The chapter in which quite the number of otherwise structurally sound stone hallways are suddenly made to collapse, and other oddities.

The Seer crumbled to the floor with the crossbow bolt nestled into her arm. The Lady’s Sight had her ready to dodge whatever attack might come... but Alysha, too, was as invisible to the blind Seer as the Gamer himself. The dark elf continued her dash up the stairs, leaping forward only to avoid a stray half of a couch that nearly crushed her.

Rave slammed the mirror ball onto the ground again to send another focused wave of **** at the hulking mage, but he was braced for it now. His heavy feet slid mere inches while huge fingers carved into the wooden floor and held on to panels that threatened to tear away. Rave thought it a blessing when the cryomancer got called to deal with Kazex’s wild growth out back, but the danger this brute represented made Rave wary.

The muscle wizard’s eyes gleamed green from underneath his hood, and only now did Rave realize his black sclera. “Can you manage anything stronger than a breeze, little girl?”

Two parting crossbow bolts announced Alysha’s exit into the second floor... but both bounced off the leathery, bare arms of the remaining enemy.

“Rave!” Travolta yelled as he ran in through the front door, his shirt still burning in places where black soot hadn’t dirtied it. “What’re you... shit.”

The gleaming eyes flickered at the leader of Collide. “Collide.”

Travolta hissed, “Donald!”

Rave’s jaw nearly dropped. “Wha- you know this jerk?!”

Said jerk restarted his charge and was upon Rave before she could possibly dodge. Travolta moved in, his fist reared back to counter-

“Here’s a breeze for you-” The disco ball dazzled... and shot forward to intercept the monstrous man. With his arms extended towards Rave, he had no guard to prevent it from smashing into his gut with the same **** they tore apart the front gates. The giant’s fingers barely brushed an errant lock of hair on Rave’s head before the entire man was shot back through the hole Rave made, his eyes bulging as blood shot from his mouth. He crashed through the wall beyond to land on the island in the kitchen. Outside, the blades of green had grown to the height of trees...

... and flash-froze into white. The cryomancer had departed as suddenly as she had arrived, and apparently it was to thwart one half of their distraction. “Well, sh-”

“Did he touch you,” Travolta demanded, his eyes wide with alarm. “Anywhere at all?!”

“What’re you… talking…” Rave’s words trailed off as she felt a sudden weight hanging from her head… and looked up as the tip of her hairs united in a single, gray mass that weighed it down into view.

The table-sized man coughed his laugh as he closed his fist. “Ola gorgon durk.”

Travolta reached for Rave, but the gray was already snapping up and across her hairs on its way to petrify her skull. “Rav-!”

Rave inhaled-

But it was too late; the curse reached down into the roots of her hair.

---

The Knights and Confessors turned in surprise as the steel of the door crumbled and fell in rusting, broken chunks.

Confessor Clover inhaled as he readied to try and control the magisteel inside, ready to pounce upon and punish the insolent warlock-

You cast Move on the warhammer!

The cracked head of Moira’s warhammer shot out through the first gap in the door and blasted into the elderly man’s face.

The warhammer deals 94 damage to Confessor!
Confessor has been knocked ****!
Confessor is dying!

The slack-jawed elder crumbled to the ground as his partner watched in horror.

“Don’t suppose you know how to use this magisteel stuff too, do you?”

Fright turned to fury as he prepared a glowing lasso-

”Guess it’s all for me.” The Knights readied for his charge for naught; the first tendril of magisteel shot past them to bludgeon the remaining Confessor.

---

“Sir, the warlock has the Warden hostage and… and he’s taking out- sir, he’s knocked out all the Knights already down there!”

“Blow the tunnel,” commanded Sir Huey, “before he gets out.”

“S-Sir?! But the Warden-!”

Sir Huey grimaced. “I’m not happy with it either… but she’s no more rescued while we’re stretched thin than if we can deal with one problem at a time. Now blow that tunnel!”

The young Knight was horrified by the premise of sealing her in with that man. “But what if he tries to… to-!”

“If he was going to, then he would’ve already,” she angrily muttered, “so obey my orders and BLOW THE TUNNEL!”

---

John slammed on the control panel, revealing a more well-dressed Galley: white pajama pants with pink roses and a shirt in the same style with the words “THE LADY RESTS” emblazoned across her heavy chest.

John blinked up at her… and slowly drifted his eyes down-

“This doesn’t leave this dungeon,” Galley flatly declared.

“Damn it, John,” Moira cried out from the abandoned cell, “come back-!”

Despite the security hazard, the warlock’s recapture justified the placement of plastic explosives all along the rocky ceiling of the tunnel leading to the elevators. Each beeped once and exploded in unison, collapsing rocks and debris into the tunnel while the floor of the level above remained preserved by spells. The tunnel filled with massive boulders and debris until it was completely plugged, sending a wave of dust clouds into the dungeon proper.

