Darlac clutched her sword in a two-handed grip, forcing her limp right hand, slippery with blood, to do its job. It might have been a mistake to rip that arrow out of her upper arm just so. Sweat was trickling down her temples, stinging her eyes. The protective potions she'd consumed had mostly expired, worn down by Marquise Insomnia's constant attacks of elemental magic. Now she faced the last of the will-o'-wisp's multiplied forms floating towards her and preparing for another sonic attack. Not that it could make her tinnitus any worse, short of exploding her head right away...

  In fact, an exploding head would make a great punchline for the tedious, grisly joke this dungeon run was.

  Darlac pretended to struggle even more than she actually did, panting, clenching her teeth against pain, burns, despair, and whatever else was trying to destroy her, waiting for the monster to start another gloating spree and get immersed in her own voice. This was the right moment. She swung the sword, slanted, from the bottom up, and incredibly, she hit true. The floating skull's lower jaw dropped to the ground in two uneven halves, followed by pieces of the cranium.

  Darlac fell on one knee in exhaustion. As she looked over the battlefield, she saw Dusty shamble towards her, leaving a trail of blood in his wake. The last survivor. The only one she could save. Not Shakoth, mauled to death by her own confused pet, and not Misha, turned by some spell into a dog once again and disposed of accordingly. And now to return home, failed in her victory, look into the baron's eyes and face the unsettling mixture of relief and disappointment he would receive her with.

  Home... But how?

  Dusty finally reached her. However, instead of helping her up or even asking if she was all right, he let out the juiciest curse Darlac had ever heard in all her mercenary years, and took position in front of her with his shield up.

  Then she saw it, too. Opposite Dusty, there was an open portal, showing the image of a keep on the bank of a river, eerily silent. Varnhold Town. At a little distance from the portal, a larger-than-life figure loomed, armed with bow and arrows, his head, made of pure darkness, covered by a horned helmet. A small lantern stood at his feet, emitting soft light in all the colours of the rainbow.

  Pushing through her exhaustion, Darlac got to her feet and stepped up to Dusty's left side behind the shield. The grip of her left hand tightened around the hilt of her sword. So it wasn't over yet. There was always another boss. She looked at the portal, then at Dusty.

  "What do we do?" he mouthed. "We can't fight that thing!"

  He was right. Both of them were wounded, tormented, exhausted, out of spells and buffs, unable even to heal, and that thing seemed strangely powerful and inscrutable.

  The figure spoke in a booming, sneering voice, explaining how he had been pulling the strings all along, how he'd made it possible for Willas Gunderson to steal a piece of jewelry from some crypt and wake the dormant evil inside. Darlac couldn't really keep up with the one-sided conversation, as if some tinkling, metallic wool had been stuffed into her ears, absorbing most of the words before reaching her mind. She stared into the portal, mesmerised. Her brain stated it was just another illusion, with little to no chance for it to be real. Her heart urged her to grab that little chance to see her home and her love again. Her gut said, real or not, it was the only way out of this hellhole. Her honour commanded her to stand back and offer that meagre chance of escape to the last man who counted on her.

  "Are you paying attention at all?" boomed the voice, now louder, and an invisible hand squeezed Darlac's wounded arm. The stab of pain startled her back to the present.

  "As I was just saying, Felicia Darlac, you have passed my test with flying colours. You are a true hero, a stalwart protector of your land, deserving to be blessed. I am ready to bestow upon you the power to defend Varnhold from its enemies. You have but to ask."

  A true hero, indeed. The ruthless power toying with her didn't exactly make her feel like one. Was that another twisted fey joke?

  Shakoth's words were whirling in Darlac's mind – their last conversation before crossing into the First World to fight the Marquise, whose remains were now slowly disappearing, probably on their way to respawn. Do not bargain with the fey. You aren't shrewd enough to keep up with their way of thinking. Do not accept anything from them, or you'll find yourself bound to an agreement you were unaware of making. Even without that, Darlac refused to ask this monster for anything. He put her in mind of those old creeps her mother had always warned her about, the type that preyed on children by proffering candy. The bait he was dangling in front of her was exactly what she wanted most, and that was enough to get her thinking.

  The pain abated. The Horned Hunter kindly left her alone for a moment to make her decision. Darlac caught her breath, shuddering, then gently jabbed Dusty to get his attention.

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  "I'll distract him," she mouthed. "Run for the portal. I'll follow."

