The glow of the eyes cast the entire room in a red hue as Elijah and Nicholas readied themselves to fight. From beside him, Bitter Bat let out a low snarl.

  “Are you the one controlling these walls?” Nicholas growled.

  “You could say that,” the voice laughed. “Yes, I suppose in your limited understanding of the world I am in control of the walls, Heartwood Sovereign.”

  Elijah was trying not to panic. He was separated from most of his friends. He knew he could rely on Nicholas, but this was meant to be an easy dungeon to get them back into the swing of working together.

  “If you are in control, then give us back our friends,” Elijah said, trying to activate his Reality Awareness. It wasn’t picking up any creatures, just the bricks and stone of the dungeon.

  “There is no need to worry, Dragontooth Pretender. Your friends are safe; whether or not they remain that way depends entirely on you. I am curious to find out who shall claim the Blood Oath Throne.”

  A laugh filled the room as the red eyes disappeared from the cracks in the stone. The black gunk seeped into the floor, freeing their feet, and the walls that had risen lowered back down into the floor.

  Elijah turned to Nicholas. “Why did it say it wondered which of us will claim the throne? What aren’t you telling me?”

  Elijah looked up and down the hall. Sasha and the two Bitters he’d sent to aid her were gone now, and there was no sign of Benjamin or Bo. He looked up at Nicholas, who was looking sheepish and refusing to meet Elijah’s eye. “What did the thing mean, Nicholas?”

  Nicholas finally met Elijah’s eye. “I’m sorry, man. I lied to you earlier.”

  Elijah felt his fingers flex on his blade, taking a step back from the tank. “Lied to me about what, Nicholas?” His voice was icy, fearing what the man was about to tell him.

  “I didn’t get the same quest as everyone else. I got a quest linked to my Heartwood Sovereign class,” Nicholas’ voice was shaky, as if he was trying to hold back whatever emotion he was feeling. “It told me to work towards usurping the throne from you.”

  Elijah’s first instinct was to attack Nicholas, but he held himself at bay for the moment. He felt Bitter Bat at his side, readying himself to strike should the opportunity prove necessary. The link to his other familiars was still active, but something was preventing him from cancelling and re-summoning them. If this turned into a fight, it would be just him and Bitter Bat. “The throne? The game wants you to usurp my, I mean, the Dragontooth throne?”

  Nicholas nodded his head. “Yes, it told me that if I can usurp the throne for myself and absorb its power, then I’ll be able to upgrade my class to the Celestial-rank.”

  Elijah couldn’t believe this. His oldest friend in the game, the one who had taken him in and made him a part of the team, was considering taking what rightfully belonged to Elijah.

  “That’s why I lied to you, Elijah, because I didn’t want there to be any question who this party would support. We are in this together, and the party has to stay unified in our goals.” Nicholas turned from him and started walking down the hallway. “Come on, let’s go get our friends.”

  “Would there be any question, Nicholas?” Elijah asked, his feet still rooted in place. This was his quest, but now the game was trying to force him to consider his friend as a claimant. His heart was pounding in his chest and his knuckles were white with the strength of his grip on his sword.

  Nicholas stopped and turned. Slowly and deliberately. The point of his spear aimed away from Elijah the whole time. “I don’t want the throne, Elijah, not if it means taking that power from you. This is a game. Remember? Our ultimate goal is to get you to Celestial so we can leave.”

  Elijah blinked heavily a few times, trying to wrap his brain around the man’s words. Nicholas was calling this a game. Elijah’s path to the throne was a game to him? This was no game; this was his destiny, and he would not let a claimant usurp his rule. The logical part of his brain knew that this was a game, but the emotional part refused to believe it. Bitter Bat could sense the energy coming off Elijah and began flexing his claws, readying an attack.

  Elijah was about to launch himself forward. He didn’t know if he’d be able to take on the tank-class adventurer, but he would not let an enemy stand there and pretend to be his friend.

  “Elijah,” Nicholas whispered, putting his shield and spear back into his inventory. His armor retracted back into his body, and Elijah noticed that he actually lost an inch or two of height when unarmored. He was an easy target now.

  “If you don’t trust me, then you can kill me here and now. I won’t fight back. But afterwards we’ll need to have a serious discussion about how this party is going to work.”

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  Elijah let the top of his blade drop towards the floor, placing a hand on Bitter Bat’s head to calm the creature. He screwed his eyes shut tightly and tried to focus on what Nicholas had said. This was his friend; why was he seeing him as the enemy here?

  Nicholas was right; he was not only Elijah’s party member but also his friend. Kole had said there were bugs with their classes, something broken with them, and that it messed with their minds. These weren’t Elijah’s own thoughts; they were whatever the game was doing. What the game wanted him to think.

  “I’m sorry, Nicholas, you’re right,” Elijah whispered, allowing his own weapon and armor to vanish. “Kole said something else to me when he and I talked.”

