Sofia had returned to Vraxridge despite her better judgments. Her time in Dolym was short. It would have likely been a bigger adventure if any of the Three Heads were actually at the headquarters. Luckily, they weren’t.

  Sofia left the money in Olena’s office with a note reminding them all of the deal.

  They could ignore that and try to flay her anyway, but at least now she had Althowin on her side . . . or she was on Althowin’s side. Whichever made more sense.

  Veph entered the kitchen where Sofia sat with a coffee. There were some elegant, expensive coffee devices all around the room, but Sofia didn’t know how they worked. She couldn’t ask either. The Rat asking how machines worked? Insane. Embarrassing. So, instead, she made the worst, strongest cup she had ever drank.

  Veph sniffed the pot of Sofia’s coffee and made a face.

  “I know,” Sofia said.

  Veph wordlessly poured a cup anyway, added a dash of milk and a shot of whiskey, then sat across from Sofia. The Void Nexus leader hardly looked human. Her movements were so fluid, so perfect. Her hair was shiny without a single strand out of place. Even her eyes practically glittered.

  Veph hooked a finger around the ear loop of her mask. She hesitated.

  “Can’t be worse than me.” She knew she was too hard on herself, but . . . she did have a rat face. And rat hair. And rat teeth.

  Veph seemed to agree as she let her mask drop, hanging just from one ear.

  Sofia watched, and knew Veph was watching her watching. She couldn’t turn away.

  The beautiful, flawless leader of Void Nexus was . . . horrifically scarred.

  Flesh had been torn away from Veph’s jaw, leaving only thin sinew in places over the bone. Many of her teeth were missing or damaged, and they were easily visible from where her lips were scarred or, in some places, missing altogether.

  Sofia had always wondered what was under the mask.

  Now, she kind of wished she could go back to not knowing.

  It was clear a mender had worked tirelessly to keep Veph’s face together after something had torn it apart. No amount of magic in the world could have fixed every damaged part.

  Veph raised an eyebrow.

  Sofia lifted her coffee. “Cheers.”

  Veph stood silently, walked back to the counter, and returned with the bottle of whiskey. Sofia, who had frozen in fear, only watched Veph pour the liquor into her coffee. When Veph was satisfied, she lifted her own coffee and clinked it against Sofia’s.

  Sofia smiled before taking a sip. It was a true heroic effort not to spit out the burning, bitter drink. Veph even winced a little.

  “Are you free of that contract?” Veph finally asked.

  Watching her talk with her damaged lips was weird. Beyond weird.

  “Yeah. I think. I paid it. Kind of. I left the money at their headquarters, so hopefully they remember.” Sofia sipped her coffee and set the mug down with force. “This is awful.”

  “How’d they get you?” Veph scratched at her scars as she stared right into Sofia’s eyes.

  It was unnerving. Most people only glanced at her or purposely looked just over her shoulder. Anything to avoid her rat face.

  “They offered lots of money. Ain’t that the way? Who says no to that?”

  Veph nodded slowly and drank more. “I can’t blame you.”

  “Aren’t you from money?”

  Veph nodded slowly. “My grandfather started Void Nexus.”

  “Big money there.” Sofia scratched her nose. “Althowin’s bounty was the biggest I’d seen. I saw yours for the goblin, but you pulled that, didn’t you?”

  “I did. As a favor.” Veph pulled a wand from her sleeve and started flipping it around her metal fingers. “I haven’t decided what route to go yet.”

  “Is he that dangerous?”

  Veph set her coffee down, leaned forward, and gently gripped the wand, all while staring intently at Sofia. “He’s a Shard Hero at level one with attributes equal to, if not higher, than a level seventy hero. He’s existed for less than a year, and he’s stronger than most of the world. We’re on a time limit before nobody can compete with him. Not even Althowin or Zezog. If we decide he’s a threat to the world—” She let the sentence hang as she took a drink of her coffee. “We need to act while we can still stop him.”

  “He ain’t that strong.”

  The door into the kitchen slid open. Sofia kept her eyes on Veph’s, expecting the Void Nexus leader to quickly hide her jaw. Instead, Veph silently stood, poured a coffee, added milk, and returned to the table just as Chorsay sat down beside Sofia.

  She swore the bench buckled under the man’s weight.

  Veph slid the coffee across and offered whiskey, which Chorsay accepted.

  Sofia looked between the old man and the intense woman. “You two know each other, right? You were Void Nexus?”

  “I was.” Chorsay wrapped his monstrous hands around the mug and took a long drink of his coffee.

  “Are you two, like, uh, a thing?”

