Elsie slammed both mallets through the face of the middle soldier in the front row, the other eight immediately activating to attack her. A moment later, Rose’s head snapped back as she was yanked by her waist across the ten metre gap. The platform rushed at her as she panicked, her mind blanking as she tried to think of a way to cushion the impact with magic.

  Elsie was a whirlwind of motion among the soldiers, two going down in clouds of dust as Rose braced, reminding herself to bend her knees as the platform approached. Physical activity wasn’t her thing.

  What need was there when she could do magic?

  The soles of her feet thudded against the stone floor. She remembered to bend her knees.

  What she hadn’t considered was that the platform was moving perpendicular to her.

  Everything seemed to happen in slow motion. As the platform moved right, she lurched to the left, her body tilting. From the corner of her eye, she saw a flash of metal – one of the stone soldiers bringing their sword down towards her head but she was already falling. She dropped the staff in her right hand.

  A moment later, her left shoulder slammed against the stone platform, her head lolling over the edge before the rest of her followed.

  Get a grip of yourself, girl!

  She grasped at the stone, hands clawing to get a hold as she went over. Her right hand caught the edge, her torso slamming into the side of the platform as she dug her fingers in and dangled above the lava below. It was a short fall – a matter of metres – the lava spitting upwards, trying to seize her.

  She let out a deep breath before reaching for the top of the platform with her left hand. She found a purchase and hung there for a moment, both hands holding on to the edge of the platform, her forehead pressed against the stone, her eyes on the lava below. She knew Elliott, Elsie, Isabel – all of them, even Korin and Parek were far stronger than her, but as she dangled there in the air, she also knew that they were once as weak as she was.

  Elsie’s complete faith in her abilities and her lack of concern of what she might face didn’t just come from her strength. Rose knew that. It was a confidence in herself. A belief. Rose, on the other hand, was so used to things being easy for her that she had never needed to have that belief. That confidence. That was why she was so unprepared.

  She smiled a bitter smile.

  She’d never been better than others. She’d just been made to believe she was.

  She let out another deep breath and looked up, only to see Elsie peering over the edge, a questioning look on her face.

  “What?” Rose said. “I’m rubbish. I know. I get it.”

  She went to pull herself up, when Elsie shoved her left hand from the platform. Rose’s eyes widened as Elsie moved to her right hand, and gently pried open Rose’s fingers before delicately pushing her off.

  She screamed as she fell, but then came to an abrupt halt halfway to the lava below. She hung there by her waist, swinging gently. She looked back at Elsie, who met her with a smile. Rose closed her eyes. Well, of course Elsie would make sure she wouldn’t fall.

  “Pull me up. Please.” Her voice was strained, her cheeks flushed.

  Elsie yanked her up and a second later, she was standing atop the platform, Parek waiting behind Elsie while the final soldier was being kept at bay by multiple small mallets. Rose picked her staff up and glanced at the little doll by her feet. So proficient physically like an assassin or a warrior, but no less adept with mana. Elliott and Isabel were similar.

  She smiled at Elsie. “I understand.”

  Elsie gave her a thumbs up, before turning back to the soldier and watching the platform beyond. She charged her mallets at the remaining soldier, smashing it to pieces. It disappeared in a puff of powdered stone, the mallets along with it as Elsie leapt to the next platform.

  A moment later Rose was yanked across, but she understood now and allowed herself to miss the platform. Elsie wanted her to dangle off the edge. It let her take care of the soldiers and kept Rose safe. She’d be lying to herself if she didn’t admit it hurt to be…well, quite useless right now, but it was okay. She had to accept what level she was at.

  She needed training. Knowledge. Practice.

  Now that they knew the pattern of the platforms, had a strategy and had a tiny weapon of mass destruction, getting to the penultimate platform was a breeze. As they’d guessed, the only difference up until then was the platforms falling faster for every one they cleared. The previous one fell three seconds after the last soldier was destroyed.

  Elsie took care of all but the final soldier on the platform. They would only have two seconds to leap to the final one – the one with the soldier twice as big as the rest, and the four on the corners. Beyond the final platform, Rose could see the alcove in the corner, the red key rotating behind a shimmering transparent barrier.

  Elsie dispatched the last soldier and leapt towards the final platform, Parek on her heels. Rose was yanked across a split second later as that platform plummeted but immediately she knew the last platform was different.

  On the previous ones, the soldiers only activated once Elsie was within their area. That wasn’t true of this one. The four soldiers activated while they were still in the air approaching from a little above the platform. What was more daunting was the big soldier in the middle, stone armour carved over its torso and legs. It held a mace half as tall as it in one hand and a battle axe with a hammerhead in its other.

