The tunnel gave way to firelight.

  The narrow stone passage behind them funneled into a vast cavern scorched by heat. Shafts of smoke and rose from stacks positioned all over a large keep at the other end of the cavern. In the ceiling, large ventilation shafts hummed as they sucked out the choking smoke.

  A river of molten metal split the chamber in two, its surface glowing in layered currents of red, orange, and white-hot gold. Sparks drifted from the exposed forges within the keep. Slag heaps rose between stalagmites, while broken scaffoldings and the remains of rusted machines littered the ground like the bones of some long-dead industry. Overhead, stalactites hung like jagged teeth, and the very air trembled with the weight of the forge.

  Heat pressed into Xander’s armor. It wasn’t unbearable, not yet, but it was enough to remind him that this place wasn’t meant for people.

  He let the others spread out behind him. Jo flanked to the right, boots crunching lightly on blackened stone. Kane adjusted his shield and moved left, already scanning for flanking routes. Ford stayed near the tunnel’s edge, eyes bright behind the smoke-hazed light. Zoey was already ahead, silent as ever, crouched behind a collapsed girder and watching the far end of the chasm.

  She wasn’t smiling.

  Good. This place didn’t call for jokes.

  Across the river, a fortress squatted against the far wall of the cavern, its shape almost grown more than built. Walls of scorched brick and reinforced iron twisted upward into towers that leaned under their own weight, chimneys jutting from their sides like rusted horns. Fire burst intermittently from its highest turrets, and chains dangled from the battlements like vines, still glowing faintly where the heat hadn’t faded. Walkways wrapped around the keep in spindly patterns, metal gangways bolted to the stone by sheer will. It wasn’t a castle. It was a wound dressed in steel.

  Between them and that fortress stood the bridge. Or what remained of it.

  The original span might have once been wide enough for wagons or entire columns to march across shoulder to shoulder. Now it lay shattered in places, reduced to twisted segments of heat-warped iron and fused scrap. Chunks had fallen into the molten river, where they hissed and boiled beneath the surface. What remained above formed a narrow, broken path across the glowing chasm.

  And standing at the far side of the ruin, where the bridge met a raised platform of hammered steel, was a figure that didn’t need motion to make a statement.

  [Analyze] Gruk Spinebreaker | Level: 16 Boss | Status: Hostile | Class: Dark Battle Master

  Gruk Spinebreaker stood still as a statue, but nothing about him looked dead.

  He was built like a siege engine in motion. Seven feet of warped muscle packed into a frame that looked less like a warrior and more like something the forge had birthed when it finally ran out of iron. His armor was a madman's mosaic of salvaged plating, made from boiler doors, engine flanges, rusted chainlinks, and melted steel, all affixed directly to his skin where scars had long since replaced stitching. A massive gauntlet enclosed his left arm, half-welded into flesh and bone, with its fingers still crusted in soot. In his right hand, he held a greataxe forged from gear-teeth and a hollowed pipe, the head large enough to shear stone in a single blow. A thick iron chain hung from the base of the haft, dragging across the floor with every subtle shift in his stance, rattling like a threat that hadn’t yet decided when to strike.

  A single scar ran down the center of his face from brow to chin, pulling his expression into a permanent sneer that twisted every motion into a challenge.

  "Big bastard," Kane said. "You think he’s guarding the keep?"

  "Not just guarding it. He’s making sure anyone who crosses earns it." Xander replied.

  "Yeah," Zoey said, rising from her crouch at the edge of the overlook. "That dungeon boss looks even bigger than the butcher outside."

  Xander took in the area around the bridge and the boss. The edges of the bridge were sheared clean in some places and twisted in others. Melted weapons had fused into the floor. Axe blades, spearheads, even the upper half of a human skull. The stench of scorched blood still lingered, buried beneath the heavier tang of soot and slag.

  "There was a fight here," Ford said. "Recently. Look there at footpath up to the bridge. Some of those weapons aren't scene decoration, they're shiny and new."

  "The question is, where are they now?" Jo asked. "The boss is still alive."

  Xander followed Jo’s gaze as she pointed to a twisted shape crumpled near the edge of the platform beyond the bridge.

  The body lay half-buried in a spray of slag and broken metal, one arm stretched outward as if it had tried to crawl. The armor was charred black, the chestplate split down the middle from a cleaving strike. A shattered sword lay a few feet away, blade warped from heat. The face had been cooked away by proximity to the molten flow, but the frame was unmistakably human.

  Another adventurer who didn’t make it.

  "That’s one," Jo said.

  "Not one we were sent in here for though," Zoey said. "Quest log still says three players active."

  "You’re sure?" Xander asked.

  Zoey gave a shrug. "Double-checked. It’s still says that there are three of them."

  "Then they either ran or got taken." Ford said.

  "They didn’t run far." Jo pointed toward the closed gates of the keep. "If they made it past the boss, that’s the only direction left."

  The entrance loomed ahead, dark and waiting. No visible movement, no sign of another battle. Just the scorched threshold of a structure that looked more like a furnace mouth than a gate.

