It was better than I thought it would be.

It was very mild, which I was not expecting. It tasted somewhere between white fish meat and dirt, with hints of more dirt. If you rolled scallops on the floor before eating them, you might be able to simulate the experience yourself, though that description lends it too much flavor. In some ways, it didn’t taste like anything at all. It was like someone describing the taste of dirt-covered seafood to you over the phone, a shy and servile hunk of meat that merely suggested flavors to your tongue, but wouldn’t be so rude as to actually taste like much of anything. That would be too forward for a shy meat like this.

It was tough - eating it was somewhat of a workout for my jaw - but I was more than able to stomach it. In fact, the spices Amaia had added really helped to soften the dirt flavor, and I was hungry enough that, if you had asked me right then, I would have told you it was damn good. Though if I had other options, I might have said it was just okay.

I ended up eating a lot of worm-drake.

We decided to set up a camp of sorts in that room with the targets; it took an entire day just to clear out the remains of the worm-drake we’d just eaten. We piled the refuse up outside. It was a tragically large pile.

The journey to the dungeon’s core was ending up being longer than any of us had imagined - except for Naomi, who asked exactly how stupid we were that we thought we could do it within a week. Since we couldn’t return to the surface like everyone else - for fear of Berenguer - we had to do what we could to survive underground. That meant food, water, and shelter.

Food had been taken care of for the moment, at least, and, in theory, we knew we could kill worm-drakes. And with our newfound knowledge of their thin skulls, we developed new hunting methods. Ones that didn’t involve nearly dying. Well, not to the same degree, anyway.

The new method involved Cadoc summoning walls of wood on either side of a stray worm-drake’s face, leading him slowly back to the pass. It had been only a suspicion, but I had wondered if they would work like blinders on a horse, and it proved effective at steering their path. Once the worms were led back to the pass, Naomi would be waiting, staff ready. But she was only back-up, in case something went wrong - and it did, often. But if it didn’t, then Amaia and I would be ready with spears and steel balls - except this time, we’d aim right for the center of the worm-drake’s skull. All it took was one good shot - or three decent shots, if needed - to break a steel ball or javelin right through the worm-drake’s weak cranium. That done, brain scrambled, the worm-drake was dead in a matter of moments. If we missed - or that one time when we shot a ball into the skull, and it only seemed to make the monster angrier - then Naomi would complain bitterly before slicing the worm-drake in half.

It was incredibly wasteful every single time, mountains of meat that we’d only end up eating for a day or two. The rest was left to rot in the snake-pit-cavern - though we would have to clear the pass occasionally, which was a terrible job - and a miasmic odor began to permeate the place. Disgusting insects, as well, which I didn’t recognize, ate away at the remains. At least we were getting mana out of it the hunting process.

Shelter was a simple matter as well. Cadoc’s ability to summon sticks and boards, as well as his manual labor background, actually made him quite the carpenter. We didn’t have nails, but he was able to fit the pieces of wood together with interlocking grooves and joints.

Actual shelter, in the strictest sense, was unnecessary. It’s not like we had to worry about inclement weather, and the temperature stayed very consistent. While the idea of building a little subterranean bungalow was a humorous one, really what we needed was defense. And while the heavy stone doors provided much of that, there was still the question of what to do if something got through. Cadoc ended up building something like a barricade of spikes on the inside of the worm-facing entrance - the idea was that, if a worm-drake ever made it through again, it would find itself impaled on a wall of spears. Hopefully that would at least slow it down. On the opposite side, he simply built a wall, with a little door in it - the all-wooden hinges were honestly pretty impressive.

Of course, this all took him days - his mana pool was nowhere near large enough to do it all at once. But slowly, we built ourselves a little hideout. We had our cooking area still, and an area cleared around the fire to sit and eat and sleep. The rest of the room was still filled with old bones.

When I laid down at night, staring up at the stone ceiling, waiting for dreams to come, I would wonder about where Tom was, what he was doing, what kind of bed he was sleeping in.

The real problem was water.

I still had a little left - having refused to add my portion in with the brain stew. My teammates, however, all ate the stew, ensuring me it was delicious, telling me to eat it. I eventually caved, and it was alright, I guess, but just the thought of it made me sick. They filled their canteens with brain-juice - Amaia said it was energizing - but still our water supplies were dreadfully low.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

So we began making expeditions out further into the dungeon. Many rooms, tunnels, and further caverns branched off from the worm-pit, and we explored them one-by-one.

We decided it would be best to have someone stay behind and guard our little spot - it wouldn’t do any good for us to return home to a Kalamuzi ambush. We would switch it up occasionally, but since Cadoc and Amaia were the most useful for running a camp, it usually ended up being Naomi and I sent out.

I didn’t mind too much. She was annoying sometimes, but she was nice to look at, in her own way. You can judge me all you want, but you try spending over a month having barely seen a woman besides Ms. Stone Face. I let her walk ahead of me, and she didn’t suspect a thing. It was comforting, in a way, and I was really just happy that Naomi never caught me peeking at her butt.

She was also a good backup. She could probably kill anything we’d likely run into - I hoped - but then I’d have to carry her off, or at least help her stumble back. That was the downside.

