Det rejoined the rest of the group in the time it took the mistship to arrive above the clearing with the red flowers. Unlike the last few times he’d exited a mistship—or how he’d gotten on this one—the party wasn’t directed to get onto the lift. It was already packed full of the equipment the crew would need to set up the temporary encampment to keep any residents away from the emergence. Instead, another nearby section of floor was opened up, and the party was given the option of a rope or not.

  And, since the crew had packed the rope, well, that really only left them with one option. On the plus side, because the ship was smaller than the other one Det had been on, it was able to sneak into the small clearing, until it was only twenty feet off the ground. That was still a bit of a scary drop.

  For anybody who wasn’t a ReSouled.

  The whole party was out of the mistship a few seconds later, even Det’s wolf-pair and ink-snake making it to the ground without any trouble. The soft earth, along with a bend of his knees absorbed the impact from the landing, and Det was already turning, scanning for trouble. Small blips appeared on his eyepatch, but those were just the rest of his party. The clearing was clear… other than the emergence in the middle of it, right where the largest bed of flowers had been.

  “We’ll start unloading soon,” somebody shouted down from the ship. “Us being here might attract attention. Good luck down there. Don’t die!”

  “Best advice I’ve heard all day,” Det mumbled, and waved at the crew.

  “We’re really doing this, huh?” Weiss said.

  “Weiss, if you’re…” Sage started.

  “No,” Weiss said. “It’s not like that. I’m ready for this. I just… I can’t believe how quickly it came to this. You know?”

  “I do,” Sage said, taking a breath, before his voice turned serious. “Here’s the plan. Since we don’t know what we’re getting into…”

  “Stairs,” Calisco said.

  “… huh?” Sage couldn’t help it.

  “There are stairs here in the hole. Heading down,” Calisco said. “I think I see an arch like the one we went through on Ironsalt.”

  “Shouldn’t you be more careful?” Tena said, jogging over to stand protectively by Calisco.

  “Why? It’s not a burst yet,” Calisco said. “Shouldn’t be any Wordless outside of the dungeon.”

  “There was one outside two weeks ago to attack me,” Det pointed out.

  “… oh,” Calisco said, then took a step to the side to put Tena between her and the hole. “That’s right. Go get ‘em Tena!”

  Already in her crystal armor—over the Mistguard armor they’d been provided on the ship—the Bulwark just shrugged and summoned her crystal double. Both with tall tower-shields, and spears in their other hands, the pair stood at the top of the stairs.

  “Tena, uh, both of them,” Sage said. “Will go first. Calisco behind her. Then Weiss, me and Eriba. Det, your renditions are the closest thing we have to a Duelist, or a back up tank, so you’re last with them behind you.”

  “Why don’t we send his giant snake first?” Calisco said.

  “Mainly because we don’t know what we’re walking into,” Sage said.

  “Won’t its size be a bigger problem if it’s behind us and we need to get out quickly?” Tena said.

  “I can cancel it with a thought,” Det said. “Just can’t bring it back after I do that. Last resort.”

  “Our first priority—after securing a bit of breathing room—after we enter is getting some Wordless parts for Eriba to use. I’ll grab the first Wordless I see to make my pet. As we move, I may trade up.”

  “What do you mean?” Calisco said. “Like a used car?”

  “Kind of,” Sage said. “Traditionally, as you go deeper into dungeons, Wordless get slightly stronger. More varied. I may find a more appropriate pet as we move. I won’t be trying to take the Boss or any Rare Spawns, though. We need to kill those to get the rewards for them, if we’re lucky enough to find them.”

  “Are rewards really a priority?” Weiss said.

  “Yes,” Sage and Det said at the same time.

  “Rare Spawns live up to their names,” Sage said. “We can’t pass up a chance.”

  “And rewards will make us stronger for the next dungeon we do,” Det said. “

  “I’m with them on this one,” Calisco said.

  “I’m not against it,” Weiss said. “I just wanted to make sure I understood.”

  “It’s no problem,” Sage said. “But, we’ve talked enough. Tena, take us down.”

  “Here we go,” Tena said, her gauntleted hand tightening around the haft of the spear as she and her double started down the stairs. As Det crossed the lip of the hole, it reminded him a lot of what he’d seen on Ironsalt. Black walls, made from the same material everything Wordless tended to be, with red discs of light—some as big as a dinnerplate—on the walls to provide some illumination.

  No Wordless came for them, though, and the bottom of the flight of stairs led almost directly into a hazy portal.

  “When you go in, Tena,” Sage said. “Try to get at least ten feet from the portal, to give us room to follow you in.”

