We fought other creatures on our way to what Gerik said was the dungeon’s lowest level.

  There were ghouls, horrible semi-humans gnawing on an assortment of shattered bones as we watched from hiding, their teeth cracking the bones or else scraping over them with a sound like nails on a chalkboard.

  Their cavern had a rancid scent so thick it was nearly an actual fog. The bones were from a mixture of various animals and unfortunate people whose lives had ended in this cavern. A fair percentage still had remnants of tattered flesh. Some of the flesh was withered and dry, like leather. Other bones had meat fresh enough to bleed.

  Bits of broken armor were littered amongst the bones. There were fallen weapons. A helmet. Hints of gold. The sour taste in the air was getting into my throat. It was difficult to avoid gagging, and even harder to block out the realization of what we were smelling. The whole cavern was suffused with death.

  Gerik and I hid at the tunnel’s edge, looking out to the pale white flesh of the ghouls, the reds of their eyes and teeth, their long fingers with nails like claws, the soft plop plop of their feet whenever they shambled across the stone floor. I felt my stomach turn with every crunch of their teeth on bones, or the smacking of their blubbery lips.

  “I want these abominations for myself,” Gerik whispered as he slid away into darkness, barely visible despite how I knew he was there. He reached the first of the ghouls and had its head lopped away before any of the others noticed. There were six more of them. It didn’t seem like Gerik would stand a chance. But then two more were dead, and then another, and Gerik’s dim outline danced through the cavern, all grace and speed, nearly impossible to see even though the torches were casting his shadow against the walls.

  It was only moments before the ghouls were dead and we were hurrying on through the tunnels. We didn’t stop to search for any treasure. The scents were too overpowering, and it would’ve seemed like grave-robbing, anyway. It would have made us into ghouls of a different sort.

  Perhaps another five hundred feet down the slowly descending tunnel, I killed a curse worm with a lightning bolt. The creature came burrowing out of the floor twenty feet in front of us, just as Gerik and I were finally broaching the topic of how I’d killed a man back at the cliff. Gerik tried to console me, and I appreciated that, but I honestly wasn’t sure if it was necessary. I was still furious beyond belief at the mustachioed man, and though parts of me cringed at the memories of his scream and that terrible sound of impact, most parts of me were overjoyed that the fucker had died. Most parts of me remembered his smug smile when he’d been cutting my rope.

  Then, just before the curse worm attacked, my conversation with Gerik had diverted into a discussion of my Trip Ring, and into my own abilities, especially how my stats had implied that I could cast lightning bolts. Was that even possible? How would I do it? These were the questions running through my head when suddenly the ground shifted and the worm reared up from below.

  It was monstrous. Thick as a tree trunk, dripping a gooey fluid from its undulating body. Mottled, dark pink flesh with patches of thick hair. It had multiple eyes, like an assortment of jewels shining from its terrible flesh. Smaller versions of the worm burrowed up from all around, and even smaller examples were burrowing within the larger worm itself. The smell was like an intense coal fire.

  I screamed and then—likely because of the discussion Gerik and I’d been having—I fired a lightning bolt. It flew out from my fingertips and slammed into the curse worm, blasting the worm was such force that it was ripped free from the floor and flung nearly twenty feet down the tunnel, bouncing three times against the sidewalls before coming to a tumbling rest, dead and leaking.

  The smaller worms all died in the explosion. The tunnel’s roof rumbled a warning against anyone firing off any more explosives. A pair of supporting beams shifted. There was a shallow crater in the floor, a pocket of charred stones strewn with meaty hunks from the smaller worms. Strands of electricity still sizzled across the largest worm, lending the tunnel an eerie light.

  “You cast a lightning bolt?” Gerik said with such wonder that it surprised me. After all, he’d been friends with Salena and was currently friends with Fridu of Stone Wood. They were witches. Certainly they’d cast lightning bolts before?

  “I’ve seen lightning bolts before,” Gerik said, clearing that up. But then why was he so confused?

  “That wasn’t any first level Lightning Bolt,” he explained. “That was far more powerful than it should’ve been.” He strode to the monstrous worm’s corpse and gauged the size of the hole I’d blasted, turning to me to hold out his hands, nearly a foot apart.

  I shrugged, then picked up a small pouch that had appeared on the floor. It contained a few gold coins and an ample collection of silver coins tarnished with age. There were also two jewels. I wondered what they were worth. I pictured me back home, in the city, at a jewelry store, trying to sell them and facing the inevitable question of how they’d chanced into my possession. What the hell would I tell them? I didn’t know. Gerik and I moved on.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  A hundred feet down the tunnel, we saw another giant beetle. This one was crawling down the left-hand wall of the tunnel, which by then had become a well-kept hallway. The air felt fresher.

  The beetle considered us for a moment and then scuttled away, with its clawed feet ripping out small pieces of stone and knocking a tapestry to the floor. On a whim I concentrated on making the beetle trip, mostly to see if I could do it. As soon as the thought flashed through my head, the beetle skidded on the wall, its back feet sliding free while its front feet scrabbled for purchase, but it was too late and it thudded to the floor.

