Azure: Gunner

Aside from maaaybe the guns, does any of that shit sound like something you’d be excited to find in a dungeon? Coal? Bloody monster corpses or raw metals?

Of course the fuck not! There’s no such Wasted thing as a dungeon that is full of powerful magic items or chests overflowing with Spell and Skill gems! Even the guns that Hammersmith pulls out of their LA dungeon are low quality, low Level, and mundane. For fucks’ sakes, they started giving the things away just to build the market for ammunition!

As a Delver you’ll eventually come across a dungeon with some good stuff, but that’s not going to happen very often. Usually, you’ll get better stuff from the System than you will find lying around in a random dungeon.

- Delver’s Guild Handbook, Section 10.10 – “Dungeon Loot”

I’d been in the middle of a sentence, explaining to Tara why I badly wanted her to take Brace for her Level 7 Skill, when something happened. I felt my insides twist unnaturally, and my head whipped up, looking for the cause of the strange sensation.

<What… the fuck was that?> Raylan whispered, and I realized we’d all felt it.

<I do not know, Fighter Raylan,> Zaire replied, the manaborn’s voice strangely tentative.

Another twist came a moment later, and then we were all on our feet, weapons in hand. My ears popped weirdly, and my chest tightened for a moment. The only time I’d felt anything like this was when Mason had activated the Wedge at the dungeon back outside of East Bank…

<I don’t like this… I think we should get back to the surface,> I said, my teammates nodding in agreement.

Arlo was opening the door when the ground rumbled, making me stagger.

<GO!> I yelled, as the ground shook harder.

The team was halfway through the door when a huge piece of the ceiling broke free with a thunderous crack and dropped. It hit the floor and vanished. There was no explosive crunch, no cloud of dust, and I stopped in shock as I realized the ceiling had fallen through the floor, leaving nothing behind. There was simply a void, as if existence itself came to a halt at the edge of the irregularly shaped area.

<RUN!> I screamed, and turned, pushing Tara out the door ahead of me.

We sprinted for the stairs, and I cursed as the ground – no, the dungeon – shook again, throwing me hard against the wall. I bounced off it and kept going, vanishing my gun so my hands were free.

H’ruk tore the door to the stairs right off its hinges as he burst through it, then the team was moving up the stairs. I heard another crash ahead, then Raylan was cursing, others screaming at him to keep going. When I reached the stairs, I almost tripped in shock. There was another chunk of reality missing, a hole bored through the stairs in front of me, endless void beckoning.

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I frantically caught my balance and jumped over the two-stair wide gap, following Tara. The Comms were an unintelligible stream of curses and shouts, and I added my own to the mix as we continued up. The stairs turned once, twice, three times. As I came around the fourth corner, I saw an identical jagged hole in the flight ahead of me.

For an instant I panicked, thinking we were trapped in some kind of perverse loop. Then I noticed that I could see through this hole to the stairs below, and a moment later I was jumping over the gap, breathing hard.

<WHERE ARE WE GOING?!> Raylan screamed.

<JUST GET THE FUCK OUT OF THE BUILDING!> I responded, as I leapt through the door at the top of the stairs.

I sprinted through the decaying corridor, in places forced to one wall or another to avoid either debris or the gaping wounds in reality. Dark whispers seemed to emanate from each one, hissing louder as I approached and then receding as I passed. We burst out of the building onto the street, and I nearly ran Tara over as I skidded to a halt.

<Angels help us,> I whispered in horror, not that anyone could hear over everyone else’s expressions of shock.

It wasn’t just the buildings that were collapsing. Above us, patches of sky were missing, exposing more of the formless void, a nameless color darker than black. Then the Comms stilled for a moment, cutting off Raylan’s voice mid-curse.

<Get to the portal! Center of the city! I can’t… hold… it!>

It was a man’s voice I only vaguely recognized, but what choice did we have? I saw a sudden glow erupt from the skyline, silhouetting two of the crumbling buildings.

<This way!> Raylan shouted, and dashed in the direction of the light. I fucking hoped he was right, because the entire team took off behind him and I joined them.

We were almost to the intersection ahead when there was a thunderous explosion, and I looked over my shoulder to see the titan tearing its way out of the building, the structure collapsing behind it. The monster paused to grab a hunk of stone and hurl it towards us, and the team scattered at my scream. The huge rock bounced once, then slid down the street until it hit one of the voids.

It vanished in an instant – not falling through, simply disappearing the moment it made contact with the greedy dark. I swerved, giving the void plenty of space, hating the need to look back over my shoulder in case more projectiles were heading towards us.

The monster, too dumb or too enraged to notice the danger, tried to charge straight through. The contact erased half a leg, and the massive beast crashed to the ground, sliding headfirst into the ruins of another building.

I whipped my gaze back to the cluttered street ahead, barely avoiding tripping over a pile of debris, then nearly stopping in shock as I saw a piece of the sky drop. It dropped out of sight behind a building, leaving another rent behind, and I forced my legs to keep pumping as my lungs burned for air.

I pushed myself harder, gaining ground on Tara as we raced through another intersection. Watching the ground for any hits of unnatural darkness, I didn’t notice the sky falling overhead until a shadow flickered in my vision. I looked up and saw a section of grey sky plummeting towards the ground ahead. Towards Tara. I felt myself slide into Battle Focus, and the world seemed to slow for a moment.

I planted a foot, pushed with all my might, and Quick Stepped, all without conscious thought. It was simply the only thing that made sense, the best path forward. My Skill-fueled leap sent me crashing into Tara’s back, hurling the Defender to the ground in a clatter of armor. I tumbled, the world spinning around me, and my helm crashed into the ground hard enough to trigger my barrier.

From my back, my eyes all-too-calmly tracked the shard of sky as it dropped, and I wrenched my body into a roll, throwing myself out of the way. Too late. I knew it even as I rolled over my right arm. Trailing slightly behind my body, my arm was still in the trajectory of the fragment. Then, it wasn’t. It was simply gone, halfway between my shoulder and elbow, along with the road that had been beneath it.

I dimly heard voices calling my name, and then the darkness took me.