Kaleek took a sip from the water bottle, reaching up with one mangy arm to wipe the excess moisture from his face as he passed it to Kat. She nodded gratefully before tipping her head back and squirting its contents into her mouth.

The water was warm and tasted vaguely like iron, making Kat immediately think of blood. Despite the flavor, she swallowed the mouthful, grimacing as she passed the bottle back to Dorrik. They nodded, capping the bottle before slipping it back into the drawstring sack that they used to carry most of their adventuring goods.

The three of them sat in the center of the final room before the dungeon’s boss chamber. All of the debris from their recent was pushed far enough away that they would have time to react if it suddenly turned into a ravening beast.

Kat shuddered. That had happened once. Two of the ten light fixtures in a chamber had turned out to be small mimics capable of firing heat rays After they managed to defeat the troublesome monsters, the team stopped to rest only to be caught unaware by another pair of lights transforming. That had been how Kaleek lost most of the remaining fur on his arms.

“How are your levels?” Dorrik asked, breaking the silence. “My stamina has almost refilled. I could fight now if necessary, but I do not feel the urge to wake up at this time.”

“Same,” Kaleek replied. “I’m only a couple points from full on stamina and my hit points are back to where they should be thanks to Kat.”

A quick check to her character sheet later, Kat updated the rest of the team on her status as well.

“Stamina and hit points are full. Mana is a little low thanks to healing Kaleek, but the pool is refilling pretty rapidly.”

The otter just grinned back at her, his face a mess of magically healed scar tissue surrounding the patches of remaining fur.

“Ten more minutes?” Dorrik said, turning the statement into a question. Their crest undulated placidly as they relaxed despite their tense surroundings.

Kat inspected her numbers once more and nodded. “Ten minutes should more than cover it. I’ll be as ready for the dungeon boss at that point as I will ever be.”

“Same,” Kaleek replied with a grunt, leaning back onto his elbows as he lowered himself into a reclining position on the dungeon floor.

For a couple minutes, no one spoke. Their silence wasn’t uncomfortable or strained. It was a lack of noise borne of comfortable familiarity and experience. There wasn’t any need to talk in order to calm pre battle jitters, so no one said anything. A sharp contrast from Kat’s new duties as a shareholder where any meeting that wasn’t full of constant activity and conversation was a failure.

As best she could tell, most of her new companions didn’t even pay attention to themselves speaking half the time. They just opened their mouths and disconnected their tongues from their brains, spending more time and energy on observing the responses of other shareholders than actually considering and picking their words.

Hell, she’d had Ricardo Waggoner confirm her suspicions once. She’d tried to compliment the man on a particularly insightful speech on the pharmaceutical applications of a new genetically engineered strain of e. Coli, and he had only looked at her blankly before admitting that he barely remembered what he had said.

Dorrik stirred, snapping Kat out of her woolgathering. The lokkel stood up. A second later both Kaleek and her joined him. Her mana pool wasn’t entirely full, only two points short, but that wouldn’t take all that long to rectify.

“Say-” “-anyway,” both Dorrik and Kaleek spoke up at the same time, cutting each other off. Dorrik cocked their head to the side crest flat against their head as they motioned for Kaleek to continue.

“You go first,” Kaleek said, slightly embarrassed. “I was just gonna tell a joke, and to be honest it wasn’t all that good.”

Dork smiled quickly, displaying more teeth than usual. They crossed their lower pair of arms, tapping the forearms quickly with the hands from their upper arms. If Kat didn’t know better, she’d almost say the lokkel looked nervous.

“About my coming of age ceremony,” they began, crest still and flat against the back of their head. “My family and I have worked out the details. The target will be the floor boss on the ninth floor.”

“Is there any sort of timeframe for this ceremony?” She asked. “If not this is wonderful news. Do we just keep fighting until we get to the floor boss and then call everyone over for the ceremony?”

Kaleek frowned, clumps of hair migrating across his face as the skin crunched forward.

“The ninth floor is a bit high to perform the rite, isn’t it?” He asked. “I only know what I’ve heard second hand, but don’t coming of age ceremonies usually happen below the sixth floor or in person against a more reasonably sized animal?”