John watched with irritation as smaller rocks and clouds bounced or rolled into view. “Well… glad they didn’t have that earlier.”

“Geez… well, at least you’re 1 for 3 on rescues.”

John tsked at the tall woman before moving on to the room across from hers. The door slid open… and squatting in her pool, clearly terrified by the racket and alarms, was the fish-girl named Deanna. John dropped all pretense. “C’mon, we’re leaving!”

“W-With my father’s permission?”

“Oh for Christ’s- sorry, but as much as I wish I could just dump the memory into your brain, I’m really not comfortable doing that to you as my first try.”

“W… What-?”

“Forget the Order for today, and I promise I’ll show you the world outside and explain everything!”

“What? N-No! Father works for the Order, and it makes him happy… why are you trying to make me-?”

John marched three steps into the chamber… and the girl dove backwards, her eyes full of fright. John’s hand was stretched out to grab her when he finally snapped out of his hasty anger… and realized the look of it: him, still stark-naked, charging this girl in her bedroom as she feared him. He slowly lowered his hand as shame washed over him. Whatever the Order deserved, whatever humiliation his enemies had earned… this girl was just another victim. “I’ll come back and save you.”

“F-From what?”

John’s frown deepened. “Everything you love, I guess.”

Deanna stared dumbfounded as the strange man left her room.

Galley stared at the Gamer with a spark of anger in her eyes. “Are you going to explain that?”

John nodded. “Later, absolutely. For now, we need to focus on escape… and I’ve got a bad feeling that they’ve closed that route off.”

A minute later, they had confirmed as much: huge chunks of stone were now packed together in what was once a long and rocky tunnel leading out. There were no other Knights on the level: they had all been knocked **** by John’s attacks, leaving them alone with…

“We need help moving these,” John finally surmised, “especially since my Move spell would still struggle with some of these rocks.”

“No,” Galley flatly declared before she moved forward to pull on a stone twice the size of a child. It budged, and eventually she managed to roll it away… but plenty larger remained, and it would take at least a half-hour for them to get it done alone. “I said no,” she repeated as she watched him glance at the nearest prison doors.

“It’s fine. I’ll make sure we can trust them.”

“You don’t even know what’s down here- Hell, I don’t even know, but it’s got to be pretty bad-“

"Like us?"

Galley grunted as she continued to try and move boulders and debris in silence.

John began his recruitment drive.

---

Tricia’s composure slowly returned. The four continued to stare at one another, unmoving, for thick seconds and rounds of the screaming warnings overhead. Blood continued to drip from the naked, oddly elongated body of Kim Moon; Laksha Singh, the Warden of the Spear, continued to look at both monstrosities as she tried to divine who needed to die first. Tricia’s body remained covered in a variety of Eyes, each one waiting for a command. Tricia was still unsure of which to give… but she knew her hesitation could mean a difference here for the man she had trained to save.

Laksha was the first to speak. “Kim Moon, is it? You’re... and I don’t mean to be rude, but you’re rotten... damaged.” Laksha struggled to suggest what she sensed: barely a sliver of evil in the bloodsoaked monster before her, but how…?

Kim Moon did not answer, save with a flexing of her legs as she readied to pounce-

“FIRE IN THE HOLE!” Laksha turned in surprise. Kim hadn’t even managed to turn, her focus too keen on the Gorbachev before her. The Knight who cried out, the brash and eager Sir Jerome Lincoln, swiveled into view, a four-missile rocket launcher resting on his broad shoulder. With no other warning, he pulled the trigger. Laksha dove backwards and upwards, clearing the missile paths as one, two, three, and four all shot out in rapid succession. The errant missiles flew in a spiral of smoke trails as their paths wove together to fly directly towards Kim… who promptly flattened her body against the blood-soaked bars, dodging out of the way of the payload and letting it fly towards Tricia and Greenpaw. Each missile had a payload sufficient to ruin a modern tank and, in this case, obliterate a human-sized enemy-

Tricia said nothing… and four Eyes, each one a cut jewel of black with a blue light in every facet, stared the missiles down. The chemical reactions ceased. Their flight paths became erroneous. The grime upon them from storage and oiling faded. Each missile continued its journey until, in a trembling and united dance, they began to fall to the floor… and fell apart on impact. Every chemical infused into each explosive had been parted to its basic elements; the steel of the shells had become a dusty mixture of iron and carbon that puffed uselessly against the ground; the various components, alloys and plastics controlling the missiles had been reduced to petroleum, gold, and bits of other minerals.

Kim and Laksha blinked in surprise.

