Welcome, sentient races one and all to the centennial season of the greatest collaboration between mortals and gods. The most thrilling, most deadly, most watched spectacle ever put on in any realm…Mana Runners!

The endless dungeon below Whitepeak, the famous City of Wizards, has reset itself once again, bringing new traps, new monsters, and new, never-before-seen challenges to this historic event. All of your favorite champions from Season Ninety-Nine are back and ready to face what is sure to be the most difficult season of Mana Runners ever attempted. From the lowest Copper Tier to the Platinums who shine at the top, every Runner is ready to lay down their lives defending you from the monsters that lurk beneath the mountain.

All of their sacrifices shall be recorded in the pages of history, but only those blessed with unique powers from the gods can reach the deepest floors. It’s the event that brings sentient races from all over the world together! The spectacle no one can afford to miss! And you can watch it all live thanks to Whitepeak College of Wizardry’s revolutionary sendernet: the only Sending spell network that broadcasts the can’t-be-missed action of Mana Runners straight into your home!*

There’s no limit to the heroism Mana Runners can achieve, and there’s still time to become one yourself! Slots are still open for the Funnel, so sign up now** and become part of history. Become a Mana Runner and gain the blessing of the gods and the admiration of the entire world!

The Mana Runners Centennial Season is produced by the Whitepeak Dungeon Committee and the Coalition of Righteously Aligned Gods. Remember, the gods are always listening, so be sure to pray for your favorite Mana Runner to earn them blessings as they battle the unthinkable dangers of the Endless Dungeon!

*Home viewership of Mana Runners requires a Sending Stone enchanted with Minor or Major Illusion. Free public viewings are also available thanks to the generous sponsorship of the Coalition of Righteously Aligned Gods. See your local participating Major Illusion theater for show times.

**Public registration for new Mana Runners will close five days before the inaugural episode. A complete liability waiver is required for all participants. As this is a historic and highly competitive season, the Funnel’s survival rate has been estimated at 67%. Best of luck to all our new hopefuls, and we’ll see you in the dungeon!

Nothing good ever comes from a knock at three in the morning.

Thank the gods I was already awake. I’d been up since yesterday doing a second-by-second analysis of the Mana Runners Centennial Season trailer to see if they’d accidentally included any trap footage or layout information in the background, so at least I didn’t yelp. I stayed perfectly still on the tiny floor pad I was forced to call a bed, holding my breath as the unknown fist pounded on my door again, much louder this time. I was silently putting on my lead-lined gloves so I could safely grab my Sending Stone when a deep, dry voice spoke through my mail slot.

“Mr. Tavin Sorrel?”

I swore silently, scrambling to remember if I’d missed any debt payments recently. I had a lot to keep track of, but they were all on automated payment plans through the Banker’s Guild’s sendernet portal these days. That thing was supposed to be guaranteed to keep away debt collectors, but I didn’t know anyone else who called you by your full name while banging on your door four hours before dawn.

“Mr. Sorrel,” the deep voice called again. “There’s no point staying silent. I know you’re in there.”

Of course he did. Anyone who’d dug up enough about me to know my name and address would also know that I never left my apartment. I didn’t see any missed payment notices when I finally managed to activate my Sending Stone, though.

That made no sense. If he wasn’t a debt collector, who could he be? I wasn’t worth enough to kidnap and had no family to pay a ransom. Even my organs weren’t sellable thanks to the medical condition that forced me to hide inside my apartment like a vampire hiding from the sun.

Being a vampire would’ve been better, actually. At least they got to go outside at night. I was stuck in here twenty-four hours a day, which meant I couldn’t slip out my bathroom window to get away from the maniac who was still pounding on my door.

I was about to say screw it and call the Peakguard—I’d be dead long before they got here, assuming they showed up at all for a call from an address in the Shadow, but I still wanted proof on the record that I’d tried not to get murdered—when I felt the stabbing, full-body pain that meant a spell was being cast near me.

The agony sent me to the ground like a hammer. Back when I was a kid and still under the delusion that I could be cured, the healers had tried to play off my pain as a good thing. “Look at it this way,” they’d told me in their fake, cheery voices, “at least you’ll never need Detect Magic!”

It’d been cold comfort then and it was cold comfort now. I was so busy writhing on my lead-lined floor, I didn’t even get to see what the spell causing me all this pain did. My best guess was Knock or something similar, because when I finally managed to stop spasming long enough to lift my head up, all three deadbolts plus the security chain on my front door were undone, and a stranger was standing over me.