  “Got it,” Tena said. “Going.” Then, just like that, the Bulwark and her double lowered their shoulders, put their shields in front of them, then stepped through the portal side by side.

  The others didn’t hesitate to follow, the group rushing through and continuing several steps so the others could get in behind them, while also scanning their new surroundings. And, those surroundings were not something Det had been expecting.

  Their last dungeon had been an outdoor plain, with a temple of some kind in the middle. The only others he’d heard of we’re also outdoor, or at least natural—with the expectation of the dungeon to be tunnels—which made this place a surprise.

  “A… theatre?” Weiss asked.

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  “Oh, I love plays,” Eriba said quietly.

  And, that was really what the place looked like. The party had come in at the same place the main doors would be at the back of the seating. Above them, some kind of balcony hung over their heads, while hundreds of empty seats extended toward the stage at the front of the theatre. There were pillars every ten rows or so, holding the balcony up, and the curtain on the stage was down. Only small, dirty emergency-type lights offered a hazy glow, making everything look like it was from a black-and-white film noir. Completely with graininess.

  If Det didn’t know better—then again, did he?—he’d think he was back on Earth. The theatre practically reeked of it, right down to the stale smell of popcorn.

  “No sign of any Wordless,” Det said, his own voice almost as quiet as Eriba’s.

  “Maybe the show was sold out?” Calisco said.

  “Then why is the theatre empty?” Tena countered.

  “Wasn’t very good?” Calisco said and shrugged.

  “Sage?” Det asked. “What should we do?”

  Instead of answering, Sage glanced at Det in the murky light of the dirty lights, and maybe it was Det’s imagination, but it looked like Sage was calculating something. Weighing options? Weighing Det?

  “What do you think we should do?” Sage countered, the shadows giving his face the gravitas of a man three times his age. Then again, considered Det didn’t know how old Sage was before he’d been reborn, that assessment could be very true.

  “We should head to the stage,” Det said. “We know this a dungeon, and there’s a Boss here somewhere we need to destroy. Probably surrounded by Wordless like the one that tried to kill me a few weeks back. It was fast and agile. Not something we want to fight between rows of seats where we can’t move around.”

  “The seats would slow them down too, wouldn’t they?” Tena asked.

  “Nope,” Det said. “I’m not kidding when I say it was agile.”

  “Then it’s ahead we go, toward the stage,” Sage said. “Tena, watch above you when we come out from under the balcony. It would be a great place for an ambush, and a terrible place to be ambushed.”

  “Actually,” Det said, squinting as he looked off to the side, back near one of the doors that would theoretically lead out to the main lobby. “Are those stairs over there? Leading up to the balcony?”

  “Could be,” Calisco said. “Want me to explode them? Or the balcony?”

  “Not while we’re under it, no,” Det said, struggling to keep the exasperation from his voice. “Let me send the snake up there. And the wolves to the sides to come down along the walls. If anything is planning to sneak up on us, that’ll make it harder.”

  “I like it,” Sage said.

  Taking that for the go ahead, Det motioned to his three renditions, and they quickly split up. One wolf each went to the back wall, then silently padded in opposite directions. The snake, deathly quiet despite its size, slithered up and over seating to reach the staircase up. On and on it seemed to move, its massive length finally vanishing from the first floor.

  “Our turn,” Sage said. “Go, Tena.”

  Without a word, the twinned Bulwark started down the aisle toward the stage, the sound of her crystal boots on the carpeted floor barely above the sound of a dying sigh. None of them had been trained for stealth, but their Mistguard equipment came with soft-soled boots, and nothing jumped them before they reached the edge of the balcony above.

  There, Tena’s double moved out in front of her, shield held in front of the pair, while Tena herself lifted her shield up above her head. Horizontal like that, the long tower shield protected the pair from any surprise attacks from the balcony. In theory.

  In reality, it didn’t protect them from anything, because nothing attacked.

  Tena and her double stepped out, legs braced for attacks to come raining down from above. After nothing came for a solid five seconds, the Bulwark angled her shield so she could see above.

  “Nothing up there,” Tena said, then suddenly winced and half-raised the shield up again. Another second, and the shield came back down to her side. “Nothing except a giant, friggin’ snake. In the shadows, that thing is terrifying.”

  “If you’re looking at it, and we didn’t hear it smashing anything, that’s a good thing,” Weiss said.

  “Is it?” Det asked. “We still don’t know where any of the Wordless are. This was supposed to be an almost-dungeon-burst. Shouldn’t there be Wordless crawling across the seats and ceiling to come at us?”

