System Report:

  Sacrifice

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  His damp coughs filled the darkness.

  The last thing Lionel remembered involved, in no particular order: hissing death, a screaming Gremlin, and hurling himself toward what he hoped—in the hopeless, desperate way of a man out of better options—was safety. The church ruins he’d aimed for had not been the solid island he’d imagined.

  Whether through Dungeon logic or a quirk of the building’s architecture, the crack they’d dove through had led not into rock but into a dripping tunnel—dark, damp, and trembling with every enraged impact from the sea-serpent outside.

  “Annabell?” he croaked, before collapsing into another coughing fit that sent barbed pain up his shoulder. Even Lionel hadn’t gotten away unscathed this time. For a First Layer Dungeon, this entire place was absurd.

  No response came.

  He blinked through the gloom, gingerly probing his injuries. A faint glow—maybe bioluminescent slime, maybe something nastier—kept the tunnel from being completely pitch black. Just enough light to confirm there was only one direction to go.

  If his Gremlin companion was still out there, paddling helplessly against the whims of a raging sea-serpent, there was nothing he could do for her.

  So, with a dislocated arm dangling uselessly at his side, he pushed forward, down the quivering tunnel.

  ***

  She was standing at the edge of the abyss when he found her.

  Even with the entire church having collapsed into something unrecognizable—cracked walls and a jagged ceiling forming something vaguely resembling a dome through which water and dust kept trickling—Lionel knew the place. Even when everything else had fallen to ruin, that crumbling hole in the floor was the same.

  This was where the Core had first risen.

  “I don’t like this,” Annabell said quietly as he approached. He hadn’t announced himself, but the words couldn’t have been meant for anyone else.

  “Me being injured from saving your skin?” he ventured, injecting a cheerfulness that could only be described as artificially flavoured. “I know, it’s dreadful. Especially considering you just abandoned me in a dark, quivering tunnel on the verge of collapse. Hardly the behaviour of a good friend, is it?”

  She gave him a brief glance—no glare, no snarl, no attempt to weaponize sarcasm—then looked back into the abyss. Out of the hundred responses he expected from her (ninety-seven of them snippy), the one she chose blindsided him completely.

  “Sorry.”

  “…What?” He stared at her silhouette, small and oddly solemn, the single surviving bunny ear drooping like it, too, wasn’t sure what to do about the situation. “No insult? No eyeroll? No wildly unrelated speech about how you’re the real victim here? What happened to—”

  A deep rumble interrupted him. Fist-sized chunks of rubble fell from the ceiling, crashing into the floor like a gnarly substitute for the rain. Even if they had temporarily escaped, the things outside hadn’t forgotten, nor were they likely to be in a forgiving mood.

  “Shit. We need to get out of here,” Lionel said, tone snapping back to businesslike urgency in an instant. He stepped up beside her, glancing down at the churning, water-filled abyss below—or, more accurately, the crumbling ledge where a door had once stood, and which now seemed to be mocking gravity with an almost bureaucratic disdain. “If we get down there, we could…”

  She shook her head. “We’re not getting out of here. Not that way.” Her next words were barely audible, whispered as if saying them too loudly might make the universe take note. “Not both of us, at least…”

  It was only then, as he stood beside her, that Lionel noticed she was cradling something in her arms: a glass bauble, whirring and ticking quietly, as if it—and only it—knew what was coming.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The only way for all of you to get out is by freeing her,” she said softly, thumbing the bauble as if it were a delicate piece of guilt she’d been carrying for years.

  For a moment, Lionel just stared at her, unable to process anything beyond the fact that the universe was, as usual, being remarkably unhelpful. In one moment, the girl beside him was chaos incarnate, in the next, she was a silent enigma.

  He ignored the next impact that rattled the ruins around them.

  “I can’t help but notice that you just said, ‘all of you.’ What about yourself?”

  “Not sure.” She gave a small shrug, the sort of shrug that suggested she’d already made peace with whatever uncertainty those words entailed. “I just have a feeling I… I won’t be able to stick around anymore if I break this last one.”

  Around them, a carpet of shattered glass and fading gizmos already littered the stones, glinting mournfully. Had she climbed down there and fetched all of them?

  “But that doesn’t really matter, does it?” she continued. “I mean… it’s not like we are friends or anything, right?”

  A large chunk of ceiling broke loose, crashing to the floor behind them with a tremendous shatter and whoosh as a cloud of dust billowed out. Neither of them flinched.

  Seeing the Pink Menace like this—somber, quiet, uncharacteristically reflective—was disarming.

