It was a pleasure to win. For all the perturbance and growing doubt that this truly was a dream, Cutter couldn’t deny the visceral pleasure of it. He’d walked into that room to face an enemy, he’d struggled, he’d come out on top. And, even though he’d lost his sigils to the other side of the door, he still had prizes.

  Cutter noticed that the progression bar on his bracer had filled to about one tenth since the conclusion of the fight. “Nice…”

  Walking toward the open door, cinder sigil squeezed in the palm of his hand, he said, “I’d love to put it in right now. It sucks to have to wait until midnight. I guess I’d better leave the ash one in until later in case there’s more trouble.”

  “Sure thing, bruh. That’s the smart play.”

  As they reached the door, brighter, whiter light seemed to filter in from a point distant along the new tunnel. The air moved around them, fresher.

  “We did it,” Cutter said. He smiled. It was a real smile, though tempered by the new anxieties whirling in his mind.

  They stopped before the chest.

  Lita said, “Here’s the full story. Chests come in different colors, bronze to silver, yada yada. Bronze is the lowest prize, but it’s still gonna be something good.”

  “As good as a cinder sigil?”

  Lita shrugged. “Beat if I know. I dunno how I knew that. Tutorial powers?”

  Cutter bent down and put his hands on the lid of the chest. There was a definite burning excitement in him. It couldn’t quench the growing distraction of what was actually happening to his reality, of the thoughts of his family, but it got pretty close.

  He glanced at Lita, raising his eyebrows.

  Lita said, “Dang! Come on!”

  Cutter lifted the lid of the chest, eyes wide with excitement. An instant later his face was flat, eyes narrowed, lips pursed. “It’s a… man bag?”

  Lita, on the other hand, had flipper-hands grasping the side of his stone head, blue eyes swallowed into gaping circles. “DOOOOD!”

  “What? What is it?”

  “Bag of holding, dude!”

  “Bag of…” Cutter’s eyes flew wide. “No way? No fucking way! Seriously, like from D&D?”

  Lita chuckled. “You say weird stuff sometimes, bruh.”

  Cutter rolled his eyes and reached in for his prize. It was a leather over-arm satchel, the sort an office worker might carry on the subway to keep things in. “So I can put everything in this? Can we put King Kobold’s club in here?”

  “Sorry, bruh. See that bronze tag? Bronze Bag of Holding. Carries about a hundred pounds of loot before it’s totally full.”

  “Hmmm. Still, that’s pretty cool.” Cutter looked around the chamber. “Oh. There’s nothing to put in it though…”

  Lita said, “Some mushrooms over there…”

  Cutter went to the throne where a bowl of the tasty brown mushrooms rested on the floor. Shrugging, he picked it up. He was about to tip the mushrooms into the bag when, with another shrug, he pushed the whole bowl in. The mouth of the bag stretched slightly to accommodate the item. Then it was gone.

  “So fucking weird,” he shook his head. The bag seemed no fuller or heavier than a moment before. He reached in, shuddering slightly as his whole arm went into the bag that was clearly not big enough to accommodate even his forearm.

  His hand came out fruitless. “Huh?”

  “Bruh, you gotta picture the item you want! Bag like that wouldn’t be any good if it didn’t sort stuff, would it bruh? Nah, you gotta picture it.”

  Cutter repeated the process and this time his hand came from the bag bearing the bowl of mushrooms. Near breathlessly he uttered, “So cool…”

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  He returned the bowl to the bag, and slung it over his shoulder. After a pause, he opened the bag again and dropped the cinder strength sigil in. “Okay, time to see what’s outside this fucking place.”

  “Sure thing, bruh. Totally have a great life and all…”

  Cutter stopped and turned to look upon Lita. The construct was hunched down, eyes downcast. He made a sniffling sound. “It was totally cool getting to know you.”

  Cutter said, “You’re coming, man! You can’t stay here!”

  Lita shook his head slowly. “I’m the tutorial… my place is… sniff… my place is here, bruh…”

  Cutter said, “First of all, whoever said you were the dungeon tutorial? I bet there’s a fuck-ton of tutoring to be done out there…”

  Lita perked up a little.

  “Secondly, I thought we’d laid that to rest. You just helped fucking murder the boss! Remember…”

  “Huh…”

  “Get the fuck over here, I want to see what’s out there,” Cutter pointed back to the doorway and the corridor beyond.

  Lita drifted forward. “I guess…”

  They moved down the corridor together, the white light growing brighter, until they reached a ladder. Above was a perfect blazing square of clear blue sky.

  Cutter went first, climbing the ladder slightly awkwardly with his axe in his hand. He considered shoving it in the Bag of Holding as well, but he just didn’t know what waited above and couldn’t go forward without a weapon.

