One of my frequent duties as an assistant chef was to grind up deliveries from the butcher for various meals. I no longer wondered what it felt like to go through a meat grinder. The storm seemed to know I was exposed and sent every nearby leaf and stone at me and the undead ox.

  "How are you still alive?" Meredeath asked as I climbed up, now shirtless, with crisscross cuts and scars slowly healing over my face and chest. I felt like I’d died a thousand times harnessing the beasts. Maybe that was the attraction.

  Shrugging, I settled into place next to her, trying to play it cool.

  Richard spoiled the ambiance by giving me side-eye and attempting a catcall whistle. With his pursed lips, he blew slimy spittle into the air.

  I shook my head at him, wincing as a headache had taken shape. My gills, exposed to the dry, gritty air, were flapping angrily, like a fish out of water. My heat debuff hadn't come back, but I knew it was close.

  "Can we get out of here?" I leaned back, wincing as the hot black seat burned my back.

  Meredeath didn't need to be told twice. She didn't bother with the reins and just gestured, mentally commanding her oxen to pull the wagon out. Richard used the momentum to leap onto my lap, slithering up my body to perch on my shoulders.

  "Are we moving?" I could hear the lady screech like a disgruntled parakeet.

  The wagon went up on two wheels, careening sharply to get around the wagon in front of us. As the wheels dug into the sand, the whole carriage tilted on its axles. Were we really going to be the losers that screwed up the escape plan within the first few seconds of enacting it?

  The axle twisted, the oxen jerked forward, straightening our trajectory. The parakeet in the cab had quieted, as I'm sure she'd slammed into the sidewall. I'd been holding on for life, and even Richard had resorted to using some of his blue gluey slime to lock himself in place. The carriage jerked in the opposite direction. Causing another squawk.

  I looked behind us at the giant twisting tornado.

  The undead oxen were moving awkwardly, as though they theoretically knew how to gallop but had never done it before.

  I realized distantly as the funnel approached the rear of the caravan that, because Meredeath was controlling them, that was probably exactly what was going on. I've been watching oxen drive carts my whole life, but did I really know how their muscles work?

  We're not going to escape it, are we?

  I fixed my eyes on the approaching funnel cloud, watching a carcass of an ox swirl up into the air. No, we were definitely not going to make it.

  It just wasn't fair. The hunkered frog march up the caravan to find the magical wagon, breaking civilized rules to get it going, and here we were about to die, anyway.

  Tell her to follow my directions.

  "Tell her yourself!"

  I'm afraid I'll break her concentration.

  Meredeath’s eyes blazed with power as she channeled it down to the oxen. Her hands clenched the dashboard white knuckled. The slug had a point.

  Richard had slithered off my shoulders and was stretching out his foot to the dashboard. I helped him as we hit a bump that almost threw me out of the cab. He [Glued] himself to the dash like some slug ornament.

  "What's he doing?" Meredeath asked, her jaw set in stone, eyes locked forward.

  Richard's tentacles were waving as though he was sniffing the air, then he pointed forward to the left like a misaligned compass.

  This way!

  "We need to go that way." I pointed following Richard’s tentacles.

  Meredeath's eyes flashed to mine.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  "Where is he leading us?"

  I grinned, giving her question a shrug.

  "Who cares? We're going to die anyway, we might as well follow the sentient slug, right?"

  Her jaw relaxed as the wagon jerked again, heading towards another nondescript dune.

  We skimmed across the desert like water bugs across a puddle. As Meredeath got the hang of her power, the undead oxen fulfilled their role in death better than they had in life. We'd even pulled ahead of the funnel.

  I clung to the railing as I looked back. The wagons were being lifted and pulverized in the wind, whole bodies of oxen rotated up higher than I could see.

  "Keep going! We're going to make it!" I yelled, a burble of triumph escaping.

  Even the debris hitting our carriage’s shield had lessened. We were going to make it!

  Don't get too excited. It's letting us go because we've been doing exactly what it wanted this whole time.

