Sally stretched out as they stood in the ground floor of the dungeon. It was just a plain open room of off-colored gray brickwork, with a staircase at the opposite end that rose up to join to the next floor above.
“This challenge must just be to make it up the stairs,” she said as she nodded to herself. “Nice of them to start off pretty easy for us.”
Chuck mostly ignored her statement. “Dent can solo the first five or six levels, then we’ll need to assist. That’ll give us time to talk.”
She pouted, but agreed. Unless there were some tasty brains, she could put a pause on the murder-spree to get a little exposition.
The swordsman limbered up and put the case holding Observer-Archie on the floor against the wall. Chuck waved his hand, and it turned invisible. Enough to keep it safe from prying eyes without having to drag it floor to floor.
They walked over to the staircase, the dagger at the end of Sally’s staff poking holes in the brick floor. She worked her jaw in thought, wondering how many stabs it would take around the walls to make the tower collapse. Not that the System would congratulate and give her the correct rewards for that—but it might, so it was worth the brain cell action.
“How do you… are you doing okay?” Chuck began, some of his old awkwardness showing through his current stoic personality. “Like, with Theo and everything?”
She screwed her face up. “It’s difficult. On one side of the coin, I’m heartbroken. But on the other side, I’m essentially a mass-murderer and it seems petty to strop over a single one of my own being killed.”
He nodded in response. “Both very human and very dissociated at once. Very like you.”
“If there’s one thing I am, it’s consistent.”
They circled up the staircase, neither of the men wanting to touch that statement. At the top of their ascent was a doorway with the number one engraved upon it. Chuck held out his hand and sent some buffs towards the swordsman, green, brown, and gold circles and pulses of energy flowing around his body.
“When you’re ready, Dent.”
The door opened up and Sally stretched out onto her tiptoes to try to see what was inside. They stepped up behind the swordsman as he entered, his blade-arm illuminated by a sharp blue sheen.
Some kind of floating eel creature, with a head that looked more like a seal than a snake. It swirled and bobbed in the air, awaiting combat to start.
Dent went into a half-crouch, then a burst of air blew dust back against them as he vanished to appear at the other side of the room. After a brief moment, an orange line drew across the Monster, as it split in two.
“A little cliche,” Sally said as she grinned, “but super badass.”
“Right?” Chuck smiled.
“My turn for questions,” she pushed him to start moving toward the next stairs. “Soooo you and Dent?”
“Ah, don’t,” the druid tried to wave her away. “You know how these things are. Nurse them back to health, they save your life, you start a warring faction to save the world together.”
“How did that even come about?” They reached the bottom of the next set of steps while Dent waited by the door. “No offence, Chucks, but you used to be a huge dweeb. Now you’re like a warlord.”
“Eh, none taken, I think.” He nodded for the swordsman to continue. “We mostly started in response to the… Red team… did you want me to start using our actual names, or?”
“Hell no, if you make this anything more that the simple blocks I have arranged in my brain, I will literally break down into a blubbering mess.”
He grimaced. “Really?
“You have no idea how much I have to dissociate to maintain this existence.” She sighed and rubbed at her face. “It’s either the mania or the bloodshed. It keeps me grounded. The Outsiders keep me grounded. Did. But, continue.”
“Right.” They stepped into the next room as Dent performed the same attack on some kind of stone-based golem. “Red team came up first, angry with the System. Without you being present, I wanted to give a voice to the Uniques, and those who weren’t so full of hate.”
“I’m proud of you for stepping up.” She grinned and punched him on the shoulder as the golem clattered to the floor in chunks.
“Definitely wasn’t easy, and Dent kept me on the right path.” He returned a glum smile. “Apparently it couldn’t be some democratic forum where the two sides coud decide what was best for the world together. Had to go straight to violence.”
“If only I was awake then.” She shook her head as they walked around the room. “So many of them would be ingested by now. We’d be the winners.”
Chuck tilted his head as they reached the next set of steps. “I was a little surprised you agreed to join us, if I’m honest.”
“Hmm, really?”
The next door opened. “You’ve always been such a force of change for the System,” the Druid continued, “and I didn’t want to step on your toes, or end up butting heads on what we wanted.”
“Red team’s plan for Uniques seemed to be kill us off, so you had that going for you.”
Chuck grinned and looked over at the group of sheep made of blue fire. “Well, what is it you want, Sally?”
She exhaled and thought about it for a moment, watching the swordsman blaze through the Monsters with little issues, flashes of colored skills pulsing around the drab stone walls.
