“Vitals?” Marcus called out from his position in front of the fallen beast.

  Elira: “Eighty-nine.”

  Hiro: “Fifty-nine,” Hiro said, and then, “sixty-five and rising,” as Aila finished administering the healing stimulant. She ejected an empty glass vial from the end of the metallic tube, at the opposite end from the glowing blue ring and inserted a full one before returning the tube to her hip bag.

  Kade: “Ninety-one.”

  Aila: “Ninety-eight.”

  Marcus put away his sword and knelt in front of the large crab, insect thing. The shell was fractured and the flesh inside pulsed weakly with a dim light. He could have just reactivated his HUD and checked on the team but he was busy watching over the massive beast, making sure there wasn’t going to be any last ditch lunges before it was completely dead.

  “Got a lot of coin over here,” Kade said from a low shelf where a large number of coins were merged into the wall like barnacles. He had one hand wrist-deep in the stone wall, chipping away carefully with a spare dagger. “Old mint. Or foreign. I’ve never seen this design before.

  “It’s so odd that they are embedded in the walls like this. What could have caused it?”

  “Whatever strange magic creates these pocket dungeons I suppose,” Marcus said with a sigh. He nudged the carcass on the floor with the steel toe of his boot. No movement.

  Elira stooped to an alcove where something had nested. She pulled out a short blade with a grip wrapped in leather. The leather looked old and was flaking away, but the blade gleamed brightly in the light. The steel had an odd bubble finish that was visible inside the metal. “Shortsword,” she said. “Edge is super sharp still.”

  Aila watched Kade, who had given up on digging more coins out of the wall and was tapping a broken gantry beam. He quickly found a section that gave off a hollow sound. Prying gently at the edges he levered open a panel in the wood and a small round box rolled free, no seams, no obvious latch.

  “How did you know that was there?” she asked.

  Kade looked at her for a moment, then pointed at the break in the beam. It was uniform and now that she understood what to look for she could clearly see that it had broken cleanly at the edge of the secret compartment. Too smooth and flat for a normal break.

  “This box is cool to the touch, but occasionally feels warm, then cool again,” Kade said. “Weird.”

  He handed it to Marcus who turned it over and bounced it in one hand weighing it. No info popped up on the HUD other than the fact that it was made from some unknown wood. He shrugged and tucked it into a backpack. “We’ll have the lab look at it I guess.”

  Hiro walked back into the chamber, carrying a canvas bag that clinked as he walked towards the group.

  “There’s no exit back there. Just a nasty nesting area scattered with these things," he said as he pulled a blueish crystal out of the bag and held it up. It was opaque and seemed to eat the light, not reflecting much back at all. “The crab mother seemed to like these, they were all over the nest.”

  “What are they?” Elira asked.

  Hiro just shrugged and stuffed the bag into the top of one of the backpacks.

  They worked fast and efficient, collecting anything that looked like it might have any value. They worked with tired satisfaction.

  They formed up. Elira took the left side, giving her sightlines down the hallway as they walked back in the direction they had come from. Hiro shook his hands out once and then kept them loose as he led the way, like a fighter walking back to his corner. Aila set her staff to a low glow and watched their backs.

  The seam they had entered from was ahead of them.

  “Everyone through,” Marcus said. “I’ll keep watch.”

  Marcus stepped through the shimmer last and let out a long breath as he looked around the ruins of the library again. “Okay,” he said, rolling his shoulders, “that sucked. Whose idea was the bug hallway again?”

  “Pretty sure that was all you,” Elira reminded him.

  “That doesn’t sound like me at all. I hate bugs. AND crab.” Marcus made a loose gesture at the shimmering portal door.

  “It was a good hallway until it wasn’t,” Kade said with a laugh.

  “It immediately wasn’t.” Hiro deadpanned without looking back. He picked his way around fallen mouldering shelves as he headed back to the main entrance.

  Kade snorted behind him. “Nonsense. Nine out of ten, boss.”

  Marcus pointed at him and sounded defensive as he said, “See? That’s what I need. More supportive energy.”

  “I was being sarcastic,” Kade said.

  “Doesn’t matter. I’m counting it.”

