I silently looked over the area in front of me, taking in the ramotaur bodies. There were seven of them, three of which had been cut to pieces like many of the other monsters we’d seen in the past, but four of them… Well, four of the ramotaurs had been incinerated, burned down to little more than charred bones.

“What happened to them?” Turtle asked as he stared down at one of the burned bodies.

“I have no idea,” I answered honestly.

The ground was heavily charred in the area where the burned bodies fell, which clearly indicated that they were hit by some kind of area effect, one with intense heat. There were even a couple spots where the stone itself had started to melt.

“This looks like something a powerful arcanist might be able to do,” Bunny said.

“Maybe,” Olivia responded, though she looked skeptical. She looked over the pattern of burn marks and added, “This is way too powerful for any arcanist I know of.”

“Mad Mike has a scepter that shoots fireballs,” Ace offered, though he quickly followed that up with, “But that thing wouldn’t be nearly powerful enough to do something like this. Not to one monster, much less four of them.”

“Maybe another monster,” Maya suggested, looking up to the sky. “If there’s some kind of fire monster here as well…”

“A fire elemental?” I mused aloud. Then I shook my head. “Maybe an extremely powerful one, but I’d feel the primal magic if that was the case.”

“Same with a volcano god,” Turtle said wryly.

We slowly moved around the area, carefully looking for clothes. However, we didn’t find anything new. There were no clues as to what had done this kind of damage, and that worried me.

“Do you think…?” Bunny started to ask. She paused with a worried look on her face. “Do you think that Raze found that power he was looking for?”

I really didn’t like that idea. Not in the least.

“Where?” Ace asked, gesturing around us. “There aren’t exactly a lot of places to hide that kind of thing around here, and we know for a fact that he didn’t have it back in the maze.”

“He would have killed us all if he had this kind of power,” Turtle agreed.

“Well, whatever caused this damage,” I said with narrowed eyes. “I don’t think we’re going to find it by standing around here with our thumbs up our asses.”

Ace snorted. “What if we don’t want to find it?”

“I don’t know how Raze and his people did this,” Maya said as she examined the bodies. “Hell, we can’t even be sure that they did. Maybe something or someone else interfered.”

“Either way,” I added, “we still need to find them.”

We continued on our way, though hadn’t gone too far when five more ramotaur appeared. Two of them stood in the middle of the path ahead of us while three more stood on rocky outcroppings and leapt down behind us, blocking our way back.

“We’re surrounded,” Turtle stated.

I nodded absently, though my eyes were locked on one of the ramotaur who stood in front of us. This one was larger than any of the others that I’d seen, standing about eight feet tall. His horns were even larger and more impressive, while he also had a long thin beard growing from his chin.

“This must be their alpha,” I thought aloud. “Their boss.”

The alpha ramotaur let out a deep roar and then charged right into the middle of our group, with his head down and leading the way. Turtle jumped in the way and took the hit on his shield, though the impact rang out loudly and sent him flying back.

Once their leader made the initial charge, the rest of the ramotaur charged in as well. I fired an ‘Invocation of Spite’ at one, then leapt at the screaming monster with my hammer. I hit him square on the head, but he just shook it off.

“Their heads are hard,” I called out in warning. “Hit them lower.”

Olivia held out her hand and fired an arcane blast, hitting one of the ramotaur in the stomach. She blasted a hole halfway through, causing the monster to scream in pain. However, instead of going down, it charged straight at her, only to run headfirst into her force wall.

Ace backed up until he was standing beside Bunny, and the two of them went back-to-back as they faced opposing monsters. The artificer fired two blasts with his scepters, one of them doing some small damage while the other covered a ramotaur’s leg in ice. That stopped the monster long enough for Sir Fluff to rush in and begin impaling him with a half-dozen quick stabs from his blade.

“Too bad the cliff isn’t close enough to throw these ones off of,” Turtle joked as he slashed his sword at the alpha. “That would make this a lot easier.”

“Too easy,” Ace joked. “What’s life without a good challenge?”

Maya suddenly leapt out of the shadows and drove her spear into the side of a ramotaur, then she pulled back and kicked the monster in the leg. Once he dropped down lower, she slammed her spear swung her spear down at his neck in a bloody slash.

Turtle used his ability to draw the aggression of all the remaining ramotaur onto himself, so I pushed my ‘Blessing of Avexis’ onto him to help out with that. Several red sparks shot out as they rushed towards him, which only encouraged their targeted aggression even more.

“Now,” I ordered.

I rushed forward and slammed my hammer into the nearest monster, using my beak side so that I penetrated deep and did some serious damage. Then I pulled the hammer out and reversed my swing to hit the next closest monster on the shoulder, shattering bone as I did so.

One of the ramotaur suddenly froze in place as ghostly chains formed around him, keeping him locked down long enough for four horned rabbits to all swarm over him at once. And while they tore apart his legs, Sir Fluff leapt up and began attacking his neck.

One of the ramotaur grabbed a large rock off the ground, one that was about the size of a beach ball, and threw it straight at Olivia. Ace dove at her and knocked her aside right before the rock passed through where she’d been standing.

“Stupid goat,” Bunny exclaimed, swinging her small hand axe at the monster since he was now so close. She gave him a deep gash in his arm before she backed off, calling out, “Goat curry. That’s what I’m going to eat once we get out of this Labyrinth.”

“How about goat on a spit?” Maya asked as she rushed up and impaled the same monster with her spear.

