Kat stood with her arms crossed over her chest, her fists clenched so hard that Lacey was sure Kat’s own nails were drawing blood. Lacey just wanted to reach out and pat her on the shoulder. Bernard, wisely, didn’t touch Kat again. Their group had retreated back to where a Goblin Elite stood with a confused look on its face, the Gossowaries behind him glaring at Bernard and his party warily. Bernard stood between the huge Goblin and Kat. Lacey was pretty sure that Bernard could take out the Gossowaries, but the Gossowaries didn’t know that and they were ready to try their luck. Their handler struggled with the leashes. The Elite waved the envelope at the ceiling with a shrug and grunt.

  “I’m just saying that we have this covered,” Colt told Kat.

  “Moe, can you just hold onto that envelope and wait to give it to the next party, please,” Lacey told the Elite Goblin. “This isn’t the right group.”

  If you’ve never seen an Enlarged, super-buffed Goblin pout, you haven’t missed much. Moe grunted and spat at the floor between the groups, but he also retreated to their hidden alcove. The George also retreated, leaving a nice solid wall behind it. All that was left of the confrontation was a Spunk’s silly giggle.

  “We do not understand,” Bernard turned from the wall after examining it carefully, probably using a Detect Secret Door ability of some sort.

  “I get that,” Lacey blew out a breath. “But this time we don’t need saving.”

  “For once,” Colt muttered, the truth of what Lacey had said settling on his shoulders.

  “You don’t know what tricks he has up his sleeve,” Kat started.

  “Like coupons that negate our ability to shut down the dungeon?” Lacey ticked off what they knew so far. “Like that he has Thieves all ready to disarm the traps we have set up between us and them?”

  “Well, yeah, those things,” Kat waved her hand at the ceiling. “But he also has maps!”

  “For all the levels and solutions for all the puzzles,” Colt told her. “We know. We saw them bypass the puzzles with the solutions. He’s got a few players, but they’re mostly NPCs at the higher levels.”

  “He convinced the convoy here that you were conning me into giving up far more resources than we admitted,” Bernard explained.

  “That we didn’t know,” Lacey admitted. “But I don’t think it’s going to matter. They just don’t have enough to get all the way through the dungeon.”

  “How did he convince the whole convoy?” Colt asked.

  “He traveled back with the messenger I sent for more participants, and he reworded the message so that it seemed to ask for reinforcements,” Bernard sneered. His guard didn’t relax as they waited. They were checking the walls and surroundings as if they could come alive at any moment. They weren’t far off. “I suspect that he replaced my messenger with himself, but I cannot prove that yet.”

  “I’ll prove it as soon as I get my hands on him,” Kat stomped the heel of one boot into sand at her feet.

  “Get in line,” Colt muttered.

  “He’s my idiot father!” Kat shook a fist at the ceiling. “I get first dibs.”

  “Not if I have any say in the matter,” Colt said, but he’d turned off the mic.

  “He came after us,” Lacey tried reason. “And thanks to you guys letting us get our feet under us, we’re ready for it. We’re grateful and all, but we are prepared to repel him and his army of Rogues.”

  “Army of Rogues?” Bernard spoke over Kat’s mumbling.

  “He needs them to bypass the trap levels we have set up between the highest level and our control room,” Lacey explained. “But he doesn’t realize that we have an army even beyond that.”

  “You have more levels than you offer up to the groups we’ve sent in?” Bernard asked.

  “Of course,” Lacey answered him.

  “You didn’t trust us to keep the peace?” Bernard gave a rueful little smile at that.

  “We trust you,” Colt tried to answer, but Lacey waved him off.

  “We do, but not everyone has your sense of honor, Bernard,” Lacey tried to be diplomatic. “We do need to be able to stand on our own feet.”

  “That you do,” Bernard’s mouth twitched, and Lacey wondered if he was annoyed or proud. She thought he was proud of them, but it was an unfamiliar thing for her. Her dad had never been proud of her. First, she’d been a pawn in his divorce and then she’d been a duty he resented. Having a father figure show pride in her would probably make her chest all tight or something.

  Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

  “We would have told you, but we tend to talk about how the fortress is shaping up rather than the depths of our dungeon,” Lacey said. “Not that I didn’t ask about that incessantly, so I’m not saying you were ignoring us or anything, but you know, it’s good for us to have a backup just in case, you know?”

  “And it’s a good thing we did,” Colt put in, and Lacey winced, not needing his help.

  “You can’t control every single variable out there, Bernard,” Lacey quickly talked over Colt, who just looked confused at her. “We don’t blame you for this.”

  “No, I blame my father,” Kat sulked, and Lacey found herself comparing the girl to the Elite behind the wall a hallway away.

  “We’re not saying for you to go home,” Lacey again tried for soothing tones.

  “NO!” Colt added.

  “We’re just saying that you don’t have to worry,” Lacey picked up a pencil to tap in on her desk.

  “And you don’t have to come in here all hot to save my ass, either,” and this time Lacey rolled her eyes at Colt’s comment.

  “What?” Kat’s tone got dangerous.

