"That's so sad." There wasn't a thimbleful of emotion in Fiona's husky voice. "There is only one human shield left. It's an extra shame that he, unlike you, was bearable."

  "We have to do something!" Kim shouted. She leaned near the hole that had just sucked in her earthly friend. "Damon! Damon! Damon!"

  Fiora grabbed Kim's face. Her claws poked into the skin on Kim's forehead and jaw, forcing her to shut her mouth. "Since we can't hear him being torn to pieces, he can't hear us." Fiora let her go.

  Kim slammed her fist against the floor, surprised at the cracks that appeared. "Do something!"

  "He knew it was a risk." Fiora rubbed her hands together, her claws making a scritch scratch noise. "Now, let's return to our task. Your floor idea was a good one. I bet there's a similar door hidden in the ceiling."

  Kim got to her feet. "I'm not leaving him there!"

  "He's dead. Likely, cats with clawed tentacles have given him Cat Scratch Fever. And you're not big enough to drag a corpse around. I've seen some of you more emotional spawners do that until they became corpses themselves."

  Kim grasped for a way to motivate this dragonspawn. Insults just set her off. Then Kim had a thought so brilliant she nearly lifted a finger and said, eureka. She'd do the opposite of insults: "He said you smelled nice."

  A soft emotion flitted behind the dragonspawn's eyes. They were the most human-looking thing about her, only slightly reptilian with shockingly blue irises and gold flecks that caught the moss light. "It's more proof that he was the less insufferable of you two," Fiora added.

  "He's totally less insufferable. I'm very sufferable." Kim mentally patted herself on the back: this was going to work!

  "I won't let him die alone," Fiora announced.

  "Hey, let's think positive: maybe he's alive and all alone sniffing flowers."

  "He won't be alone long," Fiora said.

  Fiora, oddly, came in for a hug. The dragonspawn, with impressive speed, grabbed Kim by the shoulders and flipped her upside down.

  "Wha—" was all Kim could get out before Fiora threw her into the portal.

  She shot through some weird black goop. The world went briefly dark around her, and she wondered if she was going back to Earth. Then she burst into shining light and greenness.

  Because she'd been thrown through a hole, she expected to keep flying downward and briefly wondered if she had the skills to flip cat-like in the air and land on her feet. She hoped it was just enough distance for her to do the flip, but not so far she'd break her legs.

  To her absolute surprise, she stopped in mid-air and fell back toward the hole she'd just emerged from. She landed on her feet next to it, keeping her balance and placing her hand on Strümbringer's hilt. Kim blinked. A thick carpet of vines snaked along the floor. They led to a giant tree in the center of the room. The light came from a glowing sun-like orb that dangled from more vines on the ceiling.

  Wait, she realized. The black portal that she'd just gone through was right beside her. That meant she was walking on the ceiling. Or this room was upside down. So, the laws of physics made little sense in this dungeon. Maybe the wizard had been studying M. C. Escher.

  She sniffed. It did smell like Fiora here!

  Damon was nowhere to be seen. She realized her ears were not hearing a thing. Perhaps it had something to do with passing through that hole. She banged her right ear with a palm. Then, with a pop, the sound popped in.

  Buzzing and chirping were the first things she recognized. Crickets. Flies. Bees. The insects floated all around her, except of course, for the crickets. They flew past, clearly more interested in the many flowers that filled the room.

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  "Damon?" she shouted. "It's Kim. I made it."

  There was no answer. The chamber wasn't much over fifty feet wide. Where could he be hiding?

  The Fiora smell was becoming overpowering. Maybe it would be better to have the real thing here. Kim knelt near the hole in the floor and reached into the guck, but couldn't force her hand through. The substance wasn't solid, and yet it was like a tight rubber stopper. She poked her sword into the blackness, but it, too, came to a stop no matter how hard she pushed.

  "Fiora!" she shouted. "I'm alive!"

  There was no reply. Kim stared at the hole and was about to try her hand at it again when something tapped her on the back.

  She twirled around, sword out, and kept her balance.

  There was no one there.

  Had it been like when she'd get a phantom vibration from her phone? Overwhelming sadness washed over her. She missed her phone; her plant app would tell her what these plants were called. And which ones were poisonous. Plus, it would be great to call home and tell her mom…

  What?

  That she was alive in another world called Metaloria?

