Scholarly Entry #$%≠-/0x-~??:

  The History of Ashenmoor

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  ***

  Approximately three minutes before a certain Gremlin attempted to angle five hundred pounds of disgruntled deep-sea slug mutant:

  Lionel wasn’t sure what he was looking for, only that the Dungeon seemed insistent that he didn’t leave without it.

  Three buildings in, and the results had been underwhelming.

  All he’d found were the usual suspects of an abandoned fishing village: rusted tackle boxes, nests of fishing line more tangled than some religions, and a soggy hat that practically demanded to be worn at a rakish angle by someone doomed.

  By the fourth, however, he found something different.

  Where the other buildings had been little more than windbreakers with delusions of grandeur, this one had walls. Mostly. And a somewhat-intact roof, which, by local standards, made it a down-right palace.

  But what made it stand out wasn’t the architecture. It was the atmosphere—that peculiar, spine-prickling sense that the house had been waiting for someone to step through its threshold.

  The mist slithered through the doorway ahead of him. It coiled into the house as if it belonged there, swirling with purpose. Following it was the memory—not his own, but the one etched into the very soul of this place.

  It began with a child’s laughter—the high, bright kind, full of sharp corners and impossible to ignore. Tiny footsteps pattered across the boards, too light for ghosts, too real to dismiss.

  The mist parted just enough to show the vague outline of a girl, maybe eight, all grin and bare feet, pleading with a man in shadow to take her along on the fishing boats.

  And then the mist turned dark. Thickened. Grew teeth. Too many shapes at once. And then none at all.

  The girl was gone.

  When she returned, she was older. That particular kind of older where time hadn't just passed—it had trampled. Her laughter was gone, her expression heavier in the way that sorrow weighs you down more than time ever could. She fell to her knees beside the empty, broken chair where her father had once sat.

  Lionel staggered back, the emotion hitting him like a freight cart. His heart thudded like it was trying to file for retirement, head exploding into white dots and images that did not belong.

  Worse than the whiplash, however, was the sense of unease that it brought.

  Lionel was born on the Fourth Layer. Trained on the Fifth. Polished. Disciplined. Hardened like a well-cooked boot.

  The First Layer was where they sent interns.

  And yet here he was, on the First Layer, trembling like a leaf in a thunderstorm.

  A leaf that had just remembered it was mortal.

  Worse than either whiplash or unease combined, however, was what followed—a roar and a startled yelp.

  Somewhere, just outside, a certain someone had just finished reeling in a something that really didn’t want to be reeled.

  The moment, full of haunted memory and unresolved narrative tension, was abruptly replaced by an entire wall exploding inward, accompanied by a blur of motion.

  It bounced once. Twice.

  It came to a halt in a heap that whimpered, groaned, and, after a pause to collect what remained of its bearings, mumbled something before blinking up at him through smeared goggles.

  “...Oh, shuck me sideways…”

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  It was pink. It was crude. It was, of course, her.

  Fate, it seemed, had taken Lionel’s firm refusal to associate with the Pink Menace as a challenge.

  And fate hated being challenged.

  ***

  In a way, Annabell was almost grateful for the whirling anchor that bisected the building shortly after her entrance.

  It cut the tension. Also the roof. And possibly a supporting wall.

  Where most reunions—in Annabell’s experience, at least, and she had watched a lot of web dramas—wound up in the kind of awkward silence that usually ends with someone apologising for being born, this one opted for immediate chaos and timber confetti. Lots of timber confetti.

  The anchor arrived first, whistling through the structure like a drunken banshee on roller skates, and was shortly followed by its owner: a being that had evidently decided that yes, despite being the one to throw it through a building, he did want his nautical equipment back.

  Five hundred pounds of roaring, slime-glazed regret with an over-sized claw and the basic social instincts of a wrecking ball.

  Mister Knows-it-all-Lionel, as usual quick with his unsolicited wisdom, took one look at the situation, turned on his heels, and ran. He didn’t suggest running. He didn’t recommend it. He simply demonstrated it, bolting through the same hole the anchor had exited through.

  Annabell, in no position to criticize his decision, scrambled upright and bolted after him with all the grace of a duck in a wind tunnel.

  “Don’t bring that thing over here!” Lionel barked over his shoulder, having just caught a glimpse of the roaring slug-troll avalanching through the building, into the alley he was already sprinting down.

