Chapter 12: A Pursuing Jackalope
Each day, the five beast girls adventured south or east of the Twin Cities while DM developed the dungeon. Level 1 was rebuilt to be as imposing and obnoxious as possible.
[https://i.imgur.com/e4GUZka.jpg]
Of the three paths, only one reached the stairs down to the next level. Every once in a while, DM could move some doors to change which path was the correct one. Monsters might ambush adventurers at each corner, and there were plenty of hidden recesses built into the walls, floors, and ceilings. Levels 2 and 3 were similarly designed to discourage intrusion. If nothing else, the current dungeon design would buy DM time.
“An alert!” DM was really starting to grow tired of being at the whims of intruders. Each time, there was that sickening wait to see whether the enemy was a cute little fur ball or an ultimate army of doom.
“Several targets. Hm, three humans and an elf? This male elf is a druid… first time I’ve seen that. There’s a swordswoman, a male archer, and male burglar? Everyone’s LVL 6. That’s an… interesting party.”
DM had LVL 1 creatures hidden throughout the dungeon, so spying on the party would be easy. At LVL 6, this group was probably not sent by the Lord for any type of a punitive mission, so DM relaxed just a bit.
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“Three doors. Surprisingly symmetrical,” the burglar reported.
“Perhaps the Twin Cities Guild was correct to caution adventurers to stay away from here,” the archer added on, following the burglar and swordswoman down the stairs from above.
The swordswoman retorted, “What are you talking about? I didn’t hear anything about us not being allowed to adventure here.”
“How convenient,” the elf stated mockingly. “I still think this is a terrible idea.”
“Relax. It’s a LVL 4 dungeon, isn’t it? If we see anything we shouldn’t have, we need only keep it to ourselves until the caravan continues east. Other than that, we won’t have any problems.”
“Sasha,” the burglar replied, “I’m getting creepy feelings, like we’re being watched.”
“Of course! There’s gotta be enemies around, right? Okay, fine, let’s study the room a bit before going to the next room.”
The party looked around, noticing that the floors, walls, and ceilings did not all meet neatly. None of them really felt like trying to climb up or squeeze into any crevices, though.
“Are you satisfied? Ardreth, how does it seem to you?”
The elf responded, “Sasha, though I’m loathe to admit it, I don’t sense any hate, malice, or evil here. The spirits warn of tricks and pranks, but no harm. It’s as though the nastiest enemy here is a mischievous forest sprite.”
“See? The only thing to fear is boredom.”
Now the archer spoke. “Sasha, I’ve never heard of a dungeon so free of malice as Ardreth just described, nor have I seen a room like this one. Why don’t we declare victory and get out of here?”
“Exactly how many dungeons have you been in?”
“…Not many.”
“Right! This is a rare opportunity for us. Let’s explore a little and see what we find.”
They heard a wolf, or perhaps a dog, howling in the distance.
“I think it came from that way,” the burglar stated while pointing at the door on the left wall. Sasha noticed a bead of sweat on his brow, and his hand shook slightly as he pointed.
“Fine, we’ll go a different way. If left is bad, let’s go right!”
The party proceeded through the door.
“Another door…” the burglar narrated. “Otherwise, there’s nothing here. I still feel like we’re being watched, though.”
“Oh, enough of that. Let’s continue.”
The party proceeded through the second door on their journey. They eased their way around the first partial wall, maintaining a tight formation. They paused, inspecting the second partial wall, then slowly turned the second corner. They paused upon identification of a third partial wall.
“What’s going on here…” Even Sasha was sounding discouraged now.
“I don’t believe it’s normal for dungeons to repeat themselves like this,” Ardreth noted.
“This must be what the Guild is trying to hide! This dungeon is special!”
In response to a reinvigorated Sasha, the burglar cautioned her, “What else about this dungeon is unusual? I can’t protect us from things I wasn’t trained to watch for…”
“If this was a LVL 6 dungeon I’d agree with you, but this is only LVL 4. Even if we encounter a problem, we’ll just deal with it, right?” Her companions just grunted but didn’t argue.
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They continued easing their way through the seemingly endless series of left and right turns.
“How many corners does that make?” Sasha asked the burglar.
“Hm? I don’t know. I’ve lost count.” His tone suggested he hadn’t considered counting. Before Sasha could chastise him, the party heard a howl again, only this time from well behind them.
“Sasha, I’m feeling exposed here,” Ardreth complained. He was bringing up the rear, after all.
“Let’s press forward. If we stay here, we’re just sitting ducks.”
At Sasha’s prompting, the party continued forward. She guessed they were arriving at the fifteenth corner or so at this point. As she and the burglar peered around the edge of the partial wall, they noticed two things. The first was that it was a dead end. The second was that three large monsters were slumbering, pressed up against one another.
The two froze, and the members in the rear followed their lead. They eased backwards as quietly as they could, not wanting to engage three chickbears in such closed quarters. Sasha was pretty sure this wasn’t a typical situation for a dungeon, but they’d already accepted some risk on this dungeon crawl.
Just as they thought they were safely away from the sleeping chickbears, they heard flapping over their heads. Looking up, a bat frantically darted back and forth. And it screeched. Loudly.