Dorrik nodded, crest still stiff and unmoving.

“But that shouldn’t be a problem?” Kat replied, looking from one friend to another as she tried to sort the situation out. “It’s not like we’re going to stop at the ninth floor. We’re going to need to kill a floor boss there eventually.”

“They have to do the ritual alone,” Kaleek said, his voice grim. “As I understand it, lower level opponents are usually selected because the power gap between an avatar and the elite monsters only grows as you climb the Tower. Killing a floor boss solo at level four is a feat. At level twenty four it's galactic news.”

“Alone?” Kat asked. “I suppose that’s physically possible, but it sure sounds unnecessarily difficult to me.”

“Unfortunately,” Dorrik responded with a sigh, “it is necessary. Clan Ahn has high hopes for me. Between my parentage and my accomplishments to date, the elders have decided that I will likely be an important individual in the future. Because of this, they are insisting that my coming of age be more difficult and impressive than an ordinary Ahn lokkel.”

The three of them lapsed into a brooding silence, Kat and Kaleek thinking over their friends words while Dorrik simply trailed off.

“Do you think you’re up for it?” Kaleek asked finally. “The ninth floor isn’t exactly sunny kelp fields and candy. In the winding caves alone it took almost a week before I managed to make it from one village to another in a single night.”

“Obviously we’ll support in any way we can,” Kat added, “but I’m not sure how much we can do. If your clan wants you to handle the floor boss solo, it sounds like we’re mostly going to be relegated to the realm of emotional support.”

Dorrik smiled back, their crest fluttering gently for the first time in the conversation as they replied.

“Thank you Miss Kat. Actually, your support would be very helpful. Even if you cannot participate in the ceremony itself, there are a number of skills I wish to acquire and hone that will increase my chances in the coming conflict. I know that you are in a bit of a race to level up, but if you would be willing to help hunt elite monsters on the eight floor-”

“The spiders?” Kat interjected, her skin crawling.

“The spiders,” Dorrik confirmed.

“I know that what I am asking is inconvenient and more than a little dangerous-,” they began speaking again only for Kat to cut them off.

“Of course,” she replied, forcing a smile. “This is important to you. Kaleek and I will just have to make it work. Don’t worry about it.”

“Really?” Dorrik asked, turning from Kat to the half bald desoph.

“What she said,” the otter answered, extending his right arm to give Dorrik a thumbs up. “You know me, give me something to kill and I’ll be happy.”

“On a related note,” he continued, jerking his head toward the closed door to the boss chamber. “Are we going to stand around here talking about our feelings all day or am I finally going to be allowed to stab something, hopefully a something that doesn’t look like a chair designed by someone on very expensive drugs.”

Dorrik smiled, inclining their head slightly. Their crest flared up, standing fully on end as they stepped aside to let Kaleek open the passage into the next room.

Kat followed him inside, fanning out to the desoph’s left while Dorrik moved to the right. The room was mostly empty, little more than a gigantic stone box with a dungeon altar at the other end. Standing in their way were six white pillars with the snarling and growling faces of monsters carved into them.

“Which one do you think is the boss?” Kaleek asked, indicating the partial statues. “I mean, one of them is clearly the boss. There’s no way you carve the face of an abyssal gargoyle or a night prowler into something and just have it turn out to be art. Especially in this dungeon.”

“My guess is all of them,” Dorrik replied. “It would be far too simple if there were only one mimic or golem for us to fight.”

Kat squinted at the pillars. As far as she could tell, they were ordinary stone, a bit taller than Dorrik, but otherwise unremarkable. Her companions were almost certainly right, she could think of at least a dozen dungeons where statues had ‘surprisingly’ animated once they drew close. Still, there was no real way to tell which of the pillars was dangerous.

“Maybe I should just use Gravity Spike from here?” She asked, motioning across the chamber. “If they aren’t moving, I might as well. It’s not like they’ll be able to dodge.”

