You have invoked Article 53 of the Fairy Realms Accords for the duration of your current delve. This will mean you are no longer accorded dungeon fairy status. You cannot use fairy-specific senses, immunities and abilities. You are not allowed to use portals. You will be considered an intruder while inside the dungeon. Your memory of classified information about this dungeon will be blocked. You are required to bring a tribute of one cask of pumpkin-spiced fairy nectar to the next conclave of dungeon fairies.
Are you sure? (Yes/ No)
Selvara paused. That wasn’t the usual “Do you accept?”. It was only a slight variation, but still… It did sound ominous. But accepting would mean she would be vulnerable when she’d normally be exempt from attacks and traps. She also couldn’t escape using the fairy portal she could normally use to travel from inside a dungeon to the fairy realm.
The part with the tribute was only drunken rambling of the responsible fairies that wrote the rules, but she’d already checked where she could get pumpkin-spiced fairy nectar. It didn’t matter if it made no sense; she would enter a rule enforced by NEMESIS. Everything in the article had to be taken seriously. Still, that was what she’d wanted. She accepted.
She felt a minor headache, then a dizzy feeling that took some time to clear. When she felt normal again, Selvara could no longer remember anything about the dungeon that wasn’t common knowledge. She had carefully refrained from telling the others anything confidential since that would have been considered cheating by NEMESIS.
She looked up and found herself surrounded by the rest of her team, who all looked down at her worriedly.
When Trulda knelt down to her, did she realize she’d landed on the floor, where she stood with trembling legs. She steadied herself: “I’m alright. Nothing to worry about. I told you I’d probably be a bit disoriented.”
The barbarian carefully steadied her with an outstretched hand: “Should I carry you for a while? Only just until you get used to it?”
Selvara paused, then nodded and hopped on the offered shoulder of the female adventurer.
Skorr clapped his hands eagerly: “Great. That worked. I was afraid we’d be forced to leave her behind since there was no way she’d be allowed to delve with all of her dungeon abilities intact. Now let’s get going. Just like we discussed. Weylan is in front, looking for traps. I’ll be right behind to guard him from ambushes. Ulmenglanz behind me, then Trulda with Selvara as rear guard.”
Selvara rolled her eyes as he repeated the same plan again.
Standing at the top of the stairs, the team cut an imposing figure.
Skorr had his hefty two-handed war-pick slung over his shoulder. For the first time since Selvara had known him, he was fully armored. His brigantine appeared from afar like a durable leather coat, but up close, the fine steel rivets that dotted its surface in neat rows became visible. They secured the hidden metal plates layered between toughened fabric. He wore steel-capped leather boots, thick miner's gloves, and a miner’s helm with a glowstone embedded at the front. Skorr raised his clenched fist and commanded "Be prepared for anything!" to activate his tactic skill.
Ulmenglanz, the dryad, was dressed in her white healer’s robes, a quarterstaff in hand, her presence calm and reassuring.
Weylan, the assassin, concealed chainmail beneath dark leather garments. He held his magical staff-sword at the ready, while his soft, silent assassin’s boots made no noise and he had claimed to have put on his invisible assassins’ gloves, though none could verify it.
As they reached the bottom of the stairs, the corridor led into a vast underground cavern. The ceiling soared high into a sky-like void, disappearing into swirling clouds. The cavern walls, shrouded in mist, seemed hundreds of steps away. The ground itself was cloaked in thick, faintly glowing fog, and gleaming white marble columns stretched up toward the clouded ceiling.
At the top of the broad stairway leading down into the mist, Skorr halted, taking in the sight. He grinned. “Well, bury me in rocks, that's a view. I’d recognize the smell of alchemical mist anywhere. But this... how did they make so much of it? Ah, right. Dungeon magic. They can just make stuff.”
Selvara, perched on Trulda's shoulder, looked uneasy. “I suppose they can…” She felt troubled. This was something she should have known, she felt it. But the information was locked inside her head.
Weylan eyed the mist warily. “Is it poisonous?”
Skorr sniffed the air, uncertain. “It shouldn't be. Producing this much poison would be ludicrous.”
With weapons at the ready, the team descended slowly into the mist. As they entered the ground fog, it swallowed their legs, obscuring their feet. Trulda suddenly halted. “Wait! Everything's white!”
Weylan raised an eyebrow. “Yes. White fog, white walls, white glowing clouds overhead. Brilliant observation, Trulda. Is that one of your barbarian superpowers?”
