The golden fields were now a blackened husk with only the occasional burned stalk still standing. The village was just as burned and ruined. Dead bodies of Revenants were everywhere. Some were burned, most were not. Humans always left devastation behind them, Mel mused. At least this scar would be regenerated once the invaders left.

Kelsey had ordered some basic tactics into the Revenants. Intruders were, at first, welcomed into the village for a feast. These days, they hardly ever fell for that; these intruders were no exception. When that failed, the plan was to fall back to the defendable buildings. Get a small group to commit and then encircle them.

The invaders hadn’t fallen for that either. They’d left matters to the archer, or bow-user as Kelsey insisted on referring to him as. Mel didn’t normally notice what words people used, but when Kelsey said bow-user, it meant a different thing from when other people used archer. A meaner thing.

The archer—Mel didn’t share Kelsey’s prejudices—had the party stand back and just sent arrow after arrow into the village. The ambush attempt hadn’t worked. They’d moved further back and set fire to the fields. Then, with all the remaining Revenants hiding under cover of the buildings, they set the buildings on fire.

Kelsey hadn’t expected them to have quite that many fire arrows, or for them to be quite that effective. The surviving Revenants had tried a final charge, but it was too far, and the invaders were ready.

Now the invaders were picking through the rubble and the bodies, looking for treasure and the way down.

“Copper and silver, nothing but bloody copper and silver!” the archer called out.

“You know this dungeon’s reputation, Cedric,” the swordsman replied. “It’s poor, with little reward for your effort. That’s why we never came down before.”

“I didn’t think it would be this bad, though,” Cedric complained. “I’m starting to think we undercharged.”

“Just make sure you go through and check for cores,” the swordsman said. “Tier Three cores are worth something and this floor hasn’t been properly culled in a while. They should have grown a nice crop.”

“I’m a little better at managing my mana than that,” Kelsey muttered. “What kind of dungeons are you used to?”

The man didn’t answer, of course. He couldn’t see Kelsey or Mel. Instead, he looked over to where the cleric was sifting through the rubble of the town hall.

“Finnian, Holy Crusader of Butin,” Kelsey told Mel. “And the mercenary guardian is called Kaelan.”

“I didn’t ask!” Mel bristled.

“You were about due to forget, though,” Kelsey said with amusement.

“Was not!”

“What’s the rogue’s name, then?”

Mel looked over at the slim man in the dark cloak, slicing Revenant’s chests open with his enchanted dagger.

“Um…” she said. “Was it… Braven Darkthorn?”

“That’s pretty close, actually,” Kelsey said. “It’s Draven Blackthorn.”

“Dark is practically the same thing as black,” Mel protested, pouting. “It should count.”

Names were such a pain. They didn’t have meaning, they were just sounds.

“Sure, sure,” Kelsey said indulgently. “Now, hush, I want to see how this works.”

The four men had gathered around the hole, easily clearing away the rubble of the building.

“Ugh, more tunnels,” Cedric said. “I miss the open air already.”

“You’ve had, what, three floors where you could use your bow?” Kaelan said. “The Vampire floor is supposed to be pretty open as well.”

“Three out of ten floors,” Cedric complained. “What’s down there, anyway?”

“Danger,” Draven said.

“Rats, according to Tikin,” the Crusader countered. “Corpse-rats.”

“Are they worse than regular rats?” Cedric asked.

“Tier Two, but they’ll swarm,” Finnian said. “The higher tiers are either giant or agglomerations of rats, they’ll need as much space in these tunnels as we would.”

“So we’ll be on even terms, then?” Kaelan said, swinging his arms to loosen up.

“It’s a good point,” Kelsey said. “If this test works out, I’m thinking of switching the rats with the spiders upstairs. I can Tier the spiders up without the same problem.”

“Don’t the spiders get bigger as they level?” Mel asked.

“There are different tracks for smaller spiders— with nastier poisons,” Kelsey told her.

“I don’t understand why you needed to wait for the tiny things before you did this,” Mel said. “Couldn’t you have rigged them with, um, the fuses?”

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“I could have, but this helps deal with danger sense,” Kelsey said. “Right now, they’re getting a sense of danger, but it’s unfocussed.”

Indeed, despite the rogue’s warning, the crusader had unveiled a light stone and had jumped down into the darkness.

“Do you see anything?” Kaelan called down.

“I see the rats— they’re staying at the edge of the light,” Finnian called back. “Tier Two corpse-rats, as the guide said.”

“Can’t be that dangerous, then,” Cedric muttered. He looked at the rogue, who shrugged.

“The feeling is still there,” he said.

“Only one way to find out,” Kaelan said. “Coming down!” he called. Sheathing his longsword and drawing a long, heavy dagger, he jumped down into the hole.

“I’ll miss you,” Cedric said to his bow as he stowed it away.

“I’ll leave you two alone,” Draven snickered. He faded through the floor, turning into shadow.

“That might be trouble,” Kelsey muttered. “Friggin shadow powers. Let’s go down.”

The pair joined the adventurers in the cramped sewer. Since Mel and Kelsey weren’t really there, they sort of stood in a space that was all their own. Helpful, as the delvers filled all of the available space.

“Now the little critters move around too much to guarantee it, but I tried to make sure the ones near the entrance were au natural,” Kelsey said. “And it sort of worked.”

The first kill went to Draven, who was doing something with his shadow powers. He wasn’t in the shadows, but he wasn’t entirely out of them either. His daggers glinted darkly and cut through two of the rats that had gotten too close.

“Oh, they won’t like that,” Kelsey said gleefully. “And here comes little rat CA35.”

At the first death, screeches started echoing through the tunnels, screeches that were quickly getting closer.