  “Maybe,” Calisco said. “But at least we know the dungeon’s name now.”

  “We do?” Eriba said, confusion coming through her whisper. She held her mace in both hands, tight against her chest, so the head of the weapon was next to her face.

  “At least what I’m going to call it,” Calisco answered, lifting her hand to point at something. Close to the front like she was, she clearly saw something from her position that was above the sightline the balcony blocked for the rest of the group.

  Curiosity getting the best of the rest of them—and Tena moving up a few more steps to make room—Det caught sight of the same thing Calisco had spotted. A name above the curtain.

  Stage FRIGHT.

  With the second word being in caps, and in stereotypically “scary” font—like a bad eighties cartoon—it stood directly above the center of the stage. It was either a show’s name, the theatre name, or, like Calisco decided, the dungeon’s name. Whatever way it was interpreted, it couldn’t be a good thing.

  Neither could a loud clunk that sounded somewhere off to the side, backstage, before the curtain finally started to lift. Spotlights hanging along the front of the stage burst to life, powerful beams of light angling up along the curtain as it rose, dust coming off it in waves from the movement.

  A dunk-dunk-dunk-dunk rhythmically echoed through the theatre, like somebody with a winch was manually moving the curtain. High up above, tacky, neon, red light lit up the word ‘FRIGHT’ with the kind of sound only a true neon light could make. That hum only held Det’s attention before another new sound reverberated from old speakers on the sides of the theatre.

  Sounding like it came from an old radio desperately trying to tune into a distant station, the music-box melody came out choppy and broken. Barely one note at a time, the tinny noise grated at Det’s ears, only to be joined by yet another noise. This one, a tap-tap, tap-tap, tap-tap in time with the music.

  “Be ready for anything,” Sage said, the darkness behind the rising curtain impossible to pierce because of the barrier of light and dust from the spotlights.

  “Oh, I’m ready,” Calisco said, hands held up in front of her, the unmistakable feel of her magical energy circling around them. “Can I just explode it now?”

  “Wait,” Det said. Something in his gut was telling him not to rush.

  “Do I have to listen to him?” Calisco asked Sage, apparently the de-facto leader of their merry, little troupe.

  “Yes,” Sage said, his eyes also locked on the darkness behind the curtain now halfway up.

  At both ends of the stage, each of the ink-wolves stood poised and ready to leap the stairs and strike from both sides. Hanging above the party, the ink-snake likewise extended its head and body from the balcony, preparing to strike at the first threat.

  Preparing… and waiting.

  Tap-tap, tap-tap, tap-tap, the sound continued, only speeding up or slowing down as the music dictated. Even as the curtain reached the ceiling, none of the group could see an inch beyond the vertical pillars of light from the spotlights, until all at once they went out, low, mood-lighting coming on around the stage.

  Only lighting up the stage about a fifth as much as would be possible, all Det could make out were two vague silhouettes on the stage. One, in the very middle of the stage, seemed to just be standing there, arms out to their sides. It was impossibly to tell what they were standing on, but they didn’t move an inch. Around them, responsible for the tap-tap, tap-tap, tap-tap, was a second person—a woman, by the outfit—with a wide skirt that stuck out impossibly horizontally at her waist. Almost like a tutu, though it didn’t move at all as the dancer spun and twirled on her tiptoes around the person in the middle.

  “Getting weirder and weirder,” Tena said. “Do we attack?”

  “No,” Det said, eyes still locked on the central figure, standing there with their arms out to the side. Something about it was familiar, and it only made the ice in Det’s stomach worse, though he couldn’t put his finger on why.

  The answer came a second later when two spotlights in the top, far corners of the stage crossed in an X, revealing Kels hanging in the center of the stage. She wasn’t standing on anything, with what looked like a web of strings wrapped around her body to hold her up, while more kept her arms pulled out to the side.

  Those aren’t just any strings… they’re puppet strings.

  Tap-tap, tap-tap, tap-tap, the other individual pirouetted out to the side as a third spotlight came straight from above, fully illuminating this person.

  A white, Wordless marionette standing six feet tall, with vicious, hooked blades protruding out of the back of its forearms to hang over its hands. Her head tilted unnaturally to the side, her nut-cracker jaw opening and closing in a clacking sound far too much like laughter to be anything else.

  “Rare spawn,” Sage whispered, while a red name popped up to Det’s eyepatch. Wordless Pupperina, E-Rank. One Skull.

  Before Det could even tell the others, in a quick, brutal motion, the Wordless spun and thrust her bladed arm in Kels’ direction.