The rest of the night passed, with Zoe trying her best to ignore the carnage in the hallway above. She turned her focus to every imperfection in the room she’d carved deep in the ground, every scrape and every pebble that stuck out from the walls.
Halfway through, an explosion rattled the ground as whatever James had prepared threatened to collapse their hideaway, but Zoe pushed back against it with her Earth skill and repaired the damage before anything could break through.
Not long after morning came, Brick teleported up to the surface and then back into the hole, and then back out to the surface once more with all of their passengers.
“Lets go.” Brick said, and took off into the forest. Blue, Spark and Zoe fell into place behind them as they ran through the forest once more. Jumping over fallen logs, and winding through dense clusters of trees as they avoided tracks left by the local wildlife.
“So where do you come from?" Brick asked. ”Never seen a lone healer at your level before.“
“Mmm. I came from Foizo, it’s a kinda new little place. I dug out a little hole in the ground and made my home there. Just been off exploring for a bit, looking to see new things.” Zoe answered.
“Right, with that earth skill of yours you would be great for building permanent homes, huh?" Brick asked.
“Something like that, yeah.” Zoe answered.
“Where’s Foizo?” Spark asked.
“North, quite a ways.” Zoe said.
“You get pushed out by the dragon, then?” Blue asked.
Zoe shook her head. “No, never saw it to be honest. I was surprised to hear about it, guess I got out at the right time then. Where are you all from?"
“Trin.” Brick answered. “We left almost a decade ago, now?”
“Twelve years.” Spark said.
Brick laughed. “Twelve years, then. Life was alright back there, but people always remember who you used to be.”
“Who you used to be?" Zoe asked.
“Not important,” Blue said. “Just some growing pains from when we were children.”
“We put up with it for a while, but at a point it just gets old. So we packed up and left, never been back since.” Brick said.
“Good riddance,” Spark said. “The lot of them can burn. Hey, maybe we lure the dragon back there when we find it.” They laughed.
The next few days flew by in a peaceful flash as they ran through the day and chatted about their lives, then settled down into much less luxurious hovels than the first one Zoe had made for the night to pass.
Brick and Blue both grew up in Trin as hunters while Spark was a forager and butcher. Over the years of working together, they developed a friendly relationship with each other, and eventually decided to leave Trin behind for reasons they seemed to not want to talk about. Which Zoe accepted, it would be odd for her to press so hard for other people’s stories when she wasn’t willing to trust them with all of hers, either.
They left when they were around thirty, and have been travelling through the forests ever since. Stopping off at villages and grabbing whatever jobs caught their interest. Escorting people from place to place was one of their preferred choices, when available. They enjoyed meeting new people, learning about their experiences and having a nice excuse to move on to the next place to meet more new people.
The dragon meant nothing to them, no underlying motive, no ruined town they wanted to avenge. They just heard about it a few villages back and thought it would be fun to chase after it. Apparently, they weren’t even sure if they did want to kill it even if they found it.
Spark wanted to, or at least Spark wanted to try fighting it when they found it. To test their skills against the myth and see how they fared. But even Spark didn’t seem all that interested in actually killing the dragon, bringing its head back for the bounty.
It was just a journey, an excuse to travel and see new places. A reason to go to ruined villages and deep into the woods they’d never go. It was just fun, and Zoe found she appreciated that.
On the fifth night, Zoe dug another large hole for the four to sleep in — one single room with four separate beds and a nearly sealed entrance with a small air hole near the top of the room, poking through the lush grass above. She’d learned from her mistakes, and wasn’t making nice slopes for fire to drip down. In the worst case, she could seal them in even without needing to use more mana than she should have in moments.
“Your storage item is convenient,” Blue said as they laid down on their bed and pulled a blanket that Brick summoned over themselves.
“Of course it is,” Brick added. “It’s just not worth spending that much money on something to save a few minutes every day.”
“It is if you’re rich,” Spark said, eyeing Zoe.
