By the end of the meal, the wound in my leg is completely filled in, like a balloon reinflated where the gouge was. It doesn’t even hurt in the slightest. Every bump, bruise and scrape is gone. This is incredible. As long as I survive a fight, the wounds don’t matter. It hurts, but healing is insanely fast, so with a quick rest, we can move on again.

  Less than an hour later, and I’m ready for the next fight, not a cramp or scab to see. Luckily the hall by the fight has been nice and quiet beyond the gentle crackle of the fire, and nothing came by to see what’s for dinner.

  “Do you know Polyphemus?” I ask.

  “What? Ew, Dom, we’re not boyfriend-girlfriend or anything.”

  “Poly,” I say carefully, “Phemus. The cyclops. He’s from the Odyssey. The hero gets him drunk and blinds his one eye.”

  “Oh,” she says, smacking her lips after finishing a chunk of boar. Her wounds are all gone now as well. “I know about cyclops. I never asked their names.”

  “Do I need to sharpen my spear?” I ask.

  “No, it’s the same as you. Unless it fully breaks, between combats, it will re-hone. It heals at the same rate you do. But don’t break it. That won’t fix. And don’t lose a limb or anything. You’re not a hydra, they won’t regrow.”

  “Wonderful, hydra are real here, too.”

  “Unfortunately.”

  “You’ve met them?”

  She shrugs. “Once. Harpies had chased my family out of the Summerfields. I was little. My brother and I got separated in the woods from everyone else. And there it was. Greenest thing I ever saw. Three heads.”

  “Like Ghidra.”

  “That another myth?”

  “Kind of.”

  “Well, my brother hid me behind a tree. Ran. Drew the hydra away from me.”

  “And?”

  She half smiles. “Grew up an only child.”

  If this is some sort of computer simulation, it does a damn good job at having feelings or making me think it does.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You didn’t do it.”

  “I’m sorry it happened anyway.”

  “Yeah. Well. Don’t be an idiot and maybe we’ll both survive. You have a brother?”

  “Sister. She is an idiot. Daria’s still alive, though. Well…” I think back to the impossibly expanding classroom. “Was. I got here by way of, like, a wormhole or tesseract or something. I don’t know if anyone else survived. Maybe we’re all over the place and Daria is out there with her own little satyr dude or...or…”

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  Daria may be a selfish jerk, but that doesn’t mean I want her thrown into a hostile world. I just want her to stay in New York or someplace so I only see her on holidays.

  “Sorry.”

  “You didn’t do it,” I echo back to her, standing and kicking out the fire. I use the spear to cut away at my bloodied jeans, creating poorly designed cut-offs. I note that I don’t go up a level in Fashion.

  “You need to get a good pair of sandals, not whatever that is.”

  “These are AirRun IIIs. Or they were, before they got soaked. You see how grounded I am when I set up an impale? Top gear. These are hot property back home.”

  “If you say so.”

  “It’s super cool here,” I say. “I mean that. And you’re awesome. But, I’m supposed to be learning history and mythology so I can teach it, not live through it firsthand. Although this would make an amazing lesson back home. I wonder if I ended up here because that’s what I was doing, and if I was in a cooking class, I would instead be in some world of cooking.”

  “I should be so lucky.”

  “I thought you said boar chops weren’t bad. Speaking of…”

  I concentrate and hold out my hand. Time to try my new skill, before the next encounter. I look at the spit. Maybe not the best timing. Don’t want the new guy to realize I killed and ate him. That could lead to some animosity.

  “When I summon a boar, is it really him, or a clone?”

  “A what?”

  “A copy.”

  “Oh. No, it’s really him. He won’t remember everything. But I remember growing up.”

  “And then?”

  “You called me. It’s kind of fuzzy… I don’t think I was doing anything important.”

  We clear camp, leaving as little evidence of our passing as possible. We break down the fire and move on.

  Sometimes the halls are linear, hard cornered, straight and clearly carved. At some junctions, the walls feel like a natural tunnel, uneven and arcing. Then back to straight walls. At no times do the walls seem constructed of bricks or stonework. It’s all been somehow tunneled into. Our wet footsteps echo, and every now and again, there are odd chittering and tapping noises somewhere out of sight.

  We move down the rough-hewn corridors, stopping at each intersection to check for light or movement before proceeding. I figure it’s best for us to stay dark so others don’t see us the same way I’m looking for them. The crystal moss is enough, once my eyes adjusted. I’m guessing if something has a higher Stealth skill than my Perception, it can still jump us, but we move with caution. We reach T-junction after T-junction, and I’m trying to keep track of where we came from. After five or ten minutes and realizing we are totally lost in the minotaur’s labyrinth, it’s quiet except our footsteps. I feel we’re away from any encounters that would have been lurking.

  “Here?” I ask. “Boar time?”

  Sadie nods and steps against a wall graffitied in glowing crystal moss.

  I hold out my hand and picture the war boar.

  “Life to live, mine to give. War Boar.” The next sound I make is a harsh grunting that I’ve never done in my life.

  Additional Maximum Vitality Loss: 25%

  I’m throwing up before my knees hit the ground.

  Baco is nudging me awake with a fat slobbery snout. My head is pulsing and my guts are churning.

  “Tried to warn you,” Sadie says as I stand and stagger towards the wall.

  “Look,” I cough. “It’s Baco.”

  Baconator sounds like a bad guy. My boy is not a bad guy.

  Baco puts his gray snout to the ground, comes to me and headbutts me in the leg. He’s a bristly pile of fat and tusks. But he’s my bristly pile of fat and tusks.

  “Baco, meet Sadie.”

  He half nods a greeting with a snort.

  “Hold on, is he intelligent?” I ask.

  “Funny, I wondered the same thing about you,” Sadie says with a smirk. “Somewhat. He’ll understand you perfectly. Me, not so much. He’s pre-trained. He can’t harm you and will always protect you. It’s part of the pact of being summoned. A form of forced loyalty, unless a stronger enchanter counters your charm.”

  I decide it is in my shin’s best interest not to ask if she’s under the same pact.

  “That won’t happen,” I say, rubbing the sandpaper feeling hair on top of Baco’s head. “Because I’m super charming.”

  She scratches behind one of her ears. “You know, I was about ready to say that the Euripides joke was kind of funny, but you’ve ruined it all for me now.”

  “Sitting here won’t get us out of this place. Let’s get moving,” I say.

  She sighs and gestures for me to lead the way. Baco snorts in agreement and trots off in front of us up the hallway.