The crimson source of all life flowed off Graves's body like a river. His broad shoulders hefted violently with each uneven breath as he stood atop the corpse of a monster twice his size. The damned ogre had come out of nowhere. It came up through the floor of all places. Graves and his allies were caught off guard by the swift and brutal ambush. Two burrowed giants, one from either side, and a murder of goblin marksmen coming at them from above. A classic killbox if Graves had ever seen one; problem was, Graves had never seen monsters employ this kinda strategy in Pariah. He was lucky his party wasn't full of complete hacks, or they'd probably be reviving half the back line instead of reveling in their victory.

"Everbody alright?" The Blood Knight's gravely rose rose just enough to echo to the back of the party.

With panted breaths, Graves placed both hands upon the hilt of his pike. He hefted up, his vein-covered forearms straining to rip the ax blade free from the dead ogre's shattered skull. Flicking the brain matter off the edge of his pole arm, their half giant of a tank turned around to address Rael. Graves was still coming off the high of combat, and needed to take a moment to calm himself before responding to her concerns. As always, the off tank had worn a wicked grin all throughout the encounter, his berserker screams only ever broken up by the need to shout commands at his incompetent backliners when something went awry.

"Yeah, you were right." Graves agreed, running a hand over his chest in a mostly vain attempt to wipe the blood from his bare abdomen. Most of it belonged to the ogre he'd slaughtered, but the Knight had suffered a fair few blows during the exchange. Arrows still stuck in his back, and blows from the ogre's huge club had fucked his ribs up royally. "Since when did these stupid bastards get brains?"

It was actually fascinating to the tank how lucky they were nobody went down. A horde of archers from above and two gigantic damage soakers to either side, in a relatively cramped hallway, would've spelled a wipe- or at the very least, causalities- in any other party. Maybe Graves was underestimating the rest of his team too much; though the Blood Knight doubted it was more than blind luck on the part of...some of them.

Graves gave a quick whistle, glancing over his shoulder at Elian. "Yo, elfy. If you'd be so kind as to do your job so we can get a move on, I would be very grateful." The tank's words were dripping with sarcasm; he was loathe to admit the woman had likely contributed a fair bit to the party's survival. She might be an alright healer, he supposed, but even that half assed of a compliment would go straight to the dancer's head. "Everybody else, take a breather. Shit only gets worse from here." He moved away from the front of the party and to the back, hoping his partner tank had things covered for the time being. Graves didn't think the monsters would attack again so soon, but...in this dungeon, one couldn't be too careful.

Once he was beside the much smaller, less intimidating dodge tank, Graves lowered his voice so only she could hear him. "You think there was a ghost patch? Developer tossed in new tactics for all monsters?" The Knight asked Rael, unsure what he thought of the whole thing. "Could be just for this dungeon, too,...which is almost fuckin' worse."

Fighting in tight hallways wasn't exactly an easy task but Sky managed alright. Fire flowed like water around them, swirling in a hot storm. Despite its caster being somewhat lacking in the mental department, the flames adapted quickly to the fighters, cautious not to touch them. The tempest Sky brewed gathered at their feet and flowed upwards with her commands.

Describing the process of creating fire was one she could never quite illustrate but it was like the entire world was her canvas and fire was her paint. Too much in one spot created a mess, too little in another created an imperfection and the fire flew from her control. So while her comrades sweated their way through the killing of the ambushing ogres, Sky painted. Hands drifted, fingers danced and her mind pondered whether goblins were edible or not. She eventually decided that creatures that hid in caves for most of their lives in their own filth would not be a fine snack.

Her body moved of its own accord, dancing between heavy ogre bludgeons and around arrows and despite laughing through most of it, not everything was sunshine and rainbows. It was only when the mobs were dead and her storm had calmed that she noticed a goblin arrow protruding from her right thigh. The heat of her skin had burned off the tail feathers but the head was very much embedded. "Well slap my ass and call me sally, the bastards actually got me." With shaky hands, she removed her hat and silently placed it into her mouth before biting down into the thick material. Reaching down, her hand settled onto the arrow and yanked it out with a fair amount of muted cursing. Fire rippled dangerously away from her and her hair glowed red hot as her hands heated to a white hot heat so as to cauterize the wound. The touch of heat felt a great deal better and she settled back into the wall.

Popping her hat back on she examined the wound. It would leave a nasty scar but Sky was in no way concerned by that. "The fuckers cut my skirt! Do they know how much it costs to have this stitched back together!?" As a small act of revenge, she planted her foot into the side of the nearest ogre which only stubbed her big toe.

Hopping about holding her foot wasn't exactly flattering but neither was calling the ogre's mother a whore. "This shit doesn't usually hurt, what's going on here?" You know things are odd when even Sky has noticed it.

