I glared at the insufferable man, rubbing the shoulder he had bumped. He bent over to grab a rather ratty looking bag he had likely taken off the body of a monster.

  "Forget about him, Dear." Sighed Grace as she and her husband started walking toward the gathering knights and summons. I was tempted to get lippy, but I had a least enough street smarts not to antagonize a man that may be able to literally tear me in half.

  "Whatever..." I grumbled, dragging my pitiful club after the older couple.

  Then, as if this dungeon knew we had started to get a little complacent, there was a very loud thumping noise, and the room shook, causing me to stumble, dirt and pebbles falling from the ceiling. "What the hell?" I snapped, and I wasn't the only one either.

  I saw that Jake had gathered the shaken Grace into his arms, while, beyond them, the others were gazing about the room, strewn with goblin corpses, for the cause of the mini earthquake. It appeared that none of us could locate the source, but I saw that many people had begun gazing worriedly up at the ceiling, no doubt afraid that it might come crashing down on us.

  "Let us hurry towards the next chamber." Called out the priest. I could tell by the look on his wrinkled face that this was not a normal occurrence, and that he also wanted out of this room.

  "You don't have to tell me twice." Laughed Shane as he rammed his way past me once again, this time actually knocking my ass to the cold, blood slicked, stones. "Oops, might wanna get some more muscle on those scrawny arms, Trash." He said with a cocky sneer cast over his shoulder. He walked off calmly, laughing.

  Angry now, I tried getting to my feet, planning on throwing caution to the wind and smacking the asshole up side the head with my club; its not like much of anyone here would overly mind having the guy unconscious for a good while. But I didn't stay alive this long by ignoring priorities, and potentially being berried alive was more urgent then this dipshit.

  "Karen!" I heard Grace call, taking my eyes off Shane. She was nearly at the corridor to the next chamber with Jake pulling her along, both shooting worried glances back my way. "Hurry!"

  Running through an internal list of murder options, I hurried my ass up to reach the others. But, as life hates me so much, even that could not go to plan. With another great rumbling, a resounding crack also accompanied the shaking. Admittedly freezing in fear, I stupidly looked up rather than continuing to flee, thinking that the ceiling was about to come down on my head.

  There was defiantly a lot of damage up there, but apparently it was the the stone beneath me, not above me, that I needed to be warry of.

  Why am I just standing here?

  Jerking myself out of the temporary shock, I continued my rush to relative safety. Jake had his hand stretched out toward me while also trying to keep Grace from dashing out of the corridor. Mean while, the other 'Heroes' either stood and watched, or made haste in getting farther down the hall, some even running over the people ahead of them. It was sheer pandemonium.

  I was about fifteen feet from Jake's hand when another earthquake knocked me off my feet, smacking face first into the stone. I heard a snick and a jolt of pain. Pervious experience told me I had just broken my nose. But that was the least of my issues as an ear splitting roar accompanied by the sounds of rocks exploding signaled the eruption of the floor directly behind me.

  One second I was flat on my stomach, a hand on my bloodied face, and the next I felt myself sliding backwards. Heart racing and face on fire, I looked back and let out a garbled scream.

  "Grace, stay back!" I heard Jake roar over the din of falling rocks and the screams of the others.

  "Someone needs to get her!" I heard Grace yell back, tears obvious in her voice.

  But I wasn't paying too much attention to that. That would be because I was simultaneously trying not to fall into the huge hole that the floor had now become, as well as not shit myself as I looked at the monster that had exploded up from below and created this basketball court-sized hole.

  My best guess was that it was some kind of millipede type creature, but it was so large that all I could make out was its shiny red/brown carapace, a great many bluish colored bug legs bigger around than a birch tree, and a set of blue grey pincers hovering above me. Pincers large enough to grab hold of a city bus...

  I may have been mid falling to my death, but at least the monster wasn't paying me any mind. Its primary focus was the hero summons currently trying to escape down the corridor. The earthquake must have caused part of it to collapse, because when my eyes jumped from the monster to them, I saw that there was a bottle neck happening, and the fleeing was going a little too slow.

  That's when I saw Jake and Grace. Grace was on her knees, doing her level best to stretch out and reach me while Jake did his best to keep his wife as far from the obviously interested bug looking to make a snack out of them.

  "Get her out of here!" I screamed at the man, coughing on my own blood in the process and trying to pull my dangling legs up.

