Tier Two Dungeon: The Reliquary of Bones (Floor Two)

  Objective: Defeat the Queen Tyrant

  Objective: Survive (0/1)

  Completion: 0%

  Paid Exit: Dungeon Delvers may leave this dungeon, but only by sacrificing a level.

  Open Floor: Once triggered, the dungeon’s bosses will roam freely.

  Activation Code: The dungeon’s boss will only become active once certain conditions are met.

  The roar that greeted us as we entered the Reliquary of Bones sent chills down my spine and froze me in my footsteps for a moment even after it stopped and its echoes faded. Someone screamed in agony in the distance.

  We both started sprinting. She pointed left as we ran. “Animal exhibits. Indian stuff’s on the right. That’s where Mom works. Egypt’s downstairs.” I noticed that the ‘step-mom’ was gone, but decided not to comment on it right now. “If this is the first floor, it’s already cleared of everything we care about.”

  I’d only been inside the Field Museum once, and only for an hour, but I remembered a gigantic, brontosaurus-looking skeleton in the main entryway. It wasn’t there anymore, but a winged dinosaur sat perched on the second floor’s railing on the far side of the far-too-expansive main hall.

  Sky Hunter: Level Forty-Two Monster

  It watched us for a moment, then flew off toward the ceiling overhead, where it vanished into an arch-covered hallway. As it went, I spotted a single unblocked staircase leading higher.

  “There! That’s our way up. Let’s go,” I said.

  I didn’t have to tell her twice—the blood-curdling roar coming from upstairs did that for me.

  So did the System message that followed.

  The Queen Tyrant is leaving its lair. All Dungeon Delvers in The Reliquary of Bones, prepare yourselves.

  Tori looked up, face a combination of sick and determined, and sprinted for the stairs. She was halfway up—and I was a step behind her—when she suddenly stopped. I hit her and knocked her onto the steps, but she barely seemed to notice. Her eyes were locked on a man with a knife held to Jessica’s throat.

  Mine were locked on his nameplate.

  Thomas Wright: Level Twenty-Six

  Class: Ice Sculptor

  I’d let him go. I’d assumed Eddie was the core problem in his team at the time and that Tommy had just gone along with it. I so often wanted to believe that everyone was like our neighbors back in Cozad. I’d wanted to rely on him to do the right thing. Jessica was paying for that mistake now. A bloody gash covered her face, from her nose all the way across to the base of her ear. She shook, her face drawn and eyes wet with tears.

  Tori shook, too. She was paying for my mistake almost as much as her mom was. She started casting a spell, but the knife pushed into Jessica’s throat. I tightened a hand on Tori’s shoulder, and she stopped, but I could feel the hatred—and fear—in her glare even from behind her.

  “Fucking hell,” Tommy said. He lifted his chin at me. “The Captain took a risk, and it’s not paying off.”

  “You cut my mom, you asshole!” Tori ground out between gritted teeth.

  “I did, didn’t I? Fuck. Sorry, Hal.” Tommy went quiet, but the knife didn’t move. The Queen Tyrant roared. It was getting closer. The knife jerked, and a drop of red appeared just below Jessica’s chin. Tommy didn’t notice.

  Tori did, though, and I started talking before she could do something stupid. “Tommy, put down the knife, and we’ll let you leave.”

  “I’m not a moron. The second I put it down, that bitch is going to cast a spell and rip my spine out.” Tommy looked at Tori, who glared back. “You get out of the way, let me walk out the portal, and I’ll leave Ms. Silvers just outside.”

  “Fuck yo—“ Tori started.

  “Deal,” I interrupted before Tori could do something dumb and ruin everything. Tori’s head whipped around and her glare intensified, this time locked onto me. I didn’t care. Right now, the only way out was not through. The only way out was to leave before the Queen Tyrant—

  The hall behind Tommy exploded. Marble and plaster erupted outward, and a pair of huge bronze statues flew over my head and crashed into the main hall’s floor far below. Two men burst out of the cloud of shattered glass and dust. The first wore the wreckage of a policeman’s uniform, while the other was clad in battle armor and carried a huge sword. His nameplate hung over his head, and I glanced at it for a fraction of a second.