Trulda scowled. “No, it means we don’t have unlimited time. In a few hours, we’ll get snow-blindness.”
Ulmenglanz nodded thoughtfully. “The light’s faint, but yes. Prolonged exposure to all this white will strain our eyes. We’ll lose the ability to distinguish shades and eventually go blind. We have maybe three hours before it becomes a real problem. Let us continue slow, but consistent.”
They continued. The fog was about hip height and moved in slight waves.
Selvara used her vantage point to keep a close eye out for enemies. Everyone was tense, due to the limited visibility. She’d vaguely remembered that fog and mist inside of dungeons shouldn’t hinder her sight as a dungeon fairy, but now it did. She found it quite annoying. Weylan seemed to share her feelings, as he stood out in his dark clothing like a dark beacon. There also were no shadows everywhere in sight for him to use his magic on. Enemies could sneak up inside the fog, but even as he tried crawling below the mist’s surface, he was still clearly visible as a dark blot.
The dryad healer, Ulmenglanz, also seemed uneasy, her connection to nature disrupted by the artificial environment. The air was heavy with unnatural scents like acid, sulfur, and foul alchemical fumes.
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Selvara could still not see any kind of exit or something that indicated what they’d have to do to solve the floor.
She only saw the attack as something struck Skorr from the side, a blur of pale white fur that clambered across his back before vanishing into the mist. Skorr whirled around, clutching at claw marks on his neck, right between armor and helmet.
The team instinctively formed a defensive circle, backs to each other, weapons ready. But there was nothing to see, only the eerie silence of the mist. Ulmenglanz approached Skorr. “Are you hurt?”
The duskgnome shook his head. “Just a scratch.”
“Let me check for poison.” Ulmenglanz placed her hand on his neck, whispering a soft spell. A faint golden glow illuminated the area under her touch. “It’s a mild paralytic poison. Left unchecked, it could slow you down, or worse, paralyze you. I’ve neutralized it.”
Skorr gestured toward the nearest column. “Let’s check those. There might be clues or inscriptions.”
As the group turned and while everyone looked at the column, the dungeon monsters attacked from every direction. Pale, white shapes swirled up from the mist in all sides. Before Selvara could fully register the attack, one of the creatures lunged out of the mist right at her. A white-furred squirrel, larger than normal, with unnerving, empty eyes and overgrown front teeth. She tried to take off, but it barreled into her before she could flap her wings more than once. Its mass knocked her off Trulda’s shoulder and down to the floor.
She tumbled into the mist, her friends disappeared from view. Claws raked at her from all sides as the squirrel’s jaws snapped inches from her face. Panicking, she scrambled backward, trying to block or evade the frenzied creature. There was no time to even think about casting a spell. The monster was bigger than her and much faster. A vicious swipe tore through her robe and clawed into her stomach. Desperate, she kicked at it, managing only to push herself back slightly.
The beast came at her again.
Then, a whoosh through the mist, a blur of motion, and the monster was gone. Trulda's hand scooped Selvara up and lifted her out of the mist.
“Ulm!” Trulda called urgently. “Selvara’s hurt!”
Ulmenglanz spun her quarterstaff, sending another attacker flying back into the fog, before hurrying to Selvara’s side. She took the tiny fairy from Trulda to allow her to continue fighting and examined her. Selvara winced as Ulmenglanz pressed her hand gently over the wound. The dryad’s face grew concerned as she chanted a healing spell. “The wound is deep, and poisoned. Something narcotic this time. You’re probably numb from the toxin, so you barely felt the wound.”
Selvara managed a weak grin. “At least the monsters are considerate.”
Around them, the battle raged on. Trulda’s mace swung through the air, felling one creature after another. Weylan swung his sword-staff pulled out to quarterstaff length. His magic shadow dagger was useless in the brightly lit cavern. Skorr had switched to a short sword. The two-handed war pick was simply too slow to keep up with the lightning-fast attackers. Their enemies lunged out of the mist and returned into it quicker than the eye could follow.
One squirrel leaped at Skorr, but he caught it by the neck with his left hand, holding it at arm’s length as it clawed uselessly at his heavy miner gloves.
They could clearly see their enemy for the first time. A Squirrel the length of a humans’ arm with slick white fur, sharp teeth and white pupilless eyes. Its arms whirled almost faster than the eye could follow.
