The doors swing open wide but, instead of a path for them to follow, it opens into a swirling bck vortex.

  “What’s that?” Hester asks, looking at the swirling mass of darkness nervously.

  “I think it’s a portal,” Emily says, approag it. “It looks simir to one I’ve seen before. Though, maybe it’s a barrier of some form.”

  She reaches up, bringing her hand close to the doorway.

  “Are you sure it’s safe to touch?” Juliana quickly asks with , making her pause ieps.

  “Nope,” Emily responds, fshing a smile back tirlfriend before pushing her hand in.

  Her friends jump slightly at her ck of caution, but quickly rex as nothing happens and Emily pulls her hand back out.

  “But its mana flow feels pletely stable and non-threatening, and dungeons aren’t known for being impossible to enter,” she finishes with a teasing grin, trying not to ugh at the cute gre Juliana fixes her with.

  “So you checked first before doing that?” Enzo asks, ign Dante ughing at Emily’s stunt beside him.

  “Yeah.” Emily nods. “I did say it looks like a portal I’ve seen before, but it also feels simir. Not quite the same though. The other portal urely space mana, and I could tell it was lio another portal. This one feels stra kind of seems like it’s just pressing in on itself, a little like a dimensional ste, so I think the dungeon is a type of pocket dimension and this is the entrance.”

  “I see,” he says, nodding as Emily pulls out a spool of thin steel cable.

  “I’m gonna take a look inside. you hold this and pull me out if I tug on it, please?” she asks with a smile as she tosses the spool to Juliana while holding the end, letting it unravel in the air.

  Juliana catches it, letting out a small sigh and dropping her gre.

  “Fine. Be safe.”

  “What do you mean? I always am,” Emily says with a wink before turning and stepping into the darkness.

  The portal engulfs her, reag out past the doorway’s boundary to pull her in the moment half of her body passes the threshold. Her vision instantly turns bot even aided by her infra-sight. Strangely, the innate spatial awareness she’s had since first prehending space also fails to give her any information about her surroundings. From the moment the darkness embraces her, Emily feels as if she’s stepped into a bnk, floating expanse, with nothing around her but herself.

  Looking down, she sees the warmth of her own body clearly, a wele anchor in the sea of nothingness. She tries to cast light, a pure white magic circle appearing over her hand and morphing into a glowing ball in no time. But, other than her own body, the light doesn’t fall on a single surface or object around her, and the darkness seems ued.

  Emily makes the light float above her head, just in case, and takes a step forward. Her feet find no purchase, but she doesn’t lose bance, and her foot stops at the same level as the other even though she doesn’t feel a floor below her. However, she ’t seem to move it further down no matter how hard she pushes.

  “How odd,” she mumbles, still able to hear her own voice, but not hearing a single echo despite her enhanced hearing.

  Emily keeps walking, pg one foot before the other, but she doesn’t seem to move.

  Do I have to keep going further in to find something? This is a strange dungeon. I’ll let the others know first before I keep going.

  She tugs on the wire still in her hand but feels ance. Frowning, she quickly spins the cable between both hands, reeling it in for a moment until the end appears between her fingers.

  “My cable’s been cut. I don’t think I’ll be able to find the way I came in with this darkness,” she says, gng over her shoulder and bringing a hand to her belt. “Should I reset and warhers that you ’t leave once you enter?”

  Suddenly, as she questions whether to stay or not, a ge occurs in the space. A ripple spreads from her position, washing out over the bnk expanse and wiping away the oppressive darkness.

  A dark stone floor appears below Emily’s feet, spreading out to form a thirty-metre wide disc with her at the tre. The ripple appears to rise up, revealing walls of dark brickwork with four, closed silver portcullises spaced evenly around her, and several unlit torches mounted in violent-looking sces formed from clustered barbs of metal.

  Emily drinks iails around her with anticipation, l her hand from her belt as the ripple es back towards her, solidifying the darkness above her into a tangible surface that looms like a starless night sky.

  “I guess it wasn’t about distahen. It just started on its own,” she muses, enjoying the acoustics of the chamber as her voice rings out around it.

  My cable robably cut wherance closed. I’ll see if I plete the dungeon alone for now, a ter if I o. The longer I leave it, the less of yesterday’s march I’ll have to relive.

  The torch directly in front of her suddenly flickers to life with a low, sickly-gree’s followed a sed ter by the torch to the right. Then another, and another, increasing in speed with eaew fme. Emily turns with the light, her heart beating a little faster each time a fire sparks ience, aed grin on her lips.

