Sasha stood beside Pablo at the edge of the shimmering alarm field, staring through the energy curtain at the horror beyond. Sam remained strapped to that table while The Vivisectionist methodically dissected him. The robotic tentacles continued to writhe across the ceiling like serpents. Sasha’s hands reflexively tightened on Bedrock's grip until her knuckles cracked with the strain. She forced herself to take several deep breaths—in through her nose and out through her mouth—willing her muscles to relax as best she could.
“Are you alright?” Pablo’s tone was maddeningly placid.
"Just psyching myself up," Sasha asked, glancing at Pablo. “You good?”
"I’m...trying to figure out if there's a better way to do this," Pablo said quietly.
"No time for second-guessing. It's a good plan." Sasha meant it. Back at the lake, Pablo had defaulted into a leadership role within the group. In the months since, after they’d officially voted Pablo as talon leader, she'd watched him grow into the role. The late nights with Delta. The tactical notebooks. The weight he carried for all of them.
"When we get out there, remember this isn't a classic tank-and-spank like we did up above." Pablo's voice remained clinical. "Without our armor, we're about equally resilient. So we stay together and work as a unit."
Sasha sensed the restraint in that statement. Appreciated it, even if part of her bristled at being handled with kid gloves. She knew Pablo wished he were the team's primary meat shield. Would have preferred to take every hit himself if he could.
It has nothing to do with machismo, she reminded herself. Nothing to do with you being a girl.
She'd have kicked his ass if she’d thought for a single second that was his angle. No, it was because deep down Pablo thought it was his job to protect everyone—whether with his body or with his mind. That had been true before they became Paladins, back when they were just regular friends playing D&D in. It was doubly true since they’d become damn Paladins with the fate of the world on their shoulders.
"Any ideas on finding the dungeon core after this?" Sasha asked, more to fill the silence than anything.
"I've got a hypothesis." Pablo produced a small scalpel from his Inventory. He showed it to her for just a moment before sending it back to extradimensional storage. "After we drop him, try to keep the others distracted for me. They don't need to see what I think will come next."
Sasha's stomach twisted as she considered what Pablo might need that scalpel for. Behind them, Zoe's armor materialized in a flash of white and silver light. For the last several moments, Zoe had been quietly gathering up her reserves of Unaspected Aetheric Energy, so that she could pour it all into her armor’s capacitors. It was a move that they could have used back at Middle Velma Lake, but hadn’t known about until Delta began to truly train them in the days that followed. It took considerable concentration, and at 10 points of UAE for every 2% of Armor charge, the exchange rate was costly. Zoe had just dumped the majority of her UAE into the conversion. In an emergency like this, it was better than waiting for the armor to recharge naturally, but it also cut down on their power versatility. Which was why Pablo and Sasha weren’t doing the same thing just then.
A step or two further down the corridor, Eden hunched over her camping tub, struggling to condense enough water from the sterile ship’s air to fill it. The humid jungle outside would have made the task trivial. In here, it was like getting water from a stone. Sasha appreciated the struggle Eden was experiencing. Despite this alien ship being buried underground, Sasha could barely feel the tons of soil and stone all around them through the aetherically charged hull. It set her teeth on edge. She wouldn’t be able to call up Ablative Rock Armor. Which was why Pablo was worried, even with their miraculous healing powers, this was likely going to hurt—a lot. A fresh scream from Sam echoed through the alarm field. Sasha winced, her stomach twisting. Pablo remained stoic, that Iron Mind buffer keeping him detached.
"Distract everyone from the gore, roger that." She held out her clenched fist to Pablo. "Ready to rock?"
"Ready to roll." Without looking bumped his knuckles to hers.
They stepped forward through the alarm field together. The moment Pablo and Sasha crossed the threshold, alarm klaxons blared loud enough to drown out Sam's screams and The Vivisectionist's clinical dictations. The urgent sound triggered a primal fight-or-flight instinct that had been hard-coded into her DNA. Fortunately, Sasha’s tendencies had always skewed towards the fight response, even before becoming a Paladin.
