Legolias patted Fleetfoot on the back, congratulating her: "Excellent work. I thought we'd lost you when those monsters showed up without warning."

Fleetfoot responded with a grin, "I wasn't sure if you were fast enough to take advantage of the clear line of fire before that big-handed ape dragged me down from the ceiling. Great combat spell, by the way. Didn't think you specialized in ice magic."

"I don't. I just have a repertoire from most of the elements."

Bernd pushed past them, holding his shield high. "Now it's my turn. Flatten everything that gets past me."

They marched carefully along the corridor until it took a bend to the right. Bernd quickly peeked around the corner, then paused, irritated, before fully stepping around and gesturing for his teammates to follow. Soon, all four stood on a ledge where the cave fell away down more than twenty steps. A cavern opened up before them, filled with subtle light from dozens of glowing crystals on the ceiling, walls, and even some on the floor. Deep down, they could see the surface of water, too dark to guess its depth. About a hundred steps away was the clearly marked exit door. The cave between was filled with white stone columns rising up from the water, each with a surface five steps in diameter, covered with short grass and occasional low bushes. They were irregularly spaced, some close enough to step between, others requiring a long jump. On other ledges in the cavern wall on the left and right, barely visible humanoid shapes moved.

Legolias cast a spell, and a wave of light expanded from him. One heartbeat later, it was gone. The mage frowned: "The invisibility purge didn’t work. They must use something like a chameleon’s color-changing skin."

Fleetfoot studied the dungeon room. "They are a few steps higher up than us, but too far away to jump to the columns easily. They’d need some magic jumping powers, flight, or ranged weapons to challenge us. My bet is on ranged weapons."

Bernd groaned. "So we’re supposed to jump from column to column while those color-shifting monsters throw rocks at us? That’s the challenge?"

Legolias nodded. "Seems about right. Wanna go first?"

“Of course!” Bernd took off his bag and fastened his shield on his arm. Then he jumped to the nearest column. Immediately, movement came from the monsters. Some lifted their arms and small hand-crossbows became visible. Others dropped to the floor and aimed bigger crossbows.

Legolias analyzed the situation critically. Hand-crossbow bolts were too small to pierce chainmail, and even Bernd’s leather armor should protect him from most of the damage. But they could be reloaded fast and easily. The bigger weapons he classified as light crossbows. They would pierce leather armor, but the warrior would survive one or two hits, depending on the location hit. He respected the decision of the game designers to forgo a hit point system and go for a simplified simulation of a real body instead.

Two creatures at a ledge near the exit lifted up a huge siege crossbow and placed it on a wooden support beam. Instead of a bolt, Legolias saw a round leather object on the contraption.

"Aw… Damn!" the warrior cursed and started running across the small area to jump to the next. First one, then more of the crossbows fired. He didn’t have enough room for real evasive maneuvers, so he ducked and jumped, trying to vary his rhythm so the crossbowmen couldn’t hit him as easily. He avoided most bolts and caught two more with his shield. After landing on a new column, he had three long steps at the most to the nearest edge. Not much for the jump he now attempted. He soared through the air over the longest distance to the next-to-last column.

Legolias and the others held their breath. Would he make it?

* * *

Glen the lurking strangler had waited patiently behind his siege crossbow for just this long jump. Bernd had made the error of becoming predictable on the last part of his crossing. Running and jumping at the last column in a straight line also brought him in line with the ledge where Glen had positioned himself. There was enough time for Glen to aim at the space the warrior soon would be and time his shot for the moment the warrior would be unable to dodge or move while flying.

* * *

Legolias paled when he saw the shape adjusting the giant weapon. While still in flight, Bernd put his shield between himself and the predicted attack. Glen did not care. He calmly pulled the trigger, and a leather bag full of sand was ejected at high speed in a low arc at the jumping intruder. It hit the shield squarely, and all of Bernd’s momentum evaporated. He fell just short of the edge of the column. He hit the stone just too low to grip the edge. The warrior bounced off, dropped into the water, and disappeared below the surface. Everyone watched with held breaths until he reappeared. He swam, cursing, back to his starting side, where he could now see a hidden ladder reaching up. He climbed up and sat down next to his team. Darken patted him encouragingly on the shoulders. "Good try! I didn’t expect the big crossbow to hit you, especially since it’s firing some kind of bag."

