Matt stared up at the ceiling from his bed, replaying the images of Stoffel in his mind. The little imp had been far more powerful than he’d expected. More ornery too. Worse than that, all of Matt’s stuff was now sitting with his own corpse back in the dungeon.

Including the soul siphon crystal.

Well, I’ll just have to get it all back. Matt sat up and swung his feet over the side and stood up.

That’s when he noticed the compliance manager standing in the doorway watching him. The manager leaned on the doorjamb studying Matt very carefully while chewing on a toothpick.

“Something I can do for you?” Matt asked.

“Did he give you any information?”

Matt sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “What should I call you?” he asked, ignoring the question about Stoffel. “I don’t even know your name.”

The compliance manager pushed off from the doorjamb and stepped into the room, shutting the door behind him. “My in-game name is Rilor, but you can call me Foster.”

Matt nodded. “Well, Foster, Stoffel didn’t tell me much of anything. He just sort of argued with me a lot and then blasted me.”

“Shame,” Foster said. “I had hoped you’d prove more effective than the last interrogator.”

Matt shrugged and sat back down on the bed. “I mean, it’s not like I have a lot of experience doing that. I was never a cop or anything, and I’ve only been an executioner in game so...”

Foster chuckled. “Fair enough. Don’t worry, I’ll move him to a new location and have someone else take a crack at him.”

“Why don’t you try it?” Matt asked. “I mean, you have all that lightning stuff.”

“Security,” Foster said. “We try not to reveal who our compliance managers are to people like him.”

“People like him?”

“Hackers,” Foster said. “They find out who we are and they tend to make our lives more difficult. Last year we lost two compliance managers to people like Stoffel. One was outed and had a bounty on their heads --”

“But you can’t get hurt,” Matt cut in. “So why not just zap all the bounty hunters?”

“It’s not that simple. Sure, we can blast the regular players and NPCs that get sucked up into the ordeal, but even low level hackers can cause us great pain. This particular manager was put in a coma for two weeks after an unusually nasty encounter. The second manager quit after they trapped her in a loop for a full week. Nasty loop too, where a gorrin beast repeatedly hunted her down and ripped her apart.”

“So...” Matt pieced it all together in his head and then his mouth fell open. “You let me face a guy who could do that kind of stuff?”

Foster grinned. “Don’t worry. They’ve never gone after entry level staff. They target managers and auditors.”

“Well, I was going to ask to take another run at him... but now I think I’m going to support moving him to a new location.”

Foster laughed. “Decent try though. Thanks for supporting the cause.” He turned and grabbed the doorknob, then stopped and looked back over his shoulder. “Oh, one more thing. Stoffel had a soul siphon crystal in his possession. Gave us quite a battle when we went in to clean up after he killed your avatar. Did you give that to him?”

Foster’s cold tone sent shivers down Matt’s spine. “No, why would I give him anything? I was just trying to get him to talk like you asked.”

Foster locked eyes with Matt, seemingly staring into his soul to search out the truth. “I’ll only warn you once about soul siphon crystals. They’re coveted by hackers. Give someone like Stoffel a large enough shard and he could break the whole game. So if you ever run across one, be sure to keep it out of the dungeons. In fact, if you ever find one, just turn it in to me, got it?”

Matt nodded. His heart thumped in his chest as he fought the urge to look at the chest where he had left the other shards he’d collected from Troll’s Grotto. “If they’re so dangerous, why not erase them from the game?”

Foster shook his head. “We tried once. Didn’t go well. Caused a ton of glitches. Plus, you’d be surprised how many paying players prefer to be necromancers. Can’t alienate our biggest customers.” Foster smiled and opened the door. “I picked up your equipment after we put Stoffel back in his cage. Your hood and axe and other things are in a box downstairs. And don’t worry about the shard Stoffel had. He used it up in his escape attempt, but we stopped him. I’ll have him transferred tomorrow afternoon, so you won’t need to deal with him by the next time you get a dungeon assignment.”

