Damon didn't feel brave. In fact, his stomach had a queasiness that made him wish he was back at home lying on his bed, steps from the downstairs bathroom. The only thing that was giving him the will to get closer to the vomit was the extra energy he had received when that half note had hit his chest. It somehow made him able to concentrate a little harder, see life a smidgen clearer. And oddly, he had a strong desire to pick up his guitar and blast out a solo. But his Fender Squier Strat was back in the aforementioned bedroom in his home in Snohomish, Washington, so he instead tapped his fingers on the staff. The tapping reminded him he'd had the odd hallucination that lightning bolts were coming out of his fingertips.

  Now that his mind was a little clearer, he stared at the particularly luminescent vomit that had been inside the monster. The guck had become a symbol of his life. Messy, yucky, transparent and strange. One moment he was head banging at an Anvil concert beside an attractive young woman—living a dream he'd had since his teen years—and the next he was in another world looking at the puke of a monster he'd just helped kill; living a different dream he'd had since his teen years.

  "I'm not touching that with a ten-foot pole vault pole," Kim said.

  Damon agreed with her sentiment. Because she'd referenced a vault pole, he was curious whether she had done track in high school. She certainly was athletic. That was something his cheek told him, by the fact it was still aching.

  "Yeah, not sure I want to touch it either," he said. He considered using the staff to poke around the vomit, but didn't want to get it dirty.

  "Well, one of you will sift through it," Fiora said. "Before I rub both your faces into it."

  The numbers above her were endlessly fascinating to Damon.

  Metal Health: 95

  Kind: Dragonspawn

  Type: 7th Class Warrior - Hellish Headbanger

  Metal Skill: 6th Class Roadie - Allthingfinder

  Metal Mana: 10023

  Proclivity: Shadow Walker

  Special Ability: Rainbow Scales

  She was healing. He hadn't seen a glowing note hit her, so maybe being knocked out at the start of the battle meant she didn't get a reward.

  She had a metal skill of being a roadie. The only roadies he knew lugged amps or stood at the edge of the stage with a tuned guitar. Her proclivity was Shadow Walker. What did that mean? And, like Shayne, she also had a special ability, but hers was Rainbow Scales.

  "Hey," Damon said. "Do your scales change colour?"

  Fiora narrowed her eyes. "Why do you ask that? Is it something you saw?"

  "I just wondered how you made yourself seem invisible," he replied.

  She sniffed, blood and snot rattling in her nostrils. Her snout was clearly broken, judging by the angle it now protruded. The dragonspawn, without even taking a bracing breath, grabbed the end of it and pulled toward the center. A snapping, cracking noise echoed in the room, and her snout straightened. "I have rainbow scales, which change color when I want to hide," she said this easily as if she hadn't recently adjusted the bony structure of her face. "It's a helpful way to get out of paying for ale at a pub." She laughed. "Anyway," Fiora continued. "Congratulations on killing the j?rk. This was an a-j?rk which are rather simple. The b-j?rks have more feathers and sing in a pleasant manner, but no one understands their songs and they are massively deadly. Anyway, you won. I might have underestimated you little rockers."

  "We worked as a team, right, Kim?" Damon said.

  "Uh, yes," Kim said. "A team."

  Fiora wiped away a line of dark blood from her nostril. "Where did the other guy go?"

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  "Shayne?" Damon said, happy he had remembered the man's name. "The j?rk ate him."

  "Oh, too bad," Fiora replied. "I haven't seen that exact death before."

  "So he's dead?" Kim asked.

  "He didn't get regurgitated. Therefore he's dead. That's how it works." They were silent for a moment. Damon wondered if he should say a word about Shayne, but Fiora barked out, "Any more stupid questions?"

  "Two musical notes that came out of the monster's body," Kim said. "One floated into me and one into him. And I felt stronger." She looked down at her arm. "I am stronger."

  "Killing your opponent released the Notes of Power," Fiora snorted the words. "It's obvious."

  "Notes of Power?" Damon asked. He played guitar in his band, The Lazy Smaugs, and so he knew his notes. "I've heard of power chords, but not Notes of Power."

  "I forget you come from a stupid world where you aren't rewarded for killing people. Well, this knowledge will shake you all night long. The notes make you more metal. It means you've won. Savour the power and the glory that it brings you. Most spawners don't even achieve a single victory."

  Kim looked down at the dead body of the j?rk. It seemed she stood straighter, as if willing herself to be brave. "So, are we done the quest?" she asked. "Can we go home?"