“Ware the swarm!” Finnian called. The group huddled together. Cold flame sprung into existence over Cedric’s non-magical daggers.

Despite the warning, the first rat to arrive came alone, darting forward with a speed that belied its undead nature.

“I don’t get how you can tell him apart?” Mel asked.

“His number is etched on his chip,” Kelsey said. “And that number… when I send it the signal…”

She waited until the right moment, when the rat dodged under Kaelan’s blow and lunged for the man’s wrist, protected only by a leather gauntlet. The bite didn’t get through, but Kelsey seized the moment.

The explosion was small but intense. The rat was blown into pieces, tiny shards of bone and skin went flying in all directions, and would have proved a hazard to less sturdy combatants. The real damage was done closer to the detonation point.

“Arrrgh!” Kaelan cried. His vambrace was burned and twisted, and his hand was hanging at a strange angle.

“What the—” Draven exclaimed, but he didn’t have time to process it. Two more rats were flinging themselves at him.

“Hello, D4EA and C722!” Kelsey crowed as the pair exploded. Draven had tried to stab one with his dagger, but the weapon was smashed out of his broken hand. He quickly spun, desperately turning so that his cloak took the blow from the second exploding rat. That seemed to work, much to Kelsey’s displeasure.

“You’re cheating again!” Mel protested. “You can’t choose to explode them when you want?”

“Me? Cheat?” Kelsey said innocently. “I’m just sending a perfectly legal radio signal from the lower levels.”

“This is the electricity thing all over again!” Mel complained as small explosions started to pepper the adventurers. She was so upset she couldn’t enjoy their cries of pain. “But how do the rats know?”

“Each signal is a number, and the transistors I was so excited about are for counting,” Kelsey explained smugly. “When they hear their number, they detonate.”

They paused to observe how the invaders were doing. Explosions were peppering them at a steady rate, but the invaders were nothing if not tough. Finnian’s metal armour seemed impervious to the rat-bombs, and the others were almost as well protected. Draven had lighter armour, but his shadow powers seemed to let him dodge most of the blasts.

“It’s too bad I can’t swarm them like this,” Kelsey sighed. “If they blow up too close to each other they might set off a cascade.”

“Won’t it do more damage if they all go off at once?” Mel asked.

“Maybe, but I’m worried about wasting a bunch before they get close enough to do anything,” Kelsey said. “I only have limited numbers of these, remember.”

Mel remembered. Kelsey had to make the rat bombs. She had a crew of skeletons that inserted them, by force, into freshly spawned rats. It didn’t look pleasant, but the rats were already dead.

Now, though, they were running out. The party had weathered the storm. Not without injuries, but no one was dead.

“That wasn’t in the guide,” Draven spat.

Kaelan tried to answer, but he was in too much pain from his shattered wrist. Finnian was tending to him, his god’s holy power shining on the wound.

“Dungeons change over time,” he finally managed. “They adapt to adversity, as do we. I haven’t ever heard of a dungeon doing this, though.”

“It’s unnatural,” Draven agreed. “I didn’t sense a hint of magic in those explosions.”

“How can that be?” Cedric asked. “You need magic to do such things.”

“I don’t know,” Draven grumbled. “Did anyone listen to the crazy things the mage was saying?”

“About the dungeon being unnatural, dangerous, and needing to be put down?” Finnian said, finishing up with Kaelan’s wrist. He moved on to Draven’s hand.

“Thanks,” Draven said, wincing as the bones reset themselves. “Wouldn’t want to get a potion to do this. He was saying the dungeon had taken over the town, that all the townsfolk were its slaves.”

“Crazy stuff, like you said,” Kaelan agreed, flexing his fingers. He held his vambrace, examining it. It didn’t look wearable until he got a smith to fix it.

“Yeah, we agreed we were going to ignore that, and just do the job he paid us for,” Draven said. “One core for us, one core for him.”

“Ooh, too bad,” Kelsey said, unheard. “Your core is in another castle.”

“And the money, don’t forget the money,” Cedric put in. He pulled out a healing potion and winced.

“I can get to you in a bit,” Finnian told him.

“Save your strength,” Cedric said. “I don’t have any broken bones, and you’ll be needing to heal us later.” He quaffed the potion and grimaced as the pain hit.

“Well now I’m thinking that he was right about the unnatural part, and maybe we should check out the town,” Draven said.

“Nah,” Kaelan said. “This might be unnatural, but it wasn’t enough to stop us. We’ll get to the bottom and take care of the problem at the source. Whatever it’s done to the town won’t matter once it’s dead.”

“How charming,” Kelsey said. “I’m going to enjoy killing you.”

The rest of the rat warren proved to be of little difficulty for the group. Once healed, they made their way through the tunnels. There were a few scares. A rat-bomb that Kelsey had kept in reserve dropped on Finnian’s head, but it proved insufficient to penetrate his helmet and skull.

Kelsey and Mel disagreed on which was tougher.

The rat king also proved insufficient to stop the invaders.

“That was… disgusting,” Kaelan said when it was finally dead. “All those little tails squirming…”

“I thought the way it controlled the swarm was worse,” Cedric said sourly. Tiny, twisted bodies were laid all around him, burning with a cold fire.

“Need a little help here,” Draven gasped, clutching at his leg. Finnian stumbled over.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Poison?” Draven speculated. “Rotting at the flesh. One of the rats was special.”

“Just too bad that you’re all getting divine healing down here,” Kelsey said. “If you went back with just potion healing you’d be spreading disease like it was 1346.”

“Kelsey, I’m worried,” Mel said.

Kelsey smiled at her reassuringly. “Don’t be. It’s too early. Delvers have gotten down to Cheryl before. No one has beaten her yet. These guys are tired, worn down and out of half their alchemical supplies. We can take them.”