After that second battle, Nyssa took a more measured approach to delving deeper into the vampire goblin-infested darkness... Instead of walking ten feet in front of me, she walked five. I feared that, though she had led us into two dire situations, the immediate, albeit bloody and violent success had prevented the quelling of her prideful desire to push on. The battles had instilled in her both a wariness and boldness, and it was the boldness that was winning out. She was eager for the next fight, but only as long as I was by her side. I didn’t believe she cared much for her reliance on me, but she’d accepted it.

  We pushed through the dark corridors, coming across a few more packs of goblin vampires, netting us fifty-one additional fragments and fourteen copper coins. Their stillness in the dark was off-putting. We’d nearly trip over their still bodies before they’d react, as if we were waking them from a centuries-long stupor. One of the packs had been clinging to the ceiling, dropping on us after we’d already walked beneath them as if they’d missed their cue. We'd been lucky. I swore at myself for forgetting the video game and movie rule of always making sure to look up.

  Still, all the packs were dispatched much more easily than the second group had been. The lack of struggle and pain resulted in the absence of the consuming rage I’d felt before, so though the darkness and confines still frightened me, I was glad Nyssa kept pushing forward. I, too, wanted a fight. A real one.

  It was after we’d stumbled on and defeated the fourth mob of goblin vampires that we heard it. A sound unexpected in the bowels of this never-ending vampiric lair. Nyssa heard it first, of course. She stopped, her front talon hovering in the air like a house cat stalking neighborhood prey. She cocked her head, then slowly continued forward. She wanted me to be quiet, so I tried to step softly, mostly failing.

  After a minute or so, I heard it too, a faint sound, so soft the echoes of a slow drip of water would have drowned it out. Only the complete stillness allowed me to hear it. It sounded like mewling, the desperate cries of a pitiful creature. After continuing for a bit longer, I realized I’d heard correctly. It was the cries of a pitiful creature, a child.

  Jeff had said there were two people still missing before I’d found Cynthia, assuming that each of the fortress’s seven keeps held a person. It appeared as if I’d found the last of us.

  To my shame, I hesitated for a long moment. What if the child had found their way to the boss of this area? What if, like Cynthia, they were being held? Tortured?

  What if I found myself unable to overcome my fear and help?

  I couldn’t rush back to Jeff. I could be lost in this darkness for days if I simply ran through the corridors, blindly guessing at each intersection. What trauma could a vampire goblin boss inflict on a child in the time it took me to get out, come back, and find this spot again?

  I rushed ahead, following the sound as best I could. Nyssa quickly understood my desire, although I was sure she lacked the details of the situation, and rushed ahead, her senses sharper than my own. After only a few dozen yards, she stopped sharply, flicking her gaze about. It landed on a spot where wall met floor.

  “What? Where are they?” I swung my torch up and down the hallway, finding nothing. The crying was louder than before, but it sounded no stronger in either direction. I followed Nyssa’s gaze to a small grate on the floor, barely a few inches across. I dropped to my knees and pressed my ear to cold metal. The faintest of breezes cooled my sweaty cheek as I strained to hear something.

  There.

  The sound rose as if from purgatory, a hopeless wail. The child was beneath us, on another floor of the keep. I swore. We had yet to stumble upon a way to ascend or descend to another level. I’d assumed these halls had been dug deep into the mountain, sprawling across a single level.

  “Help!” The plea rose from below, ragged and pained.

  “Hold on!” I screamed, desperation cracking my voice.

  I rose to my knees and looked up and down the hallway. We might stumble around for hours trying to find a way down, and even if we found one, who knows if we’d ever find our way back to this same spot on the level below. I wanted to smash something in frustration, which gave me an idea. I looked at my hammer. If I couldn’t go around, I’d go through.

  “I’m coming!” I yelled into the grate, then stood.

  I took a few steps back down the hall, gripped my hammer in two hands, and swung. The stone was hard, resilient against the metal of my hammer, but with that first swing, a chip, maybe the size of my fingernail, broke from the floor. I swung again, a similarly sized piece of stone breaking away. I swung over and over, hammering the floor with as much force as I could muster.

  With the deafening ringing of metal on stone, it didn’t take long for the goblins to appear. Their eyes materialized from the gloom of the corridor, staring unblinkingly as they silently stalked toward us.

  Nyssa took care of the first wave, her talons applying precise wounds across the eyes, ligaments, and necks of the four goblins. She took much longer than I would have, but she got the job done. All the while, I continued to bash my hammer against the floor, chip after chip breaking away.

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  The second wave came less than a minute after the first. Frustration overflowed into a growl as I was forced to stop my demolition. Nyssa could handle four of the miserable creatures, but I didn’t want to take a chance with eight. I didn’t get quite the same feeling of all-encompassing rage I secretly hoped for as I waded into the pack of undead, but my frustration did boil over into anger, and I swung my hammer with only slightly-restrained satisfaction.

  Immediately after I dispatched the final goblin vampire with a crunching impact to its chest, I returned to battering the floor.

  I fought five more waves before I broke through the floor. The stone I’d focused on chipped one final time before the next blow cracked it in two. The mortar holding it in place gave way with the next hit.

  Only one final group of goblins interrupted me before I widened the hole enough to be able to fit through. The child’s crying had become both more frantic and more hopeful after the first stone had fallen, which revitalized my effort.

