The Villainess wants to be a Hero

I sit with my back propped up against the stone wall of some narrow tunnel we'd found and stare out across our meager campsite and into the gloom that was almost completely black even to my enhanced senses. My teammates were asleep, El was wrapped up in her cocoon of light grey blankets and pillows, and Markus was sprawled out on top of his ratty-scarf, his feet twitching as he chased evil-gold-dragons in his dreams.

This was our third expedition into the Deep Roads and we'd been underground for days, maybe weeks—I make a note for my infallible memory to ask El when she woke up—this time trying to find a founding Thaig and a super cool relic for burnt-custard so she could be queen. Unfortunately, the Deep Roads were huge. Not in the size of each individual Road—there were only a few Roads we'd explored that I could have fit my larger form into without bumping my head—but in how far they stretched out underground in each direction.

They were also teeming with bands of not-food monsters, other kinds of monsters, and giant versions of above-ground animals—some of which were fun and fluffy, like the giant rat swarm we'd had to run away from but some were really gross, like the giant-spider nest that El had burnt with lots and lots of fire. It was the kind of place where a soon-to-be-[Hero] could gain a bunch of levels really quickly. And I had… we all had.

I was now a level 14 [Valiant Warrior] with a brand new [Shield Smash] skill that I could use to boop monster in the face When I used my [Superior Strength] or my [Brave Soul] enhanced [Superior Strength] I could boop hard enough to turn not-food monsters into smears of blood and bone which was a lot of fun, but also really messy. In addition to that, I had also advanced my weapon and shield proficiency to their next levels and I was certain I was getting close to learning a really cool sword-technique like [Arc of the Moon] or [Flight of the Swallow].


I wasn't the only one who had gotten stronger, though. El was now a level 16 [Fire Mage] and had learned to bounce her fire spells off of walls and floors and from one monster to another with something she had said was called [Geometry of Flame]—which my impeccable memory had reminded me was a variation of one of several spell-shaping skills a [Mage] had to learn to become an [Archmage]. However, she'd just grinned at me and said I'd find out someday when I asked her if she had learned any cool new spells.

Which, on the one hand, seemed unfair, because I was the team leader and soon-to-be-[Hero] and I should know these kinds of things. But on the other hand, a teammate pulling out a super-secret-skill to defend their [Hero] and beat up some assistant-[Villain] was really cool. Plus, it made a warm, bubbly feeling in my stomach to know that El was almost as excited about becoming a [Hero's] teammate as I was about becoming a [Hero].

Where El had learned to do cool, flashy, things with fire, Markus was different. He had fangs now. Sharp ones that sometimes trailed a crimson light—mostly when he jumped out of the shadows to bite a monster's leg. He refused to say what level he was or even what the skill was called—probably because he's a [Rogue] and [Rogues] are all sneaky-sneak—but he did say that it let him bite through skin and bone and armor.

More importantly than that, he was bigger now. Not big like my larger form big, but big in a way that squirrels weren't. Though maybe underground squirrels were bigger, we hadn't run across any yet, so I wasn't sure. He was also now far too big to sit easily on my shoulder since he came up to my knees when he was on all fours and up to my waist when he perked up onto his back legs.

Unfortunately, while we'd all gotten stronger and learned cool skills—even sneaky-sneaks who refused to share them—we hadn't found any shiny new weapons or even any not-shiny weapons or even any piles of gold and gems or-

My genius mind pokes me and I look over at an hourglass as it drips the last bits of sand from the top bulb to the bottom one.

Quietly…

And that was the worst part about the Deep Roads, not the monsters and the darkness and the walls being so close on all sides that it felt like I couldn't stretch out at all, but that I was always supposed to be quiet. I couldn't cheer and shout when I gained a level or learned a new skill or beat up some weird blanket-monster that dropped from the ceiling and tried to engulf me. The lectures I got when I forgot seemed to last forever, and El gave them in this weird hissing whisper that made her sound kind of like a super angry snake.

