Dive into the heart

Gil stepped forward into the dungeon, and there was no immediate danger he could see. He glanced around, his sword drawn, as the rest of his team poured out of what appeared to be an empty closet. They were in an empty apartment; not abandoned, but empty. Out of the window Gil could see a street with all the signs of an archetypical "bad part of town." The only furniture was a whiteboard hanging on the wall, words written in dark blue.

Reward: 5 dungeon credits, Loot Box

Bonus: Save the girl, get a card

"Alright, we have our marching orders." Gil said, bemused, "there's a girl in here somewhere in danger. Keep an eye out; she's priority."

His team, mostly military trained, nodded. They were tense in the unfamiliar terrain of a modern apartment building, and held their weapons at the ready.

"Keilnei; can you feel the light?" Gil asked, moving to listen at the door.

"I can touch the light within me, but it is not around me."

"Good, good." Gil said, nodding. "We have one lifeline, people; nobody waste it. Candress?"

"I'm trying to hold onto it, but it's bleeding away rapidly." She said, tensely. "I don't think I can cast."

"Try going back in the closet. I want to know if we have a way out."

Candress stepped back into their entry point, and confirmed that it was just a closet now. No escape, not by default. Before they could test anything else, the team was interrupted by distant shouting.

"Open this door! Now!" A man yelled. "It's the only way, June!"

"That sounds like our cue," Gil said, "follow me."

Gil, as the one in the best armor, took point. The girls were all decked out in Elven Leather Armor, which was mostly designed to blunt and deflect strikes from melee weapons and claws; useful but not up to modern era weaponry. The bikini armor was versatile, able to deal with almost any type of physical blow. He knew from prior experience it would even blunt small arms fire; a short range shotgun to the torso would leave him with internal bleeding and severe bruises, but he'd have a solid chance of survival even without healing.

The hallway was full of vague, blurry apartment doors set against beige walls. Gil could see one door was ajar, and that was where the yelling came from. The muffled, indistinct sound of a girl's voice barely penetrated the walls. The team crept forward, deciding by silent consensus to avoid a fair fight.

Gil poked his head around the corner of the door frame briefly, his sword held back but ready, to see the room. Four men, all armed. Two with bats, one with a handgun, and one with a long bike chain. The gunman stood out to Gil as the obvious guardian of this floor, though he couldn't point at anything but a gut instinct to justify it. Gil belatedly realized he didn't have a system in place to communicate that information, but luckily he hadn't been seen.

"Please, June." One of the men with a bat said, his voice cracking. "They'll kill us both."

"We don't have all day, old man." The guardian said. "If she doesn't open up, I shoot the lock. If someone calls the cops, this turns ugly for you and your neighbors first."

While they spoke, Gil held up three fingers and mimed swiping at an enemy with his knife. He followed up with one finger, which he turned into a finger gun and mimed shooting it. The girls seemed to guess what he meant from the first gesture, but none had ever seen a handgun. Long bore rifles were the limit of firearms tech among the Draenei, for whatever reason. Gil sighed, and decided to deal with the ranged combatant himself. He held up five fingers, then folded in one at a time.

At the end, he plucked Blackpaw's sphere from his belt and beamed it at the guardian, summoning an angry wolf directly in the bastard's face. The team filed in and engaged the four men as best they could. It didn't go particularly well; they had numbers and the advantage of surprise, but the handgun was a great equalizer.

Blackpaw took a bullet to his chest almost immediately, crumpling to the floor in pain. The girls had quickly moved to engage the three melee-armed men, leaving the gunman to Gil and Blackpaw. Gil trusted in his armor and buried his sword deep into the bone of his gun arm; the assailant pulled the trigger once before he lost hold of his weapon. The bullet was deflected by Gil's forcefield, but hurt like a hammer blow to the hip.

