My ears rang painfully as I tried to force myself to my feet. My body ached from the force it had just been hit by, but at least it didn’t seem like anything was too broken. Paws and claws all functioned as normal. A stabbing pain wracked my chest every time I breathed in, but that would have to wait for a later time.

I crawled forward, just eager to be away from the scorpion nest. I couldn’t hear them through the ringing, but I hoped desperately that they were dying. The heat was sweltering, and I felt like the air itself was boiling from the heat and moisture of the dungeon. To my great satisfaction, the smell of burnt insect filled the air. At least some of them had died in the explosion.

Without warning, I was lifted off the floor. I twisted, trying to free myself from my assailant! I hadn’t heard them coming! I couldn’t smell them through the smoke! They had snuck up on me and…

I looked up, only to see Cithrael with a sleeve pressed against his nose and mouth. With his other hand, he held me under his arm. He sprinted back down the corridor.

Chancing a glance back behind me, I saw a blazing inferno of purple fire. It sparked with crackling lightning as the mana ignited and burned. In the midst of the flames, I spied thousands of scorpions. They twitched and screamed…not that I could hear it. All I knew was that they spasmed from the heat. The plan had worked!

I purred softly to myself. Feline Favor spread across my fur and into Cithrael as we fled the scene. It soothed my aches, even if there wouldn’t be enough time to fully heal anything.

By the time we reached the others, the ringing had not faded from my ears. Raina said something, worry painted on her features as she examined first me, then Cithrael for obvious injuries. I don’t know what she found, but she continued speaking too quickly for me to hear. Cithrael didn’t seem to understand either, forcing her to resort to gesturing us back into the room where the slimes had attacked us.

The others also began to speak upon seeing us enter, but it was nothing more than a muffled sound, like I was listening though five or six closed doors. I shook my head, trying to clear my ears, but it was for naught.

Cithrael set me down before sitting down himself. No doubt he had to slow his heart after his panicked run from a rain of scorpions. There was blood dripping down his neck from his right ear, so Raina began to examine him thoroughly.

I tucked my paws underneath me and wrapped my tail around my paws. There was little we could do until the fire died out, so there was time to wait. I purred, extending my favor to Cithrael just in case.

Without warning, Raina leapt back in terror, squealing in fear so loud even I could hear it.

“Ew, Ew, Ew!” she screamed. Cithrael jumped, suddenly flinging a scorpion from his shoulder to the ground before him. In an instant, Terrowin had stepped on the thing with a satisfying crunch that I couldn’t quite hear.

With Cithrael’s unwanted passenger dead, Raina went back to cleaning the blood around his ears while we waited for our hearing to return.

It wasn’t too long. The injuries weren’t too bad, and the ringing faded after about a half hour under the affects of Feline Favor. However, the entire time I couldn’t stop thinking about how great it would be if I could have healed away our deafened state right away instead of having to wait.

“Are the scorpions dead?” Aelisra asked once Cithrael had recovered enough to understand. He nodded simply.

“I’ll go see if the fire’s still raging,” Terrowin offered. He and Raina disappeared from the chamber. A few minutes later, I received a notice from Amsiii.

Congratulations. Two thousand and eight Level 8 Fulminous Scorpion defeated. Experience shared between challengers, capped due to level difference.

Level up to Level 14.

Two aptitude points available

Wow. Two thousand and eight monsters. Even if each one had been several levels lower than us, the experience gain was significant enough to grant each of us two levels.

“Two levels,” Aelisra murmured, echoing my thoughts. “I think I understand why people challenge dungeons.”

Terrowin nodded. “You know what they said, high risk, high reward. Where I’m from, the dungeons are everywhere. It’s a constant fight to keep them from taking over towns and settlements. You can’t swing a dead cat around without landing on one.”

I growled at his choice of phrase, but he didn’t seem to notice. Instead, Aelisra continued.

“You must live much closer to First-to-Fall,” she said. “I’ve only heard stories from the knights.”

“Yeah,” he confirmed. “But I’ve never been in any dungeons. It isn’t the sort of thing you do if you’re not an adventurer.” He paused, looking down at his hands. “Never thought I’d actually become one. It’s kind of exciting!”

