Ayn closed out of her character screen with a sigh. “I got Lockpick, but not any way to disarm traps.”

  She and her party sat around the kitchen table at her house, a more and more common occurrence. Ayn continued to pet Miit, the cause of their change of scenery, and he purred in her lap in response, one bat-like wing dangling lazily over her legs.

  “I got Trapper,” Kayara said. “I can put down and disarm traps. Oh, and I’m no longer a Ranger. Now, I’m a Stalker. Pretty sweet, huh?”

  Stalker sounded a lot more rogue-ish than Ranger, which fit considering all the thief training they’d been doing with Miit, not to mention the all black, cloth ensemble Tav had made for Kayara. Ayn still wasn’t used to seeing so little color on Kayara, but with her shock of rainbow hair, still tied up in a ponytail, Ayn could still pick her out of a crowd.

  Bren snorted. “Depends on the context.”

  Kayara’s expression soured. “Oh? And what did you get, Choir Boy? Banshee?”

  “Bard.”

  “Eh. Same difference.”

  “Can a banshee cast multiple fireballs or impale mobs with stone?”

  “Depends on the context.”

  Bren had got an overhaul, too, and now sported pure white cloth clothes and a hoodless robe. Next to Sheyric’s all gray, hooded ensemble, her three party members looked rather washed out. She supposed it was to be expected. Tav was making them functional gear, not fancy, and Ayn appreciated it immensely.

  Ayn’s gear had changed the least, due more to the staying power of her rare chest armor than anything else. Its sleek black, form-fitting and belt-wrapped design clashed a bit with the brown leather scale pants and boots she wore, but its stat increases were still preferable to what Tav could make.

  A mew from Miit put an end to Bren and Kayara’s jabs. The cry had been one of complaint, no doubt from Ayn’s slowed petting, yet there was an undeniable weakness to it. In the couple of months since he’d been injured, he’d healed well enough. He’d regained his ability to fly, and nothing more than a thick scar across his shoulder remained. Yet whether because of the energy it took to heal, or coincidence, he’d weakened at a faster pace than before. A few weeks ago, he’d lost the ability to teleport, forcing them to scramble to fill the thief’s role. To Ayn’s surprise, it was Kayara who’d suggested the two of them learn from Miit. What had followed was a whirlwind of creating and getting rid of flimsy traps and locks in every second of their time, hoping The System would note their efforts and give one of them rogue Dungeon skills. Ayn hadn’t expected it to split them between her and Kayara, though.

  Sheyric scooted his chair closer to Ayn and scratched behind Miit’s ears. Kayara’s wolverine rumbled from under the table, although Ayn couldn’t say if it was relief that the healer wasn’t messing with it anymore, or jealousy.

  “What class did you get?” Ayn asked, seeking a distraction from the prickling in her eyes.

  Every ten levels, The System shifted their class and gave them a bonus skill or ability. While the change wasn’t necessarily more powerful, it helped keep their Rebirth characters in-line with their playstyle.

  “Revitalist,” Sheyric said.

  “How’s that different from a standard healer?” Kayara asked.

  “Regen.”

  Sheyric flipped his character screen open where Ayn could see. She dutifully read the new skill out loud.

  “Regen Aura. Health of allies increases by ten per second while they’re within twenty feet of the caster.” She skipped the mana cost, and the equation associated with it. Without knowing Sheyric’s actual stats, it meant little to her. “Hmmm. It’s a channeled spell. Can’t cast while channeling.”

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  Sheyric’s hood bobbed up and down in agreement as the character screen vanished.

  “Twenty feet?” Bren asked. “Seems a bit close.”

  “Most channeled spells are fairly close range,” Ayn said. “Just means Kayara and I will have to come to him to regen.”

  Miit practically melted in Ayn’s lap. A spike of anxiety shot through Ayn, then dissipated as his chest rose and fell. He’d merely fallen asleep.

  “Any new quests?” Ayn asked.

