Disclaimer: Still don't own FATE or any of the bad guys, and I don't own the R.O.U.S's from The Princess Bride, either

Chapter Three

Dantenar's POV

Screamdrinker the Unstoppable advanced, the rats red eyes glittering in the faint light. I gulped and held my poleaxe at the ready. "Zarathel?" She looked at me. "It was nice being your twin," I said to her.

"Dantenar! This isn't the time, we aren't going to die, I promise you!" She tried to spear him with her pitchfork, but it missed. The word "miss" floated up. She gritted her teeth. "This isn't fair."

I swung at Screamdrinker, and it connected, probably because my weapon was longer. "-4 HP" floated up from the giant rat. In the back of my mind, the R.O.U.S's from The Princess Bride popped up. I almost laughed.

Finally, Zarathel lunged forward and poked Screamdrinker twice with her pitchforks, once with each one. I chopped at him and finally, with a squeak of pain, he fell over. A funny looking bone club with the word "Cludrip" floating above it popped out of thin air and fell to the ground. Zarathel picked it up. "I like the feel of this. One of her pitchforks disappeared and the Cludrip thing replaced it. She whirled around and hit a topaz gel with it, and the little level up circle floated up around her.

"You gain experience and skill," the creepy voice said.

Zarathel sighed. "This is starting to get on my nerves." I laughed. She assigned two points to strength, two to Dexterity and one to Vitality on the first page. It went blank. (A/N: you know how this works by now) She then assigned one point to Critical Strike and one to Mace/Club Skill on the other.

Feeling much better now that Screamdrinker was dead, I let down my guard slightly. Fiddlestix was running around behind me, playing with Trouble, and I started forward. "Come on, Zara, we've got to get to level fifty-three."

She followed me around a few corners, Fiddlestix and Trouble following her, until I stopped short. "Wow!" An anvil sat in front of me, giving off a bright white light, the words "Magic Anvil" floating above it.

I started forward, killed a Ruby Gel trying to kill me, and placed my poleaxe on the anvil.

"Fate has favored you," the creepy voice said, and four sockets appeared on my poleaxe.

"Wow," I said again. I held onto the handle of the poleaxe. It didn't feel any different. I couldn't even feel the sockets against my hands. I broke an urn and leather gloves-the words "socketed leather gloves" floating above them-popped out of the air and landed on the ground. I touched them, and they appeared on my hands. They had spikes on them. "Wow," I said a third time. There was a socket on the back of each one. Zarathel looked at me.

"You're just a socketed person today, Dantenar!" She looked a little jealous. I offered the spiked gloves to her. She shook her head. "No, you keep them. I'll find my own," she said, grinning a little. And sure enough, as soon as she opened the nearest "large chest", she found a "socketed vest" that had purple words. It was enchanted, but not identified. Somehow, she produced an Identify Scroll and identified it.

"Leather Vest of the Tortoise" the floating words said. "Ooh, a 1 Vitality bonus!" Zarathel said. She put the vest on. She was starting look like a warrioress, what with the vest, pitchfork and Cludrip. "You know, technically I shouldn't be able to carry this," Zara said speculatively. "It requires 49 Strength, and I don't have that much. Maybe the game wants us to succeed."

I shrugged. "We'll never know, I suppose."

Zara touched a Weapons Rack and two Forest Bows popped off. She put them in her inventory and we kept going. It went like this for another ten or fifteen minutes, then I turned and saw it. A ruby gel with a red glow. I groaned. "Not another one." The word "Brud'durak" floated above it.

"Bother," Zarathel said. "It was going to well, too." We both raised our weapons, but Fiddlestix and Trouble beat us to it. They attacked the ruby gel together, effectively distracting it as Zara and I attacked from behind. It was to busy trying to get at the dogs to notice us, and it was soon dead. While we were fighting it, topaz and emerald gels kept attacking, so eventually I let Zara kill the thing and protected us both from the other gels. I leveled up in the process.

"You have gained new skills," the creepy voice said.

I gritted my teeth. "Not right now, creepy voice!" As usual, the voice said nothing. I rolled my eyes and finished off the last topaz gel and assigned my points exactly the same as last time: Strength twice, Vitality twice and Dexterity once on the first page, Critical Strike and Polearm Skill on the other.