That thought process lasted for a few seconds before it fizzled out into the aether and she set her eyes on the path ahead of them. "Onwards! There's killing to be done!"

A low, almost breathless sigh released itself from Ochre's lips as his gaze lazily surveyed the fallen figure before him, its brutish form unmoving besides the occasional spasm as the runic circle beneath it shone dimly with yellow, arcane light. Small, almost imperceptible sparks ran across the paralyzed orc, its eyes open yet unseeing without the breath of life fueling their gaze. The blacksmith's blade gleamed with each tiny arc of light that spread across the corpse, the blood dripping from its tip the same hue as the liquid flowing from a single, deep crevice across the beast's throat. As the magical trap slowly faded from the dungeon floor, its power fading without constant stimulus from its creator, the young man half-heartedly flicked his sword to the side as loose droplet of crimson removed themselves with the motion.

Honestly, they should have expected the dungeon to be full of tricks and mysteries, seeing that most if not all of the adventurers here have at least dipped their toes into a dungeon's depths before. It's what their known for after all, besides the loot that is known to lay within their expanses, as well as the monsters that protect them. But none of them were quite ready for a surprise attack from the floor of all things, especially from the normally intrepid orcs that had gained a reputation for their lack of intelligence.

Tilting his head slightly to glance at his nearby allies, he couldn't help but give one of the fighters that helped him out a slow nod of thanks, the bronze armor that he chose to enter the dungeon with creaking as the bottom of the helmet scraped the chest plate beneath it. Besides the orc he had defeated on his own, there were three others of the kind that had ambushed the small section that he occupied. Thankfully, the others of the party were capable of picking up his slack before he was able to set down a few traps, aiding another in defeating their foe. With that done, his sword was nonchalantly returned to its scabbard while a smaller, more versatile carving knife came into the grip of his free hand.

And so, the blacksmith took it upon himself to begin to loot the bodies around them. Not for gold, nor equipment, but materials. Removing teeth, skinning the orcs' tough hide, anything that the body could provide for his work. Of course, the damage wrought by his allies had most certainly reduced the amount of quality items, but he had at least one, mostly intact body to scavenge from. Enraptured into his meticulous, methodical work, Ochre ignored the sounds of disgust coming from the closest of the party, as well as the yelling coming from two loudest nuisances a dozen feet away. They really didn't have to shout, they were in an enclosed space.

It wasn't clean, his efforts, but it wasn't a job most took to doing, anyway. It saved the hassle of needing to bargain in market places for good deals in leather, bone, and the like, as well as having the pleasant side effect of being around the same quality after a bit of refinement. After picking his own orc clean, he slowly moved to the next, content in his slow, yet steady drudgery until the party began to move again. It was much less troublesome than talking to another person, anyway, and with how practiced he was the energy-efficiency outweighed conversation as well.

Elian didn't know what was going on, but she wasn't sure she liked it. Okay, it was nice to see the AI taking a bit of initiative -- one didn't usually encounter that sort of trap /inside/ a dungeon, after all, and not with a full room below it like some sort of shortcut. And yeah, for once the place wasn't laid out like it had been designed for the purpose of beating. But man, something was just wrong and it bothered her. Maybe it was how her partymates were actually hurting -- that was new, and it didn't seem to have a good reason. Yeah, yeah, realism was /great/ but there was a limit to what people wanted in a game. If things hurt as bad as irl, suddenly danger became a lot less exciting, and adventuring less fun.

Maybe it was her picking up on the others' unease -- she wasn't the only one who had noticed the subtle change, and not everyone liked it. Maybe it was that she'd barely gotten everyone through that ambush, and she was frustrated with herself.

"I've been doing my job, or you'd be flat on your fishy face," she shot back to Graves. "Unlike those of us who just flail away at whatever's in front of them, my job requires finesse and balance." Still, she was already midcast, directing her magic toward those with injuries with a flourish of fans.

Red's crack about her skirt got a laugh, and Elian could feel herself relaxing. Whatever it was, they'd handle it. And while things hurt more than usual, it wasn't really /painful/. "Looks like the programmers finally gave the mooks a bit of creativity," she said, smiling. "So stay sharp, everyone. I don't care to be patching y'all up more than I already have to."

Landon gave a gamely grin from his position nearer the middle of the group as he replied, "Believe me, Elly, I don't want to have to be bandaged up any more than you have to, either!" Then he winked after he raised his goggles off of his eyes onto his forehead. "Though you're welcome to lay hands on me anytime!"