  As the st torch ignites, and Emily’s gaze returns to the first, all of the fmes grow massively, filling the chamber with their pallid light. A screeg noise fills the room soon after as one of the portcullises starts to rise. A bck portal, simir to the one Emily used to ehe dungeon, forms behind the gate as it rises. But, as opposed to swirling in on itself in a trolled manner, it seems to expand outwards, like a gaping wound in space, leaking into the chamber.

  Emily checks the ates, finding them sealed shut and unmoving, before honing her focus on the new portal. The gate sms to a halt in the roof of the portcullis, and the portal roils as a figure steps through.

  Emily hears the sound of a battered leather sole hitting the floor as the creature steps free of the portal’s grasp. She closes her grip around the Spitter’s handle and pulls it free of its holster.

  She sees a small, humanoid creature, almost two full heads shorter than her. Its thin skin seems at home in the sickly light of the torches, and Emily ’t quite tell if it’s actually green, or just a pale shade refleg the unnatural light. She reises the snarling maw, filled with jagged teeth, and the pierg yellow eyes, as sharp as the points on the end of its ears.

  “Goblins,” Emily mutters, keeping the Spitter poi the ground in front of her as she calls out. “Are you a friend?”

  It’s strao see these guys outside of the Lerus Isles.

  The goblin growls in lieu of an answer, raising its surprisingly dagger before its chest and advang.

  “I guess they’re less intelligent here.” Emily shrugs, raising the Spitter and sending out a single shot.

  The goblin tries to respond, raising its guard the moment it hears a bang, but the lightly maa charged bullet cuts through the air quickly, pung a hole through the goblin’s throat. The creature drops its bde, falling to the floor while grasping at its neck, leaking a dark, tar like blood through its fingers. As the dagger hits the ground with a harsh ctter, twoblins step through the portal.

  One wields a polished wood aal shield, proteg its rag-covered torso, and the other holds a sturdy bow at the ready, with a quiver of arrows hanging at its hip.

  Emily meets their hostile gazes with a smile, snapping her aim to the bow-wielder and squeezing the trigger almost instantly. The goblin releases its arrow as a bullet shatters its skull, but it flies wide, missing Emily. The oblin quickly ducks behind its shield, proteg its head.

  Emily scoffs, flig the Spitter into burst and firing three shots into the tre of the wooden mass. The first bullet dents the metal pte crossing the shield’s body, the sed cracks it, and the third meets little resistance, carving straight through and burrowing into the chest of the goblin behind, knog it to the ground. Emily tracks it down to the floor and raises a brow in surprise as she sees her first two kills dissolving into liquid darkness and seeping into the ground.

  They’re magical structs, like the dummies in The Dome’s training rooms.

  Emily clicks her to the realisation that she won’t be harvesting any ans from the creatures, finishing the st survivor with a single bullet to the head in her frustration. She looks back to the portal, waiting for the oppo, and her silent request is quickly answered.

  The portal shakes violently, and body after body steps out.

  “At least I should get a good fight.”

  She aims both hands at different targets, one holding the Spitter, and the other with her palm fag outwards, exposing the glintial of a her sleeve.

  A violent dance of death starts with a click, as a bullet and a bde leap out to cim their prey. Emily twists, ripping the bde free of its new home in a goblin’s head and shooting a few goblins as she turns, cutting through their front lines with the flying bde. She drops infra-sight, and dismisses her light, internally casting bolt, elling it through the Cw, filling the flying bde with crag lightning.

  The goblins press forward with reckless abandon, throwing themselves against the storm of metal biting away at their ranks, pushing further and further into the room by cmbering over the fading bodies of their fallen. After culling a few dozen of the grees, Emily’s rhythm is disrupted as an arrow nicks her cheek, and a burniion spreads across her face.

  “Poison,” she hisses, her focus snapping onto the archer who shot her.

  In her moment of hesitation, a sizzling orb of fire, too weak to deserve the title of fireball, flies in from the back of the crowd, aiming for Emily’s face. She reacts in time, bendiorso and slig the her gun-wielding hand through the spell, bursting it in the air o her, singeing a few of her hairs along with the fabric of her sleeve.

  They have mages now.

  Emily quickly kills the archer with a single bullet, cheg her system and finding her health fixed at 269/270.

  I don’t seem to be taking any more damage from that poison. It’s either too weak to harm me right now, or only meant to cause pain.

  Her maa floods the site of intrusion, burning out the fn substance as a glistening green magic circle forms above her head and fires a nce of wind into the spellcasting goblin’s chest, pinning it to the floor. The burning in her face fades as quickly as it came, but Emily triggers the first iainst the base of her spine just in case, sending a f warmth through her body, knitting the scrat her cheek back together quickly, as if nothing ever happened.