…I move over to the grey cocoon and look down at my teammate. I have to be careful waking her up. If I'm not, she starts shooting fire. Not that I have to worry about fire. Even though I've sealed away [Gargant's Plate] and [Body of the Calamity], I'm still made from pure Wyrd, and Wyrd won't burn from anything less than [Balefire]. But El's cocoon isn't nearly as fireproof. Neither is she. Or Markus… maybe. Since he's still hiding his skills because he's a real sneaky-sneak, I wasn't sure.

My hand drifts down gently and pokes my favorite—in a two-way-tie for first—teammate in the cheek. Her eyes slowly open, revealing blue-fading-to-purple irises limned by a hair-thin ring of fiery-red—a sign of her attunement to fire and proof that she was indeed the perfect choice for a soon-to-be-[Hero's] teammate.

El blinks up at me silently before nodding. I wait while she shreds her cocoon—but not actually shreds, since we wouldn't be going back to restock our supplies for a while yet and she probably didn't want to have to sleep on the ground without her cocoon-blankets—and emerges. She grumbles over to the spot I'd picked for night-watch and flops down on the stone saying something that sounds like 'maybe I can get an advance on my allowance and buy a [Secured Campsite] next time we go back to civilization.'

Less than a minute later, I'm wrapped up in my own blankets, with my arms wrapped tightly around a pillow that we'd found in burnt-custard's city. It reminded me of Soph because it was fluffy and soft and had feathers inside it—Soph's feathers were on the outside, though—and was an awesome thing to hug when you were tired and sleepy and warm under your blankets and…

Zzz…


Lilith watches through a thousand eyes and listens through a thousand ears as she plots the downfall of the dwarven nation of Jhoral. Or rather, that's what she'd tell her father if she ever bothered to leave her estate and check up on her. Not that she expected her to. Ri'ankor'mal had always been too busy with her plotting and seductions to ever care about visiting Lilith even when she stayed in her father's estate. And now that she was an ocean away in the crumbling ruins of some forgotten dwarven city with only her [Darklings] and her [Maid] around... Well, it's not like Lilith wanted her to come by anyway. Father was always so-

*Knock* *Knock*

Lilith buries herself underneath a pile of blankets and pillows that were all she'd been allowed to keep when father had sent her away. Maybe if she was quiet and still enough they'd-

*Knock* *Knock*

"My lady."

A voice calls out to her, though it's well muffled by the thick wooden doors that blocked off the only intact bedroom she'd found in three months of sending her [Darklings] out searching. It had been the first thing she'd tasked her slowly growing army to find. She feels her skin start to crawl at the memory, and Lilith shivers even as she buries herself deeper into her pile of blankets. Those first few weeks of being outside and surrounded by other people—even if they were just her [Maid] and her [Darklings] had left her nerves scraped rawer than a fresh steak.

"My lady, may I-"

The door handle slowly jiggles, and a spike of adrenaline sets her heart to pounding. "No. Don't come in!"

"My lady, your [Generals] have assembled to address the recent rise in adventuring teams scouring through the Deep Roads. They are all awaiting your insight."

"Why do they need me…" the plaintive note in her voice is muffled by her blankets. Her [Maid] doesn't respond.

"Tell them to…" Lilith pauses, unsure of what to say. Then she thinks of her father, and what she would order them to do. The answer is suddenly clear. "Tell them to kill them all."

There. With that solved, no one would need her to leave the safety of her blankets and go… her throat works uselessly and her skin shivers as she finishes the thought… outside. Only, instead of the quiet tread of a departing servant, the next sound she hears is another jiggling of the door handle.

"My lady. Please come outside." The voice of her [Maid] is just as stern as father's when he'd told her how useless and disappointing she was before banishing her from her home. "You can't stay cooped up in your rooms all the time. You need some fresh air."

"Yes, I can, and no, I don't." This time, not even her blankets can muffle the plaintiveness in her voice. A weakness her maid must have picked up on, because not even a moment after her defiant refusal, the door to her rooms starts to move.

Maybe if she hid well enough her [Maid] would leave her alone and… Despite knowing deep within herself the futility of it all, Lilith still grabs onto that fragile strand of hope. She buries herself deeper into her blankets until the only piece of her left uncovered is one of the bladed talons sticking out of the back of her left foot that just refuses to stay hidden.

