“The fastest?” I ask back to him. All the eyes in our group slowly turn toward Samissa, and noticing our attention, she puts her back to the wall.

“What do you want me to do?” she asks Dovik, a quiver in her voice.

“If we can’t disarm it,” he says, “then the best option would be to trigger it with something. You are the fastest I imagine. You have the best chance of getting clear in time after the trap has been triggered.”

“You want me to walk into a magical trap!” Samissa yells at him, more fear than anger in the words. The woman’s scream echoes up the walls of the stairwell, and we all allow a moment of silence to fall back over us as we listen. There comes no telltale sounds of approaching groups from above, something we have been on the lookout for ever since entering the stairwell. In fact, there has been no sign that anyone has gone through ahead of us: strange, considering the fact that we were the fifth group to enter the dungeon.

“Just trigger it a little bit,” Dovik whispers at her, plastering on his brightest smile. “Your cousin is here to help you out if anything bad might happen.” Dovik looks at Adrius, his smile a little more manic now. “You have barrier abilities don’t you.”

“I…” Adrius trails off, looking between Dovik and Samissa who looks on the verge of tears. “I do have barriers.”

“This is stupid,” Macille says, putting himself between Dovik and Samissa.

“I agree,” I say, pulling a big rock out of my inventory that has a pearlescent sheen on one end that I found pretty. Without another word to the group, I throw the rock through the open passageway while leaping back up to the steps behind me, hoping that whatever the trap has in store won’t extend as far as the stairwell.

The rock flips end over end as it sails through the open passageway. When it passes the threshold, a spear of silver jets out of the wall from nowhere, pushing straight through the rock like it was made of cheese, impaling it in the air. The metallic spear stops for a moment after impaling the rock, allowing me to see it clearly. I realize that it is shaped like a spider leg, three joints along its length, the tip an almost rounded point that was able to pierce right through the stone even with its lack of sharpness. The metal spider leg slides back into the wall, letting the rock bang and shake against the stone of the passageway as the end of the leg pulls back through the hole it made in the stone. Without any trace of its origin in the wall, the spider leg disappears, the wall completely smooth and unblemished once again.

With an echoing clatter, the stone falls to the floor of the passage, a two-inch, perfectly smooth, hole bored through its center.

“Do you think you are faster than that?” Dovik asks Samissa.

“No one is faster than that,” I growl back at the man. “Leave her alone. I am still working here.”

Sighing, I slink back into the landing in front of the empty doorway and crouch, removing the Bane Crystal from my inventory with as much gentleness as I can, setting it on the ground next to me. I have no idea how much abuse the crystal can take or if breaking off small pieces of it will damage its magic in any way, but I am not willing to take chances with my new treasure.

I call dragonfire to my hand again, over channeling the ability as I press the orange fire to the smooth face of the crystal. Watching the green glow spread through the fire in my hand excites something deep in my belly; I don’t think that I will ever get tired of it.

“Playing with affixes at rank one,” Dovik comments from the stairs. “I knew you were a good pick for the group.”

“You just want me because I can disenchant monsters and carry all of our loot,” I say back to him as I continue to pour my mana into the dragonfire. Since passing the first threshold in magic, there has been a change in the fire that is difficult for me to describe. It seems more real somehow, more opaque, the colors more vibrant. I can’t help but smile at the dancing green flames in my palm, the pure power of the corrosive flame lighting my face and eyes with its glow.

“Charlene,” Macille starts hesitantly, “are you ready?”

“Almost,” I say, still staring at the fire. I feel the magic hit its limit, but pushing, I find that this is one of the few occasions I can push past that limit. I continue to build the power in the flame. The fire barely grows in size, becoming as large as my head, but the light that it throws off brightens incredibly as I push more than three hundred mana into it. Despite the others squinting at the green glow–aside from Samissa for some reason–the light never hurts my eyes to gaze at. Reluctantly, I turn back and look at the open passageway that dances with shadows and a flickering green light. “I am going to destroy this thing.”

“Back up!” Dovik yells to the group, jumping back up the stairs as I set my feet to throw the fireball.

The ball of dragonfire sails at the doorway like a missile, a fraction of a second in flight as it covers the short distance between me and its target. The explosion is a muted thing, no sound, an expansion of green light that nearly reaches me. Strands of hair, black in the green light, drift lazily toward the epicenter of the explosion, suspending in the air as the magic starts to fade. A sucking sound, air rushes toward the fireball from the stairwell behind me, the suddenness of it almost knocking me off my feet. Then, in the span of a blink, the explosion is done, and green fire spreads up the walls of the passageway like my normal dragonfire would.

Instead of disappearing into the air, the green flames eat into the stone of the passageway, every bite taken by the flames causing stone to crumble out of the walls in pebbles of black ruined dust. As is the nature of fire, it eats itself as much as it does the wall, every inch that it spreads over the stone reducing its brilliance by a fraction. It continues to smolder, piling black dust onto the floor of the hallway as it moves across the stone.

