My brow furrowed, and I thrust my torch out in front of me for a better look. I carefully waved it through the air on the off chance there was some sort of medieval laser beam situation going on, but nothing happened to the torch.

  Weird.

  I took another slow, hesitant step forward, but then the ground seemed to shift almost imperceptibly under my foot. I froze. My entire body went tense as I looked down.

  The toe of my boot was on a stone that was a slightly different shade of gray than the surrounding rocks. If I wasn’t looking for a difference, I doubt I would have been able to see it, but now that I knew it was there, it was the only thing I could see.

  I didn’t shift my weight at all as I extended my arm out a little farther. The torch illuminated the ground, and I was suddenly able to see a sort of pattern on the stones.

  The lighter-colored tiles were spaced out a few feet from each other, and they looked like they would take some serious stretching to get from one to the other.

  I had the sudden memory of Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade when he had to jump on the specific stones that spelled out Yaweh or the floor would collapse from under his feet. Could it really be as simple as that?

  I kept my other foot braced on the ground behind me and used my free hand to lean onto the wall. I pressed the rest of my weight down onto the small stone just to see what would happen and braced myself for the worst.

  The stone depressed further into the ground and I heard another faint click before it seemingly locked into place. The floor didn’t collapse. In fact, nothing aside from the faint locking sound seemed to happen.

  I raised up my foot slowly, and this time, I pressed it down on one of the seemingly normal-looking stones that bordered the sunken tile.

  The rock crumbled like it was made of dust, and suddenly, my foot dropped into a plunging sort of nothingness.

  “Shit!” I shouted.

  My voice echoed across the sparse stone walls. I yanked my foot back and was grateful I’d made the decision to brace myself on the floor behind me for safety.

  Okay. Only step on the light-colored rocks. Got it.

  I waited for my heart rate to slow before I carefully planted both of my feet onto the small stone tile. It was barely wide enough for both my boots, but I made it work.

  My eyes skimmed the floor in front of me for the next closest safe tile. It looked like it was about two feet away, which was definitely going to be an easy step.

  I sucked in a breath and carefully extended one foot out to the stone. It gave the same click as before as I pressed it down into the locked position, so I hopped the rest of the way onto the stone.

  Sweat trickled down the back of my neck. I wasn’t sure if it was because of nerves or the heat from the flaming torch, but I swept the torch out in front of me to look for the next stone. They seemed to be getting farther and farther away from one another.

  Okay, that made sense. I could do this.

  I held my breath and hopped onto the next stone, and my legs only wobbled a little as the rock lowered and locked into place. The next tile I needed was at least four feet away. I would have to stretch as far as I could to make it this time.

  I tried not to let my nerves get the best of me as I stretched my leg out as far as I could go. I debated lowering myself closer to the ground to make the stretch easier, but decided it was smarter to keep my balance. The last thing I wanted was to somehow miss the right stone and then topple forward.

  My foot barely connected with the edge of the correct tile, but at the same time, I must have pressed down onto one of the other rocks. A large section of the floor started to crumble away into dust.

  The gaping hole it left showed me a pitch-black chasm.

  My heart started to hammer in my chest as I inched my foot safely onto the correct platform. Then I shifted my weight as carefully as I would dare before hopping the rest of the way over.

  There was only one stone left before the floor ended and turned into a new hallway. It was the farthest one yet at about six feet. There was no way that I could stretch and make it. I was going to have to jump.

  “Okay, shit,” I breathed to myself. “We’ve got this. Come on Wes, we’ve got this.”

  I took a few seconds to psych myself up, and then I jumped.

  Time seemed to slow as I moved through the air. I guided my landing as best I could, and when I landed on the pale gray stone, a wave of relief washed over me.

  The correct tile sank and locked into place with a soft metallic click.

  I didn’t have a chance to celebrate my victory, however, because the entire hallway began to shake. In the blink of an eye, the false floor crumbled and fell down into nothingness.

  I was suspended above a massive, seemingly endless cavern by only a tiny, narrow pedestal that disappeared into the blackness.

  “Fuck,” I croaked as my knees went numb.

  I didn’t dare look down as I stretched out my leg and pulled myself over onto the safety of the ledge. Then I tumbled onto the ground in a wave of relief and rapidly scuttled back against the wall of the hallway. I did not even want to imagine what would have happened if I fell.

  Only when I was back up on my feet in the safety of the next hall did I dare look back at the chasm I had just crossed. I’d never been afraid of heights, but the sight made me sick to my stomach. The stones I had assumed were just special tiles were rigged stone plates that sat on top of endlessly long pillars. Those plates must have been the portions that had dropped into place when I stepped on them, but I was shocked any of the riggings functioned properly. The pillars below them looked ancient and too thin to support their own weight, much less mine.

  I tried not to imagine what would have happened if I stood on one for too long. That didn’t matter now, though, because I’d figured out the puzzle and made it across. The only thing left to do was keep moving forward.

  Especially since the dropping of the floor meant I literally couldn’t go backward. Not unless I wanted to risk a serious death-drop into nothingness.

