Area Message: The second boss of the Seared Wilds Tower has been defeated. The remaining bosses grow stronger. All bosses gain the Elite status. Further boss kills will lead to further power increases.

  Boss Defeated: The Queen Tyrant

  Level Up! Fifty-Four to Fifty-Five

  Dungeon Delvers who were not in the arena will receive fifty percent of your team’s experience.

  I breathed a sigh of relief as the grace period after the GOAT’s death ended, the Queen Tyrant powered up, and less than a second later, Tori defeated it. All four points—the two from the GOAT and the two from Tori’s victory over the Queen Tyrant—went into Charge. After all, the boss hadn’t actually hurt me at all. I’d definitely gotten the easy end of the stick, and Tori had been wrong—she’d have wrecked the GOAT with her magic.

  Area Message: The Seared Wilds Tower’s third floor has unlocked. This floor will remain unlocked for twenty-four hours, after which time the first floor will reset.

  There was a single dot on my scanner in the direction the Queen Tyrant had been—Tori. I picked up the three rare items and hurried back toward her.

  When I got there, she was staring at a spiral staircase that looked suspiciously like the one Tori, Calvin, and I had climbed to escape the Redline Tunnels at the end of our Hardcore Tutorial. I nodded. “Nice job with the skeleton.”

  “Thanks. Almost didn’t have it,” she said. “Turns out, the Queen Tyrant was a mismatch when you add that many levels to her.”

  “That’s too bad. You’d have loved the boss I fought. Would have run rings around him.”

  “The GOAT? Who was he?”

  Some basketball player, but with a goat head.”

  Tori snorted. Then she pointed at the staircase. It disappeared into the ‘sky’ about fifty feet up. “Guess we go up, huh?”

  “I guess so,” I said.

  My equipment was ready, I was in pretty solid shape, and Tori didn’t have a scratch on her—though her T-shirt had some rips that implied that hadn’t been the case five minutes ago. Even so, we didn’t have anything left to do but push up into the final floor of the Seared Wilds Tower, so I stepped onto the gold-lit, iron staircase.

  Tier Three Dungeon: The Seared Wilds Tower (Floor Three)

  Objective: Defeat The Tower Guardian (0/1)

  Completion: 65%

  Fragile Walls: This dungeon is close to breaking. Its inhabitants will be freed if a threshold of Delver deaths inside is reached.

  Break Counter: 3/5

  Sealed Environment: You cannot leave this dungeon until it is completed

  The Break Counter had gone up.

  I had no idea who else was in here, but they had to have died on the second floor—and that had to have done it while we were fighting. I stared at the number, watching in case it ticked up again, but it stayed at three, stubbornly not moving.

  “Who’s the Tower Guardian?” Tori asked.

  I didn’t have an answer. Someone had to run Chicago, though. “The mayor? Someone on City Council?”

  “That makes no—“ Tori cut herself off with a gasp. “Hal, if we lose now…”

  “Yeah, Tori. If we lose now, the dungeon breaks.”

  “Does that mean…”

  “Will the other dungeons break? I don’t know. But I do know that no one else is going to trigger the break. We’ve cleared to the third floor. They’re going to come here, and they’re going to run into us. Plus, as long as we’re in here, it can’t break until the timer runs out.” It was a flimsy bit of logic, based entirely on how the Watery Grave’s rules had worked, but it was the best I had.

  “So, what do we do?” Tori asked.

  I pointed at the completely empty room around us, and at the fog gate that was the only feature in front of us. Then I shrugged. “We wait, and we get ready. Then, once we’re ready, we kill the Tower Guardian.”

  Tori fidgeted with her hair. It had grown out a bit, and she’d taken to keeping it tied back instead of in the emo swoosh she’d used to have, but a little was still too short for a tail, and it kept escaping and flipping over her face. She tucked it behind her ear, but when she was nervous, she couldn’t help but roll it between her fingers.

  I ignored her and started pulling bombs from my inventory.