Zoe smiled. “I do enjoy having them. Maybe we’ll find some dungeons to clear and get lucky.”
“Dungeons? Around here? Doubt it.” Brick said. “Only one I know of is far to the south east of us. Not a very quick side journey.”
“What’s it called?" Zoe asked.
“Not sure, nobody’s called it anything. It’s just the dungeon. It’s in a cave underground, lots of slimes I’ve heard. Haven’t heard anything good about the rewards though.” Brick shrugged and laid down on their bed.
“After we find the dragon, maybe we should make a stop there. I think it’d be fun.” Zoe said.
“Agreed,” Spark added.
“Blue?" Brick asked.
Blue nodded. “Sounds fine to me.”
“Then we’re off to the dungeon once we find this dragon. You sure you wanna stick around with us that long, Mara?” Brick asked.
“I’ve got nothing better to do, really. I just wanted to get out and explore, so if that’s what y’all are doing it fits pretty perfectly for me too. I’ll leave if I get bored.” Zoe said, smiling.
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“Leave! Hah!” Brick laughed. “Sometimes I forget you’re crazy enough to travel through these forests on your own. At dark too, no less.”
Zoe shrugged, and found herself drifting off to sleep for the first time in months. Brick woke her up as light poked through the small crack she left in the ceiling.
“Light, lets go.” Brick said, and teleported the group up above. They stretched and yawned as they rubbed out the sore spots from their less than comfortable mattresses, and then took off after Brick’s lead again.
Days more flew by, until several weeks later they were running through an open field and Zoe noticed something deep below them. An open cavern, with an abundance of mana floating around within it.
Zoe stopped, and then clicked her tongue when she realized what she’d done. How would she justify stopping suddenly? How could she convince them to stop here and investigate whatever she’d found? Would they care? Should she ditch them and explore the cave she found? The mana seemed to indicate that it would be a dungeon, but with how strange the valleys seemed that might not be true. Maybe it was full of enchanted objects, accumulating a mass of mana.
But would that be more interesting than continuing with them to the dragon? Zoe looked around, her eyes darting through the distant trees that surrounded the clearing for anything of interest. Rocks that seemed out of place, trees that had fallen where it didn’t make sense. Patches of grass that looked different, or markings that might indicate whatever was below them. Nothing stood out.
“Everything good, Mara?” Brick asked, teleporting themself, Blue and Spark back next to Zoe when they noticed she’d stopped.
“There’s something below us.” Zoe answered.
“What?" Brick asked.
“I’m not sure. I just know that there’s something.” Zoe said.
“I vote we find out.” Spark said.
“I say we leave,” Blue said.
“I agree, I say we ignore it. Mara?" Brick asked.
Zoe smiled. “I say we check it out.”
“Damn, a tie. Blue?" Brick nodded at Blue.
Blue pulled out a coin from their pocket and tossed it in the air. “Dark,” they said as it flipped over and over itself. They caught it on the back of their hand, an image of the sun displayed with prominence on the top of the coin.
“Guess we’re making a stop, then.” Brick said. “Mara, if you would?” They stepped back and waved their arm at the ground.
Zoe pushed mana into her skill, lifting the dirt away to carve their way into the ground. After about fifteen feet, she broke into the cavern, revealing the massive hole below them. It stretched another thirty feet down, and about fifty feet across with their hole digging down on the opposite side from a tunnel that made a sharp turn off to the right and another tunnel off to their left that seemed to slope upwards.
As Zoe broke into the cavern, mana rushed in to the falling dirt, pulling the bits that fell off back up into place and creating more to fill in the hole. Zoe smiled as she saw the telltale sign of a dungeon working its strange magic.
“We found a dungeon.” Zoe said as she stopped pushing mana into her skill and let the dungeon stitch together the hole. It filled it up with dirt and even replaced the grass that grew from the surface, and then the mana was pulled back into the cavern where it lay more dormant again.
“Why do you say that?" Brick asked.