  Ding.

  “Skill acquired: Demolition.”

  I shook my head of the distraction and stared at the hole I’d created, gripping my hammer with a blood-slick hand. I shone the light of my torch into the darkness below: nothing but a stone floor covered in stone debris. Worried I could talk myself out or anything requiring courage, I stepped forward, falling into the darkness.

  It was a good ten or twelve feet before I landed. Stumbling on the rock-strewn floor, I fell hard to my side, my ribs cracking against my hammer. The breath was forced from me, and I groaned. Fear of what might be lurking just out of sight asserted itself, and I pushed to my feet, gasps coming pained and shallow.

  I swung my gaze around the square chamber, the light from my torch showing nothing but bare stone walls. One of the walls had crumbled, a large chunk broken and on the floor. Besides it, a goblin, tiny even compared to the others I've fought today. Its thin little arms rose and fell with high-pitched grunts. It looked like a toddler throwing a tantrum. I stepped to the side to get a better view, and once I understood, I lunged forward. My hammer clobbered the goblin across the room. I barely noticed as my fragments ticked up one to three hundred and ninety-six.

  I turned to the young boy lying faced down on the ground, pinned beneath the crumbled wall. He wasn't crushed as I'd feared, but he was barely able to move. Hundreds of scratches criss-crossed his face, neck, and back. None of them deep enough to draw anything more than a few beads of blood, but every inch of exposed skin was completely covered.

  He whimpered. The familiar light-tan cloth of his shirt ragged, bloody.

  “It’s okay,” I said lamely. “The goblin is dead.”

  At that last word, a sharp cry erupted from the quivering child.

  "I'm going to get you out."

  I studied the rock, making sure I could move it without crushing the boy. With a deep breath, I bent down and lifted, carefully pulling the largest chunk up. Once it was a few inches off the boy, he shifted, then scurried out from under the heavy stone. I dropped it back down, then turned to him. He's huddled in a far corner, arms wrapped around his knees.

  "It's okay," I say quietly, taking a step toward him.

  Nyssa leaped to my shoulder and studied the little person, her head cocked at an angle. I didn’t feel anything but a slight curiosity from her. There was no desire to help or protect the child. This was the second human she’d ever seen, and she was surprised at its size.

  “He’s young,” I said quietly. “Like you.”

  I slowly stepped closer until I was only a couple of feet away and knelt. “I can get you out of here if you’d like.”

  I honestly wasn’t sure that was the case, but I wasn’t about to tell this poor child that we might be lost in here until we starved to death. I could barely touch upon the thought without descending into panic myself.

  The whimpering quieted, and an eye peeked out from behind scraped arms. It stared at me, wide and frightened, until limbs and legs unfurled and the little body impacted me, clutching to my shirt as if I were a savior. I supposed I was.

  My hand hovered over the small boy’s back before I embraced him, making sure to hold onto his lower back, where there was no blood. His body shook as his tears renewed.

  “It’s okay,” I whispered. “It’s okay. I’ve got you.”

  Ding.

  “Passive gained: Rescuers Instinct.”

  I stood, easily hoisting the boy with my left hand while holding my hammer with my right. I couldn’t, however, hold the boy and my hammer and still point my torch forward. I sighed, placed both my hammer and torch into my inventory, then pulled my torch back out, letting it fall into my open palm as it materialized. I didn’t love the idea of leaving my hammer in my inventory and needing to spend the second or two it would take to pull it out, but I had a guess as to what lay before us, and if I was right, we wouldn’t run into anything too threatening.

  I turned my torch toward the room's only doorway, closed and flush with the stone wall. This room had been the starting point for this child, who appeared to be around ten years old. It had been pitch black, that little goblin the only thing in here.

  I was sure Dev’s intent had been for the person who spawned in here to be attacked by the goblin in the dark, quickly becoming wise to how terribly weak the monster was. They could track the creature by its glowing eyes, making the goblin and the darkness a trivial obstacle. However, something had gone wrong. Maybe the boy had scrambled at a weak point in a wall, and it had fallen on him, or maybe he'd simply bumped into it. Whatever happened, the young boy hadn't even had a chance to fight back. He'd been stuck in complete darkness for two days, being slowly tortured.

  I shook my head, tightening my grip on the child.

  Fuck. You. Dev.

  I’d felt frustration and even moments of burning anger at Dev for locking me in this unforgiving place, but with what he’d done to this child, a fiery seed of hate had been planted. It was unforgivable. The fact that there was someone so young here in this game hinted at something I was too afraid to confront, so instead, I seethed at Dev, focusing on that feeling alone.

  I stalked to the door and kicked it. Its smooth wood cracked along its center, the two halves exploding into the corridor beyond. Just before I made my rage-fueled exit, a thought stopped me. I moved to the crumpled form of the tiny goblin and touched it with my foot, opening its inventory. Sure enough, there was a torch. The only way to get light for whoever spawned here was to kill the goblin. I took it, a goblin vampire’s eye, and two copper coins, dropping a broken round shield so the new items would fit into my inventory.

  It was time to get this poor kid out of here.

  Is it wrong to kill to survive in this accursed world?

  Follow Xavier's journey. Discover what it means to survive… or to live.

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