  I couldn’t wait to tell my sister about this shit if I ever made it out of here to find I was still alive.

  Honestly, though, I doubted Carrie would believe me if I told her. For someone that believed the stars controlled her moods, she was shockingly skeptical. She was a fucking enigma, and if I made it out of here, I was going to thump her upside the head for coming all the way to Chicago only to get me trapped in some sort of portal dimension or something.

  I adjusted my grip on the torch and took a step forward down the next hall. There was another large, heavy-looking wooden door in front of me. The handle was just a large metal ring that looked like it had seen better days. I might have been imagining it, but as I got nearer to the door, I could have sworn I heard some sort of skittering on the other side.

  A chill rolled down my spine. I used my free hand to pull Spike out of the sheath and braced it in front of me. Then I took a deep breath and planted one foot on the door to kick it open.

  It swung open into a small room, and it took me a moment to process what I was seeing. There was a large tile mosaic on the floor that looked dirtied and scuffed over. It was hard to make out the design, but whatever it was, it looked like it had a lot of fucking legs.

  At the far end of the room, opposite the other doorway, was some sort of shrine. Maybe? I wasn’t really sure what I was looking at. It was a small table with a few candles burnt down to stumps and a large skull sitting in the center. The skull clearly hadn’t belonged to anything human.

  I swallowed the lump in my throat and took a cautious step into the room.

  In an instant, I realized what that skittering sound had been as a massive spider launched itself from the ceiling in the darkened corner of the room.

  The creature looked like it was the size of a golden retriever. It had eight massive, spindly legs with disgustingly greasy-looking hairs protruding from the chitinous flesh. Its eyes were dark and blank, and they were all focused on me.

  I could see my own frightened reflection in the darkness. I didn’t have a second to think before I thrust the torch forward at the spider.

  The creature let out a loud, aggravated hiss before dropping to the ground in front of me. I swished the flames around to try and keep the spider at bay, and only then was I able to see the intricate net of spiderwebs that covered the uppermost part of the room.

  Text hovered over the spider’s head, just like it had for all of the armor and weapons. It read Medium Monstrous Spider: level one. Below the text was what looked like some sort of health bar.

  Was that seriously a health bar? I suddenly regretted not keeping up to date on gaming. And just about every other decision I had made that led me to… whatever the fuck this sort of situation was.

  One thing was for sure, though. If this was a medium spider, I would be terrified to ever encounter a large one.

  The spider circled around me in a wide arc and continued to chitter. It seemed like it was trying to assess how good of a potential snack I might make.

  I felt sick to my stomach. There was no way that I would be able to get to the door across the room without the spider attacking me, which left me with one thing left to do.

  I was going to kill the spider.

  As a kid, I’d taken a few tae kwon do classes at a local studio while my mom worked nights, but eventually Carrie had started ballet and according to my parents, that had taken precedence. I didn’t really mind. It gave me more time to read while she had her practices, but apparently, somewhere in the back of my mind, I still remembered one of the basics of the martial art: a front kick.

  I forgot what I ate for breakfast most of the time, but somehow, my body still remembered how to deliver a swift front kick to the spider. It only dropped the health bar by a measly five percent, but it seemed to stun the creature long enough for me to form a better plan.

  This time, when the spider came scuttling back to me at full force, I swung down with the longsword in an overhead arc.

  The blade landed firmly on top of the spider’s head, and the creature let out a pained wail.

  The health bar dropped down thirty percent.

  A grin split across my face. Holy shit. I was getting the hang of this.

  I tossed the torch down in front of me in the direction of the spider so I could use both hands on the sword. The creature quickly dashed away from the flames, but I didn’t let it get far.

  I lunged with my longsword raised above me and slammed it down onto the spider’s left half.

  All four of the creature’s legs on that side were severed from its body with a sickening, wet thunk. They hit the ground, and the spider let out another loud hiss.

  There was only about ten percent of the health bar left, and I quickly took it out with another swing of the sword, and its creepy head rolled away from its body like a deflated basketball.

  I felt a rush of adrenaline as I realized I had won. Holy shit.

  I had just won a fight against a monster.

  In a dungeon.

  With a sword.

  What the actual fuck was going on?

  And why was I kind of buzzing on the situation a bit?

  Before I could do something embarrassing in celebration, a soft chiming sound pinged from somewhere in the room. I quickly glanced around and saw that there was a small treasure chest sitting where the spider’s body lay in a limp pile of green goo on the mosaic floor.

  “What the hell?” I muttered to myself before I bent down and used the tip of my sword to drag the chest away from the spider. Once I was sure I wouldn’t get spider guts all over me, I crouched down and popped open the lid.

  My eyes widened in shock at the actual gold that glinted up at me. The torchlight made the shiny metal look like it was dancing in the dark cavern of the chest, but I didn’t hesitate to scoop it out and drop it into my pocket. I had no idea what I was supposed to do with a pocketful of gold, but I knew for damn sure that I wasn’t going to leave it behind.

