Leo froze, black fluid seeping off the needle, into his veins.

  Harva stepped back, sliding another needle into his back. “What do you think? Seven teeth ought to be enough, right? You seem quite strong.”

  Despite the pins in his back, Leo forced himself to move, if only a couple centimeters, staring Harva in the face.

  Harva smiled, kissing him on the cheek. “Don’t try to escape, okay? Okay?”

  She turned, eyes locking onto the pillar I stood behind. “My my, there wouldn’t be another one of you around here, would there?”

  She reached under one arm, pulling silvery needles from her skin. For her, the neurotoxin didn’t seem to have any effect. “Where are you?”

  Energy washed out, scorching the stone, draining the color from my face and chilling my hands. It was far, far stronger than Ardenidi, smothered in malice and beyond anything Harva could ever naturally produce.

  “Throttle,” I whispered, crouching down. “When I give the signal, run for Irion and Eere. They're the only way we’re getting Leo back to normal. Just don’t do anything stupid, okay?”

  Throttle scoffed, fixing her messy hair into a bun. “Please.” she took a dagger and flicked it high, up into the air.

  Meanwhile, Harsva balanced on one foot, scanning the room with mock enthusiasm. “Heellllllloooo? Don’t you want to talk?”

  “TALK TO MY BLADE!” Throttle screamed, punching through the pillar, then snapping around, cleaving the air with her sword.

  Harva was taken back, staggering as she dodged. Before the first movement was even finished, Throttle moved against bending her arm back around, pivoting off the ground and cracking the flat of her sword against her dagger–which had just fallen into place—and it rocketed forward, cutting a gash in Harva’s side.

  She staggered, again, though otherwise ignoring the loss of blood. Impossibly, the attack had been too weak to trigger so much as a notification. Harva broke in wild laughter, wiping blood off her hands onto her black uniform. “My my, I wouldn’t think you’d be the type to kill a human. And so fast!”

  Throttle braced herself, sword held high, hilt in both hands.

  “You haven’t figured it out?” Harva asked, laughter softening into a grin as her voice dropped down an octave. “I’ll give you a hint. Yes, this is Harva, and no she's not possessed or mind controlled. Neither would work on her, even if I had them, and what I have is much, much more fun.”

  Throttle narrowed her eyes to thin slits.

  Then she charged, flashing left and right in a circle motion, before making a hairpin turn, cutting at Harva’s feet, before Harva flipped, dodging the blade, landing with one hand on the ground.

  Her eyes sharpened, focused on the broken remains of the pillar.

  “Is that another human?” Harva whispers. “I wouldn’t think so many to be in such a small place—ooo…you…you’re special.”

  I swallowed hard, pressing against the stone.

  Harva ignored Throttle’s next flurry of attacks, effortlessly leaping up, flipping off a pillar, and slamming into the rubble. I was already gone, crapshoveler gouging hunks out of the rock wall. With each blow of the shovel, cracks opened up, allowing me to climb a little higher, until I was a hundred feet in the air.

  “My you’re fast,” Harva giggled.

  I clambered up the last bit of the wall, reaching the flat top. The ledge was thin, but not so thin that I had trouble standing. For now, it’d do.

  “GUYS!” I shouted, cupping my hands against my mouth. “THE CORE IS HERE!”

  Harva grimaced, grabbing her chest. “Whoopsie. I’m burning through this mana.”

  Down below, the ground exploded apart, and Harva shot into the air, out of sight.

  Throttle and I waited, tense. Sooner or later, she had to come down.

  After a good few minutes, we relaxed.

  Wherever she’d gone off to, it would be taking her a while.

  Throttle huffed. “That was weird.”

  “No kidding,” I muttered, climbing down, back into the room. Irion pitched forward, twitching. “He’s not going to be happy when he wakes up,” I said.

  “No kidding.”

  “I’M HERE!” Cierin shouted, sprinting into the room with a crate full of potions. He took a glance around, frowning. “Where’s Harva?”

  “We don’t know,” I said, with a sigh. “My best guess is she jumped to the second floor.”

  “Jumped?” he pointed up, into the hazy sky.

  “Yeah. Something’s going on with her.”

  I glanced at the box of potions. “Where’d you get all those?”

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  “From the entrance,” Cierin stated. “The Dungeon Core was around here, so I figured it was worth a check. We never brought health potions—since we got the elixir—but some basic strength, durability, and dexterity boosting could’ve helped her a lot.”

  “I doubt those would be much of a help,” Throttle muttered.

  “Well there’s the elixir, anyway,” Cierin huffed. “That ought to be more than enough, consider its level twenty six or something. It might not heal fatal blows or severed limbs, but it should heal anything else.” He pointed to Leo. “What happened to him?”

  “His best friend stabbed him in the gut with neurotoxins.”

  Cierin squinted. “Harva?”

  “Yeah.”

  Cierin let out a groan. “I missed something important, didn’t I?”

