He considered just opening the door and letting the wolves in. He was ready, and their gnawing hurt, but he decided they might be more eager if they made it through the door on their own. He could hold out a few more minutes.

  Then, all at once, they were through. As soon as the first wolf crossed the threshold, Stew saw red, literally.

  Stew barely had a chance to read the message before something uncoiled in his mind. A visceral, physical reaction spread through his thoughts and dungeon body. His every wall and fixture feared and hated these intruders. He was reeling with a deep, sick feeling.

  "Bossy, can you feel this? What's happening?"

  "Wolf, cat or arcane dungeon core, you are all predators, driven by instinct and need. Can you see yourself? Do you see your reflection in your guests, little dungeon?"

  The rage lashed around and through him. He felt something in his core that wanted to reach inside Bossy and wipe her soul for daring to question him. It felt like something he should know how to do.

  "No!" He pushed the feelings down. "No." It was the hardest thing he had ever done. "It's not me. This isn't me."

  "We'll soon see won't we?" She didn't sound frightened, but her thoughts had an edge to them. The warmth he felt there before was missing, replaced with cool reserve.

  He focused on clearing his mind. He tried to pin down each feeling and name it. Rage that anyone would dare to step in his domain. Fear because these wolves were coming to harm his dungeon, to kill his monsters and minions, to destroy everything and devour his core. But the sick feeling beneath it all was the most disturbing. He was HUNGRY. He had to fight to remain in control as his every weird crystal nerve told him to throw away his plans and march the golems in, swinging.

  He wished he could take deep breaths, but he did the best he could, checking over each of his traps and monsters by touch and forcing himself to think through the plan. That helped.

  It also helped that instead of rushing ahead, the wolves each squeezed through the hole in the door then milled around the entrance room on alert. The leader explored every inch of the floor. He couldn't see her, but from what he felt, she was crouched low with her ears forward and every muscle tense. Her iron hackles stood straight like knives along her spine.

  She froze, tense and still, and the pack froze with her in midstep, their ears flicked forward and their noses high.

  He waited too, relieved for the time to get a grip.

  He had things almost together when the leader stood erect and raised her tail high. She started trotting forward at a casual pace. The rest of the pack followed with the other monster wolf taking up the rear.

  The wolves walked straight into room two, undeterred by the darkness. As the leader reached the middle, she stepped right over the pressure place without triggering it. So did the wolf behind her.

  He triggered the trap himself. The floor dropped open beneath them, dumping them into the pit.

  Each wolf dropped three meters without missing a step, then, one-by-one, leapt back out and into room three. Even the regular wolves moved smoothly without any pause or sign of effort, not so much as a yelp of surprise.

  Room two and three were supposed to give them false confidence, but maybe that confidence wasn't so false. He was a delivery driver, not a naturalist. "How am I supposed to know what a wolf can do, let alone some magic wolf monster?"

  "Are you talking to me?" Bossy said.

  "Wait. Stats." There was something nagging at him.

  He gathered himself, and realized he was missing something. Something he had been too distracted to see before. Stat-O-Vision? It sounded like some cheesy corporate sponsor for a fifties TV show. Bossy had mentioned how the level would form itself around her as the boss, maybe the System formed itself around him too. There had already been several things that seemed to be based on what he knew and expected. What would something called "Stat-O-Vision" do?

  He focused on the pack leader who was taking her time exploring room three, a long, brightly lit hall.

  "Right, show me some stats then."

  "Oh. Crap."

  He focused on the other Iron Wolf.

  How does that explain the other wolves then?

  Maybe it was just his new ability, but their stats looked different from those he had seen for Sluice or Big John or even Bossy. That just confirmed what Bossy had said about his System being weird. He would have to compare later. The Paladin had nearly reached the end of the hall that was room three.

  "I thought you said these iron wolves were just some deserters from a horde looking for monster cores?"

  Bossy didn't answer. He realized she might not be able to see the stats he could see.

