“Please,” Cas scoffed. “We have ranged attack spells, you know. These… whatever they are—”

  “Carrion Drakes,” Kelsey supplied. “I guess Drakolich would have been confusing?”

  “—will hardly be a challenge.” Cas continued, unaware of her correction.

  “How do they know we’re here?” Lucian asked, looking up at the featureless mist above them. Featureless to human eyes, that is. Kelsey could see through it, and therefore, Mel could too.

  “They’re smart enough to know that a strange blob of mist is probably intruders,” Kelsey said. “And they’re built to err on the side of murder.”

  “How do they intend to murder mist?” Maris asked sardonically.

  “Oh, they don’t think that far ahead,” Kelsey assured her. “They know when something isn’t part of the dungeon, and that makes them want to kill it. That’s as far as their thinking goes.”

  Mel could see that the drakes were approaching rapidly. Maris looked up at them as if she could see through mist. Which she probably could, Mel realised. Why surround yourself with mist if you couldn’t see through it?

  “They’re carrying something,” Maris informed the others. “Small rocks? Perhaps they intend to drop them on us.”

  “Perhaps lumps of that… uranium she has used before,” Cas speculated. “A passable weapon, but penetrating our wards does no good if they can’t aim.”

  “Get ready,” Maris cautioned, “They’re dropping some—”

  The first explosion was well off target, but it shocked the wizards into freezing. The next one was close enough to blow Lucian off his feet.

  “Run!” Maris yelled. “Head for the trees!”

  They ran. The mist followed them, but it became patchy as the explosions blew temporary holes in their cover. Kelsey followed along behind Maris, still talking to the unheeding wizard.

  “Technically, these aren’t grenades,” she drawled. “I wanted to make them grenades, but drakes just can’t pull the pins. No fingers.”

  She paused as a well-aimed detonation knocked Maris over. She tumbled to the ground, and a drake swooped down after her, claws extended. Maris recovered just in time to roll out of the way. Kelsey sniffed.

  “So what they are, I suppose, is remote-detonated anti-personnel bombs, which doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.”

  “You can’t do this!” Maris yelled as she scrambled for the supposed safety of the trees. “There’s no mana!”

  “Mana, mana, mana,” Kelsey intoned. “Why are you wizards always so obsessed with mana?”

  She paused, but Maris didn’t see fit to answer.

  “I suppose that question answers itself,” Kelsey admitted. “Still, I—ooh!”

  Kelsey looked over to where Lucian was losing his fight to stand up after being repeatedly blasted by explosions.

  “You guys are warded against fire and against shrapnel,” Kelsey complained. “But the shockwave can get you, at least put some bruises on you. Now let’s see if a drake can actually grab you…”

  It couldn’t. Despite Mel cheering it on, the drake’s claws skittered harmlessly off Lucien, unable to gain purchase. With a frustrated hiss, it lunged to bite—only for its teeth to fare no better. It burst into flames as Lucian recovered enough wits to remember his fire spell.

  That was the high point of the engagement, from Mel’s perspective. The drakes had carried a limited number of bombs. They tried to wheel back and reload, but only half of them made it as Cas and Lucian pelted them with long-range spells.

  Shaken, but not badly injured, the wizards continued their trek. The drakes came back for a second attack, but without the element of surprise, the wizards pelted them with spells before they could fly overhead.

  The wizards were harried by the wolves, but they proved to be no more than an annoyance. Unable to comprehend the fact that the wizards were impervious to their fangs, the wolves attacked again and again, but to no effect.

  Mel was feeling quite put out by the time the invaders made it to the Haunted Mansion, but Kelsey was unperturbed.

  “Don’t get too upset if they breeze past this floor as well,” Kelsey said. “Ghosts have always been a one-trick monster, and I’ll eat my hat if they’re not warded against possession.”

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  “What about Larry?” Mel asked.

  “Level twenty-one is getting dangerous, but I don’t expect him to do much against three wizards averaging twenty-five.”

  Sadly, that proved to be the case. The wizards didn’t even bother destroying the ghosts, and they dealt with Larry the Lich with brutal efficiency. The only hold up came when they opened what they expected to be the door to the next level and found…

  “A yard?” Maris exclaimed. “What is this?”

  “I moved things around a bit,” Kelsey said. “Check the well.”

  The wizards moved cautiously, checking for traps, but eventually found themselves looking down into the ordinary-looking well, to see… water.

  “This… looks like the exit from the vampire kingdom,” Cas said slowly.

  “I moved the Silent Sea up,” Kelsey said. “No need to thank me, I know you were eager to go skinny-dipping.”

  “Lower me down,” Maris told Cas, ignoring Kelsey’s jibe.

  Shrugging, Kelsey and Mel sank beneath the stone floor, entering to watch the wizard's entrance from underwater. Naturally, the dark waters did not impede their immaterial forms in any way.