Her hope lasts for moments. A meager handful of heart-in-throat moments before the soft tread of her [Maid's] footsteps begins to draw inevitably closer. Then the fur on her neck prickles as it's exposed to the air outside her blankets. Lilith whimpers. Why did she have to be here in the dark, cold ruins of a dwarven city full of bugs and rats and people when she could be safe at home in her dark and cold lair deep in her father's basement?

It wasn't fair! What had she done other than spend her time alone in her room reading books and hiding away from other people? She hadn't ever hurt anyone. Not the people who took a wrong turn and barged into her room. Not her [Maid]. Not even her sisters when they said things that made her want to run away and hide. And all she'd gotten for that was a swift kick through a [Hellfire Portal] and an order not to return until she'd toppled this dwarven kingdom.

Lilith whimpers and digs herself deeper into her covers even as she knows that hiding is futile. Her [Maid] was relentless. Unstoppable. Inevitable. Even now, she could feel the cold hands of that-

"Come, my lady," Her [Maid's] voice is stern, like a sword, and just as sharp. "You cannot hide away today. You must lead your people."

"But I don't wanna!"

Lilith wails and even swings her clawed hands and paws about. She might as well have been trying to fight a hurricane for all the good it did. Her [Maid] was relentless, after all.

[AN]
I realized over the weekend that we wrapped up the first "book" of this story with the previous chapter. We started with Ciel wanting something different out of life, and we end with her a smidge wiser than she was and (more importantly) starting on the exact kind of adventure that she's always dreamed of.

What this means is that I'll be stepping back from this quest for a moment (a week or two, hopefully not much longer) to do two things. First, I'll be updating the story version until it's at this point. Second, I need to actually sit down and plot out where we're going from here much more than I have (I currently have three notes: find Macguffin, make Briga queen, fight villain).

"Remind me again why we've been stuck underground for weeks now?"

El complains—I knew she was complaining because I'd learned lots of fun new things since we'd been stuck underground, and her complaining voice was one of them—even as she sends a fanning-peacock-tail of fire flaring out around her. A trio of not-food-monsters scream as their eyes start to boil, but it doesn't last too long before the fire sears their lungs, and they fall to the ground, dead but still burning.

"A [Princess] asked us to find a crown so she can unite her kingdom and fight off the evil monsters attacking it."

I pause momentarily to boop a monster with a [Shield Smash]. Gore splashes as the monster's head explodes, but I'm too quick to get caught by that kind of lazy [Final Attack].

"Chirp."

I look over and grin as a streak of crimson light leaves a pair of monsters scrambling to stuff entrails back inside them. They don't get a chance to get much back in before a [Tail Swat] slams them into the ground. They don't get back up.

"Exactly! What kind of adventurers would turn down something as awesome as that?"

My grin widens as I slip and slide and dance between clawed hands and feet. My sword flickers and flashes and slashes, and the group of monsters that were trying to surround me fall apart and splat to the ground as piles of legs and arms and torsos… and one head.

"Plus, when we come back with the crown, burnt-custard will throw us a parade and write songs and plays about us, and everyone will know about the Little Calamities-"

I stop speaking so I can stick my sword into the peacock-fan of fire that washes over my head and sears into another group of monsters that were part of the monster horde trying to overwhelm us. I hold up my now flaming sword and grin even more at the shambling horde of monsters in front of me.

"Thanks, El!"

"We are not calling ourselves that!"

"Chirp!"

I set myself into the gap that the horde of monsters was trying to shamble through. A step behind me to my left, furry-Markus steps into a shadow. A moment later, even his silhouette disappears. To my right, a wall of [Sticky Flame] sprouts up from the stone floor, just like one of Mal's plant-experiments.

"Yes, we are. I vote yes, so that means it's three votes to two."

"You don't get three votes, Ciel."

The front row of not-food monsters charge. My shield lowers. [Superior Strength] anchors my feet to the ground. I roar. They don't flee. My grin widens until my face would split in two if I weren't in my smaller form.

