My approach through the fog near the closed portcullis startled the big group of zombies on watch. Two even fired their energy rifles before pausing to see who it was.

I stepped aside, dodging the blasts. Thank you Alpha for my boosted Agility stat. Moving felt effortless, and even acrobatic flips and spins required little focus. It was a heady thing.

Holding up my zombie pass token, I shouted, "Hey! Is that how you treat guests invited by your master to visit?"

The same grumpy captain pushed to the front of the group and peered through the thick iron bars of the portcullis. "You may wish to turn around tonight."

Was he trying to spare me? Wow. I guess my charm was working.

I sighed. "Sorry, but I do have to speak with Noctarus. I believe we've had a bit of a misunderstanding between our groups. I hope to smooth things over."

The captain shrugged and motioned for someone to open the gate. The portcullis rose quickly and silently. Neat. No slow grinding and clacking of rusted gears and chains. Magic made so many things better.

"Maybe I'll finally get to kill you," the captain said before motioning me forward. Twice as many zombies as usual fell in around us.

So much for my winning personality. It was fine. I wouldn't shed a tear when I finally got a chance to kill him.

Instead of stopping at Noctarus's study, we marched past it and around a corner to a stone stair leading down. That was new. I hadn't expected an underground level so close to the lake. The stairs continued even lower, but we left them at the first sub-basement level.

I maintained an outward calm while preparing to unleash everything if this turned into a trap. In every thriller or zombie movie I'd ever seen, getting led into the basement by a bunch of armed guards ended badly. A wide hallway stretched away into darkness, lit only by a single distant dim lantern.

"Forgot to pay the light bills?"

None of the zombies answered. They smelled faintly of rot and something foul, like old socks festering in toxic waste. We marched down half the hall before stopping at a set of wide double doors. The wood was covered in intricate patterns that definitely concealed runes, but I couldn't decipher their meaning before the doors swung open silently.

In stark contrast with the dim, gloomy hallway, the huge room inside glowed with bright, golden light. A swirling pattern of alternating warm shades of green and blue covered the walls, reminding me of pictures I'd seen of Caribbean waters.

Some kind of energy barrier wall blocked the back third of the room. Broken only by a single large metal door covered in glowing runes, the barrier was partly transparent. On the far side hovered Burns and 4 other people, floating unconscious in some kind of stasis.

Noctarus sat in an ornate, thronelike chair on the left side of the room, with a long wooden table between him and the energy barrier. On it rested weapons and equipment, and I recognized some of it, like Burns's heavy boar spear or Sally Rogers' Captain America shield. One other item drew my gaze. It looked like a fantasy version of a drone quadcopter.

That was totally out of place. Had to be the special prize Burns got from killing Tecton back on stage 1. I'd gotten Switchblade and Tony got his Mark III transformable sword, but Burns never told me what he got. I bet he used that thing to target his giant Zeus lightning bolt like he'd hit Alpha and me with that first night in Midmount Vale.

I paused to scan Burns and his team long enough for Identify to trigger on each of them.

"Burns Turner. Level 48 baby human. Team Pirates of the Caribbean. Class: Tempest Marshal."

"Hector Rodriguez. Level 47 baby human. Team Pirates of the Caribbean. Class: Duelist. Yes, just a plain, old boring duelist. If you can convince him to accept some flashier spells, there's a great loot box in it for you."

"Jerry Alexander. Level 46 baby human. Team Seinfeld. Class: Flicker Brute. Jerry's build is so much more interesting. Short-range teleport, coupled with bursts of strength and constitution make for the perfect damage-dealing tank."

"Robin Wallace. Level 45 baby human. Team Princess Bride. Class: Fiery Skyrider. Not just a pretty face, Robin combines flight with her explosive fiery missiles to dominate from above."

"Sally Rogers. Level 48 baby human. Team Marvel. Class: Flight Line Glassblower. Wielding fantastic weapons with reflexes so fast they border on precognition, Sally is a devastating melee fighter.

Half of Burns's scout team were from his and Tony's original teams. I knew Hector and Sally best. I'd met Robin once, but had only seen Jerry in town from a distance. They were all elites at the top of the rankings, with classes that sounded very powerful, and Noctarus had captured them all.

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The wily old necromancer was as tough as I'd feared. Hopefully I could avoid fighting him.

"I thought I might hear from you tonight," Noctarus said, not rising from his chair, his voice lacking his usual warm enthusiasm.

"Hey, how are you?" I asked with a friendly wave.

"Disappointed, if not surprised," he said with a meaningful glance at his prisoners.

I shrugged. "What did you expect? You've been keeping secrets. We're curious beings."

"Indeed. Annoyingly so." He sighed deeply, beckoned me closer, then added to my escort, "Leave us."

The captain, who I decided to name Grumpy, hesitated but finally turned and led his team out. He paused in the doorway to cast a final glare at me. I waved.

When the door closed, Noctarus rose and swept his arm toward his prisoners. "This dampens our relationship. Everything had been going so well too."