  Maybe the crumbling room around them should have mattered more. No, scratch that—it definitely did. But there was this odd, quiet sadness to her words, as if she were rehearsing a farewell speech to a rather inattentive audience.

  Something which Lionel, who had spent most of his life primarily worrying about himself, couldn’t have cared less about.

  “Who knows?” he said after a moment, picking his words with care. More dust trickled down over their heads. They should have been running. Probably minutes ago, in fact.

  “I’m the wrong person to ask,” he continued. “Never really had a lot of friends either, to be honest. Maybe not a single one. Coworkers? Sure. Peers? Plenty. Siblings? Far too many. But a friend… who knows?”

  “Really?” A faint sniffle betrayed itself as she glanced up at him, hastily wiping something from her face.

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

  “Yeah,” Lionel admitted, not really appreciating how heavy that word sat in his chest. “I guess I was always too busy chasing other things, and the people around me were too busy chasing other things from me. Where I grew up, ‘friendship’ was defined as a zero-sum game. More akin to ‘strategic socializing,’ where the only gain was whatever you could extract from the time wasted on such pointless endeavours.”

  A large chunk of wall rolled loose.

  “Sounds like a lousy definition of friendship.”

  “Tell me about it,” Lionel agreed, a gout of water sprouting through the cracking ruins. “But at the end of the day, isn’t ‘friend’ just a label we stick on something pointless to make ourselves feel slightly less awful about existing? Call it a ‘friendship agreement’ if you like, ‘Delver-manager contract’, or a ‘slave-master arrangement’—doesn’t really change the outcome, does it?”

  Another quiet “sorry” drifted through the dust. He ignored it.

  “People are born to be used by other people. And if calling that ‘friendship’ makes you feel less terrible about yourself…” He shrugged. “Seems like pointless masturbation of the ego, doesn’t it? Life is about personal gain. Friendship or not—doesn’t really matter.”

  She looked up at him, frowning in a way that made him feel distinctly underdressed, emotionally speaking. But if some of the thoughts that had carried him through the years could help her as well, what was the harm?

  If—

  And then she huffed. “You know, I was starting to feel a bit blue thinking I was never meant to have any friends, but after listening to you, I can’t help but wonder if you’re the problem. You’re an even bigger mess than I am.”

  Those words landed like a well-aimed gut punch.

  In the past hour, Lionel had managed to overshare more than he intended—not once, but twice. More than he was even comfortable admitting to himself. And to add insult to injury, he’d just been shot down by a girl in a bunny-eared sweater.

  He couldn’t help but laugh.

  “Says the girl who doesn’t know the first thing about nothing. You’re meant to comfort and pick up your friend when they share something sad, not berate them.”

  “Says the guy who’s never even had a friend, weirdo,” she shot back.

  “I’m sure I’ve had more friends than you, ugly.”

  “Gross.”

  “Inflated brat.”

  “Lopsided muffin-face.”

  “Walking disaster—”

  “Snail-brained dummy!”

  “—with mismatched socks.”

  “Fungus-toothed burrito!”

  “Blinding eye-crime—“

  “Banana-headed buffoon!!”

  “—with the fashion sense of a turnip.”

  “You sentient sneeze on two legs!!!”

  And so it went, a ridiculous exchange that is frankly not worthy of the ink it would take to record.

  “...”

  “Feeling better?”

  “…A little bit?” She hesitated, then reached up to give him an awkward fist-bump on the shoulder. His dislocated shoulder, incidentally, but she probably didn’t notice how he was carefully biting down on a small scream of pain. “Sounds like you’ve had a rough time as well, bud.”

  Even as the bolt of pain travelled down his arm, it didn’t feel bad—strangely enough.

  Even so, he couldn’t let the opportunity slip past.

  He bent over, making several thoroughly theatrical gagging noises.

  “Is… urp… this your attempt at being ‘comforting’? Just give me a second, I—eugh—think I’m going to be sick.”

  “And you see,” she huffed, aiming a kick that would have been spectacular had it actually landed, “this is why you don’t have any friends. You’re a jerk!”

  “You and me both then,” he said with a smirk, sidestepping the follow-up punch as well. “What was that whole thing with you acting like you were about to say your final goodbyes anyway? Are you getting sentimental or something?”

  “I was just—” Her eyes went wide, fingers fumbling at empty air as she saw an item that’d suddenly changed owners.

  “You’re not the only one with fast fingers, you know,” he said, casually spinning the bauble in his good hand.

  His smirk, however, didn’t last long. It flattened, turned stiff, and grew edges. “So, now that you don’t sound all suicidal anymore, mind explaining why it looked like you were about to nobly sacrifice yourself just earlier? Or should I—”

  “DON’T!”