"I do too. The team leader gets triple. Everyone knows that."

"That's just with food because you're a pig. Not with everything else."

When the first row of monsters gets to just within range, I push forward off my back foot and spring forward. The edge of my shield digs into a monster's throat, crushing through cartilage with a nice, juicy crunch. As I spin free—I couldn't roll between their legs because, for whatever reason, all the not-food monsters we'd found were dwarf height rather than human height—my sword deflects a clawed hand and sends a handful of fingers raining down around me. Fingerless-monster growls at me, but his face and chest are no match for my [Shield Smash], and once again, I dance away from the spray of blood and gore.

"Then the one of us who beats up the most not-food monsters gets to name us. At least as long as it's not something lame or boring like Flight of Dragons or Creeping Death."

"No, Ciel. We're not doing that. I refuse"

"But you have to. It's important to do team activities togeth-"

I duck under a flailing claw and then bash into the overextended arm with the edge of my shield hard enough that I hear something crack. I step past the first monster, pausing just enough to kick him in the leg hard enough for something else to crack, and swing my sword into the space cleared out as he falls to the ground with a kind of twitchy, screamy motion.

Flickers of crimson light appear in the space between the horde of monsters pressing in around me from all sides. With each flash, a monster falls to the ground, clutching at their throats or stomachs as blood and guts and other things spill free.

I grin and lift my shield to boop another monster in the chest. Markus was getting really good with that skill, even if he kept being all sneaky-sneak by not telling El and me what it was called. The force of my [Shield Smash] sends him flying back until he lands on a pair of monsters. Together, the trio flail and fall into El's spell.

"Those count for me, El. Not your [Sticky Fire]."

"It's- where do you get these names? It's a [Firewall], not… whatever you said. And I said we weren't competing."

I boop another monster, bringing my count to twelve. Markus's crimson-fang-skill cuts through a throat and continues on to sever the spine of the monster next to him, which gives him eight—El's stuck in last, with six.

"That's only because you're losing."

"Losing? I'll show you losing, you brat."


"Thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three."

I kick a charred torso that's sitting on top of something, only to see another charred body beneath it. I open my mouth to count thirty-four, only to pause as I see a smear of burnt oiliness and ash. A frown forms in my chest. I'd lost. El had thirty-five. I had twenty. Markus had eighteen. Now, we'd never be the Little Calamities. El was going to name us something even more boring than her boring-books and no one would ever learn how awesome a team we really were, and I'd never get to-

My genius mind pokes me. I grin.

"Since El didn't want to compete, it doesn't matter that she won with thirty-five, and that means I won, and we're definitely the Little Calamities now."

"Ciel?"

"Yes?"

"Shut up and loot the bodies."

"Ok."

I shuffle away from the burnt monster corpses—El's flames were hot enough now that there wouldn't be any good loot left un-burned in them—and over to a pile of limbs and entrails where Markus and I had charged in to take out their last stand.

"Chirp?"

'I'm not supposed to talk,' I mouth to Markus even as I pick up one of the dismembered arms and tilt it so he can get a better look at the ring on its finger.

"Chirp."

Markus responds with a shake of his head, and I drop the arm. I kick what may have been a stomach. It lands a few feet away with a gross squelch—crunchy is so much better than squishy. Then I roll over what was probably the most intact torso yet. It didn't have any sword marks or crimson-fang marks or any burns. In fact, if it weren't for the missing head and one of the legs, it would have looked just like it was sleeping.

"Chirp."

I blink and look closer at a small leather bag tied underneath the torso's left arm. Wow! Leather bags mean treasure! I grin at my favorite—in a two-way tie for first—teammate and raise my fist out just like burnt-custard had taught me last time we went back to visit her. Well, I went back and visited while El went to someplace called a spa for a massage with rocks which sounded a lot more fun for my larger form than my smaller one and-

Markus knocks his paw against my outstretched fist, and his grin matches mine.

