Chương 40: 39-Inside the Palace

Bob slowly stood up, trying to get a feel for whatever kind of place they were in. It looked like a maze of endlessly intertwining corridors with an almost organic feel that reminded him of the alien spacecraft in the first Alien movie. An eerie green light from no apparent source dimly illuminated the scene.

"We have a problem," Billy suddenly said. His voice had a strange, metallic quality.

"What is the matter, Billy?" Bob asked, noticing the same strange undertone to his own voice.

"I do not have a single Achievement Point left; the dungeon sucked all of them."

"Okay, that is not good," Jenna said.

"I think we should escort Billy out of the dungeon. He has to sit this one out." For an instant, Bob thought Billy was going to protest, but he didn't—he was mature enough to understand that without his powers, he could only be a target.

"Let's do this fast. Dawn is going to get pissed if we break her script," Jenna added.

"Let's go out…if we can figure out how. Does your Waycraft show you anything, Bob?"

"It shows me a looped system. We could spend all our lives walking through this maze and never escape it. All directions lead to the center. There is no out. There is only in."

"Plan B, then," Jenna said, clearly worried.

"Billy, you discorporate and wait in the Blue Room, while Bob and I look for a way to dismantle the dungeon." Billy's face frowned in concentration for a second.

"I can't, Jenna—Something is stopping me from discorporating."

"Damn," mumbled Jenna.

"It makes sense, actually," said Bob.

"The Motif is as inside, so outside. That is why it does not let us escape by walking—the way outside is at the center of the dungeon."

"I think it is also the reason Billy can't enter the Blue Room," Jenna added.

"The Room is a way of retreating inside. It goes against the very nature of the dungeon."

"Oh, God. What happens if he gets killed and he can't enter it?" Jenna asked anxiously.

"I will die. Just as you or Bob will if the dungeon gets you. I don't get an "out-of-jail-free" card. No big deal, since the two of you seem to do just fine without one," answered Billy as he studied the place.

"Billy, I do not have an idiot power that makes me a juicy target for any random attack. You do," Jenna answered savagely.

"You knew about that?" Billy asked, dismayed.

"Of course, I knew, you idiot! I can predict what the weather will be like next month just by listening to the rhythm of raindrops. Did you really think I would not notice that every time a stray bullet goes near us, it hits you?"

"I did not choose the power, Jenna," Billy said defensively.

"I know you didn't. I am not pissed because of that. I am angry because you chose not to tell us. We are a team, Billy. We are entitled to know things like that," she almost screamed. She breathed deeply, got herself under control, and resumed walking.

"Let's go," she said.

"She is right this time, you know," Bob said calmly to an ashamed Billy. They walked towards what they thought was the center of the maze. The Palace was much, much bigger on the inside, as sometimes happens with high-ranking dungeons. Not only did space seem warped. Time also did. Bob knew they had been inside for only minutes, but some of the memories created during that time had the tang of decades-old recollections, as if they had spent their childhood exploring the place.

Bob felt a strange vibration against his chest. He pulled the Icosahedron from his pocket. It was humming and shifting colors.

"It's working. I think this place is trying to draw the Compendium out of the artifact."

"There is something that worries me," said Jenna.

"This place is supposed to have a Core and six Bosses—where are they?" Suddenly, Bob heard a sound he hoped he would never hear again. The growl of a beast, one that had nearly killed them all before. From one of the side corridors, a sleek monster, covered in razor-sharp scales, hissed at them. It moved gracefully, almost like an ice skater doing figures during a competition. Mutually Assured Destruction.

"My God, it is almost twice as large as before," Bob whispered. The original monster weighed as much as an ox, even though its reptilian anatomy made it look less massive. The new, upgraded version made the old one look like a puppy.

"It is not the original one. That was a beast mutated with corpse-camping. This one is an Essential based on M. A. D.," explained Billy. His Essence Sight still worked, Blue Room or not.

"Jesus, it is level 63."

"I think we have met our first Boss," Jenna whispered. The monstrous Pomeranian glared at Billy with absolute hatred in its eyes. Then it jumped in mid-air, assuming its already familiar discus form. Something was wrong. It was gyrating on its horizontal axis, not the vertical one, and hung suspended in midair.

"It's got new powers!" screamed Jenna, as she jumped on Bob and Billy, tackling them both to the ground. M. A. D. swirled, its body shooting razor-sharp knives that tore through the place they had been standing moments before.

"Bob, get us out!" Jenna screamed, helping them both to their feet. A spatial rift appeared to their left, courtesy of Bob's Waycraft. The three stumbled through it, the monster hot on their tail. The rift vanished an instant before M. A. D. could enter it.

"Where have you taken us?" Jenna asked Bob.

"I don't know. Spacetime is weird here. I can't use this trick to portal us out of the dungeon; it just moves us around while we are inside it, but I can't control where we land. The nearer we are to the center, the harder this will be to do."