If I hadn’t still been gasping in spine-twisting agony, I would’ve panicked for sure. The best I could say about the man who’d invaded my apartment was that he definitely wasn’t a debt collector. He looked more like a mummy with his gray, papery skin, skeletally thin body, and bandaged hands covered in dark rings. His face was so shriveled, I legitimately couldn’t tell if he was super old or if the magic I could still feel rolling over me like waves of freezing acid had caused his skin to crinkle up like a dead leaf.

Whatever had caused him to look that way, he was clearly making a lot of money off it. He was dressed in the nicest clothes I’d ever seen in person. We’re talking head to toe enchanted spider silk, multiple magic accessories, and chimera-leather dress shoes that were so shiny, I could see my own choking face reflected in them when the stranger used his pointed toe to roll me onto my back.

“Mr. Tavin Sorrel,” he said again, his faintly red-glowing eyes moving in the deep sockets of his skull-like face as he looked me over like a piece of roadkill, “why are you lying on the floor?”

“Why are you in my home?” I gasped as my survival instincts finally overrode the pain long enough to scoot myself to the far corner of my lead-lined apartment. “Get out!”

“But I went through so much trouble to find this place,” the stranger replied, closing my door with a flick of his withered hand to seal us in. “For someone who can’t go outside without falling over in agony, you’re quite the difficult man to pin down.”

“That’s kind of the point,” I said as I rubbed my aching chest through the threadbare fabric of the ancient tracksuit I was so happy I hadn’t bothered to change out of. I was feeling cornered and vulnerable enough as it was. If I’d had to face this well-dressed home invader in my underwear, I might have died on the spot.

“Who are you?” I demanded, keeping my eyes locked on his creepy red ones in the hope he wouldn’t notice my gloved hands fumbling for the emergency services rune on my Sending Stone. “What do you want with me?”

“I want nothing,” the stranger replied, leaning his skeletal frame against my closed door as if standing up was a chore. “I’m here because of what you want. Ten years ago, you paid the Wizards of Whitepeak College a small fortune to diagnose and cure a previously unknown malady. Despite happily taking your money, they were unable to provide the relief you sought. They told you that you were allergic to magic: a condition that, though never before recorded or studied, they were still willing to declare incurable. I am not so defeatist.”

I stopped fumbling for the emergency command to gape at him. “You’re here to cure my condition?”

“I’m open to trying,” the man said, producing a business card with a flick of his emaciated wrist, which he held out to me.

It took me a solid minute to crawl close enough to grab it. The man was so drenched in magic that just getting near him sent my condition into overdrive. That had happened with every caster I’d gone into debt paying to investigate my chronic illness, though, so it actually made his story more believable. After years of being forced to hide in a lead-lined room because even the softest ambient magic caused me constant, stabbing agony every time I stepped outside, I was desperate enough to believe anything, including the idea that a wizard would break into my apartment at three in the morning to treat me. Stupid, I know, but chronic pain makes you do stupid things.

“Archmage Sylas Zavrak,” I read, arching an eyebrow at his intensely ornamented card. “Wizard First-Class of the Whitepeak College, Chair of Necromantic Research.”

“Former chair, these days,” the Wizard admitted with a chilling smile. “But you know what they say: a true academician never retires. He simply changes libraries.”

He chuckled as if that were a private joke, but my skin was now crawling with something more than just the pain-induced tremors. As someone born in Whitepeak, I’d been taught my whole life that I was a resident of the world’s most magical city. We prided ourselves on being the most modern, most enlightened, most open-minded civilization on the planet. I wasn’t about to go all pitchforks and torches at the word “necromancer” like some country bumpkin, though I wasn’t exactly happy to have one standing in my apartment, either.

They might not all be as monstrous as the bards made them seem, but necromancers had a well-documented history of not taking no for an answer. Add in the “Archmage” at the front of his title, and we were looking at a near-dysfunctional level of entitlement. Archmages of any sort were treated like royalty in wizard-loving Whitepeak, which explained why this one had thought nothing of barging into my apartment at three in the morning. This probably counted as normal behavior for him. I, however, was starting to wonder if I might have been better off getting my knees broken by debt collectors.

