“So, how was the dungeon?” Nelly asked as she was packing up her tent.
The four of them looked at her with tired eyes. They had been exploring the dungeon for almost three days straight. Sure it had ended on, what they could only assume was, a success, but the almost constant fighting had taken it’s toll on them.
“I think I’ve had enough dungeon for a lifetime.” Francis shivered in the fresh cool air. “The sooner we get back to town the better.”
“Overall it went fine.” Paul slumped down to sit on a log. “We did as much mapping as we could. Found a crystal at the end that summoned skeletons. Then booked it out of there.”
“Got to the core did you?” Gary piped up. “If you could do that in three days, I think that bodes well for West Green.”
“Probably will.” Mark hefted his pack full of gold and swords. “Let’s get going. This report won’t deliver itself.”
The group of seven, the hermit hadn’t returned, broke camp and started the long trek back.
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Deep in the dungeon, the pillar chamber with it’s crystal was steeped in darkness. The skeletons continued to stare directly into the walls not moving an inch from where they had ran. A chime sung out from the crystal. The sound was accompanied with a tiny wave of energy that bounced around the room.
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The trek that took two days out also took two days back. While normally the hike back is easier due to food having being eaten and packs being lighter, the food that was eaten had been replaced with coins and metal swords.
Mark pulled Paul to the side as they walked. “So with the ‘talk’ you had down there. You weren’t able to find out those things?”
Paul turned his face away from Mark. “I... uh... couldn’t find a way to bring it up.” Turning back to Mark and leaning in. “You’d be surprised at how uncommon such questions like ‘what country are we in?’ and ‘what year is it?’ are in casual conversation. You know what happened to that Hugh fellow. While I think everyone here is accepting of us, and that amnesia excuse might still hold up, I’m not willing to risk it. So I’ve been pretending that I know the ‘common knowledge’.”
“Fine fine.” Mark patted the elf on his shoulder. “How about the reading thing? I’ve not really had time to deal with it myself, work’s kept me busy.”
Paul had a dark look on his face. “This world is a conspiracy. Julia lent me a book on plants last month. I took the time to find poison ivy, or at least something that looked like it. I had a couple days of free time so I copied the page, and did my best to translate things. But when I went back to double check things, the characters had changed.”
“Characters changed?” Mark had a small grin. “Didn’t think the plant book had a story.”
“You’re as bad as Francis sometimes.” Paul gave up a small laugh. “But I mean the letters on the page. They didn’t match my notes anymore. So I basically gave up on that plan.”
“Maybe things will change.” Mark released the elf’s shoulder.
The walk continued.
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Deep in the dungeon, the crystal chimed once again. Gathered around it were the skeletons, no longer focused on masonry, they paid rapt attention to the crystal. The sound washed over and through these silent watchers. Coalescing into a single point.
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Everett banged on the closed gate. “Open up!”
The voice of Tom shouted from the other side. “You guys aren’t zombies are you?”
“If we were zombies, we wouldn’t be able to talk now would we?” Everett rested his forehead on the gate.
There was a moment of silence.
“You could be turning into zombies right now.” Tom voiced their concerns.
“I swear we aren’t turning into zombies, we didn’t run into any zombies.” Everett thumped the gate in annoyance. “Now let us in.”
The gate creaked open a hairsbreadth. Tom peeked on through. “You sure?”
Everett pried their fingers into the tiny gap and heaved the gate open. “Sure.”
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Deep in the dungeon, the crystal chimed another time. The point of energy summoned another skeleton. It formed in place and did not move. This would be the twelfth skeleton in the room at this point.
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“Oh hey, welcome back!” Julia greeted Tim as they made their way into the warm guild. “How’d it go?”
Tim dropped the two heavy packs onto the floor in front of the counter. “Take a look, we’ve got two full bags of this stuff.”
Julia made her way around to the front. Tim held open his bag with it’s gleaming contents. The soft yellow metal and kobold swords were all mixed up inside. There was a glow as the shiny metal reflected the light up into Julia’s face.
“Oh nice!” Julia reached in to grasp a kobold sword. “You found something that dropped metal swords. Smith will be so happy with that.”
Tim looked at Julia oddly. “Yeah, that’s nice and all, but we were thinking the gold had some interest.”
“Yes, it’s very nice, that gold.” Julia looked down with an appraising nod.
“Yes, the GOLD, we’ve got here.” Tim really emphasized the word.
Julia looked up with a dawning light of acknowledgement. “Ah right! You want to exchange it. Let me get the scale. We don’t get much call for this out here, but every adventurers guild has one.”
Julia went behind the counter and reached down to lift up an apparatus. She spent a minute getting it set up. Aligning metal bars, applying hooks to chains, and calibrating for balance.
“OK, start stacking it on here and I’ll get to measuring.” Julia pointed towards one end of the scale.
“We’ve got quite a lot, and they seem quite uniform in size and shape.” Tim started lifting the gold disks up by the handful.
“The official ruling is that every dungeon produces it’s own type of gold, so we go by weight these days. Some dungeons are small, others large, you know how it is.” Julia was stacking gold, setting weights, and making notes on a piece of paper.
It took them some time to get the coins out of the bags.
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Deep in the dungeon, the crystals chamber was getting crowded. Every single conceivable space was taken up by skeletons. The chiming sound was happening regularly, like a record constantly skipping and repeating itself.
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“Well, well, well. Looks like that’s the last of it.” Julia made a final note on their piece of paper. “One thousand five hundred and four standard gold pieces. Did you want that in coin or maybe open up a guild account?”
“We’ll take the coin thank you very much.” Tim rubbed their hands together.
“Fair enough, it’s not that big of an amount.” Julia counted out thirty nibs onto the counter.
Tim stared at the small pile of coins. Stared at Julia. Then back to the nibs. “Are you sure you counted right?”
“Quite right.” Julia looked pleased with herself. “Fifty standard gold pieces to the nib. I suppose you’ve got four left over if you want them.”
Tim wordlessly held out their hand for the golden change, and scooped the thirty nibs reward into a small pouch.
“Thank you Julia, I’m sure the others will be thrilled with this.” Tim dully took their backpack, now only filled with a couple of kobold swords, and turned back to the winter’s chill.
“Tell Smith I said hi!” Julia waved Tim goodbye.
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Not so deep in the dungeon, the crystal was being pushed along by a wave of skeletal bodies. There was absolutely not a single shred of space left over in it’s original chamber. The press of bones had become so dense as to squeeze open the door.
Slowly, inexorably, the crystal was rising through it’s own dungeon.