Hal had been joking about Bobby being in here. There’d been no hint that he was even near here. Tori hadn’t seen him since the battle at Museumtown, and he was nothing but unreliable. The man was a loose cannon—someone looking out for Bobby Richards first, Bobby Richards second, and maybe, if he thought he could get something out of it, an associate or two.

  Tori couldn’t imagine he had real friends.

  She stared at the immaculate white suit that the slimebag had somehow gotten through Phase One of Integration intact—and at the closed and locked bone gate behind it. “Hal, can you knock this down?”

  “Nope,” Bobby said before Hal could so much as rev the hammer. “I got stuck on this side an hour ago. The place is completely full of creepy, crawly skeletons. You two have a way out?”

  “No,” Hal said. Tori winced. Then again, Bobby had shared that he was stuck before Hal had. Maybe he wasn’t playing his slimebag role. He’d been solid enough the last couple of times they’d fought together—but Tori couldn’t help but squirm as he stared through the bars.

  “What do you want?” she asked after a moment.

  “I want you to keep those big skeletons from breaking through so I can find the exit. While I’m looking, I’ll find a way to get you two on my side of the gate. Sound good?”

  Tori had a million questions. But she only asked one. “How do we know we can trust you, Bobby?” She ignored Hal’s look. He didn’t get it. Didn’t see what she did in Bobby.

  Bobby smiled. He stuck a hand through the grid of bones blocking their path. And as Hal shook it, his smile widened. “Because, Miss Vanderbilt, Bobby Richards is a man of his word.”

  The white suit vanished into the darkness, and Tori glared at it as it disappeared.

  We’d been here before—only a few minutes ago, Tori and I had prepared for a brutal last stand against swarms of skeletons in the catacombs overhead.

  But this time was different for two reasons.

  First, the four Crypt Guardians outside were strong. And there were sixteen more where those four had come from. We’d be up to our necks in crap if we couldn’t keep up, and we’d come out of it pretty beat up even if Bobby moved quickly.

  And second, Bobby Richards was here.

  I didn’t know how—and right now, I didn’t care. He definitely had his own plans and reasons to be in Rosehill Mausoleum. Bobby was always looking for a way to get one up on whoever else he could. I had a suspicion that he’d done something funny with the loot in at least one dungeon we’d cleared together.

  But he’d also shown up for Museumtown when it had needed his help the most. I could trust him. Maybe only as far as I could throw him, but with the Autoplate Pauldron, that was pretty far.

  And we needed the help, whether Tori trusted him or not.

  “Okay. New plan. We work on that one objective and try to survive,” I said. “Bobby works on getting us out of here, and we—“

  “We kill as fast as we can, try to keep pace with the skeletons. Got it, Hal,” Tori snapped. She looked irritated. I ignored that.

  I had to, because the first several columns of vertical bone shattered under an axe-blow, and a Crypt Guardian shoved its armored, skeletal body into the gap like that one movie I’d seen on TV, about the family trapped in that Colorado hotel.

  Its sword was still trapped outside; instead of swinging it, the monster reached in with a steel-clawed hand and tried to grab Tori.

  A moment later, it was blown backward across the crypt outside as Tori launched a pair of Pushes into its face.

  “Good one!” I said.

  “Thanks!”

  Then more axe blows landed against the wreckage of the portcullis, and what was left of its bars snapped and shattered.

  The Trip-Hammer screamed. I brought it down in a massive arc. It met the first Guardian’s axe, and sparks flew across the room. The screaming sound of steel on steel echoed through the catacombs.

  The fight was on.

  The rovers fell off their backpack and clattered to the ground around me as the skeletal warrior and I both stepped back and brought our weapons back. The Trip-Hammer arced overhead, meeting the axe in a thunderous crash as the weapon’s engine clicked and the twin hammer heads spun. Then the axe flashed out. I tried to backpedal again, but Tori had nowhere to go.

  I couldn’t retreat. And, as the first rover righted itself and aimed its rail gun right into the center of the monster—only to blow off a handful of ribs and do basically nothing meaningful—I realized there was only one move I could make.

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  “Tori, Push me!” I yelled.

  She didn’t hesitate. Her telekinesis grabbed me from behind and shoved me into the monster before it could react. The Trip-Hammer tangled up with the axe, and we slammed into the portcullis’s wreckage. I recovered first. The Trip-Hammer revved. It crashed into the monster’s chest, caving it in and leaving a green experience orb, which I absorbed.

  But the impact had carried me outside our little chamber. I backpedaled as two Guardians charged me, swords flashing. The two blades left scours across the skull-lined walls. Then I readied the hammer and dropped into a defensive stance, trying to be as much of a wall as I could be.

  Tori would have to do the damage for now.

  And she did. The Eyes of Perfection started going to work as she picked one of the two skeletons and picked it up with Levitate, then volleyed a series of Pushes and Pulls into it while dropping it into a Gravity Well every time it escaped the hover trap. The stacking damage built up slowly as I focused on defending the gap in the gate.

  Then, when she was ready, she cast Crush, and the monster imploded.

  “Good one,” I said.

  “Thanks. Took too long, though.” Tori gestured at the five skeletons outside our room. The next set had just woken up, and I’d only managed to kill one more, leaving a survivor and four fresh ones. “We’re going to fall behind.”

