When the king opened his eyes, he was back at the tavern. His heart was beating out of his chest, sweat beading on his forehead. It felt like he had just woken up from a nightmare. His eyes went wide as he noticed Worrack, his head still on the table surrounded by a mountain of beer mugs. He was snoring loudly in the dark tavern. The king looked around, trying to make as little noise as possible, though he didn’t manage to avoid the creaking of his wooden chair echoing in the empty tavern. They were utterly alone.

He held his hands together, clasped in prayer to Gozag Ym Sagoz. He looked outside through the window. It was dark and the city was quiet as a falling leaf. The stars shone in the night sky, softly illuminating the inside of the tavern with a mystical glow.

The king took a few deep breaths, trying to calm himself, before he tapped Worrack lightly on his shoulder. The orc grunted, his eyes flickered open as his giant body slowly manoeuvred itself into a comfortable position. His joints cracked loudly and his robe rustled softly as he moved. Then, his eyes settled on the king.

At first, his expression was confused, though only slightly. His dark pupils wandered the king’s clothes, who himself only then realised he was wearing his pyjamas. He blushed. The orc’s expression lightened up, a soft smile settling on his lips and creasing the skin around his eyes. As the king gazed upon the monster, both of them surrounded by the silence of the tavern, painted by starlight, he felt a kinship with the inhuman. He also noticed an understanding in Worrack. It was like he had been wearing a mask that was only now removed. His expression glowed softly like the moon on a cloudless night as the orc looked kindly upon the tiny king.

“Worrack.”

The king’s voice wasn’t much more than a whisper blown away by the wind, but somehow that single word had reached its destination. The orc nodded, closing his eyes. He responded, his voice deep and bright as the night but soft as a summer’s breeze.

“Yakom. You want to hear more about Styer, is that right?”

It was like thunder, the way it rumbled. The king nodded in return.

The town of Mitro was a place of mystery. A room tucked away, a door sealed, a locked box with a lost key. In that tavern, Yakom finally understood the true extent of the magic that was laced in the air, the earth, and the words spoken in that town. The town that raised the greatest hero the world had ever seen. And the town that lost him.

“Styer was careful on his descent. Methodical. His actions followed a set pattern like the steps of a dance or the notes of a song. He was strong enough to clear the floors, so he did. And by doing so, he became even stronger. This cycle repeated and repeated. Floor after floor he would slaughter the dungeon-dwellers and command them to rise and to serve him. With an army of death and undeath he braved the darkness and the accursed stone, the corners and the hallways.

On the seventh floor, he heard a sound like sand falling into glass. It was like a melody to him, it called him. He ran towards the sound, casting his spells with no regard for his body or his mana. Then, he saw a golden door of stone slowly closing. It smelled like rotting flesh and acid, but Styer could feel the magic emanating from the structure. He stepped into the door and saw a different side of the dungeon.

The ground was smooth sandstone and the walls were of the most pristine marble carved with intricate shapes. He saw elves holding wands, staves, bows, and swords. He saw elemental beasts, creatures of fire, earth, water, and air being commanded by their elven masters. Commanded to fight. On the other side of the mural, facing the elves in battle, were mummies. They were few, and they were weak. They stood no chance against the army that stood against them, so they retreated to another world. It was a world of sand tucked away in the dungeon. It only opened when certain stars aligned in the sky and not even the elves knew to predict the heavens from within the darkness of the dungeon.

Inside, Styer found great riches. Potions he had never seen before and scrolls holding powerful spells. But to gather them he was put through terrible danger, killing the mummies that still remained in that world, as well as other undead beasts that had made their way in over the millenia. After clearing that world, he walked through a portal that brought him back to the stone doors, now closed.

On the tenth level he saw the entrance to The Lair of Beasts. Guarding the entrance were beasts unlike any he’d faced in the previous floors. There were hydras, foul beasts with seven heads. Using his scythe, Styer cut some of their heads off, but two always grew back in their place. Magic was the only tool he had capable of killing the creatures. Then, there were the Yaks. Not too dangerous on their own, but always travelling in packs. They packed a punch and were hard to kill, but their slow-footedness allowed Styer to take them out from a distance.

On that same floor he also found the entrance to The Orcish Mines, fiercely guarded by orc priests, wizards, and warriors.

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According to his intel, Styer would need to face The Lair sooner or later in search of the Runes of Zot. That was the only way to reach the deepest portions of the dungeon, and therefore the only way to reach the Orb of Zot. Still, Styer wanted to become stronger still before facing that particular challenge.