I lean down and snatch up the leather bag, ignoring the straps as they snap against my [Superior Strength]. Then I tear open the bag with the same ferocity I tear open my [Calamity]-day presents. Unfortunately, instead of a pile of gems and coins and tiny little magic artifacts, there's only a piece of crumbled-up paper that, when I uncrumble it, kind of looks like…

[] "Hey, El. Doesn't this look like a book to you?" [Ciel finds a map leading to a library.]

[] "Those are fish… the not-juicy kinds?" [Ciel finds a map that leads to a flooded ruin.]

[] "The squiggly lines have to mean a maze, right?" [Ciel finds a map to a forgotten maze.]


"This is one of my favorite parts. It's where [Hero] learns her sec-"

I cut off. I didn't want to spoil the surprise. Then, leaning to the side so that El and Markus can get a better look, I point at the full-page picture. [Hero] and Cat are on one side, [Hero's] fiery sword burning like a brand of [Balefire] as she faces off against the [Witch-King]. El makes a grumbly noise, but her shoulder leans into me so she can get a better look.

"See, she's got her [Fiery Sword] and Cat's- oh, hey, Markus, her claws look like your [Crimson Fangs]."

At that, Markus picks his head from where it had been resting on my thigh and sprawls out over my lap until he's almost nose to book.

"Chirp?"

"Well…" El muses as she leans closer. "If our team leader wants to be a [Hero] with a flaming sword, I don't think there's anything wrong with a little plagiarism."

"Yeah!" My head bobbles back and forth in agreement. "Plus, Cat's a girl and a cat, and you're a boy and a squirrel, so it's not the same at all."

"And Ciel's a glutton, not a [Knight]." My lips twist up in a pout—that was another thing I'd learned in these nightly training sessions. "There isn't a fire [Mage] that shows up, either, is there?"

"Nope. Then it'd be [Hero] and Cat and [Burny-Mage], and that wouldn't be as cool a title." I grin as El boops the top of my head. "But that's why we aren't copying them. Plus, even though they're [Hero] and Cat, we're way cooler than them."

"I guess I can't argue with that."

"Chirp."

"Right, so," I pause to flip to the next page, a page that has a bunch of text and a closeup of [Hero's] face. "The [Witch-King] starts monologuing about her plan to poison a bunch of farmer's crops and make everyone sick and [Hero] makes this squinty face and- hey, it looks just like yours does, El, in the morning before you have your nasty-drink."

"That's called a glare, Ciel," El ruffles my hair with her hand before dropping it to the picture. She traces across the squinty look with a finger, "See how her eyes are narrowed, and her brow is furrowed?"

I watch as she taps out the squinty-eyes and moves on to the frowny bit, and nod.

"A slight narrowing of the eyes could indicate annoyance… say, perhaps at a certain little pig who makes too much noise in the morning. But this much means she's angry. Furious at the [Witch-King]."

I look at [Hero's] squinty- no. Her glare. My impeccable memory flickers through dozens of faces that had looked like that. Former [Overlords] right before I left them because they were boring. The [Knights] who'd found me back when I'd first hatched. Our [Guildmaster] the last time I'd rampaged around Reitzland. Had she been mad at me? I wonder why?

"Why's she angry, though? She's got a really cool teammate and a fiery sword and she's about to beat up the [Overlord] for book two."

El opens her mouth to respond, but Markus chirps first.

"Really?" I turn to look at him, and he nods. Then I look up at El, and she nods, too. "But poison just makes things nice and tangy."

"Maybe for someone who likes crunchy cow bones," El pokes me in the stomach, but her attack doesn't even dent my [Thick Skin]. "But it will hurt or kill the rest of us."

"But…" My mouth opens and closes a few times as my genius mind whirrs quietly. Eventually, it pokes me, and a frown forms in my chest. "So [Hero's] not happy that she gets to fight the evil [Witch-King] even though the fight looks like so much fun?"

El looks down at the book and then back up at me. Then she ruffles my hair again and grins, "I think she's still having a lot of fun; she just knows how important it is that she doesn't lose."

"Yeah!" I have to shout quietly because sound travels really far underground and the last time I did, some weird bug-monsters tunneled out and ambushed us. "[Heroes] never lose!"