Tricia stared back with an intense resolve. “Greenpaw: go down and communicate what you encounter to John.” The rabbit warrior nodded hesitantly; he didn’t want to leave her with these obvious threats, but his standing orders did not allow him to question hers. He left her to speed down the staircase as planned and described by John on their way here.

The closed Eye on her forehead cycled another eyelid. “I’m going to take John home… and you’re not going to stop me.”

“I will not let you infect him,” Kim hoarsely whispered.

Tricia narrowed her eyes, confused-

Laksha reared her spear back. Kim rapidly climbed the bars sideways towards her prey… and leapt up the bars as the spear passed her, barely missing her side. Kim looked into the cage where Laksha, appearing in a burst of rose petals to intercept her own weapon, now stood. Once turned around, she took a stab at Kim through the bars; the creature dodged only enough to be sliced alongside her waist. Enraged, Kim thrusted an arm into the cage; Laksha stood just out of arm’s reach and battered the hand with a staff blow that might’ve shattered a normal limb. Kim leapt away from the cage, earning another spear-throw to meet her on her landing; the Slayer kicked the ceiling to accelerate her descent, dodging the spear again only to have Laksha reappear standing over her, the spear spinning in her grip to stab down into the Slayer’s gut.

Kim couldn’t hit the floor fast enough… and so was helped there by the ornate, jagged spear tip sunken through her belly and spine. Kim howled in agony… and gripped the spear with her arms fully extended. Laksha watched, wide-eyed, as the Slayer finished running the spear through herself by pulling herself up. Blood and bits of critical bones hit the ground as the naked creature took hold of Laksha’s left arm.

“But I-!” Laksha didn’t have time to be curious about anatomy; she let her spear go and twisted her body to punch the Slayer’s mad grin to pieces. The Warden’s arm began to swell under the crushing pressure of the Slayer’s grip-!

Kim’s body flushed her muscles into her left arm… and slammed an open palm into the Warden’s chest.

The armor exploded off the half-Indian warrior’s torso as **** sufficient to liquidate a normal man blasted her into the stairs where Knights were now attempting to descend.

Kim, with a hideous wound gaping through her center, let the spear fall from her body as she turned to continue her confrontation of the real threat... just as the ceiling threatened to collapse on top of her. No-! The Gorbachev’s destructive Eyes had cut fissures into the ceiling until the newly loosened stone was ready to collase upon most of the prison. Kim’s body rushed at mad speed as she ducked beneath the falling debris, **** to dismember the Outsider in their midsts. Her legs surged as the rest of her body turned skeletal save for those wild, murderous eyes. Tricia opened the Eye of Papaios-

The ceiling crushed the remains of the slain guards as it fell. Kim’s hand sliced trails of her fingertips across Tricia’s belly, shattering her suit’s carbon nanotube matrix with one blow; the latter’s existence was all that kept Tricia whole. Kim looked up, wide-eyed, at the golden iris that stared back from Tricia’s quivering chest. The Gorbachev swore and struggled not to cry out… and to focus instead on the emotions powering this special, horrible Eye: pride and envy, want and greed. The Slayer’s eyes grew vacant… and her shattered body, no longer occupied, fell to the ground.

The soul retreated into Tricia… and a single touch of that twisted thing repelled Tricia until fear and disgust overrode all of her training. The Eye shut closed but not before winking loose the spirit it had wrenched from the body before her. Kim’s body convulsed as her eyes grew alive again… but she remained prone. She looked up, moving only her eyes as she stared up at Tricia. “You… Y-You-!”

“I’m sorry- oh God, what happened to- I’m so sorry, you were going to kill me,” Tricia sobbed, more from what she saw than from the wounds her suit covered and now slowly healed shut, “I had to stop you, but John didn’t want anyone to die and-”

“You d… don’t know,” Kim managed, her eyes trembling in an unreadable mixture of emotions. “Y… You think you’re…”

Tricia looked at the collapsed prison room beyond them. She looked sideways to the elevator room where Greenpaw had already begun his search of the lower levels. She didn’t have time to feel guilty… nor could she afford helping this woman survive her wounds. Whatever had kept the Slayer animated without an intact spine before was no longer in play.

But Tricia knew this woman wanted John… was she an ally, then? It seemed impossible… but given the Order’s actions, Tricia couldn’t risk leaving this one to die. Tricia placed a hand over the gaping wound and sealed all the gashes on the surface of her unknown classmate… but stopped short of restoring her nervous system. “I’ll heal you fully once we’re ready to leave,” Tricia offered, “and once John can get us somewhere safe.”

“Kill yourself.”

Tricia furrowed her brow as her only response.

“Please… if you really care about any of us… kill yourself… now…” Kim fell quiet as pain and disorder finally rendered her ****.