  Back in my Voltsmith’s Laboratory, I’d made a couple dozen of the things. I’d refined the technique from the original battery bombs I’d used in the Redline Tunnels, then again from the ones I’d created early on in Phase One. The overabundance of Small Charge Batteries I was starting to get helped, too; I’d set several up with batteries so they were already armed, and with Remote Voltsmithing, they had a whole new use.

  Three of those were acidic machine-battery bombs, while the other three were shrapnel. All six sat on the floor while I carefully put the rest into my inventory. Then, I gently tucked them away. They’d be ready for action.

  The rest of my Creations got a similar once-over, and I switched out the Bio-Electric Scanner for the Spellcode Scroll Reader. That process involved a lot of wire connections and prying with a needlenose pliers, but I needed them switched out before we fought the Tower Guardian. When it was done, my stats looked like this:

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  [Hal Riley] [Class - Voltsmith] [Level - 54 Rank One]

  [Stats]

  ?Body - 35

  ?Awareness - 47

  ?Charge - 16/79 (59 Used)

  Stat Points Available: 0

  [Class Skill - Decharge/Recharge - Drain the charge from magic items to power your own creations]

  [Class Skill - Remote Voltsmithing - Use your Voltsmithing to empower Creations even when others are using them—or when no one is.

  [Skill - Spellcoding - Transfer spells from Tomes to Spellscrolls, allowing weaker versions to be cast with Charge instead of Mana]

  Items

  ?Autoplate Pauldron (8 Charge)

  ?Voltsmith’s Grasp Upgrade One (19/30 Charge) - Rail Gun Module, Taser Launcher

  ?Heavy Trip-Hammer 2.0 (25 Charge)

  ?Warrior’s Sheath (Spellcode Scroll-Reader) (7 Charge)

  Tori cleared her throat a couple of times while I worked, but I ignored her until I’d finished the most delicate parts of the installation. Then I looked up. “What’s on your mind?”

  “I was hoping…I mean…fuck,” she said. Then she went quiet for a while, cheeks flushing a little. I looked down and kept tightening screws, as much because the job needed doing as to give her a little space. Eventually, she kept going. “I need advice about Jessica.”

  The conversation paused again. She seemed like she wanted me to say something, but this was a time for the trick Dad had used on Beth and me. I said nothing, just kept working after nodding once.

  “Do you think I’ll see Mom again?”

  That wasn’t the question I’d expected out of Tori. This time, I stayed quiet because I didn’t know what to say, and Tori kept talking after taking a breath. “I mean, I miss her, but she’s up in Green Bay, and I don’t know what’s changed up there or if they’re close to finishing their Tier Three Dungeon, or any of that. If this was videogame rules, I wouldn’t be worried. But…”

  I finished tightening up the Autoplate Pauldron—which had taken a beating against Ursa Prime—and buckled it back around my arm. “I wish I had a good answer for you, Tori. I don’t know, though. Green Bay’s a long way away right now.”

  She looked like I’d slapped her. Maybe I had. I kept talking to try to recover. “I’m working on something, or I will be soon, that’ll help. But right now, we’re looking at weeks before I can get it running—if I can. When it’s done, we can go to Green Bay.” Or Cozad, or Wyoming, I didn’t add. Now wasn’t the time for either of those trips, and I couldn’t explain why Wyoming, anyway.

  “So, what do I do about Jessica, then?”

  “What do you mean?” I knew what she meant, but she needed to say it.

  “I mean…ugh. She loves me, but I’m not sure I love her, you know?”

  I held up a hand and stopped putting my tools away. “I think you do. Tori, you fought your way across Chicago to get to her. You’ve got problems with her, and that’s fine. But she cares about you, and you care about her.”

  “Yeah, I guess,” Tori said.

  We sat there for a little while. Then I stood up. “Well, it’s time. We’re not going to get any stronger than we are now, and I don’t think taking more shots at the Floor Two bosses is gonna be helpful. It’ll just burn our resources. You ready?”

  Tori pushed herself off the wall she’d been leaning on. “Yeah.”

  Then she went quiet. “So should I start calling her Mom?”

  I swallowed. I’d known the question was coming, but I still didn’t know how to answer it. “I think that’s something you have to figure out for yourself, Tori. It’s not something anyone can answer for you, and I don’t think she needs you to say it, but if it’s something you want, she wouldn’t mind. And you’ve already done it a couple of times.”