“Mana doesn’t do that normally. It doesn’t just repair the ground like that on its own. Dungeons do that. Or maybe some enchanter or something, but I don’t think somebody would do that. Probably.” Zoe answered.
Brick nodded. “You cleared a dungeon before?”
Zoe nodded back. “Yeah, I have.”
“Then you’re the expert here.” Brick shrugged. “How do we get in? Carve another hole and jump in?"
“We could, but there’s probably an entrance. Either that way, or over there.” Zoe pointed to the directions the two tunnels led in. “Or anywhere else, really. It could have wound around.”
“Taking the entrance is better?" Brick asked.
“Not sure, but at least we’d have an escape route we could be sure of.” Zoe said.
“Okay, we’ll spend the rest of the light looking for this entrance, and then try to tackle it tomorrow. We don’t know if the shadows avoid the dungeon or not, so we’ll have to assume that they don’t and keep our activity limited to the normal light.
“But we won’t be able to see the sky from down below, so we’ll need either some way to keep the time while we’re down there, or some other way of checking. Mara, do the enemies inside return when they are slain?” Brick asked.
“It depends, every dungeon’s different.” Zoe answered. “I have no idea what the dungeon will contain.”
Brick nodded. “Okay, so we can’t split up.” They paused and scratched their chin for a minute. “Blue, Spark. You two go investigate the forest around us, see if you can’t find that entrance. Mara, come with me. We’re going to set up camp and I’ll think of what we’ll do.”
Blue and Spark both nodded then split off and ran into the forests, dashing through the trees and rummaging through the bushes for any sign of an entrance. Brick teleported Zoe off to the edge of the clearing and sat down on the ground.
“Dig us a home, I’m going to think.” They said, leaning on their knees.
Zoe nodded and got to work, digging out their home for the night. The large, cavernous dungeon below wasn’t visible even as she dropped down enough for them to stand with comfort under the dirt. It either went deeper than she expected, or was smaller than she expected. She shrugged, either way would be fun.
Blue and Spark arrived back just before dark, and Brick got up from where they were sitting. “Did you find anything?” Brick asked.
Blue nodded. “We found a small opening under a bush.”
“Did you enter?” Brick asked.
Spark shook their head. “Not much. Just made sure it opened up inside, and it does.”
“We looked around after for anything else substantial, but couldn’t find anything. A few holes, but nothing that opened up as large as that one. I think we found it.” Blue said.
Brick looked at the sky and then vanished, appearing a minute later. “The earth was repairing itself. Would it do that if it wasn’t the dungeon entrance?” They turned to Zoe.
She shrugged. “It might. I’m really not a dungeon expert, all bets are off when it comes to dungeons, really. Do you have mana sight?"
Brick shook their head. “I don’t, and neither do these two. We’ll just have to check it out tomorrow, then.”
“Did you think of a plan for dealing with night?” Blue asked.
“No. Other than one of us going up and down constantly, I can’t think of anyway we could know the time underground. I would say we can spend only a few hours every day to be safe, but we will have no way of knowing when the night is over either unless we come up and wait it out up here.
“But if the creatures in the dungeon return while we’re gone, we’d be at a standstill. I don’t think there’s a safe option here. Do we still want to try our hand at it?" Brick asked.
Spark grinned. “Even more, now.”
“It would be a shame to not try our hand at it at least once, now that we know it’s a dungeon.” Blue smiled.
“I’m against it. Mara?” Brick asked.
“I think it’ll be fun. We can leave if it’s too much.” Zoe answered.
Brick sighed. “Then we rest up for tonight, and you two lead us to the entrance at light. For the time being, we will bring lights down with us and when the shadows come to life we retreat to here immediately. We’ll think of a new plan tomorrow when we have more information. Tomorrow is just to gather more information. Understood?”
Everybody nodded in response.
“Good. Get some rest, I’ll wake you when it’s time to go.” Brick sat down and leaned against the earthen wall in the box Zoe carved out for them.