[AN]
I was in an odd mood when I wrote this. I'm not sure if it's good... it definitely feels different, but I can't articulate why.

I look down at my map and let my eyes trace along a long straight bit near one corner of it. Then I look up at the Deep Road in front of me and let my secret-[Calamity] senses pierce into the dark and gloom. Hmm…

I look back down and trace where the straight line connects to a rounded bit and then curves off in a different direction. Then I look far into the distance of the Deep Road, where I can almost see the beginning of a huge cave-cavern thing. Hmm…

I look back down at my map one last time so that I can trace the path all the way from the corner we're at to the ancient library with books at the other end. Hmm…

We could get there in a day. Maybe two if we had to go really slow because El doesn't like getting ambushed by the weird cloak-monsters that like to drop down from the cave ceilings and try and engulf us and she makes Markus scout out every branching pathway to make sure nothing's hiding down there and-

My genius mind pokes me and I grin. Two days and we'd be in front of an underground library built by an ancient dwarven empire. I bet they have all kinds of [Hero] books. Probably even a bunch I haven't read before!

I wiggle back and forth in front of the banked coals of our campfire and my grin widens. Excitement bubbles up inside me like a pot of oil right before you throw in a bunch of dumplings and everything gets spatter-y and flakey and fried.

"Let's go find that Library!"

My shout echoes against the walls of the Deep Road and a moment later, my teammates scramble out of their blankets.
El looks at me, her scowling face—that was another facial expression I'd learned, one that meant my teammate was grumpy because she hadn't had her third cup of nasty-drink yet—perfectly visible in the near complete darkness thanks to my secret-[Calamity] senses and whisper-shouts.

"Ciel, shut the-"

"Chirp."

"No, I don't have to watch my language."

"Chirp."

"Well, you can shut the-"

"Chirp."

"Hey, since you're both up, let's go find that library. I already deciphered the map and everything."

I cut into my teammates' banter with a grin. Furry-Markus looks at me and rolls his eyes, but then he shrugs his furry-shoulders and scampers over to me so he can look at the map better. El glares at me, even though I certainly haven't done anything to deserve it, but eventually, she sighs and joins us. Was she annoyed that I'd solved the map-riddle before she had? I make a note for my infallible memory to tell her that I wasn't trying to take her place as the planner, but I could do that later. For now, we have a library to find!

"See, we're here," I drag my finger along the long-straight line that I'd identified. "If we go up, through this circly thing and then over through these squiggly lines and then all the way down this jagged-line we will be…"

I pause so I can poke a picture of a castle that has a mouth with a bunch of teeth ringing around it and two towers poking up out of the top of its head. "Here."

"Ciel?" El drawls out my name in that way she did when she was going to ask a really obvious question.

"Yes?"

"Are you sure that's a library?"

"Yeah," my head bobbles back and forth as I nod. "Look. There's the huge book set in the mouth of the library and then there's a bunch of smaller books covering the sides of it. What else could it be?"

"And what about all the flames surrounding it?"

I look at the wavy, flickering, lines radiating out from the mouth of the library and then back at El. Did she really think that was fire? Oh no! Had she been underground so long that she'd forgotten what shiny bits on a map meant? Not that the wavy lines were really shiny, but that was only because it had been drawn by some not-food monsters instead of an ancient race of snake-people that had mysteriously vanished from this world behind and left all their treasures and books behind and-

My genius mind pokes me. Right. I can't think about ancient-jungle-dungeons now, I have a teammate to educate. "That's not fire. Those are the shiny bits that mapmakers put in their maps to let you know where all the treasure is."

"Why would…" El trails off, unable to refute the genius-ness of my argument. "In that case, shouldn't we go here first?"

She reaches over my shoulder and points at a different part of the map. This one has a drawbridge and a fire-lake with a square building in the middle. I study the square-castle for a moment and then look up at my teammate. My grin widens. Wow! I hadn't even noticed it. No wonder she's the planner.

"Yeah! You're right! We have to make sure we explore every part of a map so we can beat up all the monsters and get all the treasure."