  Since there was no way back to Fiora, Kim began walking around, scanning the room for traps or monsters. The tree in the center of the room looked to be a thousand years old. Thorns ran all along its trunk and branches. It had grown up next to the light in the ceiling.

  "Damon?" There was some tall grass over in the far corner that he might be sleeping in. Maybe a bee sting could have sent him into anaphylactic shock.

  She took a few more careful steps in that direction, coming around to the other side of the tree, and found out that it wasn't a sting that had incapacitated Damon.

  He was bound to the tree. Vines were wrapped around his arms, his legs and chest. He looked dazed and just conscious enough to be frightened. A pink, pulsing blob hung out of his mouth—his tongue! A vine had twined around that organ and was pulling on it.

  "Damon!" she rushed toward him, but he moved one partially free arm to warn her, then it snapped back against the tree.

  "Wines! Wines!" he gave a muffled, gurgling shout.

  Why was he talking about wine? She wondered. Then, her brain translated the slurred words. "Oh, vines. Yes, there are vines everywhere."

  "Ayvil!" He sounded very insistent about that last word.

  "Is there someone here? Is that what you're warning me about?" She waved her sword around. "I know how to use this thing!"

  "WINES!" he opened his mouth enough to give one more shout.

  "Oh!" she said. "I see you mean the vines are—"

  A vine snapped out from the tree and wrapped around her left arm. She let out a yell, which then progressed into a shriek, and then she stared wide-eyed at the vine. It had light green veins running through it and was as thick as Arnold Schwarzenagger's arm. It yanked her several steps towards the tree. She stumbled, then jammed her feet down and slid along the slick floor. These stupid leather shoes are useless! I'd kill for my Nikes right now.

  The word kill got stuck in her head. So she swung Strümbringer.

  She missed her left arm by about an inch.

  And hit the vine.

  The blade sliced right through the green fleshy vine, spattering her with green juice. She grabbed the hilt with her other hand so that both hands were holding the sword. "Just try that again!"

  The vines tried it. Several of them snapped out of the tree, and she sliced two before two others grabbed her arms. Another got her left leg. And another whipped around her right. And the last one circled around her neck. She swung awkwardly and cut the one from her neck, but that left her open to a second volley of vines. This time, with this many vines, it was no contest: she was lifted a few inches from the floor and flew straight at the tree, dropping her sword. The vines spun her, so she slammed her back into the tree. Several sharp thorns stabbed into her spine and shoulders, and the vines bound her in a heartbeat.

  She was right beside Damon. She kept her mouth shut so the vines couldn't grab her tongue. The thorns stuck in her back surprisingly didn't hurt.

  And then, as if the tree were trying to calm her, a soft music emerged from inside it. It was slow and melodically depressing.

  "Ish 'in mah dorkest hor'," Damon explained.

  "Don't open your mouth," she said, then slammed hers shut when a vine stabbed at her tongue. Had he said it was his dorkiest hour?

  The music was soothing despite the feeling of depression that it spread. There was no use in fighting. She grew quieter and stifled a yawn, remembering an open mouth was an open invitation for the vines to grab her tongue.

  "How are you?" she asked, then shut her mouth to stop another vine.

  "Brghshss," Damon said. He looked a little paler and not as cute with his tongue pulled so far out of his mouth. "Blud. Ish in mah dorkest hor."

  "Don't talk. Sorry. I see it hurts." Then Kim snapped her mouth shut again. This time the vine dug between her lips, but she bit it off. "Ha!" she managed before closing her mouth.

  "Blud."

  "What?" She spoke without opening her mouth. "Oh, the tree is sucking the blood from our bodies. That's why you're so pale." A vine grabbed at her tongue, and she had to clench her teeth together, biting off the green tip. The wriggling green piece wormed its way to the back of her throat, but she spat it out. "I see."

  It was just her luck to be caught up on a vampire tree in the third room she'd entered in this dungeon. But while she had strength, she tried to slide her arms out. No, that didn't work. Nor did wiggling because the vines grew so tight they threatened to cut off her circulation.

  When she glanced around for some way of prying them off, she was drawn to the bright light that hung down from the ceiling. It looked a lot like a very tiny sun.

  A perfectly coiffed face appeared in the sun. "Another one bites the dust," a gleeful male voice said. "Such fun!"