“Thanks,” Lucas said.

Nick and Valerie pushed open the giant double doors that led to the final confrontation in the quest.

Whereas the dungeon had consisted of dark and dreary stone walls, the boss room was a lavish mahogany-framed room with four white stone pillars and a beautiful red rug covering a white stone floor. On the far side of the room, there were four large metal cages, each three feet by three feet wide, with bars as thick as a man’s forearm. Each contained a different non-Human elder. There was an old male Were-Bear, stuck in his half-shifted form with bear ears and fur-covered arms, an elderly Alfar, a Treant whose bark had greyed, and a Dwarf that appeared to be more white, frizzy beard than man. These captives were leaned forward, grasping on the cages’ bars, and their weathered eyes were locked on the group of newly arrived players with the desperation of the enslaved. The rest of the room was relatively empty with the exception of a woman who was seated in a chair that somewhat resembled a throne in the middle of the room, dead center between the four pillars.

Dawn grinned at the group and began clapping as the four walked in. “Bravo! Well done! Or, well, at least something along those lines,” Lady Xun Guan said. “I’m glad you could see it in your heart to butcher my men before payday. It saves me a lot of money.”

“Ha! Not like you’re going to live long enough to spend it, garbage NPC!” Nick taunted. He held up his healing mace and waved it threateningly as if it were the deadliest weapon in the world. “Let’s bash this broad in and go turn in the quest.”

“Ugh. This is why no one likes you,” Valerie snapped, smacking Nick on the arm and shaving off a few points of his health as she did it. Lucas suspected that she was acting this way on his behalf.

“What? Are you just going to stand there the whole time and scowl at me?” Xun Guan said while staring at Lucas. “Don’t be so negative. Cheer up and greet me properly.”

“Fine,” Lucas grumbled. He despised being part of a group whose intention was to kill her. “How are you, Dawn?” He used her other name purposefully, calling her by the fake name she went by as they ate their meals together on the hill, lying out and basking in the sun day after day.

“Something is off,” Malik interjected as he strode to the front of the group. “She’s supposed to have two guards helping her during the fight. Where are they?”

“Oh, those two? I sent them home. They always interrupt me and spout out terrible monologues. It’s all really quite dull. What’s the point of it all? I spend all that time and money training them, and then they just keep dying as soon as they finish their taunts, so I just got rid of them.”