"Myth? Myth, c'mon get it together please!" I pleaded. I could see glowing lights, and it wasn't the reassuring yellow glow of a torch light, but a bale green glow that never indicated anything good.

  She just kept muttering, and I could feel the increasing pull of energy towards her. It was pulling whatever fresh mana it could out of the air and heating it up. And judging by the heat, this was going to be a big one.

  I had no idea what to do. I tried shouting at her, shaking her, snapping my fingers in front of her face, and nothing was working. I searched my brain for whatever bits of half-remembered lectures had to say about situations like this. Damn me and damn my brain for not paying better attention.

  I suddenly remembered something. Oh, I couldn't. But I sort of wanted to.

  "I'm mostly sorry about this!"

  I turned to Myth, squared up, and slugged her in the face with my gauntleted fist. If a mage can't concentrate, they can't cast a spell. Pain was a great distractor.

  She tumbled to the ground, her rear landing in a puddle of dungeon slime or something, judging by the splash.

  Myth sputtered a bunch of curses at me, and I didn't know the Wood Elf language, but I knew when I was being called all sorts of names.

  "That really hurt, Alta! I think you broke my nose!" She whined at me.

  "And I'm really sorry, mostly! But we need your head in the game!" I pointed down the corridor sternly at the coalescing shapes of our approaching foes. She looked at she got that far away look again, and the trembling started.

  "Alta, I'm-" The coo,l calm attitude she had outside the dungeon was gone. Whatever she had been smoking didn't stave off all her feelings, I guess.

  I couldn't blame her, though. Fighting monsters was a scary thing, and the risk of death was high. Most of my fellow classmates had never even seen a monster. I was a noble, a Sword-Witch at that. My family had been training me since I was young. I killed my first monster, a slime, admittedly, when I was 8. I was like this too. My older sister kept me from running away, but I remembered that fear. I recognized it in Myth's face.

  "I understand Myth, but we have to do this. You stand back, ready any healing spells you can think of, and I'll protect you. Ok?" I took a handkerchief out and wiped the blood off her nose.

  She nodded and I helped her to her feet. She took a deep breath.

  "I can do this! Go get em Alta!" She said with feigned confidence. She'd get there. Probably.

  This, however,r was my time to shine!

  The enemy had gotten closer, but was slowing down. The sounds of some springs and clunks of metal and screams of pain told me that the monsters of this dungeon weren't exempt from the traps, which would thin out their numbers. The most important thing was that the horde of monsters was entirely Dungeon Goblins. Which meant this was going to be easier than I thought.

  Dungeon Goblins, also called False Goblins, were beings born of the dungeons and resembled Goblins, which had a long and vibrant history and had been staunch allies of the Mortal Kingdoms for as far back as recorded history could remember. It is unknown why dungeons would spawn these false goblins with such frequency. They looked like feral versions of their namesakes, thus the name, and even spoke what sounded like the Goblin language, but translators found it all to be gibberish.

  They weren't strong or very smart, but they made up for that in numbers. This case was also true. They were basically falling over each to reach us and no doubt bite us to death. They were awfully bitey things.

  I had approximately 30 seconds till they were on us. I couldn't let them get too close to keep Myth from being in danger. So that left out a lot of powerful spells. The narrow corridor didn't help any either. So instead of offense-

  I held out my hand and spoke the incantation,

  "Shield this Maiden from Sword and Stone, let only my blade pierce and shatter bone!" I felt the energy rush into me and out through my hand, and in front of me was a luminous transparent wall that the horde of goblins immediately collided with. I could see their weight push against it, and knew I had to hurry.

  I held my blade in front of me and began stabbing like a mad woman, my blade piercing the wall into the flesh of the goblins. I may have had more experience than Myth with all this, but I had to admit, I didn't care for all the monster slaying. It was the fluids mostly. Why did it have to sound so gross?!

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  I could feel my wall hitting its limit, and while the goblin horde had thinned out some, it was still too much, and I was getting tired. I had to think of something else.

  I heard Myth shout something behind me, and I felt warmth wash over me, and the ache from my muscles receded. A stamina boost spell! Thank goodness, she hadn't frozen back up.

  Still, the wall wasn't going to hold up. Time to try a different attack.

  I held my sword before me and focused. "Sword of Steel and Burning Heat, Light the Flames of Their Defeat!" I ran two fingers up the length of it, a magical blue fire following in the wake of my touch. After it was engulfed in flame, I advanced.

  Fighting in corridors with a sword wasn't ideal, as I couldn't get much strength behind a swipe, and often had to resort to stabbing, which meant I could only dispatch one foe at a time. The main draw of using a flaming sword in this situation was to make the enemy flinch back.

