“Hi, Mel. What are you doing here? Keeping an eye on us?” Evan asked with a twinkle in his eyes.

The archer hesitated, a look of fear palpable on her face. “I - I .. uh,” she stammered.

Evan laughed at the archer’s restlessness. “You can relax Mel, we aren’t going to hurt you. We were actually about to go looking for you all.”

Mel appeared to relax but arched her eyebrow in response. “Looking for us? What for?”

Evan shrugged. “Fenrir and I are simply curious. We haven’t been truly free in hundreds of years. Perhaps we are lonely—” he sighed, his words forgotten as he lost himself in his thoughts.

“We promised to help you fight against the Labyrinth. We cannot do that without knowing more about your world — about your people,” Fenrir finished.

There was a moment of silence as the archer digested the core’s words. After some time, she seemed to reach a decision and nodded. “Alright. Jason and Astrid will be waiting for me to get back before heading to Citadel.” She took a turn off the path they had been walking on and gestured for them to follow her as she cut through a dense section of forest.

The summoner groaned as he began to follow her. He’d been hoping to take the scenic route, but it looked like, despite her carefree attitude, Mel was determined to take the more direct — and prickly — route to her friends.

At some point Fenrir grew tired of both of their complaints and released several shadows to clear a path through the dense vegetation, making the trip more enjoyable.

The two traveled in comfortable silence for over two hours before Mel spoke up. “A while back you mentioned something you called the Labyrinth. How are the dungeon portals that are popping up all over the damn place connected to it?”

“You can think of The Labyrinth as another world. Separate from yours, but now connected by an invisible bridge. Just as Earth is made up of humans, The Labyrinth is populated by dungeons, dungeon cores, and the different races that it has enslaved over time.”

He took a moment to organize his thoughts.

“Now imagine that The Labyrinth is also a sentient being. It has wants and needs, as we do. The Labyrinth survives by feeding on other worlds. When it finds a world that it wants to consume, dungeon portals appear. They act as bridges and are guarded by dungeon cores. If the attacked do not or can not destroy the dungeon core and continue to close the portals that spawn, they eventually break, releasing the inhabitants of the dungeon and The Labyrinth.”

The archer nodded as he spoke. “So that’s why the portal closed when you came out? You destroyed the dungeon’s core?”

“Yes.”

Evan watched as realization dawned on Mel and she went silent, lost in her thoughts. What he had told her was the secret to beating The Labyrinth. The key to saving humanity. The secret that millions died before realizing.

The monsters within the dungeons weren’t the danger. No. The danger was the core. It was the power source that fueled the bridge between their world and The Labyrinth. You could clear a dungeon a hundred times and the portal would never disappear if the core wasn’t found.

* * *

Another hour passed before Evan saw the yellow glow of a campfire in the distance. Mel jumped up and down and pointed in its direction. “There they are! Let's go! I’m starving!”

They reached the campsite a quarter of an hour later. Evan watched as Astrid poured a ladle of soup into a bowl while singing softly as the warrior dozed off in the corner of the camp.

The song was one of love and loss, and her voice managed to encapsulate both emotions perfectly. Fenrir, seemingly enchanted by the healer’s voice, hummed along softly in his mind.

“Guys! I’m homeeee!” Mel yelled.

Astrid dropped the hot bowl of soup and turned around in a flash. Her body struck a pose as she turned, left foot in front of her right and open palms crisscrossed in front of her chest. The warrior jumped to his feet and grabbed a small thin branch in his daze. He held it up threateningly.

It took a moment before she noticed Mel grinning at her. The healer threw her hands up in the air, “Mel! What the heck is wrong with you?! You made me drop my soup!”

Mel laughed as she dragged Evan towards the camp by the arm. “Look who I found!”

Astrid raised a questioning eyebrow as she looked at Evan. He took a few steps forward and opened his mouth to speak, but Mel beat him to it. “Don’t worry, he’s fine. Saw him go into a blue portal and come back out alive. He made the portal disappear Astrid!”

The healer’s eyes widened in surprise. “What do you mean—” she turned towards Evan, “what does she mean?”

“Humans are fighting a losing war. Clearing a dungeon is not enough, as you probably already know. To seal the dungeon and close the portal you need to destroy the dungeon core that powers it,” he replied.

Fenrir and Evan spent the rest of the night answering the trio’s questions about dungeons, their core, and The Labyrinth. After a couple of hours, Jason and Mel left together to one of the tents and drifted off to sleep.

Evan watched as Astrid stroked the fire. “Will you let me come with you?” he asked.

The healer’s eyes never left the fire as she spoke. “Yes. I think you are the key to saving us. But—” she paused.

“What is it, little healer?” Fenrir whispered.

“Most humans are not kind. They will take one look at you and know you are … different. You will face persecution everywhere you go. I fear that you will abandon us … or worse … when we get to Citadel,” she whispered back.

Evan pointed a finger at her, “you have been kind.” He pointed fingers at the tent that Jason and Mel had disappeared into, “and they have been kind.”

Astrid sighed. “They — we are the exception, not the rule. When [The System] appeared, a lot of things changed. But a lot, mostly the bad, stayed the same. Some people gained powers and bullied those that did not. They call them Ungifted. Others also gained powers, but were marked by them.”

Evan held his breath as the healer adjusted her hair, fingered her collar, and lowered it, revealing skin. He was so focused on the shape of her collarbone that he almost missed the red scales that appeared halfway up her throat and continued downwards.

“The reason that Jason and Mel do not view you with any contempt is because they are friends with me. I am one of the Marked.”

Without thinking, he reached out to touch her neck, but Astrid backed away. The movement made him pause. He shook his head, releasing him from his trance. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable. I understand. Even in my world, intolerance was widespread.” He smiled at the healer. “It seems that the worst parts of a civilization are shared.”

Astrid smiled at him. “What about you, what are you?”

The summoner returned her smile with a sad one of his own. “I am the last one left.”