Kaleek opened his mouth to respond before catching himself. He chewed his lower lip for a second, eyes flickering over to Dorrik before he spoke up.

“I’d say that we should bomb them with spells from here, but so far in this dungeon my judgment has been crap. I don’t have a whole lot of fur on my face left to lose, so I figured I would defer to the people who haven’t gotten half killed twice already.”

“A wise decision,” Dorrik replied with a nod, “but this time I tend to be in agreement with you. Gravity Spike has enough range that we will have a chance to see and avoid any trap triggered by its use.”

She took a deep breath, gathering mana as she focused on the central pillar. Despite what Dorrik’s reassurance, Kat assumed a partial crouch, legs coiled in case she needed to move on a moment’s notice.

Kat’s spell went off without a hitch, summoning a vortex of gravity around one of the central pillars. The stone shuddered, cracks forming as it tried to tear itself apart under its own weight.

The eyes on its carving, an alligator-like reptile, sprang open revealing a dull red glow. A fraction of a second later, all of the other pillars opened their eyes as well. With a groan of stone on stone, arms separated from the cylinder, sharp spindly talons rapidly growing from the limbs.

Cream colored rock flowed over the cavern’s floor as all six of the pillars shuddered into motion. Kat’s target lagged behind, cracks lengthening up and down its height as its movement exacerbated the damage from Gravity Spike.

It barely made it five paces before dust and gravel began to flake off of the pillar. Five more paces was all it took for the stone to fall apart, practically eroding before Kat’s eyes as the structural damage compounded and cascaded.

When the remaining five were thirty paces away, Dorrik unleashed ego storm on them. It was a risk, after all, if their attackers were automatons with no minds, the psi ability would simply pass over them without any impact, a waste of the lokkel’s stamina.

Luckily, the purple tempest struck home. The pillars didn’t slow much as they pushed through the swirling streaks of violet energy, but every time they were struck, their glowing red eyes dimmed slightly.

Kaleek triggered an ability and his greatsword began to glow red. A savage grin sprouted on his face, and just as the stone monsters began to exit Dorrik’s attack, he swung his sword horizontally, releasing a pulse of reddish energy that slammed into them, stopping them in their tracks and knocking two of the stone creatures back into the ego storm.

Dorrik was right behind him, swords flashing lighting quick through a series of attacks so intricate that Kat could barely follow them. The lokkel’s four arms glowed purple as they enhanced their strength and agility.

Kat took a deep breath, throwing herself toward the stone monster on the far left as the sound of shattering stone began to assault her ears. She ducked under a spindly arm, dropping into a roll when the creature’s hand rotated unnaturally grasping downward toward her even as the taloned fingers seemed to grow longer in midair.

She came out of her roll right next to the creature, jamming her knife into its side. The stone resisted her enchanted blade, but even without Penetrate active, it was far from enough. The dagger sank deep into the stone monster, and its head, a carved bear with four eyes, ground in a half circle toward her.

Shadow Step pulled her away from the monster a fraction of a second before one of its arms swept in a semi-circle in front of it. It began rotating again to face Kat, as she glanced down at her dagger.

The blade was clean. The monster might have enough of a mind to fall victim to Dorrik’s attacks, but it didn’t bleed. Overpressure was useless. Worse, most of Kat’s repertoire was focused on targeting weak points and arteries. Her knife might be able to do some damage, but against unfeeling stone it was far from the ideal weapon.

She took another Shadow Step backward. The pillar swung its other arm in a wide arc. By now its arms were practically pinwheeling, turning the slow moving stone monster into a violent dervish.

Kat poured more mana into Gravity Spike, edging backward barely fast enough to stay out of her opponent’s reach as the magic built to a crescendo. When she released it, the spell was almost anti-climactic. The pillar froze, its arms rigid and still halfway through their strikes. Then, the gravitational forces tore it apart, chunks of stone sloughing off of the pillar as it collapsed in on itself.The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

Nearby, Dorrik lopped both of the arms from the final pillar, spinning to the side after the perfectly executed strike in order to provide an opening for Kaleek. The desoph, bloody red aura flaring around him, brought his greatsword down from above, plunging his blade through the stone face of a fanged gorilla and continuing without much impediment through half of his opponent’s cylindrical torso.