Styer continued to delve deeper into the dungeon. On the fourteenth floor he found the entrance to the dungeon Vaults, guarded by Vault Guards wielding powerful enchanted weapons. Though he could’ve entered that area of the dungeon, Styer had read terrible things about it. First was that in order to exit back into the main branch of the dungeon Styer would need a Rune of Zot. It was said there was one at the bottom of the Vaults, the Silver Rune of Zot, but no adventurer that faced the fifth level had ever returned to confirm.

On the fifteenth floor, Styer found the entrance to The Depths. They were named so because of the influence of the Orb. From that point on, things would get difficult for the elf. The creatures he would face in The Depths were laced with the magic of the Orb of Zot, enhancing their physical abilities and their magical attributes. More terrible than all was The Abyss. The adventurers told tales of a realm separate from the dungeon, a place where the walls moved and shifted, where there was no certainty, and where the beasts were horrible. A place where the beasts made whoever they touched horrible like them. No one that had stepped into the abyss had returned the same, though only few ever returned at all. Only in The Depths would Styer find the entrances to The Abyss, as well as creatures capable of sending him to the darkness of that world with only the words of a spell.

After clearing the fifteenth floor, Styer took some time to study what he’d gathered once again. He’d found several powerful artefacts imbued with magic he didn’t quite understand, as well as more scrolls and potions. Also, he had gathered a few grimoires along the way. Two in particular had called to him.

The first was a dark tome. Its cover was black as the darkest corners of the dungeon, only a single word carved into the leather as if scratched by a bloody finger. It read “Necronomicon”. Inside, three spells were described. All of which had been developed by a great necromancer by the name of Borgnjor.

The first spell called upon evil spirits to haunt an enemy, so it was called Haunt. It was a powerful spell that would spell doom for most any creature that couldn’t endure an onslaught of demonic attacks.

The second and third were a tandem. Death’s Door was a spell that promised invulnerability for the caster for a short duration by tricking the body. It brought the caster so close to death the body believed itself to be dead already, allowing the caster to withstand nearly everything for a short duration before the body realised the truth of the matter. Then, there was Revivification. A spell capable of regenerating the body of the caster entirely, at the cost of permanently weakening it. They were powerful spells, but dangerous.

The second grimoire was a more traditional book, entitled simply “Grand Grimoire”, no author noted. The preface promised spells that could bend powerful interdimensional beings to the will of the caster. It was an old book with many pages ripped out or rotten completely. So, Styer could only make out two spells.

The first was called Maligned Gateway. It was a powerful spell that pulled a tentacled beast from an accursed otherworld. It was a dangerous spell, however. The tentacle could only be bent to the will of the caster temporarily. After some time, if the gateway remained open, the tentacled beast would regain autonomy and attack the caster with an incredible rage.

The other spell still legible in the “Grand Grimoire” was a more complicated thing. The author referred to the spell as “The Spell to Summon Horrible Things”. From the short description of the effects of this spell, though it was not specified in the grimoire, Styer understood that the horrible things were summoned from The Abyss. The author trailed off as he was describing the things summoned, almost as if they were too horrible to describe in detail, calling them only abominations and monstrosities.

Styer made his way back to the tenth floor and prepared to brave The Lair.

As he made his way down the stairway overrun with vines and roots a terrible heat struck him. It was oppressive, hotter and wetter than the worst summer he’d ever faced back in Mitro.

Thanks to his new spells, he breezed through The Lair. His power had reached a level so high that he started to wonder why so many had struggled to reach the Orb. That was the extent of his talent and of his naivete.

He slayed hydras simply by summoning a horrible thing to fight in his stead, he slaughtered bears and yaks by haunting them with powerful spirits, he hunted basilisks like they were common lizards by calling upon tentacles from another world.

In The Lair, he found many powerful pieces of jewellery that granted him further power and protection. His confidence was soaring higher than the sky-piercing trees of The Lair.

As he reached the third level of the branch, he found two staircases that led down. One led to The Swamp, the other to The Spider’s Nest. Those two were said to hold a Rune of Zot each.

Styer made his way down the dark pit covered with webs, the smell of poison thick in the air.”

Worrack’s words trailed off. The king was staring at the orc, his mouth agape and his fingers digging into the wooden table so hard his knuckles had turned white. He let out the breath he had been holding.

Before he knew it, the soft glow of the stars that had been dancing in the tavern was replaced with the warm shine of the sun. The light was being reflected off the metal strips that adorned Worrack’s mugs and the steel lamps hanging from the ceiling in the tavern. The king moved, stretching his body, and felt that his clothes were sticking to his skin.

The orc still held a kind smile, looking calmly at the king.