped straight into ominous, churning whirlpools. The kind of things any sensible creature would avoid out of a basic respect for the universe’s narrative cues.

  To do anything except say “Yep, I’m clearly not meant to go there,” and turn around, would be like lifting up the rug in a perfectly respectable household just in case something embarrassing was hidden there.

  You simply didn’t do it. It was an unwritten rule!

  ***

  Annabell’s grand plan was simple: it began and ended with her loot. And so, if said loot was enthusiastically being swallowed by a mysterious drainage pipe, she was more than willing to follow.

  With what she firmly believed was a graceful somersault, followed by a crisp swan dive (which, if one were to read the fine print, was actually more of a desperate mid-air tumble featuring limbs flailing at unwise angles), she hurled herself straight into the heart of the whirlpool.

  In her mind, the execution was flawless.

  In the minds of any nearby rats, it was a natural disaster.

  A tsunami of unreasonable proportions overturned dozens of makeshift lifeboats—pots, pans, the occasional piece of Tupperware.

  Countless rodent (un)lives were lost that day, but Annabell never noticed. She was too busy being treated like an unruly sock in an aggressive washing machine cycle to notice.

  Leaping into unidentified whirlpools was, as it turned out, not a great idea.

  Swirling water. Hardly any space to breathe. A rusted bend here, a rickety grate there, stray sewage, frantically flailing rats, and the occasional existential crisis. All of it delivered at high velocity with a great deal of undignified tumbling.

  By the time Annabell was unceremoniously spat out into a rank, dimly lit chamber, she was hacking up water and questioning whatever adventure Wallace had fooled her into.

  Her HP was blinking at a deeply judgmental 1/9.

  Another message flared across her vision, flashing with the kind of urgency that suggested someone, somewhere, had been hoping she’d pay attention far earlier than this:

  Warning! Boss Room Entered!

  Proceed with utmost cau—!

  Naturally, Annabell swiped it aside.

  She was too busy scrambling across the grated, metal floor, dripping, coughing, and frantically patting at the floor for what logic dictated should have been there.

  “My precious loot,” she wheezed, blinking through the grime and flickering torchlight. “Where is my—”

  And that was when she heard it.

  The slow, deliberate clang of bare feet against loose metal grates. The sort of sound that, in most respectable places, would signal the arrival of something deeply unpleasant.

  From the shadows emerged a figure. A larger-than-average rat, or possibly smaller-than-average man. It was hard to say. Either way, he had the kind of posture that suggested he had been waiting for an ominous entrance his entire life.

  His coat was an extravagant affair, mostly because it was still attached to him—matted fur, patches of exposed bone, and an air of dreadful self-importance.

  And swinging from a frayed bit of string around his neck, bobbing with every step, was her pillowcase of loot.

  Annabell’s eyes narrowed.

  “Right,” she muttered, dragging herself upright. “That’s just rude.”

  Boss Area Entered: The Rat King’s Ransom!

  Objective: Reclaim your loot from Grimy Garth before he adds it to his disgusting hoard.

  Bonus Objective: Get out of this nightmare without catching a disease.