  “You run somewhere else!” Annabell shot back, voice half a scream, half a wheeze, and about three-quarters mud as she tripped over her own feet, fell, and barely avoided a snapping claw as she skidded face-first across the ground.

  Which—by the kind of logic that only applies to small children, Gremlins, and penguins—actually increased Annabell’s momentum.

  Like a greased-up torpedo, she shot past Lionel who, unfortunately, still had to watch his footing and care for corners. Unfortunate in the sense that, when an airborne anchor came spiralling back into the scene, it did so on an intercept course with his head.

  With the alley giving him no other options, Lionel adopted Annabell’s patented survival technique: go low and pray.

  Unlike Annabell, however, he did not lead with his face.

  Which, besides sparing himself the embarrassment of mud ingestion, allowed him to pop back onto his feet the moment the anchor embedded itself in yet another unlucky shack.

  “Show-off,” Annabell huffed as he ran past her, coughing up a mouthful of earth and indignation. Not that she had long to stay down.

  More sounds were approaching.

  Wet. Slithery. And highly irate sounds.

  The homicidal slug-troll was quickly gaining friends.

  Annabell had barely scrambled back to her feet as a jagged knife whirled through the air. She dodged in the most efficient way possible which, in this instance, meant letting Wallace take the hit.

  The plushie lost some stuffing.

  Annabell gained another minute to live.

  This is what is known in tactical circles as a win.

  Meanwhile, Mister Knows-It-All was rapidly vanishing down the alley without so much as a backward glance.

  Even if she’d wished to, she couldn’t have caught up.

  So, she did the only thing left she could do: she wove.

  “Wallace, hold on!”

  Now, weaving in this context does not mean knitting, nor moving from side to side in an evasive pattern. No, this was the kind of weaving that went along with “ducking” in the form of eating mud and crashing through buildings. In other words, she followed a path that would only ever make sense to a Gremlin.

  A mean-looking spear coming for her face? Dodge toward and under it.

  A slick stretch of mud? Gather speed.

  An anchor wedged into a thrashed shack? Ramp.

  A slug-troll's gaping, offended face? Springboard.

  And the rain-slicked roof she landed on—tilted at precisely the angle required for disaster?

  That, friends, was a slide.

  Or, at least, it was momentum.

  And momentum, Annabell had learned, was sometimes the only thing separating an escape from a very flat obituary.

  It was also a lot more fun.

  ***

  Discounting the mud, the indignity, the fact he was now wearing half a village on his boots, Lionel had—by most reasonable definitions—gotten away scot-free.

  Well, companion-free, which in this case amounted to the same.

  Being paired with someone who treated “running” as a concept entirely separate from “remaining upright,” meant Lionel had been able to, with only a modest amount of guilt, simply be faster.

  Not out of selfishness, but in the noble tradition of adventurers throughout history: If you can’t outrun the monster, outrun your companion.

  Having rounded another corner, putting enough distance between himself and the sound of physics being violated, Lionel allowed himself the relative luxury of slowing to a brisk walk.

  Stamina was a resource, and the mist had already demonstrated a worrying sense of humour. If he got careless, he might just end up back with—

  —SPLASH.

  Something pink and flailing dropped from the roof beside him, landing in a murky puddle with pin-point accuracy.

  The parts of Lionel not already covered in mud? Taken care of.

  He wasn’t even given the time to let out a sound of offence as the Pink Menace bounced back to her feet, continuing to sprint down the street.

  “Your turn!” she chirped over her shoulder, and an instant later, the entire building she’d just tumbled down exploded in a storm of splinters.

  Lionel, who didn’t have to hear the bellowing roar that followed, nor see the slug-troll and its aquatic friends burst through the wreckage, set after her with a clenched jaw.

  Not away this time, after.

  Fool him once? Sod this dungeon.

  Fool him twice? Still sod this dungeon, but now it was personal.

  It was becoming increasingly clear that this scenario wasn’t interested in separating them. It was also becoming clear that whatever path existed out of this accursed village involved either teamwork, fate, or at least one of them being devoured dramatically for character development.

  And frankly, considering the girl’s remarkable tendency to throw herself at danger like it owed her money, Lionel liked his odds. He didn’t enjoy them, but he liked them.

  Even if it was going to be a tremendous headache.