“I want my dork ass vampire boyfriend. My goofy adoptive undead parents. Whatever kind of little wierdo Lucius is. To see Bella and Jackie. Just… be accepted and be able to live.”
Chuck nodded, some sadness across his face. “I want that for you too, Sally. I’m… I’ve been planning things for months. Trying to build that future, eventually. There’s something I need to ask you…” he balled up his hands and relaxed them a few times as if he was trying to build strength.
They stopped by the stairs. “Go ahead,” Sally said, tilting her head.
“We didn’t know when you’d be back,” he sighed, “so we’ve been planning—if it’s even possible—for me to become the next Architect.”
“Okay,” she nodded and put a foot on the step.
“Just ‘okay’?” Chuck furrowed his brow.
She smiled and shook her head. “What, you think I still wanted the job? I’m a complete mess, Chucky. You’re much more qualified.”
“Oh,” he said, at a loss for words as he followed her up.
“You’ve been beating yourself up about that for ages, I can tell. Some things don’t change.” She shook her head. “I joined Blue team because of your vision. If I have to have some god-like asshole ruling over my existence, you’re the least worst on that shortlist.”
The Druid smiled. “Wow, I’m definitely going to sleep better tonight. Assuming we live that long.”
“Pretty dire, huh?” They went into the next room. The ghost of a large dog-like lizard rolled his tongue around as the swordsman charged up a skill. “Part of me wonders if I’m being selfish in trying to bring back fangs rather than working for the greater good.”
Chuck shrugged. “You’ve done more than anyone else in trying to make this world a decent place to exist. If your heart wants this, then I think it’s a just cause.”
“Thanks.” She smiled and sighed. Somehow, he had managed to temper some of the storm brewing within her. Maybe she could be selfish. She had earned it after all the effort she had put into fixing the System for everyone else. Everyone had a limit, and if she died in trying to bring her family back together, then she’d have no regrets. Briefly, she wondered if it was a spell the Druid had used on her to make her so calm again—or maybe talking through things actually did work.
She tilted her head and leaned against the wall as the swordsman zipped around, having a bit more trouble with the ghost. “What happened to eyepatch?”
“In hiding, for safety.” Chuck rubbed at his eyes. “We might need them all, so that’s why the Observer Archie is being held.”
“Then Humps has two more—where’s the fifth area Archie? Was he destroyed?”
He furrowed his brow. “No. At least the others don’t believe so, which is interesting. Presumably that means the last cat had moved somewhere before the fifth area was deleted. We haven’t found them in this last year, however.”
Something felt uncomfortable in the back of her mind, as if the hint of something was trying to push forward. An answer eager to find its way into the world. “Oh,” she said, furrowing her brow and bringing out the necklace from beneath her cloak. “Where do I put the key for the dungeon?”
Chuck raised an eyebrow and looked at the heart-shaped pendant on the chain. “As far as I know, it doesn’t require one. Unless it’s for something higher up? A chest or special door?”
Sally didn’t think so. Theo was vague about it, which usually meant it was something she didn’t need to know right away, but the answer would become obvious when needed. How romantic to leave such mysterious clues for her to solve post-mortem. She grimaced in remembering she left his note back with Norah. She wanted to read that mush before she died, at least.
“Hey, Chucky. You think if you become the big boss, you can turn me into a… normal woman? Maybe remove all the memories of killing and eating people?”
He pulled a face and shrugged. “I have no idea. But I’d do whatever I could for you and the Outsiders.”
“You big sap,” she smiled and stepped away from the wall to head to the next floor. “My friend Lana fell to evil and… Chuck, do you remember Marius?”
The Druid raised an eyebrow and looked off to the ceiling to dig around his memories. “Never met him, of course—but he was your antagonist in the Forest, yeah? Corrupted STAR?”
She nodded. “We found another. You know the Last Word?”
“Yeah.” He shook his head. “You saying what I think you are?”
“My assumption is that Theo has dismantled most of them, but there might still be someone out there who can corrupt the STARs. Oh, ass!”
“Huh?”
Dent walked over, stretching out his arms, ready for the buffs to be put back on. “What’s up?”
“Theo. He had a poison that he said would kill him and he conveniently died on the same day, so I don’t know how much of that, or if he had even cured it, was bullshit.”
The swordsman scratched at the side of his head with the flat of his blade. “Sounds like he knew it wouldn’t matter either way, probably enjoyed holding the secret.”
She nodded. That did sound like the vampire. There were a few more questions she had dragging around her mind, but honestly she was tired of talking and thinking—not to mention watching Dent have all the fun with killing everything. She opened up Party chat.