"That thing packed quite a punch. Almost broke my shield arm."

Legolias nodded thoughtfully and studied the room. "Anyone have a tactic skill or something?"

Everyone shook their heads.

"Pity. Would be useful now."

Fleetfoot started uncertainly, "I think it’s best if we all move at once. Ideally on different routes, so they have to split up their shots."

Legolias agreed. "Good call. I’ll also cast some fireballs to distract them. Darken? Any useful tricks with your pun-magic?"

"It’s the dark arts! Have some respect!" the master of the dark arts reacted, mock-outraged. He stepped to the edge of the ledge and pulled himself up to his still unimpressive height. "You have made a grave error in attacking a master of dark homeopathy!" He pulled a fist-sized round potion vial filled with a clear liquid from a padded waist bag. He removed the cork and then took out a tiny vial the size of his little finger and opened it. Using a glass pipette, he removed a tiny amount of green glowing liquid and dripped it into the clear liquid. Very carefully, he closed the tiny vial and stowed it in its padded metal belt holder. He put the cork back into the big vial and shook it vigorously. It started emitting light of different green and crimson colors. Sparks floated inside the liquid. He prepared to throw it at the nearest cluster of enemies, but Legolias hastily stopped him.

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"Wait! If you attack them from the preparation area, they’ll be free to attack us here too."

Fleetfoot paled. Legolias was quite tense himself until he was sure Darken wouldn’t do something stupid. That had been a close call. He’d read the full list of dungeon rules and etiquettes the players had collected until now. Losing the sanctity of a preparation area was quite bad. If a group did that, the general consensus was that this dungeon would no longer respect staging and preparation areas in the whole dungeon for any group containing any member of the offending party.

The team had a short tactical discussion, then they started running and jumping. Each of the four ran along a previously agreed-upon route.

Darken took the left-most route and threw his poison vial while screaming, "Suffocating Mist of Death!" The vial broke amidst the stranglers, and a sparkling mist emerged. The dungeon monsters hastily retreated through a hidden door.

* * *

In the viewing room, Trulda threw popcorn at the mirror showing the dungeon delvers. "Gas grenades? That’s got to be cheating!"

Weylan asked worriedly, "Are the stranglers well?"

Skorr put up his muscled grey hand. "Why is that stuff sparkling like mad? I’ve had necromancers throw mist grenades at me, and the mist was almost invisible. That stuff seems quite showy."

Malvorik started, then examined the magic more closely.

Trulda turned around. "Wait… what did he call his type of magic again?"

Trulda guffawed and laughed.

Weylan elbowed her. "Well? Care to enlighten us? I’d like to laugh too."

"They…" she pulled herself together with effort, "It’s a nocebo effect. That’s why he made such a show of it!"

"It’s the opposite of the placebo effect."

"It’s… Well, it’s homeopathy. It only works if you believe it does."

Weylan raised his eyebrow. "That makes no sense."

Weylan pointed at the mirror: “Why is Glen leaving through that trapdoor?”

Skorr hushed them: “Stop spoiling. Now sit down and let’s watch the rest, they’re almost through.”

* * *

With one fourth of the crossbow archers out of the way and the rest of the fire divided among them, the four made good time crossing from column to column. They didn’t take the shortest route, since it would match up with the position of the big siege crossbow, so they took a bit longer than Bernd alone, but at the end, Bernd had to slow down a bit so all would arrive at the last column together. Glen took his shot and narrowly missed the ducking Fleetfoot. Two each met at the two second-to-last columns, then crossed together. The last column was a bit larger and almost directly next to the exit door on the wall. It also had some low bushes. Darken jumped first and immediately dropped to the ground to avoid a volley of crossbow bolts. As the last entered the column, the firing stopped. Legolias looked around: “Did we win?” Bernd, Fleetfoot, and Darken looked around nervously, but the dungeon monsters, including the one at the siege weapon, all seemed to leave through hidden doors. “I can’t see any more of them. Seems safe.” Darken stood up.

