Ace hesitated a moment before answering. “Artificers interact with artifacts. That’s our whole thing. One of the things that every artificer can do… I mean, it’s a basic part of our class, not even an actual ability. We can see what artifacts do. All I have to do is look at an artifact, and I get a popup description.” He shrugged at that. “The more I increase my perception, the more the popups tell me.”

I nodded at that, understanding completely. When we’d been back at that temple, I’d been able to see popups for each of the altars and shrines, ones which told me which deity they belonged to. Afterwards, everyone else had said that they hadn’t seen a thing. It looked like my ability to see popups for those altars was either part of being an invoker, or due to my specialization in the divine type. It seemed that artificers could do the same thing, but with artifacts.

“Everyone knows that artificers can identify what an artifact does,” Olivia commented. “I didn’t realize how it worked though.”

“Maggie’s dagger says that it can interact with the immaterial,” Ace continued. “So, I figured it would work on the ghosts.”

“That might have been nice to know earlier,” I commented. “But I’m glad you told me in time.”

Ace shrugged. “It seemed pointless to keep hiding my class now. Especially since we’re chasing another artificer.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “The way he destroyed my mace…”

“It’s an ability called shatter,” Ace explained. “You can really only use it once a day, and then, only on significantly weaker artifacts.”

“Can you do that?” Bunny asked him eagerly.

“No,” Ace responded with a shake of the head. “My first ability just lets me recharge artifacts a lot faster than normal when I’m in the Labyrinth.”

“Hence, why your scepters never run out,” I said.

“Pretty much,” Ace agreed with a grin. Now he looked a little smug. “My other ability, which I haven’t had for very long, lets me bring an artifact I own back to my hand. Basically, if I drop my scepters…” He tossed one of his scepters to the side, then held out his hand. A moment later, the scepter suddenly flew right back into his hand. “Useful.”

“Not as useful as being able to break other people’s weapons,” Bunny teased him.

“Maybe not,” Ace responded with another, “but I can use it more than once a day. When I got it, I was offered three abilities. Return…which you just saw, shatter…which Mike already demonstrated, and repair. That one would let me repair minor damage to artifacts, but wouldn’t do anything for ones that have been seriously broken.”

“Interesting options,” Turtle said. “Most of them wouldn’t be very useful in a fight though.”

Ace shrugged, not bothering to argue. Then he looked at Olivia. “Since it’s already out in the open, I should probably tell you that your cloak will block twenty-five percent of all direct magical damage that hits you, plus an additional twenty-five percent for the type of magic that you use. Basically, it will block fifty percent of any arcane type attack on you.”

“Really?” Olivia asked, suddenly looking down at her purple cloak with new interest. “Very nice.”

“Is there anything else we should know?” Bunny asked.

“If not,” I said, pointing down the road, “we should probably get going.”

“Not yet,” Turtle said before he abruptly ran off the road and into the surrounding mist.

“What are you doing?” Bunny demanded. “You’d better not find another ghost.”

“I’m looking for a body,” Turtle announced. He looked around then moved further down the road.

“We’ve got two bodies over here,” Ace responded with a roll of his eyes. “We don’t need any more.”

Olivia snorted. “For once, I agree with Ace.”

I just watched Turtle run around, carefully looking at the ground. “What are you really looking for?”

Turtle paused to look back at me. “We found two bodies, but there were three human ghosts.”

My eyes widened slightly and I looked at the hammer that I’d recovered from one of those bodies. “The third ghost was holding a shield.”

“Exactly,” Turtle agreed. “If I can find her body, I might be able to get a replacement shield.”

“Everyone, start looking for bodies,” Bunny called out as she moved to the other side of the road.

Ace rolled his eyes again and joined the search, grumbling, “Why do I feel like I’m looking for Easter eggs? Ones made by that alien queen in Aliens.”

A minute later, Bunny called out, “I found it. Over here.”

We all rushed over to where Bunny stood beside another dead body, one in the same desiccated shape as the others. There was a small axe on the ground beside the body as well as an intact shield.

“Still in decent shape,” Ace observed. “And it has a small bonus to protection from fire and heat.”

Turtle cautiously picked up the shield and held it on his arm, testing its weight as he moved it around. “A little smaller than my old one,” he commented, “but not by much. It should work just fine.”

“Better than no shield,” I added, glancing again at my new hammer.

“Of course,” Turtle agreed. “I can’t be a turtle without a shell.”

“Now, can we go?” Olivia asked impatiently. “I don’t want our enemies to get any further ahead of us than they already are.”

“I agree completely,” I told her. “NOW, let’s get going.”

----------

My new hammer felt a little odd in my hand. It had a similar weight to my old mace, but it was a little longer, great for using two hands, though still short enough so that I could manage with one if I needed to use a knife or my ‘Invocation of Spite’. The striking surface was a bit smaller and would require a little more care when using, but it also had a beak on the back side, a curved spike that would be great for punching through armor.