  Fiora let out a hoarse laugh. "No. You are not done. And going back to your so-called real world is not as simple as snapping your fingers. Plus, I want to point out that this is also the 'real' world—so don't be arrogant about the reality of your world. There are as many real worlds as there are grains of sand on a blood-soaked beach filled with slain foes."

  Damon loved movies and novels with multiple universes. And so he accepted the truth of Fiora's words. They were in a new world, and they had a task to do—several tasks, in fact. "Since we're here," he said, working up his bravery like blowing up a balloon. "We might as well open the chest."

  The wooden chest wasn't much bigger than a shoebox. Gastric juices coated it, giving the object a gentle green glow. Damon knelt just outside the goo zone. The smell was worse nearer the floor. He carefully set down his staff and then reached out a hand. Something lay across the top of the chest that he hoped wasn't Shayne's intestines.

  "Wait!" he said to himself. "First, check for traps."

  "Check for traps?" Kim said.

  "It's chest opening 101." Damon plucked a table leg splinter from the floor and wielded it like he was about to disarm a bomb. When he pressed the splinter into the keyhole, two metal jaws came out of the sides of the lock and snapped the wood in half. "See," he said. "All that game time is paying off." The jaws didn't let go of the sliver. They likely would have chomped off his finger.

  He used the remaining sliver to push the intestine off. But as it moved, he saw writing above it:

  R Savage Bandana +6 quad skills

  It was Shayne's bandana. He shoved it into his pouch, not wanting to upset Kim with the sight of it. He tried not to picture the man's last moments in Metaloria, or what it must have felt like to be swallowed by a j?rk. I will raise a cup to you when we get to a pub, he thought.

  Damon then pushed the last bit of sliver into the lock, twisted and was rewarded with a click. The lid of the chest popped open, and nothing else popped out: no poison darts. Nor was there a giant sandpapery tongue from the depths of a netherworld. Instead, there were seven gold coins inside and a charcoal drawing of a man with a well-trimmed beard and long curly hair—he could easily be the lead singer for a hair metal band.

  And there was also an object he totally had not expected to see.

  "There's a piece of pie in there," Kim said. She was leaning over his shoulder, close enough he could smell her breath. It was minty, which surprised him, though he decided it would be creepy to mention that.

  "That's Blayre the wizard," Fiora answered.

  "The pie is Blayre?" Damon asked.

  "You are not blessed with many brains," the dragonspawn said.

  "Oh, I see," Damon said. "Blayre thought it was funny to include a pie inside a chest that was inside a monster."

  Fiora leaned over and took a gander at the chest's contents. "Yes, a pie in vomit gives him giggles. But the drawing is of Blayre. It's from a hundred years ago, when he was younger and his hair was less metal. Blayre's face already burns in my mind every night before I sleep."

  "You hate him that much, do you?" Damon asked.

  "Oh, I hate him with the power of a thousand thunderstucks." Fiora rubbed at her scaly forehead as if trying to get rid of an image just behind her skull. "He has cast a spell on me so that every night, just before I fall asleep, his horrid visage appears in my mind's eye and says, 'Sweet dreams are made of me.' And then he speaks an unutterable word. The only way I fall asleep is by imagining dismembering him piece by piece."

  "How can a word be unutterable?" Damon was really enjoying his second year English studies at the University of Washington and was often the first to put up his hand—especially in the science fiction and fantasy novel class. "Every word is utterable. Some words are holy and shouldn't be spoken; is that what you mean? Or is it offensive like the N word?"

  "What I mean is I will never, ever utter it." Fiora's reply was calm, but the numbers above her head had turned an angry red. "Until I'm ripping out his heart with my claws."

  "Oh," Damon said. "I see."

  Damon decided not to ask about the whole 'one hundred years ago' thing or the unmentionable word. He imagined Blayre was now in a wheelchair in an old folks' home for hairy wizards. For some subconscious reason, his mind added a Warrant t-shirt and him humming Cherry Pie. "Does he expect us to eat the pie?" The crust sank a little under the pressure of his finger.

  "It is a cherry pie," Fiora said. "It is his holiness's favourite type of pie. And yes, he expects you to eat it."

  "He expects us to eat a pie that was in a chest hidden in the stomach of a monster?" Kim asked. "How stupid does he think we—"

  Before she could finish her sentence, Damon lifted the pie and took a big bite.