  "The big one is a Paladin. They're all on a holy quest against creatures of darkness, and I'm guessing dungeons qualify as creatures of darkness. So this was never about cores, was it. Why didn't you tell me?"

  "I didn't know."

  "How could you not know?"

  "I'm a cow."

  He couldn't argue with that.

  "I can tell you that–"

  "Hold on. This is it!"

  He could feel Bossy's irritation, but he had to focus to keep from screwing up the next few seconds.

  The paladin stepped carefully into room four, a square room and the first spike snare. He wasn't surprised when she stepped over the pressure plate. It took everything he had to hold back from triggering the snare. It was his plan to hold off anyway, but now he was feeling conflicted. Am I really doing this?

  He had a terrible feeling about where this was all going and the sick hunger he felt didn't make it any easier to feel good about any of it. He wanted to suck them all dry and grow fat like a tick. Feeling that made another part of him root for the wolves.

  Sluice's pit was wide open before them.

  He moved his focus into Sluice, hoping for some relief from the hunger and found that Sluice was feeling just as ravenous.

  He asked Sluice to form a discrete eye in a corner of the room to watch as the pack leader stared at the monster core in the middle of the room, then hopped down into the pit with a "whuff" that sounded positively dismissive.

  The other wolves entered the pit in ones and twos, spreading out until he started to worry they wouldn't all enter together.

  The squire held back warily until the paladin looked back, beckoning. The paladin then continued forward, head and tail high, almost to the monster core.

  As the squire landed, Stew sprung the trap.

  The spikes slammed down in rooms four and six.

  Sluice began to release mucus over the entire floor and walls of the pit.

  Two of the timber wolves went down with a scrabble and a yelp, falling and rolling back up again and again, their coats covered in the preternaturally slippery mucus. The rest of the timber wolves were soon in the same situation, as was the squire.

  The paladin braced all four feet in a sturdy stance and stepped carefully forward, one paw at a time, her tail low with concentration.

  A quick check of their stats showed that the mucus, rather than increasing their agility as it had with the golems, knocked a point off for each wolf. He assumed it was because they weren't part of the dungeon.

  He had them right where he wanted them. Sluice burbled hungrily in his mind. The stone slime wasn't sure it could digest them all at once, but it was eager to try.

  The paladin seemed to sense the threat. She let out a low growl and leaped halfway across the pit in a single bound, nearly making the edge of room six before tumbling back into the pit.

  Sluice's hunger just magnified his own. Thoughts kept chasing each other around his head. He didn't ask these creatures to defile his domain. They've earned this. So hungry.

  Defile. That's not me. I don't think like that.

  The horror of the moment stood in stark relief for him. The paladin struggled to get to her feet with unwavering determination. She was powerful and driven, they all were, but they were at his mercy for just a moment. He could wipe them out so easily.

  And become what?

  He couldn't do it. It didn't help that it sounded like such an awful way to die. Maybe he could hold them here until they were tired and hungry, then let them out the way they came? Maybe this didn't have to be a bloodbath. He didn't believe it, even as he thought it.

  The paladin made it to her feet and leapt without hesitation, catching a stone spike in her teeth and using its leverage to pull herself onto the tiny ledge between the spikes and the pit.

  If he could have held his breath he would have, but it was just a moment before she bit down with incredible force and shattered the stone spike. She grabbed another and another, worrying at them until they broke one after another.

  He had hesitated and now it was too late. He could still swallow all the other wolves, but she would keep coming.

  He slammed the spike trap in seven shut too, but he knew it was just a matter of time. He still couldn't bring himself to unleash Sluice on the other wolves. Sluice was not happy about it, he could feel that, but the slime would respect his wishes. It did dissolve the eye he had formed, so he took that as a suggestion he find another focus for now.

  He moved his focus to Big John and waited, shoulder to shoulder with the other golems in room eight.

  "I'm sorry. I'm not cut out for this," he said to Bossy and the kittens. "Now they're going to be coming for you. I'm guessing that you won't be able to respawn if I'm gone. I'm going to do my best to stop them here."