  As the three of them drew near, cracks opened up across the large statue’s body and lit up in a fiery red. It swung its weapons so fast, it even caught Elsie by surprise, though she adjusted, leaping higher just as the mace passed through where she had been.

  Parek wasn’t so lucky. Neither was Rose. Where Parek took the full brunt of the mace, Rose was swatted aside by the hammerhead as it crashed into her chest. She had the wind knocked out of her but she gripped her staff firmly as she careened towards the wall.

  She kept her eyes on the platform. She was at a height with it and within range for [Blink]. As she flew backwards, her eyes fell on Elsie, skipping between the soldiers, avoiding their blades as best she could while furiously hammering at them.

  Elsie didn’t think whether she could or not. She just did.

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  [Blink]

  Rose landed on the platform and stumbled forwards. Almost immediately, one of the soldiers brought its sword down at her, but Elsie appeared and deflected the blow with a mallet. She ran down the soldiers arm and clattered the side of its face with the mallet in her other hand, while gesturing to Rose to jump off the platform.

  Rose dove for the edge, seeing the boss swing at Elsie with its mace. She went over, past the depth of the platform when something jerked her body to a sudden stop. She swung from side-to-side, looking down at the carpet of lava thirty metres below. To her surprise, Parek was nearby, also invisibly tethered to the platform, his eyes on what little he could see of the fight above them.

  “She’s not doing damage to them,” Rose announced, drawing Parek’s attention.

  He glanced over at her. “Maybe they’re just higher level. She just needs to wear them down.”

  Maybe, Rose thought.

  Then she noticed it. On either side of the room, the ledges were gone. She kept her eye on a point on the wall and watched as the lava slowly rose. Maybe ten centimetres every second or so.

  “The lava is rising,” Rose said. She quickly did the maths. Ten seconds per metre. Thirty metres between the platform and the lava. “We have about five minutes.”

  Parek looked down, focused on the walls then his face darkened. He glanced back up, barely catching glimpses of Elsie as she danced among the mobs. They dangled there as the heat in the room became a little more uncomfortable, brushing past their faces. Sweat began to bead on Rose’s forehead, and trickle down the sides of her face.

  Rose watched the lava rise. Glanced up to the platform. Her brows furrowed.

  The heat. The lava rising. Elsie’s inability to damage this last set of soldiers. It wasn’t that Elsie wasn’t strong enough – it was that dungeons worked differently. They had their own rules. Rose recalled the fiery red cracks in the large soldier’s arms and legs and torso as it swiped at them.

  Perhaps?

  She looked at her waist and reached out with her free hand, fingers stroking the air until they touched something solid but invisible above her waist. She slid her fingers up and down that invisible tether – like a thick rope tied around her waist, fastened to the platform above – then wrapped her fingers around it. She gripped her staff firmly in her right hand as she brought it above her other and began to climb, placing one hand over the other. Once she was alongside the platform, she planted her feet and the butt of her staff against the stone, head craned to see the soldiers still fighting with Elsie.

  The platform rumbled as the soldiers brought their maces and swords down. For all that Elsie wasn’t damaging them, they were struggling to keep up with her. The few times she was hit, being sent flying out over the sea of lava, she simply [Teleported] back to the platform, and the cycle began again.

  Parek joined Rose on her left side. “You have an idea?”

  “I hope,” Rose replied, opening her pores to mana, letting the magical energy pour through her channels and into her staff as she drew the sigils. She wasn’t terribly good at ice magic, but as long as it worked, she didn’t need to be. She had no doubt Elsie would see it and adapt.

  Above her, a ball of ice the size of her head formed and she directed it towards the soldiers, though she had to guess where they might be. Still, the platform was packed enough that one of them should get hit. One did. It roared – a harsh, grinding sound. Rose smiled. Above her head, she could see the legs on another soldier, and began a new spell.

  Ice started to form around one of its legs, running up towards its knee. It turned to face her, mouth open in a snarl, eyes flaring red.

  “Elsie!” Rose shouted, but she needn’t have bothered. Elsie sent a mallet through that soldiers leg, shattering it into a thousand pieces. It stumbled, falling to the ground on its hands. More ice formed around its torso, before that too was smashed to pieces, the shards soaring past Rose’s head and into the lava below.

  “Let’s go,” Rose said, and both she and Parek used their invisible ropes to scale the side of the platform to reach the top but they didn’t climb on.