“I appreciate you taking a personal interest in my case, Archmage Zavrak,” I said cautiously as I handed back his card. “But I’m afraid I don’t see how a necromancer is going to help—”

“Of course you don’t see,” the archmage said dismissively. “You’re a twenty-five-year-old shut-in who never advanced past the basic level of public education and experiences pain every time you’re exposed to magic. I couldn’t invent a less qualified person to understand the intricacies of my great discipline. Fortunately, your comprehension is not required for my success. All you need to know is that I’ve been searching for a man in your… unique situation for a long time. I was quite excited when I found your record in the ‘hopeless’ drawer at Whitepeak Medical College and decided to pay you a visit at once.”

I arched that eyebrow again. “At three in the morning?”

“Were you otherwise engaged?” he asked testily. “Should I come back with your miracle cure at a more convenient time?”

“No, no, no,” I said quickly. “It’s just… I’ve heard these sorts of promises before. I’m up to my eyeballs in debt because every expert I went to swore they had the power to fix me, but none of them ever did. Now you burst into my room out of nowhere and say you’re the one who’ll succeed where everyone else failed and…”

I paused, dragging a shaking hand through my overgrown hair as I tried to think of a way to finish that sentence that wouldn’t end with an insulted necromancer throwing a poison skull at my face. I was still working on it when the ancient archmage pushed himself off my door.

“I understand if you have trouble believing the veracity of my claims,” he said, reaching out to touch my lead-lined walls with his withered fingers. “True genius always appears to be madness at first, but you don’t have to understand what I’m doing. You just need to have faith. Faith that a man as great as myself wouldn’t bother coming to a hovel like this to cure an impoverished, unemployed—”

“I’m not unemployed,” I interrupted. “I have a job.”

The necromancer gave me a deadly look. I shot him one right back. It was a stupid hill to die on, but damn it, I’d spent my entire life figuring out how to survive despite the terrible hand I’d been dealt. I might have gone into debt paying other people to solve my magic problem, but I’d spent the last ten years pulling myself out of that hole with my own hard work. It was a small and arguably pointless designation, but I had my pride, and I stood stubbornly on top of it until the necromancer sighed in defeat.

“Fine,” he said, pinching the bridge of his shriveled nose. “Have faith that a man as great as myself wouldn’t come to the hovel of an impoverished, employed man”—he paused until I nodded—“without absolute confidence in his success. I can free you from your condition, but only if you’re willing to let me. This is not a question of power. I could pry you open with a snap of my fingers if I chose to do so, but surgery on the soul requires a steady hand, which means the chance of success is much higher if you’re not struggling.”

That was a pretty high-handed way to request my assistance, but while I’d only known Archmage Zavrak for five terrifying minutes, I was already certain that “please” wasn’t in his vocabulary. My gloved hands were still clutching my Sending Stone behind me, but while I could feel the helping hand-shaped symbol of the “Request Emergency Services” rune, I didn’t speak the command word.

Couldn’t speak it would’ve been more accurate. I’ve been a lot of things I’m not proud of in my life, but I’ve never been a quitter. The Wizard in front of me could very well be the insane villain I’d assumed he was when he broke in, but as long as there was a chance—any chance—that he could fix my stupid body and let me walk outside in the sun again without pain, then no amount of red flags, however giant, was going to stop me.

“Alright,” I said, releasing my death grip on the Sending Stone as I rose shakily to my feet. “What did you have in mind?”

The necromancer flashed me an unsettling smile and reached into the pocket of his ridiculously expensive embroidered robe. When his withered hand came out again ten seconds later, he was holding a sleek black object the size of my thumb. It looked like an obsidian quail egg someone had decorated with a delicate, geometric lattice of green-glowing lines. It wasn’t until Archmage Zavrak turned it over to show me the complex network of orichalcum circuitry attached to a small, crystal needle at the egg’s point, though, that I finally realized what I was looking at.

“Is that a manajack?” I asked in half alarm, half wonder.

“It’s so much more than that,” Zavrak promised, his red eyes gleaming with pride as he cradled the unsettling object in his bandaged hands. “The manajack was revolutionary a century ago, but these days, the only people who remember that the ‘mana-’ prefix is actually an acronym for ‘Magically Augmented Neural Architecture’ are the artificing conglomerates who mass-produce them. Here in Whitepeak, you can buy a functional manajack from any corner item shop and have it installed by whatever drunk idiot capable of casting Cure Wounds happens to be working behind the counter, but my device is different. My creation remembers the manajack’s original purpose: the revelation, translation, and codification of the mortal soul.”