"We must keep moving. The sooner we reach our goal, the sooner this will be over," Jenna answered grimly. They kept walking towards what Bob identified as the center of the maze. Jenna noticed a change in the dungeon: corridors seemed to be joining, reducing the number of possible options until they all converged into a single, large passage, hundreds of meters long. A single figure stood, blocking their way. It seemed to be a vaguely female humanoid with three heads, all bowed down, staring at the floor.

Her body was covered by some sort of leather armor that looked as if it had been bought from a very specialized shop, and it rippled with bulging muscles. It spoke with three distinct female voices in perfect synchrony. They sounded like those of teenage girls.

"Hold. Time to pay the toll." Jenna felt something cold crawl down her back as she recognized the voices and the phrase itself.

"Alice? Beth? Tiff?" she asked incredulously. The creature raised its three heads simultaneously. They were all fixated on Jenna.

"You tattled. You dirty snitch." The faces were demonic, sporting horns and fangs, but they had clearly been modeled on young girls' faces.

"Who are these, Jenna?" Billy asked softly. Jenna took hold of herself. The creature had shaken her badly.

"This Boss is based on the three girls who had terrorized a particularly creepy foster home I stayed at for one year when I was eleven. They were seventeen."

"The toll was the price I had to pay for telling on them to a supervisor. Fun fact: I never did. The girl who snitched accused me so that I could take the beating for her. Her name was Louise, and I thought she was my friend." The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"We have to go through them—there is no alternative," Bob said.

"With pleasure," the Primordial answered, adopting a martial arts stance. She was no longer the same scared girl these three had bullied a long time ago.

"I go close, you go ranged, Bob. Billy, stay back!" she instructed as she closed on the monster. This was as good a plan as any, and she had a beating to return. The ogre was at least twice as tall as she. She needed the spear—the beast fought without weapons, and its longer reach would negate the height difference. She enhanced her body, focusing on speed and dexterity, summoned her elven spear into her hands, and attacked.

She then discovered that without having honed her technique with Bob, she would not have lasted five seconds. The thing moved with the grace of a ballet dancer and hit with the speed and might of a typhoon. Jenna used every technique in the book. She slid over the slippery floor, trying to gut the thing with an upward strike — harvest of blood.

The ogress gyrated on her left heel, letting the edge of the spear miss her by inches and catching Jenna on the face with a backward fist that sent her tumbling to the ground— reaping the tempest. Jenna had to focus on repairing her broken body while Bob took the lead, trying to distract the beast from delivering a coup de grace on Jenna.

"Wind Kisses the Ball!" Bob shouted while purposefully missing the beast's head. Jenna saw the ball turn around like a boomerang, heading to the beast's blind side. It did not even bother to dodge. Her right hand struck out at the speed of lightning, catching the ball in midair without even looking at it and throwing it back at Bob. The Skillmaster had to use his Shadowcraft to fuse with the shadows at his back, reappearing on the other side of the room.

The palooga ball hit the wall so hard that it became embedded in it. One second earlier, it would have turned Bob's skull into paste. Jenna could clearly see the rune it was marked with. It was Alarel's, her adoptive mother. She knew Bob used that particular ball to enhance his Gaze of the Eternal Warrior perk.

"Jenna, do not attack it alone," Bob's voice sounded inside the Blood Link. The beast catching Alarel's ball in mid-flight had counted as a hit. The Skillmaster had information to share.

"Each head focused on the same target increased its stats for one-third while attacking that target. But the beast can't ignore opponents on purpose. If we all attack it at the same time, it can't focus on one of us."

"Are you insane, Bob? Billy has no powers. Do you want him to attack that thing?"

"It does not have to be a successful attack, Jenna. Any attack will suffice. On my count…"

"One…" Jenna summoned her sword in one hand and a dagger in the other. It was one of her favorite fighting stances. She approached the monster on her right side. Alice bared her fangs at her.

"Two…" Bob held his spear as he prepared to charge the monster on her left side. Beth flexed the beast's left arm as she prepared for a counterstrike.

"Three!" Billy threw the Spear of Belegrin at Tiff's head. A poor throw from the weak arm of an untrained youngster. Tiff scoffed at his useless effort as the spear clattered at her feet. But she had focused on Billy; that was enough. Jenna hit the beast's right arm with the pommel of her sword as it struck at her. A powerful blow, but nowhere near the skill the ogress had wielded when fighting her alone. The Primordial's dagger flashed out and carved a bloody wound on Alice's right cheek. The beast howled in pain.

Bob rolled under Beth's strike, making the most out of his war form. His spear snaked out and hit the ogress on its left foot as he passed by her. His maneuver took him out of range.

"Run!" Bob screamed.

"We do not have to beat it; we only have to leave it behind." The other two Losers followed suit. The ogress tried to give pursuit, but a jolt of pain went up her left leg. She could not move. She looked down to assess the damage and noticed a steel thorn had nailed her left foot to the floor. Steel Thorn (Spear Mastery 3) If you pierce your enemy's body with your spear, nailing him to another surface, a magical thorn will be conjured when you retract the spear, keeping him nailed.

The three girls roared in fury as the Losers disappeared down the corridor. They stopped to catch their breath when they could no longer hear the beast's howl.

"Billy, what is happening here? Your essence sight still works, doesn't it?" Bob asked him.

