The moment doesn’t last, and Lauren pulls away as a notification appears.

[Congratulations! Dungeon cleared. All combatants receive: 500 Power. For defeating the Dungeon Leader, you receive: Ring of Teleportation! Dungeon will reset in: 3:25...3:24...]

As compelled as I am to investigate the ring more thoroughly, the fact that we’re mere minutes from being stuck in the dungeon mid-reset overrides the thought entirely. I hesitate only a moment before picking the most logical place to store the ring: my finger. I cast around for Cerberus and Lauren, finding her immediately and seeing Cerberus literally high-tailing it out of here. To my surprise, Lauren has a mischievous smile, and a questioning look in her eyes, as if asking: ‘wanna stay and fuck them up again?’, and her mood is almost infectious enough for me to agree… but not now. I still feel weird after that fight. Besides, it wouldn’t be worth it now.

I smile back, but shake my head, instead running for the exit. I get part of the way there before remembering to grab the small pendant from around Syndarus’ neck.

With nothing to bar our egress, we make good time and escape a whole minute before the reset. Still, what would have happened if we had happened to win right before the day ended? What would happen if we were caught in there? Probably anything from absolutely nothing to being annihilated when time rolled back and didn’t place us in the dungeon, as we weren’t there when it was formed…

Hopefully the system wouldn’t be that punishing.

The sudden presence of light as we burst into the Zathis chamber momentarily blinds me, but my eyes are quick to adjust. We find Cerberus sitting, somewhat impatiently, and he immediately stands when he sees me.

“Good, I would not want to retrieve you.”

Ignoring the jab, I examine the ring.

[Ring of Teleportation - Teleports the wearer 10 ft. in the desired direction. Recharges once per day.]

Another trinket. First the Energy weapon I found, and now, this. The golden bracelet on my arm slowly slithers into my hand, wrapping it in a glove of cool, flowing metal. It still takes almost thirty seconds to do even that, but it’s getting faster.

The trouble with trinkets, especially powerful ones, is the way you have to adapt around them. Skills tend to come from what you do anyway, so they enhance and guide your existing inclinations, but magic items…

They aren’t meant for anyone. I’m sure the system provides some grossly inefficient way to tailor make magic items for people, but as for how? I couldn’t say. It’s one thing to give a sword the ability to imbue its wielder with extra Strength, but could you make it elemental? Could you lessen or add weight? Make it guide your strikes to hit more easily? The list goes on, but there aren’t answers. I know that really special circumstances, combined with Energy, let me infuse my weapon with cold, but I had no control over that being the element. In fact, I would have guessed that it would be infused with fire, given how badly I was burned in its making.

“You have returned unscathed! I have come to expect no less.” The giant intones, ringing the air with his throaty voice. Which…

“Zathis, just what the hell did we find down there?”

“What do-”

“Syndarus. What the hell?!” I quietly curse myself for letting emotion slip into my voice, but the pain is still too fresh.

For once, Zathis is quiet, whether it be out of fear of angering me or because he is at a loss for what to say, I know the answer, but I would prefer it be the former.

“A pendant that seals her? In one room? And the longevity... Why? It’s bad enough to be in a prison, but at least you know that one day, you’ll be free. Whether through death or release, there is that certainty… but not for her. And she was made to stay in one room within that prison, so far from you, the last sane being she could talk to-”

“SILENCE.” The word shakes the very ground, raining pebbles and sand down from the ceiling. My ears ring, probably only still intact due to my Toughness. I’m tempted to press the attack, but I know better, and manage to hold my tongue. I take out the pendant, carved with broken chains… a cruel joke at best… and toss it up to him.

Despite the tension of the moment, his large hand moves to catch the tiny thing, cradling it gently, and staring at it with mournful eyes.

“It was really fucked-” I shoot Lauren a glance, and the words die on her lips. She still looks furious, and that fury momentarily turns to me, but her expression ultimately softens slightly, and she turns away.

“It was… never meant to be like this. I believed she would be freed soon, that I would find others to help us escape, or take our place… but I failed. Part of the hell that is this place stems from… the memory destruction. They aren’t perfect, and so, we remember fragments. It took some time… 400 cycles before I had my first memory carry over.”