  The Captain: Level Forty-Three

  Class: Administrator

  Level Forty-Three. Holy crap.

  Then my gaze locked on the massive empty eye socket looming over the man, and the teeth—far too many, and each the size of a pitchfork tine. The Queen Tyrant’s brown, petrified eye locked on mine.

  For a few seconds, the Reliquary of Bones was silent—an apocalypse, frozen in time. Another bronze hit the ground below, and something further down the hall crashed.

  Then the Queen Tyrant roared again, and everything went to hell.

  The Queen Tyrant: Level Fifty-Five Elite Dungeon Boss

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  Current Difficulty: Impossible

  The Queen Tyrant remembers ruling with an iron fist—a tiny one, but an iron fist nonetheless. She was the undisputed heavyweight champion of the Cretaceous. Now, she finds herself in a new world, one filled with weak and helpless prey. The Queen Tyrant remembers ruling, and when she’s finished, no one will dispute her right to rule again.

  Skeletal - This boss takes reduced damage from weapons designed to cut or pierce.

  Insatiable - This boss will feed on any viable food sources within its range.

  Dominion Aura - This boss’s lair grants it the Elite status.

  Elite - This monster moves faster and hits harder than a similarly powerful monster (thirty-four seconds remaining).

  Everything happened in about three seconds.

  Tori started casting something. Gravity Well, or maybe Crush. I couldn’t tell, because Jessica’s scream—and the impact of her body slamming into Tori—cut the spell off. They both crashed into me, and we fell down the stairs in a tangle.

  Tommy started running, taking the stairs three at a time on the way down and casting his own spell. The knife hit the ground behind him, forgotten and bloody. He swore and yelled, looking over his shoulder.

  The two men at the top of the stairs turned right instead of coming down. They angled away from us and toward the second floor’s other wing. I let them go; The Captain was a problem, but my goal was to get Jessica out.

  And the Queen Tyrant stepped forward. The balcony cracked and crumbled beneath her weight, and she roared as she fell twenty feet down to the first floor, then punched through it and down into the basement. She sank hip-deep, then stopped.

  As I pushed Tori and Jessica off me and readied the Trip-Hammer, I knew it wouldn’t be enough—nowhere near enough. The Queen Tyrant was just too strong—twelve levels and that ‘Elite’ buff. The Captain had no chance of fighting it, and neither did we.

  But I didn’t need to fight it. I just needed to get Tori, Jessica, and myself out of the dungeon alive and be ready to fight The Captain when he came out behind us. That refocused the whole conflict on him. The Queen Tyrant was a force of nature, not an enemy. At least not yet.

  I put the Trip-Hammer away and shouted, “Run!”

  Tori looked at her step-mom, then at Tommy. The man was almost to the exit already. She looked like she was about to cast a spell at him. “No! Just run! We’ll deal with him later!” I screamed, right in her face. She flinched, then started running.

  Something flashed past my head, and something wet splattered across my face.

  I grabbed Jessica and followed her as the Queen Tyrant erupted from the shattered concrete and tile floor. I lost track of The Captain and the other cop. Tommy had gotten out, probably, and Tori was well ahead, but I didn’t even have the focus to care about her right now. My only thought was keeping in front of the stomping, thudding footfalls and breaking tiles behind me.

  Jessica kept mumbling something about the Native American wing, but I couldn’t understand her. Her lips barely moved, and every bump and jerk tore at the wound across her face. Her blood-soaked shirt stained my armor all across the front.

  We were going to make it. The Queen Tyrant wasn’t fast enough—not when the whole dungeon seemed to be in her way. A few more seconds and her ‘Elite’ buff would fall off. We were going to—

  A figure in battle armor hit the floor in front of me. “You have someone who belongs to me,” The Captain said. He leveled his sword at Jessica.

  I stopped. We were thirty feet from the exit—Tori had already gone through. At any moment, she’d realize we weren’t right behind her. When she did, she’d come back to help me.

  The roaring, hunting Tyrannosaurus Rex closed in, but its forward progress had slowed as it pushed through steel beams and concrete basement walls. We had a handful of seconds. Enough time to think of something—but not much longer than that.

