The students turned one last corner and found themselves staring at a familiar pile of bones scattered throughout a long corridor. The adventurers had wisely waited for the osteomorph to show so they could defeat it before taking on the guardian. A massive gate made of solid wood reinforced with iron bars stood partway open at the end of the hall. A collection of backpacks belonging to the adventurers rested along the wall nearby. They’d done it. They had finally caught up.

  “Let’s help them out!” said Evran, setting down his bag before sprinting toward the guardian chamber. Kaila and Narro followed close behind. Evran burst into the massive open room and was immediately overwhelmed by the battle raging before him.

  There was an enormous bone serpent trashing about wildly, desperate to land a strike against the dragoon woman opposite it. She dashed about, expertly dodging the monster’s attacks while sneaking in a few blows of her own. Her spear sent bits and pieces of splintered bone scattering across the floor, but the damage was negligible against the immense size of the monster.

  Across the room, a lone knight stood surrounded by an army of skeletons. He swung his longsword back and forth, sending bone and rusted armor flying with every strike. But for every skeleton he felled, another rose to take its place. Unlike the osteomorph, these skeletons were reviving themselves at a much quicker pace, as Evran saw several piles of bones reassembling themselves where they fell.

  An explosion blasted away a dozen of the skeletons in a single attack. Not too far from the entrance of the large room stood a haggard mage, a beastkin of the Usathi clans. A pair of long rabbit ears poked through the brim of her pointed hat. Though she mostly looked tired, there was a hint of panic growing in her eyes. Her last attack clearly hadn’t managed to accomplish what she hoped it might.

  “Mr. Gil, look!” she said to the priest standing to her right. “Students!”

  “What the hell are they doing here?” the priest shouted before quickly turning his attention back to the final member of their party.

  A man in dark leather armor chased a shadowy figure in robes about the room. He pulled the final arrow from his quiver and loosed it at his opponent. The robed creature moved out of the way just in time to avoid the strike, then sent a ball of dark energy flying back toward the ranger. A barrier of light formed in front of him, blocking the attack. His final arrow spent, the ranger discarded his bow and unsheathed a falchion to continue his assault.

  The hooded figure rose up off the ground and glided away from the determined but ineffective ranger. It was simply too quick. During their brief dance across the battlefield, Evran got the briefest glimpse at the face beneath the hood and trembled at what he saw. It was a lich.

  Evran took a deep breath and analyzed the battle before him. The dragoon was holding her own against the bone serpent, and the knight was struggling to keep the skeleton army away from the casters all on his own. Still, the ranger and the mage weren’t enough to bring down the lich, and the team would soon exhaust themselves with nothing to show for it.

  “You two help thin out those skeletons,” Evran shouted commandingly.

  He didn’t have much of a plan, but someone had to do something, or this wouldn’t end well for any of them. Without delay, Narro launched himself into the fight.

  “Stay safe, Ev,” said Kaila, lingering for a moment before joining Narro in the fight against the skeleton army.

  “You too,” Evran replied before running off to assist the priest and the mage. He pulled two of the liquid mana vials from his belt and offered them to the beleaguered casters. “We’ll explain everything later. Let’s bring down that snake!”

  The mage nodded as she took the liquid mana vials, then tossed one over to the priest. They surely had collected their own back when they explored the safe room, and had more than likely already used it in their fight. With a fresh reserve of mana to draw from, the priest should be able to help the ranger occupy the lich while they went after the bone serpent.

  Evran activated his aurasight and inspected the skeletal snake. As he suspected, black smoke rose off of one of the countless ribs of the monster. The skull was not its weak point. Unfortunately, there was little he could do to communicate exactly which bone it was, as below the neck, everything looked exactly the same.

  “Aim for the bones about two meters down from the base of its skull!” Evran shouted loud enough for the dragoon to hear. “That’s its weak point!”

  A ball of dark energy crashed into a barrier a few meters from Evran’s head, causing him to flinch. He glanced over to see the priest give him a quick nod. Evran quickly checked to confirm his protection amulet was still active and would save him if the priest should ever let one of those attacks slip by. He breathed a sigh of relief to find it still fully charged.

  The mage and the dragoon began probing attacks at the spot Evran had indicated. If they had any doubts about his call, they vanished when the bone serpent behaved more defensively in response. As things were, the monster was more than capable of dodging all of their attacks. They needed some way to pin it down.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  The walls the of guardian chamber were lined with stone bricks, much like the rest of the third layer, only larger. The ceiling, however, was not. The large circular room had a smooth dome carved into the solid stone above them, giving Evran an idea. He began using earth magic to pull chunks of ceiling down on top of the snake. He had to be exceptionally careful not to pull too much out and collapse the whole labyrinth on top of them, but there was plenty of stone to work with.

  Large blocks of stone plummeted down on top of the bone serpent, striking it up and down the length of its body. Dozens of rib bones cracked and splintered. The monster whipped itself around, desperate to escape the rain of stone, but in doing so, it left itself open to a strike from the dragoon. She leapt high into the air and pounced on the snake from on high, driving her spear deep into the monster’s skull. The force of her descent drove the head of the snake into the ground, where her spear pierced through bone and stone, pinning the head in place.