Tricia shook her head. She needed to hurry: that woman, almost sure to be the Warden of the Spear that Tricia knew by description, seemed exceedingly strong. Along with the aid of the Knights, she likely only bought minutes with-

A hole exploded in the rocks… and the Spear of the Golden Rose cut neatly through the bricks of the opposing wall. Tricia glanced over just in time to see the last rose petals fading from Laksha’s teleport. The spear would have had to cut through several meters of stone... but Tricia had a poor window of time to contemplate the physics of what had gotten it through. The naked Warden withdrew the spear from the stone and looked down at the kneeling Gorbachev.

“You know, love, you I don’t have any reason to kill,” Laksha offered, “so be a dear, would you?”

---

Travolta stared, wide-eyed, as Rave’s head of hair, now fully made of stone, fell to the floor… and shattered.

Donald Brier, the mass of man who now got up from the kitchen counter, looked on to admire his work… and fell still.

Rave’s body remained of flesh… save her head, which had been replaced by a golden, glowing silhouette of light. As soon as it had appeared, however, it vanished, replaced now with a gasping, bulging-eyed Rave… now bereft of her token haircut. She didn’t have time to consider something as miniscule as hair follicle depths; she had to survive. She’d remind herself of that every time she slapped herself in the mirror.

Rave was bald. Travolta cleared his throat. “If you even fucking try,” Rave started.

“Yeah, let’s see if we can live long enough for karma,” replied the former Baldy.

“You won’t,” grumbled the massive mage.

“He’s a Gorgon Disciple: a specialist for the Apothecary who also works for the Order. He helps reverse people suffering petrification, paralysis, and other curses… because he’s trained to do them all himself.”

“And he works for the Apothecary?”

“He doubles as part of their collections department.”

“… That makes sense.”

“Honored, Travolta,” Donald offered, “though I have to say, your next visit is going to be pretty awkward, given the bounty the Order’ll put on your head now.”

“For what? Some property damage and spite?”

“And a Lightbearer who can transmute into her element! When they see what she was capable of…” Donald whistled for emphasis as he raised his hands.

Rave swung her disco ball back. “HADOKEN!” Rave yelled.

“Hadowha-?” The mirror orb jettisoned across the gap as single mirrors set off their contained power for extra velocity… leaving the dozens in the front to slam into the old mage’s face as dozens of Rave’s fists. His hood exploded into rags, revealing his furious, stone-marred face: a twisted, dwarf-like head, his nose a broken piece of stone, his left cheek a sheet of gray, and a beard and balding head of hair that mixed locks of white with strands of gray, lifeless rock protruding from dead pores.

His green, glowing eyes added to his monstrous appearance as he grabbed hold of the ball and, with a screech, poured his magic into it. “Ola gorgon durk!” He waited… and cursed in another tongue. “What kind of enchantments does this stupid thing have?!”

Rave tsked. “Let me show you.” She released all the **** left in the mirror ball, sending it rebounding back to her… after breaking the meaty fingers that once held it. Donald howled as she scooped the device into the loop of her arm. “So we can’t touch him, and we’re both pretty much strikers,” she whined to Travolta, “so any plans?”

“You idiots,” the wounded mage howled with his giant, bellowing mouth as he grasped a shard of marble from the counter, “you’ve got no idea of how fucked you are if you keep-!”

Thwip.

A crossbow bolt sunk into the man’s tongue. He paused with a small, pitiable squeak. Rave and Travolta blinked. Alysha held the crossbow aloft just behind them, already returned from her hunt on the second floor. “It seemed the least lethal soft spot left on him,” the dark elf calmly explained.

Quietly, the Gorgon Disciple slumped backwards, resting again on the shattered kitchen island. The kitchen doors opened anew as the cryomancer appeared, clearly perturbed-

Thwip.

The cryomancer slumped to the ground, the bolt sticking out of her shoulder.

Rave sighed with irritation. “You know, we totally had them both.”

“In the way that a warrior with broken legs can still dance… yes.” Alysha’s eyes narrowed again.

Thwip.

The crossbow bolt stuck between the calloused fingers of Alysha’s target. Rave and Travolta both stiffened at the sight of him: the shirtless, singed, and one-armed man walked in from the courtyard with **** in his eyes. “You are not welcome in my home,” he calmly explained, “but since you are here… which one of you is ‘Rave’?”

The three stared at the man in brief silence… until Alysha finally replied, “The bald one.”

---

Fairy sighed as she rested on the spine of the house, bored of misleading and tormenting the idiot Knights who continued to search for her… and she remained so only briefly as she more felt than saw her trap barrier be breached. Who the fuck among these knuckle-dragging cuck-knights could manage-?! Fairy looked to where the breach had occurred… and watched two people who were obviously not Knights calmly escape.