  Veph raised an eyebrow.

  Chorsay made a face.

  “I’m wrong?” Sofia shifted uncomfortably. These were two of the most dangerous people in the entire world, and she just said something insulting. There were a million ways they could kill her. Chorsay had less shards than Sofia, but that hadn’t stopped him from killing multiple Shard Heroes in the last month.

  Veph finally laughed. “Chorsay’s my grandfather.”

  The old man finished his coffee in one massive gulp.

  Sofia watched with horror, then scrunched her face. “You said your grandfather started Void Nexus.”

  “Romoalt Veriss,” Chorsay said.

  Sofia narrowed her eyes. “I think I’m confused.”

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  “Chorsay helped raise me.” Veph poured some more whiskey into her empty mug, into Chorsay’s empty mug, and after a glance, some more into Sofia’s coffee. “Chorsay was my grandfather’s partner. My mother died in the Tundra while on a mission.”

  Chorsay sighed. Not rudely. Not loudly. The old man looked into his mug, now filled with whiskey, like he was staring into a mirror.

  Veph scratched carefully at her scarred jaw. Her mouth didn’t move, but her eyes squinted as if she was smiling. “My grandfather got me from Brukiya and brought me back to Stelsodo, back to Void Nexus headquarters. That’s when I first met Chorsay. He was just a regular career hero at that time.”

  Chorsay smiled softly.

  “My grandfather had insisted on taking the train. It took us days to get from Vraxridge all the way to Atrevaar.” She paused, looking at Sofia. “That was before Althowin kicked all companies out of here.”

  “Right.” Sofia nodded as if she knew that. She didn’t. “So, if you were Romoalt Veriss’s partner, why did you leave Void Nexus?”

  Veph shifted all of her attention to Chorsay and raised an expectant eyebrow.

  “Hm.” He finished his whiskey. “I met Romoalt in Prouvaria, just outside Barcaen while I was offering my services as an escort through the Desert. He hired me, despite being a hero himself. He spoke of his daughter during our entire journey, and I followed him back to Atrevaar after. I fell in love with the man, not with Void Nexus. Romoalt had a way of rallying people to his side, no matter their beliefs or goals. When it got too big, I needed to find my own place. I tried waiting. I tried adapting.” He scratched his face and sighed heavily. “I never wanted to leave you or Romoalt.”

  Veph nodded slightly.

  Sofia found herself tense. Probably the most tense she had been in her entire life, even after facing other heroes and dungeon bosses.

  “I stayed in Atrevaar to be close.” Chorsay placed his hand out, palm up. Veph slipped her wand into her sleeve and placed her metal hand on his. It looked like a child’s hand against Chorsay’s massive palm. “I never wanted to leave you.”

  “I know,” Veph said quietly.

  Sofia slipped off the bench, lingered while thinking of what to say, then stepped out of the room. She took a deep breath as soon as the door closed behind her.

  “Is the kitchen busy?”

  Sofia jumped and looked up at the massive elf standing before her. “Ah!”

  Zezog furrowed his brow.

  She really would have assumed the strongest man in the world would have hair. Something about him balding just really threw her off. That, and his shorts. Maybe it was judgemental. She didn’t know. It didn’t really matter. Her opinion didn’t change facts.

  “Yes,” she said. “It’s, uh, it’s emotional in there.”

  “Emotional?”

  Zezog seemed to consider that for a moment before turning. “Did you eat?”

  “No. I didn’t even finish my coffee.” She grabbed a cigar from her thigh pocket and looked at it for a moment. Althowin said she wasn’t allowed to smoke inside, for some reason.

  “Want some pancakes? There is a place nearby.”

  “Huh?” Sofia put the cigar between her lips and looked nearly straight up. “You eat pancakes?”

  “Does having seven shards change which foods I enjoy?” He walked down the hall and stopped at the stairs. “They have coffee and orange juice.”

  “Okay . . .” Sofia started following Zezog. “I think I’m confused.”

  “We can talk about it over pancakes,” Zezog said.

  It was, without a doubt, the weirdest day of Sofia’s life.

  ***

  Fortress Dungeon

  Fifth Floor

  One Shard Active

  Owin found himself in a black room. He was so used to either walking up or down stairs upon entering a new floor. Instead, he was just deposited into a room.

  Shade jabbed his finger into the wall and swore quietly as his bones bent weirdly.

  “What’s it made out of?” Owin asked.

  “Boundary, I think.” Shade poked it a few more times, swearing despite having the exact same result. “Nothing is getting through here. I believe we are trapped.”