  The first sign of Maris’s entrance was a roiling of the waters as the ten feet of water in the entrance shaft was pushed down in front of her. To Mel’s astonishment, the woman had cast a spell that kept all water away from her. Far away.

  “She’s not even going to get wet!” Mel protested as the bubble of air extended down into the sea. It looked like the water had been pushed back for about ten yards.

  Kelsey was upset for a different reason. “That shouldn’t be possible,” she said wryly. “A bubble like that should pop to the surface with irresistible force. So much for physics.”

  Mel didn’t understand what Kelsey was talking about. If your magic pushed the water back, then of course it was going to move the water back. How else would it work? From previous experience, though, she knew that asking would just give her a headache, so she contented herself with glaring at the invaders. The other wizards joined Maris, and they all floated down in the same air bubble. It wasn’t large enough to reach from the floor to the ceiling, but it was more than enough room for them to walk around and talk.

  “This doesn’t bode well for the monsters on this floor,” Kelsey said mournfully. “No matter how graceful and deadly a fish might be, once it crashes through that barrier, all it gets to do is flop on the ground.”

  Mel hummed in agreement. At least the wizards would have trouble finding the exit. Mana flowed swiftly and directly through air, but water slowed it down and deflected its path with currents. Instead of walls, Kelsey had set up a complicated current on the floor that dragged the mana around with it and made it hard to find where the source was. Not impossible, especially for wizards, but harder.

  “Honestly, I expected more,” Cas said into the darkness. Mel glared daggers at him, but she knew he couldn’t see her. “This used to be the final floor, right? The one that no one ever got past? And yet it’s mostly empty.”

  “It’s a work in progress,” Kelsey said testily. “I picked up some ice-vines from the Hungry Depths, but I’m unfamiliar with the ecology. I need more time to make sure I don’t just freeze the whole floor solid.”

  “Cold is easily warded off,” Lucian dismissed. Maris, however, frowned.

  “I’m not sure I like the idea of dungeons collaborating,” she stated.

  “Oh, too bad,” Kelsey sneered. “Especially since we’ve figured out how to do it without requiring an avatar. Material transfer still needs a physical presence, but we should be able to figure out a way.”

  Maris hissed with displeasure. “Something to put a stop to, once you’re collared.”

  “Keep dreaming,” Kelsey said. “Maybe I’ll see you there.”

  With little to guide them, the mages had no choice but to wander through the unlit depths in search of the exit. A few monsters found them, but it was as Kelsey had said. Disappointing. At least the mages seemed as frustrated as she was.

  “Is the reason no one has come back from this floor because they got lost?” Cas complained.

  Mel snickered. The Silent Sea was bigger now than it had been. Kelsey had used the same spatial expansion that she’d used on the Forest of Gloom, adding more water from the sea. She’d complained bitterly at the time about how long it was taking to pipe in seawater at a rate low enough to go unnoticed by the Kabimen outside.

  “Patience, Cassian,” Maris cautioned. “We’re moving in an organised search pattern, we will find the exit soon enough.”

  Mel agreed with both of them. It was taking too long, and they would eventually find it. Unfortunately. Kelsey didn’t show any impatience, but she was probably working on her “chips” and preparing the next set of surprises even as she carefully monitored the group's progress.

  She almost cheered when they finally found the pyramid and started work on the puzzle that opened it. Surprisingly, the wizards actually went through the steps of solving it.

  Kelsey sniggered. “I guess they don’t want me thinking they’re dumb. If an adventurer can solve it, surely a wizard can.”

  “This is no challenge to a mage’s intellect,” Lucian declared.

  Kelsey just shrugged, and Mel knew why. With the water banished from the immediate vicinity, there was nothing to push the adventurers in when the door opened. They’d disarmed the trap without knowing it was there.

  Sure enough, the wizards just floated down the open shaft, looking curiously at the spikes at the bottom. Some water came down after them, but Kelsey shut the doors as soon as they were off the upper floor. The water merely splashed down and drained into the floor once the wizards had left the shaft.

  The last time a human had been down here, this passageway had led to the reactor room. Which was the sum total of what Mel knew about that place. That, and also that something about it was deadly to humans. Mel was almost certain that the wizards weren’t warded against that.

  This time, the passageway led to spiders, and Mel already knew they weren’t going to accomplish much. They were bigger and had new poisons, but they never got the chance to use them. They were pushed back by wards and burned with fire. Kelsey still had the oil trick, but the wizards just snuffed the fire out when it got too intense.

  It was only when the wizards clambered out of the final, silk-enshrouded cave that Kelsey got that small smile that meant a surprise was coming. Mel didn’t have to wait long. As soon as the wizards came out into the light, they stared in shock at the enemy awaiting them.

  “Hi guys!” Aubey said brightly. “Are you ready to join the winning team yet?”