  They exited out of the library's main entrance directly into another hallway. Nothing about these pocket realms made any sense. They travelled back the way they had originally come and kept an eye for anything they may have missed on the way in.

  Aila adjusted the strap of her pack nervously. Her staff cast a warm blue glow that made the black stone sparkle. “Why does every pocket dungeon have to smell like damp socks?”

  “Damp socks and trauma,” Marcus said.

  Elira lifted a hand. “Shh.”

  Everyone quieted immediately.

  She was staring ahead, stopped in the middle of the wide hallway that would have fit perfectly in an old English manor. Ahead, about 50 paces were openings on either side. A cross path of some sort.

  Something clattered across the floorboards ahead.

  Kade whispered, “I vote, no giant bugs this time.”

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  “Seconded,” Marcus said. “All in favor—”

  Four small goblins popped out from the lefthand passage.

  “Aw, man,” Marcus said. “Rejected unanimously.”

  The goblins screamed and charged.

  Hiro moved first – a blur of monk robes and calm judgment. His fist lit up with a violet flame that always made Marcus think of a neon sign. He practically flew down the hall and punched the lead goblin so hard it turned into a special effect.

  Kade vanished with a whisk of his cloak. Just as two arrows whistled down the hallway, dropping two more Goblins before they made it half way towards them.

  That left one.

  It sprinted straight at Marcus, which Marcus respected. Brave little guy. It even made a great noise, too – some kind of war cry that sounded like a kind of a hiccuping scream. Marcus batted away a spear thrust and grabbed the Goblin by the back of its neck, lifting it up into the air.

  “Absolutely not,” he said, holding it up like an angry cat. “Behave.”

  He held it out to the others like a prize. “Can we keep it?”

  The goblin couldn’t maneuver the spear so close to Marcus and, dropping it, pulled out a rusty knife instead. It took a couple of frantic swings but the blade just scratched along Marcus’s armour with little effect.

  “Rude,” Marcus said.

  Elira sighed and stuck it in the back of the shoulder with her own knife. It shrieked and dropped its weapon.

  Marcus set it down gently. “Okay, now, go. Tell your friends not to do crimes.”

  It looked up at Marcus for a moment and he made little Shooing motions with his hand. It ran.

  Hiro stared at him. “Are you… letting it go?”

  “No, I’m coaching it,” Marcus said defensively. “He will take this message back to his tribe, or clan or whatever, and preach a better way.”

  Aila stifled a laugh behind her hand. Kade reappeared beside her, jingling a pouch he’d looted from somewhere.

  “Standard trash loot,” he announced. “Couple coins. Weird tooth necklace. Broken dagger. And this…” He held up a smooth, dark charm etched with faint lines of light.

  “Kade… that symbol,” Aila said softly. “Isn’t it the same as the one on those coins you grabbed back in the crab room?”

  Kade pulled one out and held it up to the charm. He cocked one eyebrow and looked up at everyone. “Looks the same to me.”

  “Oh good,” Marcus said. “The plot thickens.”

  “The what?” Aila blinked, confused, still trying to figure her place in the new team.

  Marcus only laughed.

  Elira plucked the coin from Kade’s hand and ran a thumb over the pattern. “I’m pretty sure it’s the same symbol we saw in that old castle-ruin dungeon last week.”

  Kade squinted. “Like… interdimensional magic graffiti?”

  “Not graffiti. Not if it’s on a coin… and a charm,” Hiro said, his voice was level, but something in his posture tightened.

  Aila looked from face to face, trying to keep up with the conversation, but you could see the panic on her face. “But… These dungeons are random. I mean, that's the whole thing, right? When they form they just grab little bits of nearby reality and smash it all together into some sort of pseudo-world. No? These are just random little quantum bubble pocket spaces aren’t they? Just some random echo of our own world - or, of Earth-3 anyway…”

  Marcus crouched a little so he was eye-level with her, his tone gentle. “Aila, did you see any old manors outside? Any libraries? Crab monsters strolling around campus? Any of these dungeons look even remotely like the actual terrain around them?”

  “I… I don’t understand.”

  “He’s saying they're not Random,” Hiro explained, arms folded in front of him. “We’ve… noticed a few things about these dungeons. We find the same creatures inside all the time. Similar layout. Even repeating loot. It’s too much for a coincidence.”