That was the most glorified explanation of a manajack I’d ever heard, but I still shook my head.

“It’s not going to work,” I warned. “I know that manajacks read souls. That’s why I’ve been trying to get the doctors to give me one since I was fifteen. If I could just get a manajack installed, it would scan my internal magic and reveal what’s actually wrong with me. There’d be no more confounding factors, no more endless tests. My magic allergy would show up as a condition on my status sheet same as everything else, and then I’d finally have something I could show to people and prove I’m not making this up!”

I dropped my head with a sigh. “It’s the obvious answer to my problem. Unfortunately, manajacks are also some of the most magically dense objects ever invented. Just being in the same room with one that’s not already safely installed in someone else’s head is enough to make me break out in hives. If I put one inside my body, the allergic reaction would kill me within seconds, which kind of takes it off the table as a solution.”

That sounded like the definition of a hopeless situation to me. When I glanced at Zavrak to make sure he was following, though, the necromancer was glaring back at me like I was an impertinent apprentice interrupting his lecture.

“Did you think I had not considered that?”

“Well… no, actually,” I admitted, trying not to sound as irritated as I felt. “You might be the expert in your field, but I’ve spent my entire life trying to solve these problems. I know what works and what doesn’t. I’m also the one who’s going to die if you overlook anything, so it seemed wise to speak up.”

“A better word would be ‘presumptuous,’” Zavrak informed me as he clutched the darkly shining manajack in his bony fist. “Don’t confuse stating the obvious with wisdom. I’m well aware that a normal manajack installed by a normal Wizard would send you into fatal anaphylactic shock, but—as you’ve already so vocally pointed out—nothing about our current situation is normal. I’m not saying my procedure won’t kill you, just that it’s much less likely to, and even if it does, it won’t be the end.” His unsettling smile got wider. “I am a necromancer, after all.”

“That’s not exactly reassuring.”

“What reassurances were you hoping for?” he snapped. “You might still be breathing, but by all functional measures, you’re already dead and buried. Five more years of living in this lead box is going to kill you no matter what. You’ve got nothing left to lose, so you might as well let me try.”

I didn’t need him to tell me that. I was the one who woke up feeling like I was going to barf every day. I knew exactly how sick my own walls were making me, but I didn’t have any other choice. Here in Whitepeak, the birthplace of the Artificing Revolution, the air was so saturated in magic that just stepping outside made me black out from pain. The only things that stopped the onslaught reliably were the Antimagic Field spell and stacks of lead bricks, and guess which one of those was in my budget.

If I’d been born into one of the rich families up the mountain, maybe things would’ve been different, but I’d been surrendered anonymously as a baby to one of the silver dragon Mithralian’s charity orphanages. I had no family to help me and negative money from trying to help myself. At this point, my options were to either endure the constant crippling agony of the world outside or die slowly of lead poisoning in my shielded room, which made putting my future in the hands of an egotistical necromancer sound not so bad by comparison.

“That’s the spirit,” Zavrak said when he saw the resignation on my face. “As they used to say in the old days: nothing adventured, nothing gained. Now close your eyes and try to relax. This will only take a moment.”

He was already reaching his bony hands out to grab me when I bolted away. “Hold on a second,” I said frantically, taking shelter in the doorway of my tiny bathroom. “You’re not planning to put that manajack in me here and now, are you?”

“Of course,” the archmage said crisply. “In case the hour of my arrival wasn’t a big enough tip-off, I’m in a bit of a hurry.”

“I don’t care!” I cried, wrapping my hands protectively around my skull. “I agreed to consider your offer. I didn’t agree to brain surgery in my apartment! Don’t you need a sanitary operating table or magical workshop or something?”

“A proper table wouldn’t go amiss, but it’s hardly necessary,” Zavrak replied with a dismissive shrug. “But if you’re not willing to do what’s required to save yourself, I can always find someone else. My conditions for this experiment are narrow, but Whitepeak is a city of ten million souls these days. I’m sure I can get what I need from one of them if you’re not ready to commit.”

He smiled as he finished. A smug, cruel grin that made me want to punch him, because he was right. I knew I was being manipulated, knew this was a horrible, stupid, dangerous idea that I should never have let myself consider. I knew all of this, but knowing you were being led into a trap didn’t stop the bait from working.