Its eyes flickered red once before fading back into whitish stone. Kat activated Shadow Step in order to catch up with her companions. A frown flickered over her face as the skill increased her speed.

Shadow Step always decreased its user’s visibility, but when they weren’t spotted, it generally allowed something akin to teleportation. Kat couldn’t go through solid objects, but if she had an unobstructed path to a hiding place, the ability should blur the distance between her starting and end point.

She shook her head, trying to dismiss an indeterminate sense that something was off as she walked the rest of the way to meet up with Dorrik and Kaleek. There were plenty of explanations for why the ability only half worked. If even one of her friends was paying attention to her, and the smart money on that front said Dorrik, Shadow Step probably wouldn’t work properly.

“That was easy,” Dorrik said with a frown as they looked over the piles of crumbled stone. They released their right sword with their lower hand and leaned down to pick up a chunk of rubble, turning it over thoughtfully in their hand.

“You’re not allowed to say that it was too easy,” Kaleek cut in, shaking his head. “I’ve gotten mauled twice. I know how this works. The second you say some shit like that everything is going to go sideways on us.”

“Are you sure that you should be talking about how easy the fight was?” Kat asked, looking at the space around the dungeon altar for signs of a trap or a disturbance but finding nothing.

“Shit,” Kaleek muttered. “Now all three of us have mentioned how easy the fight was. You know what? I’m just going to go and touch the altar before our conversation summons some sort of hyper demon from the seventy second floor or something.”

He began walking across the open space that separated the three of them from the lonely looking dungeon altar. Despite his flippant remarks, Kat could see that Kaleek’s muscles were tense and ready, his hands clutching the hilt of his sword tight enough to be visible through the patchy remaining fur.

“That can’t be right,” Dorrik mumbled to themselves, holding some of the white wreckage up to get a better look at it. “This isn’t rock. It’s ivory.”

In one moment, everything clicked. Kat’s eyes widened.

“Stop!” She blurted out, taking a step toward Kaleek. “The monsters were just its teeth. I think the floor itself is a mimic.”

Kaleek froze, swearing loudly before he began backpedaling away from the altar.

The ground rumbled as if there were an earthquake. Before the shaking finished, three pink tongues, each as big around as Kat’s waist, shot from the stone.

Kat jerked to the side, easily dodging the mass of pink flesh as it dripped viscous brown acid. In front of her, a pit sank into the stone, revealing a massive circular mouth rimmed with inward facing teeth, each of them at least as large as her arm. Above the maw, a pair of eyes blinked open, set into the floor and spitting malevolence they fixed their gaze on Kaleek as the desoph’s blade flared with red light, shearing through the acid tongue darting his way in one smooth stroke.

She began gathering mana for another Gravity Spike, keeping one eye out for the tentacle she had dodged as it whipped backward toward the giant mouth. Dorrik rushed past her, chasing their own tongue. Unlike Kaleek, Dorrik hadn’t been able to sever the attacking limb, but there were a pair of deep wounds on either side of the tentacle where their blades had scored deep hits.

Mana curled into a ball, coalescing just between the beat’s eyes before Kat’s spell snapped into being. Rock crushed together, grinding into the mimic’s flesh as flesh was torn and scrambled under its own weight.

The creature groaned, a deep bass sound that rattled Kat’s bones. She ignored it, letting Kaleek draw its attention as he planted his sword in its rocky flesh just outside its cavernlike mouth.

Dorrik stopped, sheathing both of their blades and lifting all four arms over their head. Purple energy was building into a giant disc, pulsing and growing with each second as the lokkel fed even more power into it.

She cast Overpressure twice in succession, wincing at the mana cost. The dark viscous fluid that passed for the monster’s blood and digestive juices fountained from the crumpled hole between its eyes followed shortly by the deep stab wound Kaleek had left in it.