  As Kayara and Bren had promised, their sources had provided a handful of basic requests over the last couple of months. It was never anything terribly exciting, but it gave them the funds to keep Crawling while they didn’t have safe access to treasure chests. Now that they had basic rogue skills, things were looking up, but they were still behind on equipment and items.

  Kayara shook her head. She’d been tightlipped about how she’d procured her batch of quests, although since the rewards had outstripped the fetch quests Bren’s family had sent their way, Ayn hadn’t pressed very hard.

  “No,” Bren said. “The other families seem to have caught wind of it, as well. While I’m sure my family has covered the trail well, they can’t risk giving us more for a bit. But we don’t require it.”

  Kayara raised an eyebrow. “Maybe not right this second, Choir Boy, but if we get too lazy about finding more, we’ll end up where we started, at the mercy of The System.”

  Bren scowled. “We’re already at the mercy of The System. You were the one to open my eyes to that.”

  “That’s not what I mean, and you know it.”

  “Regardless, we are well supplied and well equipped. We should take on the next floor.”

  Kayara frowned and glanced Ayn’s way.

  Ayn understood what she was thinking. After the horrors of the Abyss, Bren had backed off of his driving need to catch up with Arlen, and it had allowed their party to regain their footing. His patience was clearly running thin, though. He’d pushed for smaller breaks between floors seven and eight, and eight and nine. They’d only cleared nine two days ago, but Arlen had pushed on to floor thirteen the day before.

  “That’s fine,” Ayn said.

  Kayara sighed, but didn’t argue.

  Ayn hadn’t gone against Bren’s wishes once yet, and since they were well prepared, she didn’t see a reason to this time, either.

  *****

  Desert. Blinding, hot, expansive desert. Fortunately, The System seemed disinclined to kill them by heat alone, although that didn’t change the fact that sweat dripped down every part of Ayn’s skin, or that sand stuck to every crevice of her armor. She looked longingly at the magic users’ attire. Bren’s white garb and Sheyric’s hood looked a lot better now. Even Kayara’s black, leather studded cloth allowed more airflow, and had a hood and face mask she wore inside the Dungeon. She had her face tightly wrapped at the moment, blocking the sun in ways Ayn’s agility boosting hair ribbon could not.

  Kayara’s wolverine trotted in front of them all. It snuffled, not a care in the world despite its thick fur. Ayn wanted to know its secret.

  Other than a handful of quickly dispatched sandfish, because what desert biome was complete without sandfish, the burning expanse had offered no fights or clues as to what they were supposed to do. Their auto-generated quests, one of which they completed on the sandfish, spoke of at least two other mobs, but where were they?

  The wolverine barked and jerked right. Everyone dutifully followed, pivoting in the loose sand to face more expanse, the horizon blurred by the heat. What looked like buildings rose in the distance. Probably just a mirage. Not too far back, Kayara had run after some palm trees, only for them to always stay on the horizon. Bren had just stopped teasing her about it.

  “Is that… for real?” Kayara asked.

  The wolverine sped up. That seemed enough for Kayara, who jogged past her animal companion, her prior humiliation forgotten.

  Bren hung back and watched the blurry shape warily. “Could be a trap.”

  He glanced sidelong at Ayn, no doubt waiting for her to be her normal reckless self and rush off to find out. She obliged, but for different reasons than usual. As Bren’s patience slipped away, Kayara’s seemed to as well. Her normal scheming and love of sharing her mind had dropped off within the last month. Outside of their lessons with Miit, she’d barely talked.

  As Ayn closed in on the shapes, the heat haze cleared enough for her to see what hid behind it. A ship. She frowned at the oddity, still not sure it wasn’t a trick of the desert. For one, it was massive. She didn’t know how they hadn’t seen it from much farther away, haze or no haze.

  The ship had been snapped in half. The stern stuck straight out of the sand, rudder aimed at the sky, while the bow had its front edge wedged in the ground, showing off the splintered guts within. Sand worn masts stuck out of both halves, and encrusted, yet impressively intact netting hung between the poles like giant cobwebs collecting dust. It looked as if it could have housed a hundred people with ease, had it been whole.

