I opened my eyes after what felt like a simple blink. I was back in the North Georgia mountains cabin, sitting at the gaming table where this all began. The only illumination came from the candles and lanterns on the walls and the chandelier above us.

Before I could celebrate, though, I saw a large, absurdly handsome young man sitting across from me. He did indeed look like Casper Van Dien from Starship Troopers, but with brown skin, long, partially braided hair, and a scruffy black beard. He wore a hard leather breastplate over a dark blue tunic, with a cloak the same color as the tunic wrapped around his shoulders. His muscular biceps were bare, and he had placed his hands on the table palms down. His skin glowed with that hazy blue aura that told me his resistance to Stephen’s spell was still intact.

“Mace?” I said.

His eyes took me in, determined I wasn’t a threat, and then scanned the rest of the room. “Where am I?”

“Georgia. I think.”

He thought for a second. “Is it beyond the Eternal Ocean?”

“Uh, sure.”

I realized my hands were also on the table, palms down, and I wore the same clothes I had when we started the game.

I put my hands in my lap and said, “You’re a stubborn bastard, you know. I want to go home. I want to see my kid again. I want to play a real RPG with my friends, not this alternate reality with pain, terror, and death. The only way home is to complete the dungeon, and you’re whining about being healed by magic you think will give you cooties? Man up!”

I surprised myself a bit over my bluntness with a guy who could crush my skull with a flick of his fingers. But like I said, I wanted to go home.

His eyes shifted back to me and narrowed. “I see you are not a warrior, so I will ignore that insult. And I’m well aware of who my father was.”

I sighed. “Look, I don’t know if we’re dead or unconscious or in some mirror dimension. I hope we’re not dead because I’d hate to put Sonja and Stephen through the chore of returning to the Spawn Room.”

He frowned. “I do not wish to inconvenience anyone.”

“Then why won’t you let Stephen heal us?”

His lip curled in disgust. “Krait’s magic is an abomination. It is everything against which my ancestors fought. It infects those who wield it and warps their minds so that all they want is more power. Until finally, they turn into mad demons. Like Angelus.”

“Angelus uses Krait’s magic?”

“Aye,” Mace said. “He was once mortal like us, but he spent years consuming Krait’s magic until it finally drove him mad. My ancestors tried killing him, but he was too strong. So they tricked him into entering the dungeon, where they imprisoned him for what should have been all eternity. But his evil has begun leaking from the prison and into the countryside. Abominations haunt the forests around the dungeon, and his zones of evil grow larger each year. It was a mistake not killing Angelus and one I will rectify.”

“I got a look at what lies outside this dungeon,” I said. “Green meadows, snow-capped mountains, lush forests. Seemed pleasant to me.”

Mace shook his head. “’ Tis but a façade, an illusion Angelus has projected to lure the unwary and turn them into his slaves. There were once farms and villages surrounding this area. All were abandoned in the last decade. Any animal or person who wanders in become corrupted aberrations or worse. Undying shades roam the forests at night, driving to madness anyone who lives within twenty miles of the entrance. Humans, dwarves, gnomes, the race makes no difference. If Angelus is not defeated, he will continue expanding his borders and consuming every living thing he can until he is powerful enough to break free.”

Okay, some good backstory that I wasn’t aware of, which began to clarify why Mace had entered the dungeon in the first place.

“And so for partners,” I said, “you chose a barbarian warrior, a cleric of Sergar, and… a wizard of Krait? Given what you just said, that last one confuses me.”

Mace grimaced. “The presence of the wizard was not my choice. But the Queen has decreed it, and so I will obey her as my vows dictate.”

I got the feeling that vow was the only thing keeping Mace from killing Stephen outright.

“So your Queen only sent four of you into this dungeon to kill Angelus? No backup? Seems like a mission for an army.” The memory of Angelus’s voice almost bursting every cell in my body was still fresh.

“There is a magical field around the entrance that allows only four questers to enter at a time,” Mace said. He looked me in the eye. “Others have come before us. And if we fail, others stand ready to follow us and see the quest completed.”

Others have come before us. He must mean other players from Earth, like Aryam. Is that what happens when players from Earth enter The Tomb? Is that what happened to Aryam—she had entered The Tomb as a player and “failed?”

As I pondered that, a rumble shook the cabin as if a freight train were approaching. The rumble grew louder, and the shaking grew more violent until fixtures on the walls began falling to the floor. Cracks appeared in the log walls, and dust popped from the mortar between them.

I had so many more questions for Mace, especially regarding this feud between the Ancestral Paladins and the wizards of Krait, but it was apparent we didn’t have much time to chat.

“Listen, Mace,” I said, raising my voice above the rumbling and cracking, “you need to let Stephen kill this thing that’s eating us from the inside out.”

He began shaking his head as soon as I mentioned Stephen. “No. It would break the vows I took when I became an Ancestral Paladin. I cannot do that. I will die first!”

“If you choose to die, then you’ll intentionally break the vow you made to the Queen to stop Angelus!”

I must’ve hit a nerve because he suddenly looked conflicted. I hoped it wasn’t just the cabin collapsing around us.

“All right, how about this,” I said. But before I could finish, the ceiling above me cracked, and the plates that held the chandelier to the ceiling gave way. Both Mace and I leaped backward as the chandelier crashed onto the table and flattened it.

“Let me make the call,” I said, trying to talk to him and dodge debris from the ceiling. Small fires began on the rugs surrounding the table.

“What do you mean?” he asked. He stood like a statue in a hurricane, his hand resting on the hilt of his longsword.

“You and I are constantly fighting for control in that dungeon. So how about when we get into a battle, you can take over. When we need to make a decision involving Stephen, let me take over. That way, you don’t have to make the decision and break your paladin vows.”

It was thin reasoning, but I hoped it was enough to give him a face-saving way to let Stephen heal us.

Part of the roof collapsed behind me, and I could see the dark sky above. Lightning flashed in roiling clouds, and the wind howled above the jagged hole. Rain fell through the opening and doused some of the flames nearby. I ran over to the side of the room where Mace stood so that I didn’t have to scream at him over the storm and collapsing cabin. Even though I stood next to him now, we still had to yell over the chaos.

He gave me a doubtful look and said, “How do I know you won’t allow him to corrupt me with his dark magic?”

“How do I know you won’t get me killed with some idiotic battle tactic?”

“You would have to trust my judgment,” he said as the reasoning behind my suggestion began to dawn on him. “You would have to trust that my vow to defeat Angelus would not let me make a decision I deemed foolish.”

“Exactly. Do we have a deal? I think we’re about to die here.”

The fireplace exploded, and a wall of orange and yellow flames rushed toward us. I saw it coming, yet I couldn’t move fast enough to dive out of the way.

Well, this is it, I guess. I didn’t feel fear or sadness or anything. I just knew I didn’t have the power to change what was about to happen, so there was no use worrying about it.

The flames got to us in an instant…and stopped when they hit an ethereal blue wall that sprung up in front of Mace and me.

Mace had his forearm raised as if he were holding up the blue wall like a shield. Then, he looked back at me and said, “I reserve the right to overrule you if you allow him to do anything truly evil.”

“And I will overrule you if you chase goblins by yourself.”

He gave me a confused look and said, “Very well. We have a deal, Chris Able. Let us defeat Angelus once and for all.”

The blue shield that kept the flames from us dropped, the fire rushed forward—

I was back in the cavern puking up blood and feeling like my guts were stuck in a blender.

“Shield down,” I croaked to Stephen, who still leaned over me. “It’s Chris…”

Then I passed out.