Matt felt the need to ask more questions, but he knew it wouldn’t be wise to dig more into the issue of soul crystals. Instead he asked something else that had been bothering him since setting foot in the dungeon. “Actually, what’s the point of the dungeon? I torture NPCs and the occasional hacker, but why? I mean, there’s no audience like at executions.”

Foster snorted. “Let’s just say that aside from the occasional hacker, there are other players that get sent to the dungeons for in-game crimes. Your show gives them a sense of realism.” Foster then exited the room and closed the door.

Once the manager left, Matt let out a sigh and flopped backward onto the bed. How long would Foster have tortured me if he knew I had a ton of shards? Also, would I ever be asked to torture other players? So... what? Someone kills a chicken and I give them forty lashes or something? “This is messed up,” Matt said aloud. He jumped up from the bed and went downstairs to recover his equipment, which he found in a box on the table. Filbug stood nearby while a pair of hired guards sat eating their supper. He studied each of them for a few moments. The guards moved mechanically, void of spirit and life. Filbug, on the other hand, at least appeared to have some level of intelligence and free will.

Matt glanced to the door and then thought about Stoffel and the soul crystals.

“Do you require anything, milord?” Filbug asked.

Matt tilted his head to the side and regarded Filbug curiously. “How loyal are you to me?”

Filbug frowned. “I am sworn to your service.”

“Yeah, I know that, but I mean are there any actions I can take that would make you turn against me?”

Filbug’s brow furrowed and he narrowed his eyes. “I am sworn to the crown, and I am sworn to you.”

“What if I steal something?” Matt pressed. “What if I kill someone?”

“I cannot abide the death of an innocent person, but minor theft doesn’t concern me.”

“What if I disobey other laws but I have a good reason?”

Filbug shrugged. “If you say you have cause to work outside the law, who am I to judge the queen’s chosen executioner? Just don’t harm innocent people.”

Matt gave an approving nod. “Wait for me at the door. I need your help.” Matt rushed up stairs and grabbed two more soul siphon crystals. He then went downstairs, grabbed Filbug, and left the house. “We need to go outside the city and find an enemy.”

Filbug turned and narrowed his eyes, but then shrugged and gave a nod. “I know a place where we can find some unsavory people.”

Thieves’ Hole marked on your map.

Matt smiled. “That’s what I’m talking about.” The two of them exited out the west gates and made their way two miles down the road before turning off the highway and sneaking through the brush and trees to the south. The pines and junipers filled the air with clean scents while the dry needles along the forest floor crunched under foot. The sun was starting to set, but there was still ample light to see with.

“Careful,” Filbug said as they crested a small hill where the trees gave way to a fifty yard span of grassland before the wide sandy beach to the south. “There is a scout.”

Matt quickly spied the scout Filbug was pointing out and nodded. “Just one,” he said.

“If he sounds the alarm, the others will attack.”

Matt smiled. He waited, studying the scout’s short patrol route and counting out the seconds. “I think we can charge him. We just have to time it right.”

“On your command,” Filbug replied confidently.

Matt waited for two more cycles, edging himself to the tree line and counting to himself. Then, just as the scout reached the closest position to them and turned around to face the sea, the pair bolted from the trees. Matt could see his stamina bar draining, but he knew he had enough to reach the man. He just had to make sure he struck true to keep the scout silent. The scout was four seconds away from reaching the end of his route.

Matt was thirty yards away.

Three seconds left.

Matt was twenty yards away.

Two seconds left.

Matt was ten yards away, the dirt hardly fazing him as he sprinted.

The scout stiffened, likely hearing the approaching footsteps. He spun around just as Matt reached him.

Matt called upon his unique power and slowed time as he entered battle. The scout’s mouth slowly opened, but Matt’s axe chopped through the man’s neck before a single sound was uttered. Blood fountained upward from the neck as the head started to spin through the air. Matt turned around as time caught up to him. There were two distinct thumping sounds in the sand behind him and then a yellow streak of energy flowed toward him from the corpse.