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Mirage smirking at his remark as she finished rearranging her gear. Good, she thinks it's funny and not scuzzy, thought Landon to himself with just a touch of guilt. At least she has a good sense of humor...and excellent aim. It had been thanks to Mirage's fast reaction to the goblin archers that had saved Landon from getting more hurt than he might otherwise have been; she had nailed one of the archers with a shot just as it loosed an arrow at him, and it threw off the arrow enough so that it only grazed his ear instead of piercing his head. That had been close! Far too close for comfort, and Landon had angrily snapped off an explosive bolt from his wrist-mounted crossbow that knocked a few of the archers off their feet and threw them off-balance long enough for the party to regroup and protect themselves more readily from the ranged attackers.

Landon remembered the brief but intense sensation of friction as the arrow had skidded past his ear, and the pain had brought tears to his eyes as well as caused him to drop the cigarette from his lips in surprise. That hurt! He'd been in some groups that hadn't been as good, and gotten damaged plenty from all kinds of attacks, but this was the first time in Pariah that he could remember the pain feeling so utterly real. He actually contemplated whether or not he'd wake up in the real world with an actual skid mark on his ear.

Mirage had been the only one close enough to notice the startled jump he had made when he had been grazed, but she hadn't remarked yet. She had been awfully quiet, in fact, since the earlier incident with Graves; Landon guessed that the archer was still feeling self-conscious from what had happened. But he liked that she was handling it gracefully, not letting it interfere with her work in the dungeon, even though she had been badly shaken by the extreme overreaction from Graves.

In a low voice, he said in a more serious tone to Mirage, "Thanks for th' save earlier." And he smiled at her, and she smiled back, and that sent a little shiver of delight up his spine. Nice smile, he thought as he turned to his own gear, where he rearranged which bolts he had at hand in his quiver. He'd have to be smarter for the next round, and he couldn't rely on pretty women to save his backside forever - no matter how motivating his rear could be!

---

Ailanthus_Altissima breathed a sigh of relief and started analyzing the surroundings. So this kind of terrain is also good for an ambush, especially if enemies pop up out of the ground now. After finishing her mental note, she scoped out the party. It seemed Ochre knew at least one of the members and had dragged her in at the last minute. before they could properly get acquainted or even properly get into position the attack had occurred. Though Tessa hadn't been in the optimum position, the front had held its own, and Tessa had been able given enough time to set up her 'fortress' playstyle, throwing out her web of magic-channeling chains and creating a deadzone that protected herself an any allies that happened to be in her bubble with her. She tried to pretend she didn't recognize Landon, and hoped he wouldn't recognize her, though neither her armor nor playstyle had changed since they last met. there also seemed to be bickering between the party members, suggesting that this party had been thrown together, rather than be a dedicated group of friends. This was worrisome, especially with the new knowledge of changed monster behavior.

Following Ochre's lead, Tessa retracted her chains and began kicking around any goblin mages that had been downed, yanking magic crystals from the sockets of their staves and wands, crystals that she would later refine into powder. She was just here to collect materials, and maybe get a few enchanting commissions from this lot. She wasn't going to praise anyone for their performance in the battle, nor did she expect any in return. She wasn't friendly to parties who were friends, let alone a party that seemed ready to tear itself apart at any moment.

Graves didn't know how he felt about Rael's little theory. If this dungeon was just the beginning of another tier of monsters, with more intelligent AI and actual tactics, what did that mean about the rest of the game's difficulty? Would there be more dungeons like this one? The playerbase would need to adjust their expectations on how monsters should fight every time they approached certain raids. If they couldn't adapt, as their current ragtag team had somehow managed to, they'd die. 'Pariah was gettin' a lil' too easy anyway.'

"Good idea. You and flower boy can take up the rear. I'll keep covering the front. We should keep close regardless. Both flanks need 'ta be able to cover each other when shit inevitably hits the fan again. Oh, and don't...don't call us 'wayfarers.' Makes you sound gay as hell. Just call us players." Graves wasn't a fan of the original plan to keep themselves split into two fireteams anyway. It left them exposed and weakened. Splitting up was never a particularly bright idea in a dungeon; and now that the monsters were using ambush tactics, the danger was multiplied several times over. "Yo, Orchid!" The Blood Knight shouted, turning to Ochre. The craftsman was going through the rather disgusting process of picking apart the corpses for materials. Graves grimaced at the sight, but he didn't comment on it. "I want you in the back with the little girl. Keep our rear covered. You think you can handle that, flower boy?"

The team's resident pyromaniac and psychopath might've gotten on Graves' nerves to the point where he wanted to wring her neck, but she had a point...for once in her life. They shouldn't be feeling pain. Not with the same intensity that followed when Graves was struck by a goblin's arrow earlier, anyway. It was certainly cause for concern. The tank had reacted violently to the sensation. It was...alarming, to feel the barbs strike him and lacerate his flesh. Graves didn't fight like the other tanks. Rael was swift enough to avoid most blows. Ochre and Vulcan wore armor that protected them from harm. Graves? His power to survive came from magical potions. He regenerated his wounds by bleeding his enemies. Graves was exposed to every crushing hit of a club, and every biting stab from a blade or arrowhead. He was a tough son of a bitch, but not that tough.