In less than a minute, it is gone, the barest flickers of green fire still smoldering amid the ash on the ground. The passageway looks as if a dozen men beat at it with pickaxes for an entire day, the doorway that stood open completely gone, and the walls, floor, and ceiling uneven and charred where the green flames ate into it. Without the doorway, I can see the hallway that lay beyond, a stone, featureless, hallway that extends for twenty feet before coming to an end at an end with a wooden door. A blackened stone falls from the now uneven ceiling, splashing into the black ash and spraying the air with smoke and soot.

I hear a whistle behind me and turn to see Macille descending the stairs. “Now that is something I didn’t know you could do.”

“I picked it up recently,” I say, touching a dragonfire-covered finger to the Bane Crystal and storing it in my inventory once again. “It takes a bit of time to ready, but it seems pretty effective.”

“Pretty effective,” Dovik scoffs, joining Macille and me on the landing and shaking his head. “You killed the wall.”

“Seemed like the best way through.”

“Now, the question is, does the trap remain?” Dovik asks me.

I turn, looking back toward the ruination that my corrosive dragonfire left behind, scanning the walls with my eyes now that the doorway is completely gone. I don’t detect any sight of the spider leg trap remaining, and even after sending Galea to look around, she doesn’t bring anything to my attention either. “I think it’s gone.”

“Best to check.” Dovik pulls his weapon, Pokey, from its spot on his waist, and with the ring on his other hand, creates an identical copy. He throws the copy down the hallway with all the force he can muster. The metal rod that resembles a fire poker spins in the air, racing toward the end of the hallway in less than a second, embedding itself in the stone to the side of the door with a reverberating twang. The weapon waves back and forth in the stone, and we all wait for more sinister spider legs to crawl out of the walls to strike at it. Nothing happens.

“I think you got it,” Dovik tells me, smirking. With a gesture, the weapon sticking out of the wall disappears into motes of light, reassembling in his open hand. “Time to move on then. Now the next question, is there a trap on that door?” He points toward the waiting door at the end of the hallway.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

“I don’t see one,” I say.

“Do you want to get closer?” Dovik asks, words dripping sarcasm.

I huff, marching into the hallway, leaving clear boot prints in the black ash that covers the floor. Though I might show bravado, I am still afraid that spider legs might crawl out of the wall and run me through. Nothing comes for me, and I stop a few feet in front of the closed door.

Searching the door for any sign of magical auras, I find nothing. “I don’t see anything,” I say again to Dovik. “Maybe you want to check this one.” I slap the door, causing Samissa, back on the stairwell, to jump.

“Wait!” she almost screams at me, bounding down the hallway and grabbing my arm, pulling me away from the door. “Let me check for traps as well.”

“That’s what I thought I was doing,” I tell her. The boys leisurely stroll down the hallway, Macille kicking a blackened stone as he passes it.

“The Mage checks for magical traps, the Scout checks for mundane ones,” Samissa scolds, like it is the most obvious thing in the world.

I can’t help but wrinkle my face as I look at the woman that is a full head shorter than me. “How was I supposed to know that?”

“Is this your first dungeon or something?” she asks.

“Obviously.”

Samissa looks back at Dovik, her mouth hanging open, but he just shoos her ahead to look at the door. She groans, stomping over to the door, and falls to her knees so that she can look under the tiny crack beneath the door. Samissa spends almost five minutes inspecting every minute detail of the door as she slowly works her way toward the top.

“Do we have to do this for every door?” Macille asks Dovik and Adrius.

“That is the safe way of doing things,” Adrius says, looking on.

“It is also the slow way of doing things,” Dovik sighs. “Generally, taking your time and doing things in the safest way possible is the best course of action. However, I think that this dungeon is more designed to reward people for finding the treasure first. That woman outside already told us that there are treasures to be found. There is probably some component of a race to all of this.”

“We were fifth in,” I say. “That is pretty early, considering how many people were outside.”

“True,” Dovik agrees. “Normally, you can be a little bit riskier in manufactured dungeons, as they are actually designed by their creators, and typically aren’t made to kill the people trying to clear them. They are more about offering a challenge than being deadly. Considering that the guild decided to poison all of us before we even entered and the general brutality of this competition as a whole, I don’t know if that is the case here. It is probably wisest to proceed as slowly as possible, prioritizing safety over speed.”

“Well, I am glad that the party leader cares about our safety all of a sudden,” Samissa says, standing up from in her inspection of the doorway and casting a deadly gaze back at Dovik.

“I always cared about your safety,” Dovik says back to her, his voice as smooth as silk. “I thought that we would have to trigger the trap to disarm it. I am so glad that wasn’t the case.”

Samissa huffs at his words.

“Did you get the door open?” I ask her.

“Didn’t have to,” she says, putting a hand to the door. With a slight push, the door swings open on well-oiled hinges to expose a short passageway beyond that opens into a larger room. “No traps.” In the next moment, she ducks into the room, leaving the group behind.

