**Sabotage mission on the First, Amelia - Ada - Anthony - Jason

  The air was stale. The elves didn't need a filtration system as their suits would handle that. The walls looked grown, not constructed slabs, but living stone webbed with bioluminescent veins that pulsed at odd intervals, like the place was thinking.

  Ada said the mana was too still. Jason said it smelled like a hospital morgue. Anthony, as usual, remained silent and stoic. Amelia didn't flinch. She took point, bow slung over her back, blade in hand. Every step she took made less noise than the distant hum of arcane coolant running through the floor. Dane wasn't with them. He was up top doing what he did best, pulling a spotlight over his head and setting himself on fire so everyone else could slip through the cracks.

  And for a while, it worked.

  The first relay node popped, Jason's bomb rigged fast, Ada's wards cloaking the burst in enough noise-masking to keep the walls from waking up.

  The second node was more difficult with pressure plates disguised as fungus. Arcane tripwires cloaked with invisibility, looking like nothing at all. Anthony cleared the hall ahead, claymore spinning, his face blank in that way he got when his blood was up. Amelia called the shots without raising her voice. Jason didn't crack a joke for ten whole minutes, which was how she should've known something was off.

  Then, as if the halls were waiting to ambush the party, the corridor's geometry shifted, walls stuttering sideways, and light froze. The floor beneath Ada and Anthony rewrote itself in real time, slipping into an older version of the dungeon like someone had loaded the wrong save file.

  They vanished into a shadow, the echoes of their screams reverberating through the small hallway. Then, without warning, the noise stopped.

  The floor sealed shut. A mouth closing on Jason's friends, he hadn't had many friends growing up, and even fewer when the world was plunged into chaos and animals became monsters. His hand trembled with disbelief. As the highest-level member of the party, Jason was technically the leader when he saw the names on his HUD grey out and their status changed to 'deceased'; his legs stopped responding to his brain. He stared at the spot where they had just been.

  Jason froze. "Did they...?"

  "Jason, we don't have time," Amelia said. She backed up two steps, eyes fixed on the runes in the wall. A shadow moved along the floor. Amelia shoved Jason behind her.

  The floor rippled like a wave. The Shadow man materialized, emerging like the dungeon spat him out. His elven features were sharp, and his armor was regal, worthy of command. Red-trimmed armor with a short black cloak laced with anti-magic runes, they were faintly glowing under the leather. The mask that he usually hid behind was nowhere to be found, and a long scar on his jawline was visible.

  Amelia knocked an arrow and released, striking quicker than a viper. The Shadow man didn't flinch, taking the blow. It wasn't enough to even put him off balance. She switched to a dagger that she kept on her as a last resort. Swinging in a clean arc, her blade moved so fast that it blended into the background, looking like a smear on the dungeon wall. He caught her wrist mid-swing.

  "You're slower than I expected," he said, voice dry. "I thought the Matriarchs trained you better."

  "Jason. Go," she said, not taking her eyes off him.

  "You owe me a drink," he added. "And possibly marriage."

  "Now's not the time, Jason; he will kill you." Amelia pleaded.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Dante looked toward the short man with amusement in his cold eyes.

  "You're the inventor," Dante said flatly.

  "Engineer," Jason replied, panting. "Romantic interest and, according to my friends, Unlikable."

  Dante didn't laugh.

  "Leave," he said. "This is family business."

  Jason looked at Amelia. he couldn't leave her with this monster. Something about the man made Jason's skin crawl. The elf was like a Nosferatu vampire with a Lord of the Rings flair. When Amelia returned his glance, she didn't have that usual determination in her eyes. Instead, he saw fear. Jason had to run. He wasn't strong enough to help; Dane was the fighter. He had to help in his own way.

  "Don't you fucking die, Amelia," Jason said, holding back tears as he left.

  "Well, now that we don't have any interruptions. I believe reintroductions are in order."

  "I'm Dante," he said, voice echoing lightly off the stone. "Commander of the Forsaken Caverns, you cost me two slaves today."

  Amelia didn't move. "I lost them. They were mine."

  Dante stepped forward, "You always did take strays too seriously."

  She didn't answer. Just adjusted her stance slightly, measuring the weight between them.

  "You're fighting for slaves now?" he asked, head tilting faintly. "Earthbound scum who barely know how to hold a sword? That's what you chose?"

  Amelia's breath came steady, but her voice was steel. "I chose people who didn't' sell their own for treaties."

  Dante's jaw tightened at that, and a slight twitch near his eye started.

  "You were too young to remember, I was tribute," he said. "You think I had a say? They sent me because my mother fell out of favor. They needed to give something to the Scarlet Legion. So they gave me."

  "You stayed."

  "The Scarlet Legion doesn't give you a choice. They made me a weapon."

  "That's all your Emperor wants. What a good little dog my cousin has become." Amelia said with disgust in her gaze.

  Behind her, Jason's footsteps faded further into the dark. The corridor shook to a distant detonation. His failsafe, probably. Or the elves waking up. Dante rotated his wrist. The runes on his bracer lit up red over the old, black glyphs, layering magic. Not elven script. Earthbound war-writing, twisted by Legion binders.

  Amelia shifted.

  Dante's voice dropped. "You don't understand what's coming. The Earthbound aren't' building a future. They're just delaying the flood. When it hits, your body will be one more stone under the waterline."

  "We burn our dead," Amelia said.

  Her blade moved first. She stepped hard, and then there was a flash of steel. He parried without looking strained. It wasn't elegant. It was a drilled reaction, a reflex baked in, under decades of blood. Amelia followed with a feint, a second knife aimed low, toward his side. He caught the knife with his hand and squeezed; blood should have rushed out, but the steel crumbled into dust, the power of his grip like a hydraulic press. She let go of the hilt. Pulling a broken arrow from inside her right bracer.

  They separated again, circling in slow steps. Breath fogged faintly in the cold air.

  "You don't owe them," Dante said. "Your blood's old. You could've had our old home. The elders would've taken you back."

  "No," she said, firm. "They would've married me off and thanked the other family for thinning our bloodline."

  "You think these Earthbound are better?"

  "I think they're not trying to own me."

  Dante's eyes narrowed.

  "I am bringing you in alive. You may be a traitor, but you still deserve judgment like a civilized person."

  Amelia's voice dropped to a whisper.

  "Then you should've brought more men."

  She stepped forward.

  And the corridor erupted in light.

  The abrupt flare of light lit every rune and shadow in the long hallway. Amelia wasted no breath. She lunged forward into the glare, broken shaft still tight in her grip, aiming for the gap in his armor. Dante's shield of wards flickered too late; magic rebounded into the stone ceiling, sending motes of dust drifting down like ash. He staggered at the blow, more startled than hurt.

  Amelia didn't wait to see how badly she'd hit him. She pivoted, sprinting back the way she and Jason had come, ragged breaths and her limbs moving on instinct. Behind her, Dante called out once, voice calm and cutting.

  "I hate wasting a spectacle. Your trial would've drawn a crowd."

  A brief shimmer of light in the palm of his hand, the orb wasn't smooth but looked like a knot. He let it loose, and it shot down the hallway, the heat from his blast making a mirage in the chamber, warping the stone as it passed.

  She leapt, rolling out of the way, dodging a pulse of mana that slammed the stone where she had been only moments before. Sparks flared against the bioluminescent vines, momentarily painting the stone a sick red.

  CLANG.

  Dante crouched briefly, running a gloved hand along the curve of the bow. The mana still sang in it, faint and familiar. He inhaled once, like tasting blood on the air.

  His voice followed her down the hall, quiet but unshakable. "You left your scent, cousin. I won't lose you twice."