They hadn’t lost enough time to matter. It was amazing how fast a panic attack happened. Lacey had taken a quick bathroom break to wash her face and get back on track. It was the best she could do and that was enough. Now she sat at her desk again and tried to imagine what Dom had planned. What would she do?

  “I just keep thinking that I wouldn’t do it,” Lacey shook her head at Colt. “I wouldn’t force an army through the narrow corridors even if they were a bunch of Thieves.”

  “And he’s got to know that it’s a bunch of mazes full of traps or why would he go to all the trouble of making sure everyone has trap skills?” Colt nodded. “I was starting to think the same thing, when I wasn’t distracted by company. Now that Kat and Bernard are weaving through the safe road…”

  “He couldn’t have figured out the safe road through the mazes, could he?” Lacey pounced on the thought.

  “How?” Colt tossed his hands up in frustration. “The maze levels weren’t even there when he was a level 77, at least the way they are now. There’s almost no similarity, right?”

  “And he couldn’t even use the safe path without a George, and a good one at that,” Lacey agreed.

  “Could he have looted a George?”

  “He’d have had to have killed a lead Spunk for that, and Lord Rais would have told us,” Lacey denied that thought too. Lord Rais was the head Spunk. They’d given him a title because he’d won a speed-trap-setting contest for the leadership of the Spunks. “Neither of us has had to resurrect any of the Spunks since Butterfly slipped into and under the water-plunging mechanism. That was back when the Spunks were working the water areas.”

  “That was before Dom was probing around and she didn’t have a good George anyway,” Colt was obviously scrolling through the death logs at his desk, so Lacey didn’t double-up on his work.

  “He’s seen the trapped mazes though, so he has to think he has a way around them,” Lacey smacked a fist onto her desk, sending a stubby pencil skittering.

  “Soft Earth clear,” Ginger announced, and they both sat up straight as if the teacher had called their names in class.

  “I guess we’ll find out,” Lacey bent to blindly grasp for her fallen pencil, her eyes not leaving the screens. Kat and Bernard had made it to the army, where they would stay until or if Dom made it all the way there.

  “We lost one group?” Dom asked Cadd, the leader of the higher leveled Knights. The tin cans, the only way Dom could think of the pretentious group of Knights, backed out of the middle of the tunnels to let Dom and Cadd pass. “How many singles?”

  “One full group died, though we’re not sure how. We had reports of four deaths and two single deserters,” Cadd replied stiffly. They needed each other, but it was an uneasy collaboration. Cadd had trouble taking orders from a man so far beneath him.

  “That’s not too bad,” Dom knew of the Knight’s animosity, but it didn’t worry him. The Knight wanted to marry up in position and Dom had the ear of just the woman for the Knight. At least that’s what the Knight believed.

  “The dungeon was easy,” Cadd professed, slapping his leather gloves against a metal gauntlet. “Too easy.”

  “Only because you had the answers to all the traps and puzzles,” Dom defended the dungeon, resisting the need to grind his teeth. “Was the loot good enough for you?”

  “That was a pleasant surprise,” Cadd smiled, and handed off his gloves to a squire that he’d sent through one of Dom’s Arena levels. “Why have we stopped at the edge of our success?”

  “Traps,” Dom answered curtly. Cadd knew why they’d stopped, and Dom didn’t like to talk about it in the dungeon where they could be overheard. Dom sent a quick glance at the walls. They were still making their way down to the mazes.

  “We have more than enough trap seekers to get started there,” Cadd said cagily, and Dom stopped to stare at the man.

  “You were supposed to wait for me,” Dom said very quietly.

  “I left two of my best trap men to get started,” Cadd let it drop. “I don’t take orders from you, sir, merely suggestions.”

  “Fine,” Dom’s eyes narrowed, but he resumed the walk through their army.

  “Don’t take it so hard, my friend,” Cadd sneered.

  “They aren’t my men, so why should I care if you throw them away,” Dom smiled at Cadd easily. Dom then excused himself for a moment to speak with one of the women players he’d recruited. Goth handed him a large hammer that she’d carried all through her dungeon level.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  “Thank you,” Dom smiled charmingly at her. She took her own hammer out of an inventory that did not get bogged down with weight restrictions, unlike the NPC’s inventory system.

  “We have Earth Mages,” Cadd had stopped long enough to disparage Dom’s plans. “They can…”

  “Shut up,” Dom snarled at Cadd in a voice so soft that he had to be an inch from Cadd’s ear for the stupid Knight to hear him. “Unless you wish the dungeon to know our plans. Plans that I’ve been very careful not to reveal.”

  “What difference does it make?” Cadd pushed Dom back and Dom had to remind himself that he wasn’t in a position to simply kill the idiot…yet.

  “Earth Mages?” Lacey’s chin popped up off her palm.

  “What would they use Earth Mages for?” Colt said, but Lacey could see that he realized it just as she had.

  “Why all the Thieves then?” Lacey sputtered.

  “Pedestal, list all the Earth Mages in the incursion with their levels,” Colt demanded quickly.

  “There are three Earth Mages in the incursion, at levels 41, 32, and 29,” the system answered.