  Kayara stood in front of the gaping maw of the bow. Her wolverine picked the opposite direction and trotted over to the half-buried stern. She stayed silent as Ayn stopped beside her, making Ayn wonder once more if, and how, she’d offended the newly minted stalker. But all of her previous efforts to find out only seemed to drive Kayara farther away, so Ayn busied herself by staring into the ship’s innards, trying to pick out what had caught Kayara’s attention.

  Other than the splintered wood and twisted metal at the break itself, the inside of the ship’s front end looked remarkably intact. Wooden floors divided the ship into layers. The bottom was the most open, with barrels and crates scattered around. On the next layer were cannons of various sizes, and above that, what looked like the remnants of halls and rooms.

  “No traps, then?” Bren asked as he caught up.

  “Not yet,” Ayn said. With her head craned back, the sun shone almost directly in her eyes, and its heat seemed to increase tenfold. Crawling into the ship’s shaded guts didn’t sound so bad.

  The wolverine snarled, tearing Ayn’s attention away from the oppressive heat. As soon as she turned, her skin seemed to cool.

  The wolverine stood in front of a hatch on the side of the stern. All of its bristles stood on end, creating a brown and black mohawk down its back. The hatch started to open.

  Ayn was at the wolverine’s side in an instant. Kayara matched her stride for stride.

  A man’s voice came from around the half-opened hatch, his words sharp. “Don’t attack. I’m unarmed!”

  Neither she nor Kayara lowered their weapons. It would hardly be the first time an NRC lied about their intentions.

  The wolverine snarled louder.

  “All right, look. I’m coming out. Please, just hold your violence a minute and you will see I mean you no harm.”

  True to his word, the hatch opened all the way and out came a man who looked like he’d crawled out of the Colonial Era. With a tan pith helmet, khaki clothes with more pockets than Ayn had ever seen, black boots and a stiff handlebar mustache, Ayn was suddenly transported to a time she hardly remembered, where a television showed a bumbling archaeologist in a jungle.

  He held up black-gloved hands in a gesture of peace. “See? No weapons.”

  “Weapons aren’t the only way to attack,” Kayara said.

  “Yes. True. How do you suggest I show you I mean no harm, then?”

  Kayara lunged. In a flash, the curved blades of her daggers pressed against the man’s throat.

  He blanched paler than the sand.

  Kayara stepped back and shrugged. “Good enough.”

  The man’s hands flew to his throat, patting as he checked for injury. “I bloody well hope so. I dare say I’d hoped actual people would be kinder than the beasts in this godforsaken place, but now I see how misguided I was.”

  Ayn sighed and lowered her sabers. “I think we’re all just a bit irritated from the heat.”

  A lie, as Ayn knew Kayara’s agitation ran far deeper, but good enough for the NRC. The man nodded, his handlebar mustache waving with the movement, and motioned toward the open hatch. “I can surely understand that, my girl. That’s why I was hiding in there in the first place. Well, that and the incredible display of ancient, sea-faring artifacts and architecture. There’s an honest to God double cannon in there, and I found a doubloon in a barrel just the other day. There’s also plenty of room in there for all of—”

  “No thanks,” Kayara said.

  Ayn nodded in agreement. She was sure none of them were in the mood to be in close quarters with a strange NRC. Bren and Sheyric still stood a healthy distance off, and not even Bren’s heavily ingrained sense of etiquette drew him closer.

  “If you need something from us,” Ayn said. “Just tell us here. If not, we’ll be on our way.”

  The man looked crestfallen, and for a moment, Ayn believed he’d actually wanted to tell them stories about what he’d found. Then the expression vanished, replaced with an overly friendly grin. “All business and no play. Very well. I could use some explorers of your particular talents. John’s the name. I’m an archaeologist. Came out here to document the wonders of this beautiful lady of a bygone era, only to get completely and utterly stranded.”