“Don’t count your Falgoats until they’re back in the barn,” Raina warned. “we still have a long way to go, I suspect.”

“No rest for the weary, then,” Terrowin pushed himself to his feet with his glaive before offering a hand to Cithrael. “Will you be okay?”

The elf nodded. “More reason to ignore Aelisra’s chattering.” The paladin huffed in mock irritation before adjusting her shield and marching out. The others chuckled as they followed. Me? I hopped back on Raina’s shoulders and kept my eyes peeled.

The crunch of dead scorpions underfoot was music to my damaged ears. I purred as we continued down the corridor. Eventually, the tunnel circled back around to another intersection. Ahead of us, more scuttling of scorpions betrayed another swarm. In fact, I suspected that path just lead straight back to the entrance. However, the path to our right descended further underground. A deep rumbling like thunder echoed back to us.

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

“Well, the plaque before did say the way forward had to do with thunder,” Raina offered.

“Seems as good a reason as any.” Aelisra turned to the right and held her shield at the ready.

The tunnel narrowed, forcing my hench-humans and Cithrael to walk single file. They continued in silence as the tunnel curved to the right and took a sharp dip.

“Watch your step,” Aelisra called back. “It’s slippery.”

They inched forward, struggling.

“You know, it’s not that hard,” I told Raina after her foot slipped and she nearly fell into Terrowin.

“Maybe for you,” she grumbled. “Not all of us are cats.”

“I know. Not everyone is purrrfect like me.” I licked my paw. She sighed.

“I knew I should have used more bluebells in your summoning ritual…” she muttered.

“Why? What would that have done?”

“It might have curbed your ego while crossing over from beyond.”

I chattered my amusement. “HA! If you didn’t want one of the most majestic and magnificent creatures known to all mankind, then, by all means, throw me back, but you hench-humans won’t last ten seconds without me!”

“Was that sound Malzy? I didn’t know cats could make that kind of chirping sound,” Aelisra called back. “What did he say?”

“You don’t want to know,” Raina answered. That earned a chuckle from each of our companions.

I huffed indignantly. I was right and I knew it. That’s all that mattered. Who was it who figured out how to defeat the fire sprites? Who was it who faced Qelona’s hungry hounds? Who had defeated a dungeon before? The answer to all of those was the same: The Great and Powerful Malzifrax, Master of Magic, Feline Extraordinaire.

My tail drooped, but I quickly shook my head to banish the thought. I was magnificent. It was thanks to my expertise in dungeons that we’d made it this far. It was thanks to me that we hadn’t suffered death by two thousand and eight scorpion stingers. I had been the one to suggest working around the problem rather than facing it head on. Even if Raina had relayed it, the premise of the idea was still mine.

Jumping to the ground, I proved my superiority, bounding through the tunnel past the humans and into the next chamber.

It was a wide-open cavern with stairs that spiraled down the outer wall into a pit below us. Most of the cavern was dark, but that just added to the spectacular show the dungeon was putting on display for us. The ceiling roared with thunder as lightning shot across the darkness. It wasn’t the roiling ooze we’d found in the first room, but instead a truly magnificent storm of mana lightning. Every so often, the lightning would streak down into the pit, lighting up a wooden chest that lay at the bottom.

“It’s a trap,” said Terrowin as soon as the others had arrived. “No way a chest like that is unguarded.” Everyone looked around before exchanging a round of shrugs. No enemies presented themselves. There was just us and the lightning.

“Maybe we should go back?” Raina suggested.

“What do you think lays back that way? A clever rescue party?” I snapped. Raina flinched but didn’t answer. But, my sentiments were echoed, albeit more politely, by the rest of the party.

“Even if it’s trapped, we have to check it out,” Aelisra answered. “We have to figure out that riddle if we want to proceed, and this is the first actual lightning we’ve seen.”