  He knew he was treading on dangerous ground; telling Nicholas that the game was messing with his head could kill any trust they had. But someone had to know, so that they could help keep him from losing it. He told Nicholas about what Kole had said and what he’d been feeling.

  The man listened in quiet understanding as Elijah laid it all out on the table. Part of him expected Nicholas to show disgust, to call him weak-willed, or to attack him right then and there. He closed his eyes, waiting for whatever would come to come.

  He didn’t expect the large man to pull him into a hug. He felt the bones in his back pop once as the strength of the man wrapped around him. At first, he thought Nicholas was trying to squeeze him to death, and memories of the time Nicholas had choked him on the fields outside the abandoned fort resurfaced. But Elijah realized quickly that the man just didn’t know his own strength. This was friendship, not betrayal.

  “I’m sorry you’ve been going through that, Elijah,” Nicholas whispered. His crushing hug loosened slightly. “I’m here for you, though. If you don’t feel comfortable telling the others, then I’m just glad you told me. I can help keep you grounded.”

  Nicholas broke the hug and set Elijah back down onto the ground. He hadn’t even realized that Nicholas had lifted him up. It was a pleasant feeling. No one had hugged him like this since he was a child.

  “I appreciate that, Nicholas,” Elijah said, letting his bats reform his armor and sword. “Let’s go get our friends back and kick this dungeon where it hurts for screwing with us.”

  Nicholas gave him a big, toothy grin as his armor reformed from within his body. “Sounds like a plan.”

  Elijah glanced down at Bitter Bat to see what the familiar had to say about this. The creature’s eyes were wide and its lips were curled into a frown.

  “What’s wrong, Bat?” he asked.

  Bitter Bat held his arms up to him and made a grasping motion with his talons.

  “Uppies?” the creature asked in a soft, almost sad, voice.

  Elijah had to hold back a laugh at the creature’s expression. He rarely noticed much personality from his familiars. When he had gotten Bitter Dryad and Bitter Bat, they had both mostly acted like carbon copies of Bitter Root, but the more he had them out the more their personalities seemed to diverge.

  He reached down and picked the familiar up, giving it a tight squeeze. “Want to ride on my shoulders for a bit?” The bat creature nodded and scrambled up onto Elijah’s shoulders and wrapped his arms around his forehead to stabilize himself. Elijah rolled his eyes but couldn’t stop the smile that crept across his cheeks.

  Part of him felt that this must be what it was like to be a parent. The Bitters were his subjects, his soldiers, but he still had a responsibility to care for and protect them. They were sentient creatures—at least in his mind—and he took his duty to them seriously. That was as close to parenthood as he could ever legally get, even if it were just in a video game.

  ”Ready?” Nicholas asked with a smile creeping along his own face.

  Elijah nodded his head and began following the man down the hallway. They were in more danger now, even though their heartfelt conversation had done much to shore up the concerns they had about each other. Without a healer or mage, they had no support class, and every step risked springing a trap without their rogue.

  Realization dawned on him; he at least had a solution to them not knowing what was coming up next, and summoned his three scouts. He could have duplicated his missing friends, but each of them had expressed their discomfort in Elijah duplicating them. It was a choice driven by emotion instead of by logic, but he had promised them he wouldn’t copy them with his powers without their express consent.

  He channeled their vision through his own as he walked. One eye kept on the floor in front of him and the other on the vision of one of his scouts. The hallway continued on for quite a way; the alcoves growing emptier the further they went. More of the black sludge was present, though not even close to the quantity that had come out of the walls.

  The dungeon had only meant to use it to separate the party, to make the two monarch-class players feel isolated and vulnerable. It was a tool rather than a weapon of the dungeon core.

  The bat scouts—Elijah had decided during his two-week break to name them Larry, Curly, and Moe—saw the Ink-Bound Wraith well before Elijah and Nicholas got close to it. It was still forming, the black ooze wrapping itself around one of the bodies still present deep in the dungeon. He sent the other two down deeper into the dungeon, but had one—Curly—find a roost in one of the high-up alcoves along the opposite wall.

  It was interesting that the black substance had to envelope a body to form a wraith; when they’d ‘killed’ the last one, it hadn’t left behind any physical form. It also didn’t bode well for trying to kill this thing. If it reformed from the corpses, then they’d be fighting a battle of attrition that they would eventually lose. There were just too many corpses.

  ”Ink-Bound Wraith forming around one corpse up ahead,” Elijah told Nicholas. “We should try to get up there and kill it before it can form completely.”

  Nicholas grunted his agreement and took off down the hall at a sprint. Elijah sped up to keep up with the man’s long strides. Bitter Bat’s legs tightened around Elijah’s chest and his sharp talons bit into his forehead as Elijah rushed forward. It was painful, but as long as the bat-like creature held on, it was better than having to stop to catch the familiar.

  A screech echoed out through the tunnel, and Elijah could see through Curly’s eyes they were too late. The wraith had formed.