Zavrak had placed his hook well. I’d only been in this particular apartment for the past seven years, but I’d been living inside some version of a lead-lined box since I was eight years old. I hadn’t felt the sun on my skin in over a decade, and I hadn’t talked to anyone who wasn’t a delivery person or a social worker in months. I had no friends, no family, no one who’d notice if I died tonight besides debt collectors.

Even if I did manage to pay off my medical bills, I’d be dead from lead poisoning before I could enjoy my new financial freedom. Any way you looked at my life, I was screwed. I’d been trying my best to make peace with that since the only alternative was to waste my few remaining years in a hopeless depression, but this was different. This was a way out of the trap, and while that was the same sort of thinking that had gotten me into so much debt in the first place, there was no way I was going to say no.

“Screw it,” I muttered, opening my arms in welcome. “I’m in. Do your worst.”

“I never do any less,” Zavrak promised, grasping the glittering egg of the strange manajack in one skeletal hand while he took hold of my skull with the other. “This will hurt. Try not to scream. Terrified neighbors are very disruptive.”

I did my best, gritting my teeth and squeezing my eyes shut. This had the unwelcome side-effect of locking me in my skull with the terrified certainty that I’d just gotten myself killed, but it was too late to back out. I could already feel Zavrak’s magic pouring into me. It was the same icy-acid burn I’d felt when he opened my door, but so much worse. Infinitely worse. Wish-I-was-dead levels of worse.

I’ve lived with pain my entire life, but I’d still never known anything could hurt this bad. It felt like Zavrak was pulling out every organ in my body, tying them into knots, and then shoving everything back in upside down. I hadn’t known it was possible to live through so much torture, but then, just when I was sure I’d stupidly trusted the wrong Wizard for the last time, the pain suddenly vanished.

I opened my eyes a second later, though I wasn’t hopeful about what I’d find. After all that agony, the only logical conclusion was that I was dead. I didn’t feel dead, though. Not that I’d ever been deceased before to compare, but I didn’t think dead people had internal monologues. Since I was still able to think, my next leap of logic was that I must be undead. Zavrak was a literal card-carrying necromancer. A factor I really should’ve considered more carefully before I’d stupidly agreed to this.

It’d serve me right if I woke up as a zombie, but my arms felt the same as they always did when I reached up to rub my eyes. My body felt normal as well now that I—

I froze, eyes popping all the way open. That was wrong. My body didn’t just feel normal. It felt amazing. Not euphoric or superpowered or anything like that, but for the first time I could remember, maybe the first time ever, I was in zero pain. The constant nausea in my stomach, the pressure in my lower back, the ache in my joints, the sharp stabbing in my chest every time I breathed, the irritated redness all over my skin, it was all gone. Nothing hurt, nothing at all. I was still lying on my back in dumbfounded wonder when I heard a voice speak inside my head.

I understand if you find this unsettling, it said in an up-close and definitely haunted version of Archmage Zavrak’s deep, educated voice. Change is always frightening, but you have nothing to fear. The implantation ritual was a success, as I knew it would be, and I have now taken control of your body.

“What?” I asked, blinking my eyes, which still felt fine and not like they were under anyone’s control.

You should rejoice, Mr. Sorrel, the voice continued in a smug, soothing tone. You have become the chalice of a higher being. This marks the start of a marvelous new chapter in both of our existences. Alas, only one of us possesses the greatness of mind necessary to enjoy it. I’ll be ending your consciousness soon, but do note that I kept my promise to cure your condition. I wouldn’t want my new vessel to waste his last freely taken breath calling me a liar. I hope you’ve enjoyed these final painless moments. Goodbye, Mr. Sorrel. I promise to remember you fondly.

The voice ended there, just cut off like the end of a Message spell, but I didn’t feel any different. He’d said that was the end of my consciousness, but my mind was still whirling when he finished. I could still move, too, and I did, sitting straight up on my sleeping pad to run my gloved hands all over my newly pain-free body. I was still taking stock of the whole miraculous situation when Zavrak’s voice burst back into my head.

Why are you still here? he demanded. The transference worked! The manajack is installed, so why are you…

His voice trailed off as my eyes—which I guess also served as his eyes since he was apparently squatting inside my skull—landed on the pile of tattered cloth beside my bed. The fabric was so dusty and decayed, I didn’t even recognize it as the remains of the silk robe Zavrak had been wearing until the necromancer started swearing up a storm inside my head.