Filbug nodded with approval. “Expertly done.”

Matt smiled, and then frowned and looked around. “Wait. I don’t see anything out here.” There was no cave in the hillside. No boat in the nearby waters. Not even a campfire or hut on the beach. He walked back to where the scout initiated his patrol route and frowned as he brought up his HUD. “The mark is right where I’m standing,” he said.

Filbug gently pushed him out of the way and started shoveling dirt away with his hands. After a couple seconds a rope was uncovered. “We go down.” Matt stepped back a bit more while Filbug opened the hatch, spilling sand down into a dark shaft with a simple wooden ladder.

Matt went down first. The air grew damp and saltier than the breeze above ground. Wooden boards held back the walls of damp sand, and lanterns hung from the wooden ceiling to illuminate the entrance tunnel. Filbug crept down a moment later and held his hands akimbo as small red lights sprouted from his palms.

“I just need one more,” Matt said. “We don’t need to clear the whole hideout.”

Filbug nodded and the two walked along the tunnel for fifty yards in a northerly direction. By the time they reached the first intersection, Matt figured they were back under the forest. The tunnel was a clever design, deep enough to avoid detection by patrols in the forests, and hard enough to find that a single scout was likely all they needed.

Except for today.

The tunnel on his left led to a door some ten yards farther. The path to the right led to an open room where two men sat playing dice and cursing at each other as they took turns betting small stacks of copper coins.

“I ‘eard the cap’n is coming back next week,” the first said.

“Bah, the cap’n ain’t never comin’ back ‘ere.” The second placed three coins and then cast the dice.

Matt crept up close and crouched down. He turned to Filbug and whispered. “You hit the one on the far side, I’ll take the closer rogue.”

Filbug nodded. “On your command,” he said.

Matt appreciated how dutiful Filbug was. Whether they faced rogues or trolls, the man didn’t even blink. Matt waited for the pair to play another round of dice and then he gave a nod. Filbug sent a pair of fireballs into the room. Matt jumped up and chased the two roaring spheres of flaming death, axe at the ready.

To Matt’s horror, the two men both jumped up from the table. Both the axe and the fireballs struck the first rogue.

“INTRUDERS!!!” the second rogue shouted.

“Crap!” Matt ignored the yellow energy flowing into his soul crystal and buried his axe deep into the second rogue’s chest. The HP bar dropped to just ten percent. Filbug rushed in and blasted the second rogue in the face, vaporizing the rest of the bandit’s HP.

“Time to go!” Matt said as the door behind them opened. Several rogues spilled into the hallway. “Shoot the lanterns!”

He and Filbug ran back to the intersection as Filbug blasted fireballs into the far hallway. The first two struck bandits, slowing the group down, but the third struck a lantern and caused an explosion as the kerosene burst outward.

“GAAAH!” one of the bandits screamed as flames caught onto him.

“Let’s go, let’s go!” Matt cried out as he sprinted for the exit. Every few yards, Filbug would turn and throw fire at another lantern behind them. The explosions kept the chasing group at bay, but the increasing flames also lit up the wooden walls around them. Wood creaked and cracked as the flames tore down walls and roof sections. The bandits’ cries became muffled as the tunnel quaked and a massive cave in filled the tunnel in the middle. The dirt and dust blinded Matt for a few seconds, but he and Filbug managed to escape up the ladder before all but the last five yards of the tunnel collapsed.

“Whoa!” Matt surveyed the forty yard long scar stretching back to the hills before the forest. “I don’t think the bandits will be able to hide here anymore.”

Filbug was breathing heavily, doubled over with his hands on his knees. “What should we do now, Master?”

Matt smiled and held out the two charged soul siphon crystals. “I have some questions I need answered.”

Filbug frowned. “And to get the answers you needed the soul siphon crystals filled?”

Matt nodded and pointed back toward the city as he started walking. “Either Stoffel speaks to me in exchange for soul siphon crystals, or I’ll have you blast him to smithereens.”