  I dropped Jessica to her feet and pulled the Trip-Hammer out of my inventory. “Go for the door. Tori’s waiting.”

  “But…” She wasn’t fully aware. In shock. I’d seen it before, in the shop, when someone got careless and hurt themselves badly enough to need help.

  “Go!” I shouted.

  She went. The Captain turned as if to grab her, but before he could, I fired off all three tasers, one after another. The first missed, but the second caught him in the arm, and he went down.

  Bam! A gunshot went off, and I whirled to face the cop firing his handgun my way. The Captain was a problem, but—I brought the Trip-Hammer overhead and smashed it into the shooter’s knee. It buckled, and he screamed. I whirled to finish him off, but before I could, a massive foot slammed down onto him.

  He didn’t die right away. His scream sounded like he wished he had, but the Queen Tyrant ground him to a pulp below her massive claws, so it didn’t take long.

  I dashed for the door. The Captain was down; if I could make it out, the Queen Tyrant might finish him off for me. But the boss’s bone tail slammed down between me and the fog gate before I could get through. I swung the Trip-Hammer, activating both heads at the same time.

  It felt like hitting a tank. Even without her ‘Elite’ buff, the Queen Tyrant was still too much for me.

  She bore down on me, what had to be ten tons of bone, rock, and hatred thundering through the floor on her way to me. I hit the floor and activated my Voltsmith’s Grasp. The shock did nothing; the massive leg next to me was as thick as an oak stump and made of stone. And she was thirteen levels higher than me.

  “The Voltsmith. I’ll remember you,” The Captain shouted. I rolled, and my heart dropped. He’d gotten around me—and around the boss, too. “But I’ve worked too hard to let you screw up my plans. I’m going to fix everything!”

  The Queen Tyrant roared. She flailed toward him, tiny arms reaching out with her jaw. He stepped through the fog gate—and into the throne room, where Tori and Jessica were. I needed to get to them, and I was out of time. Completely out of time.

  As the Queen Tyrant’s head snapped my way and her massive eye socket refocused on me, I sprinted straight at her. She roared again, but I kept running. The Trip-Hammer idled in my hand, but I didn’t bother swinging it. I threw myself forward onto my stomach; the impact drove air from my lungs, but I slid like a baseball player leaping toward home plate.

  Behind me, the Queen Tyrant’s tail came down. Ahead of me, The Captain waited for me. The only way forward was through him.

  Behind me, the Queen Tyrant’s tail came down. Ahead of me, The Captain waited.

  Alone.

  Just like we’d planned.

  I’d started putting the pieces together during my conversation with Tommy in The Void. The biker was a broken man by the time the dungeon’s first floor calmed down; even so, he’d willingly told me everything I needed to know. The biggest thing was that Jessica was the only Healer in Museumtown right now. The second biggest was how The Captain had leveled up so fast.

  He’d seen it happen. The man’s level had just ticked up, and he had no idea how, but I’d had a guess: the Administrator class. He was siphoning off power from everyone who pledged loyalty to him, gaining levels whenever they did anything. I wasn’t sure if it was clearing dungeons and Field Bosses, or if he got a small percent of their experience for everything. Neither was Tommy.

  That didn’t matter.

  What did matter was that he was using people for his goals. And I had people. The Captain—no, the apocalypse—was a puzzle, and people were the pieces.

  I’d been hoping to find a few more; after Calvin met with Tommy to get him on board, he was supposed to find Carol and Zane. And the whole time I’d been dungeon-crawling with Tori, I’d been hoping to run into Bobby Richards. But I’d underestimated The Captain’s willingness to pull the trigger when we disrupted his plans. He’d gone after Jessica way faster than I’d expected him to. And that had put Tommy between a rock and a hard place. Jessica, too.

  It had been worth it, though.

  In the end, Bobby and the twins hadn’t been necessary. Tommy and Jessica had been in position to whittle away at his base of support slowly, being a touch slow on one heal or helping finish off another injured fighter, and they’d proven me right; his level was dependent on his lackeys. We’d both been relying on people.

  Now, it was just him and me.

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