Graves would be damned if he complained and showed weakness to the rest of these maggots, though. He tore the barbs from his back, blood spurting out. Each broken arrow brought an angry curse to Graves's lips, and a grimace to his face. He cleared his naked flesh of the arrows, allowing their resident healer to scar over the wounds. Everyone was shrugging off the passive magic of the dungeon like it was nothing. Graves remained silent on the subject, though he bore an increasingly sour disposition- nothing unusual for the hardened man. 'Easy for you all to say when you're barely getting hit.' He thought to himself with no small amount of contempt for how easily his party members were shrugging off this awful new sensation. The old system never hurt this much.

"Alright. We've spent enough time jerking ourselves off here. Let's fuckin' move out." The crass tank ordered. If they actually followed or not, Graves didn't much care. He took his pike in his fist and started back down the dark halls of the dungeon anyway, even if he was going alone. They would follow; that's how they worked. All it took was a little bit of yelling and some physical prompting, and Graves could get anyone moving along.

As the fighting died down, Tiferet lowered her fiddle, adrenaline making her breathe heavily. At first, she just focused on getting her breath back and checking herself for injuries. Fortunately, she didn't have any serious ones; she had been solidly in the middle of the group, wishing that she could play her fiddle to pass the time without it attracting monsters. Of course, at that point, monsters had appeared. They hadn't walked around a corner or anything, though; they had come from the floor. Only a combination of quick thinking and being near Graves had saved her from becoming mincemeat, and after that point she had stayed as far away as she could while still making sure everyone was within range of her buffs. Tiferet grimaced as she found a small wound in her side. Seemed like one of those little goblin shits on the balcony managed to nick her. Oh well, it wasn't anything debilitating. As she looked up from her injury, she overheard Rael's comment about "passive magics", and a smirk crossed her face.

"Yeah, or maybe we're all trapped in Pariah now, doomed to become ghosts eternally haunting the system!"

For the latter half of her little joke, Tiferet put on a voice like she was telling a ghost story around a campfire, and waggled her fingers in the air. She laughed a bit at her own joke, then continued a bit more seriously.

"Maybe it's some kinda special Halloween event? Jumpscares and a bit of real pain sounds like the sort of thing they might pull."

She stretched (and winced a bit; that damn cut was in exactly the wrong place) and continued, "I hope they keep the whole 'enemies are smarter' thing, though. Makes things less formulaic, y'know? Ha, and maybe they'll add an afterlife to it as well. That'd sure be something."

With that, Tiferet turned to follow Graves down the tunnel, humming quietly to herself. (She'd play her fiddle normally, but she figured it might attract more monsters. Besides, Graves didn't seem like the kind of guy to appreciate a nice song, unless it was helping him fight.)

"Yo, Orchid!"

Ochre averted his gaze from the current cadaver of an orc that he had been skinning, carving knife slack in his dominant hand as he slowly stood up from the half-desecrated corpse. Scarlet liquid painted the front of his bronze armor, drenching the lower half in particular as if he had been wadding in it. His blank, coal stare viewable from the T-shaped slit in his helmet locked with the pikeman's own, a measured nod his only response to Graves' call. The name was one he was quite familiar with, having been called as such each time he and the bloodied soldier met for a dungeon run. It wasn't the worst thing he'd been called, to say the least, since the man was essentially naming him after a varied kind of flora.

Gathering materials from the dungeon orc was... visceral, to say the least. Not that it couldn't be, as it inevitably boiled down to "relieving" a corpse of its natural extremities, but today the act itself seemed... disturbingly authentic for some apparent reason. He couldn't divine the reason from his own musings, except maybe theories upon the cause of it. The same catalyst that had increased the intelligence of the orcs they fought, perhaps? An update that the entire party, strange as it would be considering how many "in the know" members there were, was oblivious of? Once again, he only had theories, but they were all that made sense to him at this moment in time.

"-covered. You think you can handle that, flower boy?" Snapping out of his thought-provoked stupor, the armorsmith blinked his half-lidded eyes before giving the man another slow nod. Honestly, Ochre had no idea what once of the most vocal players had just said, having missed most of what he said as he pondered the strange happenings in the game they were playing. However, he was sure that the task set before him couldn't have been too difficult, nor anything pertaining to a feat needed outside a dungeon's confines. Worst come to worst, he could just go with the flow until someone called him out. Less energy spent than asking, anyway.

With a brief glance at the ruined corpse next to him, the young man deduced that he already had enough materials from the orc to experiment with, and proceeded to roll the body over to cover the mess he had made on the creature's chest and mouth. Of course, it didn't cover the pool of blood that had gathered below the body, as well as the three other carcasses in visually worse states, but the small act should weather the worst of the stomach bug that had recently settled inside him.