Skorr kicked away an unseen assailant and used the squirrel as a club, smashing another attacker mid-leap before decapitating the one in his hand with a swift slash of his short sword. He continued fighting while informing his team of his conclusions: “Did you see their eyes? That’s a side effect of mist-vision potion. What I wouldn’t give to have one of those right now for myself. They can see right through mist, fog and clouds. This dungeon monsters also are clearly affected by a speed potion, at least one at master tier and we already know their claws are coated with different kinds of poison.”
Trulda cursed. “Speed potions too? Damn. At least now we know what ‘alchemically enhanced’ means.”
Selvara, struggling to recall some common information she’d learned: “Dungeon monsters of a certain level can only have a specified amount of power and abilities. Trevisanus can use everything to empower the attributes of his monsters to the full maximum without reserving anything for magic abilities. Then he uses alchemy to further enhance them beyond their limit and give them magic abilities. Could you use Analyze on them?”
Skorr barely managed to block a squirrel from scratching his neck again. “Juvenile Scourge-Squirrel,” he then reported, “Dungeon monster level 1.”
Selvara’s wounds had been healed and she flew upwards, high enough to see any attacker coming, if they could even jump that high. She refrained from using invisibility, since she guessed she’d need all her mana for offence. Even from above she couldn’t see their enemies inside the mist. “This is an open floorplan dungeon floor. All monsters permitted for this floor are right inside this cavern. There are some dungeon etiquette rules about how many are allowed to attack simultaneously, but I can’t at the moment remember how much. Since these are level 1 monsters and this is rated for a group of level 8 delvers, I guess it’s a lot of squirrels.”
Weylan killed another squirrel, then ducked under the next that tried to jump right at his face. “You don’t say. These beasts are everywhere. One managed to scratch the back of my foot, right through my leather pants. The boots are strong enough to withstand their tiny claws, but they are already pretty scratched. I hope the spell focus works on enchanted objects.”
Selvara warned Ulmenglanz of an attack from behind, she then barely dodged. The dryad hit the squirrel in flight as it passed her by. The monster flew away, but wasn’t killed.
Skorr had meanwhile turned up the collar of his brigantine, to defend his neck.
The dryad blocked another attack, then paused: “Wait… Did you say Scourge-Squirrel?”
Skorr killed another monster in midflight, then nodded: “Yes. Why?”
“Scourge type monsters always come in different sizes, starting with a swarm of small ones. These are juveniles, then we’ll probably soon see adult and elder types. The small ones are meant to wear us down and make us use limited resources like mana and potions.”
Weylan swung his staff-sword through the mist, but hit nothing. “Great. So how long do we need to fight this monster wave?”
Everyone peeked at Selvara. She shrugged: “Depends. Finding out how to continue is the main trial of an open plan dungeon floor. We can’t exhaust the dungeons capacity to create new monsters, but there are limits how much monsters he can throw at us. I’m just afraid we’re nowhere near the limit. We need to find the trigger for the next phase. It’s killing a certain number of monsters, finding a specific place inside the dungeon, solving a riddle or something.”
Ulmenglanz snorted: “That really cleared nothing up. Let’s continue to the column. There seem to be no other noteworthy features here. Oh, and Skorr, do you know any way to remove this mist?”
The duskgnome shrugged: “I’d need an alchemist and a laboratory to brew a dispelling potion.” He considered, then continued: “We could also change the ambient temperature. Alchemical mist is quite sensitive to temperature changes. Pity I don’t have any fire bomb potions or similar with me.”
Selvara used her higher vantage point to watch out for more enemies, even as they were almost impossible to spot below the mist. There was however a wave coming right at Skorr. Fast. The dungeon fairy darted to a point between the duskgnome and the approaching enemy and cast Frost Breath. A cone of cold hit down at the mist and it instantly disappeared into sparkling particles that rained down to the ground. She kept up the spell and waved the cone of cold around. Scourge-Squirrels became visible. The short contact of the moving spell cone didn’t hurt them much, but they scurried away like startled cockroaches. Then the wave she had seen entered her cleared area and the source became visible. A Squirrel, but its body was the size of a wolf and his bushy tail more than doubled this length. She identified it hurriedly.
Adult Scourge-Squirrel. Dungeon Monster Level 6.
It had the white eyes of the juveniles, but seemed slower. Where the juveniles were lean and quick, the adults body bulged with muscles. When it entered the mist free area, it immediately jumped. The monster cleared the distance to Skorr in a heartbeat. The duskgnome pointed his short sword at the incoming monster, but the blade slid harmlessly along the fur. He was knocked over, lifted up and carried away from the adventurers' formation that quickly disappeared in the mist.