“Do we follow?” I ask.

“Give her a few seconds,” Dovik says. “Let her feel useful as a Scout.”

I shake my hand at the man. Ever since we arrived at the bottom of the stairs there has been something up with him; he is acting like a jerk all of a sudden. We wait, and after a few seconds, Samissa sounds the all clear from the next room.

Macille pulls the door closed behind us as we step into the next chamber, the light from my dragonfire and from Adrius’ floating crystal lighting the circular room. Compared to the massive chamber before, the circular room of worked gray stone seems almost cramped. An unadorned pedestal rests in the center of the room and five would-be doorways stand opposite us. Four of the doorways are completely covered by several layers of wooden boards, while the one of the far left has been broken through, splinters of the tannish wood decorating the floor around the dark passageway beyond. Above each of the passageways, etched into the stone and shining with a metallic sheen, are words from the same language that we found earlier.

“A fork in the road,” Macille says, looking between the doors. “I suppose that it is our choice where to go from here.” He points his sword toward the far left door where the wooden boards have been beaten through. “Someone has already claimed that path.”

“Which makes us the second group to reach this room,” Adrius says.

“Unless another group followed the first that way,” I say, pointing toward the same shadowed doorway that Macille points at. “Who is to say that no one else went that way.” I look back at Dovik, who is looking between the different doorways. “What do the words say?”

“I’m working on that,” he mutters, eyes scanning the words on the wall. We allow him plenty of time to work through the words above the doorways. I can’t help but keep looking back at the door that we came through, wondering just how long it will take for another group to come find us here. We haven’t heard any sound from the other groups since entering the stairwell. “Well, that’s funny,” Dovik says after a few minutes.

“What is?” Samissa asks.

Dovik points to the doorway that has been broken through, specifically at the words etched into the stone above it. “It says that way to the dungeon.”

“But we are in the dungeon,” Adrius says.

“No,” Dovik rolls his eyes. “Dungeon, as in the place where you hold prisoners.” He keeps his hand moving, pointing at the words above each of the other doors in turn. “Lagoon, Library, Kitchen, Exit.” He looks at each of us after he has made his proclamation. “I don’t think the group before us had someone that could read the words. That, or they really wanted to inspect some rusty holding cells.”

“One of the doors says exit?” Macille asks, looking at the last door in the row. “That is a bit of a letdown.”

“Well, we are obviously not taking that one,” I say.

“I agree,” says Dovik. “I also don’t think that we should follow the other group. That leaves Lagoon, Library, and Kitchen. Which direction do you all want to go?”

“Lagoon sounds interesting,” Samissa says. “That is a place where there might be a pool of water right?”

“I’m not a fan of that,” I say, holding up a burning hand. “I don’t know how effective my fire will be in a lagoon.”

“I wouldn’t want to take you to a library for the same reason,” Macille snickers.

“I’m not going to burn down a library,” I defend, but the group merely gives me flat stares as their reply. “I won’t!”

“I guess we are going to the kitchen then,” Dovik says, shrugging.

“Don’t make a decision around me,” I say, looking between them.

“They are all the same to me,” Dovik says. “I plan to explore most of this place before leaving. Where we start doesn’t matter too much. Besides, you have the greatest offensive potential of anyone in the party, making a decision around that would be a smart choice.”

I can’t help but blush a little at his odd compliment, even if I don’t believe it myself. Sure, my fire can hit pretty hard, but these people each have at least ten levels on me. I don’t hold a sliver of hope that I could beat any one of them in a fight.

“Time to earn your pay,” Dovik says to Macille, pointing his thumb back at the boarded up passageway that leads to the “Kitchen.”

Macille laughs, limbering up his arm as he walks forward. “I have to admit that I have been feeling a little useless.” Macille pulls back his hand, and with a punch that could shatter bones, blows the boards into splinters. He takes out his sword and sweeps the edge of the doorway clean of any hanging boards before turning back to the group with a bow. “After you,” he say to Samissa.

The spark of jealousy that I feel when I see her face light up at Macille’s graciousness surprises me. I store the feeling away; I’ll have to ponder on that later. Right now, there might be a terrifying chef waiting for us on the other side of that darkened passageway.

“The other ones too,” Dovik says, gesturing to the other doorways.

“To keep other groups from knowing which direction we went,” I say, understanding immediately. I have to admit, despite his strange moodiness the past few minutes, Dovik is probably as good of a party leader as I could ask for–he’s canny.

“Yes Boss,” Macille chuckles, putting a thunderous kick into the boards nailed across the doorway that supposedly leads to the exit. The man makes quick work of the boards and breathes out a sigh of relief when he has finished.

“Any idea of what we should expect in this kitchen?” I ask Dovik.

“Food,” he says with a confidence that can’t be real. “Hard to know really. Probably shouldn’t eat anything we find.”

“Probably,” I agree. I try to look down the hallway as Samissa creeps forward, disappearing into the darkness. “Forward we go then.”