  What greeted him, as he climbed out of the hole, was something he had never considered.

  A vast empty whiteness rolled to the horizon in every direction.

  “The fuck…”

  It looked in every sense like a piece of 3D modelling software with nothing loaded. Just a perfectly featureless expanse.

  Cutter turned, taking in the bizarre scene. He took a sudden step back, gasping in fright as he turned to six o’clock.

  “Jesus fucking Christ!” He gripped his weapon in two hands, arms shaking slightly. Directly before him stood what appeared to be a man in black robes, wearing a mask that protruded from the folds of a deep hood. The mask seemed to be made from the skull of some derangedly huge bird.

  The voice from the mask was decidedly human, disconcertingly normal even, given the rest of his appearance. “There’ll be no need for that. I mean you no harm. For now, at least.”

  Lita’s voice echoed from the hole in the floor, mixed with the sounds of difficult scrabbling, “What’s happening up there, bruh? You talking to someone? I’mma be there soon. No feet, know? Hard to climb a ladder…”

  Cutter fixed his attention on the newcomer. The stranger spread his arms wide, with no small flourish. “I, my new friend, am known as The Shopkeeper!”

  Cutter saw beyond the robes to a monstrous wagon. It was a steampunk gargantuan, like two train cars that had been bolted together and then overly adorned with features. At the front of the wagon hulking furred shapes lounged like cattle.

  Cutter drew his eyes back to the Shopkeeper, not lowering his weapon. “Shopkeeper, eh?”

  “Certainly! The purveyor of the finest everything from edge to edge. Come, let’s see if we can’t make a trade?”

  The Shopkeeper beckoned him forward as he started to turn back to his double-decker carriage.

  Cutter followed, a little hesitantly. “So… you like sell shit? Buy shit too?”

  “Certainly I do. Sadly, I fear you have little or nothing to trade right now. But perhaps I’ll have something to pique your interest for a future encounter? Something to aspire toward.”

  The Shopkeeper disappeared around the side of the cart and then reappeared at a service window.

  “Like a taco truck…” Cutter muttered.

  Behind him, “Taco, dude? What’s a taco?” the voice still echoed up from the hole. There was a slipping bumping sound, then a cascade of low grumbling.

  The Shopkeeper said, “So. What interests you?”

  Cutter said, “Well… I guess a sword… how much would a sword set me back?”

  “How long is a piece of string? That depends entirely on the sword. I have weapons that can cost a thousand gold coins, or a million! The choice is yours!”

  “Shit… a grand for a basic sword?”

  “Those, my friend, are the breaks, I fear.”

  “What can I get for… zero gold coins?”

  The Shopkeeper turned, speaking as he rummaged, “Funny you should ask! I like to extend a free sample to new customers.”

  He returned to the window with a tangle of leather straps in his fingers.

  Cutter stuttered, “I’m not sure…”

  The Shopkeeper extended his hand, “Take it! For you! For the start of what I’m sure will be a beautiful friendship. It’s a weapon belt. I see you are bereft of anything similar.”

  Cutter accepted the leather and shook it out. A simple leather band, with metal loops firmly secured and a sturdy buckle. He glanced up at the window. “Well… thanks, I guess.”

  He strapped it on and then dropped his axe through one of the loops. It fell right through, stopping as the axe head reached the loop. He drew the weapon quickly, and then dropped it back in again. “Hey, that really works!”

  “But of course. Everything I offer works exactly as it should. I’m no peddler. I am The Shopkeeper. Only the finest, and only the best of wares on offer.”

  “Yeah… that’s great. But I guess, if you’ve got no more freebies… and I’ve got no money, that’s kind of it for us? No?”

  The Shopkeeper leaned forward. A finger curled to gesture Cutter to step closer. After a moment’s hesitation, he took another step. The Shopkeeper spoke in a low tone. “I have so much to offer here, Cutter, so mu-”

  “Hey, how’d you know my n-”

  “There’s little you name in all of scape that I can’t provide. Are you sure there’s nothing else you seek? Nothing else you’d like to find the price of?”

  Cutter shrugged. “Like I said, a sword would be cool, I guess. But for that kind of money… Dammit, I had sigils down there, wonder what they’d have added up to… I will have a spare strength sigil… hmmm, I was gonna give that to Lita…”

  “No! No, my friend, you’re thinking too small. Too paltry. I speak of things of a much grander scale than that!”

  Cutter narrowed his eyes. “Like a really good sword?”

  “Cutter! I know what you really want, and it is something I can truly offer you!”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Oh yes. You want a way to go home, and that is the very thing I can offer you.”