"It is pulling from our memories to create its bosses, much like that thing Bob and you fought in Bjarfalla. Not fresh memories; otherwise, it would have summoned Paul or Balance. It is using those that are part of our very essence."" As inside, so outside," Bob quoted.

"What is Dawn doing? What is she waiting for? We could do with some help for destroying these Bosses," Jenna fumed.

"I am not even sure that is a good idea," Billy answered.

"This dungeon is not like others. Its magical structure is different. I think if we destroy a Boss, it will be replaced by a new one."

"And Dawn has lived for Aeons, Jenna," Bob added.

"Think about what the dungeon could summon from her." Jenna shut up—that was a sobering thought.

"Whatever. I think we have finally reached the center," she announced. They were in a huge hexagonal room, easily the size of a couple of football fields. Bob swore.

"The Icosahedron," he said.

"Something is happening to it." The artifact was visibly trembling in Bob's hands. Suddenly, it flew from them, settling at the very center of the room.

"I think the Compendium is coming," whispered Billy.

"Not only the Compendium, I am afraid," said Jenna. Bosses were coming from each of the gates leading into the hexagonal room. The three-headed ogre limped through the southernmost gate. At the gate to its left, M. A. D.' s sleek form glided into their presence. A woman made of ice and beauty walked calmly through the next gate. She looked with contempt at Bob. She smiled, and her tongue slipped between her lips. But it was no tongue.

It was a flexible whip made of metal that could take a man's head off at thirty feet. Bob gasped.

"That is Ellen, my ex-wife." A skeletal thing with fangs and glowing eyes crawled through the ceiling towards the room, as easily as if it were walking on the ground. It sported long fangs and looked hungrily at Jenna. Bob recognized the face from Bjarfalla.

"That one is Brinkman, your psychologist, isn't he?" he asked Jenna. Jenna glumly nodded. A ten-foot-tall paramedic, his face covered in a medical mask and his hands dripping with fresh blood, took his position north of them.

"One of yours, Billy?" asked Jenna. Billy sighed and assented.

"He is the paramedic who told me that my parents were dead, the night of the accident." Finally, a burly man with a mustache, dressed as a baseball coach, joined the party.

"Really? Really?" exclaimed an angry Bob.

"That is Blake Judd, an idiot I worked with, who had always pestered us with his conspiracy theories. God, I know I loathed him, but I never suspected that I hated him this much." The Artifact kept rattling, as if an invisible hand were using it for a game of dice. Outside the Palace, Dawn suddenly jerked up her head.

"It is coming. The Compendium is coming. If the Losers can survive for the six minutes it will take me to reach them, we may actually win." Dawn focused her mind, calmed her emotions, and tried not to think of anything. The six boss slots were already filled with the Losers' memories—she could enter the place without giving fresh ammunition to the dungeon. Her memories were vast, ancient, and mighty. Keeping them inside her mind was the right choice.

"Pray for us, Bilto," she told him as she hurried past him into the dungeon, not giving Bilto time to charge her for the prayer. Jenna tried to devise a battle plan. Six bosses, based on their worst experiences, all of them level 63, and with Billy powerless. She tried to feign bravado, but there was no way they were going to win this one. If Dawn didn't come in time, they would die. Full stop.

"Okay, let's try to play this safe…" she began as the six bosses slowly started to approach them.

"We can't use Waycraft to escape—We are at the center of the maze, and the Motif will interfere. We must try to hold them off while keeping Billy safe, and…Billy? Billy!"

"What the fuck are you doing?" Jenna screamed in panic as her boyfriend went straight towards M. A. D. The blood-soaked paramedic charged at him from behind. Bosses seemed particularly fixated on those whose memories gave birth to them. Billy had taken off his elven cloak and was using it as a bullfighter's muleta. The Pomeranian assumed his discus form and charged towards Billy. The Everlasting threw himself on the ground as the beast flew over him, straight into the paramedic's face.

A gurgling sound was heard over the room as the paramedic's blood painted the walls.

"The real M. A. D. always fell for this trick. Always. I figured its copy would too," she heard Billy's voice inside her mind. Jenna was horrified. One of the bosses was dead, but M. A. D. was no more than ten feet away from him. The other four bosses had surrounded Bob and her. There was no possible way to help him. The whole dungeon began to shake for a moment.

"What is happening?" Bob asked inside the link.

"Is the Compendium coming?"

"Not yet, Bob. The dungeon is creating a new boss to replace the one we killed."

"Perfect. Just bloody perfect. Just what we needed. A new boss to replace the doctor guy—a new boss to fight."

"No, Jenna, it does not work like that," Billy answered.

"We have killed the boss who held that slot. Now it is our slot, not the Compendium's. The new boss is not theirs, it is ours." At that moment, M. A. D. lunged at Billy's throat. He was weak and without powers. M. A. D. could kill him even without trying. A boot caught the dog in mid-flight. The Pomeranian yelped as the hit sent him flying away from Billy. Billy smiled from the ground at the tall figure protecting him.

"I knew you would come," he told her.

"Always, Billy," Belegrin smiled back.