"...Well then!" said Landon after a moment - quite a bit louder than necessary - into the shocked and stunned silence that followed the announcement, and he turned on his heel and shoved his way through to the gate that had shut behind them. "You heard the announcement, we need to blow this joint ASAP, and I've got just the stuff right here!"

With practiced ease, Landon shrugged out of his pack and began attaching a variety of explosive devices to the gate. The announcement was still working its way into his brain, but he was keeping himself busy to avoid thinking about it too much. For someone who wanted to live forever, the idea that he could die in this game was the last idea he wanted to contemplate. If it was true, and if he could get back to the real world, he was going to sue this company for so much money...

Before he knew it, he had rigged up a series of detonation charges connected by a dangling fuse that ran through them each one in sequence. The attachable mines would have been useful in traps to set up for the others to kite monsters right into them, but judging by the way the monsters were acting now, he was willing to bet such an obvious trap wasn't going to work this time.

The blonde-haired technician got to his feet and brushed off his hands, then walked swiftly away from the charges. "Everyone back away, fifty paces, hands over your ears and mouths open - helps keep you from going deaf," he barked as he reached the minimum safe distance himself and then took several more steps just to be safe. He cracked his knuckles and adjusted his goggles. "Hey, Red, do me a favor and light the fuse up for me, wouldja? And my cig, too." Landon had just pulled out a cigarette and put it into his mouth, feeling somewhat self-satisfied.

The fire mage complied - perhaps a little too eagerly, but Landon could appreciate a woman enjoying her work - and the explosion seemed to rattle the whole dungeon as smoke blew past Landon, who was just enjoying a pull off of the cigarette as he turned around to see-

The burning white stick fell from his suddenly limp lips and hit the dungeon's stone floor with an unimpressive tap. The smoke cleared, only to reveal that the gate hadn't received a single scratch from any of the explosives. Only scorch marks remained where the explosives had been carefully attached, and the discoloration already seemed to be fading.

"I-Impossible!" stammered Landon as he fell backwards onto his butt, stunned. Of course, this outcome wasn't unforeseen; dungeons had always been notably resistant to damage, most likely to prevent adventurers from merely blasting their way through the traps and monsters by bringing down the walls. But he had desperately wanted this plan to work, and he had guessed that if the monsters were acting more realistically, maybe the dungeon's physics would cooperate better too. No such luck, as it turned out.

And if they couldn't go back...then the only way out would be to beat the dungeon. Or...die trying.

---

Real life...SUCKS.

Being unable to reverse your decisions...SUCKS.

Dying...SUCKS.

Eileen played games more to escape than to have fun. In the past, when she had stuck to console games, she was a regular save-scummer. She needed to be in control. She needed everything to go her way in the most optimal manner. In a way, she's grown away from that, after all, you couldn't exactly hit the reset button in an MMO. But one thing that she never did was play in any "Nightmare" or "Hardcore" mode, never anything where permadeath was a thing. The thought of all her time and effort going to waste because of one, tiny mistake was unthinkable. So maybe the truth of the GM's announcement hadn't fully sunk in yet; Eileen didn't truly feel 'threatened' or that her actual life was in mortal danger, but the thought of losing everything she had worked so hard to achieve, prompted her to preemptively down a mana potion and send out her chains again, activating them for their area of effect spells. She wasn't going to let an ambush get the better of her. And although she did this mainly to protect herself, any party members inside the area were equally as protected. She watched in anticipation as Landon attempted to blast a hole in the door barring their retreat from the dungeon. Eileen kept her mind on the spell that made her other spells discriminate between friend and foe, ready to drop the enchantment should anyone in this party suddenly wish to experiment with player-killing AKA murder. She also kept a close 'eye' on her remaining mana, which was draining at a slow pace as long as she kept up her spells, although instead of a bar, how much remaining mana she had was more of a 'sensation'.

"Ochre?" she said calmly, surprising even herself, "Come here." She didn't know why, but she would feel safer if the people she was familiar with were closer.

@Tergonaut @Xiro Zean

Graves kept to the vanguard of their dungeon party, as was the plan. He acted as the tip of the spear as they descended deeper into the depths of the labyrinth. It was the Blood Knight's duty to keep his eyes peeled for any monsters or traps that would impede their progress onward. Oddly enough, no such obstacles made themselves known, even as they entered a cramped tunnel that would've been perfect for such static defenses. Silently, Graves advanced, tapping the floor and the walls with the tip of his halberd periodically.

'It doesn't make any sense.' The Bounty Hunter thought. 'This is about as perfect a killbox as you can get. But...' He glanced around, eyes shifting to the back of the group where there was a distinctive lack of Orchid beside the little girl. 'Damn ingrate. Didn't even hear me, did he?' With a heavy sigh, the tank returned his attention forward, continuing on, slowly but surely advancing ever further.