I’d practiced with a hammer before, but not extensively since it wasn’t usually my preferred weapon. My preferred weapon used high caliber rounds, and plenty of them. Still, it was a nice hammer and I couldn’t wait to try it out.

Unfortunately, it looked like I wouldn’t get to test my new weapon anytime soon. The only monsters that I’d seen in this area were ghosts, and we’d been avoiding them ever since encountering the first group.

I kept my eye on the road in front of us, looking for Ramirez’ markers just as much as I was looking for threats. I didn’t see either of those, only another body in the distance.

“Another player down,” Turtle commented as we passed the body. “But not one of the ones we’re after.”

I nodded at that, feeling guilty for just leaving the body as we found it. I would have preferred to give all of them a good burial, but that wasn’t an option at the moment. We just didn’t have time for that kind of thing.

“Strange that they’re still around,” Bunny said. “The Labyrinth usually cleans up the bodies within a few days at most.”

“These ones have definitely been here longer than that,” Ace agreed. “Maybe it’s keeping these ones for the ambiance.”

“Maybe,” I agreed thoughtfully. “Or maybe, it needs the bodies to make those ghost copies.”

That thought just gave me more reason to bury the bodies, and even more regret for not being able to do so. Maybe when we’d finished our business and were heading back.

After this, we seemed to move past the area with all the ghosts. I no longer saw any glimpses of them in the fog, nor heard any of their moans. Even the fog itself faded away while the light above us brightened up into more of an early-morning level.

We moved through what now appeared to be a grassy marsh with clusters of trees scattered about in the distance. Large pools of water were spread out on both sides of the road, though they were hidden by the tall grass so that they would have been easy to miss until close up.

“We’ve probably got a new kind of monster,” Bunny warned us, keeping a suspicious watch on the water.

“I hope it’s not another muck monster,” Turtle said. “I hate those.”

“My bet is some kind of frog or alligator,” Ace offered a few seconds later.”

“I bet it’s something REALLY big,” Bunny said. “And it has both fur and scales.”

“That,” Olivia pointed out, “is rather specific.”

Bunny just paused and pointed ahead of us. It took me a moment before I saw it, but there was a massive monster spread out on the ground. And as Bunny had said, it looked like it had scales over much of its body, but there also seemed to be a thick coat of shaggy brown fur on part of it. From the way the thing was laying, I couldn’t make out what it was.

“That thing has to be at least twenty meters long,” Bunny said. “And it isn’t moving.”

As we got closer, it became obvious that the monster was dead. It had been sliced up and torn to pieces, probably by Raze’s axe, though there were indications of other damage as well. This was the first monster body that we’d seen in awhile.

“It looks like they couldn’t avoid this one,” Ace said.

“Or, they couldn’t resist the opportunity,” I added, remembering how Raze liked killing things.

“It isn’t melting yet,” Olivia pointed out. “We’re closer than I expected.”

Ace paled at that, then said, “I don’t even know why we’re still chasing them. I mean, they kicked our asses. We were lucky to get out of there alive.”

“He has a point,” Turtle reluctantly admitted. “I don’t know how we expect anything to be different this time.”

“We’re still after them because we’re stubborn,” Bunny stated, taking a dramatic pose, though it was somewhat less effective with her arm in a sling. “You have to be pretty stubborn to make a living in the Labyrinth.”

“She does have a point,” I said with a faint smile. “Players do tend to be stubborn.”

“But being stubborn won’t be enough,” Olivia pointed out wryly. “I would prefer to survive our next fight.”

“I do want to beat them,” Turtle said with a sigh. “I want to beat them a LOT.”

“See,” Bunny told him almost cheerfully. “Stubborn.”

“We do have the advantage of surprise,” I pointed out thoughtfully. “I doubt they expect us to follow them.”

“I doubt they even think we’re still alive,” Ace added. “We were in a bit of a mess…with a few monsters running around.”

I considered this for a moment. “Maybe catch them separately. Divide and conquer. We won’t know the best way to proceed until we actually catch up to them and see what the current situation is.”

With that agreed, we continued moving forward, though even more cautiously than before. With our enemies being this close, none of us wanted to risk stumbling across them unprepared.

It was a short distance later, only a couple hundred yards down the road, when I saw the large structure off to the side. It was huge and made of stone, though I wasn’t quite sure if it was a building or something else because it was shaped like a giant cube, and the sides seemed to be featureless without a single window to mar the flat surface. The structure was off the main road, though an arrow on the ground pointed straight to it.

“What is THAT?” Turtle asked.

“Art,” Ace answered. When everyone gave him puzzled looks, he shrugged. “One of my old buddies used to tell me that whenever he saw something around his college campus, and if he didn’t know what it was, it was art.”

I was about to say something in response when I noticed something from the corner of my eye, something moving out from behind a nearby tree. I snapped around, ready to fire an ‘Invocation of Spite’, but then came to a complete halt.

“About time you caught up,” Ramirez announced. She pointed to the stone cube and added, “They went in there.”