I padded softly down the stairs, followed by Aelisra the Ever Brave. At least she could be counted on to knowingly walk into a trap so we could progress. At the end of the day, she was right. The only way out of the dungeon was through it. If the chest was trapped, the chest would be trapped, and we’d deal with it. Besides, if it was a trap, then that meant there were monsters guarding it. Monsters who would appease Amsiii’s thirst for violence…

“Um, guys?” Raina called. I looked up. She was still at the top of the stairs. “Did anybody else notice that the lightning to the ground is always in a straight line?”

Everyone stopped moving, fear freezing their feet in place as they carefully watched the room. Lightning danced across the ceiling, followed by a rumble of thunder. Then, the mana surged towards the ground. As Raina had said, it travelled in a perfectly straight line from the ceiling to the ground, as if travelling along a tiny, invisible thread.

“Lightning doesn’t do that,” Aelisra muttered. The others nodded their agreement.

“Could someone throw something into the room where the lightning was?” I shouted to Raina. She dutifully translated my suggestion, once again taking credit for it as her own.

Aelisra nodded and reached into her bag. A moment later, she pulled out a spare button and tossed it into the middle of the room. It arced cleanly through the air before suddenly coming to a halt.

Lightning surged, streaking down a dozen threads to the button. Illuminated by the lightning, we could all see them extremely clearly. The button was suspended between six threads so fine even I would have struggled to see them without the mana which coursed through them. In fact, I could only assume that a whole forest of long threads hung, just waiting to trap an unsuspecting feline in their paralytic clutches.

But…what had created them? Were they a simple creation of the dungeon meant to protect the chest below? Or were they more sinister than that.

I soon got my answer. The button began to move. It was dragged upwards in its fulminous prison. Higher and higher it rose into the air, until a creature separated itself from the ceiling. Its long, thin body hung down along the thread it tended, reaching for its unsuspecting prey. Mana streaked along its body, though whether it was simply channeling lightning that was already present, or generating the electricity itself, I wasn’t sure.

Inspecting Hostile Creature: Level 12 Fulminous Worm

A worm with a fondness for trapping areas with electrified threads. It will wait until prey falls into the many electrified threads it weaves before reeling it in and eating it.

At least they were straightforward. There weren’t any hidden strengths to worry about, or at least none that Amsiii would deign to tell me. A Level 12 creature, though, would be an excellent source of the violence my mysterious benefactor desired.

“If we don’t bother them, maybe they won’t bother us?” Aelisra offered. “They didn’t seem to care until their threads were disturbed.”

Slowly, step by step, Aelisra and Terrowin began to continue down the stairs. My ears swiveled, constantly searching for the enemies that might attack us as we approached the chest.

Nothing happened.

I let Aelisra take the first step onto the floor of the pit.

Nothing happened.

Terrowin and I followed, keeping close to the paladin. From above, about halfway up the stairs, Cithrael put a string to his bow, ready to fire at the first sign of danger. Raina stayed with him, keeping her eyes on the ceiling.

“It’s just a chest,” Aelisra said, lowering her shield ever so slightly. “I think the dungeon would have attacked us by now, otherwise.”

“Why would a dungeon put a chest filled with goodies at the bottom of a pit if there was no trap?” Terrowin countered. “The whole point of allowing challenges is so that we die, and it can eat our mana.”

“Maybe it’s trying to reward us?”

“For what?”

“For getting past the scorpions.”

Terrowin shook his head. “Why would it care? More likely is that it’s going to lure us in with the promise of treasure and then kill us.”

“Then you tell me, where is the trap?”

I’ll admit, I was with Terrowin on this one. It just didn’t sit right. The chest felt…wrong. It made my fur stand on end.

The knight looked around, trying to find the trick. He stepped closer to the chest, examining the stones in front of it. Then, he got on his knees and pressed his head to the stones. I crouched next to him, trying to see why he’d gotten down on my level.

“That stone is false,” he said, pointing to the one before the chest. “There’s a groove around it like it’s supposed to press into the ground.”

“Okay, so don’t touch the front stone, got it!” Aelisra said cheerfully. She set down her shield and reached for the chest.

Only too late did we see the problem. The chest lunged at Aelisra with vicious teeth. She stumbled back in time, but the damage was done. The creature that was once a chest was now on the pressure plate…

And I heard the click loud and clear.