  The door in front of me opened with a soft click.

  I made sure I had every piece of gold picked up from inside the chest. Then I grabbed my torch off the ground before I crept toward the now open door.

  I used the toe of my boot to push the door open since I didn’t want to get jumped by another giant spider if I just walked in without taking precautions.

  Luckily nothing jumped out of me as the door swung the rest of the way open, and I took that to be a good sign while I crept into the room with the torch held aloft.

  The room was dimmer than the last one I had been in, but from an initial glance, there didn’t seem to be anything inside. Then again, I had thought that same thing about the last room.

  There wasn’t much in this room. It was about the same size as the first one. A door sat on the opposite side of the room, and I wondered if I had to do something to make it open. There was a small chest in the center of the room and not much else.

  I felt the hairs on the back of my beck rise to attention as I studied the chest.

  Too innocent.

  It had to be a trap.

  I was not going to get caught in a trap. Instead of fucking around with the chest. I slipped my sword back into its sheath as I briskly walked to the other side of the room. I pulled hard on the door handle, but the door didn’t open.

  Okay, maybe I just didn’t pull hard enough. I tried to yank on the handle again, and I was met with the same level of resistance as before.

  Great.

  I turned back around, and my gaze fell onto the chest.

  I felt like I was getting a feel for how this dungeon worked now. If there was a chest, I’d end up having to open it somehow.

  Cautiously, I walked over to the chest in the center of the room. I sucked in a breath through my teeth and debated pulling out my weapon while I circled the chest. As much as I wanted to have the weapon out and at the ready, I needed a free hand.

  I held the torch up over my head to illuminate the room as I carefully moved around the chest. It didn’t look like there were any apparent traps, but I couldn’t be too careful after the shitshow I’d just been through.

  I really did feel like Indiana Jones, and that was just about the only thing that was able to get me through the situation. Indy wouldn’t freak out, so I would also be totally cool.

  Well, that wasn’t quite true. He would freak out if there were snakes. But I would be fine. Totally cool and chill in this random dungeon I’d woken up in without any idea what the hell was happening.

  Finally, I crouched down onto my knees in the center of the room in front of the chest. It was about the size of a large tote bag, but made entirely out of what looked like rotting wood. The metal brackets that held the chest together seemed like they would break if I gave them a swift kick and nothing else. Even the lock on the front of the chest looked like it had seen far better days.

  I tried to lift the lid of the chest with my free hand, just to see if it was actually locked.

  The gesture was met with an annoying amount of resistance, which told me that yeah, the chest was definitely locked, and I was going to have to figure out how to open it.

  I glanced over my shoulder and studied the room. I didn’t think I’d missed anything when I walked in, but I really couldn’t be sure. I stood up and decided I would walk the room tile by tile to look over everything. It was the only way to make sure I checked every square inch of the place.

  I started at the door I had just walked in through. I began to walk the perimeter of the room in slow, cautious steps, but it felt like the room was getting darker and darker as I went. Was I simply imagining it, or was the already dim light from the torches on the walls fading? It felt like my torch was the only bright spot in the entire room.

  Weird.

  I crouched low to the ground as I moved. I also swept my torch around me like it was some sort of metal detector, but so far, all I’d found were lots of tiny bugs, dirt, and what looked like moldy bread. There didn’t seem to be anything in this room that could help me.

  And then I saw the small hole at the base of the next wall. It was probably no bigger than the size of an orange or a grapefruit, but there was something entirely cartoonish about the hole. It looked like every mouse’s hideout I’d seen in every old-school cartoon growing up.

  I hesitated. So far, the hole was the only thing other than the chest in the center of the room that seemed to scream “I’m part of the puzzle.” But I also didn’t want to stick my hand in a dark hole in the middle of a dungeon. What if something was in the hole? What if it chopped off my hand?

  My brain continued to conjure up nonsensical threat after nonsensical threat after I lowered myself down onto my knees to study the hole a little better.

  It was smooth, like it had been carved into the stones on purpose. It was definitely more than some random notch in the wall.

  The entire room had gone dark around me by then.

  I hadn’t been imagining it after all.

  The torches on the walls had completely extinguished their flames. If I hadn’t thought to grab a torch off the wall earlier, I would have been left completely blind in the dark.

  I strained my ears to try and hear any sounds from the hole in the wall, but I was met with silence.

  An idea struck me.

  Instead of foolishly sticking my hand or face in front of the hole, I adjusted my stance and used the burning head of the torch to investigate the strange notch.

  The room went completely dark as the flames disappeared into the hole in the wall, but hopefully the fire would either kill or scare away anything that might be inside.

  I felt unnerved in the dark, like something was watching me. I glanced over my shoulder and tried to scan the darkness, but everything was just some sort of murky blur. It was impossible to tell if there was anything waiting for me in the darkness.

  The thought set me on edge, and I yanked the torch out from the hole in the wall so quickly that I nearly extinguished the flames. The torch was still in one piece, and it didn’t look like there had been anything inside the hole at all.

 

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