Maggie took it better than he expected. She only cussed thrice within a minute.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?!” She choked so hard that she nearly swallowed her joint. “A monster that can exit Dungeons?! And it talks back?!”

  “Brings back memories, doesn’t it?” Matthew scowled, his arms crossed over his knees. “And not the good kind.”

  Maggie’s ground her teeth so hard Matthew could hear them creak. She understood the threat a smart monster posed better than most, let alone one capable of changing nests like a cuckoo. She crammed her joint against a brick while trying to get her thoughts in order.

  “You don’t think it’ll be a one-time thing,” she guessed.

  “If it happened once, why not more?” Matthew had fought Dungeons long enough to see how these trends usually spread. “The smart ones won’t catch on, ‘cause most Dungeons won’t stand monsters that can disobey them, but the Disbelief adaptation? It’ll become popular sooner or later.”

  Dungeons currently functioned like flytraps, using bait and deceit to catch unwary civilians. Monsters capable of tricking Disbelief for a time would cause them to evolve into beehives sending drones out to gather food rather than relying on it coming to them. They’d become exponentially more dangerous.

  The Association’s best bet was to kill Tarantulas and swiftly destroy any Dungeon it came in contact with in the hope that they could eradicate this mutation before it spread; a difficult task on its own even without factoring in the Old Town team’s loss.

  And Maggie knew that as well as Matthew. He could see it in her thoughtful gaze as she stared at the distant skyline.

  “My condolences,” she finally said, her voice softer than before. “For the dead team.”

  “I didn’t know them very well.” Matthew’s team hunted on turf other than theirs, so they only met during Association meetings and the occasional group raid. Matthew vaguely recalled that Blight had a daughter and that Bomberman still lived with his parents, which sucked. “But there are people who’ll mourn them and never learn the truth.”

  Maggie growled. “Your bosses will claim they died in another car crash?”

  Her remark cut deep. It had been the excuse Disbelief provided when Matthew’s team exited the Mall with heavy injuries and a dead friend.

  “What do you want us to tell their families?” Matthew replied harshly. “That an extra-dimensional spellcasting spider killed them?”

  “It’s still better than lying.” Maggie tossed her jointover the roof and into the wild grass garden below. “I’m sick of it. Perse deserved better.”

  “They all do,” Matthew muttered under his breath.

  “No, they don’t. Sam left us peasants for the USA and denied everything rather than own up to it, while Jack…” Merely uttering her brother’s name seemed to cause Maggie physical pain. “I don’t talk to that coward anymore. He only uses his Key for himself now.”

  Matthew scoffed. “So you’re talking to me, but not your brother?”

  “At least you’re still in the fight, and Ulysses…” Maggie glanced at the Werners’ house. “It was his sister who died. He gets a pass.”

  “Does… does he ever answer your messages?” Matthew must have sent hundreds since the incident and all of them were met with silence.

  Maggie shook her head sadly. She had no more luck than he did. “His mother told me they’re going to move out next year.”

  “What?” Matthew’s head perked up in surprise. “Where?!”

  “Canada. His mom’s company wants to transfer her there, and she’ll take up the job so they can start fresh.” Maggie’s scowl deepened further. “They’re gonna leave her behind.”

  Matthew didn’t know how respond to that. He couldn’t blame Viviane Werner for trying to move away from the city where her daughter died, but… Ulysses had been his best friend once. Did he know about his mom’s plans? Did he even care?

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  Soon only Maggie and him would remain in Evermarsh. Everybody else from their old team would be gone, one way or another.

  “Is…” Matthew gulped as he tried to put his thoughts in order. “Is that why you want to take another shot at the Mall?"

  “I just can’t stand the thought that everybody else just gave up. It’s like spitting on Perse’s grave.” Maggie turned to look at me. “Is this the moment when you tell me it’s suicide?”

  “Fighting that monster is suicide,” Matthew replied darkly. Mr. Chang had sliced the creature for seventy-hours straight down to its atoms, and it just pulled itself back together in three minutes. All attempts at bypassing the creature to reach the Mall’s core had failed too. As far as Matthew could tell, you couldn’t destroy the Dungeon without dealing with its defender too. “It can’t be beaten, unless…”

  Maggie raised an eyebrow. “Unless what?”

  Matthew hesitated to tell her. The truth was that he had thought of using his Key in a way that could potentially destroy the Mall a few months after Perse’s death, but the cost… the cost…

  A sharp pain suddenly erupted in his skull. Matthew massaged his temples as he struggled with a headache.