“How did you know it was exactly 400 cycles if your memory was perfectly wiped?”

“The dark shadow speaks to us, the fixtures, to torment us. When I kept my first memory, it realized, and saw how I was galvanized by… how little time I thought had passed. It… fixed that. Afterwards, it took everything I had not to give up myself, and knowing that every wasted second meant she continued to suffer… that was all that would make me continue.” At this, Zathis sighs deeply, eyes sinking in despair. “I knew I had to keep trying, convinced that I could find worthy individuals to place my faith in. Time after time, I was proven wrong.” His eyes rise slightly, meeting my gaze. “ I have died many times. Countless times, like your friend here.” He gestures lightly to Cerberus, who growls back. “True, not nearly as many, but he has not been here for as long. When I was found, I was killed or sealed within this place. The few that sought to communicate with me longed only for the treasures I was supposedly hiding, and my dying action was to always ensure that my greatest treasure evaded their grasps… Syndarus.”

“People aren’t treasures, Zathis, they’re treasured. They can’t be kept, or you destroy everything that made them worth keeping.”

Zathis takes a long look at me before responding. “Such is a lesson I learned in a hundred hundred lifetimes… odd, that I should hear it from one so young.”

“I don’t remember exactly why or how, but I remember what it was like to want someone so badly you could convince yourself to stop them from leaving. You could say to yourself that they were simply trapped in a mood, that the lapse in feelings would pass, and all that was needed was time. You would always be wrong. They just hate you more on the way out. They just leave a bigger scar.”

“She needed to be whole if I… when I managed to free her!”

“Killing her would return her to the way she was right after. Her suffering would have been staggered instead of a concentrated, eternal hell of isolation.”

“You know some, yes, and make guesses based on that knowledge, but you do not know all that is this place, nor the immortality it grants. With each death, something is lost. Small things, limited, but ask your companion what remains of the minds of his people!”

I turn to Cerberus, but he looks away. I frown slightly. He was the one who told me that his people were mostly feral, and yet now he’s ashamed? Or is it an unwillingness to have commonality with Zathis?

“I spared Syndarus that fate, at the cost of suffering it myself. What I was, what I am now… I know not how far I have fallen, but I imagine the distance is vast. I have memories of before, when my magics would create canyons, throw mountains! Yet now, I must strain to do anything more substantial than training a few humans at the same time. Syndarus… has- had not tasted that loss. Now she has. I trust you made it quick?” A flash of accusation crosses his eyes, but it fades with the nodding of my head.

“She may never believe what I did for her was right, but I know that it was good. I know that it saved her.”

“I believe that, but I do have one more question: how did you know that would help her, if you gave her the pendant before all this?”

His eyes widen. “I… do not… remember.” He finishes, weakly. His eyes scream out his lie for him. It doesn’t matter. It’s not my affair to get involved in, but It changes my view of Zathis. For all that he helps, he is deeply afraid, meaning that I should be wary of ever leaving him entirely alone. He makes it easy by offering to train us, but should we need to pull everyone away from here, he must not be aware it is happening.

I would not like to know what he would try to keep us here.

I shake my head and turn away. Maybe I’m overreacting, but I’m still going to fill Lynn in on the details. I glance sideways at Chris, who has spent the last five or so minutes staring, open mouthed, at me arguing with a giant.

“Chris, have you done it yet?”

“A-Amadeus! Ah, no! Sir! But… I have…”

“Don’t explain, just show me.” I gesture towards the boulder.

Chris audibly gulps while looking at what must be the bane of his very existence, but nevertheless, moves into position. With a strange certainty, he pushes. Gone is the agonizing struggle, the futility in his face… replaced with the grimace of pain and the hardness of a sure gaze.

My eye twitches, and I feel something stirring in me. The rock shifts. The rock shifts again. Slowly, hand under hand, he rolls the boulder a quarter of the way up the ramp. With a gasp, his entire body gives out, and he falls to the ground in the path of the rolling boulder. With a sharp burst of Energy, I manage to stop the boulder before it hits him, and Lauren drags Chris aside so I can let the thing come to a rest.

“Son of a bitch…” I mutter quietly, looking down at his heaving body. “He actually fucking did it.”