  Immediately afterward, maybe because the beetle understood I was the one who’d made it trip, it went on the attack, spreading its wings and flying madly at my face. Gerik shoved me to one side and leapt forward, hitting the floor in a somersault and drawing his sword as he rolled, with the blade arcing upward and cleaving the beetle in half. Gerik’s momentum carried him past the resulting shower of blood and goop, which was good because it smelled like radioactive weasel shit.

  “Nice work,” I said, but Gerik held a finger to lips for silence. I tried to listen for whatever he was hearing. There wasn’t much. There was the sloshing noise of the bisected beetle settling into a widening pool of gore. The fluttering sounds of the flames in the oil lamps against the walls, like tiny bat wings. The constant hum, almost a moan, of being underground, of all the stone breathing around us. Occasionally a slight breeze would make its way down the hall. Gerik walked closer to me, avoiding the spilled beetle.

  “You hear that?” he whispered. “We’re being followed.”

  “Followed?” I whispered back. “I didn’t hear anything. Who’s following us?”

  “Too far back to tell. This isn’t a good defensive position. We’ll have to move on.”

  “You think it’s Pig-Face?” I asked as we began walking.

  “Pig-Face?”

  “Oh. Back at the Leaky Centaur in Whitewater. There were three guards. Pig-Face was their leader. They tried to… arrest me, or something? One of the guards is the man I killed back at the river.”

  “That could be it, then. When you see one rat, there’s usually a nest.”

  “What the hell do these guys have against me?”

  “Did you sleep with anyone in Whitewater? Kill anyone?”

  “Uh, no.”

  “Then it’s likely something to do with how you knew Salena. She was a controversial woman. Had a lot of enemies.”

  “What? Salena? How’s that even possible?” This was news to me. I’d just figured that everyone loved her.

  “Because of Hogarth,” Gerik told me. “Her husband. The man who died. He was the son of Megger Sengar.” Gerik spoke the name as if it had great importance. He looked to me for a reaction. All I had was confusion.

  “Who?” I said.

  “Ah, I forget you’re not from these lands. Megger Sengar is the head of Sengar family, the entire family, not just his blood relatives but the entire band of assassins. Perhaps three hundred of the lot. They wield enormous influence in Whitewater and beyond. Not just this influence,” he tapped his dagger, “but also political in nature. Sengar is brother to the king.”

  “An assassin is the king’s brother? How’s the king feel about having a man like that in his family?”

  “Don’t be na?ve. King Istvan feels it’s wonderful. His enemies fear being cut down from the darkness. It makes it easier to impose your will when there’s death hanging from your every word.”

  “Where’s Salena come into this? The problem with her, I mean.”

  “Salena, in the minds of some, used her witch’s powers to steal Hogarth from his rightful path. She led him astray, and then to his death in the Great Tooth Dungeon. For that crime, she had to pay. But even worse, she stole the honor of the Sengar assassins.”

  “How’s so?”

  “I can’t be sure. There was some object. An item. A sacred artifact stolen from the Sengar treasure-house. Hogarth took it with him when he decided his life was with Salena, rather than his family. Since then, the assassin cult has been fading, their influence waning.”

  “Wait. The blurred man. Could he be one of the assassins? Do they think I have this thing? Why the hell would I have it?”

  “Someone has it,” Gerik said. “Might be you.”

  “I think I’d know if I had a magical item.”

  “Would you? You didn’t know Salena was a witch, even though she told you. You didn’t know the world of Goncourt existed. You had a door to another world in your bedroom, but remained ignorant of its presence. And now suddenly you’re an expert on magical items?”

  I didn’t have any response. We walked on in silence. My adrenalin was fading and my body was nudging me for attention, reminding me that I should’ve been home, asleep in bed, warm and safe. Instead, we were fighting increasingly more powerful monsters while likely being tracked by a cult of assassins.

  The hallway grew steadily larger. It was still immaculate, like we’d walked into a castle staffed by dedicated servants. But while the tunnel had started out as a hall perhaps ten feet across, now it was easily twenty feet across, and the ceiling was progressively higher. There were occasional doors of fifteen or even twenty feet tall, with doorknobs as large as basketballs. The scale of everything was immense.

  “Are we in a hallway for giants?” I finally asked.

  “That we are, Josh of Apartment 3B. That we are.”

  “Really? Honestly? Does that mean there are giants here?” There was barely a tremor in my voice.

  “Likely not. The giants of old have passed. Even in these dungeons, their steps have faded. There could be one of their lesser kin, I suppose. Fifteen feet tall at the most.”

  “I think it’s fair to say that if someone’s fifteen feet tall, they can rightfully be called a giant.”

  “True. But it’s also fair to say that you wouldn’t feel the same if you ever saw one of the proper giants.”

  Ahead of us, the hallway came to an end. There were open doors to either side. We peered into one to discover a storage room with shattered wooden crates the size of houses. It looked like a tornado had destroyed them. The other side of the hall had a vast library, a den of sorts, with a roaring fireplace over twenty feet tall. The heat was incredible. The irregular winds were heavier in the doorway.

  “Whoever’s following us,” Gerik said, “we’ll meet them in here.”

  “Okay,” I said, trying not to stutter, feeling small in the giant’s doorway.

  “Ready your wits,” Gerik said, clapping me on the back. “And also your blade, your prowess, and any last words, if needed.”

  “Okay,” I told him, most assuredly stuttering, feeling lost in the world.

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