  “That would do it,” Lacey found herself smiling in spite of herself.

  The incursion didn’t need Georges. They had Earth Mages that would do the same thing. They did it outside for Bernard all the time. The fact that the incursion only had three of them said a lot for Bernard’s men’s loyalty. He’d had at least a dozen of the Earth Mages to help him build the fort outside.

  “They had to get to the Spunks,” Colt’s eyes widened. “And if they get to the Spunks, they’ll have Georges.”

  Lacey quickly triggered on the intercom to the trap corridor of the first trapped maze. “Evacuate! Now!”

  “The lower levels were handed envelopes,” Dom told Cadd. “Did you collect them?”

  “I did,” Cadd admitted, pulling out a wad of crumpled papers. “They just held stupid tally sheets and pieces of cardboard.”

  Dom bit the inside of his cheek to keep from swearing at the man. The smile Dom put on was devoid of malice due to a youth and young adulthood of having to kiss up to idiot bureaucrats in his job in the real world. “Since you don’t need them, may I have them?”

  “I threw them away,” Cadd smiled back, but, not having the experience of hiding his distaste, Cadd’s disdain was evident.

  “I collected them for you,” Cadd’s squire whispered, handing Dom a small bag of the puzzle pieces. He’d already collected the ones from the lower levels, but he was still missing a few key parts. Cadd had already walked on, their conversation interrupted by someone from Cadd’s group rushing to tell Cadd that his two Thieves were dead. Dom’s mouth twitched, but he gave only a bland look at the arrogant Knight before bowing over the puzzle pieces.

  “First level Spunks clear,” Ginger reported, and Lacey’s shoulders relaxed a little.

  “Earth Mages can move dirt around, but they can’t make it disappear,” Colt reasoned. “They can’t get through the Manchester rooms on levels three, seven, and ten without putting that dirt somewhere.”

  “It had to fall from somewhere,” Lacey sat back. “All they should have to do is push it back up, right?”

  “Hey Bernard,” Colt flicked on his mic and sent the question down to Bernard at the front lines of the mob army. “Can Earth Mages push a whole collapsed cavern of dirt back up where it came from?”

  “Earth Mages,” Kat swore. “Of course they have Earth Mages. That’s how he’s going to get through those mazes, isn’t he? That devious…” and she swore some more.

  “Are they any of my Earth Mages?” Bernard returned the question.

  “They only have three of them Bernard,” Lacey clarified quickly, describing the Manchester room dimensions and trap mechanism. “Just, can they do it? Can they beat my Manchester rooms with that?”

  “It’s possible that the highest level can shift that amount of soil, but he would then need to hold it up while the army passes,” Bernard answered after swallowing his concern. “That would take a hell of a lot of mana. I’d probably try to bypass the rooms by tunneling around them. That would be safer for my men, but it would likely take just as long, if not longer.”

  “It would also require that they close up their retreat,” Kat put in, and Lacey’s eyebrows rose.

  “True,” Lacey nodded. “I didn’t think about the use of magic like earth moving for the Manchester rooms.”

  “Does that mean we can put those rooms back in the dungeon?” Colt asked, his face distorted into childish glee.

  Lacey let herself laugh, which had been Colt’s intent.

  “Does this mean that you’re in more trouble than you thought?” Kat talked right over the levity that Colt was trying to insert into the conversation.

  “Ah,” Lacey thought about it, and she felt the paranoia try to niggle into her mind, but it was almost exhausted from her previous panic attack. Those chemicals could only last so long before they petered out. Lacey was in that loose place that happened after her fear overloaded her circuits. It was the most normal she ever felt. “I don’t think so. Not unless there’s some way to counter the army right behind you.”

  “Well,” Kat paused to look at the straining Gossowaries, grinning oversized Goblins, and the moving ceiling full of pests. “I mean, maybe they could trade off. What are the odds in here? How many mobs do you have in this army?”

  “There are about 500 in that cavern,” Colt told her.

  “Five-to-one odds are doable with equal levels,” Bernard considered out loud.

  “But there are another 500 underground,” Lacey added, casually. “Then there are another three caverns just like that one, but their levels are lower. This cavern is in the 40s and 50s, but the other caverns are mostly 40s, maybe some high 30s.”

  “You’ve loaded up three thousand combatants into these caverns?” Bernard blanched at the numbers.

  “Yes,” Lacey replied. “You gave us the time to build up.”

  “That I did,” Bernard’s face slowly transitioned from shock to a simple smile. “I do believe that you did not need us at all.”

  “But Benny,” Colt’s laugh echoed in the chamber Bernard stood in, several Goblins taking up mirthful grins. “We like you here! How else would we know whether the Earth Mages were going to mess up our rooms?”

  “Besides,” Lacey cocked her chair back, trying for Colt’s level of nonchalance. “With you here, we are assured that it won’t be a full wipe and that means better loot for us.”

  Bernard laughed in a way that made Lacey think of Santa Claus. She teetered for only a moment before putting her chair back on four legs. She did not need to go through all this and break her neck because she got cocky. There were more than enough cocky folks down in the dungeon.