  Now that Elsie knew, she made quick work of the four smaller soldiers, ice forming across their bodies as she hammered them several times with her mallets. Shards of icy stone scattered across the room, falling to the roaring lava below.

  The boss was another matter.

  It was almost as fast as Elsie, but even so, she was chipping away at it. The boss swung its mace. Elsie leapt out of the way, before [Teleporting] onto the mace and running down its length. The stone arm holding the mace began icing up, trapping the flaming cracks beneath. Elsie hammered down with a mallet. It didn’t shatter the way the others had, but it did roar in pain.

  Elsie continued her assault, but the boss was learning, eyes tracking Elsie’s movement. It swung its axe and predicted where Elsie would jump to, following up with a wicked swing of its mace, the spiked ball catching Elsie and launching her across the room.

  She winked out of existence, reappearing above the bosses head, ice spreading across his shoulders as she tossed two mallets towards it. It looked up even as it howled in pain, jumping and swinging wildly with its weapons. Elsie shot past the weapons, rolled in mid-air and landed on the platform, tiny feet thudding on the stone but immediately shot back up, ice forming on the boss’ torso. Elsie smashed a mallet through its side and a crack opened up on its body, flames spitting from within.

  The lava was two-thirds of the way to them now, flames licking the air. The heat was starting to become a suffocating blanket.

  “Two minutes, Elsie,” Rose shouted.

  Elsie was focused on the boss but held a thumbs up. She avoided a blow, somersaulted backwards and shot towards the ground, slamming down to the platform. She stood in front of the massive soldier, her feet planted into the ground.

  Then Rose felt Elsie draw mana. The air around her crackled as mana streamed towards the little doll. A tiny trickle at first that soon became a river, then a flood, then a deluge. It was like Elsie was drawing an entire ocean of mana into her – it was on a scale that Rose had never felt before. On a scale that she couldn’t even imagine. It was multiple times what Rose could safely manage. Even a tenth of the amount would kill her.

  The temperature around them plummeted. Where they had been blanketed with heat, they were now being smothered with ice. Frost started spreading across the platform, ice forming on the bosses feet and at the tip of its weapons and on the top of its head and working its way to the soldiers core. The fiery red cracks dulled. It swung both weapons overhead, fury carved into its face but as the weapons came down, they slowed until they came to a stop just above Elsie’s head.

  The boss was completely frozen. Encased head-to-toe in ice.

  Rose and Parek scrambled up onto the platform, standing beside Elsie. Rose glanced at her, saw her cute round black eyes were completely white, focused on the soldier ahead. Around them, ice spears began to form – one, two, five, ten and on and on until there were hundreds floating in the air around them, each the size of Rose’s staff.

  Elsie let them loose.

  Spears whistled past them as one, dozens aimed at each limb, hundreds at the torso and head. Beneath the ice, the soldier’s fiery red eyes widened. The spears all hit simultaneously. Instantly, the boss shattered into thousands of tiny pieces of stone and ice, scattering across the room, pieces falling into the rising lava with a plop.

  Elsie’s eyes returned to normal, the deluge of mana disappeared as abruptly as it had emerged.

  Ahead of them, the shimmering transparent barrier fell.

  So did the platform they were standing on.

  Before they had a chance to fall with it, Elsie leapt across the five metre gap to the alcove, landing beside the key. Rose and Parek were yanked behind her, both slamming against the wall.

  Parek groaned, hands grasping for the edge of the alcove before he found it and lifted himself up. He turned around and offered a hand to Rose. Beneath her, the lava was still rising. She took Parek’s hand and he pulled her to safety.

  “Maybe I should have turned Elliott down,” he said. “Maybe I should have just let him kill me. At least it would have been quick. All this trouble and I might die anyway.”

  Once Rose was in the small alcove that was barely big enough for them, she reached out and grabbed the hand-sized key. Once it was in her hands, a chime sounded across the room. All three of them watched as the lava not only receded, it seemed to seep out of the room altogether, revealing the ledges on either side and between them rose a marble floor. To the side of the alcove stone slabs pushed away from the wall with a groan as a set of steps formed from the alcove to the floor at the bottom.

  Rose stepped onto the stairs and gazed down towards the ledge. In its centre, a gap had opened up.

  Rose turned around and smiled. “We did it!”

  Parek smiled back, but Rose’s eyes fell on Elsie.

  She gave a thumbs up but her smile was a little subdued. There didn’t seem to be the same enthusiasm as Rose was used to.

  She didn’t get to question it though, as Elsie bounded beyond her, running down the stairs towards the exit.