It is early in the morning. Dawn has just started to break.

  In the master bedroom of a well-appointed manor, a woman is slowly waking up. She is an older woman, red-haired and elegant, beautiful even before her normal morning routine. She yawns, stretches, and opens her eyes.

  She sees her husband, drenched in blood. His body is in ruins.

  The woman opens her mouth in a silent scream and runs from the bedroom into the hallway.

  Forty-four hours remain.

  –

  I plunged my hand into the depths of our brand new Queen’s Threshold-branded satchel, groping around for another sweetroll. We had bought a dozen and there were still plenty left.

  The exit of the Threshold had its own marketplace, just like its entrance had – though this one was much nicer. Aeshma told me that adventurers who made it through the Dungeon to the other side were usually flush with cash from all the looting and treasure-hunting they did along the way.

  Given that Aeshma had made us speedrun to the Boss room, we hadn’t collected much loot. So when we emerged from the Threshold hungry and tired, we were forced to sell a few of Tatzel’s gold rings in order to afford food.

  Aeshma said that Tatzel would understand the necessity of selling them off, and since Tatzel herself was still unconscious, she didn’t have much to say about the matter. I was hungry enough that I didn’t really care. As long as we kept a few of the sweetrolls in reserve for when she woke up, I didn’t have any moral objections to pawning a few of Tatzel’s things.

  Aeshma and I were currently having a little snack-break, just something to tide us over before we found a proper inn somewhere further up the road. It had seemed like Aeshma wanted a break from lugging Tatzel’s body around, too. With the limp Dragon propped up against a tree, the two of us (plus Jie) were just sitting around, eating pastries and enjoying the view of the new Zone.

  In terms of the physical environment, Zone Two was markedly different from Zone One. The main road here was surrounded by a forest, but rather than the deciduous trees that had populated Zone One, this side was filled with what looked like coniferous banyan trees. While Zone One had been sunny and mild, the weather on this side of the Threshold was cool and foggy, with overcast skies that threatened rain.

  We had even heard some thunder rumbling a few leagues back, which was concerning, given that we’d opted against picking up some Queen’s Threshold-branded umbrellas back at the market. Hopefully the weather would hold out long enough for us to find some shelter.

  "I think the… um," Aeshma said through a mouth full of half-chewed sweetroll, "Mm, the blue ones might be the best so far. The grillberry ones? They've just got that…. mmmph." She rolled her eyes up to the heavens as she tried to think of an appropriate descriptor. “That… pop! You know?”

  “You’re saying you like the grillberry ones because they’ve got that pop?” I asked.

  "Yeah, like, you know, they go zow! Right in your–"

  "Where in the Queen's green groves am I, and why isn't it my grave?" Tatzel asked, interrupting our important conversation. Her eyes sluggishly struggled open, revealing slit golden disks which simmered in the grey light filtering through the clouds. At first she tried to stand. Then she noticed the Thunder Cord tied around her hands and feet.

  "Hi Tatzel. We figured it might be useful to keep you around,” I said with a shrug.

  "Yeah, don't worry about it, Tatz. We already discussed all the risks and benefits and everything, really analyzed the situation. And we figured we’d get more XP fighting the goons sent after you – you know, because of your abject failure to guard the dungeon? – than we’d get for killing you.”

  Tatzel’s eyes went wide. "Oh, no, no, no. I am not getting sucked into your… your ill-conceived little power-Leveling scheme. I am not going to let myself get killed just because you–"

  "Because you abandoned your post as the Dungeon Boss?” Aeshma suggested.

  “Because you cheated and got a bunch of high-Level creatures to do your dirty work?” I added, cautiously walking over to drop a grillberry sweetroll into Tatzel’s bound hands. Some food in her belly might help the Dragon see our side of things. Even bound, she had more than enough range-of-motion to eat.

  Which was also enough range-of-motion to throw the sweetroll into the woods, like a big dumb baby.

  "Oh come on Tatzel! The blue ones are the best! I was just saying!" Aeshma howled.

  Tatzel sounded like she was on the verge of tears as she wailed, "I don't care if the grillberries were handpicked by the Queen’s Royal Guard! I don't want food right now! Argh! I want… I want…. did you two dimwits sell my rings?" Her voice transitioned from despair to a more familiar, condescending tone as she refocused on her half-bare fingers.

  Aeshma just shrugged and gestured at our new totebag, with what remained of our snacks.

  After we’d given Tatzel a few minutes to calm down, Aeshma brushed the crumbs off her chest and stood up. She took a step towards Tatzel. "If I untie you, are you gonna run off?"