The elven mage saw something move directly next to him from the corner of his eye and tried to duck, but got stabbed in the side by an apelike monster appearing right between two bushes. The creature had patiently waited with its fur perfectly matching its surroundings.

Fleetfoot threw a knife, but missed.

Bernd roared a battle cry and charged, bowed low and shield in front.

The lurker seemed to flicker as shadows raced across his body rapidly, making it harder to track his movements. He acrobatically rolled to the side, evading Bernd’s attack. The warrior grunted, turned to follow him and rammed his foot sideways to brake and came to a halt after a step length of sliding. The lurker deftly evaded his wild sword swing, then cut at the extended arm with his dagger. Bernd laughed as the dagger barely scratched his grey skin, hardened by the stone skin potion he’d taken before even entering the dungeon.

Two more throwing knives from Fleetfoot hit Glen’s foot while he was still concentrating on the warrior. One of his chameleon eyes turned to track the thief, while he kept the other one at the warrior. His footwork was fast, but he was still at a disadvantage because of his short feet. The reach of his longer arms was compensated by the length of the warrior’s sword compared to his dagger.

Darken had meanwhile readied his crossbow and fired it at the same time Legolias hurled a sparkling ball projectile spell and Fleetfoot threw another knife.

Glen threw himself flat on the floor to evade all projectiles at once and then grabbed a nearby bush to pull himself sideways. His maneuver failed as the plant came loose because of the shallow earth and its underdeveloped roots. Glen managed to evade the wave of projectiles, but not Bernd's reverse grip downward thrust with his sword. The blade pierced into his back and pinned him down. Bernd stepped back and another wave of spells and projectiles hit Glen squarely. He threw his dagger at the warrior in retaliation, but it barely pierced his leather armor and potion hardened skin.

While the delvers had their full concentration on the still flailing Glen, two other lurkers had sneaked up on them without getting noticed. One grabbed Legolias’s throat with his left hand, which he completely wrapped around with his long fingers. With his other hand he thrust a dagger in the mages back. Again, and again. His next combat spell faltered and snuffed out.

The other lurker tried the same with Fleetfoot, but she whirled around and ducked at the last moment, warned by her danger-sense. The first stab found his mark in her side, but then she fought back viciously. A roundhouse kick threw the lurker backwards, then two throwing knives pierced his chest in quick succession. Bernd noticed the new enemies and stomped down on the downed Glen, finally killing him. As the body dissolved to mist that quickly dissipated, he pulled out his sword from the ground and charged Legolias’s attacker.

Darken fired his crossbow from point-blank range into the head of Fleetfoot’s enemy, killing him instantly.

The other lurker quickly also fell under the combined attacks of all four adventurers.

The four adventurers formed up back-to-back, watching all four directions. Then Legolias looked up hastily, but there was nothing above them.

After a long moment of nothing happening, they relaxed. Bernd looked down on the spot where Glen had died and picked something up. He showed a glittering gold coin to the others. One side showed a long fingered hand holding a wicked dagger surrounded by the words: “Dungeon of Assassins”, the other side showed Glen’s face. “Wow! Is that a monster-heart?”

Legolias paled: “Put that down! Put it down NOW!"

The warrior looked perplexed: “Why? It’s loot.”

“It’s a monster-heart. Some dungeons go completely berserk if someone tries to leave with one of those. I tried it once and every single monster left in the dungeon converged at our position. Howling, screaming… It was bedlam. No fair fight, no mercy. Ten or more monsters died to take one of us down, until I threw the thing away. Then they all went quiet… and returned to their normal posts. It was eerie.”

Bernd looked around nervously. All around on the balconies the hidden doors opened silently. Lurkers looked out, one seemed to hold a big winch crossbow.

The warrior very carefully laid down the coin and stepped back. The lurkers disappeared again.

Fleetfoot slowly reached for the door and pushed it open. The tunnel behind the door lit up in welcoming light, while the light in the dungeon room went out. Still nervously watching for traps or ambushes, the group left the room.