The Vivisectionist whirled to face them, his gray alien features contorting in an unmistakable expression of rage. Those all-black eyes fixed on her and Pablo with predatory focus. His cybernetic hands—slick with Sam's blood—clenched and unclenched.
"Intruders," he hissed, the Oxford English accent somehow making it worse. "How dare you contaminate my laboratory?"
With a wave of his hand and an unintelligible command in an alien tongue, the robotic tentacles all around the laboratory surged with unmistakable intention as they writhed to orient on the Paladins. Dozens of them lashed out from ceiling mounts, whipping through the air at Pablo and Sasha like striking vipers.
Against the meaty abominations up on the surface, Bedrock had been an ideal weapon. The hammer was built for breaking bones and pulping flesh. With a sweep of the warhammer, she knocked aside one lashing tentacle, but it bent bonelessly against the blow and began writhing itself around Bedrock’s haft. Aetherically-enhanced muscles flexing, she tried to rip the hammer free of the tentacle’s grasp, only to feel herself dragged forward a step instead.
“Sasha!” Pablo shouted over the blaring alarm and took a hurried step forward to stay by her side, even as he used Razor to weave a curtain of steel around himself.
"I got it!" Sasha shouted over the klaxons. This wasn’t the time for Mountain Stance, not when they might need to move at any second. Fortunately, despite carrying a big hammer, Sasha knew that not every problem was a nail. "Brains over brawn, baby!"
With a thought, she banished Bedrock to her Inventory, and the tentacle-wrapped hammer vanished into thin air. Hands suddenly free, Sasha grabbed hold of the nearest tentacle in both hands as it lashed toward her face. The polymer-ceramic composite was smooth and surprisingly warm as she wrapped her fingers around it.
Within her crushing grip, the plasticy surface of the appendage cracked, and she gained purchase. Setting her feet, Sasha yanked back and ripped it from the ceiling with a grunt of effort. Sparks showered from the ceiling, and an oily fluid gushed around her hands. She swung the severed tentacle like a whip, using it to bat aside two more that came at Pablo's blind spot.
***
With surgical precision, Razor flowed through defensive forms around Pablo. The blade's impossibly sharp edge cut through tentacles like they were made of paper. Severed lengths of tentacle fell to the floor, still twitching. Nearby, Sasha blinked Bedrock back into her hands to smash a tentacle slithering along the floor toward her ankles. Then dismissed the hammer a split second later to grab hold of and rip another tentacle from the ceiling.
Within the first handful of seconds, they’d dispatched half a dozen tentacles, but there were just so many. More seemed to be emerging every second, sliding out of hidden ports in the ceiling and walls. For every one they destroyed, two or three more took its place.
Beyond the fray of their battle, the Vivisectionist stood like a puppeteer. His cybernetic hands had sprouted additional fingers, one for each tentacle he controlled. They writhed in boneless mimicry of the tentacles' movements, an obscene display of fine motor control.
At least we’ve got his attention off Sam, Pablo thought.
A tentacle caught Sasha across the ribs. She'd been focused on two others and missed the third coming low. The impact lifted her off her feet and slammed her into the worktable. Beakers shattered. Chemical solutions splashed across her jeans and hoodie, the liquids burning where they touched skin.
"I’ve got—!" Pablo began.
"I'm good!" She rolled off the table, ignoring the pain. Her Accelerated Healing was already kicking in, the chemical burns sizzling even as flesh knitted back together. "Keep pushing!"
Going back to back, it was all they could do to hold their ground. Forget about fighting their way in close enough to confront The Vivisectionist directly. This was exactly the sort of fight where Warren’s devastating fire affinity would have come in handy. Sasha's health bar hovered at 43%. Pablo's own Health was at 68%, but dropping. Without their armor's protection, they were taking damage at an alarming rate.
"This is unsustainable!" Pablo called out, parrying three tentacles in rapid succession. "We need to…"
To what? It’s too soon for armor! Then Pablo kicked himself for forgetting the items he’d literally just distributed. "We need to get things up a notch.”
Jumping into his menus, he reached into his Inventory and selected the Beast-Blood Tonic, expecting it to materialize in his stomach or trigger somehow automatically. Instead, the small glass vial appeared in his hand.