[Sally: in the tower dungeon with chuck and dent]
[Sally: edward is somewhere, on board]
[Norah: things are quiet here]
No update from Lucius, which made her clench her teeth. She needed that Death Knight back pronto so she could give him a slice of her mind.
“Alright,” she growled. “I need to warm up, tag me in, Dent.”
He shrugged, and Chuck turned his hand to cast the buffs on her instead. “Next few floors are rough, but we have your back.”
Lucius fumed. Fire emojis flickered next to angry faces as he pulled on the armor of the Death Knight to no effect.
“You need to give up,” Humphrey said with a sigh, staring out over the canopy.
“You need to stop giving up.”
The Death Knight turned his head. “Why are you so intent on me going back to them?”
Lucius put his hands on his hips. “What is your purpose?”
“I have none.”
“Really? You no longer have a connection to Norah or Sally? Your Bodyguard duties?”
Humphrey turned back to the expanse beyond. “There was a time where I was just a minion of the System. Observing errors and bugs, making my reports, until I came across something odd—a Player soul that had merged with a Monster.”
Lucius calmed and sat back down beside the plated figure.
“It was as if just seeing her detached me from the rails the System kept me on. I shirked my directives. Felt like I had to continue watching to see what this Unique individual could do. She needed to be nurtured like a flower. It was hardly a tough decision to join with this body and save her life.”
He sighed and rubbed at his skeletal face. “I tried to be what she needed in this world. A rock. A father figure, despite having no idea what that really entailed. I’m just a creation of whatever this world is, yet I have grown to know how to love and feel emotions. Become something greater than how I was designed.”
“Happy?”
“More than anything. Sally is like a daughter to me. Norah lights up something within my metal chest that I never thought was possible. And Theo… I just can’t accept what I have done.”
“Fuck you, Humphrey.” Lucius stood up and turned away from him.
“What?”
The Shade started to walk away. “Don’t sit there, telling me how much you love something, while you continue to abandon it. We need you now more than ever. Theo trusted you to look after Sally.” He stopped and turned back to Humphrey, his eyes burning with intensity. “Do you not understand?”
Humphrey stood slowly to his feet. Flames burned brighter at the back of his helmet as shadow obscured his face, save for sparks of crimson light in the back of his eye sockets.
“Let’s go.”
Sally stretched out as they stood in the ground floor of the dungeon. It was just a plain open room of off-colored gray brickwork, with a staircase at the opposite end that rose up to join to the next floor above.
“This challenge must just be to make it up the stairs,” she said as she nodded to herself. “Nice of them to start off pretty easy for us.”
Chuck mostly ignored her statement. “Dent can solo the first five or six levels, then we’ll need to assist. That’ll give us time to talk.”
She pouted, but agreed. Unless there were some tasty brains, she could put a pause on the murder-spree to get a little exposition.
The swordsman limbered up and put the case holding Observer-Archie on the floor against the wall. Chuck waved his hand, and it turned invisible. Enough to keep it safe from prying eyes without having to drag it floor to floor.
They walked over to the staircase, the dagger at the end of Sally’s staff poking holes in the brick floor. She worked her jaw in thought, wondering how many stabs it would take around the walls to make the tower collapse. Not that the System would congratulate and give her the correct rewards for that—but it might, so it was worth the brain cell action.
“How do you… are you doing okay?” Chuck began, some of his old awkwardness showing through his current stoic personality. “Like, with Theo and everything?”
She screwed her face up. “It’s difficult. On one side of the coin, I’m heartbroken. But on the other side, I’m essentially a mass-murderer and it seems petty to strop over a single one of my own being killed.”
He nodded in response. “Both very human and very dissociated at once. Very like you.”
“If there’s one thing I am, it’s consistent.”
They circled up the staircase, neither of the men wanting to touch that statement. At the top of their ascent was a doorway with the number one engraved upon it. Chuck held out his hand and sent some buffs towards the swordsman, green, brown, and gold circles and pulses of energy flowing around his body.
“When you’re ready, Dent.”
The door opened up and Sally stretched out onto her tiptoes to try to see what was inside. They stepped up behind the swordsman as he entered, his blade-arm illuminated by a sharp blue sheen.
Some kind of floating eel creature, with a head that looked more like a seal than a snake. It swirled and bobbed in the air, awaiting combat to start.
Dent went into a half-crouch, then a burst of air blew dust back against them as he vanished to appear at the other side of the room. After a brief moment, an orange line drew across the Monster, as it split in two.
“A little cliche,” Sally said as she grinned, “but super badass.”