“Now, that sounds delicious,” Ace joked as he got back to his feet and then helped Olivia up.

Olivia abruptly fired an arcane blast, hitting one of the ramotaur who’d been rushing up on Ace from behind. He staggered back with a deep hole in the chest.

It was obvious, that even with the help of my blessing, Turtle was unable to keep all of their attention on him. However, he was able to keep a couple of them focused on him, which made it easier to deal with the others.

One by one, the ramotaur went down until only their alpha remained. He roared at Turtle and then charged the bulwark again, leading with his head as he did so. Turtle stepped aside and brought his sword down, attempting to slice through the monster’s neck, though the blade caught one of the monsters horns and bounced off instead.

The rest of us all turned our attention to the alpha, who roared and then abruptly charged at Maya. She teleported away in a swirl of shadow, appearing about fifteen yards away. It would have been more convenient if she’d been able to appear right behind the monster, but that kind of control would come with practice, levels, and stats.

My ‘Invocation of Spite’ was ready again, so I fired a blast at the alpha. The monster hit the ground and spazmed as it shrieked in pain, leaving it open for everyone else. It was dead mere seconds later, well before he could recover from my attack.

“If those bastards are going to kill monsters,” Ace complained, “the least they could do is do it right. I mean, look how many they keep leaving behind for us to clean up.”

“Sloppy work,” Turtle agreed with a chuckle.

“Look up there,” Bunny said, pointing at the path ahead of us.

There were three more ramotaur corpses, two of which had been incinerated while the third had been cut in half. This just confirmed that whatever was burning these ramotaur, it was with our enemies.

Maya crouched down beside the two charred corpses, though her attention was on the ground around them. The ground had been burned right down to the stone, which was all cracked and melted, another indication of just how intense the heat had been.

“Now I’m getting worried,” Maya admitted.

“Me too,” I reluctantly agreed. “I hate going against an unknown threat.”

She nodded at that. “We’ll need to gather intelligence and figure how what we’re up against before we hit them again.”

“At least they aren’t hiding from us,” Bunny said, indicating the bodies and the charred ground. “Its almost like they want us to follow them.”

But then, Olivia pointed to the ground off to the side, where a stone arrow pointed down the path in the direction that we were already heading. “There’s no ‘almost’ about it.”

----------

I looked across the large field that was spread out before me, scowling as I did so. The ground was dead and barren, with a with a few scattered stone walls, crumbling remnants that marked where buildings had once stood.

There were giant slugs scattered out over the field, each of them two or three feet long and impossible to miss because of their neon green color. These monsters were slow and soft, which made them easy to kill…or even just walk around. However, they were dangerous nonetheless. Their slime was acidic and left a corrosive trail behind them. It would burn through your boots if you stood still…and your flesh if you got any on you. Their guts did the same thing, which we’d discovered by accident.

“Acid slugs,” Maya said in a tone that practically screamed her disapproval.

“These things are disgusting,” Bunny agreed.

However, Olivia quickly added, “Yes, but not as bad as some of the things we’ve run into.”

There was a moment of consideration before Bunny nodded agreement. “True.”

“At least they’re easy to kill,” Ace said, right before opening fire with both of his scepters. Several slugs were hit and died on impact, practically exploding as they did so. They might have been easy to kill, but their acidic death splatter was what made them dangerous to deal with.

We’d been following our quarry for awhile as they rushed up into the shallower areas of the Labyrinth as quickly as they could. The monsters we’d faced along the way had become progressively easier to kill, until we were here, in one of the shallowest areas possible.

“I think we might be near the Taxco entrance,” Maya abruptly said.

“Taxco?” Ace asked blankly.

“Taxco Mexico,” I explained. “There’s a Labyrinth entrance near the city.”

Maya nodded at that. “That entrance has mostly had acid slugs over the last few years, so…” She gestured out around us.

“I’ve always wanted to visit Mexico,” Turtle answered. “Just not like this.”

Maya and I shared a look as we both realized what this meant. The rogue players were trying to escape the Labyrinth, though I’d been expecting that considering the direction that they’d been moving. Now I had a better idea of where they were trying to escape to, or at least, where the closest entrance would lead them to.

“Ah crap,” I grumbled, remembering what had happened the last time Raze and Mad Mike had left the Labyrinth. They’d killed a bunch of people in Gideon Heights, and I didn’t want to see them do that again. “We need to stop them before they leave.”

“We may already be too late,” Maya pointed out grimly.

With that, we picked up our pace as we made our way across the field, carefully avoiding not only the slugs but their corrosive slime trails as well. We didn’t have the time to waste killing them, so it was a good thing that we could avoid having to do so.

It didn’t take long before we saw signs of the Labyrinth entrance. Several echoes flickered about in the distance, small unstable passages which would probably lead to somewhere around Taxco, if that was indeed where this gate led. Then we saw the main entrance up ahead, a shimmering glow in the air that looked a great deal like the one I was most familiar with in Gideon Heights.

“We’re too late,” Maya announced. “They’ve already left the Labyrinth.”

“But they might not have gone far,” I suggested. “With any luck, they’re trying to keep a low profile.” Maya and I shared a look since neither of us believed that.

We all looked back and forth between each other and the entrance, each of us readying our weapons as we did so. I didn’t know exactly what waited on the other side, but I suspected that it wouldn’t be good.

As soon as I stepped through passageway, I was immediately met with the smell of smoke and an overwhelming feeling of deja-vu.