'...But there isn't so much as a single trap in here to slow us down.' It was as if all standard dungeon protocol had been purposefully turned on it's head. Monsters were acting with surprising cunning, while tight corridors- usually guaranteed to have at least one to two traps guarding them- were, for the most part, safe. Graves couldn't hear any activity on the other side of the tunnel. It was silent, other than the rhythmic breathing of the person behind him and the tapping of his halberd. The quiet was...unnerving. Graves strained to see what was in front of him in the darkness. He felt sweat formulate along his brow. Was he...nervous? Why? Graves didn't get nervous. It wasn't like him.

"I think I see a room up ahead. Let's-" Graves started, only to cut himself off with a frightened shout.

Suddenly, a painfully vibrant light came before them almost out of nowhere. Graves was forced to look away from the source until his vision adjusted to the quick change. Once he was able to see, the Blood Knight was surprised to see the ghost of one of Pariah's announcers floating in the tight corridor before them. This was a...new development. Things only got stranger as the man's forced smile broke down into a worried frown, and he approached them out of character. Something big must be going down; Pariah prided itself on it's immersive nature. The information he had for them was the closest thing to terrifying Andrew had ever experienced. 'Holy shit. B-brain-dead?'

Andrew felt like he'd just been struck by a freight train. He couldn't explain the numbness that spread through the tips of his fingers. With shaky, uneven breaths he looked back at the rest of the party. They...they were in real danger, now. T-they could die. All it took was their health dropping down to zero, then they'd go...brain-dead. It didn't feel real. This couldn't...be. But it wasn't...it wasn't just a joke. The admin said so outright. Andrew hadn't experienced true terror before. But this. This was pretty damn close. Graves ran a shaky hand through his sweat soaked hair. He gripped the shaft of his halberd tight enough for his knuckles to go white. His every instinct told him to run. But where to? He was trapped. They couldn't log off; he tried to, even though the developer said it couldn't be done. 'Oh God. Okay...shit. Fuck. Keep it together.'

Landon was the first to break the silence. His loud shout drew a brief jump from the towering warrior, much to his shame. Their resident alchemist, who thankfully still had his wits about him, had come up with a quick plan for how they might escape the dungeon before...before it was too late. Graves silently nodded, following along with whatever plan he had. The Blood Knight didn't like being stuck at the back of the group as they backtracked to the front gate. He was constantly glancing over his shoulder, worried more ogres would pop out of the floor to actually kill him at any second. Thankfully they were able to return to the entrance without incident, and Landon went to work strapping every explosive in his arsenal to the threshold that blocked their path to safety and freedom.

At the older man's order, Graves retreated a good number of steps behind him to keep out of the blast zone. Dying to a teammate's controlled explosion sounded a hell of a lot worse than getting jumped by an ogre, or shot to pieces by a horde of goblin archers. Landon oozed confidence in his own plan. He even asked the fire mage to light up his cigarette, too. Graves couldn't help but envy how...calm he managed to be in a crisis. With the blast imminent, the tank placed his hands over his ears and closed his eyes. The ground shook, and the explosion was still eardrum-shatteringly loud. Turning hopeful eyes up toward the gate, Graves was once more struck by a very human feeling of despair. The gate remained. It was barely even scorched, somehow. It didn't work. Players usually couldn't just blow their way through dungeons for...obvious balance reasons. But this- they needed this one to work.

They were well and truly stuck in the dungeon, unable to escape through their original entrance. Trapped within an unknowable labyrinth, surrounded by monsters with wits as sharp as their gleaming blades. Graves rose up from his hiding spot on unsteady legs. He crossed over to where Landon had fallen onto his backside. Reaching down, the tank placed a strong arm beneath the pyrotechnician's arm, helping to lift the man up if he didn't- for some reason- resist the assistance. "You okay?" The Blood Knight asked, concern written all over his typically rough and uncaring visage. He didn't have time to keep up the 'tough guy' act. Not in this situation. Andrew wasn't that stupid. It didn't take a genius to tell that they only had one last option for getting out of there, save sitting around and hoping the administrators found a way to log them off before they were turned into monster chow.