  "No!" Shouted grace. "Please, someone needs to help her!" Cried Grace, even as Jake finally managed to haul the woman to her feet.

  "Leave her!" I heard another voice snap, but was unable to tell who had said it. Not that I was surprised.

  "Karen, hold on!" Jake shouted, still gripping his wife tight enough to bruise, while also panning his gaze side to side, ignoring the monster and looking for a way to help. How he could ignore a bug the size of a skyscraper, I did not know.

  But his efforts, as well as my own, were in vain. My fingers were slipping out of the slight grove they were desperately clinging to, and I could feel my grip breaking. I was going to fall.

  "Get her out!" I screamed one last time, just as the centipede began to move, pulling itself farther out of the hole it had made, advancing on its partially trapped prey.

  As more reddish carapace and blue legs emerged from the hole, my fingers finally lost their grip. I would have screamed but I immediately had the air knocked out of me when I bounced off the hard body of the monster and the rock wall. Fighting off the pain, I tried to grab hold of another floor as I tumbled past, but the bug had gouged enough space through that floor too that I could not reach the cracked stones.

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  I continued to fall, alternating from open space to broken rock and bug carapace. One particularly hard knock on the side of a floor I tried to grab, had my upper arm snap, a flash of bone sticking out of skin being the last thing I saw before blacking out.

  I had no clue how long I had been out, but I really wished I had stayed asleep when I did come back to consciousness. The sheer pain all over every inch of my body was nearly unimaginable. Whimpering, I started, slowly, moving different parts of my body, my breath coming out in shallow pants.

  Defiantly a broken arm. Add to that the nose of course... given the pain and trouble I was having breathing, I'd say a few cracked or broken ribs too. I thought that my legs may have made it out with cuts and bruises, but no breaks. Nervously, I tried to get myself into a seated position. My unbroken arm shot out and I felt a wall at my back. I couldn't see a thing. On the floor above there had been lit torches along the walls, allowing us all to see. I wasn't sure how many floors I ended up falling, but it was clear that there were no torches here.

  As I stifled my screams of pain, dragging myself to my feet with the support of the slightly damp and slimy stone brick wall, I noted that I did not hear the bug monster anymore. I wasn't a nice enough person to heartfully hope that none of the others got eaten... I just hoped that Jake and Grace made it out alright.

  When I finally got my -thankfully- unbroken legs under me, I took to squinting into the darkness. I was in too much pain to do much else right then. I hoped to see something that would distract me from looking at the exposed bone of my destroyed arm. I wish I could say that it was the first time, but it wasn't. Didn't mean that looking at it wouldn't make me throw up though.

  After a short period of time, where my head pounded and my arm began to grow worryingly numb, my eyes started to adjust to the dark. I still couldn't see much at all, but a feint, blurry glow in one direction told me that there was some kind of light that way. I tried to take a deep, steadying breath, coughed and whimpered in pain at my stupidity, and began slowly shuffling forward, the wall my sole support.

  The going was slow, but it was either continue forward, or curl up and die. I wasn't dumb, and I had been near death enough times now that I knew that I was probably done for either way. But the idea of just laying down and accepting it irked me too much to just do that. I would rather die at least trying to get out of this hell hole.

  Eventually, after what was probably an hour of painful and terribly snail like progress, I stood panting at the end of a corridor, looking out into a vast room. By this point my vision had gone a little blurry and I was resisting everything inside of me to not slide to the floor and rest, just for a moment. I knew if I gave in it would not be for a moment, but something of a more permanent nature.

  I could tell the room was huge due to the fact that it seemed to have several small fires all around it. Some squinting through unfocused eyes told me that the source of the fire was multiple groupings of candles either placed directly on the floor, or on old and tarnished floor candelabras. With some difficulty, I looked up and realized that I could not make out the ceiling.

  "Human..." a voice suddenly growled, loud enough to echo and make me jump. The sudden movement making me groan and get dizzy, on the brink of passing out. I stumbled forward a couple paces and lost the support of the wall. Foolishly, I looked back, almost surprised that it had moved from me rather than me from it. This was not good.

  "Human..." Said the deep, growling voice again, reminding me about what had startled me in the first place.