  Maggie watched him with a scowl. “What’s up?”

  “Nothing,” Matthew lied. “Just a headache.”

  He shouldn’t dwell on that subject. It was a nuclear option which the Doc struggled hard enough to talk him out of. He didn’t want to consider it, not unless everything else failed.

  “We’ll figure out a spell to take the Mall,” Matthew replied as he tried to focus back on the conversation. He continued to delve deeper and deeper into his color with each passing year. “The Doc and the Association made a lot of progress in the last four years. It’s just a matter of time until we find a permanent solution to Dungeons.”

  “I’m not going to wait another four years, Matt.” Maggie stared at the moon with a grim look on her face. “If that spider-thing learned how to escape its Dungeon, then the monster who murdered Perse will figure out how to do the same sooner or later. You know it’ll kill again, and it will be our fault…” Her jaw clenched tightly. “Again.”

  Matthew took a long, deep breath. “Maggie, it wasn’t your–”

  “It was my fault.” Maggie’s hands clenched into fists. “Yours and mine. We picked that fight and we were too weak to win it. Perse died because we couldn’t protect her.”

  “Then why won’t you join the Association?” Matthew asked. “It’s not like our old team. We’ve got people to cover for us, support, knowledge–”

  “I know,” she all but hissed back. “I know it would be for the best.”

  “Then why?!”

  “Because I can’t watch someone dying on me again!”

  Matthew winced back, his body going cold for a moment. Maggie covered her eyes with her hand, and he could immediately tell that she was suppressing tears.

  “How do you do it, Matt?” she asked him, her voice soft and weak. “Going out there with new people and not…” Maggie exhaled and lowered her hand, her eyes staring at the ground below. “Not remembering Perse every time you look at them?”

  A heavy silence followed. Matthew looked at his old friend with his last remaining eye for a long moment, catching a glimpse of the frightened and sad girl behind her tough exterior.

  Maggie was mad at him, but more than that, she was mad at herself. She was afraid of opening up again after everybody else either died or left, and she didn’t think she was strong enough to protect anyone else anymore. She pushed people away to avoid being hurt, the same way Ulysses did.

  Matthew understood because he had been there first.

  He took a deep breath, mustered up his courage, and hesitantly dared to put his hand on Maggie’s shoulder. He expected her to push it away, yet she didn’t. Her bones and muscles felt more fragile than glass to his fingers.

  “I’ve never forgotten,” Matthew confessed. It was Perse’s blood that he saw when he treated Kari’s wound. “I didn’t even want to join up with another team at first.”

  It was the Doc that all but forced him to form a group with others. Matthew still recalled that time his mentor brought Kari and John to what he thought would be a normal Dungeon delving mission. He had pouted and complained, but in the end they ended up clearing the place and having lunch together afterwards.

  “When, uh… when Kari and John started dungeon-delving, they… they were terrible. They had no idea what they were in for, not really, while I… I did. Honestly, they would have been badly injured or killed without me.” Matthew couldn’t help but smile upon recalling the first time he dragged John out of a mimic’s jaw. “But because I showed them the ropes… they survived.”

  And Matthew considered that his biggest achievement, greater than any spell.

  “Now they can handle Dungeons on their own, and they helped save plenty more lives than I could do alone. I, uh…” Matthew exhaled until his lungs went cold. “I think it’s what Perse would have wanted. I hope.”

  Maggie answered his words with silence, though her thoughtful expression told Matthew that they gave her pause. He had finally managed to reach out to her after all these years. He had to persevere.

  “Amélia and the others need people like us,” Matthew said after pulling back his hand. “Like you, Maggie. We can shield them from what we went through.”

  “I’ll… I’ll think about it.” Maggie shook her head and looked away from him. “It’s getting late.”

  Matthew could read between the lines. She wanted to be alone with her thoughts for a while.

  “I better go before King Coach notices I’m gone,” Matthew said as he rose to his feet. “I should invent a spell to hide my absence at the dorm.”

  Maggie scoffed and turned to face him. “One last thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t dye your hair again.” For once, Maggie’s mocking smile had a warmth to it. “You look like a goth, and not the hot kind.”

  Matthew chuckled. “You don’t know what kind of price I exacted in exchange.”

  The rift between them remained far and wide, but… it no longer felt quite as large as before.

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