"Snooping on you was foolish, but you have to realize there are a lot of people worried about what's going to happen after tomorrow."

"We have an agreement in place for that," Noctarus snapped.

"Sure, but our lives are on the line just like yours. No one's been allowed in the castle, you've never explained all the runes in the lake, or even admitted to having those six-legged monsters."

"I allowed you to see one. Isn't that enough?"

"Apparently not."

Noctarus didn't say anything for a moment, but darkness seemed to gather in his eyes. I activated Spellseer's Gaze. Sure enough, a wave of black mana was flowing from him toward me.

I pushed out my convergence mana to form a shield just outside of my skin across my entire body. After using the idea of shielding mana with such success in my study of the runes around the energy crystal, I figured it might help keep his powers from affecting me, at least unless he really pushed it.

Noctarus's mana flowed around me but bounced off my shield. Instead of getting angry, he chuckled and clapped slowly.

"I sensed you grew much stronger again and now you've proven the point. What is your secret?"

"I fight a lot. Even faced your old pal Alpha again tonight."

That caught his interest and he took half a step closer before catching himself and pretending disinterest. "Oh, you've already met, and you survived again?"

"Better than that. At least one of our problems is over."

"You killed Alpha?" Noctarus gasped. I expected surprise, but he looked almost . . . Horrified.

"I did."

"How, Even with my best rune shield?" He hesitated for a second before quickly adding, "The one he stole from me."

Several little clues started clicking into place. "Yeah, he was wearing a necklace you had on your desk last time I visited."

"You noticed that?"

I nodded. To confirm my growing suspicions, I pulled out Alpha's head and dropped it on the floor. Almost instantly, the giant, battered wolf head morphed back into Alpha's blocky, bearded humanoid one.

With a wail, Noctarus dropped to his knees, reaching one shaking hand toward the grisly trophy. Looking from Alpha's big, blocky noggin to Noctarus's shrunken, corpselike old-man head that was also strangely blocky, the final clues clicked into place.

"So, how are you two related?" I asked with forced calm, although my thoughts were racing.

On the surface, they didn't look alike at all, but I'd noticed Noctarus's blocky skull last time I visited. Couldn't see the similarities until Alpha's transformed humanoid head sat close to Noctarus. Now it was undeniable. They had to be related. Maybe cousins or even uncle and nephew. Or, if Cyrus was going for a cliche twist, father and son.

"He was my twin brother," Noctarus whispered, so low I barely heard.

For a second, my brain kind of froze. What the freaking hell? "Say that again."

Noctarus's shock turned to anger and he rose, dark energies gathering, a lot stronger this time.

"Brother?" I repeated, still struggling to wrap my mind around the impossibility of it. Sure, they'd chosen different paths, but could those paths really change them both so much in such different ways? I guess so.

"You lying Amadeus," I swore. "You were working together the whole time. Everything you told me was a lie?"

"You killed him!" Noctarus shouted, darkness gathering and thickening around his body, his face contorted in rage.

"Of course I killed him!" I shouted back. "What was I supposed to do? You set me up to fight him with your web of lies."

"You've made a mess of everything!" Noctarus trembled with anger and I prepared to unleash all my spells when he attacked.

"Me? You've been lying since before we even met!"

"Our partnership has been extremely successful until you and your people had to wreck everything."

I snorted. "You mean until you gave Alpha a rune shield and sent him to kill me?"

With obvious effort, Noctarus reined in his towering fury a bit. "I expected you to run and for your people to remain distracted another day or two. Can't you do anything without messing it up?"

"Noctarus, you're not making any sense. You've set us up from day one. You can't blame me for the death of your brother. Blame yourself and your web of lies."

"You could have retreated," Noctarus repeated, but his initial burst of rage seemed under control. Why was he holding back? What else did he want from me?

The fact that he wanted to talk gave me a bit of an opening, a slim chance to get out of here with Burns and his team to regroup with the others.

"No, Noctarus, I couldn't. Alpha was out for blood, and you knew it. You sent him out with full protections to kill or turn all of my people."

"Well, not all of them. I need workers for a couple more days."

"Do you even see how ridiculous that statement is? You're plotting to destroy us even though you need us. Why the elaborate games?"

He shrugged and sighed, exhibiting a remarkable emotional control. "The pack and my zombies had to fight. It was the only way. I ran the maths and even the obstinate fool had to agree. We both needed the same resources. You."

"So you launch a brilliant deception. Con us into helping you while setting us up to die. If that was the plan, why would Alpha keep attacking hunting parties?"

"Efficiency. He needed to grow and strengthen the pack. Sacrificing a few of my people to that end to keep up the greater ruse was necessary."

There had to be stuff he wasn't telling me. When I got dragged up onto the second stage back on the second day, their groups had savagely attacked each other. That was long before they needed to deceive us. I guess it didn't matter. Now we were finally peeling back the lies and getting to the heart of the double-cross. We'd been right, and yet so very wrong.

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