Killing a boss like the Runelord would have been easy.

  Keeping him alive…not so much.

  The zombies were one thing. Tough, armored, and able to take more of a beating than they should have. And, worse, they just kept coming. But with Tori’s magic and my damage, we could have fought them…maybe not forever, but certainly for a while. The Trip-Hammer and various Gravity Wells could have done a good enough job, even if it took more blows than it should have to make the Zomberserkers actually die.

  The problem was the Runelord. He was almost suicidal in his efforts to get to the horde and start the killing, and for an old man in a suit of rune-imbued battle armor, he took a surprising amount of damage. And, worse, most of it was from himself. The zombies’ claws, swords, and teeth couldn’t break through the granite plates surrounding him, but with every attack he threw their way—or ours—a rune went dark and a piece of stone fell away.

  “We’re on a timer!” I shouted. The Trip-Hammer crashed into a zombie’s skull, and a second later, a slab of granite the size of a dinner plate sliced through the same monster’s neck.

  “They’re on a timer, and it’s running out!” the play-by-play voice echoed.

  Right. And then there was that. The announcers were having a blast, and this time, they were being very careful not to give us more information than we already had. They only said things we already seemed to know.

  “I know,” Tori said. She cast another Gravity Well at the entrance, stemming the tide for a moment. “We need to change tactics.”

  But saying it and doing it were two different things.

  The next few seconds were a madhouse. Tori threw the last Elite buff on me, and I revved the Trip-Hammer to full. Zombie gore sprayed across the room, coating the walls and the Runelord with blood and guts. A pair of fangs punched into my shoulder. Tori ripped them out with a Pull that left two jagged tears across my arm. The Runelord threw two boulders toward the entrance. They crashed through the horde, leaving two empty gaps in it that filled a moment later.

  All our efforts weren’t making a difference, though. For every monster that fell under my hammer, two more filled the room. It was like trying to fight a tornado; no matter what we did, it just kept coming. It was overwhelming. And I didn’t see an end to it; they’d eventually overwhelm us and get to the Runelord, or he’d run out of runes to fight with.

  We’d had a couple of tornado scares, back in Cozad. The worst was when the neighboring town got destroyed, and we’d spent time helping them recover. But they’d touched down near our farm, too. And when they did, Mom and Dad always aimed Beth and me straight for the bolt-hole under the house. No matter what happened, we were supposed to go to the cinderblock bunker and wait it out. Don’t worry about the chickens, or the pigs, or any of that. It’d work itself out.

  We needed a bolt-hole. And we needed to take the Runelord with us.

  “Tori, can you slow the horde down? As much as you possibly can—and don’t attack the Runelord. Don’t do anything to stop him unless he attacks you. I’ve got an idea.”

  “On it.” A double-cast of Gravity Well sealed the door for a few seconds as the zombies piled up.

  The plan was simple.

  The announcers had explained the rules:

  One: If the Runelord died while the zombies were in the boss room, the zombies won and took over the dungeon—including the secret door to the survivors.

  Two: We were in a four-way race.

  Three: Nothing in the boss’s mechanics said it couldn’t leave the boss room, and nothing in the win condition for the zombies said him leaving would make them win.

  The secret door to the survivors was the key. I needed to find it as quickly as I could.

  The flood of zombies dwindled to a trickle as Tori’s Gravity Wells formed two clusters of monsters, which the Runelord quickly pulped with slabs of flying, glowing granite. That gave me a second to catch my breath and look around.

  The room looked like it had a dozen entrances. Barred gates surrounded us, with one—the way we’d come in—wide-open. That was where the zombies were coming from, but the pounding, thudding on the other doors told me we had limited time. At some point, the horde would erupt into the room from another angle, and we’d be overwhelmed in seconds.

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  There were runes on the ground, though. Five of them, each at the point of a star. It had looked like part of the Runelord’s ritual before, but…what if it wasn’t? What if…we knew the dungeon had an exit. A back door.

  But…what if the reason I couldn’t find it wasn’t that it was well hidden? What if it was magic, and only the Runelord could open it?

  “Hal, hurry up and figure this out!” Tori yelled.

  I looked up.

  The zombies had overwhelmed her first set of Gravity Wells, and though she’d Pushed them back, they were still coming. “Seriously, I can’t kill them fast enough!”

  “Okay, give me a second!”

  I revved the Trip-Hammer, took a deep breath, and charged the Runelord.

  Shockingly, he’d spent most of the fight on the zombies, but the moment I rushed him, he whirled and started spraying rune-encrusted stones my way. His glowing armor crackled with energy, pieces going dark as he tried to kill me before I could get to him. But I still had one huge advantage: Tori’s Elite buff.