“Don’t you carry a sword or something?” I asked on the first outing, as we walked down the pass away from the hideout, past the rotting worm-drake corpse. “Seems like you’d want something you could use without knocking yourself out.”

Naomi scoffed at me. “And lower myself like that? K’know, some of us have standards. I’m a real mage, not, well…” She paused, pursed her lips, looking at me. “Well, never mind that. No. I don’t use a sword, thank you.”

On our explorations we found strange over-grown insects, eerie pale plant-life, and at least one disembodied human head, which grinned at us like we were the butt of an unspoken joke. The head looked fresh, but we never found the body. We guessed it was the Kalamuzi who had done it, but never could agree on why they would leave the head behind.

Luckily, it wasn’t too long before we found water. I had almost been convinced by my savage companions to try drinking blood.

We were standing in a high-ceilinged cavern, having been brought there after following the sound of flowing water in the walls, and instead of those hell-colored roots, this space was lit from above by strange bioluminescent fungus, which glowed a radiant blue which reminded me of a computer screen. Its electric blue brightness would have banished all darkness from the chamber, if not for the harsh shadows that danced on the walls and floor like shadow-people at a monochrome rave - caused by the man-sized moths, white-bodied with black eyes and wings, which flitted around the lights, high above us.

And there it was. We had seen it from a distance before approaching - just barely, a far-off glint, tucked away in a rocky little grotto. It was an underground stream - only a small part of it exposed to the cavern we stood in. It came out from the wall to the side, and ran quickly further down, so that only a square foot or so was exposed, in a forgotten corner we easily could have missed.

I didn’t wait. I knelt to the ground and thrust my face into the stream, drinking with reckless abandon. I knew it would give me a stomach-ache if I wasn’t careful, but I didn’t care. The water tasted amazing.

I stood, water dripping off of me, and smiled. Maybe hard work does pay off. Naomi was giving me a strange look, but I motioned towards the stream. “Going to have a drink?”

“Just don’t push me in,” she said, and knelt down - shooting glances back at me - and had a drink. I had no idea why she’d think I’d push her in.

Having found water, I felt pretty damn good about our chances. Surely we’d be able to make it through the dungeon before a month’s time, and whatever we found would easily pay my debts for the month. Things were looking up.

We filled our canteens, and that’s when we felt it. A chill. We both must have felt the same thing, because Naomi was looking around, a curious look on her face.

“Hide,” she said in a whisper. “Someone’s coming. Quick!”

There weren’t exactly a lot of options for hiding places - we were literally cornered. We had to settle for crouching behind some rocks, perpendicular to the stream. I cursed myself. Fucking idiot. Of course the one source of water down here would attract attention. We should have gone back for reinforcements the moment we saw it, brought one more person with us. But I was so fucking thirsty.

“If he has magic that can sense us,” Naomi whispered. “Then we’re dead.”

“Or if he has ears,” I said. “Shut up.”

Naomi snorted. “No need to be so rude, y’know.”

We crouched there in silence, waiting. The chill grew in intensity, and soon, someone came into view.

I’d seen her before. It was that woman from the camp on the surface, the one that had been freezing a bucket of water when we’d walked by. She was still bundled up in full winter gear, and I supposed I could imagine why - it was freezing just to be around her. It seemed goofy that you’d get ice magic and not be immune to cold yourself, but if that was the case, I’d be bundled up, too.

She looked around suspiciously, as if she could sense the two pairs of eyes on her. I didn’t dare move, and I hoped Naomi was sensible enough to do the same.

The ice woman didn’t notice us. She was clearly distracted. She looked flustered - her face was blushed, though that could have been the cold. She begun pacing, then would stand awhile, tapping her foot, crossing her arms, then back to pacing. Like she was waiting for something.

Or someone. I saw the light before I saw the person. The electric blue matched the ambient lighting, but this was brighter. I almost groaned as I recognized it, and then, a moment later, the person bearing it.

It was the electric sword dude from before. The one who said he would kill us if he ever saw us again.

I tried to think if there was a way to escape, but I couldn’t think of one. I’d just have to wait. I hoped they would leave soon.

Actually, I thought, what are they doing here? Aren’t they on different teams?

“Took you long enough,” the woman said, turned away. She didn’t even look at him. If it wasn’t for that one statement, I might have thought she hadn’t noticed him come.

“Darling, darling,” the man said, in a very different voice than I’d heard speak with before. “You know I came as quickly as I could, Leah, my love. Don’t give me the cold shoulder.” He flashed her a shit-eating grin.

The woman - Leah - looked at the man with a piercing look. “You think that’s funny, Nolan? You leave me waiting, then you make fun of me? Maybe I’ll just go.”

She started to make like she was leaving, but Nolan grabbed her arm as she tried to pass.

“Let go of me,” she said. She didn’t raise her voice, but the temperature dropped a few degrees further when she said it. It took everything I had not to let my teeth start chattering.

It was right then, at the most inopportune time I could think of, that RENA’s voice sounded in my ears. Of course, no one else could hear it, but I jumped, and I could only hope neither of the two enemies had seen me move.

“I’m sorry to interrupt, Miles,” RENA said. “But she insisted, and she is your emergency contact - besides Tom. Your mother is calling.”