Broken

Chapter 3

"-right? Madam, are you alright?" I heard a man's voice say, as if at the end of a long tunnel.

Blinking, I could just barely make out that there appeared to be a man standing over me. Feeling more than a little confused as to why I was laying on the floor of the subway, and why my head felt like it had just been caved in by a crow bar, I couldn't do much but groan and try and regain my feet.

"Easy does it." Said the man, sounding like he was a little closer in that tunnel now.

Wait, a tunnel? That's right, I had been on the train... Holly shit, had my train just run head long into a freaking instance portal?!

As current events began to flood back into my rattled brain, I recalled that I had just been shot like a bullet though an instance portal. Putting out a hand, I leaned against the stone wall of the cave, clearly the very one I must have splattered against, ringing my gourd like a damn church bell. Damn. Last time I was hit like that was when a Lesser Sand Basilisk got me with its tail... At least I got to land on soft sand that time, not a freaking limestone cave wall!

"That was not fun." I managed to get out, wanting to shake my head to clear it, but previous experience telling me that that could be a very bad idea. Instead, I settled for gingerly feeling around my own skull. Warm liquid touching my fingers revealed that it wasn't just my hair that was red and flowing out of my scalp.

"I don't suppose you happen to be a healer." Stated the mystery man.

"No." I said, deciding that the room had stopped spinning just enough for me to focus on the guy.

He was a good bit taller than myself, but that was nothing new for me. He was also classically handsome, with soulful hazel eyes, clear skin, and hair that had clearly been styled. He had both the air of an experienced raider, but at the same time, looked too clean and polished to actually be one.

"Well, that poses a problem." He sighed, standing straight and gazing to a location a ways away from where we stood. I followed his eyes and saw that there was a group already gathered in front of the swirling blue portal of mana. Even at a glance I could see that I wasn't the only one who had come out the other side in worse shape than they had entered. On top of that, it seemed that more than one person were on the verge of a mental break down.

"Why?" I asked. A somewhat stupid question, true. A healer would have been great right about now. But, in my defense, I still wasn't completely capable of forming coherent thoughts, much less put them into cohesive sentences. What I meant to ask was, why were we in dire straights, when the exit was right there? Could we not just leave the instance and call emergency services, or the Raider's Association, and get help?

It appeared that the handsome raider knew where I was headed with my scrambled thought processes. "We can't leave." He said with great gravity, snaking out a hand to take hold of my elbow and help me keep my feet as we made our way to the others. "It's a sealed instance..."

"Shit." I cursed, my head throbbing once again. Well, we were well and truly screwed now.

When instances first started appearing across the globe they were pretty straight forward for a couple months. They were all what we would call zero to one-star instances, and all of them were straight forward enough to be getting done with. Then, a few months later, the higher stared instances began to appear. These ones were where complications began cropping up.

Most of the instances were the same-old-same-old, just with stronger monsters. However, once you hit two-star, some times the instances went from being short clears, to something that may take a couple days to clear, as well as being more difficult. And then, once you reached the three-star level, things like Sealed Instances began cropping up. It was due to the very first sealed instance that raid parties were now all required to contain at least ten members, and once you get to four-star, a healer is absolutely required.