  Thankfully, the archers arrived quickly, Irion and Eere immediately went to work to get the needles out of Leo’s back and side.They were sharp and thin, but without barbs, so it was a relatively smooth process. Actually, thanks to Leo’s resistance and innate durability, he didn’t seem to have taken any damage from the actual stabbing.

  Irion and Eere used their abilities, cleansing Leo, and he dropped, melting down, before he curled up into a ball, burying his head in his knees.

  “Wow,” Cierin whispered. “He looks rough.”

  “You know,” Throttle started, “Do you think Harva was his girlfriend?”

  Cierin frowned. “Why would she attack him?”

  But Throttle cut me off before I had the chance to speak, clamping both hands on Cierin’s shoulders. “Harva’s dead.

  “Dead?” I gagged.

  Cierin staggered back, shoving her hands off him. “You said she attacked you.”

  Throttle nodded.

  “But she’s supposed to be dead?”

  “Pretty much.”

  Cierin nodded. “So Harva is a zombie?”

  “Well she’s not alive,” Throttle muttered. “I know a decent bit about fighting, and Harva’s not that good. But her nature became obvious when I stabbed her—”

  “Harva talked to us.” I blurted. “She’s not—”

  “Have you ever been stabbed?” Throttle snapped. “As in, actually stabbed by an actual blade? Because I have,” she said, gesturing toward her stomach. “I don’t care how good of a fighter you are, if there’s a wound in your side, it’s going to affect how you’re physically able to move, because actual physical muscles have been severed. Not only did Harva completely ignore the pain of her injury, her movements and fighting were in no way affected by the wound I’d inflicted on her, which implies she’s not the one moving in the first place. She can’t be alive.”

  “B-but she talked,” I stammered.

  “Magic,” Throttle grunted. “This whole thing rots of magic. And lots of it. I don’t know what the Core did to her, but it wasn’t nice.”

  Cierin frowned. “What’s that thing you always say?”

  Throttle raised an eyebrow. “Never eat an Intoxishroom?”

  “That’s a thing?—” Cierin asked.

  “It’s a ridiculously strong hallucinogen—”

  “---Well I meant the other thing—”

  “---The thing where I say I miss the days when a fight boiled down to who could hit who harder until they stopped moving?”

  “Yeah,” Cierin said, with a low sigh. “Since the moment I stepped into these dungeons not one thing here made any sense. Actually, I was confused even before we entered the dungeon—there was a lot of talk about mana emissions and all those monsters fleeing the area and—”

  My eyes shot open. “What kind of monsters, exactly?”

  Cierin shrugged. “Cores? I think we had a conversation about those, though I guess some other monsters must be escaping too, but yeah it’s mostly just cores. Why do you ask?”

  “It’s odd, isn’t it?” I asked.

  Leo finally got to his feet, though he didn’t look good. His eyes were sunken back and there was a sort of darkened face that hadn't been there before.

  “Leo?” Mall asked, stepping closer beside him, and waving a hand. “Hey. Are you okay?”

  Leo ignored her, tuned to Throttle.

  “You. Throttle. You said Harva was dead. Can you prove that?”

  Throttle huffed. “Other than what I mentioned earlier, where she didn’t react to pain or bodily harm, I can't remember her breathing during our fight, and her skin looked pale and cold. Oh, and there was a massive wound on her head, which still hadn’t healed, despite the effects of regen, which would only work if she was alive.”

  “Regen doesn’t work while there’s toxin in the bloodstream,” Leo said, stiffening. “You don’t know for sure. We won’t know for sure until we get a heartbeat.”

  Throttle sighed. “Move on, wackjob, we’ve got bigger issues right now.”

  Leo puffed red, about to snap back, before his resolve caved, and he slumped.

  Quin entered the vault, holding onto Sern. “Hey, did you kill the Core yet?”

  “He left,” I stated.

  “He?” Quin asked.

  “Looked like a guy,” I said. “Feels too weird to call something humanoid ‘it.’”

  Quin blinked. “Huh. You’re a weird guy, you know that?” He scanned the room, spotting downcast faces. “What’s going on?”

  The party turned to Leo, but he didn't answer, so Throttle chirped up.

  “Harva’s dead,” Throttle said, with a sigh. “Well probably.”

  “Harva, as in…magical-special-class-mage, Harva?” Quin clarified. “As in, one-of-the-only-people-with-a-real-shot-at-killing-this-thing, Harva? Oh. Oh, that’s bad.”

  “It’s not hopeless,” Cierin stated. “We’ve seen what this core can do. That’s worth something.”

  Irion nodded. “We’ve just got to figure out what kind of powers this Core has.”

  “All of them,” Harva stated.

  “Well that’s just ridiculous,” Quin scoffed. “Not to mention unfair.”

  My stomach started doing flips.

  Quin then noticed the other members of the party had turned pale, and he followed their lines of sigh. “Uh…”

  Harva smiled and waved, hanging in the air above everyone’s heads. Not bobbing. Standing fixed in place, in the air, defying the laws of physics.

  Quin rubbed his eyes. “Aren’t you dead?”

  Throttle huffed. “The flight is new.”