Whatever it is, it’s an unbelievably catchy tune. At first, I thought it was a flute, but I’m pretty sure that it’s singing, with the echoes and twists of the cavern fleshing out the sound. I’ve become so used to hearing our own footsteps and the occasional water drip, the new sound is interesting and we need to find out more.

  I grab Sadie’s arm. “Sadie, stay behind me. Be ready to use those flaming fists if you have to and make sure Baco has a clear path to any target.”

  She looks at me blankly and nods. I ready my spear and move on, my two bondlings close behind me.

  Whatever the singing is, I don’t think it has lyrics, but it’s clearly asking us to find it. It will be safer there. If someone is singing in the middle of what appears to be a battle zone, it must be safe. It might even be a way out of the dank of this labyrinth. The sound is beckoning warmth and without a doubt precisely where we need to be.

  The idea of trying to keep track of turns and distances is gone. I’ve tried more than once to mentally bring up a map into my vision, the way the notifications appear. If I have a heads-up interface, you would think the designers would put a map in the system for me. Maybe it’s there, and I haven’t figured out the map command yet. I can’t press M, although I think it as hard as I can and try saying it a few times.

  I think this might be some song by Evanescence, but it keeps changing, each section even cooler than the last. Sadie pushes past me. I grab the neck of her toga before she takes the lead.

  “Sadie. I said stay behind me. Let me check everything out first.”

  She looks at me, but more like looking though me, turns and continues walking away from me.

  “Sadie!” I spit. “I take the lead! Don’t followers follow?”

  The song is louder now. We’re getting closer. With echoes and reverb, I can’t begin to guess the distance. Sadie doesn’t stop her forward drive, a determined splish-splash through low puddles replacing her clip clop.

  “Sadie!” I call, raising my voice for the first time since the fight. In response, the song gets louder. And Sadie starts running toward the source like the cops are after her.

  I want to slap me. How could I not have realized? So far, this place has been made of ancient Greek Myths. I bet the singer is a Siren. I run after Sadie, her hooves splashing loudly in the puddles of the path.

  In the myths, Sirens sit on rocks in the ocean and sing an irresistible song. Sailors then crash their ships on the rocks, dinner for the monsters.

  Six-foot-tall human legs can luckily outpace four-foot-tall satyr legs. She’s out of reach, so I dive.

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  She lets out a bleat as I take her down like the star quarterback I never wanted to be. She quickly rolls over and squirms out from under me, face darting from side to side.

  “Dom? What happened? Why did you attack me? Where are we?”

  In The Odyssey, Odysseus plugs his crewman’s ears with wax. Out of insane hubris and curiosity, he has the crew lash him to the mast of the ship so he can hear the song but not head into it. I am not Odysseus. Domuleus? Domysseus? Dominies? Never mind.

  I use the spear to cut strips off the bottom of my shirt. Great, I really needed a halter-top. I wad up the fabric and stuff it in my ears. I then hand pieces to Sadie, but she’s already standing up and her eyes are glazing over, staring right through me again.

  “Sorry about this,” I say, shoving her back to the wall, my forearm across her collarbones. I stuff her ears with shirt bits. Her ears are lightly hairy and elongated at the top, requiring more material than mine did. She shakes her head and blinks, looking me direct in the eye with those goat pupils of hers.

  “You back?” I ask.

  She nods, making eye contact.

  “It’s a Siren. We can’t fight with our hands over our ears.”

  Baco shoulders past my legs, nearly gouging me with those all-angle tusks. Oh, no. Looks like bondlings are more susceptible to charm than summoners.

  I run in front of Baco and issue the Stay command. Sit. Nothing. He chugs along, trying to pass me. I grab his snout and press his face to the water on the floor.

  “Sadie, my shirt,” I urge.

  She tears my whole shirt off with a violent yank. Not at all what I had in mind. She rips it in two, and stuffs fist sized wads off what was my shirt into Baco’s ears. I let go of Baco’s face. He stands. I issue the Sit command. He does.

  “My dad gave me that shirt,” I tell Sadie.

  “It was already ruined,” she says with a pale smile.

  Great. Cut off jeans, wet sneakers, no shirt. You would think after a full year of cardio, I would get abs. How did I get Summon Satyr and not abs? I need a breastplate or something. I hear the muffled melody. It’s nice, but I’m not curiously drawn to it anymore.

  “Let’s keep moving. Maybe we can get out of range of the Siren Song.”

  The next turn lands us in a chamber, a natural room, with the water forming a black reflective pool, probably no more than calf deep, surrounded by a black sand beach which would be beautiful if we were on some island coast. At the edge of that pool is a large, rocky outcropping. On that rock sits a creature, swaying and singing. The song, even through the cloth in my ears, is beautiful, uplifting, and exhilarating.

  As thick as my thigh, the creature’s serpentine body coils around the rock, glistening with an intricate pattern of scales, black, gray, and maroon. Slate colored reptilian bat wings pulse in and out to the languid melody of its singing. Wings put it at a tremendous maneuverability advantage. I don’t think it knows we’re here. It’s turned mostly away from us, so it’s difficult to discern. I do know if we kill it, we will gain some new skills.

  In The Art Of War, ancient warlord Sun Tzu wrote ‘Surprise the enemy if possible’.

  I give the hand signal for Charge, pointing at an outstretched wing.

  Sadie’s first-sized fireball passes cleanly through the fleshy webbing of that wing as Baco thunders by me.

  The Siren turns. The skull white face is striking, not quite human, feminine with high cheekbones and eyes that belong in a mascara ad. It has a nose, but for some reason I expected it not to. The appearance startles me long enough for it to hiss with a long, forked tongue and unevenly flap away toward a black sand beach on the other side that leads to a passage.

  Baco, a furious ball of tusk, fart and grunt, bounds into the lake to get across. I curse my perception level as I notice the cloth wads fall from his charging ears. He splashes to the far shore of the lake by the exit that the Siren blocks, turns back, grunts, paws the ground and readies himself to charge.

  At me.