We descended a level once we found the stairs down, and the first thing we saw on level three was a Death Cap coming towards us. Trouble, who had just lost his Gryphon form, got it, Fiddlestix joining him about halfway through.

I had gotten a quest up in town, and now I started looking around for "Adadh", a Mottled Lurker, which I guessed was a spider or something. We explored around, and finally I saw him. By this time, I had figured out what to do and wasn't nervous anymore. I quicky and humanely killed the spider, the collected the "Assassin's Blade of Sapping"

"You have completed a quest," the creepy voice said.

I ignored it. "Okay, I've got to get to town and return this to Seever. Coming?" I asked my twin, and she nodded. I opened the portal and we stepped in.

We appeared in the Town of Grove, and I found Seever. He gave me a lot of gold, a lot of Fame and a "Cloth Belt of the Tortoise", which gave me a 1 Vitality bonus. We went to Dreya the Healer and returned to Dungeon level three.

After descending five more levels and killing Eyeripper the Ruthless(Hag), Almgroth(Zombie, Khuzorogul the Ghastly(Ruby Gel) and Faceater the Detested(Nocturne Fungus), I was more than ready to go home.

A/N: A Nocturne Fungus is like a Death Cap, which looks like a walking mushroom, only purple and white instead of pink and green. Other than that they're the same.

"Zarathel?" I asked.

"Yes?" Zara looked at me. We'd each leveled up around two or three times in the five levels we'd descended. Now we were on level ten, not even close to being half-way to level fifty-three.

"I wanna go home." I tried not to sound like a whining baby, but I was tired, hungry and nearly dead. At least that's what my red health bar on my left sleeve said. I broke an urn, and a "major health potion" dropped onto the floor. I touched it, and my health bar went all the way to full. "I feel better," I muttered.

Zarathel was sympathetic. "I want to go home to, but we have to beat that guy with the hard name first! The sooner we get there, the sooner we can beat him and get home."

I was almost crying. "I want to go home now!" I insisted. Zara put a hand on my shoulder, and I pulled myself together. "Right. Well, we're done with this level," I said, inspecting the map floating next to me, on the left. "Let's go down." We ran to the stairs, stopping twice as we ran out of breath.

"You are exhausted." the creepy voice said.

By this time we'd learned not to yell at it. It didn't do a lick of good.

We descended to level eleven, and came face to face with a FATE statue. "Oh boy!" I shouted and immediately began prying at the gems the statue had for eyes.

"Fate has favored you," the creepy voice said.

Two Superior Opals popped out of the statue, and I instantly installed them in my poleaxe. Now, whenever I walked a cloud of white followed me. My poleaxe now had +48 electric resistance and +24 electrical damage. Zara glared at me. "You could have let me have one, you know."

I belatedly remembered her. "Sorry, Zarathel, you can have the next one, promise!" We turned a corner and Zara, still glaring at me, walked straight into another FATE statue. "What luck!" I said.

Zara tried to stay mad, but failed and started laughing. She pried two Bloodstones from the statue and installed one in her socketed vest, the other in her pitchfork.

"Come on, we have to find Gassh the Bloody!" Zara said. I followed her until we found a Goblin with five Noxious Gels defending him. "Gassh the Bloody" floated above his head. "This must be our lucky day," Zara muttered, but we waded in with a will. Fiddlestix bit a Noxious Gel and was poisoned.

"Fiddlestix, Fiddlestix, Fiddlestix," I said reprovingly but kept fighting. I killed two of the Noxious Gels, left Zarathel to kill the last one, as she'd killed two as well, and started on Gassh the Bloody. Together we finished him off, returned to town so Zarathel could claim her reward and came back down after getting healed and selling everything in our inventory.

We went into the opening where the stairs going down were, and I stumbled over a raised place in the floor.

"You might want to be careful around here. These levels just get more dangerous as you descend," a voice said. It wasn't Zarathel's. We both whirled around to find a young man, maybe around twenty, standing behind us.

He wore blue and white armor, and looked just like the guy on the font of the box. His dog, Kaos, sat behind him. Both were dirty and looked exhausted. "I'm Kile," the man offered, and stuck out his hand, which we both shook politely. "I've been trapped in this game for six years."