  "Or try to kill us?" I added.

  The Dragon sighed and flopped herself dejectedly against the tree. Whatever fight was left in her after the Dungeon was evaporating as quickly as our supply of pastries. She wordlessly lifted her wrists and let Aeshma untie the Thundercord.

  I waited with bated breath, half-expecting Tatzel to turn into her Dragon form to spew poison at us, or just to fly off into the air. She didn’t do anything of the sort, however. She just sat there rubbing the ache out of wrists, then checking her face for the damage Aeshma had inflicted during their scuffle. When she found that she was uninjured, she let out a little scoff. We had traded one of her rings for healing potions, one of which we’d already used up mending Tatzel’s wounds, along with Jie’s cracked boards.

  “Someone pass me another blasted sweetroll or I'm gonna throw a fit,” Tatzel said.

  –

  The first droplet of rain smacked me right on the nose. Not an hour had passed since Tatzel agreed to travel with us, but in that time the skies had gone from a dull, uniform gray to ominous shades of dark blue and purple. The gusting wind and distant peals of thunder made it clear that this wasn’t a storm we ought to be caught out in.

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  “Ah shoot,” Aeshma said, as more fat droplets spattered the ground ahead of us. “Pick up the pace, you guys. I’m not spending the whole day hiking in the rain.”

  “A whole day might be long enough to get you smelling decent,” muttered Tatzel under her breath.

  I snorted and molded Jie into a wide-brimmed hat. An umbrella was still out of the question because of its mechanical parts. I’d stuck the Mimic’s stat boosts into transformation speed, and chosen a Perk that gave him increased durability. Hopefully that would keep him from getting waterlogged.

  The road we were on was empty; apparently everyone else had been smart enough to hunker down somewhere before the storm hit. By the time we’d gotten to the next signpost along the road, we were all completely soaked. Tatzel’s teeth were chattering, and Aeshma kept sinking down into the mud as she walked. Jie had shriveled to the size of a skullcap. He was shivering so intensely that I took him off and stuck him in my pocket for warmth.

  I was uncomfortable, too, but unlike the rest of the party I was doing my best not to show it.

  The signpost indicated the next town was still five leagues away. The three of us all let out a stream of curses. From my pocket, Jie squeaked in outrage.

  “I’m already sick of adventuring!” Tatzel howled.

  “Can we even walk five leagues in this mud before sundown?” I asked.

  Aeshma frowned as she peered off into the distance. “Is that something over there?”

  I hadn’t noticed, but there was something there: off to our right, a row of cleanly trimmed hedges ran parallel to the road, broken only by a wrought-iron gate. And beyond that–

  “What is that, a mansion?” I asked. It was hard to be sure, with the sheeting rain obscuring my view. “It looks like the lights are on.”

  Tatzel shielded her eyes from the rain to take a look. Her face lit up when she saw it. “Yes, it must be! Oh and it’s so close, too. It’s perfect. Let’s go in, shall we?”

  Tatzel had already slipped through the gate. Aeshma and I exchanged a look, but followed behind her anyway. A muddy path led from the gate all the way to the mansion. Deep puddles were forming in the manicured grass lawn to either side of us. The lawn was dotted with topiary sculptures, all of which had a blacksmithing theme: a hammer, an anvil, a muscular figure quenching a blade.

  “Uh, whoever’s inside probably won’t like us barging in, right?” I asked. “And probably they’ll be especially upset about ‘us’ including a bunch of Monsters?”

  “It’s impossible to be an adventurer without committing the occasional B-and-E, Roland,” Tatzel said with the unearned confidence of someone who’d been an adventurer for less than an afternoon. “I for one, am not willing to freeze to death our here. I’ll happily forgo a little courtesy to avoid it.”

  “Look, just on principle I hate to agree with Tatz. But if there’s something we can do to avoid camping out in this rain, I say we do it,” said Aeshma. “It’ll be fine. Whoever’s in the house will probably let us in no problem. And if they don’t answer… then as upstanding members of society, we’re, like, duty-bound to kick the door in and make sure everything’s okay.”

  “Wh– no! Do not kick the door down! It’s probably more expensive than all our stuff combined!” I said furiously as we approached the expensive-looking front door.

  “It’ll be fine!” Aeshma repeated. She rapped her knuckles against the door. When there was no answer, she put more weight behind her fist and pounded on the door.

  It swung open, apparently having been left both unlocked and ajar. Aeshma stepped back, grinning wide. “See, we don’t even need to be let in!”