  Neither of us said anything. I was trying to do the silent Dad trick, but Tori wasn’t biting. One or the other of us had to break, and in the end, it was me. “I told you about Beth, right?”

  “Your sister?”

  “Yep.” I took a deep breath. This wasn’t a conversation I wanted to have, but it was the only tool I had left. “Two years ago, Beth was graduating from high school. She kept sending me pictures of her sashes and pins. Art school, high GPA, all the stuff. And it was overwhelming, because I was stuck in Chicago, in between jobs, trying to make enough rent money to stay in Mrs. Faren’s attic. So when she asked how long I’d be home for during her graduation, I told her I wouldn’t be.

  “It wasn’t my fault. I couldn’t afford the bus trip, and I definitely couldn’t afford to spend a week not looking for work. But it broke something in Beth. We got into a shouting match. First, it was over text. Then it was through a phone call. Then, suddenly, she was gone.”

  Tori waited for me to continue, sitting in front of the fog gate to the boss. When I didn’t, she finally broke. “So what does that mean for me?”

  “I don’t even know if she’s still alive. Neither do Mom and Dad. She disappeared shortly after our fight. She walked across the stage at her graduation, and the next day, she was gone. If I could do it over again, I’d take a step back and think about how to solve my problem instead of telling Beth that it couldn’t be done. At the very least, I’d find a way to show her that I loved her, because she’s my sister, and she deserved that from me.”

  “So you think I need to tell her I love her and call her Mom?”

  “I think calling Jessica ‘Mom’ is something for you to figure out, but you love her, and she needs to know that. She’s trying like I wish I’d tried with Beth.”

  Tori thought about it. Then she closed her eyes and nodded slowly. “Okay. Yeah. Yeah, I can do it.” She swallowed and stared at the fog gate. “You won’t tell her about this talk?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Great.” She headed for the fog gate. “Let’s go fight the Tower Guardian. That’ll be way less stressful than thinking about this.”

  The Tower Guardian: Level Sixty Dungeon Boss (Rank One)

  Current Difficulty: Extreme

  Welcome to the Windy City.

  Multi-Phasic - This boss must be defeated multiple times. It will change properties as the fight progresses.

  It was the simplest stat block for a boss in a long time. Only one affix. A single line of backstory. No hints or clues for how to win.

  Just a woman—a woman that looked uncannily human and yet somehow off.

  While some of the dungeons we’d fought through—most, really—had maintained their theming, this one hadn’t. After the first floor, it felt like it’d gone completely off the rails. I wasn’t sure what to do about that, or about what it meant.

  And I definitely didn’t know what to do about the beautiful, alien-looking Tower Guardian.

  She stood about my height—tall for a woman—and every inch of her torso was armored in off-white plates with glowing purple highlights. Beneath the plates, she seemed to wear mail that extended up her arms and down her legs to boots and gloves. And covering her head was an almost-oversized pointed hat, not unlike a wizard’s or witch’s. The staff in her hands and the sword on her back gave hints to what two of the phases might be.

  “That’s a raid boss,” Tori whispered. “Or something from a Souls game.”

  “Is that a good thing?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  The boss hadn’t moved a muscle. She’d definitely seen us, but she seemed content to let us make the first move. And I knew exactly how to take advantage of that.

  I pulled the first of the remote-ready bombs from my inventory and handed it to Tori. “Put this on one of the pillars.” Then I copied her, lining up my pillar of choice to match with hers. The whole time we worked, the Tower Guardian watched impassively. She didn’t make a sound. In fact, she seemed more than happy to let us prep the room, so I spread the rest of the remote bombs out like land mines. We build a safe area near the door, then a line across the room with the four remaining explosives.

  Then there was nothing left to do. We’d done the prepping. My gear was ready. Tori had the best spells we could get for her.

  I readied the Trip-Hammer, flexed the hand beneath the Voltsmith’s Grasp, and stepped across the room’s center point.

  And only then did the Tower Guardian react.

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