Sir Brais, Compound Master Yanasi, and groups of Free Lancers and guards were waiting when Cerise, Jaxin, and Mykhal left the Holy Place in the Sea Crest Dungeon.

"Breach!" someone yelled just before they stepped out.

Jaxin shoved Mykhal and Cerise down, yelling back, "Delvers leaving!"

Several arrows thunked overhead, even as Master Yanasi bellowed, "Hold fire!"

"Stay down," Jaxin told his party.

Some yelling happened outside.

Tatara asked, "Can I flame them? I should totally--!"

"No," Cerise ordered. "You should stay here to protect me."

Tatara fluffed a little, but accepted the order.

The yelling calmed down quickly, and then Yanasi shouted, "Team name!"

Jaxin yelled back, "Delving Lights with solo Bronzer Jaxin and a newly tamed hatch!"

"Exit!" Yanasi ordered.

Jaxin said, "Move slow. Especially Tatara."

"What! But--!" the little faerie dragon sputtered.

Cerise said, "You're pretty fearsome, and they're scared out there."

"As they should be!" Tatara declared, pulling an air of regal dignity around himself. "Very well. I shall show mercy to these puny mortals. You may carry me."

Cerise had to fight very hard to avoid giving into the adorableness that was her new bonded.

They moved slowly, and exited the tunnel. Inspect skills rolled over them so thickly that Cerise felt a bit disoriented. She paused, and waited out all the mana swirling around her. Mykhal was right next to her and Jaxin had paused a few steps ahead of them.

She and Mykhal exchanged speaking glances, confirming they were both good to go, and began moving with deliberation to the leaders.

"Sir Brais, what is the concern that's brought so many here?" Cerise asked.

He looked at her like Cerise had lost her mind. "The dungeon is acting in an aberrant manner. It opened a second entrance! The one--."

Rocks ground together as actual stone filled the pathway to the classing room.

Cerise looked between the closing doorway and the Knight Protector.

Tatara scoffed. "That's not aberrant!" he declared.

"He's right," Cerise said. "It's in the covenant."

Yanasi and Sir Brais sucked in their breaths as they paid attention to Tatara for the first time.

"That's a--," Sir Brais began.

Tatara interrupted, making his voice boom again, "Great and powerful dragon! Master of Space and Time! Lord of the Skies! Scourge of ... um ..."

"Flies?" Cerise suggested.

"Are flies fearsome beasts?" Tatara asked in his normal speaking voice.

"I hate them almost as much as ticks, and Daisy will adore you if you can scourge the flies that bite her," Cerise said.

"Okay," he agreed. Back to his booming voice, he finished, "Scourge of Flies! The Awesome Ta-Ta-Ra!"

"Tatara, Sir Brais is the Knight-Protector of the Sea Crest Dungeon Village. Compound Master Yanasi oversees the operations of the Free Lancers -- Company, Consortium, and Guild -- in Sea Crest. I have great respect for the both of them."

The faerie dragon climbed up to the crown of Cerise's head and took up a Sphinx-like pose. He patted Cerise affectionately, and crossed his fore-limbs. "I'll be as nice to them as they are to me."

Cerise let it go for the moment. "So, your guards have a complete book of the Druerjan Dungeon Laws, Sir Brais. I can show you the passages in the old covenant that cover this."

Yanasi gave her a droll look. "I can quote that covenant backwards. Nothing in there says anything about new entrances opening and then closing."

Cerise quoted, "'Those who remain with peaceful hearts may with suitable sacrifice depart' is a pretty way of saying what priests in the North admonish us when a new holy place is discovered in the hills."

"But those are holy places!"Yanasi said.

"Where you get your classes," Cerise nodded, agreeing. "We are warned that there are consequences for breaking the sanctity of the holy places, and each of the high gods enforces different consequences. The only common ones are: Build too close to a holy place and you'll get a monster wave. If you try to live in a holy place, well, we don't know what happens because no one returns from that. If you disrespect a holy place you have to atone or you cannot cross the threshold. And if too many people do that, the holy place disappears.

"Now, I don't know if dungeons are such consequences. If so, I can see them being a gift from Nam-am as trials of atonement, or Solaris under his domain of Conflict. They may have nothing to do with such consequences and be the manifestations of the aegis of El-Am-Shaq as god of Tribulations and Trials, or Fortuna as the god of Opportunities in Adversity.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"But just because there's a violent path to the classing room does not prevent there being a peaceful path to the holy place."

Another shout of "Breach!" rang out, quickly answered with "Delvers leaving!" interrupted them.

Once the group exited, Sir Brais asked on of his guards, "How many more teams are in there?"

"Three, Sir."

Sir Brais turned back to Cerise, "We don't find many 'holy places', places one can class, without a dungeon, and I have never heard of anyone leaving a dungeon richer than when they entered without committing violence. We do know there is an infes-- um, a colony of faerie dragons in the dungeon, and there have twice been monster eggs in the chests guarded by the floor bosses. Do you have anything to declare?"

Cerise smiled and tapped her chest, saying, "Sir Brais, please remember that I am a diplomat and these," she held our her hands to Mykhal and Jaxin, "my delving team. Even if we found a pony-weight of gold coin, we would have nothing to declare."

He frowned, but Cerise kept going. "But to address what I think is the intent of your question, I'm going to start with Matais, a young man in need of his first class."

Another team came out while Cerise gave these two human authorities of the Sea Crest the long version. She concluded by saying, "I never expected the holy place to present us with such wonderful challenges."

"Hey!" Tatara protested, tapping a claw on her crown.

Cerise laughed. "You are the most excellent of challenges! I'm not yet worthy of your brilliance, now am I?"

In an offended tone, Tatara declared, "You will not speak of my human in such a degrading manner. I have chosen you; you are mine; therefore, you are perfect."