  She tinues cutting down the swarm, getting close to the front-liners with shields, daggers, and swords to use their groups’ numbers against them, blog the spellcasters hiding at the back from wantonly attag. They still do, scorg several of their teammates, but Emily keeps the melee close anyutting away the Spitter and revelling ihrill of the battle.

  After ten miraight of bat, the flow of goblins from the portal starts to slow, its violent motion reg and, after Emily reaps the lives of everything else in the chamber, it stops. She stands alone in the tre of the room, seeming no worse off than at the start of the fight other than a few tears and burns on her robes and a few insequential points of stamina lost.

  Emily breaths in the silearing at the portal expetly, waiting for the oppos to arrive. Nothing happens for a few seds, the quiet stretg on slightly too long with Emily’s high from the battle slowly ebbing away, theorches lighting the chamber move again. They dim and brighteedly, pulsing like the beat of a heart as the portal s again.

  This time, only five figures appear from the portal, stepping out into the light of the chamber. They look simir to the goblins, but they stand at the same height as Emily, even being slightly taller in the case of the o the tre of their formation holding a tower shield. Three of the others are armed, two with swords, and the third with a bow. The st carries a wooden staff with two crystals mounted oop, one red and one green.

  The shield-bearer has shinial pte armour, like the knights of old, and the spellcaster dons a flowing robe, simir to those worn by ant mages, with a hood draped low over its head, cealing its fa shadows. The other three all have lightweight, polished leather armour.

  “Hobgoblins. And you’re all well equipped,” Emily says through a manic grin, a dense, swirling magic circle of fire, metal, and light f around her as she raises both hands and prepares to pounce.

  The archer signals the start of the fight by releasing an arrow that rockets forwards with immense speed. Emily leans to the side, defleg the projectile with a d springing forward to meet her oppos. The spell behind her finishes casting as she cshes with the swords that fsh forwards to meet her. A glittering arrow fires out of the magic circle, pung through the tower-shield and bursting ihe chest of the hobgoblin holding it, killing it instantly.

  Emily hears guttural ting ing from the spellcaster in some a nguage, indecipherable to her. She deflects an ining sword and kicks the wielder in the kh her heavy boots, flig out the spikes at the moment of impad shattering her enemy’s knee. She sshes a Cw across the hobgoblin’s throat as it falls unguarded, and raises a barrier of stoween herself and the ting spellcaster as a half-moon bde of wind mixes with a matg bde of fire above its head and slices through the air towards her.

  The spinning bdes burst against the protective spell, crag it but not breag it. Emily takes the opportunity to dodge another arroarry an ining bde, letting it run off her own before slipping ihe hobgoblin’s guard and burying a bde several inches deep in its chest. As the st melee batant falls to the ground bleeding, she retracts her Culls the Spitter from her thigh smoothly, levelling it at the archer.

  A sirigger pull halts the creature’s breath as a bullet bores a hole through its chest. Emily calmly turns and points the pistol at the earthen wall blog the enemy mage, celling the spell as she pulls the trigger again and the slide locks back, signifying ay magazine. Another bullet whistles through the air, dropping the mage and interrupting its spell as it forms.

  Emily drops the magazine from her gun with a well-practised motion, catg it and sliding a fresh one from the side of the holster and into the bottom of the on, clig the slide bato pce before the mage’s body hits the floor. She looks around the room, her tension high as the portal shows no signs of moving.

  She holsters the Spitter and finishes off each of the still breathing hobgoblins with a quick stab to the head as the portal shrinks in on itself and vahe open gate falls shut as well, smming into the ground with a g.

  Emily gnces around, waiting for the attae. But, instead, the torches flicker, shifting from a sickly green to a warm e glow, and a crack appears in the wall between two of the portcullises. It slowly widens, f into a doorway to another well-lit chamber.

  Why didn’t the ates ever open?

  Emily cautiously g the closed gates before approag the new door, raising her brow as she feels several familiar mana signatures oher side. She walks through into another circur hall, this one massive, with a diameter of at least a hundred metres. Stepping into the room with her, from simir doorways oher side of her, are Dante and Enzo, both scratched and battered, bleeding from several wounds, with Dante sp a particurly nasty gash on his forehead.

  “What are you guys doing in here?” Emily questions as they turn to look at her with pale faces, a cold realisation sending a chill down her spine. “And if you guys are here, where’s Jules?”

  KeroKeron