“Oh crap.” Sasha and the others heard a loud roar, no, make that three loud roars, from the direction of the chickbears.
“Do we run!?” the burglar screamed.
Strangely, the bat flew away. Perhaps it sensed the chickbears and wanted to get away from them. Sasha noticed this and then made her decision.
“No! We’re LVL 6! We need to fight! Get ready!”
The chickbears couldn’t have been more than LVL 4. It would be tough, but they could certainly defeat them with good decision making and teamwork. Footsteps matching the rhythm of a running bear’s gait approached.
Ardreth prepared his first spell while his companions prepared to unleash their first salvo against the charging enemies. The first chickbear rounded the corner at an unexpected speed.
“Now!” Sasha had positioned the group mostly pressed against the wall with her as the vanguard. She expected the chickbears to get clumped up coming around the corner. It wasn’t a bad idea. Normally.
If the first chickbear stopped to attack her, the other two would be boxed out, at least for a short while. This strategy wouldn’t work against intelligent enemies like soldiers who would move sideways while attacking to line up alongside the enemy. Chickbears weren’t intelligent, though.
Just as Sasha prepared to guard against the first attack and then counter with her sword, the chickbear bypassed her.
“Oh no! Look out!” She didn’t have time to assist her teammates behind her, since the second chickbear was turning the corner.
The burglar took a step forward to tank the first hit, knowing full well he couldn’t stand up to the chickbears as well as Sasha could. He had neither the class, the gear, nor the stats. Still, he was a higher level, and he’d survive the initial attack. Protecting the archer and druid was more important. Ardreth would surely heal him as soon as it became necessary.
The first attack didn’t come. Was the chickbear positioning to counter-attack against the burglar? That was his fear, so he hesitated to attack himself. However, the chickbear didn’t seem interested in attacking him. Instead, it progressed further, making room for the second chickbear.
“Ardreth, look out!” The burglar knew shouting a warning wouldn’t even do much. It seemed the chickbears were shockingly intelligent. Not only did they bypass the first enemy, but they bypassed the second enemy so that all three could fight in unison against the adventuring party.
At this point, the lead chickbear was positioned to attack the druid or the archer, who weren’t equipped to tank the hits. The second chickbear was clearly about to bite into the burglar, and the trailing chickbear was ready to go toe-to-toe with Sasha. Even Sasha, who was the only one qualified to duel a chickbear, would have some difficulty fighting one without any support from the rest of her party. She wasn’t even sure if their odds were 50 percent at this point.
The lead chickbear surprised them again. Instead of digging into the party’s tender flank, it continued down the hallway, turning the next corner. The second chickbear followed the first, bypassing the adventurers. The third chickbear also followed.
“W-What?” All four adventurer stood still, staring at the back of the final chickbear. Then, from behind them, where the chickbears has been slumbering, they heard light footsteps. Chasing after the retreating chickbears was a single jackalope. It squeaked in anger as it chased after them, bypassing the adventurers and disappearing beyond the next corner.
The four looked around, trying to get their bearings and make sense of what just happened.
“Were the chickbears… running from that jackalope?”
After a few moments of nobody answering the burglar’s question, the four all collapsed on to the floor with their backs against the wall. It wasn’t advisable to relax like that in the middle of a dungeon, but the past few moments had been incredibly draining.
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“The druid did warn them to be wary of tricks and pranks. I’m curious how he learned that. Something about spirits?”
DM was quite enjoying messing with the adventurers. From what he gathered, they didn’t seem to have any evil intentions, so he didn’t plan on seriously harming them. He was pretty sure he could handle them in a battle, if needed, so he didn’t do anything to weaken them. Physically, at least. He wondered if they might be having nightmares about chickbears and jackalopes for a while.
“They’re lucky I really wasn’t trying to take them out. Those days I spent playing real time strategy games really would have come in handy there. They had no idea dungeon monsters could set up a concave on their army!”
DM would continue to mess with them a bit, then hopefully have a nice chat.
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With nowhere else to go, the four backtracked to the rooms with the doors. They were on guard for the return of three chickbears, but didn’t encounter them. The tense environment was wearing away at their nerves.
“Well, we tried the right path alread–“
“Sasha! You don’t seriously intend to continue exploring this dungeon, do you?”
Sasha seriously intended to continue exploring the dungeon.
“Ardreth, say something to her!”
“What is there to say? The dungeon neither harms us, lures us in, nor scares us away. I still think it was a mistake to come here from the beginning, but the anomalous behavior we’ve witnessed so far is not, in my opinion, a reason to retreat.”
“You damn elves! Sasha, even if you’re okay, I’m beat! I don’t have the energy for three more floors of this nutty dungeon!”
“Fine, the exit’s right there. You can wait for us outside.”
“What!?”
“If we can make it to the bottom of this dungeon, we’ll learn something fascinating. I can feel it. I won’t give up just because we saw monsters playing around.”
“Damn it…”
Of the three doors in this room, the group had just returned through the door on the right. While they bickered, the door on the left swung open of its own accord. The party stared at it, hands on their weapons, not saying a word until Ardreth eventually broke the silence.
“Have any of you heard of dungeon doors opening on their own like that?”
They all looked back and forth between the open door and the dungeon’s exit.