  Often you'd have archers or mages shooting over your shoulder in situations like this, but I'd rather have Myth focusing on healing and boosting me. And she was doing a good job of it I had to admit.

  Almost a soon as any goblin teeth or claws made contact with me, it was healed. Every time I started to waver I perked up again. Despite all her flaws and terrible taste in smoking habits, she was a fine healer once she got her head in the game.

  The battle had settled into a comfortable rhythm, and after a few tense minutes the Dungeon Goblins had been defeated, and I was covered head to toe in viscera and everything stank to the high heavens. I wanted to sit down, but the idea of sitting in the deep morass of blood wasn't the most appealing prospect.

  I slumped against the wall instead and breathed deeply despite the miasma of the bodies and watched. Myth joined me against the wall, popping a potion and swigging it down, her face blanching at the taste. Mana potions were disgusting things, but a necessary evil.

  Soon, I saw what I hoped to see. The bodies of the goblins began to liquify, and their ooze seeped into the stone, including blood splatters on the floor. Little tendrils of faint light even pulled some of the blood off my clothes and armor. Dungeons always recycled the corpses of the monsters that they spawned. It was unknown where it all went, but it inevitably was reabsorbed by the dungeon to be used again later.

  We sat there in silence for a bit, catching our breaths and sharing a potion between the two of us.

  "I'm sorry about that, Alta. I can't believe I did that!" Myth broke the silence. It was strange to see her expression, one of shame and sadness. As long as I had known her, she maintained either an expression of detachment or at most faint bemusement when whatever it was she smoked hit her system.

  "I'll be honest, I wasn't surprised. You've never seen a real monster before, have you?" I asked as I started to wipe some of the monster slime off my armor.

  "I figured I could handle it. We had the practice dungeons, and I was fine."

  "You knew they weren't real. Simulated danger is easy to handle. Even simulated pain. But they can't recreate the whole thing. Its a lot for your brain to take in. Darkness, stink, danger, fear, the strange mana of a dungeon, it can be overwhelming. Everyone has three reactions when that happens. They run, they fight, or they freeze up." I explained as best I could.

  I found myself wanting to snap at her and give her a good dressing down. Like my sister did with my first time fighting monsters. She shouted at me till I cried. And then shouted at me for crying.

  No one deserved that, even in situations like this. I steadied my emotions. Myth annoyed me at the best of times, but even a grudging comrade deserved respect.

  We sat in the dark, lit only by spells, in silence some more.

  "You mentioned once that you've fought monsters before. Was it scary for you the first time too?" She asked, looking directly in my eyes.

  "Absolutely not. I've never been scared in my life of a monster." I lied. Myth gave a little smile that showed she saw right through my facade.

  "Sure. I getcha. Any tips for a scaredy cat like myself?" She chuckled as she said it. I couldn't help but smile.

  "Its all chaos, so just focus on what you can do, and hope your allies can back you up. If you can't believe in yourself, believe in them till you can believe in yourself. Half of fighting dungeon monsters is confidence. The other half is violence." I patted her on the shoulder.

  "I guess its a good thing we found out what happens when I get scared, huh? Plan around it for the future." She looked sad again.

  "That's the best way to look at it, I think. Plan for the future. Don't let this hold you back." I tried my best to be encouraging.

  "We should probably get going, huh? I think there's a time limit on this assignment." She said, looking at a timepiece she fished out of a pouch.

  I cursed. I had forgotten the time limit. Our professor was a strict harridan, and she would totally mark us down for being even a few minutes late. I looked at my own timepiece and swore again.

  "We're gonna have to make a run for it, Myth! We've got two hours to get this done and back to town!"

  I groaned, thinking about everything we had to do yet. I really should have set an alarm this morning. And skipped coffee. Really, there was a lot of regret to go around today.

  We were still on the first floor, with two more to go! Damn monsters messing with our time table!

  We rushed down the corridors, following the path we had planned out ahead of time. Thankfully, the earlier chaos had caused most of the traps to be tripped, and the dungeon hadn't had time to reconstitute more monsters to slow us down. We ignored all the treasures in exchange for cutting precious minutes off our time.

  We turned the corner and found the last thing we expected.

  "Isn't there supposed to be a set of stairs here?" Myth voiced the question on both our minds. She grabbed her copy of the map, and I did as well. We looked at it, and both of us felt dread growing in our guts.

  "Yes. Yes, there is. What in the hells is going on here?" I scowled and glared at the wall. This whole trip was conspiring to really piss me off.

  I punched the offending wall and fell right through it.