“Right?” Chuck smiled.
“My turn for questions,” she pushed him to start moving toward the next stairs. “Soooo you and Dent?”
“Ah, don’t,” the druid tried to wave her away. “You know how these things are. Nurse them back to health, they save your life, you start a warring faction to save the world together.”
“How did that even come about?” They reached the bottom of the next set of steps while Dent waited by the door. “No offence, Chucks, but you used to be a huge dweeb. Now you’re like a warlord.”
“Eh, none taken, I think.” He nodded for the swordsman to continue. “We mostly started in response to the… Red team… did you want me to start using our actual names, or?”
“Hell no, if you make this anything more that the simple blocks I have arranged in my brain, I will literally break down into a blubbering mess.”
He grimaced. “Really?
“You have no idea how much I have to dissociate to maintain this existence.” She sighed and rubbed at her face. “It’s either the mania or the bloodshed. It keeps me grounded. The Outsiders keep me grounded. Did. But, continue.”
“Right.” They stepped into the next room as Dent performed the same attack on some kind of stone-based golem. “Red team came up first, angry with the System. Without you being present, I wanted to give a voice to the Uniques, and those who weren’t so full of hate.”
“I’m proud of you for stepping up.” She grinned and punched him on the shoulder as the golem clattered to the floor in chunks.
“Definitely wasn’t easy, and Dent kept me on the right path.” He returned a glum smile. “Apparently it couldn’t be some democratic forum where the two sides coud decide what was best for the world together. Had to go straight to violence.”
“If only I was awake then.” She shook her head as they walked around the room. “So many of them would be ingested by now. We’d be the winners.”
Chuck tilted his head as they reached the next set of steps. “I was a little surprised you agreed to join us, if I’m honest.”
“Hmm, really?”
The next door opened. “You’ve always been such a force of change for the System,” the Druid continued, “and I didn’t want to step on your toes, or end up butting heads on what we wanted.”
“Red team’s plan for Uniques seemed to be kill us off, so you had that going for you.”
Chuck grinned and looked over at the group of sheep made of blue fire. “Well, what is it you want, Sally?”
She exhaled and thought about it for a moment, watching the swordsman blaze through the Monsters with little issues, flashes of colored skills pulsing around the drab stone walls.
“I want my dork ass vampire boyfriend. My goofy adoptive undead parents. Whatever kind of little wierdo Lucius is. To see Bella and Jackie. Just… be accepted and be able to live.”
Chuck nodded, some sadness across his face. “I want that for you too, Sally. I’m… I’ve been planning things for months. Trying to build that future, eventually. There’s something I need to ask you…” he balled up his hands and relaxed them a few times as if he was trying to build strength.
They stopped by the stairs. “Go ahead,” Sally said, tilting her head.
“We didn’t know when you’d be back,” he sighed, “so we’ve been planning—if it’s even possible—for me to become the next Architect.”
“Okay,” she nodded and put a foot on the step.
“Just ‘okay’?” Chuck furrowed his brow.
She smiled and shook her head. “What, you think I still wanted the job? I’m a complete mess, Chucky. You’re much more qualified.”
“Oh,” he said, at a loss for words as he followed her up.
“You’ve been beating yourself up about that for ages, I can tell. Some things don’t change.” She shook her head. “I joined Blue team because of your vision. If I have to have some god-like asshole ruling over my existence, you’re the least worst on that shortlist.”
The Druid smiled. “Wow, I’m definitely going to sleep better tonight. Assuming we live that long.”
“Pretty dire, huh?” They went into the next room. The ghost of a large dog-like lizard rolled his tongue around as the swordsman charged up a skill. “Part of me wonders if I’m being selfish in trying to bring back fangs rather than working for the greater good.”
Chuck shrugged. “You’ve done more than anyone else in trying to make this world a decent place to exist. If your heart wants this, then I think it’s a just cause.”
“Thanks.” She smiled and sighed. Somehow, he had managed to temper some of the storm brewing within her. Maybe she could be selfish. She had earned it after all the effort she had put into fixing the System for everyone else. Everyone had a limit, and if she died in trying to bring her family back together, then she’d have no regrets. Briefly, she wondered if it was a spell the Druid had used on her to make her so calm again—or maybe talking through things actually did work.
She tilted her head and leaned against the wall as the swordsman zipped around, having a bit more trouble with the ghost. “What happened to eyepatch?”
“In hiding, for safety.” Chuck rubbed at his eyes. “We might need them all, so that’s why the Observer Archie is being held.”
“Then Humps has two more—where’s the fifth area Archie? Was he destroyed?”