  "Could be prisoners," Ford said. "Or hiding somewhere deeper inside."

  "Or bait," Kane added. "Wouldn’t be the first time a dungeon used a rescue quest to lure in fresh bodies."

  "Hate to say it," Xander said. "But we're going to need to assume captured with that boss still being alive. We're on the clock, so we need to plan based on the worst case."

  As if summoned by the conversation, Gruk shifted at the far end of the broken bridge. He rolled one shoulder slowly, like a man shaking off dust before a fight. The chain at the base of his axe rasped against the ground as he tilted his head and raised the weapon with both hands, the motion deliberate.

  Performative.

  He planted the axe beside him and opened his arms wide, chain dragging behind like a stage curtain pulled back for the show.

  "Looks like he wants to play," Kane said.

  "That scream we heard earlier… it came from that direction." Jo said.

  "Which means someone’s still hoping help is coming," Xander said. "Let's do this."

  Across the chasm, Gruk’s grin widened.

  Behind him, the others formed up without a word.

  Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

  The bridge creaked and popped beneath their boots as they advanced, metal warped and softened by heat. Below, the molten river hissed and spat as droplets of slag plummeted from above, each one vanishing into fire like time itself was melting away.

  Gruk moved first.

  He let out a sharp bark of laughter, then raised the massive axe over his shoulder and slammed it into the deck.

  The impact rang out like a temple bell struck with malice. The sound alone would have staggered lesser fighters, but it was the aftermath that shattered order.

  Shards of iron and fused stone erupted upward along the bridge’s length as the force rippled out from Gruk’s strike. Above them, the cavern groaned in protest. Cracks spiderwebbed along the ceiling supports, and with a sound like bone splitting under pressure, chunks of slag-crusted steel tore free.

  The first slab hit just ahead of Xander with a deafening crash, exploding in a burst of sparks that kissed his legs and lit his vision in streaks of orange. He didn’t wait for the next.

  "Move!"

  He veered hard to the right as another block of twisted debris slammed down behind him, punching through the walkway with the weight of a wrecking ball. Heat rippled from the point of impact, warping the air.

  Jo broke left, sprinting low as the pathway cracked beneath her feet. A second later, Kane peeled away in the opposite direction, shield raised above his head like a makeshift roof. The shield took a direct hit from a hail of smaller stone fragments, driving him to one knee with a grunt before he surged back upright and kept moving.

  The bridge became a gauntlet of falling ruin. Columns cracked and collapsed, spilling steel girders that bounced and skidded in unpredictable arcs. Chunks of welded rebar screamed down from the ceiling like javelins loosed by angry gods.

  Xander ducked under one and rolled across a section of warped platform, barely regaining his footing in time to see a slab drop directly toward Zoey.

  He threw his hand out mid-motion and cast Divine Aegis, sending a shimmer of radiant energy across her back just as the debris struck near her boots. The shell flared on impact, cracking but holding long enough to give her the extra second she needed to dive clear.

  Ford was still near the rear, cloak whipping in the updraft, both hands raised as he tried to weave together the glyphs of what Xander recognized as his stronger protection spell. A glowing barrier began to form around him, faintly domed and rimmed with threads of light until a blast of dust slammed into his face, causing him to cough and flinch.

  "Dammit," Ford muttered, trying again, only for a hail of stone to scatter across his boots and force him to stumble sideways. The spell fizzled, the glyphs unraveled, and he was left clutching his staff as he tried to stay upright while still dodging whatever came next.

  "Just get under something!" Xander shouted, weaving through the destruction, eyes darting between his team. He caught sight of Jo skidding into cover near a warped section of railing, just in time for another hunk of ceiling to obliterate the space she’d stood in a heartbeat before.

  "Under what!? There's nothing to get under," Ford shouted back as he moved to avoid more debris.

  Another Aegis flared outward from Xander's hand, this one catching Kane as a pillar fragment bounced off the fighter’s shield. The impact rang out but didn’t slow Kane. He pushed forward like a man who didn’t recognize the concept of falling back.

  The bridge was no longer a battlefield but a collapse in progress. The formation they’d started with was gone. There was no time for tactics or coordination. It was everyone for themselves until the phase of the fight was over.

  Ash poured from above, thick and gritty, turning every breath into a lungful of forge-dust. Visibility dropped. The edges of the chasm flickered in and out of view as if the world was blinking.

  Somewhere ahead, Gruk stood unmoving, watching the chaos he’d created with a smile that made Xander’s teeth clench.

  The Ork reached down, slowly, theatrically, and ripped his axe free from the metal as the debris stopped falling and the dust began to clear.

  Steel shrieked against steel.

  "You think you're heroes?" Gruk bellowed. His voice rumbled across the chasm like something tectonic. "Down here, iron eats hope!"

  He charged.

  The bridge trembled under the impact of his boots, every step a punctuation of brute force. The greataxe swept out in a wide arc, howling through the air. Kane ducked low, bringing his shield up to catch the blow at an angle, but the force sent him skidding across the metal with a hiss of boot leather.

