Alex’s eyes snapped back open. He was mildly relieved to find that he was still slung over Claire’s shoulder like a sack of potatoes. The scent of blood lingered in the air to mark the signs of what must have been a fairly recent fight.

He didn’t say anything immediately, instead focusing to see if he could hear the sounds of fighting or talking. They were, after all, in the Mirrorlands. There was always a pretty high chance that something too powerful to fight had showed up and Claire was hiding.

“What do we do?” Wess asked. “I want to get in there already!”

“We wait,” Claire replied. She shifted her weight slightly. “Alex seems to be enjoying his position at the moment. Give him a bit.”

Alex coughed. He slipped off Claire’s shoulder, landing on the ground as faint tingles rushed up his legs. They’d fallen asleep in the time he’d been off in his soul. Alex shook them off, then cleared his throat.

“No shame in it,” Wess said. The man gave him a thumbs up. “I’ve never been one to get bounced around, but I can see the appeal. Seems fun.”

“I was making sure we weren’t getting hunted,” Alex grumbled. His tuxedo had gotten ruffled during his little trip on Claire’s shoulder. He smoothed the magical material back out and it straightened perfectly, as if it had never even had so much as a single wrinkle within it.

They were still, unsurprisingly, in the Mirrorlands — but not in the same room that they had been when Alex had slipped into his Mind Palace. This one was larger. Much larger. It was a large, doming roof that rose far above.

Cracks riddled the ceiling to grant jagged windows up into the churning red-purple skies of the Mirrorlands far above. Distant power crackled and hissed as the occasional flash of a portal snapping open and closed penetrated through the hazy air from the distance.

Alex’s eyebrows rose as he let his gaze drift to the ground around them. Monsters were strewn across it, torn to shreds and slaughtered. There wasn’t a single living enemy left in the room around them. But, in spite of that, an oily haze shifted through the entire room. It ebbed and flowed like the lap of waves beating against a shore.

“We were busy while you were enjoying your piggy-back ride,” Alyssa said, leaning against her large brush. A weary smile pulled at her lips, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Lots of enemies in this shithole of a world… but we found a boss room. By the way, has anyone ever asked you what was wrong with your class? Because there’s something wrong with it.”

“Once or twice, I think,” Alex said absentmindedly. “Looks like you all survived. Don’t complain. That means you got magical energy. Now I’m behind. I’ll have to make up for that.”

“I think you’ve gotten enough extras to afford missing out on one or two fights,” Claire said, prodding him in the side. “Eat too much and you’ll get too round for your tuxedo.”

“It’s magic. It’ll make do,” Alex said. His gaze followed the shimmering patch as it twisted across the room. It was oddly hypnotic. Not in the magical way, but in the style of a flowing piece of art that held each position for no more than a brief instant before moving on to the next. “This haze… is it something with powerful magical energy on the other side?”

“That’s what we were thinking,” Claire said. “There were a lot of monsters gathered here. They’re drawn to locations with high magical density where the barrier between worlds is weaker, right? So…”

Alex nodded. “Good thinking. This is very likely a boss room. And given the fact that its moving around so much, there’s a pretty damn good chance that its fighting somebody.”

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

“The coins aren’t activating,” Alyssa observed. Then she grimaced. “Not that I’d imagine they’re going to do much when we’re… what, in an entirely different world? How does this work?”

“Don’t think about it too much,” Alex advised. Alyssa was on their side for the time being, but he had no desire to outline the exact ways in which his class worked to her. She wasn’t exactly a full on ally.

I still need to figure out exactly why the River King is so interested in Alyssa. Her magic is certainly impressive, but he didn’t seem that shallow. He wouldn’t have asked me to keep an eye on her unless there was a really good reason for it.

“So?” Wess asked. “What now? This thing has been moving around quite a bit. We’re pretty sure it’s in combat. Are you going to send us back to the Ancestry so we can drop in and lift this kill off whoever is fighting against it?”

Alex frowned. “I don’t think dropping us right into the middle of the room is the smartest idea. Opening a portal isn’t really all that subtle. We might be able to avoid notice under the din of battle and if its out of the way, but if we go too far, I’d imagine whatever family this is will have some sort of watch set up.”

“Claire said the same thing,” Derek said. He yawned, pushing himself up from where he’d been resting against one of the dead monsters’ bodies. The large man stretched his arms over his head before shaking himself off like a dog. “But lookouts are gonna be lookin’ for things that are coming from the places you put a lookout.”

Everyone stared at him.

“What I think he means to say,” Wess drawled, “is that nobody is going to put a lookout to watch the back wall. It’s a wall. You put the lookouts to watch out for the threats that can come through known entryways. So if you stick one of those portals of yours off somewhere where nobody could come through, the chaos of the fight should be more than enough to disguise our arrival.”

Alex nodded thoughtfully. “That’s a fair enough argument. But we’ll need a pretty good spot. If someone does notice us coming through, we could have trouble. Don’t forget we need to actually survive up until getting the kill on the boss — and then escape.”

“Leave the portal open,” Alyssa said. “That’ll give us a way out.”

“Then the only problem is the surviving bit,” Alex said. “I don’t think running in there and hoping nobody notices is a very good plan. We need to make sure—”

“Fake them out,” Claire said. “We can’t guarantee nobody will notice the portal. But we can definitely draw their attention with something. If we toss something significant enough through the portal, they’ll be focused on that. When they take it out, none of them will have any reason to believe that it was just a distraction. Nobody is going to stick their head into a strange portal in an Ancestry. Not, at least, until the boss is down.”

“That could work,” Alex said with a slow nod. “It would have to be quite the distraction if we want to make sure they’re completely focused on that and not on us as we come pouring out of the portal behind it.”

Alyssa pointed to a bulging outcropping of rock near the edge of the room. “The last portal you made was solid energy. You can’t really see through it. If you put it at the right spot and summon a big enough monster, we could all squeeze in over here while your monster does its thing. The rock would give a pretty decent amount of cover as well. Between whatever you can send in and the actual boss… I bet everyone would be pretty distracted. We could pull it off.”

Alex examined the area she’d pointed out. It wasn’t very large, but there was enough space for them all to duck behind the rock if they crouched. There was no guarantee the stone would be in the exact same place back in the Ancestry, but there was probably something vaguely wall-shaped in the same area.

The plan seemed viable. It would, at least, get them into position to try and steal the kill on the boss. Killing it was a challenge in its own right, but they could deal with it when they got back to the Ancestry.

Getting out of the Mirrorlands and into the boss room without bringing the entirety of whatever Great Family was fighting in this room down on their heads was the primary objective right now. This would probably solve that issue. There was just one small caveat.

“Everything kind of depends on us being able to send something scary enough to draw everyone’s attention through the portal,” Wess pointed out. “Claire seems confident that you’re going to be able to do that, though. Can you?”

A smile crawled across Alex’s lips.

“As a matter of fact, I do have a new monster that I’m eager to test out.”

“Is it going to be enough?” Wess asked. “This thing is going to have to be more than just some random monster. It’s going to have to be scary. And I mean messed up scary. The kind of shit you only see in your nightmares.”

Alex smiled as his hand slipped down to the deck at his side. He pulled free the Derelict Luminary’s gold-trimmed card. “I think I’ve got us covered.”