Zena moved to engage the man who had been yelling; he was an older Asian man, not in the best shape. Compared to the three other fit young Asian men, he seemed the softest target. Indeed, Keilnei was able to bury an arrow into his collarbone with her first shot, which distracted him more than enough for Zena to bury a knife in his leg, cutting an artery.

Candress was less lucky; in a quick exchange of blows, the slim elf was quickly overpowered. The young man with the chain wrapped it around one fist as he closed in on Candress, and pounded the small woman with the improvised brass knuckles repeatedly. He grabbed her upper arm, holding her in place. He didn't last long, not once his companions fell, but he left Candress in a brutalized state.

Gil breathed heavily for a moment after the fighting was done, then heard a shout of pain from one of the downed men. He turned and saw Keilnei staring at one of the men with icy blue eyes. She had one hoof pressed into his wrist, pinning his arm to the floor.

"You will tell me what you were reaching for in your pocket." She said evenly. "Once I know you are no danger, we can tend to your wounds."

"Detonator," he choked out, "bitch!"

He struggled for a few more moments before giving up, at which point most of the men faded from view, leaving only the older overweight one. The door the men had huddled around opened and a young Asian woman rushed out.

"Dad! No!" She cried in tones of despair, falling to her knees next to the older man. She knelt there for a moment, then flickered and vanished. At around her eye level, a small rectangular card floated until Gil snatched it out of the air. The door to the girl's hiding place became a swirling red portal, not unlike the ones he used to travel to new worlds. Across from there was a red pillar with an access panel.

"Zena, how is Candress?" Gil asked, recalling Blackpaw to his sphere. "I'm not sure if we want to progress immediately, if we are likely to be down two people."

The fight hadn't even been particularly brutal, as scuffles with deadly weapons went, but it had still been dangerous. Gil felt fairly certain that Blackpaw and Candress would both make it out ok in the long run, and the others had avoided any meaningful injury to speak of, but Gil was assuming that each floor would be more dangerous than the last.

He wandered over to the pillar, and examined the screen. It offered him the opportunity to spend 20 dungeon credits in order to edit the relationships of the dungeon's host. Gil didn't really have 20 dungeon credits to spare, or much use in altering a random guy's emotions remotely. He intended to sell the guy, after all. Even so, Gil noted the pillar and wondered what the idea was. Did every floor have a pillar like this?

Gil's head whipped around as he heard a faint whooshing sound, and saw Candress shrouded in golden light. Her split lip closed, her broken nose snapped back into place, and her general dazed expression sharpened. She still had fresh welts from the beating, but she managed to stagger to her feet, coughing.

Gil suppressed the urge to curse. Candress did not represent much of a tactical asset in her current state. She wasn't even as solid a combatant as Gil had been upon arrival on the skyblock, and they only had one heal for the whole dungeon.

"Keilnei, was she in immediate danger?" Gil asked mildly.

"No." Keilnei answered severely. "However, she was not going to be able to walk. Getting her up means that she will be able to take care of herself to some degree. The rest of us can focus outward, instead of dedicating Zena or Berelaine to carrying her."

Gil conceded the point.

"Well, everyone, what do you say?" He opened the question to the floor, "Do we risk stepping into the next floor before leaving, scouting it out? Do we press on to the end? I expect one more conflict, around this dangerous if not more."

"Retreat, now." Zena said immediately. "We are here for personal gain, right? I say we gather up what we can here and leave."

Keilnei backed her up and Silky was largely indifferent. Only Candress seemed interested in continuing, but she didn't really get a vote in her current state. Gil would have liked to scout ahead, but didn't want to annoy his girls by asking for advice and then totally ignoring it.

He looked around at the slightly tired team, and sighed. He just didn't have the emergency healing to handle the situation if Keilnei went down, and even if floor two was entirely identical he didn't have the numbers advantage anymore. Better to be careful than dead, and it would benefit him to know how things worked. He ran his finger across the Door of Light in his pocket.

"Fuck it, we are going to Rim Elm next." He grumbled. "I need more healing leaves. Everyone, strip this place bare!"