Beyond their Paladin weapons and armor, they hadn’t had a lot of experience with Nexus-generated items. He’d been hoping for a hot list on his HUD or something more game-like, but apparently, consumables weren’t automatic. With Razor in a one-handed grip, constantly weaving around him, Pablo pulled the cork with his teeth, spat it aside, and downed the crimson liquid in one swallow.
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The liquid tasted like salty pennies with a spicy burn at the back of his throat. The effect was immediate and visceral. Heat exploded through his muscles, and his blood sang with sudden ferocity. His next swing with Razor cleaved through two tentacles at once, the blade moving faster than before. A notification appeared: BEAST-BLOOD TONIC ACTIVE: +20% MELEE DAMAGE - 60 SECONDS
"Sasha!" Pablo called out. "The Beast-Blood! Drink it!"
Sasha retrieved the vial from her own Inventory, yanked the cork, and drank. Her eyes widened as power flooded her system. "Oh, that's what we're talking about!"
***
Rowan stood at the entrance to the lab, spear gripped white-knuckled in both hands, his entire body coiled like a compressed spring ready to release. The battle was chaos incarnate. Pablo and Sasha were barely holding their own against the sheer mass of robotic tentacles. Rowan had lost count of how many they'd destroyed, but more kept coming. The Vivisectionist stood at the center of the maelstrom, his elongated fingers conducting the symphony of violence with clinical precision. Then, within seconds of one another, Pablo and Sasha seemed to falter. Pablo's next sword swing was slower, less precise. Sasha barely got her hammer out in time to block a tentacle strike.
Something's wrong.
Pablo stumbled, his free hand going to his chest. Even from across the room, Rowan could see him grimace in pain. Sasha's knees buckled for just an instant before she caught herself.
"It’s the tonic’s backlash!" Pablo called out in warning.
Both of them reached into empty air—that Inventory thing Eden had tried to explain to him—and pulled out small glass vials. They drank quickly, desperately, like people dying of thirst. The effect was immediate and visible. A soft blue glow began emanating from their skin, growing brighter with each passing second. Pablo's movements became steadier. Sasha straightened, some of the tension leaving her shoulders.
But the light kept intensifying. Within moments, both of them were glowing like lanterns—Pablo outlined in chrome-blue radiance, Sasha wrapped in warm orange-brown light. Every movement they made left trails of illumination in the air.
That can't be good, Rowan thought. They're lit up like targets.
The Vivisectionist's attention sharpened on the glowing figures. More tentacles converged on them, drawn to the light like moths to flame.
"Not like we were planning on stealth anyway!" Sasha shouted, her voice grim as she grabbed hold and crushed another tentacle. Her arms blazed with that orange glow as her muscles flexed.
Rowan's grip tightened on his spear. Whatever those tonics were doing, they were keeping Pablo and Sasha in the fight, but at a cost. Then there was a whisper of wind—so faint Rowan almost missed it—and something invisible slipped past into the chamber. He caught the barest distortion in the air, like heat shimmer, moving toward the operating table where Sam lay strapped and bleeding.
Zoe. That has to be Zoe.
Rowan did his best not to be overwhelmed by the fear and violence swirling through the laboratory. His newly enhanced Awareness let him track more than he wanted to. Every scream. Every impact. Every spray of blood. Nothing in his life to that point had prepared him for anything remotely like this.
Eden inched up beside him, the camping tub finally filled with water she'd painstakingly condensed from the sterile air. She was breathing hard from the effort, sweat beading on her forehead.
"The moment Sam's free, we move," Eden said quietly, her eyes fixed on the battle. "Get him in the tub. I'll handle the rest."
Rowan nodded, not trusting his voice.
On the operating table, Sam's restraints suddenly fell away. Invisible hands—Zoe's hands—cut through the straps with precision. However, the motion drew The Vivisectionist's attention like a lodestone.
"Cruious," the dungeon boss hissed. “Oh, yes. I see now. There you are.”