  It gave me nearly fifteen levels on the Runelord. And I used them to full advantage.

  Cuts opened across my face and chest. Shrapnel exploded as he crushed his own armor and weaponized it against me. And the Trip-Hammer howled. I ignored it all, swung my weapon, and smashed it into the stone around the old man’s shoulder. It crumpled and shattered, and the runes went dark.

  The Runelord screamed, half in rage and half in agony. But before he could do anything else, the Trip-Hammer reversed course and crushed his hip. The stones shattered, and something snapped. This time, the scream wasn’t rage—it was only pain.

  “What are you doing?!” Tori shouted over the screeching.

  I didn’t answer right away. The hammer shattered the boss’s next joint, then the next. My muscles burned as I tore at the massive stones surrounding the man inside the golem. “I’m…getting our ticket out of here!”

  My hand closed around cloth. I pulled, and the Runelord popped free from his armor.

  “Clear a path, rune to rune!” I didn’t wait for Tori to reply. Instead, I dragged the broken, screaming boss toward the first rune. A Zomberserker rushed me, and I had to drop him to swing the Trip-Hammer. The monster died after three hits to the skull. “Tori, clear a path!”

  “I’m trying!” She was, but even with her stats, the amount she’d been casting had worn her down. She Pushed a gap through, though, and I picked up the Runelord and slammed him onto the ground next to the run—an angular, iron symbol stuck between the stone flagstones.

  “Open the door!” I shouted.

  “Or what?” Even though the Runelord was shattered and broken, we were still enemies, and I realized he wouldn’t help us—not willingly.

  “Or Hal will feed you to the zombies!” Tori said. She was back-to-back with me now; one of the other doors had opened, and a new swarm of Zomberserkers had entered the fight.

  I held the Runelord up. “I’ll do it!” I said, turning him around to face the swarm.

  And, just like that, he did it. The rune started glowing, and a thin layer of blue-ish-green magic formed on the floor, forcing the zombies back from the tiny circle it surrounded.

  It hit me like a truck, the relief. This was going to work. It was going to be messy, and violent, and Tori and I were both drowning in zombie blood and guts already.

  But it was going to work.

  “Whatever Hal and Tori are trying, it looks like they’re almost done!” the play-by-play announcer shouted.

  “This seems like a great time to explain why there are ‘undead’ on Solemnus Six,” the color commentator said. “You see, the Universal Order is not a no-waste society. That’s technically impossible—even with technology like the Consortium uses to terraform planets and install the System, there’s always waste. Impurities. Leftovers. The ‘undead’ Hal and Tori are fighting right now are a small, focused part of that waste disposal system—or at least, before Solemnus and Earth grafted, they were.”

  “The last rune just activated! Now we get to see if Hal and Tori can get through to the other side—and what that’ll mean for their chances of surviving the Norse Town dungeon!”

  I didn’t waste any time. With every rune, the glowing wall around that one section of floor had grown thicker, and the floor had grown less and less real. As the fifth one activated, the glowing shifted to a rainbow of colors. It didn’t fall through the floor, though. It arced into the air, up through the ceiling—which had also faded out of existence—and into the pitch-black night sky.

  I grabbed Tori with one hand, the Runelord with the other, and sprinted for the rainbow bridge.

  We almost made it.

  But a Zomberserker’s claws closed around Tori’s ankle, pulling her out of my grip, and the zombie horde closed around her. An explosion of gore rippled out as she shredded the undead with her new spell, but before she could get back to me, another wave swarmed over her.

  “Dammit!” I shouted. Then I threw the Runelord toward the bridge and dove into the tide of zombies once again.

  Tori was spent.

  She didn’t have anything left in the tank. Every ounce of energy, she’d used killing zombies, or shoving them around.

  But even so, she kept fighting. She Pushed the swarm away from her, dropped a Gravity Well at her feet, and—

  And that was it. She didn’t have anything left.

  Hal’s hammer screamed as he swung it into the swarm, but three doors were down now, and the sheer number of zombies in the room was overwhelming. He could barely get a good swing, and Tori could hardly see him through the crowd, even with an orange halo around him. And where had he put the Runelord?

  She clawed at a Zomberserker as it clawed at her, ripping a gash in her stomach that almost doubled her over with pain. Another grabbed a chunk of hair and pulled; it ripped free from under the Perfection’s Gaze, and she screamed in agony. Then something exploded next to her head, showering her face with gore and brains. But it wasn’t enough. Nothing was enough.

  Tori had to get out of here. As a zombie jumped on her back and slammed her into the ground, she dug her nails into the gap between the flagstones and pulled herself forward, toward the glowing rainbow portal.

  A pulse of magic ripped across the room and hit Tori like a brick wall.