  “We don’t have to win, do we?” I asked. The objective was only to survive. If we could hold out until Bobby got the door open, we’d be alright.

  Tori’s eyes narrowed as I turned back to the skeletons. A Gravity Well dropped in front of me, buying a few seconds. Then she said the words I’d been hoping to avoid.

  “One hundred percent full clear, Hal.”

  By the time the door behind us screeched slowly upward, I’d given up on the full clear completely. There were thirteen skeletons outside, all three of my rovers had fired their shots and were slowly recharging, and I’d spent the Voltsmith’s Grasp down to nothing—and tapped into a few Charge-based explosives in an attempt to hurry the fight up. They hadn’t helped much. If the shrapnel ones caught the right bones, they were useful, but most of the time, they went through the spaces between ribs or caught on plate armor. The explosive ones were better, but even then, they fractured bone without destroying the skeletons entirely.

  So, the moment I heard Bobby’s voice and the screeching door, I turned, grabbed Tori, and threw us both through the half-open portcullis, ignoring her complaints about the full clear. It slammed down behind us as I pulled the Trip-Hammer through.

  “Okay, Bobby, where are you?” I asked.

  His voice came back muffled. “I’m upstairs. There are a few real bad dudes in here, but there’s an exit near me. I avoided them, but with the two of you, it shouldn’t be an issue to kill them, right?”

  “Right,” Tori said. “We’ve got to—and then we’ve got to come back for our full-clear.”

  A sword crashed into the portcullis, and she jumped.

  “Let’s put that on the back burner, Tori. We can try a full-clear once we’ve got Bobby,” I said.

  “Yeah, about that,” he said from above. “Bobby Richards isn’t staying put here. I’ve got things to do in this shithole of a dungeon, and I’m going to get them done. You want to meet up, that’s fine with me. But you need to keep moving.”

  Another skeleton got to work on the portcullis. It wouldn’t last much longer, and then we’d be right back where we started. I nodded. “Fine, Bobby. See you soon. Tori, let’s get going.”

  The teenager glared up at the ceiling, where a small hole revealed Bobby’s grinning face. She didn’t look away until I put a hand on her shoulder. “Tori, we need to move.”

  Then she shook herself and looked around. “Fine. Fine. Sorry, it’s just…couldn’t he come back and help us out?”

  I started jogging into the catacomb, then took a right at a four-way intersection lit by a guttering torch. “He probably could, yes. But maybe he’s got a reason.”

  “Yeah, the reason is that he’s an asshole.”

  I snorted. “Your mom wouldn’t be happy about that word—but she’d probably agree.”

  We took another right, climbed a flight of stairs, and opened a door that creaked slightly. Beyond it was a wide, circular room lined with dirt mounds. Bones jutted from the piles in mismatched, jumbled heaps; a few scattered shards lay in the center of the room, along with a few monsters in the darkness on the far side. From here, it was all but impossible to make out what they were.

  “That’s a sign that reads ‘Bobby was here.’ Bet they vomit up skeletons when we try to cross,” Tori said.

  “No bet. You’d win.” This whole dungeon felt like a repeated set of ambushes; get pulled into a grave, get surrounded by the Gravekeeper’s army, get ambushed by the Crypt Guardians, and so on.

  I stepped into the room, hugging the wall. And the first monsters erupted from the bone piles.

  Wolverine Spider Corpse: Level 52 Monster

  They were…wolflike, if wolves had eight legs and jaws that opened sideways, and were made entirely of bleached white bone. They charged us, bone-clad legs clattering across the floor.

  Tori broke into a sprint. “Come on, Hal!” she said.

  Whatever she’d seen, I hadn’t. But I ran behind her, feet pounding the dusty off-white floor as the Trip-Hammer thumped on my shoulder. “What is—“

  “Just hurry!” she yelled. She threw a Gravity Well in front of her, then Pulled the monsters it had assembled toward us. “Ignore them!”

  What had gotten into her? I wanted to ask. Instead, I kept running past the monsters. A bone spike jammed into my leg, and I yelled in pain as it ripped free, then spun and slammed the Trip-Hammer into the offending monster. It exploded, but before I could collect its experience orb, two more Spider Corpses covered it and pushed forward.

  So, instead of fighting, I ran.

  And as I did, I saw what she’d seen. It was Bobby, sitting in the middle of a red half-circle on the ground, surrounded by spiders. They couldn’t cross the line, but they’d blocked him in there.

  And also inside of the half-circle, in the room’s wall, stood a closed, locked door.

  The second Bobby saw us, he started waving. “Way down over here! Get your behinds in here, and let’s get moving!”

  “What happened?” I yelled as I slid through a Levitated gap in the spiders and crossed the red line. Tori tumbled across it right behind me.

  “Oh, you know? This whole place is a nightmare. The second I realized other people were in here with me, it got way harder. The Gravekeeper showed up when you two got pulled six feet under, and I had to run from it. Then, of course, I find the exit—but I haven’t finished the objective yet, not until everyone’s either survived or died. And worse, I can’t even leave to help you out.

  “If it hadn’t been you two…you know what? Never mind. Just give it a minute. Any second now…

  Area Message: Rosehill Mausoleum’s second floor has unlocked. This floor will remain unlocked for twenty-four hours, after which time the first floor will reset.

  The circle went green around us, and the door popped open. “There it is! Let’s go,” Bobby said. “We can talk on the next floor.”