With a flick of several grotesquely multiplied fingers, he sent a storm of appendages whipping toward the "empty" space beside Sam. Tentacles converged from multiple angles, moving with frightening coordination. The tip of one cracked against something solid in mid-air. Sparks sprayed from the contact. Zoe shimmered into view in a shower of electrical discharge. She had her back to the table, Gale raised defensively, and her body was placed squarely between Sam and the alien’s attack.
"Zoe!" Eden shouted. “Get out of there!”
Behind her, Sam rolled off the table—driven as much by his own muscles as a gust of wind from Zoe pushing him clear. He hit the floor hard, and Rowan got his first clear look at the damage. Sam's abdomen was a horror show. A massive Y-shaped incision ran from his sternum to his pelvis, held open by surgical clamps. Organs gleamed wetly in the laboratory's harsh light. Then, as Rowan watched with bile rising in his throat, Sam's flesh began moving. Oozing together like wet clay. The incision was closing itself, tissue knitting with impossible speed.
The aetheric saturation, Rowan realized. He's unlocked healing powers or something…
Zoe dodged one tentacle, then another, her armor's flight jets firing in short bursts to lend her speed. Finally, a lashing tentacle caught her and slammed into her gut like a battering ram. The impact sent her flying backward. She crashed into one of the vats with a sound like a car accident. The containment glass of the vat spiderwebbed with cracks. Zoe slid to the ground. For a heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then the glass gave way. Greenish liquid exploded outward in a pressurized wave. The Raptor-Hound corpse that had been floating in the vat came with it, tumbling out in a cascade of liquid. The chemical solution spread across the laboratory floor, mixing with blood and broken equipment.
It was then that Rowan realized he could sense something within the liquid. Plantlife of some kind, like…kelp or algae. His Flora Control lit up like a beacon in his mind. The algae was plant matter—primitive, but still within his domain. It swirled in the chemical soup, thousands of individual strands crying out to be…fed. The fibrous strands of plantlife demanded meat!
Before he could think to do anything useful with it, most of the algae was already rushing away down drains built into the lab's floor, carried by the flood of fluid.
“We need to get to Sam!” Eden shouted, but there was a storm of tentacles heaving at the ready between the doorway and where Sam lay slumped on the floor.
No. Wait. I can use this!
Driven by instinct, Rowan took a bounding step forward. With the strength of his entire body plus his Flora Control exerted on the wood of the haft, he hurled his spear across the room at another tank. The spear sailed through the storm of robotic tentacles. It struck the vat holding the Boar-Man corpse. Glass cracked, then shattered.
More fluid gushed out, this time mixed with a different color of algae—deep purple instead of green. The Boar-Man's massive body tumbled out, landing with a wet thud. Before the chemical-laden fluid could carry the algae down the drains, Rowan seized hold of it with his Flora Control. The sensation was like flexing a muscle he'd only just discovered. The algae responded with compliant hunger, awaiting his command.
Shape. Form. Move! Eat!
With an effort of will that made his temples throb, Rowan consolidated the algae into a vaguely humanoid shape. It rose from the laboratory floor like a creature from a nightmare—seven feet tall, roughly man-shaped, dripping with preservative chemicals and shambling forward on legs that shouldn't have supported it. He sent his algae creation charging at The Vivisectionist's back.
The dungeon boss sensed the attack at the last second. He spun, cybernetic hands redirecting tentacles to intercept the threat. But now he was forced to split his focus. Pablo and Sasha on one side. Rowan's algae monster on the other side. For the first time since the battle began, the Vivisectionist seemed to be struggling.
Then Sam entered the fray. He surged up from the far side of the surgical table, and Rowan's mind stuttered trying to process what he was seeing. Sam's arms had transformed into long bony blades—gleaming white protrusions that erupted from where his forearms should be. The Y-incision in his abdomen had sealed completely, leaving only fresh pink scar tissue.
Sam's face was twisted in an expression of pure rage and agony. His eyes had changed too—the whites were now a sickly yellow, the pupils elongated vertically like a goat's.
"You!" Sam howled. The voice was his, but wrong, layered with an inhuman resonance. "You did this to me!"