I lift up my shield to deflect a bit of flaming-spider-meat as far away from me as possible. Spider meat is gross and I didn't think cooking it would make it any better. The spider it came from squeaks and then collapses to the ground. Its legs twitch a couple of times before it falls still.

Stepping forward through a flaming curtain of spiderwebs I spin my sword in a fancy, wavy pattern, blocking spider legs and poking out spider eyes. A flash of crimson sparks above me. I look up to see Markus slap a clutch of spider eggs with his tail before he drops from the ceiling trailing crimson as he cuts a guard-spider in half.

*SQUEAK*

A huge spider lumbers out of the flaming-spiderweb-covered-darkness, crushing smaller spiders beneath its massive legs. Venom drips from its fangs to the cavern floor, where it spits and sizzles as it eats into the stone. Faceted eyes fall on me first—which was only right, I was, after all, the tank—and narrow in rage.

Magic rustles against my shirt, and if I were made of flesh and blood rather than crafted from pure Wyrd, I probably would have turned to stone. Instead, a grin spreads across my face as I turn to my teammate strategically hiding behind a boulder near the entrance to the spider cave.

"Great job, El! I think all the fire finally lured out the boss-spider!"

"Chirp!"

"Oh, well, maybe it did get mad because of all the smashed-"

"DieDieDieDieDieDieDie!!!"

A wall of flame rushes past me and slams into the boss-spider. In an instant, the boss-spider goes from stomping about menacingly to spinning around, frantically trying to put out the fire burning its hairy back.

"DieDieDieDieDieDieDie!!!"

The second wall of flame is even bigger than the first and it turns the spider-boss from an uncoordinated, flailing mess to a pile of twitching, braised spider meat. I take a step closer, just to check, only to shake my head in disgust. It seems boss-spider meat is just as disgusting as regular spider meat, even when it's cooked.


I lift my shield as a wave of fur and claws boils out from thousands of little tiny tunnels carved into the sides of the main tunnel.

"Chirp!"

"But what if there's a boss-rat to fight?"

"Chirp!"

"Why not? It could be a super-smart-boss-rat that's learned how to communicate telepathically and can mind-control other rats with its super-strong psionic powers that it got-"

"Chirp!"

"What's a hive mind?"

"Chir-"

"Ciel! Stop chatting and fucking run!"

"Ok!"


Finally, after days of wandering around and killing giant-spiders and running away from telepathic-rat-swarms, we're here. Not at the library with teeth and wavy lines in the middle of my map, but at the square building El said we should visit first—which was totally a great idea, because watching El explode giant-spiders was almost as much fun as bopping them with my shield. Even better than the spiders and the rats and the not-food monsters, though, is that the square building is surrounded by a lake of mountain blood.

I look across the mountain blood over to the square building poking up from a cloud of smoke and ash so far that it almost scrapes against the ceiling of the cavern. Why would the dwarves would build a building in the middle of a lake of liquid fire? Unless…

"Hey El?" I turn to look at my absolute favoritest teammate of all time.

"No."

"But…" I trail off as I wait for my genius mind to come up with the perfect counter, "there could be treasure inside."

"Well, in that case." El pauses and my grin widens. I knew that would be the right argument. "No."

"Boo."

Before my grin can fade into a frown, Markus hops into the conversation, "Chirp."

"Yay." I knew Markus was my absolute favoritest teammate of all time.

"Ugh. You're both idiots."

I wasn't an idiot. I was a secret-[Calamity], a soon-to-be-[Hero], and a genius. And since I was a genius, and I was getting special training on recognizing all the kinds of faces that people make, I knew that El's frowny face was actually her way of saying, 'I agree, exploring a building in the middle of a lake of mountain blood does sound like a lot of fun, but I have to be boring and responsible for some reason.'

"In that case, let's:


[] Be a smart [Hero] and let El cast an [Anti-Fire] spell and then run across the mountain blood really quick.

[] Be a sneaky [Hero] and follow Markus as he scampers across the ceiling of the fire cave.

[AN]
I don't know how many of y'all have to deal with end of fiscal year nonsense, but guess who got a bunch of bs dropped on their desk last Monday. I hope I'll have more time to write soon.