  “How’d you get out here, anyway?” Ayn asked.

  “Oh, by camel.”

  “And where is the camel now?”

  “An elder sandworm swallowed it on my last attempt to get out of the desert. Quite horrible, really. I mean, we were already going around in circles, beginning and ending right here no matter which way we went, but then, as if to add insult to injury, the very sand underneath us shifts, and sucks us in like bloody noodles. Barely escaped with my life.”

  “The sandworm didn’t come back to eat you, too?”

  “I was sure it would, yet it ate my camel and left. Full up, I suppose. Of course, I ran until I ended up back here. Nothing ever gets close to this old girl. I wonder what the story behind that is…”

  John stroked his chin as he looked off into the distance. Ayn had the feeling he was waiting for her to ask what he knew about the ship, but she didn’t feel like playing along.

  “So, what exactly do you need?” Ayn asked.

  “Oh, right. Hmm…. Well, I wager what’s keeping me here is some sort of protective charm, or curse, depending on how you look at it. Regardless, there’s one very important piece I haven’t found on this ship, and I believe it is the key to leaving.”

  “And what is that?”

  “The sextant, naturally. What else to lead us from this place than the very tool used to navigate the waters, yes?”

  “Sex…tant?” Ayn’s face twisted up as she tried to figure out what exactly that was supposed to look like.

  “I know what that is,” Bren called.

  Ayn barely acknowledged he spoke. Something else the archaeologist had said sprung to the fore. “What do you mean by ‘lead us out’?”

  “Well, me, and all of you, of course. It’s only a hypothesis, but I’d wager the last of my field rations that, in coming here, you are now bound by the same magic I am.”

  Having a safe base to return to, or be returned to, didn’t sound so bad to Ayn, considering the long stretch of nothing they’d walked through to get to the shipwreck. But the idea raised more questions. “If we always get teleported back here, how are we supposed to find this sextant? Wouldn’t that mean it’s here?”

  “Most assuredly not here.” John harrumphed, not unlike the character Ayn remembered. “I’ve searched the old girl up and down and came up dry. Besides, what did I tell you? I got quite a distance out before things got messy. Even struck out in different directions. The actual locations I trudged out to seemed different enough, even if they all ended similarly.”

  “So it’s like hide and seek,” Bren said. He’d moved closer while John talked, boredom clear on his face. “Except the hider might be anywhere in this ship’s radius, and considering this barren place, probably buried in sand.”

  “Well, I guess we’d better get started,” Ayn said.

  She turned toward the open desert and eyed the horizon. The sun hadn’t budged from its zenith the entire time they’d been on the floor. It didn’t surprise her. It was typical in the Dungeon for the time of day to never change, although not guaranteed. But if the sun never moved, they had no way of knowing which direction they were heading. She turned back to the archaeologist. “You have a compass?”

  “Oh, yes. Won’t do you much good, I’m afraid.”

  He produced a round, black compass from one of his many pockets. The needle spun, blurring as it went until Ayn couldn’t tell where the north end of the needle was, let alone where it pointed.

  Ayn frowned. “Right. Too easy. Umm….” She scanned the surrounding area. A clump of wooden barrels had fallen off the front end of the ship into the sand. She pointed. “Those. We’ll use those to mark what point we’ve left from the ship. We’ll place one where we leave, then keep it at our backs for as long as we can see it.”

  No one asked what they’d do once the heat haze blocked their sight. Not even Kayara.

  Kayara’s mouth was set in a grim line, and she looked as attentive as Bren, yet she refused to look Ayn’s way. Ayn pushed the problem to the back of her mind and, with her party, rolled a barrel out to their first point of departure.

  John had got comfortable outside the hatch leading to his camp and set watching them with keen interest. He waved as they set out. “Fair winds!”

  “Any wind would be amazing,” Bren grumbled.

  Ayn looked up, suddenly certain The System would punish Bren’s words with a sandstorm.