Sam charged The Vivisectionist with inhuman speed, those bone-blade arms raised high. He hacked into the dungeon boss with wild, frenzied strikes. One blade caught The Vivisectionist's shoulder, cutting deep. Green blood sprayed.
The coordination of the tentacles finally faltered. The Vivisectionist staggered back, one hand going to his wound while the other tried desperately to control the tentacles. He couldn't maintain focus on everything at once.
"Everyone, cover your ears!" Sasha bellowed.
Rowan barely got his hands up in time.
Sasha threw her head back and roared. The sound wasn't human. It was the territorial challenge of some ancient, apex predator, something that had never needed to fear anything else. The roar physically vibrated the air. The vats trembled. Equipment rattled. Even the tentacles seemed to flinch. Rowan felt it in his chest, in his bones, in his teeth.
More importantly, The Vivisectionist reacted. His elongated fingers spasmed. His all-black eyes widened. For just a moment, the alien dungeon boss looked like prey that had suddenly realized it was being hunted by something bigger.
The tentacles' coordination faltered. Sam's bone-blades drove deeper into the boss's flesh. Rowan’s algae creature tightened its grip. Rowan lowered his hands from his ears, his heart pounding.
"Now!" Pablo shouted. "Armor up!"
“Across the stars unyielding. Shields against the Void Beyond!” Three voices shouted in near unison.
Chrome light exploded around Pablo. Orange radiance enveloped Sasha. In a flash, blue and purple plates materialized around Eden as she rushed forward. Dripping with chemicals and algae, Zoe surged back to her feet at the far side of the room. The four armored Paladins—like heroes out of a movie—converged on The Vivisectionist from all sides.
However, even in their armor, Rowan could see they were still struggling. A tentacle caught Pablo across the chest, and his armored form staggered. The faceplate of Pablo’s helmet swung up, exposing his face to the air. He pulled another vial from nowhere, downed it in one quick gulp, then sealed the helmet shut.
The healing must have worked, though, because Pablo moved with renewed vigor, pressing the attack against The Vivisectionist right alongside the others. Gritting his teeth and filing the observations away, Rowan centered his focus entirely on his own contribution to the battle.
Rowan's algae creature grappled the dungeon boss from behind, its boneless mass wrapping around his torso like a straightjacket and began to devour alien flesh. Still screaming, Sam's bone-blades continued their frenzied assault. Pablo and Sasha hit from the left. Having arched up to skim along the ceiling, Zoe dove from above. Eden came in from the right, her trident stabbing forward.
They battered the gangly gray alien to the floor in a combined and devastating strike. Within seconds, the dungeon boss collapsed, his body cut to pieces, green blood pooling beneath the wreckage of his cybernetic enhancements. The tentacles all went limp simultaneously, drooping from the ceiling like dead snakes. Silence crashed over the laboratory. Even the klaxons stopped wailing.
"We came. We saw. We kicked his ass!" Zoe shouted in triumph, her armored chest heaving as she tried to catch her breath.
Sam stood over The Vivisectionist's corpse, those bone-blade arms still extended, dripping with green blood. His whole body was shaking.
"Sam?" Eden said softly, taking a careful step toward him. "Sam, it's over. You're safe now. Let's get—"
Sam turned to look at her, those alien yellow eyes wide with confusion and fear. The bone-blades began to retract, sliding back into his forearms with a sound like grinding gravel. Fresh blood—crimson human blood—welled from the wounds their emergence had caused.
"Eden?" Sam's voice cracked. "What...what’s happened to me?"
Through the haze of his own exhaustion, Rowan noticed details he'd missed during the battle. Pablo and Sasha were still glowing, that strange light emanating from their armored forms. Both of them kept rubbing their arms like they ached. Sasha's stomach growled audibly from across the room. They'd won. They'd saved Sam. They'd defeated the boss. But the cost was written on every combatant, in every labored breath, in every moment they struggled to stay upright.
Rowan's algae creature collapsed back into formless sludge, his control slipping as exhaustion hit him like a freight train. His legs gave out. He caught himself against the doorframe, the world spinning. Through a haze of weary confusion, a message flashed in his vision: Flora Aspected Aetheric Energy Critically Low!