  The kittens, fierce as ever, seemed unimpressed. Bossy was reserved. He realized he had cut her off earlier. He was about to apologize for that too, when he ran out of time.

  The paladin tore through the spikes faster and faster with more and more of the pack joining her in the tunnel she created. He remembered how they had made short work of the golems outside, but maybe he had learned a few things. They might win, but he wasn't going to make it easy. It still seemed gruesome, fighting them with fists and hammer and pickaxe, but it felt more fair than dissolving them in some horrific trap. What was I even thinking?

  Did that matter to the wolves?

  Did they care if they died fighting a slime or a golem? I'm just not a killer. I can't do this, not even to save myself.

  Then he realized he was ready to try, if only to save Bossy and the kittens. If I fight hard enough maybe they'll give up. This again rang hollow even as he thought it, but it was all he had.

  The paladin made it through the last spikes.

  He braced himself, raising the hammer and the pickaxe as all the other golems raised their fists.

  His eyes met the paladin's amber stare. He didn't see the fierceness of an animal. Maybe he imagined it, but it felt like a look of resigned disapproval.

  The paladin leapt.

  Big John swung the pickaxe to meet her.

  She dodged it easily, using his own arm as a springboard to extend her leap over his head and all the way into the grass of the boss room behind him.

  Frantic, he swapped to Bossy's eyes. Afraid of what he might see next.

  The rest of the wolves crashed against the golems like a wave of teeth, tripping one after another then tearing them into rubble, but the sheer number of golems slowed them. Only the paladin was through to the boss room so far.

  Panting, the iron wolf paladin locked those amber eyes on Bossy and walked forward.

  The kittens tumbled out from behind Bossy and spread themselves between the wolf and the cow, arching their tiny backs, walking sideways, spitting and hissing.

  If he had a heart, it would be breaking. They didn't have a chance against even the one wolf. He looked at Fluff with his new ability.

  Spectral Panther? He felt more and more out of his depth. Still, none of this made Fluff and the others anything more than a snack for a hungry wolf. The same wolf that took two steps forward, unphased by the kittens' doomed bravery.

  Then the fearsome, implacable Iron Wolf Paladin curled one paw beneath her and bowed her head, kneeling to Bossy.

  Stunned, he made the golems stand down.

  The wolves immediately stopped attacking. They filtered into the room, joining the Paladin and kneeling on the grass. Among the pack there were a few scrapes and bloody noses and a limp here and there, but for all their fighting they seemed mostly unscathed.

  The golems hadn't fared as well, three were down and two were missing limbs including Big John who was missing his head but still standing.

  Looking out through Bossy's eyes, he felt something like a chuckle in her mind.

  "I don't understand."

  "I'll show you," Bossy said, and the lights went out.

  Stew found himself floating in darkness again, only this time his vision cleared and he could see an endless plain of long grass lit by a titanic, full moon.

  In the darkness, he saw the faint outline of wolves limned in a red glow. The iron wolves each glowed with a denser, amber fire. Faint wisps of green balefire shaped like large cats sat at attention before them surrounding a white radiance so bright against the dark background that he couldn't make out any details at first.

  He realized he was looking at Bossy, who towered over them all, sitting on her haunches with regal poise on a raised dais of stone with the moon resting in her horns.

  One by one, the wolves raised their heads and began to howl.

  Bossy raised a hoof in benediction.

  Each of the cats turned to look directly where Stew floated, bodiless, their eyes glowed a piercing, emerald green.

  "I have just learned a surprising truth." Bossy's voice came to him in his head, all of the previous warmth and humor returned. "These brave souls came on a holy quest to rescue me from the foul dungeon which had summoned and imprisoned me. Now they are singing a hymn of praise. Listen to them. What music they make."

  "It's nice, really." Bodiless as he was, he still felt completely exposed as each of the wolves now turned to look at him. "I'm thinking I should have named you 'Bela.'"

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