  “We’re not out there in your world where I’m weak as some kitten or something,” Colt pressed on, and Lacey shook her head as he dug his grave. “We’re here in the dungeon. This is my turf and I’m more than capable of defending it with or without you.”

  “I come in here to save your ass, and you want to throw it in my face that I’m not high enough level to do it?” Kat slid around the point.

  “And we appreciate you coming in,” Colt pushed back, counter to his normal charming self.

  “It doesn’t sound like it,” Kat sulked.

  “Kat,” Colt’s tone got stern. “I always like it when you’re in the dungeon. In fact, you already helped us out.”

  “Don’t try to placate me,” Kat growled.

  “I’m not,” Colt chuckled, and Lacey felt herself relax a bit. He wasn’t being a completely insensitive idiot. “The first sign we had of the invasion was the fact that you weren’t here. We knew almost immediately that something was wrong. You already gave us a couple hours head start. And unless we want to lose that head start, we should be focused on the dungeon,” Colt went back into dangerous territory. Lacey would have smacked him for it if she was the girlfriend.

  “You want me to smack him for you?” she offered to Kat.

  Kat’s lips twitched, “Nah. I’ll do it later.”

  “If you’d shut up, I could be telling you all about how we are winning,” Colt teased Kat.

  This thing with them must have been getting a lot more serious than Lacey had imagined. Colt almost never slipped in his charming fa?ade. The idea that he felt comfortable enough with the spitfire sulking in the sand was evidence that he was letting Kat get to know the real guy underneath the surface. It was so cute that Lacey let that explain the tightness in her chest at Bernard’s previous inference of pride in her. She was just choked up that her best friend was truly bonding with a girl that Lacey actually liked. It was beautiful. That was all.

  “We can do better than tell you,” Lacey offered.

  “We can?” Colt sent her a quizzical look.

  “They can get up here and watch with us,” Lacey shrugged.

  Colt triggered off the sound system. “Are you sure, Lace?”

  Lacey took her finger off the intercom button on her screen. “I trust them. And they’ll get to see all our preparations too.”

  “They’ll see everything,” Colt’s eyebrows rose, but Lacey could tell that he really wanted them here. At least he wanted Kat here in the control room.

  “Including how we take down her asshole dad,” Lacey let herself grin even though her pessimism was poking a hole in her stomach. “And our snack cabinet.”

  “Up?” Kat asked into the silence that their group heard.

  “Well, down and up,” Colt said, turning on the intercom again.

  “Jerry isn’t too far from them yet,” Lacey told Colt. “His Reject is having trouble getting the Gossowaries to stop playing in the blood puddles.”

  “That and he’s still eating,” Colt said.

  “Who’s still eating?” Kat asked, as Colt had forgotten to close the intercom connection this time.

  “Jerry,” Lacey pressed her own button to explain. “He’s one of the Elite Goblins we’ve tasked with counting coup on Dom’s army. The group that finished the level you’re on decided that they didn’t want to accept defeat gracefully, so Jerry and his group slaughtered them.”

  “That’s what allowed you to come into the dungeon in their place,” Colt explained, as if they were talking about something much less gross.

  “Jerry and his Spunk can pick you and Bernard up and bring you back past the army,” Lacey went on.

  “I can come?” Bernard asked.

  “Army?” Kat’s voice was lower, but she wasn’t stomping anymore.

  “Of course you can come, Bernard,” Lacey grinned, and then turned off her mic. “Can you see if you can find a way to make them friends of the dungeon so they don’t set off all the proximity alarms?”

  “I can try,” Colt took his hand off the intercom this time to say.

  “Just give us a few minutes,” Lacey told the group.

  “I’ll send my men back out, but only if you’re sure you don’t need them,” Bernard offered.

  “We don’t need them,” Lacey assured him, and it surprised her that she was sure. “They could come…”

  “I’d rather they were somewhere useful in case that scoundrel has more plans outside the dungeon,” Bernard turned to murmur some orders to his men.

  Bernard’s guards turned as one and saluted the dungeon before ducking back out of the entrance. It was such an honorable thing to do that Lacey felt wrong for being glad that they weren’t coming to the control room. It was enough of a risk, no matter how minor, to have Bernard and Kat in the control room. Their minions could take out Kat, but Bernard was higher than all of their mobs. He could do some serious damage.

  Lacey stuffed that pit of paranoia down deep into her stomach. Bernard had never been anything but honorable. Just because he could take them out didn’t mean that he would. The devil on her shoulder told her that it would be a glorious betrayal that would net Bernard vast gains in his world. It went on to remind her that he was a creation of a system that hadn’t been on their side not that long ago. The angel on her other shoulder looked at the almost boyish excitement on Bernard’s face as he turned back to the dungeon. He was all smiles with not a single glimmer of malice in those charming eyes.

  Lacey was reminded of how much he’d wanted to be a part of the exploration of the dungeon. Even though he knew that he wouldn’t remember the dungeon he was about to see, he was still bubbling with eager joy at the thought of experiencing it. She hadn’t even had to ask for him to send his other Fighters back to the outside world. Lacey reached down and strangled that nasty paranoia, pretending she was a Gossowary in a blood puddle.