  As the carriage crested the dune Richard had aimed us toward, my [Dungeon Diver] skill flashed. We were in the presence of a dungeon. We hadn't escaped; we'd been driven. Moments later, lightning danced between the horns of our oxen as we passed through an unseen barrier.

  The air was still, and the debris field we'd been driving through had completely vanished. A cluster of cacti surrounded a copse of trees sitting in the valley’s bowl.

  The oxen stumbled to a halt, and I realized we'd done the impossible. We'd survived. Meredeath released her magic, and the two beasts collapsed. Now that we weren't moving, the smell of cooked meat was pervasive. The remains of the ox melted off the bones.

  Meredeath drew in a sharp breath. Her skin blanched, collarbones protruding and face hollow. She looked like, given a century or two, she could be Rhi Voss, the [Immortal Lich]. My hands were white knuckled, locked on the rails of our bench. I tried to school my expression as color and vitality began seeping back in as she released the magic. She was more [Necromancer], more [Lich] than I wanted to admit.

  "Are we free? Is it over? Let me out!" Came an over-articulated, high-pitched, nasal voice. I glanced at the oxen, realizing we had a new problem.

  I closed my eyes as I heard the crack of the carriage door.

  "Oh, my BEAR! What's happening to our oxen?" Predictably, the green-clad noble exited nose first, with a fragile delicateness as her slippered foot touched the sand.

  Richard unstuck from the dash of the carriage with a wet smack. I didn't really want to put him on my bare shoulders, so I just rested him on my forearm. His slimy foot wrapped around my arm as I jumped down from the bench. Someday I'd get used to the feeling, I'm sure.

  A shimmering dome sat over the small valley, preventing aspen leaves and cacti and dust from entering. The tornado had moved over us, catching up quickly, as though we'd sprung some cosmic mousetrap.

  The second lady just screamed when she saw our barbecued ox-power.

  Say they got hit by lightning. I was pretty sure Richard used [Partial Rapport] team speak.

  I waited for Meredeath to explain, but glancing up, I realized she was still in shock from her magic use. Her eyes looked hollow, dark from exhaustion.

  On second thought, it was probably better they didn't look at our [Death Knight] come [Necromancer].

  "Lightning." I coughed, trying not to look at the two. I didn't really care if they believed me or not, but being half-naked made it hard to lie.

  The rest of the carriage emptied into the dungeon oasis. Ash looked at the dome above us with wide eyes. Tandy examined the oxen with a frown on her face, already seeing the holes in my 'lightning' logic.

  Argin was whispering to her grandfather, who'd regained consciousness at some point in our journey.

  I missed Leo. I imagined him slapping me on the back, asking if I'd gotten to the second floor of Meredeath's dungeon, considering my state of undress.

  Placing Richard on a rock with two sprigs of some sort of desert grass to munch on, I rummaged through my pack to find another shirt. What I wouldn't give for some nice slime resistant self-repairing leather armor. I pulled out a green linen pullover with a lace-up chest. I was down to my last shirt.

  Richard chewed loudly on the grass. It's dry, he complained.

  "It's a desert," I said blandly. What did he expect? My stomach grumbled. I dug out a small sack of Tandy's Dry Granola?.

  I'd prefer dessert.

  "Me too, bud." I sat next to him, crunching down on a cinnamon-flavored cluster of oats. The tornado had encompassed the entire dome. We were trapped. We'd traded a sure death for just a prolonged one.

  The dome flashed and shrunk.

  I was wondering how it'd force us into the dungeon.

  "What are we going to do?" Ash's panicky voice cut through the noise of the tornado bouncing off the dome.

  It flashed, shrinking a few feet again.

  Six sets of eyes looked at me. Richard and the old grandpa were in their own worlds.

  Why was I deciding? I was so tired my bones ached. The last gashes across my back were sealing up. I was not the leader.

  "Tandy." I snapped my fingers in front of her face. "What are we doing? You're the team leader."

  Tandy looked at me, wild-eyed, as six faces swiveled to her.

  Richard raised his eyestalks to evaluate the situation, a stringy leaf hanging out of his mouth.

  Good deflection, 10/10.

  The barrier flashed again, shrinking like an island in a flood.

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