"Hey, uh. Guys?" Graves raised his voice a little, looking around as he tried to get the group's attention for a second. There was a good chance morale was...wavering, after that failed attempt at escape. Everyone was probably feeling about the same way Graves was. He could've kept quiet, but- they couldn't just stand about waiting for the end. Something needed to be done. "Right. So." Graves set his weapon on the floor gently, crossing his arms over his chest. It made him feel just a smidgen more secure. "Obviously...we're probably all not...feeling too good about this." No shit, Sherlock. "However. We can't just sit here moping. We need...a plan. We can't get outta here through the gate, so...As far as I can tell, we have two options. We either set up defensive positions here and hold out until the admins can log us out; if they even can. Or..." Graves sighed, glancing around at the rest of them. The control mage with her chains out seemed particularly on edge. "We try to get out the normal way. Beat the dungeon so we're not just sitting ducks waiting to be attacked. I know- I know that sounds crazy. Especially with- well- yeah. You know. But...I'm gonna be honest, guys, I can't see another way outta this."

Once they'd started moving, Elian stayed alert. But still, she had to check. "Yo, you doing alright?" she asked Graves, leaving off the insulting nicknames this time. "The new patch or whatever...can't be easy, given your equipment. I mean, I'm gonna keep you in one piece and all, but I don't exactly have anything for--"

Graves cut her off as the gate they'd just passed closed behind them. Well fine, if he didn't want to talk that was his choice. She'd be here if he changed his mind, and he'd have a chance again later when she tried to ask him what was going on outside the game, that his mood was so off. She'd not forgotten that little scene with the new archer.

A sudden light heralded a game-wide announcement, with a projection of one of the devs' characters that they used for the job. To the best of her knowledge, it was an empty account, and she was fairly certain any one of them could jack in to use it. Probably with just a regular computer, instead of a full VR rig.

But the news was always in character. Always. It was puzzling, to see the false persona drop and be replaced by what looked much more like a programmer put out of their depth, or maybe a PR guy trying to handle a problem he didn't have a plan for. A sentence or two more and she understood why. As the image vanished, Elian found herself gaping at where it had been, unable to get her mind off the idea that they could all die. What the hell?

She knew freezing in a dungeon was bad, but all the same she couldn't move. Landon's voice rang louder than it should have, but the words might as well have been some incomprehensible buzz, with how much of them she processed. It took Graves punching her shoulder and making a comment about explosives to bring her back to the present, and then she quickly moved back with the rest. The noise of the explosion was deafening, even with her fingers in her ears.

When the smoke cleared, the gate wasn't even dented.

No. No, no, no!

"This can't be happening," she whispered. "This, and us stuck in a dungeon?" They didn't have a way out except through, and that with this one being atypical to begin with -- why was everything lining up just right to destroy them? "Oh God, oh God." She knew enough self-defense that even creeps didn't particularly frighten her. The real world was rough, sure, but you kept your eyes open and you learned to roll with the punches. Sure, some people were awful, but a lot weren't, and there was no point in worrying your life away.

But the number one rule was that you avoided taking stupid risks. And staying in a dungeon where the monsters could actually /kill/ them seemed pretty stupid. They were designed to give players a challenge. Even the mobs that could be spoken to or negotiated with weren't pushovers.

And they couldn't turn around.

Not only that, but she was the group healer. If she fell apart, they all paid for it, and that was not the kind of responsibility she wanted. She looked at the other players around her, in varying states of fear and shock. Even Graves looked less than certain.

Two choices to deal with this. "Either way, we're going to need to face the monsters." Her voice wavered, but she was too shaken to care. "I don't...I don't know if I can do this. I know I'm the party healer, but...I'm no hero. I'm just a dance instructor and a gamer. This--" she waved to the dungeon "--is a hobby. If I wanted to be responsible for people's lives I'd've been a surgeon or something." The shock was still there, but the sharp edge of fear was starting to cut through it. They were well and truly fucked.

As the moderator's voice faded away, replaced with a dead silence, Tiferet felt almost light-headed with disbelief. There's no way. It's gotta be a Halloween event, like I said. There's no way that we'd actually... get trapped in the game. Right? She could hear her own nervous laughter in her head, even though her vocal cords had been stunned into quiet. Surely this is some sorta sick prank, or a part of the dungeon, or something. Yeah... it's gotta be. God knows the alternative is even worse.

Suddenly her joke about being trapped in Pariah didn't seem very funny anymore.

Landon's loud declaration and subsequent wiring of a massive amount of bombs brought Tiferet out of her reverie, and she quickly turned around and followed him over to the gate, eager to see if his plan would work.

It did not.

Tiferet felt a surge of panic well up from her throat, but she forced it back down. Not the time. Get outta here first, and if it's true, panic later. She also noticed Graves breaking character, which was quite a notable event. Normally the surly tank kept up his persona like it was a mask that had been welded to his face. Though in the face of what had just happened, Tiferet supposed it was fair enough that he did. God knows any kind of anti-social shit could mean the end of us all down here.

Graves' little speech, such as it was, painted a pretty good picture of their options at the moment; set up camp, or complete the dungeon. Completing the dungeon seemed like the best option, but Elian brought up a good point: no matter what they did, they'd have to fight some monsters.