He was running around the outside of the monster. Periodically his greatsword would flash red, multiplying its momentum as Kaleek swung it downward, cracking the mimic’s stone shell and pulping pink flesh underneath. The two remaining tongues jetted out of its mouth, but once Kaleek was aware of their presence, he was a much more difficult target.

Rather than get wrapped up in an attack, he easily sidestepped the darting attacks, dodging the uninjured tongue and slicing off almost a quarter of the tentacle that Dorrik had already damaged.

It groaned again, but without the element of surprise, the mimic was struggling. The monster had clearly hoped that one or all of their party would have been halfway to the dungeon altar when it transformed. Kat had little doubt that it could easily flense the flesh from her bones if she were foolish enough to approach the creature, but at a distance it didn’t seem to have any defenses but its tongues.

She dropped another Gravity Spike deep into its gullet as she dodged. The tentacles were fast, but compared to her reflexes they weren’t anything impressive. Moreover, the attacks needed to pass through almost forty paces to reach her. Even if they were fast, it wouldn’t have been that hard for Kat to spot and dodge them given the distance.

The creature groaned again as Kaleek shattered even more of its shell. Its final tongue whipped back from its attack on Kat to try and slap the desoph from behind.

He spun, a graceful pirouette as his sword flashed red, swinging through a half crescent as he brought it down in an overhand slash. It hit the tentacle, cutting the tentacle in half with deceptive ease.

The mimic shuddered angrily a final time, and then Dorrik finished their casting, functionally ending the battle. Psi energy rushed into the air, creating a glowing circle with a radius of about two paces above the center of the mimic’s mouth.

For a second nothing happened. Then the circle pulsed and a crackling bolt of energy, as big around as a human snapped into being, held in place by the glowing purple ring. It writhed, an unruly tree of reddish purple light seeking escape.

Then it blasted straight downward, strands of energy arcing off of it and grounding themselves in the monster’s stony flesh even as the main force of the attack ground its core into dust.

It shuddered, screams swallowed by explosions as Dorrik’s ability hollowed it out. Almost at the same time, Dorrik dropped to on knee, entirely spent after using the entirety of their stamina reserve to power the spell, and the mimic’s eyes dimmed, losing focus as it died under the lokkel’s onslaught.

Kaleek glanced back at her, an unspoken question on his face. She only shrugged in reply. Finally, he spoke up.

“I think it’s dead.”

Kat chuckled, shrugging once again. The mimic certainly looked dead, but on the other hand, that was their thing. Looking like something they weren’t. She doubted the huge monster was putting on some sort of act, but it clearly had enough intelligence to hide long enough for their party to wander into range.

“I don’t know,” She replied. “Why don’t you go and touch the dungeon altar and find out. The Tower won’t let you leave if the boss is still alive, so that’s probably the only way we can be sure.”

Kaleek glanced at the creature at his feet, an eyebrow raising as he looked up at Kat.

“I think it’s your turn to be bait,” he replied. “I only have a little bit of fur left, and I’d like to hang onto that if possible. You go and touch the altar.”

Kat rolled her eyes, but kept an eye on the unmoving monster that had been most of the floor in front of the altar as she walked around its outer limits. The mimic didn’t move, thick brown liquid leaking from the holes torn in its body and hissing where they encountered the actual stone of the dungeon.

Most impressive was the wound inflicted by Dorrik’s psibolt. They needed more stamina if they wanted to use the ability frequently, and it wasn’t terribly useful against mobile opponents as the casting time gave targets almost ten seconds to walk out of the way as the violet rings formed above them, but the actual attack was capable of leveling a small building.

She shook her head as she approached the altar. Iron tier abilities really were on an entirely different level. Of course, the one or two silver abilities she’d seen demonstrated by higher level players were even more impressive.

Finally, without any interference from the almost certainly dead monster, Kat found herself in front of the altar. She placed a palm on its smooth stone, and a familiar notification popped up.

Congratulations Adventurer!

You have completed the Iron Tier Level Eight Dungeon, Chameleon Depths

Three of Three party members surviving. Good Job!

Assigning awards:

Mind + 1

Mana Points + 3