  Owin walked across the small room and gestured. There were two doors on each side, giving four obvious exits from the black room.

  “Ah. Yes. I meant other than the doors. Trapped besides for the thing that makes us not trapped. I just hadn’t looked all around the room yet. I jumped to conclusions. Or rather, poked into conclusions.”

  Owin ignored the skeleton and leaned his head out the leftmost door. The room beyond was just as dark with no clear areas to go. He walked to the other wall and looked out. Other than a monster he hadn’t seen before standing in the far corner by a chest, nothing was very visible. Even the ground looked like it disappeared after a step or two.

  “What’s that?” Owin asked, pointing at the creature.

  “That is . . .” Shade leaned over Owin. “A minotaur! Half human, half bull, half ugly.”

  The minotaur looked across the vast room.

  “I think it heard us.” Shade stepped back and hid behind the black wall.

  “It heard you. You were yelling again.”

  “I never yell. You’re making that up.”

  The minotaur didn’t move. It stayed near the chest like it was one of the guardians in the Ocean. Owin reached his foot out and pressed down just outside the door. It was solid, even though there wasn’t a clear floor.

  He looked through the other doors, which only provided a slightly different view of the same room. There was an obvious door on the opposite end without an obvious way to reach it. Most of the ground looked like a never-ending pit.

  Shade walked right through one of the doors before Owin even realized. By the time he ran to the doorway, the skeleton was already a few feet out.

  “Is it safe?”

  “Define the word for me,” Shade said. He crouched down and jabbed his finger into the ground at his feet, having the same reaction he did to the wall. “You can only see the ground when it’s below your feet. But there is ground. I wanted to make sure it would support our weight.” He poked off to the side where he didn’t touch anything. “Don’t fall off.”

  As soon as Owin stepped onto the walkway, he spotted several mobs flying near the ceiling. They shimmered with a familiar glow.

  Warpers.

  “Don’t let those close to you,” Owin said.

  “Oh, I’m aware. Also watch for those.” Shade pointed to his left onto another walkway. It took Owin a few seconds to make out a shape hanging from the ceiling. It was difficult to see even when he knew it was there. As far as he could tell, it was a fleshy rope hanging from the ceiling.

  Shade stared at his feet, walked in a circle, then fell to his knees and started touching different parts of the floor. “I thought it was a single line, but it is not.” He pointed in all different directions. “We could take any route to that door, I guess. What way do you want to go? Forward? Back? Left? Right? A combination of all of them that will inevitably end up with us in the same place we started?”

  A warper dove from overhead. Owin pointed his hand and quickly cast Bolt. With how damaged his mana was, the chunk he used felt far more significant than it should’ve. The electric spell smacked against the flying specter, giving Shade an opening to cut it out of the air.

  “I can’t say I particularly like this room.”

  Owin walked back into the starting room and left through a right doorway. He inched along, moving as fast as he could while making sure every step was on solid ground. After a few minutes, he looked up and made eye contact with the minotaur, who was still far away. The mob was simply waiting.

  Shade tapped Owin’s shoulder. “I don’t mean to alarm you, but we’re being watched.”

  “I know.” Owin took another step before Shade poked him again.

  “Not by that.”

  Owin looked through the rest of the room where there were various sizes of eyes floating about. A few were turned to him, and one massive one near the door stared straight at him.

  “Oculars.”

  “Specters to eyes. What a dungeon. A beautiful place.” Shade scooted past Owin and continued at a slighter faster pace. “You know, it is painful to see how slow you’re moving.”

  “What else am I supposed to do?”

  Shade turned and stuck a finger in his eye. “I can see the ground rather well.”

  “Oh.”

  “Keep the eyes away from me, and I’ll speed us up a little.” Shade ran, pivoted, took a step, and stopped. “Too fast? Isn’t it ironic? Eye enemies.” Shade wailed and ducked as a red beam shot over his head.

  “I don’t have a lot of range!” Owin jumped from his current position and landed directly beside Shade, even grabbing the skeleton to ensure he didn’t tumble over the side.

  “You have wands.”

  Shade stepped aside as another beam shot from a swarmer.

  Owin pulled a wand from his belt, pointed, and said, “Arcane Blast.” The purple spell spun to life and shot from the tip of the wand. It smacked into the ocular swarmer just as it shot a beam. Both spells collided, exploded, and tossed the ocular corpse into the pit.

  “See?” Shade took a step. “I want you to know it is taking every ounce of my skin not to make jokes about eyes.”

  “You don’t have skin.”

  “Ah.” Shade continued quickly without another word.