  Her panicked shout was the only warning Lionel got before his heart stopped beating.

  ***

  A steady rainfall fell, drumming against his ears in a steady rhythm. It should have been familiar by now; the sort of background noise that’s supposed to make life feel normal.

  But Lionel wasn’t in Ashenmoor anymore. He wasn’t even sure he was anywhere.

  The rain didn’t fall around him. It struck from below, hammering up against the surface of a silent ocean. Or perhaps he was the one oriented incorrectly. The endless Depths stretched above, in front, and all around him—darkness pressed against his senses with a weight that seemed almost tangible.

  “You are careless, child,” the first whisper came. It was nothing like the incoherent rambles he’d heard throughout Ashenmoor. It was far more substantial, reaching deeper until it struck something within him, like a chord embedded into the very essence of his soul. It was Her. “A male vessel is of little use to me. There was no need for you to die.”

  Perhaps She sensed how his pulse leapt at Her words, because She continued.

  “No. You’re not dead yet. Nor are you alive.” Something stirred within the darkness. “Not unless I will it. Yet you dismissed me the first time I called, child. Wisely, perhaps. You could sense the danger involved—she does not. The girl has much more use to me than you ever could.”

  Another shift within the Depths.

  “Though, I suppose her hesitation is inconvenient. If you could nudge her in the right direction, your life would be worth sparing. Oh, I can feel your hesitation. Don’t bother denying it. Relax. You were never meant to be more than a passing stranger in her life. You come from different places, different homes, different worlds entirely. It was never meant to be…

  “Just push her away, like you always meant to do.”

  With the grace of a dropping anchor, Lionel was yanked backwards and upwards, out of the drowned, endless darkness and into a cold night where the crimson moon painted the world in the colour of endings.

  Even so, even as his pulse went on a frenzied drum solo and his mind twisted, it wasn’t her words that made his fingers clench painfully tight. No, it was another memory that had surfaced.

  One from his youth. One which…

  ***

  “DON’T!”

  Annabell’s scream ricocheted around his skull. Lionel gasped for air, pulse tap-dancing against his ribs as cold sweat snuck down his spine. Reality, reluctantly, reasserted itself.

  She was standing there. The manic girl who had barreled into his life on a screaming scooter, who had quite literally trashed every plan he’d ever made for his future and his apartment. Since then, she had been a headache, a nuisance, and a general bundle of chaotic unpredictability.

  And now… she was holding out her hands nervously, wide-eyed, staring at the bauble in his grasp as if it were the one grenade in this world even mayhem feared.

  In the back of Lionel’s mind, that persistent voice nudged him. “Just give it to her. Let her do it. And you can slide back into the perfect, predictable little life you always wanted…”

  It would’ve been so easy. So impossibly, absurdly easy to just give it to her—to let her die instead of him. Someone was going to die. He’d realized as much the moment he came face to face with Her—a being far beyond mortal comprehension.

  The decision was simple, logical even. He would just hand the bauble to this headache, nonsensical girl that’d crashed into his life without invitation—turn his back on her, just like so many people had turned their backs on him.

  People were born to be used. He knew that.

  “Hey,” he rasped, the words tasting faintly of metal and regret, “what do you think: is friendship meant to be easy?”

  Her eyes flickered to his, then to the bauble, then back again. “…What?”

  “Figures.” He allowed himself half a grin which, in his own estimation, counted as a victory.

  “Then… sod it all, right?”

  He heard her scream as he chucked the bauble into the air. But she wouldn’t reach it in time.

  He’d thrown it over his shoulder, away from her.

  For once in his life, Lionel J’Khall made the absolutely most foolish, reckless, spectacularly irresponsible decision he could think of—and, perversely, it felt magnificent.

  Right up until the glass sphere hit the floor.

  It shattered into a thousand little pieces, skittering across the stone like terrified, glittering mice. His heartbeat lurched violently in protest. His breath seized, and then, the world simply stopped existing.

  Lionel J’Khall was dead before he even hit the floor.

  ***

  Scholarly Entry #Z91-120-Hf3:

  Friend (n.) cont.

  Friends are the people who:

  see you at your worst and stay anyway,

  share their fire when the world goes cold,

  shoulder part of your burden without being asked,

  and sometimes leave, but only because they think you will be safer for it.

  A friend is someone who will carry you when you can’t walk, argue with destiny on your behalf, and remind the universe that you are not, in fact, alone… even when your own thoughts disagree.

  A friend is not defined by grand gestures or perfect loyalty.

  A friend is simply someone who chooses you—

  in a world that so often does not.