  Tatzel shoved me forward. “Get in there, what are you waiting for? And tell whoever’s inside I want a clean, fluffy towel to dry myself off with. And a warm plate of food.”

  A strange sensation passed through me as I stumbled over the threshold and into the mansion’s foyer. It almost felt like I was passing underneath a waterfall, but dry; or like stepping through a cold curtain.

  Aeshma must’ve felt it too, because as she stepped up behind me she let out a shiver. But the weird sensation was quickly forgotten as both of us looked around the hall. This was the fanciest place I’d ever seen, at least in real life. Pale wood paneled the walls, the strips twisting and irregular like the banyan trees outside, but artfully interwoven to form a smooth, contiguous surface.

  The centerpiece of the room was an enormous fireplace on the wall opposite the front door. A fire roared inside. Its mantel was made of rough-hewn stone and decorated with intricate brasswork, and above the mantel were hung all sorts of trophies, Animal and Monster heads alike, mounted on wooden plaques. The taxidermist had taxidermied all of their faces into snarling, angry expressions.

  Which meant that, just based on their expressions, the six people gathered in front of the fireplace all fit right in. If their yelling and pointing at one another was anything to go by, they were in the midst of a heated argument. They hadn’t seemed to have noticed Aeshma or me yet.

  Above the overlapping voices, one boomed out clearly, “What do you mean there’s no way to turn it off? We’re to be stuck here for two whole days?” This voice’s owner was an odd-looking, shirtless man with pale skin and golden blonde hair. He was tall and broad, almost cartoonishly v-shaped, with shoulders that were triple the width of his narrow hips. His legs were disproportionately short and stocky, and were squeezed into a pair of well-tailored, expensive-looking embroidered dress pants.

  This guy was obviously not Human. Even at this distance I could make out a pronounced scale pattern etched across his chest and shoulders.

  The gathered figures hushed as a woman said something too quietly for me to hear. She was slumped in a plush, velvet armchair, the maroon fabric clashing somewhat with her fiery red hair.

  Whatever she said apparently enraged the v-shaped Dragon man. “Now you listen here!” he shouted. “I didn’t want to come here in the first place! And I’ll tell you what, I was right, too, ‘cause if Dringel hadn’t gone and gotten hisself murdered, this whole endeavor woulda ended exactly how it did done gone the last time!”

  A petite woman was seated at the Dragon man’s side. Her slim body was bundled up in a coat of white ermine and she had a tiny fascinator hat perched atop her head. She dabbed at her eyes with a folded handkerchief. “Oh, we simply must call a Necrodetective to investigate this… this heinous crime!” she said shakily. She was paler than the Dragon man beside her, and her hair was paler still: a platinum blonde that was nearly white, styled into ringlets which cascaded onto the white fur boa draped across her shoulders.

  Behind us, Tatzel hissed through her teeth as she entered the house. I tore my eyes away from the argument to see what had upset her. She was in the midst of passing through a silvery, pulsating sheet of light which covered the front doorway.

  That definitely hadn’t been visible from the outside. Tatzel must’ve been feeling the same, cold sensation I felt when I’d entered.

  Floating above the door, in silvery, pulsating script, were the characters: 38:25. After a few seconds, I saw it tick down: 38:24. A digital clock? A timer?

  “With this storm rolling in, we’ll never get a Necrodetective out here in time,” said another of the figures, a red-headed man with a sturdy-looking neck and thick arms. There was a hint of derision in a voice. “That’s even assuming we could get a message to penetrate Father’s barrier, which I doubt.”

  Beside him, a different red-haired man nodded solemnly in agreement. The two of them must have been brothers – they shared the same long nose as the red-haired woman in the armchair, and all three of them were dressed in fine tunics of green and brown. But there the resemblance ended. Where the first brother was stout and strong-jawed, the second brother was thin and scrawny, with high cheeks and close-set eyes. His hair was close-cropped and receding around the temples.

  Two groups immediately stuck out to me: the three red-heads, likely two brothers and their mother; and the two others, the Dragon and the pale woman. There was one more figure standing off to the side, somewhat away from the rest. She was a maid, dressed in a formal uniform. She clutched a rolled sheet of parchment in her gloved hand.

  No one had noticed us yet, which was probably for the best. I wasn’t sure I wanted to get tangled up in whatever had transpired here.

  Beside me, Aeshma suddenly grabbed my arm. Her face was scrunched up, as though in pain. “Aeshma? Aeshma, what’s wro–”

  “Ha-CHOOOOO!” she sneezed.