  Aila just looked back and forth at everyone, trying to process what she was being told.

  Marcus set a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “Hey, don’t sweat it. It doesn’t mean anything yet. Just that the lab guys back at base are a little off when it comes to their theories. We’ll give them our report, they’ll go back to the drawing board, rewrite the briefing packet for the next mission, and we’ll keep doing our thing.”

  “Drinking beer at the tavern!” Kade said.

  Elira snorted and rolled her eyes. “I think he means clearing dungeons.”

  “Yeah, yeah. That too. And don’t forget,” Kade said as he struck a pose. “Lookin’ good on camera.”

  Marcus shook his head, chuckling. “Okay, we’ve killed some crab-bugs, we’ve humbled goblins, and we’ve looted… a string of questionable teeth and assorted other goods. Great work all around. It looks like this dungeon’s done. This is the smallest one we’ve seen so far.”

  “Which is weird,” Elira said. “They always go deeper.”

  “Yeah,” Marcus agreed quietly. “Well, let’s take the easy win this time and head out. We can close it up and get back to town before dark.”

  They began walking again and within half an hour they arrived back at the entrance portal that led back to Earth-3.

  Marcus gave the dungeon behind them a long, suspicious look. It really had been small. They must have missed a set of stairs somewhere. He sighed. Smaller dungeon meant less loot, but also less problems.

  He slung the HEX device from his back – steel case the size of a lunchbox with wooden corners. He knelt, popped the latch, and the case woke with a quiet note. His ANIP made a silent handshake with the device and a soft green light turned on. As it cycled up it threw a mesh of invisible threads around the room but his HUD shaded in a ghost of the geometry.

  “Arming,” Marcus said for the record. “HEX destabilizer. Three-minute fuse. We can cancel with a two-factor switch, but let’s just get out of here before we need to worry about that.”

  He thumbed the arming plate. The device clicked and unfolded like a metal flower, petals setting into the stone with thin, magnetic legs. A small spindle lifted from the center and began to spin, slowly at first, then faster until it blurred. The air hummed and blurred around the box. It made the hair on Marcus’s arms stand up.

  “Fuse set,” he said. Everyone’s HUD painted a countdown: 03:00 in clean digits in the top right of their view.

  “Alright, everyone, let’s bounce. Through the shiny rip in the wall.”

  They filed out one by one. Marcus came last, lingering for half a heartbeat. The corridor’s ambient glow flickered as he watched.

  “Creepy,” he muttered, and stepped through the portal.

  ***

  People think the money is in the shiny stuff. At first, so did we.

  In the beginning we hauled back sacks of swords, shields, half-rusted armor and fraying leathers. Anything that looked valuable. What did we know about valuable?

  The company bought it all, weighed it, tagged it, paid us credits that barely felt worth the effort. Other towns in the area paid a little better, especially for the metal stuff, but it involved a lot more travel.

  Coins were better. Old gold. Silver stamped with faces no one remembers. Gems best of all. We didn’t find a lot of that stuff, but it was always the most valuable stuff.

  Turns out though, that the real money was something completely different.

  Mei Lin was the one who clued us in. She is an undervalued resource in town. There are not very many people from the local world that know what we're about here and can answer the dumbest questions about this world without looking at us sideways.

  Turns out monsters weren’t just obstacles. In the eastern empire, they were ingredients. Bone, blood, bile, marrow, glands, claws, fangs, tails—each one tied to some tradition, some remedy, some long-standing belief that predated the entire length of human history back on Earth.

  I keep a list now. What’s useless. What’s common. What’s worth stopping to harvest even when you’re tired and everything smells like blood and rot. Claws that harden when dried. Organs that have to be preserved within minutes. Fluids that are worth more than gold.

  I sell some to Mei. The rest gets packed carefully and moved east when we travel that way, or find the right merchant coming through the village. It felt pretty strange at first, hauling around chests of monster bits. But apparently it's a pretty common practice and how many adventuring parties in this world make a living. For us, it’s just a nice bonus.

  We still take the gold and gems when we find them of course. But the days of hauling around hundreds of pounds of captured weapons are long gone.

  Personal Journal

  Iron Fangs

  Kade Virek; Rogue