  Jo moved to intercept, her longsword flashing high to distract the Ork’s gaze. Gruk twisted, catching her motion with the edge of his eye, and redirected his second swing toward her with a brutal efficiency that belied his bulk.

  Xander didn’t wait.

  He stepped into the gap left by the rotation, angled his spear just beneath the joint in Gruk’s plating, and drove it forward. The tip rang off reinforced steel and skated wide. Gruk snarled, not in pain, but in satisfaction.

  This wasn’t a fight he was tolerating.

  He appeared to be enjoying it.

  A thunderous stomp cracked the platform. Steam hissed up in sudden lines, racing along the seams of the bridge like lightning surging through wires. Xander saw it just in time, shouted a warning, and leapt clear.

  Zoey didn’t.

  The vent beneath her feet exploded in a column of scalding vapor, searing along her leg and up her side. She screamed, hit the metal hard, and rolled once before coming to a stop near a buckled support.

  "Zoey!" Xander called.

  Ford was already moving. He lifted a hand, and a pulse of golden light shimmered through the haze. The lines of steam faded just enough for Xander to see her convulsing as the magic worked to seal the damage, skin knitting at the edges where blisters had risen.

  Gruk laughed again, dragging the axe behind him like a plow through stone.

  "Good scream," he growled. "Let's see if you can make ’em louder."

  The team scattered.

  Another cleave. Then a second. Gruk's axe swept wide, carving up slag and steel with each pass, herding them backward toward the edge of the bridge. The chain at the haft's end snapped through the air, catching on twisted railings and ripping them loose.

  Kane darted in, shield up to draw the Ork’s attention, but Gruk adjusted too fast, pivoting to slam his weapon toward Jo instead. She dropped beneath the swing and slashed upward, scoring a line across his inner thigh, but the blade barely bit. Armor like welded scrap turned most blades aside.

  Xander moved again, testing the reach, ducking in behind Kane to try another thrust. The angle was wrong. Too shallow. Gruk blocked it with the haft, twisting it in his grip to push them both back again.

  Then came Zoey, having recovered from the steam attack.

  She appeared at Gruk’s flank like a ghost slipping out of smoke, short sword reversed in her hand. No warcry, she simply drove the point into a seam at the base of Gruk’s ribs, where a cracked hinge left a narrow opening.

  Frost exploded from the wound.

  Gruk roared louder than before. His shoulder jerked back as the temperature flash-froze the exposed flesh beneath his armor. He stumbled, just for a second, and the opening widened.

  Jo lunged, but the chain lashed out again, sweeping low across the bridge and forcing her to pull back. Kane caught the tail end of it on his shield and skidded to the edge, boots grinding metal.

  Gruk bellowed once more and slammed the axe down with both hands.

  The blade drove deep into the bridge.

  A sharp tremor ran through the walkway. Then another. Xander looked down in time to see a crack split across the center platform, racing outward like lightning across the sky.

  "Get off the center!" he shouted.

  Everyone moved at once.

  Jo broke hard for the southern edge, boots slipping briefly on a patch of warped steel before she caught her balance and sprinted across a sagging girder. Kane was already running, shield still raised overhead as fragments of debris pelted his back. Zoey limped after them, steam burns still fresh, one arm pressed to her side as she vaulted over a collapsed beam. Ford stayed low, staff clutched tight, scrambling across the platform like it might fall out from under him at any second.

  Xander followed last, casting another Aegis across Zoey’s back as they ran. The glow shimmered, then cracked, as another piece of ceiling clanged off a nearby pipe.

  The bridge groaned deep in its bones, then buckled down the center with a sharp, violent lurch.

  A jagged seam tore across the metal behind them as they cleared the midpoint. Steel shrieked. Supports gave. And with a sound like a dying colossus, the central span dropped into the river below in a cascade of sparks and molten splash.

  Xander and the others hit the southern platform just as the collapse finished behind them.

  They turned to look.

  The middle section of the bridge was gone. Nothing remained but twisted fragments and heat-distorted beams jutting out into empty space. Across the gap, Gruk stood alone on the northern platform, framed by the furnace light of the keep beyond, his silhouette wreathed in smoke and falling ash. His axe hung at his side, the chain still swaying.

  He reached behind him, tore Zoey’s blade from his back, and with a contemptuous flick of the wrist, hurled it into the river of molten metal.

  The sword vanished in an instant, swallowed by the heat.

  A blast of lava burst upward in reply.

  Gruk didn’t flinch. Instead, he raised his fused gauntlet and thrust it straight into the airborne spray, letting the molten metal cascade over his arm. It coated the already-warped plating with glowing liquid fire. His entire frame shook with what looked like fury, or joy, or something in between.

  "You want fire?" he roared. "The Maw gives plenty!"

  Across the gap, Xander stared him down. The others pulled in close behind, catching their breath, adjusting stances, taking stock.

  The bridge was gone.

  Gruk was not.

  Also, Patreon is currently ten chapters ahead. That’s a ten-chapter head start for five bucks, and all of that goes straight back into supporting my writing time and keeping this story moving. If you’ve been itching to read ahead, that’s the place to do it.