  It was a lie, or wishful thinking at best, but Dusty seemed to buy it – or at least, thankfully, he was in no mood to play the hero. He nodded in agreement and accepted her sacrifice without arguing back. For a moment, Darlac felt at peace. If she could save but one of her soldiers, her friends, she was happy to lay down her life.

  Keep me in your heart, Maegar.

  Darlac turned towards her foe and stepped forward from behind the shield, clutching her sword desperately in a trembling hand.

  "I do not want anything from you, monster!" she shouted. "Except maybe your blood!"

  She sent a sliver of a prayer to her goddess, regardless if it would be delivered or not, and charged.

  In the very last moment, right before her sword connected, she realised her mistake. Too late. The monster vanished, and in his place, a portal sprang up from the abandoned lantern. Darlac, carried by her momentum, passed through it. As she skidded to a halt on the other side, she lost her balance and hit the ground. Rising to her feet, she turned back in an effort to get to Dusty, who never reached the Varnhold portal. It wasn't even there anymore.

  A force field pushed Darlac backwards, as she fought to reach the closing portal. She struggled against the current, trying to power through to the shrinking hole in the air. On the other side, a group of fey materialised around Dusty, some of them blowing strange horns, others aiming their bows at him or rushing at him with scimitars. He held his ground for a while, but soon he was overwhelmed.

  Darlac refused to give up hope. It wasn't too late yet. She could still grab him and pull him through to this side. Just a few more steps... as if she were thrashing in molasses up to her waist, without making any progress.

  The fey hunters scattered, leaving a motionless body on the ground, and the portal puffed out of existence. The invisible molasses dispersed, letting Darlac go, now that it didn't matter anymore.

  Hero, my ass. I watched them die, one by one, to the last man.

  She fell on her knees, shaking, not even sparing a glance for the landscape of lush hills and meadows all around, covered in strange-coloured, iridescent vegetation. In her helpless rage, she stabbed her sword into the ground, into the very soil of the First World she was trapped in, hoping that it hurt.

  "Curse you, Horned Hunter, and all your playmates!" she cried. "One day you will cross someone stronger than yourself. When they hang you by the blackness inside your helmet, remember the innocents you've tormented just for the laughs!"

  She collapsed as the aftermath of the boss fight caught up with her. Her heartbeats were out of rhythm due to the electric shocks that bypassed her protective potion, her skin was blistered in patches, her ears ringing, her stomach nauseated. And there was the wound. It was a long time since she'd last had to go without magical healing, and she was frightened to realise how dependent she'd grown on it. Now she had to figure out how to manage without that.

  Using her just-in-case dagger, she ripped off the right sleeve of her shirt. Part of it was stuck in her drying blood, now making the bleeding worse. She cut another slice from the bottom of her shirt, and used the fabric as a makeshift bandage to stop or at least slow down the flow, and fashioned a makeshift sling out of the sleeve's remains. It was not the most hygienical bandage she'd ever created, but it was still something. If she could make it through the night and also get some sleep, she would replenish her positive energy and... no, that was a thing of the past. Darlac crawled under the leaves of some giant herbaceous plant, flushing a five-winged butterfly from its resting place, curled up, and let her eyes close.

  After some time spent in shallow, fitful sleep, periodically interrupted by discomfort, grief, shame, pain, thirst, sobs, whatever, the final disruption came.

  The earth itself moved beneath her.

  Darlac frantically felt for her sword, bow and quiver, scooped them all up into her arms, and scrambled to get away from the area. Just in time. A giant turtle-like creature rose from the ground where she had been sleeping. It stretched its limbs, all seven of them, yawned with a toothless maw, and walked away, leaving behind a crater. It took the big plant along on its shell.

  Darlac stared incredulously after the departing beast, not even realising how poorly she felt until her knees buckled underneath her and her teeth started chattering. She couldn't even tell if she felt hot or cold or both at the same time, and not because temperature worked differently in the First World. Her arm was throbbing, red and swollen around the dirty bandages.

  She instinctively tapped into her holy energy reserves, and found them empty. What else had she expected? With uncertain fingers, she removed the bandages that were trying to kill her, and checked on the wound. It looked and smelled bad. Had that arrow been imbued with something necrotic, or was it her own poorly executed first aid intervention? Either way, her time was running out, and so were her options. True hero or not, she probably wouldn't be able to amputate her own arm. Which left her with one course of action: find a safe shelter to hole up in and let her body sort this out on its own... or just die, alone, abandoned, in agony, as she deserved.