  I looked back out into the vast open room to try and pin-point the source. I cursed myself for the poor state I was in, and the inability to see nor focus. But, then, a slight movement had me focusing on a point that I would guess was around the middle of the space, where the fire light was the strongest. Amidst the candle light was a large dark object. I couldn't tell what it was, but it was taller than the average man, that was for sure. But what had caught my eyes had been somewhat smaller than the dark object. Near the foot of it was a dark 'thing', and this one was moving slightly.

  "Come closer... human." It growled, the word 'human' said in a way that suggested that, what ever this thing was, it was not a fan of humans. That should have been warning enough to stay away, but I wasn't exactly thinking straight at the moment, and I began to shuffle forward, my feet kicking small stones and un-lit candle stubs.

  What am I doing? I found myself thinking. It was a pretty logical thought, after all. Was it not dumb to head toward the scary voice that referred to me as 'human', therefore suggesting that what ever this was, was not human? But my brain wasn't exactly working right, and I was just fascinated that I could still move my feet at all. I could tell by the smell alone that I was bleeding way too much, and my breathing had become even more shallow.

  It seemed like one second I was shuffling along, and then suddenly I was standing before my goal the next. Had I blacked out? This was not looking good for me, at all.

  I couldn't really focus on that right now (Not that I could focus at all) given what my eyes were seeing. Had I not of been half dead and did not think I could run, even if my life did depend on it, I was pretty sure I would have been fleeing back the way I had come.

  I stood at the foot of a massive carved stone and iron throne. It was dark and gothic, covered in jutting spikes and surrounded in candles of varying sizes, fires still flickers even though they surly should have melted away by now. And as scary as the throne was, it was what sat upon it that had me shaking in fear yet unable to move: a corpse.

  Though, not just any corpse. No, this was a leathery skeleton of massive proportions, and several inhumane shapes... I was pretty sure there were no humans who had massive pauldron like shoulder blades covered in spiky bone protrusions after all. And the man this skeleton had once been must have been at least eight feet tall, maybe even nine. Every part of its boney body seemed to have a spike here or there. From its desiccated head grew a mat of long grey hair and a dark fabric cloth or kilt was around its waist; it's only cloths that I could see. This could not possibly be the body of a human.

  "Half dead..." Sighed the growling voice, sounding oddly disappointed. I was so out of it that I stared at the skeleton in horror, thinking that it had spoken, despite its jaw not moving and the fact that it possessed none of the needed organs to produce sound. Or any organs, for that matter... "Still, we are hardly in a position to be picky."

  Blinking stupidly, my brain finally registered that the voice had been coming from my left. Slowly I turned and felt a jolt of fear, before it too faded into the dull roar of pain I now existed in. It ruled over any other emotion at the moment.

  To call what I was looking at a dog would have been accurate, but not nearly efficient enough. If I had to pick a breed that I knew, I would call it a Rottweiler: big, bulky body full of hard muscle, a huge head supporting an equally big jaw, and deceptively cute ears... but like the skeleton, this dog was nearly twice the size it should be, and its eyes were a deep red and held far too much intelligence.

  Also... Was I just described as being inadequate by a dog?

  "W-what?" I asked it, even though what I should have done was run away, broken bones and blood loss be damned.

  "I was saying that you are a sorry sight." Grumped the dog. Even the freaky experience of seeing a dog speak like a person was, apparently, not enough to kick my addled brain into gear, as I just stood there and continued to stare. "It is true that almost none ever make it this deep, but even amongst those few, I think you are in the saddest state of any of them..."

  "I fell." I mumbled, swaying slightly and the dog going in and out of focus.

  "Indeed." Said the dog, eyes unsympathetic.

  "What... What is this place?"

  "What little is left of the demon realm." Sighed the dog simply. He said it like he was commenting on what looked to be rain clouds in the distance. "I hardly think you are in any state to be asking such questions, however."

  "No." I agreed. "I am pretty sure I am dead." Perhaps not literally, but I would be quite soon. I should have been more worried or scared, but I just could not muster the emotion to feel much of anything. I was pretty cynical as a person, but even I usually had more fight in me than this. I must have smacked my head against the walls a few too many times as I fell.

  "Well..." Said the dog, looking me over as if I were a mildly irritating toddler. "It may be your lucky day then. Though it is very, very, unlikely to work... I do know of a way that you may be able to survive."

  Well that sounded both promising and ominous.

  When I failed to give the dog a response, he flashed me a very toothy, horrifying grin, red eyes blazing. "What's say we make you the new Demon King?"

  Huh?