  Unable to dodge, the bone serpent struggled and flailed in desperation to free itself, but it was too late. The beastkin mage and sent a fireball careening toward the back of its neck. The dragoon leapt away just as the fireball exploded, sending shattered bone and dust every which way. When Evran followed up with a gust of wind to clear the area, the serpent was missing a few meters of spine behind its skull. It stopped moving.

  With the bone serpent out of the way, Evran glanced over to see how his friends were faring. The mass of skeletons was only a third of what it had once been, and Narro and Kaila were alive and well. The tide of battle had turned in their favor.

  Evran and his new allies turned their attention to the lich. The ranger was still chasing it around the room while the priest kept it from landing any attacks of its own. However, the priest looked as though he was nearly exhausted, having already drained his modest supply of liquid mana.

  “Astion, I’m all out!” shouted the priest, before falling to one knee. Resigning himself to fate, the man closed his eyes and began to pray to the dead gods.

  Sensing his weakened state, the lich turned toward the meddlesome priest and fired off a shot of dark energy, hoping to once and for all be rid of him. The attack exploded harmlessly when it crashed into a barrier of solid light less than a meter from the priest’s head. He opened his eyes and glanced over at Evran, who returned the earlier nod.

  The lich continued to fly about the room, endlessly harried by the ranger and dragoon. Evran took up the role of the priest and intercepted every one of the lich’s attacks with a barrier. He struggled to keep up at first, but once the rabbit-eared mage joined in, the lich had few opportunities to counter.

  Eventually, it made its first mistake dodging a swipe from the dragoon. She’d held her spear closer to the bottom, extending her reach beyond what she had trained the lich to anticipate. It still managed to dodge, but awkwardly, and at the cost of creating an opening for the ranger. His blade bit into the lich’s bony arm, hampering its ability to extricate itself from the melee. The mage then followed up by landing a stone shard in its leg as it tried to separate itself and fly off. By then, the dragoon was in place to follow up on her original attack. With one swift thrust, her spear found its way into the guardian’s skull, instantly ending the creature’s false life.

  The hollow clattering of bones filled the grand chamber as every last skeletal creature came apart at the fall of their master. Though in this moment it brought him great joy, Evran wished to never have to hear such sounds again. When the last fragment of bone came to rest, a strange silence fell upon the room. Several of the adventurers collapsed to the floor, exhausted from the marathon fight they’d barely survived.

  “That was way too fallin’ close!” complained the priest.

  Though he’d nearly spent all his mana, the priest had run off to battle the skeleton army with only a short wooden rod as a weapon. Evran admired his willingness to continue fighting with everything he had, even after depleting his mana. That is the sort of mage Evran strove to be.

  For the adventurers, the fight had been a long one, but the late arrivals still had a good bit of energy left. Kaila ran halfway across the guardian chamber and threw herself into Evran’s arms. She pulled herself away from the embrace only for a moment, looking up to Evran through tear-filled eyes. “We did it! We survived!”

  “Yeah… we did,” he replied, pulling her back into his arms and stroking the back of her head.

  “Alright, what the hell is going on?” shouted the knight, finally rested enough to deal with unexpected presence of students involved in his party’s delve into the labyrinth. “What in the name of the gods possessed you three to come here? And you! Didn’t I tell you this is the last place you should ever go?”

  “It was Kassitor, right?” Evran asked, showing the man he actually had paid attention to their conversation back on the boat. The knight nodded in the affirmative. “I’ve got some terrible news. Right after you all left, a dragon attacked. It’s still out there.”

  “A dragon?” Kassitor asked incredulously. “You sure, boy? Not a wyvern or the like?”

  “Yes, a real dragon — arms and wings, slate gray scales, terrible breath,” Evran replied, pulling up his pants to reveal the burns on his boot that even the standard restoration enchantment failed to undo, as well as a few minor scars where the smallest droplets of dragonfire had permanently marked his flesh.

  The dragoon woman approached and scrutinized Evran’s leg. “It is as he says. This was done by dragonfire.”

  “We were summoned unexpectedly back to camp, and when we arrived, the whole place was an inferno,” said Kaila. “The ship was already sailing away. It was on fire a bit, but it didn’t look too bad. I expect they survived, though we did not stick around to confirm it. We fled here hoping to find shelter and wait for rescue at the entrance.”

  “Oh, so then why are you here? Came to warn us about the dragon?” the knight inquired.

  “Not exactly,” said Evran, with a hint of guilt in his voice. “That osteomorph attacked us at the entrance, and when it revived, we decided to flee somewhere else, only to have the dragon ambush us. There were five of us at the start.”

  “I… I’m sorry, kid. This is no place for children.” Kassitor said with a grim look on his face. “No, after what you three must have been through, it would be wrong to call you that.”

  “Um, this changes things quite a bit, doesn’t it?” asked the Usathi mage. “I mean, I didn’t exactly sign up to fight a dragon.”

  “Only the foolish do,” said the dragoon. “Even the most skilled of my people fall in battle to their kind. The few of us are not equipped to face such a foe.”

  “So what then? Sit here and count our coin while we wait for rescue like the kids said? Bah!” shouted the priest.

  “Not much else we can do. And speaking of coin…” the mage hinted.

  “Oh right, the treasury!” Kassitor said with newfound excitement in his voice.