Cerise bit her lips to hold in a delighted squeal.

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Jaxin was given leave by Master Yanasi to act as a messenger to inform Cerise's parents of the happenings at the dungeon. She and Mykhal got to stay back and go over, in excruciating detail, the rites and rituals they knew of as related to holy places, and what they had done for this day's excursion.

During that interrogation, the last two recorded parties exited the dungeon, as well as a group of four people who had slipped in past the guards.

Every last one of the delvers claimed to have been overwhelmed by the urgent need to leave. Those who had held out the longest reported feeling increasing dread to the verge of panic, which eased as soon as they moved toward the exit, but intensified even if they did not move.

Shortly after the last delver was out, the vines over the entrance moved to close it off, and the rock-on-rock grinding of actual stone sealing off the passage sounded.

Cerise went with Sir Brais and Master Yanasi to inspect the closed entrance. "The vines sealed off the entrance shortly before the dungeon opened new floors," Yanasi commented. "That's common, but not stone sealing the way, too."

The leaves on the vines whispered something Cerise almost understood. She tipped her head and concentrated.

On her head, Tatara sang, "♪ Grow, grow, grow! / When you get the mana / You just gotta spend it! / Grow, grow, grow! ♪"

The leaves changed what they were whispering to imitate Tatara's song. Then the stones started to sing along, adding, «♪ The higher your levels get / The deeper your floors go! / Grow, grow, grow! ♪»

Cerise looked around and saw that Yanasi wore a perplexed expression that about mirrored her own feelings.

«♪ Happy is the stone / That gets to be alone to / Grow, grow grow! ♪»

They both began to carefully back away from the prior entrance. Yanasi put a finger to her lips and gestured for people to get away. Sir Brais spotted the spooked looks on the two Free Lancers' faces and added his own signal to fall back. Yanasi and Sir Brais stepped off to the side for a quick discussion, and Cerise siddled a bit away, hoping they could leave soon.

Tatara giggled and spoke in Beast Speech. «Stony's just happy. E's a singer when e works, and all e's constructs resonate with e's songs. It kept things interesting while I waited for you in my egg. Almost all of Stony's songs turn bouncy when e's happy. Ballads are for crafting traps, and lullabies when e's building constructs.»

"Really?" Cerise said, relaxing. "Well, let's leave the Guardian to e's business. How long do you think it'll be for the dungeon to reopen with a seventh floor?"

Tatara said, "By the Solstice at the latest. That's a holy day. E's been getting ready bit by bit, but sacrifices, properly prepared, already got divine attention. I'm here, after all. The new floor will be done faster, but depending on which of your sacrifices the divine chooses to share, there will be small changes throughout the rest of the floors. The word I heard in the egg was that the upper floors were doing fairly well, but could use a little shake up. Something to teach running away skills."

Mykhal joined them in time to catch the last bit. "If you really want to teach running skills, add some white-back weasels to your training regime."

Cerise shuddered. "Love the fur; hate the stench!"

Tatara's laughter was deep, rich, and full of wicked delight. Then he sighed and said, "Fart jokes never go stale."

"How did you find a companion monster as weird as you?" Mykhal asked.

Cerise shrugged. "I have to concede to being out weirded right now. We'll see how long that lasts."

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A few days later, back in Va'Velton ...

"Champion Nahia, thank you for responding to the High Champion's summons so quickly," the Sol-el who said that was an older man whose bones audibly creaked as he rose to extend the proper forearm clasp greeting for another dedicate of the god of Conflict.

"One does not delay when the Master of one's order calls. I am confused to be in your office now." Nahia did not have a lot of patience for politics, and being escorted to a Sol instead of the High Champion she had come to see smacked of politics.

The elderly priest laughed. "He left. I think it's related to the reason he summoned you. I'm sure you heard that Marsen fell to the Talamayan curse, and I hope the word of his recovery has traveled just as swiftly. The [Healer] who discovered the vector of that curse arrived at Va'Velton's Temple of the Gods as a fortunate, along with her parents. The parents returned the next day with a letter they would only place in Marsen's hands.

"Well, he read that letter, then began summoning records. And then he summoned you.

"Two days ago, we received one of the messenger sprites, calling for an investigation of an aberrant dungeon, one of the new ones and fairly close. Sea Crest, on the coast of Velton's Hirsellands. There is a Temple of the Gods closer, but they lack resident champions.

"Despite that Marsen has only recently recovered enough for the Luns to shush about him riding, he decided he needed to lead the expedition to determine if the dungeon needs to be destroyed.

"The Luns started to argue over that until he roared at them that he had a debt to pay to the ban Silverwood at Sea Crest and he would 'by Solaris's flaming balls' repay that debt."

Nahia clapped a hand over her mouth, eyes round in shock at the profanity coming from the mouth of one of Solaris's blessed.

The elder Sol-el laughed. "Marsen doesn't typically use such strong language, but the Luns have been beside themselves ever since his healing. Quite a few have been trying to understand what skill the ban Silverwood used when she healed him."

"There's a ban Silverwood? And, are you saying the letter her parents delivered was why I was summoned?" Nahia asked, baffled by where she might fit into this all.

"Yes, and I think so. Well, suffice to say, the Luns stopped complaining and added three unblessed lunates to the expedition.

"At this point, you can stay and await the High Champion's return, or we can resupply you and send you out after them. They were planning on El-Ahrand's Champion taking them the direct way. You would be advised to follow the roads. And you may even catch up with them if you push hard, considering they will be riding to remain Battle Ready."

Nahia nodded. "Thank you for the resupply. When can I leave?"

"We know how Marsen's Champions tend to follow his form so, now."

Nahia stretched out her neck, stood, and departed.