He furrowed his brow. “No. At least the others don’t believe so, which is interesting. Presumably that means the last cat had moved somewhere before the fifth area was deleted. We haven’t found them in this last year, however.”
Something felt uncomfortable in the back of her mind, as if the hint of something was trying to push forward. An answer eager to find its way into the world. “Oh,” she said, furrowing her brow and bringing out the necklace from beneath her cloak. “Where do I put the key for the dungeon?”
Chuck raised an eyebrow and looked at the heart-shaped pendant on the chain. “As far as I know, it doesn’t require one. Unless it’s for something higher up? A chest or special door?”
Sally didn’t think so. Theo was vague about it, which usually meant it was something she didn’t need to know right away, but the answer would become obvious when needed. How romantic to leave such mysterious clues for her to solve post-mortem. She grimaced in remembering she left his note back with Norah. She wanted to read that mush before she died, at least.
“Hey, Chucky. You think if you become the big boss, you can turn me into a… normal woman? Maybe remove all the memories of killing and eating people?”
He pulled a face and shrugged. “I have no idea. But I’d do whatever I could for you and the Outsiders.”
“You big sap,” she smiled and stepped away from the wall to head to the next floor. “My friend Lana fell to evil and… Chuck, do you remember Marius?”
The Druid raised an eyebrow and looked off to the ceiling to dig around his memories. “Never met him, of course—but he was your antagonist in the Forest, yeah? Corrupted STAR?”
She nodded. “We found another. You know the Last Word?”
“Yeah.” He shook his head. “You saying what I think you are?”
“My assumption is that Theo has dismantled most of them, but there might still be someone out there who can corrupt the STARs. Oh, ass!”
“Huh?”
Dent walked over, stretching out his arms, ready for the buffs to be put back on. “What’s up?”
“Theo. He had a poison that he said would kill him and he conveniently died on the same day, so I don’t know how much of that, or if he had even cured it, was bullshit.”
The swordsman scratched at the side of his head with the flat of his blade. “Sounds like he knew it wouldn’t matter either way, probably enjoyed holding the secret.”
She nodded. That did sound like the vampire. There were a few more questions she had dragging around her mind, but honestly she was tired of talking and thinking—not to mention watching Dent have all the fun with killing everything. She opened up Party chat.
[Sally: in the tower dungeon with chuck and dent]
[Sally: edward is somewhere, on board]
[Norah: things are quiet here]
No update from Lucius, which made her clench her teeth. She needed that Death Knight back pronto so she could give him a slice of her mind.
“Alright,” she growled. “I need to warm up, tag me in, Dent.”
He shrugged, and Chuck turned his hand to cast the buffs on her instead. “Next few floors are rough, but we have your back.”
Lucius fumed. Fire emojis flickered next to angry faces as he pulled on the armor of the Death Knight to no effect.
“You need to give up,” Humphrey said with a sigh, staring out over the canopy.
“You need to stop giving up.”
The Death Knight turned his head. “Why are you so intent on me going back to them?”
Lucius put his hands on his hips. “What is your purpose?”
“I have none.”
“Really? You no longer have a connection to Norah or Sally? Your Bodyguard duties?”
Humphrey turned back to the expanse beyond. “There was a time where I was just a minion of the System. Observing errors and bugs, making my reports, until I came across something odd—a Player soul that had merged with a Monster.”
Lucius calmed and sat back down beside the plated figure.
“It was as if just seeing her detached me from the rails the System kept me on. I shirked my directives. Felt like I had to continue watching to see what this Unique individual could do. She needed to be nurtured like a flower. It was hardly a tough decision to join with this body and save her life.”
He sighed and rubbed at his skeletal face. “I tried to be what she needed in this world. A rock. A father figure, despite having no idea what that really entailed. I’m just a creation of whatever this world is, yet I have grown to know how to love and feel emotions. Become something greater than how I was designed.”
“Happy?”
“More than anything. Sally is like a daughter to me. Norah lights up something within my metal chest that I never thought was possible. And Theo… I just can’t accept what I have done.”
“Fuck you, Humphrey.” Lucius stood up and turned away from him.
“What?”
The Shade started to walk away. “Don’t sit there, telling me how much you love something, while you continue to abandon it. We need you now more than ever. Theo trusted you to look after Sally.” He stopped and turned back to Humphrey, his eyes burning with intensity. “Do you not understand?”
Humphrey stood slowly to his feet. Flames burned brighter at the back of his helmet as shadow obscured his face, save for sparks of crimson light in the back of his eye sockets.
“Let’s go.”