Tiferet's vocal cords started moving before her brain could catch up, so it didn't have much input in what she said next, instead leaving it to the heart, which made it sound shaky and unsure. "I mean, we'd end up fighting monsters anyway, but if we complete the dungeon, we'd be able to get back to town and stay in the clear until we can be logged out. And besides, setting up camp in a dungeon where monsters have previously burst out of the ground just screams bad idea to me." She spoke up a bit more loudly. "I know we're all scared right now, being in a dungeon at what is possibly the worst time to be in one. And a new one, at that, one where the normal rules don't seem to apply. But we have to get out of here. God knows how long the mods will take to log us all out, and I for one don't feel like getting ambushed again." Tiferet took a deep breath, then continued, voice a bit stronger now. "We don't have to be heroes right now. We just have to get out of here alive."

She exhaled and turned to Elian, smiling gently. "You, on the other hand, have been a hero from the very start." She placed a hand on the other woman's shoulder in a comforting gesture. "How many people can put up with healing so much that they make it their profession? Not many, that's for sure. And I promise, Elly, you're one of the best I've ever seen. I know you can get us through this. And if you need it, I can do some healing too. Death-obsessed I may be, but I'm not eager for any of us to see if the developers really did program an afterlife, haha." She dropped her hand, hoping that her little pep talk - to Elian and to the party in general - had been enough.

As the blue light of the administrator flickered away from the scene, Ochre quickly noted how symbolic the action seemed to be. Like the hopes of every person in the dungeon, it disappeared within an instant, as if it had never existed. He was also conscious of how calmly he seemed to be taking the situation, his body still with expression unflinching, gaze still locked upon the empty area where the announcer had once stood. Of course, it was highly likely that this was caused more by shock rather than by a stoic nature, frozen by his fear rather than weathering through it.

After all, it wasn't everyday that someone was told that they were stuck in a life or death situation.

It wasn't true. It couldn't be... could it? This sort of situation was only achieved within the realms of anime and fiction, weren't they? Games were meant for entertainment, allowing their consumers to distance themselves from the waking world, to escape from the troubles and conflicts that made up their day to day lives. They were meant to be a tool of escapism... Not a prison that promised one's demise should they fail in their task. Ochre knew it was abundantly clear he had not misheard, his senses acute in preparation of the dungeon's mechanics and traps that were surely set for their downfall, and the varying states of shock and desperation that fell across the other players. But... it was a hard pill to swallow. To understand that he was separated from his family in a decisive way that could end in his...

With a visible shake of his head, the virtual blacksmith pulled himself from his spiraling thoughts as a loud explosion brought his attention back to what was happening in the present. His gaze eventually swiveled towards the unmarred doors of the dungeon room, smoke drifting off of its pristine figure. Flat on his behind and visibly stunned by the lack of results for his efforts, Landon was the visual to Ochre- No, Maxwell's inner thoughts. Bewildered, desperate, and lost. He wasn't like Graves, who had a mask he could drop in order to reveal his true feelings, nor Ellian, who wore her heart on her sleeve yet could hold herself together in a trying situation. Ochre, Maxwell, could only be what he was. As his head drifted downwards, his eyes caught sight of the blood that caked his armor, placed there from the body he had carved for its materials. And in a fit of fear, he saw it to be his own. One mistake. That's all it took. A single misstep, and he'd die. No matter how careful he was, no matter how efficient he acted, with a single misjudgement he could end up just like the ogre he once stood above. Without his prompting, his breaths came faster, his hands shook with indecision. What could he do? He was just a single man in a sea of others, and with the stakes as high as they were he would be like any other in the throes of death-

"Ochre?" A calm voice cut through the notions that ruminated at the forefront of his mind, a soothing break in the dark thoughts that had taken hold of him. With a turn of his head, Ochre took in the sight of his business partner, her chains at the ready by her sides as the air around her seemed to be suffused with the mana of her auras. In that moment of clarity, she seemed like an anchor in the world around him, ready for the troubles ahead despite the weighty nature of the situation before them. Within seconds, his hands began to still, breath caught just before it could escalate any further. "Come here," Altissima spoke once more towards the blacksmith, and at her call he obeyed, his armor clanking with each step he took until he was within her sphere of influence, already feeling the weight of the auras she had activated as he made a move to her side. As he took the space right beside her, Ochre closed his eyes and rose his head, taking a deep breath as his heartbeat steadied within his chest. "...Thanks," he voiced out with a calm, even tone, his head once again set firmly on his shoulders as his ears picked up the beginnings of Graves' attempt at a rallying speech. He didn't expect the Enchanter to understand what he was thanking her for, yet he did so nonetheless. She didn't do much, really, but all he needed was something to anchor him down, something solid he could hold on to.

All she did was be that anchor, for a single moment in time. And for him, that was enough.